Google Pixel C vs. Microsoft Surface 3 – Which Tablet Has Better Specs?

Until now, Google has been creating a family of laptops in collaboration with the biggest names in the industry, but they were running on Chrome OS. The Pixel C is the first tablet running on Android OS and which was exclusively built by Google. We'll compare it to Microsoft's Surface 3 tablet which runs now on Windows 10, but which has a weaker processor than the "Pro" version. The Pixel C tablet has also an optional keyboard accessory, but it lacks a stylus. But, more about both devices you'll find out in this article.

Displays

The screen of the Pixel C is a bit smaller, measuring 10.2-inch and it's an IPS display which is able to support a resolution of up to 2560×1800 pixels. The images are pretty sharp because the resulted pixel density is convenient at 308 ppi.

The Surface 3 uses a ClearType screen with an aspect ratio of 3:2, but it has a diagonal of 10.8-inch and its resolution is Full HD, so don't have high expectations from the image quality, because the pixel density is very low at 214ppi. Even so, you won't have any problem when reading content in direct sunlight, because the ClearType technology makes text viewed on liquid-crystal displays, even outdoors.

Hardware

These tablets have completely different internal configurations. For example, the Pixel C is using a big.LITTLE Nvidia Tegra X1 octa-core processor which is paired with Nvidia Maxwell GPU and 3GB of RAM, and it has two variants of internal memories: 32GB and 64GB, but they're unexpandable.

The Surface 3 is powered by an Intel Atom x7-Z8700 quad-core processor which is clocked at 1.6 GHz, but the speed can be increased up to 2.40 GHz. The tablet has either 2GB or 4GB GB LPDDR3 1600 MHz, Intel HD Graphics and there are also two variants of internal memories with capacities of 64 and 128GB, but there is room for extra storage up to 200GB, by adding a microSD card. The tablet has also an LTE option and the Type Cover is backlit, but which is also attached to the bottom of the device using magnets.

Software

The Surface 3 takes advantage of the operating system it comes loaded with, being capable to run many applications which aren't accessible to the Android users. But when it comes to gaming, the Pixel C has a slight advantage, because there are plenty cool Android games for mobile devices.

Prices

The starting price for the Pixel C is $499, but if you want to buy the keyboard, you will pay $150 more. The 64GB variant of the Surface 3 costs $500, and its Type Cover is cheaper at $130.

Source: Google Pixel C vs. Microsoft Surface 3 – Which Tablet Has Better Specs?

Teacher says there’s too much tablet time in class

Melissa Darbee knows how much technology can benefit students in the classroom.

But the Joshua Cowell educator is also concerned about what she says is a recent Manteca Unified mandate stating that students should spend 80 percent of their school day working with technology – a fact that she says, flies in the face of contemporary child development research linking excessive screen time to common problems.

Last week Darby delivered a sharply-worded and reinforced statement to the Board of Education centering on the 80 percent requirement and possible links between the amount of time that students spend on computers or wireless devices and things like anxiety, depression and obesity. Such time has increased with the issuance of tablets to all 23,000 Manteca Unified students as part of the Going Digital endeavor.

And she had the facts on her side.

Among her comments were researched ideas from the A.D.A.M. Medical Dictionary, the Mayo Clinic and a series of independently written articles by The Huffington Post that link too much screen time to childhood obesity, irregular sleep, behavior problems, impaired academic performance, violence and less time for active, creative play.

"Members of the board, fellow teachers, parents and concerned citizens, in a society when obesity-related illness is at an all-time high and in a country where mental illness leads to mass violence at alarming rates – in a time when 11 percent of the children in our classrooms have diagnosed attention disorders – we must offer a well-rounded education," Darbee said. "We cannot ignore solid research or years of teaching practice in favor of an off-the-cuff mandate.

"We must provide an education that reinforces actual human interaction – an education that produces students that are college, career and life ready."

Darbee also pointed out that she can't simply be targeted as "anti-technology" in the wake of the Going Digital p latform because she has implemented many facets of the program tailored specifically for the age groups that she teaches.

Too many students, Darbee said, rely on the devices solely for their education – taking away traditional classroom methods that have been proven successful even amongst the newest, tech-savvy generation.

Too many students, she said, are focusing solely on the tablets and the computers which are supposed to augment in-class instruction but has instead nearly replaced it.

"Given the current research in child development it is not only ridiculous, it is unethical for Manteca Unified School District to push teachers to plug students in for 80 percent of the day," she said. "May I close by pointing out the irony that I'm speaking on this topic tonight – ironic because I am implementing technology in my classroom and ironic because I've spent hours researching and looking for age-appropriate applications to the devices at my school site.

"It's ironic because I was asked to be a 'site tech champion.' I'm not anti-technology – I am using age-appropriate technology to support students and maximize their learning. I also have four students in my classroom that cannot hold a pencil – these students do not need to be plugged in for 80 percent of their day."

Source: Teacher says there's too much tablet time in class

Amazon’s $50 Fire Is the Paperback of Digital Entertainment

Oct. 13, 2015 2:14 p.m. ET

Amazon.com AMZN -0.23 % recently began shipping a tablet computer that's so cheap, you can buy it like bulk Snickers. The new 7-inch Fire tablet sells for $50, and if you get five, they'll throw in a sixth free. Imagine the trick-or-treating this year at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' house. You get a tablet! And you get a tablet!

Since tablets arrived five years ago, we've been trying to figure out what they're good for. The first iPads were all about you being the first of your friends to own an iPad. But the magic wore off quickly. Tablets have been in a race to the bottom on price while sales overall are in a slump. In search of profits, Microsoft, Apple, even Google have been pushing higher-end tablets as replacements for work laptops.

Amazon's bargain mini-tablet strikes me as something different: a throwback to the paperback novel. A year ago, I was impressed when Amazon brought out a $100 6-inch tablet that didn't stink. Now we've got one for half that price with an additional inch of screen (albeit lower resolution).

Using the $50 Amazon Fire for the past week, I wasn't drafting presentations or burning through email. It doesn't have anywhere near the necessary speed or screen resolution for serious work. Performance is almost beside the point. Instead, the Fire seizes on the reality that, for many of us, tablets are entertainment—a means to read novels, binge on Netflix NFLX -3.28 % in bed and sling Angry Birds.

Half as powerful as an iPad but one-eighth the cost, Amazon's tablet is cheap yet good enough to have fun. And like a checkout-aisle thriller, it won't mind getting battered at the bottom of a gym bag or even dropped on the floor.

Amazon's $50 tablet doesn't single-handedly solve the existential crisis facing tablets. Especially as phones get larger, more of us use them for tablet-like tasks. Even Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite e-reader lives on to compete with tablets in its single niche, reading e-books indoors and out. But the price does change my perception of tablets: They're a low-commitment way to get a bigger screen without going full phablet (shudder). And they're a cost-effective way to keep children occupied.

To see Amazon's cheapie in better context, I checked out eight of the latest mini-tablets, including the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 8, Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and iPad Mini 4, all released with little fanfare in the last two months. Here's what you can expect in a cheap tablet that's just entertainment—and what you get by paying extra.

Necessities

In raw processing power and screen pixel count (1024x600), Amazon's $50 Fire is a step down even from modestly priced tablets like the $100 Amazon Fire HD 6. But it keeps one critical feature: visibility.

Older LCD screens require your eyes to be directly in front of the tablet or the image gets washed out. Bargain tablets, such as the $70 Trio 7.85, get in trouble when you rotate to a vertical orientation, a big problem for reading. Amazon's Fire keeps things visible at all angles with a technology called IPS that's worth looking for on any tablet.

An entertainment tablet also needs to play video and games without hiccups. The Fire played all the video sources I could throw at it, including local files and content streamed from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and, of course, Amazon. Casual games, including Angry Birds and Monument Valley, worked fine.

Of course, a family-ready tablet needs a battery that keeps "Wild Kratts" playing the entire cross-country flight. The Fire ran for a little over seven hours in my local video-playback tests, though closer to five when I streamed via Wi-Fi.

The Fire is made of a sturdy plastic that withstood being repeatedly dropped out of a bed, but any technology that's priced to be disposable needs a good means of disposal. Amazon, like Apple and others, has a free system that takes back and recycles your tablet after your child inevitably drops it in the toilet.

There are a few acceptable compromises for a $50 tablet. It won't be slim—the Fire is 0.4 inches, though its rectangular shape still felt comfortable for one-handed reading. The camera isn't going to take print-worthy shots, but is sufficient for a video chat with the grandparents.

With an Amazon tablet, you're also buying into a relationship with Earth's largest online retailer, which makes money on bargain hardware by upselling us on digital media. You are stuck buying movies and games from Amazon, though you can still stream from services like Netflix that Amazon allows in its own app store. Amazon puts ads on its lock screen, which you can remove for $15. You can't remove the persistent home screen shopping links, however.

Still, the Amazon link may be what makes the $50 tablet idea work. It happens to have an incredible digital media store and parent-friendly features like time limits. And when Amazon puts its good name on the line with budget hardware, it's easier to trust.

Nice-To-Haves

Spending more for a mini tablet buys you two important things: A better screen and better battery life.

A screen with more pixels packed in helps your eyes with HD video and fine text alike. Just a slight bump in pixels per inch, or PPI, makes a big difference in viewing pleasure on something you hold close to your face.

But higher resolution can tax the batteries, so manufacturers have to bump that up, too. The mid-level Amazon tablet, called the Fire HD 8, actually got worse battery life performance, by about an hour, than the 7-inch Fire. That's all because of the higher-resolution screen.

My favorite step-up tablet is Lenovo's new 8-inch Yoga Tab 3, which for $170 has 189 PPI and a battery that lasted about 10 hours in my test but the company says can do up to 20 hours of just reading text. (By comparison, the 7-inch Fire has 171 PPI.) The Android tablet gets its stamina—and some very nice speakers and a rotating 8-megapixel camera—from an unusual tube shape on one side. I found the tube convenient to grip, but it weighs one pound, so I suggest handling one in a store before you buy.

If you've got $100 more to spare, one of the best deals is the two-year-old iPad Mini 2, which Apple now sells for $270. It has a 326 PPI screen and 10 hours of battery life (but no fingerprint reader).

Another nice-to-have: a memory card slot. There's one on the Yoga Tab 3, Amazon's $50 Fire and the high-end Samsung Tab S2. Apple's iPads don't offer them because of their super-slim form—and likely also their maker's interest in extracting another benjamin from us for more built-in storage.

Luxuries

If price is no object, what's the best you can get in a mini-tablet? Money buys you a super-luxury, super-thin screen and power to do more than just entertain yourself.

You can't buy a better handheld entertainment display today than Samsung's $400 8-inch Galaxy Tab S2. Its screen is beautiful, using a technology called Super AMOLED to provide truly black blacks and colors that look saturated even in brighter situations.

Because of the screen technology, the super-thin Tab S2 is also the Energizer Bunny of tablets, lasting about 15 hours in my video playback tests, nearly 50% longer than the iPad Mini 4. The Tab S2 also comes standard with 32 GB of storage. You don't have to pay any more to be vacation-ready.

So where does that leave the iPad? This year's update added more multi-tasking capabilities and a screen that looks slightly better in daylight. It matches the Samsung in slimness and features like a fingerprint reader. But with inferior screen and battery performance, you're really buying access to the Apple world. It comes with an elegant operating system, giant app store and admission to the alluring ecosystem of Macs and iPhones.

Both the Tab S2 and Mini 4 come with blazing-fast future-proof processors. At the smaller size, I've found the iPad Mini useful as a creative tool for drawing and taking photos. You could even hook up a keyboard for word processing.

But as high-end tablets verge into laptop capability—and prices rise accordingly—it's vital to consider your needs. Why pay the hardcover price when all you need is a paperback?

Write to Geoffrey Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com or on Twitter at @GeoffreyFowler.

Corrections & Amplifications

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 has a MicroSD card slot. A previous version of this article incorrectly said that the Tab S2 did not have one.

Source: Amazon's $50 Fire Is the Paperback of Digital Entertainment

Microsoft Surface: From Cross-Bearer To Standard-Bearer

The Microsoft event that introduced Surface to the world in June 2012 was awash in pairs of stacked rectangles. Most obviously, they were the new Surface and its keyboard. But below the surface, they represented something else: the twin challenges of creating an ARM-based tablet that ran a credible version of Windows (RT), and an Intel-based tablet that was thin and light with long battery life. At the first task, Microsoft failed. But at the second, it succeeded well enough to make the first task irrelevant.

The Surface Book has a detachable keyboard

Critics were quick to call the Surface a flop—especially given the massive write-off Microsoft took on the business—but by the second generation of the Surface Pro, there were glimmers of success, at least in specific industries such as health care. With the next Surface iteration, the even thinner and larger Surface Pro 3, Microsoft had largely abandoned taking on the iPad and set its sights on competing with conventional laptops (even though Surface's keyboard was still optional). The even thinner, lighter, and faster Surface Pro 4 continues this trend with a larger, higher-resolution screen and thinner and more rigid Type Cover featuring an enlarged trackpad with an optional fingerprint reader.

With the Surface Pro, Microsoft has clearly hit on something. It was one thing when Microsoft's hardware partners released tablets with their own Surface-style keyboard covers. But Apple's recent announcement of the iPad Pro combined with iPad improvements in iOS 9 seem to take several cues from the Surface. Multiple apps on the screen at the same time? Larger screen? More pervasive keyboard shortcuts? Magnetically attached keyboard accessory? Digital pen? Check off all five boxes.

The Surface Pro 4's Type Cover

Now, Apple can credibly claim that its keyboard accessory is an evolution of its own smart covers that preceded Surface, and that multiple apps sharing the screen have been a Mac thing since the days of 1991's System 7. And the company steadfastly maintains that its MacBook and iPad lines shall not merge in a Surface-like way. But the timing of it all makes it hard to look away from Redmond's influence completely.

With the foundations of Surface Pro 3's success, the Surface Pro 4 clearly represents an evolution—albeit a more pronounced one than we've often seen between successive iterations of iPad or MacBook. But even this new tablet was dramatically upstaged by the Surface Book, the thin and powerful 13.5-inch, two-in-one tablet with a snaking hinge that can be used as a tablet, either with or without its battery-extending and GPU-providing keyboard base. Despite the upper half's large screen size, it's lightweight, and the base's hinge has attacked the balance problem that many tablet/laptop hybrids have. And like the Surface Pro 4, it features an instantly recognizable profile.

The Surface experience story isn't quite as good as it looks on paper.

If the Surface tablets have made waves in Apple's backyard, the Surface Book may spawn a tsunami in Microsoft's. Unlike with the first Surface tablets, Microsoft had nothing to prove with the Surface Book. As the Surface Pro customer base has grown, it's likely that Microsoft is just accommodating potential customers who prefer a more laptop-like device than the Surface Pro 4, which is still a tablet propped up with a kickstand.

While Microsoft is quick to compare its "ultimate laptop"—which starts at $1,500 and goes way, way up—to Apple's portables, it will walk a far narrower tightrope in competing with its own hardware partners with the Surface Book. Not only does the first model stand to do battle with the best that HP, Dell, Acer, and Lenovo have to offer, but the company is poised to come downmarket with a lower-priced mainstream version, as it did with the $500 Surface 3.

The Surface experience story isn't quite as good as it looks on paper. Even with the considerable reconciliation of Windows 10 and the arrival of a touch-optimized Office as well as other universal apps, Windows' interface is still in transition. Many people with Surfaces spend much of their day working not so differently than they would with a no-touch Windows 7 laptop. Even on the marketing side, Microsoft needs to rethink the Surface Pro, which it's been promoting as the tablet that can replace your laptop. Now that the company wants to sell you a laptop, where does that leave the Surface Pro?

The Surface Pro 4 at work

Still, Microsoft has shown it can innovate in tablets and even in the ancient laptop category. At its launch event, Surface products stood in contrast to its new Lumia phones, which represented a modest upgrade from their predecessors. Indeed, the new phones' signature feature is what they can do when they're tethered to a monitor on a desk, a relatively limited scenario.

As a Microsoft sub-brand, Surface still has its limitations.

What's next? Given the Surface trajectory towards larger screens, an all-in-one iMac competitor is almost certainly brewing at the state-of-the-art prototyping and development lab that bakes Surface products. The upgraded Microsoft Band still leaves plenty of room in the company's device portfolio for a more full-featured smartwatch. And then perhaps a beastly desktop aimed at power-hungry professionals would take on the Mac Pro, letting Microsoft recast the Surface Book as the laptop that can replace your workstation. After all, the Surface message has long been as much about performance as it's been about form factor.

As a Microsoft sub-brand, Surface still has its limitations. The Surface Hub wall-mounted Windows 10 giant touchscreen takes on a niche computing form factor that has previously been the province of a few small vendors. Meanwhile, it makes sense that the HoloLens augmented-reality headset—a product that can eschew surfaces altogether—would skip the Surface label. Both the Surface Hub and HoloLens are high-end enterprise tools, at least in the short term. Indeed, despite the Surface business's reported $3.5 billion in revenue, Microsoft still hasn't made much headway into the consumer tablet market, a major thrust of the Surface's original mission. Still, the division's impact is destined to expand as an Apple alternative and threat to Windows PCs manufactured by Microsoft's customers.

Keep an eye on the trackpad that guides you, PC industry. Microsoft's gloves are off.

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Source: Microsoft Surface: From Cross-Bearer To Standard-Bearer

Amazon's tablet stuck in no-man's land

Tthe new HD 10 and HD 8 have improved little over last year's mid-tier Fire tablets.

Amazon's newest Fire HD tablets have a problem: It's hard to be in the middle of a road when you're selling gadgets these days.

At US$230 and US$150, respectively, the Fire HD 10 and Fire HD 8 sit in a funny no-man's land. On the one hand, they're too pricey to be cheap - for that, Amazon has a US$50 tablet it would like you to look at, which you can opt to buy in a six-pack that still costs less than the cheapest iPad.

At the same time, these Fire HD tablets are not quite good enough to consider as a cheaper option to a high-end tablet - in most cases, the money you save may not be worth the tradeoffs you make.

No-one's quite sure how the tablet market - which is really just five years old, if you think about it - is going to play out. But if it's anything like the smartphone market, we can probably expect to see two very clear paths to success: pursuing the high-end or dominating the low-end.

Smartphone success seems to come either by being a premium brand - which is hard to establish - or by selling lots of devices that are cheap but pretty good - though that's no cakewalk from a profit standpoint.

In tablets, the high-end has fallen to Apple and Samsung, which are offering cutting-edge tablets that can be marketed as productivity tools. At the low end, there are the sub-$100 tablets that are really designed for consumption, meaning that they'll work for watching videos on a plane but you probably don't want to try and do any work on them.

Enter Amazon. Cheap but good may be an area it can own, as the firm has traditionally eschewed profit and used its gadgets as a portal to content. In fact, given that the company's attempts to make high-end devices fizzled - the Fire Phone, for example - cheaper tablets are sort of a return to form.

But with the new Fire HD tablets, the company didn't return far enough. These tablets have the screen sizes of Amazon's pricier HDX line (starting price US$430) - which is not getting an update this year. But in terms of quality, the new HD 10 and HD 8 have improved little over last year's mid-tier Fire tablets.

That shows up in a few ways. For example, neither the HD 8 nor the HD 10 have the crisp display of the HDX line, which is particularly important for a consumption device. It's especially noticeable on the 10-inch tablet, which was perfectly fine for watching video but wore on my eyes over time for reading books. The Fire HD 8 was a little better in this respect, but still not nearly as crisp as, say, firing the Kindle app up on a high-end smartphone.

The new tablets' performance was also very middle of the road. There were noticeable stutters, for example, when I started apps up for the first time and even occasionally when I tried to get back to the homescreen. Video playback was smooth - a crucial box to check for Amazon since its tablets try aggressively to get you to pick up more Amazon content.

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Browsing on the company's Silk browser was also fast. But I often found myself waiting impatiently for content in apps to load. Even in Amazon's own Kindle app, it would sometimes take so long to get to my book that I had wondered whether the tablet had frozen.

There were things I liked about the tablets. For example, the sound quality for a tablet at this price point was surprisingly good. I picked up background noises and sound effects in television shows on the Fire HD that I didn't get when watching on other tablets, or even my television. The tablets also have a slightly odd proportion that I actually liked for widescreen viewing. In the case of the smaller tablet the stretched-out shape was also good for getting a lot of text onto a single "page" of an e-book. And the option for expandable memory is welcome - both tablets support up to 128GB of memory.

Still, given what we've seen from Amazon lately, these tablets feel like leftovers from another strategy, somewhere between the company's former play for the high-end and the renewed push for the low. For some consumers, these may be acceptable tradeoffs. But most probably won't be that interested in getting stuck in the middle.

 - The Washington Post

Source: Amazon's tablet stuck in no-man's land

The Problem With Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet

Tunisia certainly deserves a Nobel Peace prize for being the only democratic success story in the wake of the Arab revolts. The political, economic, and security challenges of 2011 until now have been exceptionally tough. Shaking off decades of a Western-backed dictatorship was also (and still is) a huge challenge. Despite all of this, significant advances were made in creating a democratic structure of governance and a culture that Tunisians can be proud of; it's one that provides a model for the world, not just the Middle East.

But there is a key problem with the Nobel Committee's announcement on Friday that the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet had won the prestigious award: The main actors who actually protested in the streets—those who made excruciating compromises, then facilitated a voluntary step-down, and then handed over power in early 2014—were actually the democratically-elected representatives of Tunisia and their political party leaders, not the four NGOs that ostensibly "steered" the negotiation process.

Indeed, if the Committee really wanted to show that "Islamist and secular political movements can work together to achieve significant results in the country's best interests," the logical choice would have been the leading Islamist party, An-Nahda, and any number of their "secularist" coalition allies, or perhaps even their current partner in government, the Nidaa Tounes party, which currently holds a plurality in the parliament, the presidency, and the prime ministership. In fact, this is exactly the duo that the International Crisis Group is recognizing in their annual Peacemakers celebration later this fall.

Additionally, one should not forget that the Quartet, which includes the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers, is in significant ways part and parcel of the dictatorship era, with some of its four components not only occasionally offering opposition, but also sometimes standing in as regime support-bases—the very structures that helped keep key sectors of the Tunisian body politic and economy frozen in the monopolistic mold that many Tunisians found frustrating and oppressive.

As the Oxford University scholar Monica Marks explained in Foreign Policy in late 2013, there were also a number of problems with the Quartet's stewardship of the whole dialogue and negotiation process (full disclosure, I helped co-direct the annual Tunis Exchange politics conference). Marks wrote:

"…important flaws [in] the National Dialogue process—flaws that, rather ironically, also plagued the NCA's [National Constituent Assembly] constitutional drafting work. Like the NCA, the dialogue failed to adopt a robust public outreach plan. Communication with average Tunisians about what was actually happening inside the dialogue, its procedures, and the motivations behind its decisions was almost non-existent. Tunisian citizens, along with local journalists and NGOs trying to follow the negotiations, often found themselves confounded about what was happening behind closed doors. Foreign journalists, as indicated by the almost complete absence of coverage on Tunisia over the past few months, largely gave up trying to cover the dialogue, or found editors back home uninterested in detailed reports on Tunisian political wrangling—however important that political wrangling was for Tunisia's future. I often confided in fellow Tunisia-watchers that, even as a person living here and speaking almost daily with parties involved in the negotiations, I often felt ignorantly mute—like a sportscaster stranded outside the stadium.

"Like the NCA, the National Dialogue repeatedly failed to honor self-imposed deadlines, operating on an amorphous timetable that Tunisians quickly began to treat with a grain of salt. Whether or not the dialogue should have been declared illegitimate on November 3, a day after it had promised to choose its nominee for prime minister, and a new, technocratic dialogue should have taken over is a tongue-in-cheek question that rarely elicits laughter from Nidaa Tounes supporters. "It's totally different [from the NCA]," a leading candidate for prime minister who had been supported by Nidaa Tounes told me. "The dialogue is informal. The NCA is an official body that made an official promise. It's different.

"Frustration with political parties across the board—and with the indecipherable, seemingly endless politicking going on inside the National Dialogue—grew steadily amongst Tunisians through the dialogue process. It seemed to many that this new, more "technocratically legitimate" body shared the same time management problems as the NCA, and may have been even less transparent about its internal procedures…"

Eventually, of course, the process came to a head and an agreement was forged that ended up facilitating the approval of a new Constitution and fresh elections, among other positive outcomes. All of these advancements are laudable, but the Quartet was a vehicle in the process, with the real sacrifices made by the political leaders and elected officials.

Furthermore, the Quartet is also mainly responsible for installing the notion that whenever matters get tough, one can and should go outside of democratic governance structures (like an elected Parliament) and sit with NGOs and whoever else can muscle their way into the back room to hammer out compromises.

Viewed in this sense, one can also say that the Quartet process may actually represent one of the main inflection points when democratic structures were elided and therefore weakened. Given the robust comeback of the old "parallel state" in Tunis—the de facto authority in the country before the revolution and now re-ascendant—perhaps we should look at the Quartet's role from 2013 to 2014 as yet another moment when Tunisia and its external backers failed to replace the parallel state, composed of the security sector, some business elites, and the local mafia, with a durable democratic framework. As I argued in Tablet in September, this may yet prove to be a fatal flaw for Tunisia and the wider Mediterranean region.

Related: Forecast for TunisiaIt's Not Springtime in Tunisia AnymoreAnother Middle Eastern State Could Collapse, and More Cash and Weapons Won't Save It

Nicholas Noe is the co-founder of Mideastwire.com and co-director of the Tunis Exchange Politics Conference. His Twitter feed is @NoeNicholas.

Source: The Problem With Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet

Google’s Pixel C is a Great Professional Tablet with One Giant Flaw

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Search on Gadget Review Gadget Review ▸ Reviews ▸ Mobile ▸ Tablets ▸ Android Tablets ▸ Google Tablets ▸ Google's Pixel C is a Great Professional Tablet with One Giant Flaw
Source: Google's Pixel C is a Great Professional Tablet with One Giant Flaw