sorbus

I'm a bit surprised that the Asus U36SD isn't in the comparison too; it's slightly lighter than the X1, although not quite as thin, has a better battery life with the integrated battery (and identical with the slice battery), the highest configuration has the same processor as the X1 (though I haven't found anywhere that actually sells that configuration), and a much better GPU.

The low-end configuration of the U36SD is about $400 cheaper than the low-end X1 or 13-inch Macbook Air, too, as well as having a better processor than both, although this comparison focuses on the high-end, so that's not too relevant.

The article seems to be saying that the neutrinos appear to have exceeded c. If it were just neutrinos moving faster than photons through some non-vacuum environment, that would be completely non-notable - experiments have already succeed in slowing light down to almost nothing, after all.

> If it really is miles ahead of everything else then the whole concept of that type of software probably needs to be radically rethought.

That's pretty much what I thought, reading that. The college I'm at right now uses Moodle, and while it gets the job done it doesn't do so particularly well. Might just be because of how the professors use it (there's a lot of variability in how useful it is between classes), but even in the best cases it's nothing special.

> btw: the kindle, with passive E-ink, has 2 months battery (i.e. over x100 longer)

And my TI-84 has had the same batteries for at least two years (it's getting to the point that I'm starting to wonder when they're going to run out, since I know that it will be the worst possible time). It doesn't matter, it's an irrelevant comparison, unless you're saying that something more similar to the kindle would be better for developing regions where solar power is a major selling point (which is a really good thing to point out - why does a solar powered netbook need a 250GB HDD? Why not a small SSD, if that would save power?).

I'm hesitant to put an exact figure on how much that would cost, but, including all the RnD that you would need to get even a basic working system, I would say upwards of 1 million. To get something that would work well (not requiring frequent modification to keep it running) and be somewhat realistic, anywhere in the region of 15m to 50m. Once the first one was running and you could just duplicate the design, I would guess that parts and assembly would cost around 100k.

If anyone went into this project with less than 1m to spend, I would be skeptical of their success even if they weren't paying for labor - this is something that would take perhaps dozens of prototypes to get perfect, and the cost would add up quickly even if it was very modular.

However, that's just an arm chair estimate. It's not my field of expertise (I'm not an engineer), and it's quite likely that a committed group of people could pull it off for much less.

Given that Prey is free, open source, and has been around for quite a while, I think that it's fairly unlikely that this is a hoax.

Yeah, if it's impossible for a thief to use the computer then Prey is useless. It's why I have a guest account on my computer: if someone steals it, I want them to be able to get it online so that I have some chance of recovering it.

> Seeing the Fangguo logo in a super market clearly doesn't conjure up images of Apple products, but imagine an electronics store featuring products plastered with the Fangguo logo - it stands to reason that consumers might get confused and mistake one company's product for another.

I suppose that if you had never seen the Apple logo, and merely had it described to you very badly then you might confuse the two. Maybe, if it was a really bad description and you had poor eyesight. I didn't even get that Fangguo's logo was supposed to be a stylized apple until the article said so.