Posts by 3si

LG touts 'surprisingly productive' iPad killer

History repeating

Actually, the original IBM PC was a hasty reply to Jobs' and Wozniak's garage built computer, offering an alternative to the then mainframe-dumb terminal norm. With an original time to market of 1 year (subsequently reduced to 6 months), IBM's engineers had little choice but to use off the shelf components - bar the BOIS which was later reversed engineered by Compaq, creating the PC compatible/clone market.

It's worth noting the position on those earlier players in the market today - Apple have a limited (and IMHO fairly niche) share of the PC market, IBM's PC wing was sold off to Lenovo (enjoying a similarly small share), while Compaq enjoyed a much larger until being taken over/merged with HP.

The eventual winner in the tablet market will be whoever can offer the best features and value for money as the device evolves from being a niche (want one but don't know what for) purchase to being a everyday/commodity purchase like the PC of today. This winner may be Apple, Google, MS, or even the $100 7" Apad sitting on my bedside locker running Android and apps such as Amazon Kindle.

Personally, I don't see Apple winning here long-term. Imitation cost less than innovation and the late arrivals can piggyback on the lessons learned by the early adopters. Dell ring a bell?

Chinese go beyond binary with ternary molecule

timing and decimal values?

Ternary could never replace binary as traditional timing circuits avoid certain frequencies and timings (e.g. 10Hz / .1s) as they cannot be accurately stored as binary numbers - much like 1/3 in decimal. When you introduce base 3 timing, you eliminate most of the frequencies in use today.

Microsoft promises no patent prosecution of open-source .NET

Bah Humbug

First - MS provided financial backing for Mono in the past. Mono is not just .Net on Linux, it's .Net on practically everything (Linux, Solaris, Symbian etc.).

Second Richard Stallman is not an 'Open Source Evangalist', he is a free software advocate and in his strange little world, the two are totally different. RMS has spoken out repeatedly about Open Source before conceding that it is 'Not the enemy'. He has also published a paper on the FSF website titled 'Open Source misses the point of Free Software' (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html). Have a read of it and then tell me he has any positive influence on OSS.