Slashdot Mirror

http://arstechnica.com/science...

Adblock and Incognito friendly.

Just the republicans ... http://arstechnica.com/informa...

It's important to recognize that, according to the ArsTechnica article, "Rosewill" is just a name Newegg uses to hide the name of the actual manufacturer.

I've had some good products from Newegg's "Rosewill" also. Most Rosewill-branded products that I've seen have had some design or manufacturing defects, often amazingly foolish defects.

Read the complaints on Newegg. Newegg should get more knowledgeable people to evaluate the products sold under the Rosewill name. At present "Rosewill" is damaging Newegg's reputation.

They get a free and presumably effective tool to enforce the law and the fines go to pay the company that provides them the tool.

That's the same business model that lead to red light camera corruption. It is the seductive logic of callous authoritarianism where the powerful congratulate themselves on exploiting the voiceless dis-empowered and call it justice.

Thanks for posting. The interesting thing about the Metal framework is that it is a mixed bag of performance compared to OpenGL. In some areas there are performance benefits, but there are also losses.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

Given the time required to build and maintain great products (the longer you keep something going, the more money you can make) I personally feel that "portability is THE killer feature". Hence I prefer OpenGL compared to Metal. Developing only for Apple is a losing proposition - especially for something as resource hungry as a modern jet combat simulation (which Apple has inferior hardware for anyway, sadly).

It's great if you're targeting a narrow hardware range because you can now optimize specifically for it but we've had this at the vendor level before (S3, 3Dfx, nVidia, ATi, PowerVR, Matrox, 3DLabs, etc.) and it was a nightmare. Even if the application supported your card that didn't mean it supported it particularly well, or as well as other cards. So picking a graphics card was less about how powerful the card was and more about how popular it was with developers.

The point of OpenGL is you *don't* do this. The point of Metal is you do (and you have to lots of work).

With AMD opening up the GPU it means the OpenGL driver writers can squeeze more performance out, without the application developer having to do the low-level work. This is the model I personally prefer.

No, if I'm not mistaken, YOU are expecting your fellow citizens to pay more tax so ISPs can reap more private profit. That's what this is about -- ISPs want more lenient definitions of "broadband" so they can more easily qualify for subsidies extorted from telephone customers .

Or maybe I'm just stepping in a big pile of Poe again.

Slashdot readers may recall the:
How a Group of Rural Washington Neighbors Created Their Own Internet Service (November 01, 2015)
http://mobile.slashdot.org/sto...
How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service (Nov 1, 2015)
http://arstechnica.com/informa...

The "But all of the nodes are eventually routed through a .. " to get to the many "internet exchange" or "carrier-neutral interconnection facility” options is the real question.
What can an existing network cartel do about such competition in their captive cities and states? Some car sale related ideas might be useful?
For security each connection has to be paid for, listed and have an ip range that can be logged.
Ensure every connection in the US to a consumer is a final hop directly to a federally listed provider by law?
Make sure the list of allowed brands that can sell to the US consumer is complex, regulated and very expensive to join.
A system of internet medallions per city, state that show users can be tracked. Only a select few traditional providers brands could have long term secure staffing for all direct contact with end users to legally supply the internet.

Invoke a law to alter free bandwidth use to ensure the final internet connection can only be for use by the user paying for their own network.
Users can connect to each other in a community network but any internet sharing is not legal. No direct selling down to groups of end users.
Track and chat down each home connecting and then find the new "direct" provider. Users will then have to reconnect to the more traditional providers.

I think an earlier post referenced this article where the US gov't ran a kiddie porn site it took over. You've got a point though, there's no good way to obtain such material. Are we still stretching definitions so drawings count?

No, they've actually done that 0 times. What they've often done, and continue to do, is try to find ways to remove sources of error from the data. That's called "calibration", and is an essential part of any measurement technology.

Ars Technica just published a very thorough article about this, describing all the different types of corrections and why they're needed. See http://arstechnica.com/science.... If you truly want to understand the subject, I highly recommend it. On the other hand, if you're just being a troll and don't care about the facts (I don't know whether you are or not--that's for you to decide), you obviously should ignore it.

A few of the many stories about backdoors in U.S. hardware (Copied from another comment.):

D-Link: Reverse Engineering a D-Link Backdoor (Oct. 12, 2013)

Arris: 600,000 Arris cable modems have 'backdoors in backdoors', researcher claims (Nov. 20, 2015)

Juniper Networks: Juniper drops NSA-developed code following new backdoor revelations (Jan. 10, 2016)

Cisco: Snowden: The NSA planted backdoors in Cisco products (May 15, 2014)

Netgear: Netgear Patch Said to Leave Backdoor Problem in Router (April 23, 2014)

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Hard drives: Breaking: Kaspersky Exposes NSA's Worldwide, Backdoor Hacking of Virtually All Hard-Drive Firmware (Feb. 17, 2015)

Is every backdoor the work of the NSA? There is no way of knowing.

Check out this story:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

Sad truth: the messenger matters to how we get the message. We've seen a slew of stories along those lines -- physics tests lower if gender is known, violin auditions need to be anonymous to be judged on sound quality, insufficient peer review given to bad ideas of famous scientists such that death is the only thing that opens up the field to opponents (I can't find my citation on that one, but it was in the news last year), and just the fact that we reject ideas that come from political opponents, regardless of facts. But at the same time, true anonymity makes people behave in a much crueler way (much better cites exist, but this one will do for today). And all those "AC" labels make it hard to carry on a conversation -- I can't tell when the same person replies to me. Also, that name eventually develops a reputation for making good comments, which makes it possible to dredge out of the morass of people who just dump inanity, attacks, or lies -- those get recognized over time. The pseudonym of Slashdot seems to me to be a pretty good compromise. Pick a number to be your screen name, something large and random to avoid any connotations. But give me something to see you as a source of information.

That is certainly NOT a "purely political" story; although I can understand why someone would make that mistake. It's a story about the decline of technology in the United States caused by those who make money favoring secret actions by secret U.S. government organizations.

NSA = No Sales for America.

Boeing Might Lose $4B Brazil Deal For F-18 Jets After NSA Surveillance Scandal; Analysts Say Politics Won't Trump Business (09/12/13)

Three months later: President Dilma Rousseff Announces Brazil Is Buying Sweden's Saab Gripen Jet Fighters (12/18/13)

NSA = Not a Sensible Arrangement.

The NSA does not provide "Security". Instead, the secrecy makes everyone feel insecure. Anyone can claim that a secret organization did something destructive; that's an easy sale when a small group wants violence. Suppose an NSA manager wants a promotion. The manager can arrange something likely to cause violence; there is no outside review; new violence can be used as a reason for new authority.

Consider the Culture of fear. Nazi leader Hermann Goring: "The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Quote from that same Wikipedia page: 'Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that the use of the term War on Terror was intended to generate a culture of fear deliberately because it "obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue." '

Another quote: "... journalist Adam Curtis argues that politicians have used our fears to increase their power and control over society."

NSA = No Structural Authority.

There are complicated problems in running ANY organization. Managing secret organizations sensibly is impossible. Each manager of a secret organization has an excuse to hide his or her mistakes. There can be no outside ideas to fix problems because no outsiders are allowed to know what is happening.

Backdoors:

The U.S. government allows secret government agencies to go to any executive in any company, make demands for "security", and threaten the executive with prison if he or she doesn't do what the secret agency wants. Is that the reason that U.S. computer equipment has backdoors? We are not allowed to know. Secret agencies are allowed to lie, so even if an agency says it didn't force a backdoor, no one can know if the statement is true.

A few of the many stories about backdoors in U.S. hardware:

D-Link: Reverse Engineering a D-Link Backdoor (Oct. 12, 2013)

Arris: 600,000 Arris cable modems have 'backdoors in backdoors', researcher claims (Nov. 20, 2015)

Juniper Networks: Juniper drops NSA-developed code following new backdoor revelations (Jan. 10, 2016)

Cisco: Snowden: The NSA planted backdoors in Cisco products (May 15, 2014)

Netgear

Tim Cook says Apple pays every tax dollar it owes. Maybe the key word is dollar here. He never said Apple pays every euro it owes!

Errm, TFA doesn't say anything about "owing" money, but that it could in the future owe back-taxes because Ireland didn't ask for enough taxes.

Anyway, if you think this is bad news for Apple, think what it means for other companies (mentioned in TFA, read it) who will have a much harder time paying their back-taxes, not to mention the IRS, who will get less taxes if Apple ever brings home their foreign money.

I was more considering that a new instruction would be added to the CPU to unlock instructions currently available and this unlock instruction is never called on older windows versions and is instead resulting in a BSOD when the OS tries to execute locked instructions.

Take it one step further and build in the encryption features in the CPU to lock the CPU from being used with any other OS than Windows 10+.

According to Arstechnica the reason is these newer technologies/> like usb-type C use thunderbolt and thunderbolt 3 and 4 will support external video cards and pci express busses too in addition to powercharging SS and other things. Weird.

This is a major PITA to get working without a rewrite of the old Windows 7 code. Worse, as vendors like Toshiba and Sony customize it then incompatibilities arise as things like kernel timings and encapsulation work differently on 10 as it is more easy to modify. WDDM 2.0 which is underneath the directX and part of Aero (as an example) is different which is why DirectX12 can't be backported to Vista and Windows 7.

Come on guys before XP MS would never backport new technology in a 7 year old OS (by the time this hits)?

Ubuntu 9.10 won't be able to run on this hardware either. You all have no problem doing an apt-get and apt-upgrade. MS is doing the same. FYI I still run Windows 8.1 and see how this can be a PITA and I am not a MS fanboy.

But according to Microsoft's point of view it can't catch up to Android and MacOSX and IOS and even Linux. Things are moving forward rapidly. ... also you mentioned instructions. CPUs in 2016 are SOC and do HELL of alot more than just perform arithmetic. To cut costs and make them tablet/ultrabook friendly the new cpus have onbaord wifi, I/O, usb type c, graphics, and other technologies. So it is not a simple have the OS do new instructions. It is to get all of these things to work at the kernel and service/daemon level reliably. Thunderbolt is finally sticking thanks to SS supercharge and usb type-c compatibility. I can imagine external video card enclosures for laptop users come later this year or next year. Lots of new things mobile too are moving hardware wise.

Like the 1980s and 1990s when hardware moves fast the OS upgrades come in too. They are mvoing again but not with faster hardware, but with less power and more features onto the chips.

Tim Cook says Apple pays every tax dollar it owes. Maybe the key word is dollar here. He never said Apple pays every euro it owes!

Two things

https://www.w3.org/blog/news/a...
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

Facebook is already behind. They have the user base today but they have nothing supporting it in the long term. Ancillary tech such as gTalk and Facetime and with Microsoft its Skype. Facebook's relevancy is only propelled by trend and not fundamental technologies (handsets, operating systems etc).

I said years ago that when the Facebook (HTC) phone failed that was the end of FB's relevancy in the market. Besides WhatsApp which I feel was a smart acquisition made by FB (over priced or not) represents open communication standards such as XMPP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP) again propelling a decentralisation of communications standards inevitably meaning that WhatsApp's relevancy is on the chopping block in the long term also.

Free Basics is FBs attempt at getting into actual communications market but its a terrible attempt because all they are doing is telling the world that communications providers should be offering their services for free (which is what made Mark Zuckerberg rich in the first place). But we all know networks and servers (and data) costs money. Whereas a LAMP server storing peoples photos and comments isn't all that costly. So with FB is price pointing network infrastructure at ridiculous levels "I.E Free" which is totally unsustainable will fall in a huge heap around them

Just remember, if your a network admin and you earn $(X)XX,000 per year FaceBook's Free Basics has just told the market that you're not worth your pay check and what you do for a living should be given to people at no charge.

not where you buy something and then when you get home, you find a piece of paper that says you didn't buy it anyway.

The U.S. Supreme Court also upheld EULAs.

The second paragraph where I specify what the "study" does and doesn't indicate, based on the actual study methodology, is rank with hyperbole... how?

Perhaps you meant the third paragraph, where I speculated on an alternative explanation (in which case you might want to look up "hyperbole"). Admittedly, though, the statement that vulnerability control is laughable in Oracle products is somewhat unsubstantiated, although I assumed it was common knowledge (among the knowledgeable in the field) at this point. If not, perhaps this would be an eye-opener [into the absurdity of their culture with respect to "secure" products]: http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Here is the "adjustment" you're referring to:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-...

The recent correction is the difference between the black line and the red line. The temperature rise between 1959 and 2014 is about 0.9C. The adjustment, in the last two years, is just barely large enough to see, about 0.05C. Over the full period analyzed, the new global analysis changed the observed rate of warming from 0.065C/decade to 0.068C/decade, less than the noise.

Really, I need to point out that analyzing data sets is what science does. But, if you actually look at the data, even if you throw out the new corrections entirely, it doesn't make a difference. The corrections didn't change whether warming exists or not.

That image is from this article: http://arstechnica.com/science...
For reference, here is the paper with the adjustments explained: http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
(Karl, et al., "Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus," Science Vol. 348 no. 6242, 26 June 2015: pp. 1469-1472
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa5632)

Computer use at home linked to school failure, increased drug use
Ipad initiative failure
Why the computer is not dominating schools
Why has the computer failed in schools and universities - 20 years later, the "solutions" outlined at the end are still not workable, because, ironically, they need much more individual teacher input than was realized at the time.
There are no technology shortcuts for good education

The history of electronic technologies in schools is fraught with failures.
Computers are no exception, and rigorous studies show that it is incredibly difficult to have positive educational impact with computers. Technology at best only amplifies the pedagogical capacity of educational systems; it can make good schools better, but it makes bad schools worse.
Technology has a huge opportunity cost in the form of more effective non-technology interventions.
Many good school systems excel without much technology.

The inescapable conclusion is that significant investments in computers, mobile phones, and other electronic gadgets in education are neither necessary nor warranted for most school systems. In particular, the attempt to use technology to fix underperforming classrooms (or to replace non-existent ones) is futile. And, for all but wealthy, well-run schools, one-to-one computer programs cannot be recommended in good conscience.

How many schools can even afford one-on-one computer classes, even in the industrialized nations? Because it doesn't work when you try to do it in bulk, as if the kids were computers to be programmed.

Report Finds K-12 Computer Science Education Declining; Most Schools Teach How To Use Computers, But Nothing Deeper

A search for "double-blind experiment computer use in schools" doesn't produce anything apparently relevant. Why are there no hard data available on something that's gobbling up $10 billion a year out of school budgets? The simplest answer is, as always, follow the money.

I prefer Google Translate's naming convention. It's about time somebody went back to the moon; might as well be occupiers from Mordor.

Damn, I screwed up the link. (Actually, it wasn't my fault; Firefox has suddenly stopped including the "http://" in the address bar for non-HTTPS URLs for some reason. WTF, Firefox?) Here's the correct one: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/06/carterfone-40-years/

... I recall having the option to opt out of this behavior by Windows 10

You may be given the option, but Windows just ignores it:
http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Then again this article is from August, so Microsoft has probably fixed all that by now (ha ha ha I almost finished typing that with a straight face!)

Since you are the one making the claim that all these oppressive laws are out there, why don't you provide an example of a law that an ordinary citizen risks getting arrested for without knowing such a law existed?

I'm not the parent poster, nor am I making the same claim he/she did in that laws are just to oppress people (I agree some laws have been used for this, but they do seem the exception and not the rule)

I only wanted to address one part of your reply separately, specifically "provide an example of a law that an ordinary citizen risks getting arrested for without knowing such a law existed?"

Now I must first point out that the chances of being actually arrested or even prosecuted in the following examples is pretty low, rare even (again, the exception more than the rule) but in each example it has happened at least once (once too many IMHO, for what little that's worth)

But there are plenty of laws people break all the time without even knowing it, and if the right person/people pressed the issue legally, you would be successfully prosecuted for breaking them (facts are facts after all.)
Some allow for arrest and jail time, if a judge so wished to do so.

One good technical example fit for slashdot - do you own a smartphone? Do you ever enable wifi?
If so chances are very good you have broken the law repetitively every day.

When the phone passes near an open unsecured AP, the phone by default will try to connect to it.
Perhaps just to read the MAC for location services, perhaps to use for data over the slower and more expensive cellular connection.
Either way if you haven't obtained the explicit permission from the APs owner to do this, you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for "gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or a website"
This is a 3rd degree felony, up to 2 years in prison, and up to $10000 in fines.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/84...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://seclists.org/isn/2006/M...

I notice your slashdot handle is "bws111". Does that happen to be the initials of your real name? Well even so the extra numbers brings you back against the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for "using a false name during an online registration process"
http://www.wired.com/2009/07/d...

Ever use sarcasm a lot like I do? Most of my slashdot posts use a ton of it, and in many US states that is a crime.
Disorderly Conduct laws frequently make it a crime to write anything that disturbs another person, and worse some states don't even require publishing that writing to the public, nor excludes fiction, for it to be a crime.

Illinois has such a law with a max $1500 fine and 30 days in jail.
Oklahoma has such laws where if your fictional writing describes a person being injured or killed, you can be arrested for "planning to cause serious bodily harm" with up to 10 years in prison.
Chicago has such laws and has actually acted on them.

Note all for "disorderly conduct":
http://www.wired.com/2007/04/t...
http://www.wired.com/politics/...

In California (and I believe other states) anti-grafitti laws state it is a criminal offence to have a permanent marker in public.
It is illegal simply to possess "broad-tipped indelible markers" or "aerosol cans" in a public place (such as when leaving the store you just purchased your new marker from) because they can be used to commit acts of vandalism.

Because folks might bother hacking crap like FitBits or baby monitors or drug pumps or Barbie dolls, or maybe even cars, but it's not like a refrigerator has ever been proven to be insecure.
Oops.

Should we modify the politicians??

http://arstechnica.com/science...

Are there consumer routers that will provide security for home users using IPv6 that they can just plug in and leave with default configuration?

Home routers should be assumed to be vulnerable in any configuration. If I were going to attack someone's house, the router is the first place I would start. There are a lot of vulnerabilities in routers.

Security isn't something that can happen as an afterthought. It can't be bolted on. You need to train your programmers to have the security mindset from the very beginning, and router companies haven't done that.

And not just "suits" as in executives who traditionally wear business suits. It can also mean lawsuits if Activision starts using the copyright in its games to take down streams of rival leagues. At least Capcom,[1] Nintendo,[1] and Sega[2] have been known to use copyright against fan videos and streams, and Activision had a TV rights dispute with KeSPA a few years back.

[1] Kyle Orland
[2] Tony Ponce
[3] Wikipedia

Did you read the actual article giving the quote? Because ion my experience if one is not an expert in the field it almost never makes sense to conclude that some guy's take on a topic supported by evidence you haven't read is not bullshit.

Let me give you the whole quote from the Ars article that has the quote:

"Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

That could mean what you're saying, and that he thinks that he needs a database of 100% of everyone's communication or there's no security. It could also mean he wants some bureaucratic tool to search google's servers for specific targeted info from specific targeted individuals. To actually figure that shit out you'd need a whole hell of a lot more context, including shit like the exact phrasing of the conversation prior to his statement.

But let's do what you have done, assume bad faith. Is that shit gonna work? The answer is yes, assuming we've got the votes to replace Giorgio's ally McConnell, but we don't.

Otherwise it's terribly stupid because the only bit of the government designed to check the NSA is Congress, and Mitch is one of the most important members of Congress. You need Mitch McConnell or you'll get warmed-over bullshit served to you as NSA reform, and you ain't gonna get him if you assume Fascism. Especially if it's true.

Always remember: to win Civil Rights it took both Dr. King (assuming good faith, being nice to the opposition, and figuring out which horses he could trade to end up ahead) and Malcolm X (who took a rather more radical line, altho by the time he was shot he did acknowledge that white people were not the result of a twisted science experiment). It also took an rather complicated about-face on segregation by the guy who invented the idea of Japanese Internment.

To be fair, the cheerleaders don't necessarily know they're supporting NSA. They were just unlucky enough to have their intercepted naked pics traded around Fort Meade like Yu-gi-oh cards.

Good to remember, that Congress just passed new (clearing companies to share any data with the NSA directly without liability) surveillance legislation tucked into the 2015 budget bill:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The way this (and the data uploading with Windows 10) dovetails with the budget spy bill just passed you'd think it was hatched out in a back room - in D.C.. Obviously don't use Windows 10 if possible (you can still get 7 or 8.1 on most systems) and don't use Microsoft's built in encryption option (which Microsoft kneecapped starting with Windows Version 8 by removing the elephant diffusor making it more vulnerable to brute force attacks), there are other options for Windows Encryption.

Because each hurricane is getting much bigger.

http://arstechnica.com/science...

Wow, almost as if something the size of a planet can be ... complex!?

It was the right decision- even jerks need to be allowed freedom of speech. (And I say that as one of the jerks :-) )

No you mean "Even jerks need to be allowed to restrict other people's free speech".

If registering a trademark, which is an exclusive monopoly on a logo, label or branding, is an expression of "free speech", then we live in the world of 1984, where the government protects your right to free speech by restricting what you can say, the government protects your right to bear arms by passing gun control laws, and the government protects you from enemy nations that want to destroy you, by making sweet deals with them that give them $$$, and sell them firearms, and send them foreign aid, and allow them to better pursue the development of nuclear weapons

On the face of it however..... what seems counterintuitive is the court actually used the first amendment to Rule against Free speech, because they are saying that you can Trademark a disparaging name to prevent other people from using that mark.

Trademark rights are a RESTRICTION on other people's free speech, so ruling that trademarks are allowed, ever, is, in a real sense, an infringement upon free speech.

WRONG

Allowing the government to restrict trademarks - like you want - would make it easier for someone to imply, for example, the sports jersey they were selling was an official Washington REDSKINS jersey.

And THAT'S what you want, isn't it? To score points in your game of positioning yourself as "more caring" and "more progressive" because you rage against the name REDSKINS.

Because "progressive" is just another name for comparing yourself to others and patting yourself on the back for being "better". Your beliefs aren't based on experience about what WORKS (nah, socialism/leftism/progressives didn't run Greece or Venezuela or Detroit into the ground - no way they ever ran out of other people's money...), your beliefs are a postitional good. You pat yourself on the back because "you care" more than other people.

So you base your fundamental beliefs on nothing more than what other people believe, in a competition to "out-care" them.

Woo Hoo! Leftist "caring"! "I care MORE than YOU, making me a better person!"

How fucking trite.

But no, you don't contribute one fucking dime or one fucking minute of your time to the causes you "care" about. You hate "global warming", but you still drive a fucking car - instead of a 3,000 lb SUV that gets 18 MPG, you drive a 2,500 lb "compact" that gets 24 mpg, because living car-free would be too much of an imposition on your privileged ass. Way to sacrifice.

I drive a big car - and I don't give a FUCK about global warming and the alarmists who Chicken Little it - because they don't have the confidence in their own "science" to do it all in public. Congress subpoenas NOAA to see how exactly NOAA arrives at the claim that this is the "warmest year on record", and NOAA refuses to show their work. If you can't show your work - ALL of it - the answer is BULLSHIT. Awww, those poor warmists. Being forced to substantiate their claims. Awww, pooor widdle "scientists" being bullied!

Oh yeah, and guns are "skeery!"

Leftists. About as deep as an August parking lot puddle in a dilapidated Florida strip mall.

And also useful idiots.

You can also use Bluetooth keyboards and mice with most Android devices.

Ars Technica article discusses using Android as a desktop. While it just works in many cases, they point out that mouse drags are interpreted inconsistently. Sometimes they are like finger drags and sometimes they can highlight text as on a desktop.

To be fair it was never said that "sucking up the energy" is WHY it got rejected. It's just said that they had to literally explain to someone complaining that this was not the case and this new article does not contradict that. They never told us WHY it got rejected. The original article was just on the stupid complaints that people brought up to try to reject it.

Here is the arstechnica headline linked to from slashdot: "North Carolina citizenry defeat pernicious Big Solar plan to suck up the Sun" http://arstechnica.com/science...

Fromt the more popular press, here's the Huffington post (yeah, I know), article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... Solar Farm Rejected Amid Fears It Will 'Suck Up The Sun's Energy' Residents were concerned it would stop plants from growing and cause cancer.

There is no other way to interpret the articles than that the town rejected the solar plant due to sun-sucking fears. The authors intentionally miswrote the story to give the reader a laugh at the rubes.

fair point. I was mostly referring to a specific article linked here on SD. But I didn't check the other headlines. That said headlines are intentionally clickbaity. I will go ahead and assume the text agrees with the article but if it doesn't that doesn't invalidate my point. Which was that the original articles never said that was what happened. They HEAVILY implied it through various means like even mentioning an idiot who thinks solar panels steal energy that plants need but they never said that's what happened. If those article however DO say that in the text then sure that's fair.

And let's lightly address your other arguments. Performance - nope there is no substantial difference between Windows and Linux on the same hardware. They're both mature operating systems and unsurprisingly they're both very efficient. The place you most likely see a difference is in things like graphics drivers and more often than not it is Windows that enjoys the performance advantage as this comparison demonstrates.

Backwards compatibility. Oh please. Windows is not perfect by any means but chances are extremely high that any 32-bit application / game software you have will work, even if you have to run it with some compatibility flags. Even when you have 64-bit Windows. If you want to run older software on Linux you'd better have the source code and hope it recompiles because chances are you're going to suffer badly otherwise. To bring it around to games I suggest you dig out some old Loki game ports and see how you get on installing them. Maybe you'll be lucky, but I doubt it and will be scrabbling around making fake roots with the deps it wants to make it happy.

User base. And here's the rub. Windows does have the user base and it looks on continuing to be that way. Developers chase the biggest platforms to recoup their investment and that means consoles and PCs. They may think of porting to SteamOS / Mac, assuming the money's there to make it worthwhile but they may not. Perhaps SteamOS will take off but I rather suspect Valve are just doing it to seed the market a bit for some streaming / cloud initiative and have little interest in fat clients let alone other Linux dists.

And just because SteamOS is Linux based doesn't mean some random game will work on some random Linux - I threw about 6 games onto an old laptop running Fedora Core 23 recently - 4 ran okay, one printed up a bunch of diagnostic bullshit about stream controllers and one (Goat Simulator) managed to hardcrash the PC. Not very promising. It points to some devs lacking the inclination or resources to test their games on Linux to the extent that they should.

To be fair it was never said that "sucking up the energy" is WHY it got rejected. It's just said that they had to literally explain to someone complaining that this was not the case and this new article does not contradict that. They never told us WHY it got rejected. The original article was just on the stupid complaints that people brought up to try to reject it.

Here is the arstechnica headline linked to from slashdot:
"North Carolina citizenry defeat pernicious Big Solar plan to suck up the Sun"
http://arstechnica.com/science...

Fromt the more popular press, here's the Huffington post (yeah, I know), article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Solar Farm Rejected Amid Fears It Will 'Suck Up The Sun's Energy'
Residents were concerned it would stop plants from growing and cause cancer.

There is no other way to interpret the articles than that the town rejected the solar plant due to sun-sucking fears. The authors intentionally miswrote the story to give the reader a laugh at the rubes.

Except not:

Blitzer pointed out that major tech companies have resisted government requests to access encrypted communications. He asked candidate Carly Fiorina if the companies should be forced to cooperate with the FBI.

"They do not need to be forced. They need to be asked to bring the best and brightest, the most recent technology to the table. I was asked as a CEO [of HP]. I complied happily. And they will as well. But they have not been asked," Fiorina said.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The real joke* in this is that many of these municipalities aren't being served at all by the big monopolies. They asked for service repeatedly only to be denied.

The reason there isn't more competition is because starting an ISP is really hard, in large part due to government regulations:

A new fiber provider needs a slew of government permits and construction crews to bring fiber to homes and businesses. It needs to buy Internet capacity from transit providers to connect customers to the rest of the Internet. It probably needs investors who are willing to wait years for a profit because the up-front capital costs are huge. If the new entrant can't take a sizable chunk of customers away from the area's incumbent Internet provider, it may never recover the initial costs. And if the newcomer is a real threat to the incumbent, it might need an army of lawyers to fend off frivolous lawsuits designed to put it out of business.

http://arstechnica.com/busines...

And, what "municipalities aren't being served at all"? Most people have access to at least one DSL provider, one cable provider, and one wireless provider.

The professor here mentioned is the son of Judge Richard Posner, who is famous for throwing out the Motorola vs Apple patent cases, and also for claiming copyright is too excessive.

4K is not going to happen unless [...]

It seems a bit odd to suggest it can't happen when 4K streaming is already happening. The main selling point of Netflix's top streaming tier is that it grants you access to their "Ultra HD" (i.e. 4K) catalog. YouTube has had 4K support since late 2013 and has quietly been adding support for even higher resolutions in the last two years. You can already find content available at resolutions as high as 8K (e.g. this video). One of the production houses I follow on YouTube makes most of their animated content available at 4K and is moving more and more of their live action content over to 4K as they get more 4K cameras into the hands of their teams.

And the pipes are already good enough. Netflix's 4K content only requires a sustained 25 Mbps connection, which is orders of magnitude more common in US households than 4K TVs are.

Comcast, TWC, et al. are certainly deserving of a good raking over the coals, but when it comes to their ability to deliver 4K streaming capability...well, that bar is actually pretty low, and they've pretty much already met it. 25 Mbps plans are not particularly difficult to come by in most of the US, though I'm quite aware that some regions are woefully underserved and that prices for those plans remain unjustifiably high. For instance, the area where I live (Bryan/College Station, Texas, smack dab in the middle between Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin) is officially classified as a metropolitan area, but Internet plans here cost 34x that of peer cities not too long ago (that "34x" is sadly not a typo), simply because we don't have any adjacent urban centers.

Amazing the lengths they go through to make it so you can't uninstall their "utility" and HP isn't even on this "bad list". I wonder if that is because this guy just didn't get to them yet? I can understand the PC Vendors wanting it on there - for the consumers that call them and have no clue after they've botched things up...but making it so you can't uninstall it moves into the realm of them thinking its their computer and not mine.

This is the 2nd serious security botch up recently for Dell, the NSA must love them (remember it was outed recently they were installing a root certificate that is easily exploitable):

http://arstechnica.com/securit...

Whenever I get a new computer I image the drive (as is) so I can restore it (if & when I sell it in the future), have the associated drivers for it already downloaded separately and then nuke the drive from orbit repartitioning and fresh installing the OS...then only installing the hardware device drivers it needs. Even that isn't enough for some PC vendors (remember Lenovo was putting some of its monitoring software in the UEFI BIOS, nice extra feature of UEFI, so it would reinstall itself after you wiped the drive). Crazy.

You know, you figure after at least 15 years; it would become apparent who the real troll is...
http://arstechnica.com/civis/v...
http://www.thorschrock.com/200...

May I suggest some meditation? (I doubt the meds are working).

Windows 10 is Malware. "Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user." Will Microsoft top managers be the targets of a court case? Other spyware makers have been convicted. Will there be an anti-trust case against Microsoft's virtual monopoly?

Apparently Microsoft is moving towards these arrangements: With Windows 10, Microsoft has complete control over any computer connected to the internet, so Microsoft can use its spyware, which it calls "telemetry", to gather personal information to be sold to advertisers. Eventually there may be monthy payments to use Windows, as with Microsoft Office-365. Apparently Microsoft is paid by secret agencies of governments to steal personal information.

As many people have said, putting spyware into Windows 10, and not allowing people to know the purpose of "updates", will obviously be bad for Microsoft, eventually. So, why is Microsoft becoming even more offensive? It seems that the company is amazingly badly managed. For example, the cover of the January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.

Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

Articles about Microsoft abusing customers:

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying" (But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to avoid blocking.)

Windows 10 is Malware. "Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user." Will Microsoft top managers be the targets of a court case? Other spyware makers have been convicted. Will there be an anti-trust case against Microsoft's virtual monopoly?

Apparently Microsoft is moving towards these arrangements: With Windows 10, Microsoft has complete control over any computer connected to the internet, so Microsoft can use its spyware, which it calls "telemetry", to gather personal information to be sold to advertisers. Eventually there may be monthy payments to use Windows, as with Microsoft Office-365. Apparently Microsoft is paid by secret agencies of governments to steal personal information.

As many people have said, putting spyware into Windows 10, and not allowing people to know the purpose of "updates", will obviously be bad for Microsoft, eventually. So, why is Microsoft becoming even more offensive? It seems that the company is amazingly badly managed. For example, the cover of the January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.

Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

Articles about Microsoft abusing customers:

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying" (But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to avoid blocking.)

For you and for the uninitiated:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

Yeah... Just, umm... Just, yeah... Have a peek at that review. ;-)

I hope it's not running Windows... like the last time

Red Hat, apparently: http://arstechnica.com/informa...

"They are getting the unintended consequences that any rational person should have seen coming a mile away. This is not going to go well for MS, and it would not surprise me if it ended up in court."

Will Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella go to prison? Other spyware makers have been convicted.

Will there be an anti-trust case against Microsoft's virtual monopoly?

Articles about Microsoft abusing customers:

Microsoft's Software is Malware. Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user.

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying"

"They are getting the unintended consequences that any rational person should have seen coming a mile away. This is not going to go well for MS, and it would not surprise me if it ended up in court."

Will Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella go to prison? Other spyware makers have been convicted.

Will there be an anti-trust case against Microsoft's virtual monopoly?

Articles about Microsoft abusing customers:

Microsoft's Software is Malware. Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user.

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying"