MS to save the world?

Take that Torvalds!

ouch

So you avoid carrying a tablet and phone, but have to pay the same amount anyway?

Controllability?

I had a cheap RC helicopter a while ago and was massively disappointed that it basically seemed to just go up and down. At what price point do you move from a gimmick, to something you can actually learn to fly - and any recommendations?

Isn't cracking the code supposed to give a password? If so how does just knowing the completion URL help?

Why shouldn't Apache want members to use the same infrastructure... as a developer I like that I know how things will work in advance.

And all this waffle about Git - it's just another tool, not a silver bullet.

As a Windows user I never 'got' quicktime, it just seemed like another annoying plugin/addon I had to install. The way others feel about Flash probably!

@TomR

Did you post purely to balance out the bias you saw in the article? Or did you think asserting several 'facts' without a single link would show us all the True Way?

If it's really that good, then this is perhaps less over-priced then MacBooks themselves?

Domestic energy bills will fall by 7% if we use 1/3 less electricity.

What a bargain.

re:Inferior to Flash

It's about the server not your web connection then. Unless you can test watching video in both formats from the same provider, it's not a valid test.

Anyway.... if Amazon are going SL and Netflix do to, doesn't this make it more likely we'll get SL on Android... Amazon will surely want video on their Fire tablets...

netflix

I was interested to see they use SL when I was in the US. It worked very nicely on both Mac and Windows, and they have iOS players too - maybe for mobile they will use a separate app rather than SL?

Got to love the morons saying "because they won't sell it in a format I want, I am free to steal it instead".

On the assumption people posting here are FPS gamers

Then their weakly constructed, aggressively presented arguments seem to back up Mr. Wang.

It annoys me that I'm automatically logged into Youtube by Google. I use g-apps for business and I don't particularly want my work email linked to all the random youtube videos I watch.

bargain

I didn't think they could do anything for under £500k, let alone a fairly decent system (the fact nobody listens to it is a separate story)

Nintendo also make some games. But they are not the sole maker of games. And it STILL takes time to learn how to make a good game with a totally new input device, rather than as a gimmick.

Just because interest is falling

doesn't mean it won't go back up. It just depends who is in the news at the time... iPad3 rumours and Kindle Fire, etc. When Microkia start showing their tablets properly, we'll see.

re:There is no-way to go lower than 14nm

Well, now a random person said it on the internet, won't Intel be feeling silly!

re:How about they actually release some decent software

That's for the games companies to do. It takes time to get to grips with any new advance in console hardware... hence PS3 games are still getting better graphics as programmers learn the hardware more and more.

Fascinating Article

Thanks El Reg, nice amongst the Apple rumours!

Flex

Why does Flex being OS make it near death? In the Java world, OS tools like Spring/Hibernate are the core of Enterprise software, and opening the Flex SDK means the technology can now grow and develop unfettered by how interested Adobe are.

"I think though the plan was to make Bond more believable."

Have you _seen_ the stunts in the recent films? I'm thinking the chase scene at the start of one of the Craig films especially (can't remember which right now)

re:Imaginary mass, Rockstar physicists

1. "Imaginary numbers" are not imaginary. They were not 'invented', at least no more so that regular numbers were... which is to say both _were_ invented/discovered.

2. Feynman would also today be described as a 'Rockstar' - keen on popularizing science, liked talking to people, charismatic, etc. Attacking a scientist simply because they don't spend every hour in a lab avoiding human contact is asinine

@A 20

Shush, he was making an important point of principle, the facts are just an inconvenience.

@Mike_JC

If all those ribbon haters spent as much time (or even a fraction of it) learning how the ribbon works as they did complaining on the web about how it's too difficult, they would be able to _stop_ complaining on the internet, saves themselves a lot of time in the long run, and perhaps be a bit happier.

It's not rip-off tax.

Try buying UK brand in US and let us know if it costs the same amount.

Does Office need to be touch-friendly, when by their very nature touch-screens suck for typing?

@b166er

Why don't you measure your pockets and get back to us on that?

Still chavvy?

I was put of the N4S franchise a decade ago - I liked the driving but the whole chav vibe of pimping my car really annoyed me.

Is this still the background to the games, or have they grown up and the N4S name is more a brand than anything else?

iPlayer

For a $200 tablet, I don't really care about loading my existing videos. What I would use such a cheap tablet for (I don't really want Amazon video and I have a proper Kindle for e-books) is web-browsing and watching TV... so what's the situation with iPlayer, 4OD, etc? Will they just work through the web-browser, or require special apps?

What IS this Silk browser anyway? Webkit?

Pro?

I find the whole concept of extending the Pro range to 13" versions a bit bizarre, to be honest.

Besides being really cool to look at, ... have a serious scientific point to the project

I think they just wanted the coil, and found some science to justify it :)

I think this one case where MS just made a better product.

So "it's better than Android" but still crap?

That seems to be the gist of the article - smooths Androids rough edges but not as good as iPad. What did you expect precisely?

re:Je suis sceptical

Human amputees can run pretty well on replacement legs that are essentially a single piece of spring-steel.

A real bird has to be long-lasting. A robot doesn't need to run for 10 years without wearing out.

Also, some systems that are efficient, can be ill-suited to evolutional processes if there isn't a way to get there through many gradual iterations. So planning the final result, it's possible to create something evolution would never have got to.

Why doesn't he just go to www.gmail.com? What am I missing here?

No

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on Smartphones. They can certainly sign a valid contract with a supplier to go exclusive with them... if the supplier accepts it. The supplier shouldn't, but it's a bit surprising Apple don't have the clout to push the issue considering how big a contract that is for the supplier.

Hooray

More pixels to drain the battery and strain the CPU.

We don't need it. 1600x1200 (or 1900x1200) on PCs has been fine for a decade because nobody wants more unless they have a giant screen, even though GPUs will drive more than that. Even gamers spending £2k on their rig are happy with it.

You'd think Apple would have a non-compete with their suppliers - they are big enough to dictate terms.

re:And they should be forbidden from having any more children.

In America. people often invent new names or have odd ones. It's not as unusual as it would be here.

re:No FLAC, no deal.

Yes, you definitely need lossless compression for listening to music on your phone on the train through £10 ear-phones.

I bet he doesn't even know what it is, just heard other pretentious people talking about it and thought he'd jump on the bandwagon.

Streaming?

Is it proper streaming like iPlayer/4OD/Netflix, or does it let you download a local copy so each device is stream-once-play-many?

Loss leader irrelevant

Since only a minority will do this... and the publicity Amazon get from techies liking Fire could be valuable... most won't know _why_ techies like it, only that they do.

re:2 year battery lifespan?

They're making an example, not claiming that's how long it lasts.

For goodness' sake

I'm sure Steve/Apple have dozens of ideas every year which they chat about, maybe do a bit of early thinking, and then ditch as bad. They'd admit they were bad ideas themselves... brainstorming sessions, idle fantasies, stuff that seemed great after a few glasses of wine...

"Why not do it for real"

You could also enlist in the army and get paid to do it for real, rather than playing COD:MW3. Oddly, most people don't want to.

50k pixels (voxels)

Is only 37x37x37 pixels, so we need about 1000X better resolution to be usable.

But it's still awesome.

I'm a Christian

I'm not offended, but I am confused what the point of it was. Also, poking fun is fine - but are they allowed - even in a joke ad - to say they discriminate against a religious group? Religious organisations have to get special dispensation from the normal law, if they want to require employees share their beliefs.

If you want yank-friendly brits...

What about Eddie Izzard? He's also a loon.