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Comment The numbers are from IDC (Score 4, Interesting) 738

The numbers are from IDC, so they might not be very accurate. According to IDC, Samsung sold 2,391,000 tablets worldwide in Q2 2012, but according to Samsung's court documents in the Apple case, it sold 37,000 tablets relevant to the court case. It could be that almost all of their sales were international and/or not-relevant (such as Windows tablets), but it is hard to reconcile those numbers nonetheless. The most likely explanation is that IDC really sucks at estimating tablet sales. Maybe they are dramatically better at phones?

Source: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/10/apple-sold-5-7-million-tablets-in-the-u-s-last-quarter-court-documents-show-samsung-sold-37000/

Comment Re:I'd feel safer... (Score 5, Insightful) 741

I would feel safer if we got rid of the TSA and just had one or two fully decked out marines on board each flight. Would be cheaper too...

Even that would be a complete waste of money. After 9/11 passengers know that if the plane gets hijacked they will likely die. The passengers and crew will now prevent a hijacking just as a Marine would. The other easy to imagine threat is that someone tries to blow up the plane. In that case a Marine isn't going to be much help. We would be better off devoting the money to intelligence and investigation.

Comment Re:Still not good enough. (Score 1) 280

Treat each medium separately, and instead of pointing out advantages one has over the other and pushing for those to be mapped into each domain, KEEP THEM SEPARATE. It's an e-book. It's digital, can be copied for zero cost, etc. etc. Don't whine about not being able to share it with a friend. Yes, that's an advantage of the physical book. But it isn't a physical book, it's an e-book. So why try to create a system to match physical books?

In my opinion, the problem is price. If we stop trying to treat e-books as real books, then we shouldn't have to pay real book prices. I would be fine with either of these scenarios, but would probably prefer the second...

a) Keep trying to treat e-books as real books. Let people lend and re-sell them. Keep prices where they are now, usually somewhere between a hardcover and paperback.

b) Treat an e-book as a DRMed digital object. No lending or resale. Also recognize that it is nearly zero marginal cost to produce, and bring the price way down. Maybe somewhere around $1 per book.

Comment Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score 1) 827

...assuming you're the golden boy that gets all the attention.

Otherwise you end up just like the losers that are hidden in the far corner of Best Buy. The App Store model is sort of a lottery and lottery's [sic] are for suckers.

Lotteries are for suckers if they have a negative expected payoff. You wouldn't be a sucker for taking a "heads you pay $1, tails you win $100" lottery. You've done nothing to argue that the app store has a negative expected payoff.

Comment Re:Eat my balls! (Score 1) 521

We all know Apple bans Flash because it would allow third party apps that don't have to forfeit 30% of revenue to Apple. Plain and simple. All other explanations are just someone's absurd mental gymnastics to justify Apple's stupid and shortsighted iPhone OS policies.

I don't really buy this argument as the sole explanation for Apple not supporting Flash on mobile devices. Mobile Safari supports enough of HTML 5 that you can re-create most of the flash apps that you suggest would eat into Apple's profit. There are a lot of iPhone specific web apps that give a lot of functionality. Sure, not as much as building a native app, but you won't get the same functionality as native apps with Flash either.

Comment Re:Go (Score 1) 531

I think it will be great for playing go. I can place stones on my iphone pretty well and a 9.7" screen can only be better. Plus my main problem with playing on the computer right now is that I don't want to sit at my desk for hours at a time. With the iPad it would be easy to get up and move about the house while I play.

I just wish KGS would open up the protocol and let third parties create clients. I may switch to IGS in order to play online with the iPad.

Also looking forward to a version of SmartGo for the iPad.

GUI

IDEs With VIM Text Editing Capability? 193

An anonymous reader writes "I am currently looking to move from text editing with vim to a full fledged IDE with gdb integration, integrated command line, etc. Extending VIM with these capabilities is a mortal sin, so I am looking for a linux based GUI IDE. I do not want to give up the efficient text editing capabilities of VIM though. How do I have my cake and eat it too?"

Comment Re:Good Next Step (Score 1) 312

3.3 GB really isn't that much. I would mainly use the Kindle DX for reading academic papers in PDF format. I have only recently started organizing them on my computer, and so far I'm over 700MB. That is only two semesters' worth.

An SDHC slot is really a no brainer on this device.

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