I think The Peripheral is the best work he has done since the Neuromancer series. It really felt very much like that kind of story telling he did for the Neuromancer series. When I finished it I wanted there to be a sequel.

Straight out of William Gibson's latest novel - The Peripheral.

That's actually something that drives me nuts about virtual keys. If I am trying to type something with a good mix of alpha and numbers it's such a pain to switch back and forth from alpha to numeric. And besides, on physical it doesn't have to cater to every situation; that is what the shift/ctrl keys are for. I think there are probably benefits to virtual as well as physical but for me the physical benefits are more to my liking.

I think there are two things that are possibly being overlooked. A virtual keyboard on a phone is not going to be significantly bigger than a physical keyboard on a phone and also it will reduce the available screen for display of information. So saying the keys will be small would also apply to a virtual keyboard. And the second thing is with the increasing size of phone screens it seems there would be a matching increase in keyboard size for a physical keyboard on a slider phone. I have seen bluetooth keyboards that were as small as the bigger phone screens we have these days. I think with the increasing screen size, now is the time to have a return of the slider keyboard because it can be comfortably sized.

Samsung Epic 4g and Motorola Photon Q were both decent sliders with good keyboards (IMHO). I still use my Photon and probably will until there is a revival in the slider market (or my Photon dies).

I just started reading Neal Stephenson's Seven Eves so this is news that resonates with me. As I am reading Seven Eves I find myself *really* wanting to hear about space exploration successes instead of failures.

I didn't see any mention of the new aircraft in the second linked article. Perhaps the wrong link was used? I also don't see the quote about flying around the world with his wife in either article. This leads me to think, even more, we might have the wrong link or we are missing a link. Can someone provide the correct link with the "flying around the world" quote?

" we don't need radical changes in metaphor, just refinements in usability and convenience"

" It's clear they're making a huge effort to listen to their users and find out where the pain points are: it's a radical concept in software development (listening to the users and applying fixes as relevant). I wish others did it too."

And these are the reasons why I switched from FireFox to Pale Moon for my daily browser. You are correct; more projects need to do this but I think this *is* coming. I think there are slowly but surely going to be forks of good projects who have lost their way and have gone down that "changes in metaphor" road. The forks will try to restore the sanity and they will gain a following.

I just got my DirecTV bill for February and to my surprise it was significantly higher than usual. After a bit of checking it seems DirecTV has raised its rates. So immediately I started evaluating my programming packages with them and after careful consideration I eliminated several pieces of programming and the result is a lower bill than I had previously. So the end result of DirecTV raising rates will be less revenue from me. The programming I chose to do without can be had easily via NetFlix, HuLu, youtube or several other online sources. So I lose nothing but DirecTV loses money. If they had not raised my rates I probably never would have changed my programming. I still think there is a market (at least for the moment) for providers like DirecTV, especially for live events in HD (sports, concerts, etc.). Most of the professional sports in the U.S. have their online presentations locked down pretty tight and priced way too high (IMHO) for the quality it delivers. I can subscribe to something like MLB.TV but if my broadband connection is not up to the task then the quality is not worth the cost and the same event on something like DirecTV will be far superior. If the various online outlets for live events get the quality up and the price down then I think that will be the real end of DirecTV and others like them.

This is where I am getting my roms: http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=xt897. I do know I had to go through several different custom recovery choices and versions before I found one that worked correctly. I encourage you to keep trying because you should be able to load 4.4 or better: http://www.techaudible.net/cyanogenmod-11-for-motorola-photon-q/

I have nothing to add to the original post except to agree with all of it. I went from a Moment to an Epic to a Photon Q where I am currently parked until someone decides to revive the slider platform. At least Cyanogen is still creating images for the Photon Q so I can stay relatively current as far as the OS goes.

Also, will the coating affect the flavor of the beer? I know there is a definite difference in flavor between bottled (glass) beer and canned beer. If they want the current glass bottle consumer to buy into this new packaging they better do extensive testing to make sure the flavor profile is not changed. Beer snobs everywhere will not accept this if the beer taste changes.

This reminds me of the work by Neal Stephenson which was also a good read about trans-oceanic cables.

Once again I find myself thinking "are you me?". I played Elite so much that now when I hear that song "dah dah dah dah dah... dah dah... dah dah" I automatically see myself lining up my rotation for docking. And I also played Karateka on my C64. Aaaand while I played a little tetris while working at IBM I really did not get what all the fuss was about. Seriously, are you me?

Are you me? That sounds almost identical to my experience except I was lucky enough to get my C=64 from dad for Christmas (along with a pile of programming books). I even played on a friend's sinclair!

Our school had a single TRS-80 for AP students to use so I started there but got a C-64 for Christmas that year. So really I did all my early learning on Commodore equipment (eventually I ended up with an Amiga-2000 as well).

I have to agree. And I prefer them to be divergent. I left /. because I didn't like what they were doing to the site. I left SN because I found only about 10% of the content interesting. I found |. and thought I had finally found a place to my liking: something as close to the old, old /. as I could get. And now |. is becoming a reader for SN. This is not what I am looking for and if the trend continues in the wrong direction then, alas, I will have to start my search again. I really want a site that honestly is "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" and not all of the other junk we get on SN (including the "off the deep end" comments). Please turn off the feed.

A new rear wheel for my tricycle.... now if the poll had said "my next big *technology* purchase will be..." then I might have chosen External Storage.