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TrackingPoint is quick to emphasize the rifle doesn't fire "by itself," but rather the trigger's pull force is dynamically raised to be very high until the reticle and pip coincide, at which point the pull force is reset to its default. In this way, the shooter is still in control of the rifle's firing, and at any point prior to firing you can release the trigger.

Quoted from the Ars Technica article, from back when Slashdot originally ran the article.

It might interest you to know that the gun doesn't fire itself. What it does is control the trigger pull. Take a look at the Ars Technica article on it. Or the original Slashdot article.

Shoot from...265 feet? I guess you have no idea about ranges; if you did, you'd be using yards or meters.
This is the line of rifles that someone could hit the target dead on at 1000 yards, when they had not fired a gun previously, while TFS mentions 500 yard ranges.
And 90 yards may be hard for someone who never picked up a rifle before, but with practice it's very close.

But yes, I can see it being desirable for assassinations, except for how obvious it is as a weapon. You might kill them, but there's no way you'll hide something like that.

Dude, that's a joke at your expense. You keep trying to argue around the fact that your "statement of fact" is obviously wrong.

I've provided you a simple and effective demonstration that your belief is not coherent with reality. Even your counter proof says "Trend: 0.14". You do realise that a positive trend indicates warming, right?

Here's a quote from the Met Office:

The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. (emphasis added) If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16C/decade (or 0.15C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8C. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

The atmospheric warming trend has slowed a little, however, the ocean (which absorbs about 90% of the extra incoming heat from the green house effect) continues to warm, Decades of slower warming are expected. Especially, see Figure 2 in the last link. Natural variability laid on top of a trend can always lead to an endless series of plateaus, if you try hard enough.

From Ars Technica:

"One of the design documents that they volunteered specifically called out compelling a [certificate authority] in the jurisdiction of the UAE or Saudi Arabia to produce SSL certificates that they could use for interception," Marlinspike wrote in a blog post.

Clearly there is something wrong with the public key infrastructure on the web.

I think Dyson is a bit too pessimistic about AI. AI hasn't fulfilled the promises of human-level conversational intellect, but those promises were unrealistic. I think the problem is that people want computers to emulate human minds and human souls, when we don't even know how humans work. The solution is that computers are their own type of device, with a so-far unconscious intelligence that far exceeds human intelligence. There's even a Wikipedia article about the challenge in the perception of AI.

For example:

• Calculating trigonometric values. Used to require teams of careful researchers. Now it's done by cheap pocket calculators.
• Translating source code to machine code and optimizing it. Used to be done by hand, now the best compilers are more clever than all but the most insane of programmers.
• Finding complicated derivatives and integrals. Used to require big teams to calculate, now it's a loss leader for a SaaS product.
• Learning complicated tasks. Used to be a unique human trait, now computers use it to play video games. They just get no enjoyment out of the process.

Computers can't do what humans do, but what they do well, they do far faster, more cheaply, and more accurately than humans ever could.

In a weird twist of fate, this particular comment is being cited on ArsTechnica.com.

Apparently, State Senator Yee doesn't readily give up if laws that he supports eventually are declared unconstitutional...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/07/sensationalist-legal-brief-aims-to-revive-ca-game-law/

Management cares about features they can sell, and stuff that does not immediately translates into new features is considered a waste of time.

What you're saying may be generally true. That's what made Mac OS 10.6 such an amazing release. As John Siracusa wrote in his Ars review:

At WWDC 2009, Bertrand Serlet announced a move that he described as "unprecedented" in the PC industry.

"0 New Features"

Read Bertrand's lips: No New Features! That's right, the next major release of Mac OS X would have no new features. The product name reflected this: "Snow Leopard." Mac OS X 10.6 would merely be a variant of Leopard. Better, faster, more refined, more... uh... snowy.

I think Mac OS X could use another release like that today. Fewer iOS-like "features" more bugs quashed, please. Too bad Serlet left the company.

The central problem with DRM is that it stops only honest people. Anything that is located entirely on the user's computer in obfuscated form and plays from there can be cracked, and crackers will crack it, whereupon the cracked goods will quickly find themselves on BitTorrent and other sharing networks.

The thing is, competing with free isn't that hard. If you offer high-quality goods for a reasonable price, using an open format, at a convenient location, customers will buy from you. How did Tower Records thrive for so many years when recording tape-to-tape or record-to-tape was so easy? Or, for a modern example, look at Tor books, which has un-DRMed its books. They say the sky isn't falling. This transition has already largely completed in the realm of technical books at companies like O'Reilly, Manning, Apress, and others.

DRM is an endless and futile game for content creators, and an annoyance to customers. I doubt in the end that any DRM standard we settle upon will be sufficient for most publishers for many reasons, ranging from capabilities to safety, and in the end those publishers who are really serious about DRM will go with proprietary plugins anyway (and will find that those don't work very well either).

That's already happened. There is no shortage of stupid users/administrators regardless of platform. Ars Technica has been running sorries about it for some time. Although nobody knows how the servers were initially compromised, most likely cause is stupid users.

which is the link listed in the Ars Technica article "Copyright troll Righthaven finally, completely dead" . I guess the editors copied the text from the Ars Technica article including the "(pdf)" parenthetical statement pointing out that the Ars Technica URL link points to a pdf file. Then they inserted the link to the Ars Technica article itself, rather than the link to the pdf file. (why am I bothering writing this?? no one else seems to have noticed the botched and borked link!)

When is his trial date?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/auernheimer-aka-weev-sentenced-to-41-months-for-attipad-hack/

Yeah?

coverage: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/feds-may-use-subpoena-powers-to-study-patent-trolls/
explanation: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2013041110212889

give it a few months. The wheels are turning, slowly but surely.

No problems!

Gather all the information you can, but... I think you'll get more useful information elsewhere.

I don't know how much hand will be lost, or if something like this could help... 3d printed replacement hand. It's certainly intriguing; if you're building custom rather than COTS, you can possibly tweak it to better suit specific applications.

I see that you don't really understand what Apple's Fusion Drive really is. In Intel's SRT the SSD drive acts like a cache for the HDD. I hope I don't need to explain what a disk cache is and how it works. In the Fusion Drive on the other hand both drives appear as a single logical volume with the space of both drives combined and the OS decides which files get stored on the SSD and which on the HDD. From the Ars Technica article I quoted:

In a caching solution, like Intel's, files live on the hard disk drive and are temporarily mirrored to the SSD cache as needed. In an enterprise auto-tiering situation, and with Fusion Drive, the data is actually moved from one tier to another, rather than only being temporarily cached there.

Those are two very different approaches.

Good point. Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child didn't fail on its own, however. It had help from M$ and M$' better half, Intel. They got in and messed with OLPC causing delays, barriers and overruns. Even in the most generous assessments, Intel had a serious conflict of interest because it was actively trying to sell a product of its own which competed directly with OLPC. The OLPC was suppose to be based on the AMD Geode and Intel couldn't have that.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/prenda-porn-trolls-clam-up-as-their-plans-crumble-in-an-la-courtroom/

The pic here is pure win.

If you're in the EU, and specifically using France's Freebox, the ISPs are basically are at war with Google and neither Google or the ISPs want to pay for the pipes required to access Youtube comfortably. I have Free, and during peak times, there is definitely a slowdown in Youtube.

A recent article on bringing back the Saturn V J-1 engine mentions how 3D printing has enabled them to reduce the part count for some components from 5,600 parts to just 40; thus *vastly* simplifying (ie *MORE* simple, not 'now anyone can do it') the building of this engine.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/3/

In 2007 we were using "A single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 256k DSL lines or 195,000 56k telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.". The Wikipedia page doesn't seem to have any real updates since 2007. Of course traffic has increased since then, but I doubt they bother to store streaming video of Justin Bieber from YouTube - which is reputedly 98% of all bandwidth consumption apart from pron.

  What was the size of the LHC storage by the way? Oh, that's right, in 2010 it was "About 50PB of tape storage, handled by a set of robotic storage hardware. Still, they've been finding that disk storage is working well, and have scaled that up to 20PB worth of storage." http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations/

However the good news is that in 2011 "Our annual data consumption was estimated at 9.57 zettabytes" on the internet. A difference of 21-15=6 orders of magnitude. http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/07/our-annual-data-consumption-estimated-at-9-57-zettabytes-or-9-57/ So unless NarusInsight can find and throw away a million times more Bieber than your snarky comments on Sub Reddit, "Revolutionary rodents against the government" they don't have that on disk yet, But they could probably record all telephone conversation.

I seem to recall that rumor used to have it that only all calls in and out of the USA were monitored, it would not be at all surprising to find that the capability to monitor all internal calls were available. The only reason it might not be happening is that the transcontinental calls route through a finite set of fiber or satellite links, whereas call data on the internet in the USA could route through a very much higher set of nodes that would need to be monitored to capture the data.

arstechnica has a more in-depth look [including architectural details] at:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/a-look-at-haswell/

None of the big players except Amazon's EC2 and Microsoft's Azure:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/07/25/security-privacy-amp-compliance-update-microsoft-offers-customers-and-partners-a-hipaa-business-associate-agreement-baa-for-windows-azure.aspx

http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/09/amazon-cloud-earns-fisma-government-security-accreditation/

Thank you. I was aware that they were in technical compliance, but I was not aware that Azure had started offering the business associate agreement. The link below seems to indicate that AWS is still "looking into" the matter, but I haven't found anything conclusive that says they will offer it. Needless to say, I'm starting a project immediately to begin an Azure deployment for my organization.

https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=444933

None of the big players except Amazon's EC2 and Microsoft's Azure:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/07/25/security-privacy-amp-compliance-update-microsoft-offers-customers-and-partners-a-hipaa-business-associate-agreement-baa-for-windows-azure.aspx
http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/09/amazon-cloud-earns-fisma-government-security-accreditation/

Ars Technica ran an inditing article on your sanity in which you made statements on the virtues of MDPV (bath salts), having three informants in the Zeta Cartel and also informants in Nicaragua that had made contact with Hezbollah's camp. To put my question succinctly: what the hell, man? Where have your James "Psychonaut" Bond travels taken you to recently?

ArsTechnica article http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/ibm-makes-stop-motion-film-using-atoms-as-pixels/

lol. record quarterly profits?

reality disagrees with you. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130124-717358.html

That is not the last quarterly result, this is: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/microsoft-posts-record-third-quarter-revenue-in-spite-of-flat-windows-numbers/

One could argue that, but one would be talking out of one's ass in doing so.

I don't think the code signing is directly screwing Microsoft, but it's part of an element of 'customer hatred' that really shows the way they are going. We all know how development works. You choose to do one feature or another. Code signing the way Microsoft chose it, has almost no customer benefits and plenty of long term customer negatives in terms of reducing competition and your own freedom to fix your system when needed (even fixing the bottom layer of Windows is blocked). Almost certainly one of the key features which makes Android better was dropped to do this. For example maybe Gesture Typing - a bit like the Swype Nokia used to have on the N9 before it was cancelled.

Compare that to Google's "Data Liberation Front" features designed to let you export your data when you want to. This has very little direct benefit for Google, but the customer benefit is massive and comes at the point when you least expect it. Short term this looks stupid, but long term it means that users come to "trust" Google which is to Google's long term advantage as well.

Microsoft has a long history of choosing features like Active-X and directly executable email content which allow them to deliver proprietary control of your machine to themselves at the cost of problems (in those case security problems) for customers later. Customers may not know that they are being screwed now, but they remember that they were screwed before and are beginning to expect that. The Microsoft ban on GPL software in Windows Market place is an example. They don't like the software so they make the choice for you. The choice to have a fixed user interface around hubs, not allowing Apps to change things is another example - at the beginning it makes things more consistent; it makes it easier for them to sell you more similar devices; but later on it means you can never achieve the full power of a customized mobile device and is part of a whole attitude problem leading to continual app disappointment.

Simply put, code signing is a symptom of Microsoft's hatred of their own customers (just one of the first links to pop up searching for Mirosoft customer hatred. They look at their "ecosystem partners" as a bunch of suckers ready to be screwed when the chance comes up. That used to work in the old days when every tech company had to come round Redmond to get permission before doing a big new launch. Now it's just getting users and partners annoyed.

Office doesn't run on Android.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-for-android-frustratingly-close-to-release/ LibreOffice is close to release :) Although Android has a several of its own.

Just having Office make this better than Android.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-for-android-frustratingly-close-to-release/ Libreoffice in close to release so you don't have to wait too long. Although many users have already moved to alternatives like Google Docs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JK_Wedding_Entrance_Dance

Wedding dance made famous. Really innovative and interesting. Drove sales of the song, which was a year old, right back up the charts on both Amazon and iTunes. I couldn't help but chuckle. If that were done today ala Dancing Baby http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/after-five-years-dancing-baby-youtube-takedown-lawsuit-nears-a-climax/ then would sales have been driven? How about the charity donations the couple setup? If that were posted today would YouTube immediately yank it? I'm betting yes. DRM could have even prevented them from using the song since it's been proposed that watermarks prevent re-recording. Would DRM have prevented it's use? If the RIAA had their way it would have!

Artists sweat and worry about loss of sales but examples like the above prove that being able to freely use a song don't mean it will lead to poor sales. I understand the concern. Frankly if I were a writer going through a big publishing house being forced to sell my e-copies at higher than bound copy price I'd be VERY worried. what I don't understand is the shortsightedness. Look at the latest SimCity for kripes sakes - I was going to buy that until I heard about the B.S. The new XBOX? always on for DRM purposes? FAIL! I will not be buying one.

So no, I cannot think of a single instance where DRM in any way enhances a product such that it's a good thing for the consumer aka the customer. Want to pin the customer down, tie his hands, force feed him? Better hope no one comes along with an even slightly decent alternative because unless I'm forced I will not subscribe to DRM laden crap and I will break it any chance I get when I'm forced into it ala books and movies. Hell since DRM was lifted from music I've been BUYING bunches of it off of Amazon!

I believe a deconstruction is in order here. Mostly because I'm bored, so...don't take it personally?

Are these the same students who post every fart on twitter?

The very same ones that don't post their sharts, and don't have those unfortunate incidents recorded in perpetuity.

There are three kinds of people, a gigantic group wish to share everything they do with as many people as possible. A tiny group that are afraid that aliens are scanning their minds and a miniscule group of people who realize that anything you do in public is public.

You missed the groups that don't want to be followed or watched by cameras/drones in public period, the groups that see things being done in public that shouldn't be done but still go unpunished so they don't see the point, the sub-group of that gigantic group that is fine with sharing everything as long as it isn't personally identifiable, the group of people on the other side of the cameras that want to see you punished for every little city bylaw that you violate (ex: Demolition Man), the group on the other side of the camera that want to watch what you do so that they can sell that information to advertising while also getting paid to automatically serve you ads (ex: Google, who, by the way, may have said they don't want ads on the glasses themselves, but which doesn't stop them from selling to websites that you frequently view with your glasses or even from transmitting your information to nearby stores that are beginning to look at facial recognition or simple smartphone scanning to serve personalized advertisements), etc.

Take Googles scanning of Wifi access points. People who have them probably didn't think about someone taking the effort to scan them all BUT you are broadcasting a signal into public space for all to see, why shouldn't someone else be allowed to record it then? It is funny to see people argue that media content broadcasted into the ether should be allowed to be picked by anyone since it is broadcasted into public space yet peoples wifi signals broadcasted into the same ether and public space should be private. Granted, sometimes it is not the same people arguing both but there is an overlap.

Maybe if they only scanned for SSIDs, but in reality they went a lot deeper.

"Google’s Street View cars collected names, addresses, telephone numbers, URLs, passwords, e-mail, text messages, medical records, video and audio files, and other information from internet users in the United States.

But, the commission said, Google did not engage in illegal wiretapping because the data was flowing, unencrypted, over open radio waves."

This also brings up the group that is too stupid to put a password on their routers and yet still would never have agreed to let Google have all of that information if they had at any point been given the chance to opt out.

Personally I have little need or desire for the camera part of these glasses BUT I am ALSO aware that any public performance, the glow from phone screens as people try to record the show is almost blinding. And from pubs to attraction parks the sight of people recording themselves and others with their phones has become near universal. It used to be that at a company outing, one designated person had a camera, now everybody is snapping away. And not just a group foto or two but everything.

And yet in private performances you risk getting kicked out of the theater, or kicked out of private property in general for taking photos or video. And the everybody snapping away are taking pictures of things that they want to talk to other people about and choose to share. They aren't planning on bo

I believe a deconstruction is in order here. Mostly because I'm bored, so...don't take it personally?

Are these the same students who post every fart on twitter?

The very same ones that don't post their sharts, and don't have those unfortunate incidents recorded in perpetuity.

There are three kinds of people, a gigantic group wish to share everything they do with as many people as possible. A tiny group that are afraid that aliens are scanning their minds and a miniscule group of people who realize that anything you do in public is public.

You missed the groups that don't want to be followed or watched by cameras/drones in public period, the groups that see things being done in public that shouldn't be done but still go unpunished so they don't see the point, the sub-group of that gigantic group that is fine with sharing everything as long as it isn't personally identifiable, the group of people on the other side of the cameras that want to see you punished for every little city bylaw that you violate (ex: Demolition Man), the group on the other side of the camera that want to watch what you do so that they can sell that information to advertising while also getting paid to automatically serve you ads (ex: Google, who, by the way, may have said they don't want ads on the glasses themselves, but which doesn't stop them from selling to websites that you frequently view with your glasses or even from transmitting your information to nearby stores that are beginning to look at facial recognition or simple smartphone scanning to serve personalized advertisements), etc.

Take Googles scanning of Wifi access points. People who have them probably didn't think about someone taking the effort to scan them all BUT you are broadcasting a signal into public space for all to see, why shouldn't someone else be allowed to record it then? It is funny to see people argue that media content broadcasted into the ether should be allowed to be picked by anyone since it is broadcasted into public space yet peoples wifi signals broadcasted into the same ether and public space should be private. Granted, sometimes it is not the same people arguing both but there is an overlap.

Maybe if they only scanned for SSIDs, but in reality they went a lot deeper.

"Google’s Street View cars collected names, addresses, telephone numbers, URLs, passwords, e-mail, text messages, medical records, video and audio files, and other information from internet users in the United States.

But, the commission said, Google did not engage in illegal wiretapping because the data was flowing, unencrypted, over open radio waves."

This also brings up the group that is too stupid to put a password on their routers and yet still would never have agreed to let Google have all of that information if they had at any point been given the chance to opt out.

Personally I have little need or desire for the camera part of these glasses BUT I am ALSO aware that any public performance, the glow from phone screens as people try to record the show is almost blinding. And from pubs to attraction parks the sight of people recording themselves and others with their phones has become near universal. It used to be that at a company outing, one designated person had a camera, now everybody is snapping away. And not just a group foto or two but everything.

And yet in private performances you risk getting kicked out of the theater, or kicked out of private property in general for taking photos or video. And the everybody snapping away are taking pictures of things that they want to talk to other people about and choose to share. They aren't planning on bo

...unless he possesses a Type 7 FFL...

One quick Google search later:

On Saturday, Defense Distributed—America’s best-known group of 3D gunsmiths—announced on Facebook that its founder, Cody Wilson, is now a federally licensed gun manufacturer and dealer. The group published a picture of the Type 7 federal firearms license (FFL) to prove it.

“The big thing it allows me to do is that it makes me [a manufacturer] under the law—everything that manufacturers are allowed to do,” he told Ars. “I can sell some of the pieces that we've been making. I can do firearms transactions and transport.”

I am surprised you got the spreadsheet scandal via Colbert. It has been making news for quite some time. There was an NPR report, one BBC report etc. So please do not assume I am getting all my news from Colbert.

Further, very surprisingly, Stewart and Colbert seem to care for accuracy, despite being a comedy show. Being comedians they are able to laugh off their mistakes on air and apologize by making fun of themselves. But still, they do that when they make a mistake. The one I remember recently is Stewart making up a funny dickish name connected with civil rights, and it turned out to be a real name. The on air apology from him made me wonder, why isn't he called the newsman and the others jokers.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/microsoft-excel-the-ruiner-of-global-economies/

[2] http://news.silobreaker.com/does-this-spreadsheet-error-invalidate-the-case-for-austerity-5_2266755871209947215

[3] http://news.silobreaker.com/three-umass-profs-expose-flaw-in-harvard-research-that-underpinned-austerity-5_2266756154677788864

[4] http://news.yahoo.com/student-took-eminent-economists-debt-issue-won-095347790--business.html

[5] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190

[6] http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/138763/

It's not like Microsoft is thriving currently...

Is this the famous filter bubble? http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/microsoft-posts-record-third-quarter-revenue-in-spite-of-flat-windows-numbers/

Yeah, odd that being right keeps people feeling confident in their predictions...

Ah, yes, Microsoft is in deep shit now, what with the record revenue and what not. No wonder the CFO ran away. 2013 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop, all hail RMS!

Wrong. Dead wrong. 2013 will not be the year of Linux on the desktop. At the most, it will be the year of Windows 7 on the desktop.

The real problem for Microsoft isn't that they are losing market share on the desktop, because they aren't. If Windows 8 sales aren't up to par, the slack will certainly be taken up by Win 7 and even Win XP. The real problem is that the desktop as a whole has been losing ground to other environments (tablets, phones, even smart TV sets). The release of Windows 8, with its not very well veiled attempt to force their own version of the mobile interface on users of every platform, was a misguided attempt to address this issue.

During the year I lived in China, I ran into several people whose only means of free and open Internet access was through Tor. While everyone I met only used it for Facebook and Youtube, if there ever is a democratic revolution in Iran or China, Tor will be there to help to make it possible.

If you want to help people in China, Iran, and possibility Japan, where Tor is being blocked, you can run a obfsproxy bridge to circumvent the block. There is currently a shortage of these bridges,
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/tor-calls-for-help-as-its-supply-of-bridges-falters/
so every little bit helps now. The quickest and easiest way is to setup your free Amazon EC2 account with the Instructions at the Tor Cloud Project page
https://cloud.torproject.org/
Or for a general Linux setup, [detailed instructions can be found at:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en

NOTE: A bridge is NOT the same as an exit node. If you are just running a bridge, you are only helping people join the Tor network and are only routing a small amount of internal encrypted tor traffic, so there is no risk of getting into trouble with the authorities.

Ah, yes, Microsoft is in deep shit now, what with the record revenue and what not. No wonder the CFO ran away. 2013 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop, all hail RMS!

And you expected something different here? Microsoft's latest numbers are actually astoundingly good, better than even most of the optimists predicted. They speak of a very healthy company, not one in decline at all.

Ah, yes, Microsoft is in deep shit now, what with the record revenue and what not. No wonder the CFO ran away. 2013 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop, all hail RMS!

"Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be--at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance. I've struggled before with using Linux as my full-time operating environment both at work and at home. I did it for years at work, but it was never quite as easy as I wanted it to be."

I disagree, it's no more complicated than installing Windows, how many people have to install an OS on their brand new computer?

I've been Windows free for three years and going, and I've not noticed the loss !

As the map you voice recordings to an id and map that id to your apple id, I find it very strange they can claim it's anonymous!

From a better article:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/04/apple-remembers-where-you-wanted-to-get-drunk-for-up-to-2-years/

Muller pointed out, however, that the identifiers are deleted immediately—"along with any associated data"—when a user turns Siri off on his or her device. (You can do this by going to Settings > General > Siri on a supported iOS device.)

If you can delete the identifiers and associated data when disabling Siri, it is not anonymous.

Also voice recognition has been working fine for many years now, if they want to find your voice clips it shouldn't be much trouble.

You can use Google's authenticator app or Microsoft's authenticator app. This was a typical poorly written summary on Slashdot. Anything MS does that is remotely positive was be half reported or not reported at all. http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/microsoft-rolls-out-standards-compliant-two-factor-authentication/

I think you missed the point. Google has published the patches but the carriers have not distributed them.

Actually, may be they have. In the sources the ACLU is using for its FTC complaint, the most thorough and well researched article they're using to support their point, is purposefully not counting minor updates:

(Note that we define "update" as a major point release of Android—2.2 Froyo, 2.3 Gingerbread, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. More minor updates or firmware releases are not accounted for here.)

Now I understand Android users getting pissed off for not getting major updates, but if we're really talking about "security updates", minor versions should at least be counted. Gingerbread for instance is not going away anytime soon. All manufacturers for instance are still making the cheaper single processor Gingerbread phones, and they currently have no plans of ever stopping that (at least not for the lower end of the market). Does that mean that Gingerbread is insecure? Not in the least, Google is still making minor security updates for Gingerbread and will probably continue to do so for years to come.

And ACLU's Christopher Soghian, author/first signature of the two on the formal ACLU complaint, is quoting a Washington Post article which is only quoting himself, ACLU's Christopher Soghian, as the sole source. WTF? Why did he even feel the need to reference that article? Is his ego more important than the point he is trying to support?

Also, I can no longer find the reference, but the last time his name came up, someone on slashdot found his linkedin profile in which he immediately described himself as being an iPhone owner. And yes, I realize the irony of quoting a source I can no longer find, when I just complained about someone referencing an article in support of his point quoting himself as the sole source.

But assuming I'm telling the truth, or assuming you remember seeing what I saw, who would do that on their linkedin profile? Does he post that on his resume as well? I can think of more subtle ways to communicate one's membership in the iPhone owners club. And if anyone was coming to the rescue of Android users, I would prefer that person to be an Android user/owner himself (after all, there are so many), instead of a person who proudly wears his iPhone as some kind of badge of honor instead (again, that's assuming you think I'm even telling the truth about what I read from his linkedin profile, you may not even believe me of course).

Tokyo was hit very very hard during World War II (1944). So, even though Tokyo has been around for centuries, an awful lot of it is new.

However, they weren't laying down high-speed Internet in the 50 years post World War II. Government policy is a much more likely cause:

"[Lennett] argued that broadband policy in recent years has been based on the "really flawed assumption that telephone companies and cable companies are going to compete with each other." Instead, he said, we've gotten a "negotiated truce" in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms. "The consumer is going to lose from that," Lennett said.

Lennett suggested two policies that might rejuvenate the US broadband market. First, he suggested that policymakers should re-evaluate the 2005 decision to abandon line-sharing rules. In many other countries, incumbent firms are required to lease their facilities to competitors at regulated rates."

The second policy he mentions is having the city pay for rollouts, but that usually ends up blocked by court battles in the US.

Lots of Windows developers warned you Windows 8 was going to be a big mistake. You ignored us and stumbled on like an angry dunk. I used Windows 8 in the shops. It sucked and was clear customers wouldn't warm to it. With the writing on the wall developers took the plunge to Tablet development. People still wanted their PCs, but instead of re-inventing the desktop and instead you laid another Zune and forgot to flush. You have squandered the biggest computing monopoly ever, but this time people are leaving so I don't think there is a come back. Bye Bye Balmer.

Windows 8 App Developer Says Process Stinks
http://www.informationweek.com/security/application-security/windows-8-app-developer-says-process-sti/240010598
More Game Developers Unhappy With Windows 8
http://linuxgamenews.com/post/29001456897/more-game-developers-unhappy-with-windows-8
Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8 # warning signs as far back as 2011!
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/06/html5-centric-windows-8-leaves-microsoft-developers-horrified/
Don’t Blame Us for Windows 8s Slow Sales, PC Makers Say
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/oem-windows-8/

And yet here is the other side of the story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_inventions

Wi-Fi being on that list.

CSIRO talks out of two sides of its mouth. It wants to take credit for Wi-Fi. They promote themselves this way, and you even see the Science Minister of Australia (Evans) stating "It's hard to imagine an Australian-invented technology that has had a greater impact on the way we live and work".

But then in technical circles where they face informed response, they play things down.

And no, CSIRO did not discuss with IEEE the use of the patent prior to its inclusion in the standard. The standard was published in 1997 and CSIRO didn't pipe up until later. They were not even on the 802.11 committee. This is standard submarine trolling.

And their FRAND terms? They wanted $4 per device. This would amount to more than the entire cost of a WiFi chip.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/how-the-aussie-government-invented-wifi-and-sued-its-way-to-430-million/

RTFA. It says the CSIRO suffered from the last director who de-emphasised research because he wanted to make it more like a company. They cut funding to research so they could focus on selling consulting services and getting deals with industry like the snake oil they sold to Novartis. The Wireless patent is what we call a submarine patent. If they declared it up front, standard bodies would have just designed around it. Instead they wait until the technology is widespread and suddenly reveal it and send patent troll lawyers to enforce it. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/how-the-aussie-government-invented-wifi-and-sued-its-way-to-430-million.ars

Trouble is, most folks on Android are known to loathe "paying for any software."

This is an article about an Apple user being attacked for Piracy by an Apple developer by Hyjacking their twitter accounts and posting confessions of piracy :) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/ios-apps-hijack-twitter-accounts-post-false-confessions-of-piracy/.

Nice try. How does that refute that iOS users buy more software than Android users? For every tuppe666, there's a thousand grandmas who got their Android phone free and have never paid for a single app, and wouldn't even know how to.

Perhaps you should should stop Demonising Android users. I'm personally willing to post screenshots of my Play account, showing all my purchases.

Perhaps once you stop demonizing Apple users. This story has nothing to do with Android, yet fandroids such as yourself seem to have no trouble coming up with reasons to bring up the wholly irrelevant (to this story) Android OS.

Sounds like an inferiority complex to me. At least it's not as bad here as it is on G+.