Slashdot Mirror

Then "Linux" is is about to become proprietary as Google is about to pull the last "E" of a EEE play on Android and lock it down behind the Paywall...errr "Playwall". They have dropped support for AOSP, started tying critical parts of the OS into APIs tied to the Playstore, its gonna be about as open as a TiVo...enjoy.

What you're missing is that you have to know specific information relevant to the case at hand is encrypt on that device. In that regard it's no different from ordering a defendant to provide the combination to a safe that is known to have criminal evidence inside.

"On the day of Gelfgatt’s arrest, after being informed of his right to remain silent, he told the authorities that he was able to decrypt his computers but would not do so.
As the MSJC ruled:

        During his postarrest interview with State police Trooper Patrick M. Johnson, the defendant stated that he had performed real estate work for Baylor Holdings, which he understood to be a financial services company. He explained that his communications with this company, which purportedly was owned by Russian individuals, were highly encrypted because, according to the defendant, "[that] is how Russians do business." The defendant informed Trooper Johnson that he had more than one computer at his home, that the program for communicating with Baylor Holdings was installed on a laptop, and that "[e]verything is encrypted and no one is going to get to it." The defendant acknowledged that he was able to perform decryption. Further, and most significantly, the defendant said that because of encryption, the police were "not going to get to any of [his] computers," thereby implying that all of them were encrypted.

        When considering the entirety of the defendant's interview with Trooper Johnson, it is apparent that the defendant was engaged in real estate transactions involving Baylor Holdings, that he used his computers to allegedly communicate with its purported owners, that the information on all of his computers pertaining to these transactions was encrypted, and that he had the ability to decrypt the files and documents. The facts that would be conveyed by the defendant through his act of decryption—his ownership and control of the computers and their contents, knowledge of the fact of encryption, and knowledge of the encryption key—already are known to the government and, thus, are a "foregone conclusion." The Commonwealth's motion to compel decryption does not violate the defendant's rights under the Fifth Amendment because the defendant is only telling the government what it already knows."

So basically those who don't know their rights and how to keep their mouths shut may end up in a sticky situation.

Turns out that's a reasonable expectation. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

Bullocks yourself. The games I have say what operating system and version they require on the box and in the product insert/installation instructions/manual. That hasn't changed from before IBM came out with their version of the personal computer, when games would list their hardware requirements, since personal computers then weren't hardware (never mind operating system) compatible.

IBM did not invent the personal computer.

In 1975, Ed Roberts coined the term "personal computer" when he introduced the Altair 8800. Although the first personal computer is considered by many to be the KENBAK-1, which was first introduced for $750 in 1971. The computer relied on a series of switches for inputting data and output data by turning on and off a series of lights.

Even Allen and Gates gave Roberts credit:

Even Roberts' Wikipedia page acknowledges him as the engineer who developed "the first commercially successful personal computer." When he died last year, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen praised him as "the father of the PC."

"The day our first untested software worked on his Altair was the start of a lot of great things," their statement concluded. "The Altair ultimately failed in the marketplace, but it sold thousands of units and jump-started the entire personal computer industry,"

So Bill Gates and Paul Allen say bullocks to you too :-)

If you have your phone set to connect to any available network, re-connect to wifi networks you have joined before, and to continually broadcast those SSIDs one by one until it receives a response, then don't be surprised to get owned every now and then you're following the 802.11 standard correctly.

If your phone is set to connect to networks with names like "attwifi" or "xfinitiwifi", then... well, that's what it will do.

Any half-decent system will disallow passwords like this.

Enforce strong passwords? Prepare for a sticky notes.

Very little music is created in a vacuum, and the line between 'inspiration' and 'derived work' can be fuzzy and subjective.

So, are you ready to demonstrate, how copyrights have sniffled the development of Jazz, Rock-n-Roll, or Rap, for example?

If not, then your "concerns" about sniffling are nothing but attempts to spread FUD.

It has traditionally been allowed. All of those genres have grown up with being allowed to sample, make covers, and especially make music that sounds like other artists (what do you think genres are in the first place?)

Recently it was made illegal to make music that sounds like other artists: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The fact that GamerGate hates Social Justice Warriors so much illustrates what it is really about. It's about being upset when people criticise video games and gamer culture. It's like someone came onto your server and pwned you, and now you are lashing out in retaliation. Problem is they are better than you, they came with detailed arguments presented clearly in accessible video format, without any screaming or ranting or profanity. So now you turn it into a game, because games are what you are good at.

But hay, don't take my word for it. Here are the IRC chat lots from GamerGate's core. They published them themselves in an attempt to docdump, hoping no-one would find all the bad stuff. Unfortunately for them, people can grep:

https://storify.com/strictmach...
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/...
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

Nowadays how many Americans have no Internet service?

That depends on whether having only cellular Internet counts as having Internet.

Re Finding?
"This machine catches stingrays: Pwnie Express demos cellular threat detector" (Apr 21, 2015)
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
Looks for Unauthorized or unknown cell providers, Anomalous or suspicious base stations, IMSI catcher/interceptor identification, Rogue or malicious cellular base stations.

Except that Sooner wasn't the only device planned and Dream (large touchscreen, etc.) was already supported by the software: http://www.osnews.com/permalin...

Nice theory. Too bad that the video (released after you could already buy the iPhone) showing the "support" proves you still needed to use hardware buttons to navigate web pages in the browser. If that's support planned from the start that's fucking shitty support so far in the development progress.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40000-word-history-of-googles-mobile-os/
"I'm gonna show you an advanced device, with touch screen [that would be your Dream]. Here's the web browser" - and goes on to press lots and lots of hardware keys before he begins what you can do with that advanced touch screen: oh, look, you can jerk the web page around on the screen. In Streetview you can even zoom.

Actually it does go to bing and yahoo, just not google.

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

So what does DuckDuckGo do differently, besides putting up cheeky billboards in San Francisco? DuckDuckGo works by using both its own Web crawler and data from other search engines, including Yahoo, Bing, and Blekko—but not Google. The company claims not to log IP addresses or user agents, and “no cookies are used by default." It also uses default encryption modeled after HTTPS Everywhere.

Yeah, it does make a difference in people who see where this is heading (and fast) actually do their job as voters. The two Swedish politicians who were voted into the European Parliament under the Pirate Party flag made an enormous difference while they were there, and the German Pirate Party MEP who succeeded them has continued to do so being the rapporteur for the parliament's review of the Copyright Directive - something that's happening right now.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

Add to that the Icelandic Pirate Party who are making a difference in their national parliament, and are currently polling as the largest party in nation.

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

The Pirate Party movement is represented in over 70 countries all over the world. The "only" thing that needs to happen to counteract the stupidity of Big Media and Authoritarian Government is for people to do their jobs while at the voting booths.

With floppies.

Congress needs to fix the last mile by overturning the bullshit laws in states that were passed to stop competition.

Some of those laws have already been overturned.

Are we talking about the same person that deleted all her emails to obstruct a corruption investigation?

http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~... http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Sla...

And that's only the recent scandals.

Let's not forget Whitewater and all the other scandals.

Also people near the Clintons have the tendency to commit "suicide", die in airplane crashes, botched robberies or other unfortunate circumstances. The Clintons are even worse than LBJ in that regard.

But hey, if the people are stupid enough to vote for her - more power to her... literally.

That's just my own personal experience. You don't have to look very far to see the many, many other unbelievably stupid litigations that have made the news (hint: they all seem to resolve around the courts in a certain East Texas district). And the one failure I pointed out happened to cost my company a lot of money to resolve. Why should we keep putting businesses through the wringer for the sake of lawyers and patent trolls?

So, yeah, I wouldn't mind tossing the concept of software patents altogether. By any reasonable standard, it's been a disaster for the software development industry over the past few decades. How many more years of failure would you like to see before you're convinced it's a bad idea? Maybe another few decades of patchwork fixes and band-aids?

The idea of patenting software is and always has been a dubious notion at best. Just because it's the law of the land now doesn't make it a good idea in the slightest. We should follow New Zealand's example and simply assert that software is not an invention and therefore shouldn't be patentable.

Can Windows Update serve you malware? Yes.

ex : breathalyzers

And voting machines.

What Would a Constructed Language Have To Be To Replace English?

English

To misquote Tony Hoare: I don't know what the language of the future will look like, but I know it will be called English.

One of the big improvements was a focus on optimization. There were a number of global locks in Windows Vista that were re-engineered in Windows 7 to be much more efficient on multi-core/multi-CPU machines.

BTW, don't pay any attention to the internal version numbers. These were mismatched simply for compatibility reasons, not because it was a "minor" tech upgrade or anything like that.

Yeah either use BSD like Apple or pull a EEE like Google and be showered with praise for the teabagging by the FOSS community. Since they don't have the funds to pull the latter? The former would be the wise move.

GEOLOGIST: Injection of wastewater in Oklahoma is triggering earthquakes.
POPULAR PRESS: Injection of wastewater is causing earthquakes.
ACTIVIST: Fracking causes earthquakes.
GEOLOGIST: Many small quakes relieve pressure, bigger ones inevitable but smaller, less often.
ACTIVIST GEOLOGIST: Many quakes means movement! Big one inevitable! It's our fault! Soon!
POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again
GAIA: I just want to be left alone. Naasty peepl.
ARCHIMEDES: Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.
WASTEWATER INJECTION CREW: All we're doing is lubricating the lever. We did not create it.
VIRTUALLY EVERY OKLAHOMAN: No big deal.

Meanwhile,

GEOLOGIST: Depletion of groundwater creating uplift along San Adreas Fault
DESERT PERSON WITH LUSH LAWN: San Adreas is not my fault.
AGITATED FRACKING ACTIVIST: Who let that guy in anyway? We're talking about Big Oil.
MULLHOLLAND: We shall deflate the West to bring water to California.

Meanwhile,

SCIENTIST: By use of amazing technology, traces with unique Cesium-134 fingerprint of Fukushima have been detected in ocean off Vancouver.
SCIENTIST: if a person swam for six hours each day in water with Cesium levels twice as high as those found in Ucluelet, they'd receive a radiation dose that is more than 1,000 times less than that of a single dental X-ray.
INTERNET DOOMPORN STAR WITH PERFECT TEETH: This is an extinction level event! Look, a fish died in the Pacific! Salmon are misshapen! The cans are dented!
POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again
GAIA: Stop the world, I want to get off!

Parturiunt Montes, Nascetur Ridiculus Mus
The mountains are in labor; an absurd mouse is the result.
~~Horace

which has been given to them by... local governments

That's news to me. Apparently the fact that the government eliminated exclusive franchise monopolies in 1992 is news to everyone else in this thread.

The only regulations stopping companies from installing their own network is the minimum wage laws preventing companies from using slaves to do it and property laws which prevents them from just digging up land they don't own. Oh, and mi's beloved contract law, which would theoretically prevent a company from borrowing billions of dollars to pay for that labor, property, and material and just deciding that they didn't have to pay it back.

mi's "oh mah gawwdddd teh gubbbermintz" left the building years ago and is only just now coming back to see what shit shape unregulated ISPs have left the place in. I'm sure he'll be along shortly to make up more excuses for the behavior of the ISPs since "government monopoly" isn't cutting it.

This makes the future of Firefox OS look bleaker and bleaker than it's already looking. Firefox OS isn't seeing much adoption at all, and the reviews about it so far have not been positive at all. Seeing almost no adoption in the developed world, we keep on hearing about how Firefox OS will be targeting the developing nations. But now this new OxygenOS offers consumers, especially those in developing nations, yet another option that's much better than Firefox OS.

The market is clearly speaking, and saying that Firefox OS is unwanted, and that it just isn't any good. How much longer will Mozilla keep throwing money at this failed, undesired hack called Firefox OS? The market clearly wants Android and iOS. The market does not want Firefox OS. Why does Mozilla keep fighting the market? The market isn't going to lose this fight; Mozilla and Firefox OS will. Mozilla should cut their losses now, and get back to restoring Firefox and Thunderbird (the only products from Mozilla that people actually use!) to their former glory before they too fade away.

they must have been talking with feinstein recently http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The obvious solution is more and better information on the Internet. Doctors have a vested interest in keeping patients ignorant, so their "rants" should be discounted.

The Internet doesn't make you smarter; you only think it does

Even the most reputable health web sites with the most accurate information can cause trouble for the hypochondriac. ''Hypochondriacs tend to latch onto diseases with common or ambiguous symptoms or that are hard to diagnose," says Fallon. For example, illnesses such as HIV or lupus, and neurological disorders including multiple sclerosis can cause vague symptoms like fatigue, swollen glands, and strange physical sensations.

Second-Guessing the Doctor

Barsky and Fallon say hypochondria often breeds suspicion and distrust between a sufferer and his or her physician. Some doctors may be too quick to dismiss the worries of hypochondriacs, and hypochondriacs are likely to ruin relationships with good physicians by second-guessing them from the start.

For instance, Barsky says, a hypochondriac needs to resist the compulsion to self-diagnose and to seek assurance from doctors and friends. The best one can do is to get regular medical treatment from a trustworthy doctor trust and to live a healthy life.

Fallon agrees: ''In a loose sense, a hypochondriac becomes almost addicted to looking up information, examining himself, and getting reassurance from other people,'' he says. ''Checking just makes things worse.''

And what about using the Internet to look up that worrisome symptom? ''If it's just going to make you upset,''says Barsky. ''Don't do it.''

Internet Makes Hypochondria Worse : Cyberchondria

And again for Gabe its NOT about the money, he already has more piles of it than the man (living his current lifestyle) could ever spend, its about the MASSIVE accolades he gets from his followers. I mean can you name ANY other game developer that was actually put in a game by a company that has nothing to do with the company? Well that has happened to the great Gaben, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. As long as he owns Valve? He's a rockstar, he's a pope, his followers call on gaben for fricking luck for pete's sake like he was a deity! Again as long as the man has a heartbeat? He is NOT giving that up!

And I can back you up on the Steam games, i have Titan's Quest and played it a couple of times while it was unavailable to buy on Steam, mine worked no different than the day i bought it. Last I checked right now this second you cannot buy the original Deus Ex: HR or just buy The Missing Link DLC, since all they sell now is the director's cut...but I got it and noooo they didn't force my game to become the DC, its still the original Deus Ex HR and it plays just fine, no differently than if i bought a boxed copy.

There are better ones. Why do we care about this project, as opposed to the dozens of other (better) NES emulators?

I love these click bait titles everyone uses these days it's all about spreading FUD cause thats more likely to get all the sheep to click. ONlive shut down after going bankrupt and Sony bought the patents nothing else at least Ars can get the facts right without manipulating the title to be all but a lie

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

And you believe them? Talk about naive...

If they go under they aren't going to give a crap about you and if another company buys Valve and shuts it down they aren't going to care about you either.

It isn't just a question of Valve going out of business.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

Sony bought OnLive to get their patent portfolio. It's the only thing Sony cared about. That's why they bought them and shut them down.

No matter what Valve says, the same thing could happen to them. And when it happens, they won't be able to do any of the things they have promised because someone else is calling the shots and they no longer have any say in it.

google will do exacly this in chrome, and mozilla is currently discussing it http://arstechnica.com/securit... . Of course CNNIC is not amused (bottom of article)

So, in fact, you are smarter when you can use the Internet as a reference.

The reality is, the initial premise is a total lie. The NSA is a failed organisation and they are not looking for the same kind of people. They are looking for 2nd raters, people who specialise in breaking stuff and not in making stuff. The reality is securing stuff in computers is an order of magnitude harder than breaking security. The breakers are always second rate compared to makers, it is inherent in their cerebral makeup and the 2nd rate breakers know it to the core of their being, hence instead of making, their jealousy drives them to breaking.

The NSA were not particularly skilled at hacking, their targets were not focused enough on security and were easy to break into. Now of course the NSA script kiddie perverts are finding life much more difficult as companies become much more focused on security and are hiring the most skilled makers to make better security. The NSA stuck is now failing and that failure is far worse on the securing things side because of their chosen focus on breaking stuff on employing egoistic perverse script kiddies, incapable of securing stuff.

The US government was warned again and again and again, that in order to effectively secure their systems they must completely separate defensive operations from offensive operations but they were locked into arrogance mode and only listen to their own bullshit and now they are stuck.

If you are bright and interested in security, the real skill and challenge is in defensive operations, 24/7/365 operation of skills, abilities and knowledge, real investigatory skills on any exposed breaks or weaknesses and preventing them from happening again and creating a defence in depth system, giving greater opportunity to catch hacks are earlier less damaging levels. The people do not play well with breakers, not at all, the whole psychology is different.

Yes The Equation Group really seemed "2nd rate" and they sure didn't "make" anything.

At the moment the NSA & GCHQ, and other agencies are at the behest of politicians that want to see all our communications are working against the security industry. If this continues I see a bleak future. But if we manage to get these organisations to support security I see a much better future.

Past supporters of RFRA acts include Barack Obama (who voted for one as Illinois State Senator) and Bill Clinton (who signed one into law as President). So Tim Cook's position is not in the political mainstream and in fact it is even outside the liberal Democrat mainstream. The news here is Tim Cook inappropriately dragging Apple into a political war to endorse his own radical politics, not anything going on in Indiana.

Cooks' statements are also not based on any actual facts. See background on RFRA here.

Not long ago Apple stood for fanatical devotion to great design. Now it stands for tasteless bling and Tim Cook's political agenda. We all know the heartbreaking history of that company. It is made even sadder by Cook's failure to stay true to the vision.

from:

Apple: Insanely great design.

to:

Apple: Indiana is a bunch of Anti-homosexual Christian Bigots.

Tim Cook is not qualified to lead Apple. Not because he is gay (nothing wrong with that in my opinion) but because he is ruining the corporate image by putting his personal politics ahead of Apple's interests. If any other employee at Apple used the Apple name to endorse his own personal political views, that employee wold be fired. The same policy should apply to Cook.

Not really. If "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn1" isn't safe, your choice of mixed song lyrics probably isn't, either, asuming a malicious actor is trying to figure out the input when they know the MD5 output. And if they've compromised a site that was storing your password in plaintext, your password strength is completely irrelevant. Like I said, the real issue is password reuse, and it's impossible for a human to memorize good, unique passwords for every site they visit. Password managers are the only solution for people who value their online identity.

The elephant in the room, of course, is security.

With NSA "upgrade factories" - where spyware is installed by the NSA before delivery - China and everyone else is looking for alternatives to American products.

(And note that the spyware can be implanted in the BIOS, and even the hard drive firmware, and will persist even if the system is wiped, or the BIOS is replaced.)

The scope of economic damage this has done is astonishing. I've never believed in trickle-down economics, but once China starts making servers my guess is our IT industry will tank from the top down.

Expect an economic crisis in, oh... about 5 years.

(The solution would appear to be a complete open-source ecosystem including BIOS and hard drive firmware. Just as I can verify my linux installation, there should be verifiable BIOS and hard drive firmware, so that any country can purchase any computer, and be confident of its security.)

The subtitle is a statement of why the case was even remotely interesting: it is an indisputable fact that the tech industry and investment banking are "dominated by" men. Men make up the overwhelming majority of people in both of those industries, and the skew is even more pronounced at the executive levels. And at question during this trial was the behavior of those men towards women: which means... the trial DID highlight the male-dominated tech and investment banking cultures in Silicon Valley. That was the FOCUS of the case.

No, only one half of the trial focused on highlighting the male-dominated tech and investment banking cultures in Silicon Valley. The other side focused on how women get more than fair treatment at KPCB, and how this particular woman fucked up. That the subtitle continues to push the narrative of the side that lost is a sign of editorial bias. That the reporter seemed to have been taking a nap while KPCB was presenting much of its side of the story points to a systematic bias in the reporting on Ars Technica. I'm not disappointed; Ars Technica these days seems to be more interested in boring us with their special kind of first world problems.

By describing the tech and investment banking industries as "male dominated," they are, in fact, being as absolutely factual as if they were writing a story about the "female dominated" nursing field. There was nothing in the article about "male domination" being the reason for Ms. Pao's loss; nor was there any presumption that "male domination" somehow influenced the jury. I think you need a refresher course in reading comprehension, friend. Your sense of outrage is clearly cutting off your oxygen.

thanks for the spin. it's not like stating "facts" ever implies anything. there's no such thing as "reading between the lines". i'm glad that KPCB was found "not liable" for discrimination in the very first sentence, but was not actually "cleared" of all wrongdoing until halfway through the article. they're just facts, right?

Jury: Kleiner Perkins not liable for Pao’s gender discrimination claims [Updated]
Trial highlighted Silicon Valley's male-dominated tech and investment culture. via http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Absolutely loving the reasoning here. There are two possible outcomes.

1. Kleiner Perkins freed of all charges. This highlights just how male-dominated and sexist the tech industry is.
2. Kleiner Perkins guilty of all charges. This highlights just how male-dominated and sexist the tech industry is.

Perhaps this could be used as some sort of Turing test for feminazis?

Jury: Kleiner Perkins not liable for Pao’s gender discrimination claims [Updated] Trial highlighted Silicon Valley's male-dominated tech and investment culture. via http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Nope benchmarks show superior reliability

Likely your drives didn't wear out. No trim in raid with anything under Windows 2012 without intel RST driver screwed up wear leveling as it lost track of virtual rewrites

Actually Hairy this was tested .

Ssds are more reliable than platters these days. My 2012 Samsung pro in raid 0 still functions. There is a free tool out there that gives you health and life of a ssd reported I had til 2025 before it goes kaput. Times are changing and sand force is gone.

Try it ... and system D guy was troll and off topic trying to start a flameware. SystemD and other init replacements were hip since 2005 when Apple did theirs ... until last summer when sys admins who find nothing wrong with dozens of 200 line programs all linked created thousands of threads upon startup felt threatened

is that it also makes warrant canaries illegal.

Despite privacy policy, RadioShack customer data up for sale in auction Data includes names, phone numbers, mailing and e-mail addresses, and purchases. http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Yeah, right "do this or you can't sell machines with our stuff".

[citation needed]

According to the image in the Ars Technica article that started the whole conversation:

Win10 Desktop: It's OEM option whether to allow end user to turn off Secure Boot

(emphasis mine)

VS 2015 supports android and linux development with cordova. No really you did not miss read that. I like this newer Microsoft

The all new Microsoft that, as expected, is conspiring to lock Linux out of people's computers by means of the so-called SecureBoot?

I've worked with one of these, and it is very sweet. Honest PC alternative to a Macbook. I'm no fanboi (I use both platforms), but PC laptops have been flimsy plastic throwaway junk for years, whereas apple builds reliable, solid, throw-it-in-the-bag and go with no McAfee crapware to deal with. The Dell comes with a little McAfee crapware to uninstall, but in every other respect it is the first decent PC laptop I've seen in a long while.

Quality costs. The XPS with 8.1 non-Pro, 8GB RAM, the lower-resolution, non-touch screen, and a decent-size 256 GB SSD (upgrade) will run you $1099 (the "retina" touch-capable screen costs another $300). By comparison, a 13" Air with the same storage, RAM, and non-retina screen (and a slightly faster processor) is $1299.

The XPS 13 feels solid, stupid lightweight, really fast, long battery life, and the non-retina screen looks great (can't vouch for the higher-res screen, but I've heard mixed reviews of Windows 8 scaling up). And it's an actual "lap" top - it don't need no kickstand to hold the screen up. Here's a good review. I would really like to see more PC's built like this.

I've worked with one of these, and it is very sweet. Honest PC alternative to a Macbook. I'm no fanboi (I use both platforms), but PC laptops have been flimsy plastic throwaway junk for years, whereas apple builds reliable, solid, throw-it-in-the-bag and go with no McAfee crapware to deal with. The Dell comes with a little McAfee crapware to uninstall, but in every other respect it is the first decent PC laptop I've seen in a long while.

Quality costs. The XPS with 8.1 non-Pro, 8GB RAM, the lower-resolution, non-touch screen, and a decent-size 256 GB SSD (upgrade) will run you $1099 (the "retina" touch-capable screen costs another $300). By comparison, a 13" Air with the same storage, RAM, and non-retina screen (and a slightly faster processor) is $1299.

The XPS 13 feels solid, stupid lightweight, really fast, long battery life, and the non-retina screen looks great (can't vouch for the higher-res screen, but I've heard mixed reviews of Windows 8 scaling up). And it's an actual "lap" top - it don't need no kickstand to hold the screen up. Here's a good review. I would really like to see more PC's built like this.

A possible bug in Foxconn boards BIOS affects Linux ACPI

Windows Update drivers bricking USB serial chips

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific.