jjindev

Convergence devices have a long history. I read in Steward Brand's 1988 book, The Media Lab, about devices that would converge, collect the functions of our small electronics. Xerox PARC was starting on ubiquitous computing and "pads, tablets, and slates" in the timeframe.

A 30 year progression has brought that old dream to hundreds of millions, who just call it a "phone."

I have a hard time seeing the long history in terms of just one brand, or even a few. The trend is much bigger.

I actually like the confusion of the Android market, but I chose a purely conforming Nexus for myself.

Still I like an ecosystem that is really that, and Xiaomi contributes to diversity, even if I don't buy one.

I was one of those boys who bought a TRS-80. The thing is, I don't remember it as a peer accepted pursuit for me either. This was before anyone noticed, let alone Hollywood recast it as their version of Revenge of the Nerds. This was when being a nerd was not nice.

While I did get some quasi support from people who thought it might help in a career someday, the much more common response in those days was "who needs a home computer?"

Update: I agree that we should encourage everyone with an aptitude now to go into higher ROI fields (of which CS is one), I do think it is a bit reconstructed history to make TRS-80s actually "cool" and "non-cool kids excluded."

Indeed, the TRS-80 was not even a game machine. PCs as game machines came a bit later, and as price effective ones, much later.

I think this is a "stages of moral development(1)" thing. In post-conventional levels of development, all tools would be valued for their strengths. We wouldn't denigrate a tool for belonging to a class of tools.

1 - with apologies to Kohlberg

Yeah, I had a Cherokee and knew that the road out from my house flooded every 3 or 4 years. When if finally did ... the police got there first and blockaded it. I had to drive around anyway.

That was funny, I cussed for the next few miles.

As a guy with a chem degree, I prefer Metric in the lab, and Imperial (US) in the kitchen or workshop. It isn't really that hard to shift gears/units for your task.

Even better is when you learn to cook or build without measurement, just transferring sizes directly. See James Krenov on building a cabinet.

Went camping this week. Left my Prius behind, took my girlfriend's 4x4 up the forest service road to the campground ... found 3 Prius there ahead of me.

We need less car than we think we do.

I enjoyed this review from 2012, but in 2014 we are past a 2013 "MOOC backlash" and live in an era where lines are well drawn. There are still some educators committed to true distance learning, but some also who have circled the wagons and who decry such "solutionist" thinking.

The really sad thing is that the current battle isn't just about this or that "poor" offering in the present, it is against the whole effort. Do you have an idea for a better way to run distance learning? You too are a "solutionist" and have enemies in place.

I always considered it a mild anti-theft measure. "Hey, that's my ..."

[meaning sticker combos should be pseudo unique]

I personally (redundantly) am an android/linux user, but I perceive that iPhone and iPad are accepted in rich and powerful circles, and are precisely the market for an IBM effort.

I don't think IBM wants to sell _both_ a corporate data initiative and a new phone at the same time.

thank you, noted.

You know, companies with the size and wealth of MS sometimes employ people just to have them NOT innovating elsewhere. Consider 18K smart people freed of that as the bright side.

While I defend "disruption" as a thing, that happens sometimes, I don't think this is it.

What Apple and IBM have really done is join an ongoing movement, something that has been going on for years. People already have these iPhones in their pockets, these iPads on their desks, and they very naturally have been integrating them with their life-and-business processes.

Sure, Google would love to have the IOS cache, but this deal more reinforces IOS market dominance than "disrupts" it, the leader.

Should karma be an ephemeral thing? Should it age off in a week or so?

There could be a downside to the early entrants benefit. Sure, you can explore new territory and carve out a huge position, but you become a "Land Barron" in a sense, and no friend of later "squatters." (Relatedly, Bitcoin)

("sure I've got 20000 points, but they guy just climbing from 100 to 200 is a repwhore")

Are there too many bad questions?

Why not the Google answer, which is that search brings you "good" no matter how much "bad" there is?