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The Seiki SE50UY04 shows up at less than a thousand pretty frequently.

The one major downside is that the cheapies almost certainly have neither Displayport nor HDMI 2.0 HDMI 1.4 will drive a 4k panel; but maxes out at something like 30Hz. Given that pre-canned 4k video is practically nonexistent (but would be the material that might have been shot at under 30FPS originally, and has plenty of detail in the original film if somebody feels like doing a good transfer), the only real use case is hooking it up to a computer, where the refresh rate will promptly unimpress you.

It won't flicker or anything, this isn't the CRT days; but 30FPS is Not Good.

Try 4K for $1K.

http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/polaroid-50gsr9000/4505-6482_7-35833805.html

NSA offers details on 'LOVEINT' (that's spying on lovers, exes)

In 5 of the 12 cases, the employee resigned before being disciplined. In 1 instance, the employee retired before being disciplined, and in another the worker retired before the investigation had been finalized. Half the cases were referred to the US Department of Justice (1 of those was declined by the DOJ), and in 2 other instances, records were insufficient to determine if the case had been passed on to the Justice Department. None of the workers were prosecuted.

Being fired from a job like that has a significant permanent affect on one's career opportunities. No more security clearances, for example.

Yes, although apparently the type of game matters.

When the law wasn't there, by unjustly taxing the local advertising providers, the local government itself was skewing the market in favour of the foreign operators, creating a preference for local taxpayer money to be transfered to foreign governments (Ireland? Bermuda? USA?), where it could be spent, for example, financing the NSA or paying the fuel for Brin and Page's private jets. The government was acting against the interests of its own citizens.

Now the playing field is level, and the companies you were talking about are perfectly free to become even richer, which contrary to what you say isn't stigmatized by anyone, as long as they do it by providing better products at better prices instead of relying on legislative advantages.

Apparently, Rockstar is now selling most of the patents they bought from Nortel for these lawsuits.

It was a scummy business all along. It went like:
Apple and MS: *buying up Nortel's patents*
US DoJ: *stares at them intently*
Apple and MS: "We promise to fairly license these patents to anyone!"
US DoJ: *nods, turns away*
Apple and MS: *passing patents to Rockstar quietly*
Rockstar: "Ha! We're neither MS nor Apple and didn't promise shit, suckers!"

True, although not every suspicion of that type has turned out to be well founded. For example, many people were uncomfortable with the NSA-initiated changes to DES during its design in the 1970s, but rather than a backdoor, those turned out to be correct changes that strengthened its security. The NSA already knew about differential cryptanalysis, which wasn't yet publicly known, and the requested changes strengthened DES against that attack (something that was finally realized publicly in 1990).

This is a big (and, I personally fear, unfixable) problem for the IETF and associated Internet bodies. Of course, router security is only a tiny piece of it. Given that RSA has been revealed as taking money from the NSA to weaken security protocols, who knows how deep the rot goes.

One big fight right now is in over the removal of NSA employed Chair of the Crypto Forum Research Group. There will be more.

All I want is a program that combines Autoruns with StartupMonitor. and steps in when any Dll or executable is about to be modified, hell, the OS should do that anyway.

Over 5 years I have enjoyed running my PC virus free. and without the annoyance of anti-virus software's constant nagging. VirusTotal for when I'm in doubt and a scan with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for when I get a tinge of paranoia.

CNET posted a review of the X60 in March 2006. Lenovo ThinkPad X60s The release date for this "ultraportable," February 14. This is for all practical purposes an eight or nine year old machine.

I am comfortable buying refurbished.

But nothing this old --- and never without a warranty, however short-lived.

The problem is, if my iPad needs to get wiped for whatever reason, I cannot reinstall older versions of the apps from the Apple Store, since they will not allow download of old versions of apps, even if the newer version is not compatible with my hardware.

Stop spreading FUD, I have a non iOS7 device and when I ask for the latest version the appstore aks if I want the oldest device compatible one to install.

Need to register for your mandated insurance? Start -> HHS Health Bob

Obvious Bill could see this coming.

Bill Gates says Microsoft Bob will make a comeback

Oh, yeah. Fragmentation has clearly been blocking Android's success since 2008, before the first phone was introduced. If it weren't for this fatal flaw Android might have been popular by now.

Nope, it seems to be that you weren't the one paying attention. He was making campaign promises in 2008 to end the warrantless wiretaps. One of his spokesmen in 2007 even claimed he would filibuster any act that would provide the telecoms with immunity.

In October 2007, Obama spokesman Bill Burton issued this unequivocal statement to the liberal blog TPM Election Central: "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

That is until he got into office and signed the law himself.

Sometimes, Google just baffles me. The lack of direction in their product lines makes me shake my head.

We have several distinct software platforms:

1) Android. Development in XML with Java used as glue to hold everything together. Unless you don't. You can use standard C libraries and call the Linux kernel directly, bypassing the Dalvik Java VM.

2) Chrome browser. Development largely in javascript, again there are some obvious exceptions. Javascript is, of course, preferred because it's safer, so ChromeOS protects you by having everything done in Javascript. Except that it isn't.

3) ChromeOS. Kinda/Sorta like using the Chrome browser, except that it's not, because you are developing things that run as if they were actual clients. In Javascript. And of course, this too, is just as strictly enforced.

4) But Let's not forget the 4th platform in the trio: Google's Go language is clearly a contender, and it's designed to replace C, except for a few bone-headed decisions like linking everything statically resulting in enormous binaries. Because you really, really need to have the same library installed once for every app installed, because that way you get to recompile everything installed on your system any time a security update comes out for your favorite library. Except that, of course there are exceptions here, too.

And most importantly, you cannot target all these platforms with any single codebase written in any language. It's like they are trying to make their product suite as difficult as just using products from multiple vendors anyway.

It's really quite simple. A lot of Google projects started from a handful of people going "you know what would be a cool idea?" and doing it with very little approval or red tape (the fabled 20% time). That's certainly the only explanation I can think of for DART, at any rate.

Go is basically what you get when you hire a former Plan 9 developer, expose him to Google's internal hermetic build system (where a 100MiB binary is small), then let him build cool stuff to keep him from getting bored.

Disclaimer: I work at Google but do not speak for my employer. I don't work on any of the teams mentioned in your post. The information in this post is already available to the public in various places.

Sometimes, Google just baffles me. The lack of direction in their product lines makes me shake my head.

We have several distinct software platforms:

1) Android. Development in XML with Java used as glue to hold everything together. Unless you don't. You can use standard C libraries and call the Linux kernel directly, bypassing the Dalvik Java VM.

2) Chrome browser. Development largely in javascript, again there are some obvious exceptions. Javascript is, of course, preferred because it's safer, so ChromeOS protects you by having everything done in Javascript. Except that it isn't.

3) ChromeOS. Kinda/Sorta like using the Chrome browser, except that it's not, because you are developing things that run as if they were actual clients. In Javascript. And of course, this too, is just as strictly enforced.

4) But Let's not forget the 4th platform in the trio: Google's Go language is clearly a contender, and it's designed to replace C, except for a few bone-headed decisions like linking everything statically resulting in enormous binaries. Because you really, really need to have the same library installed once for every app installed, because that way you get to recompile everything installed on your system any time a security update comes out for your favorite library. Except that, of course there are exceptions here, too.

And most importantly, you cannot target all these platforms with any single codebase written in any language. It's like they are trying to make their product suite as difficult as just using products from multiple vendors anyway.

And the most dangerous hacker in the world, whose greatest skill was asking people nicely to give him things, was put into solitary for eight months for fear that he might use a pay phone to politely request a nuclear launch.

Maybe you just missed out on some of the required reading for this class.

To be fair, it's entirely possible that there did exist at least one nuclear missile that could be launched by dialing the correct (unlisted) number and transmitting the correct analog signal (the handshake and launch order), and there do exist people with the capability of impersonating acoustic modems by whistling into a phone.

And the most dangerous hacker in the world, whose greatest skill was asking people nicely to give him things, was put into solitary for eight months for fear that he might use a pay phone to politely request a nuclear launch.

Maybe you just missed out on some of the required reading for this class.

But if you really believe their is a chance that drones are going to be dropping packages off at you doorstep in under 10 - 15 years, you neither understand the logistics and you are both delusional and naive. Set down the Adderal and the Code Red. Maybe light some incense and listen to some Tibetan singing bowls or something.

Speaking of Tibetan singing bowls and doorsteps if your doorstep is in the USA maybe not. But if Tibet is near your doorstep maybe...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57601531-76/drones-in-china-deliver-packages-even-a-birthday-cake/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/02/amazon-is-joining-not-starting-the-drone-delivery-revolution/
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2013-09/03/content_16941199.htm

Not saying it's a good idea. Just pointing out that drones may be dropping packages off sooner than you think, depending on where your doorstep is.
quote from the last link:

Currently several major Chinese couriers like S.F.Express have expanded to counties or even villages. But there are still areas that are more remote or with poor transport infrastructure. It is expected the drones will be useful for delivering online shopping goods to those places.

Some kind of kinky "role-reversal play' among government agencies?

I imagine it's more some turf war / battle over budgets.

Remember back in in 2008, when the FBI wanted the right to monitor all internet traffic ("The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said, whether it be .mil, .gov, .com--whichever network you're talking about.")? Apparently the NSA got an even bigger budget for that project than the FBI did, and I imagine the FBI's been jealous ever since.

Ever since news about how guys like Chalabi would play the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA off of each other, I've wondered how many of the world's conflicts are actually DNI(CIA) vs DoD(DIA)

Applies even more to internet hacking, where 4 of the 10 biggest hacker groups in the world are almost certaily DNI(CIA), DoD(DIA), DoJ(FBI), and DHS(NCSD). (probably all working under the alias "anonymous")

Software has been eating the free lunch Moore was providing before it got to the users; the sad reality is that the typical end-user hasn't seen much in the way of performance improvements - in some cases, common tasks are even slower now than 10 years ago.

This point of view is common, even though its odd disparity with reality make it seem almost anachronistic. Software isn't bloating anywhere near as much as expectations are.

Oh, sure, it's true that much software is slower than its predecessor. Windows 7 is considerably slower, given the same hardware, than Windows XP which is a dog compared to Windows 95, on the same hardware. But the truth is that we aren't running on the same hardware, and our expectations have risen dramatically. But in actual fact, most implementations of compilers and algorithms show consistent improvements in speed. More recent compilers are considerably faster than older ones. Newer compression software is faster (often by orders of magnitude!) than earlier versions. Software processes such as voice recognition, facial pattern matching, lossy compression algorithms for video and audio, and far too many other things to name have all improved consistently over time. For a good example of this type of improvement, take a look at the recent work on "faster than fast" Fourier Transforms as an easy reference.

So why does it seem that software gets slower and slower? I remember when my Dell Inspiron 600m was a slick, fast machine. I was amazed at all the power in this little package! And yet, even running the original install of Windows XP, I can't watch Hulu on it - it simply doesn't have the power to run full screen, full motion, compressed video in real time. I was stunned at how long (a full minute?) the old copy of Open Office took to load, even though I remember running it on the same machine! (With my i7 laptop with SSD and 8 GB of RAM, OpenOffice loads in about 2 seconds)

Expectations are what changed more than the software.

Not only did he learn Java to understand the case, but Judge Alsup was already a programmer (and mathematics graduate), putting him in an ideal position to make nuanced judgements about Oracle's arguments:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57445082-94/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-court-and-java/

' Alsup told Boies, "I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America --how could you even make that kind of argument?" '

It seems very unlikely that the current panel will be as well-qualified (which is great for Oracle).

Do you really think Netflix is paying for the proportion of the internet that it uses?

"The report from Sandvine, a company that sells Internet traffic-management systems, finds that Netflix use accounts for 33 percent of all downstream traffic in North America during the peak hours between 9 p.m. and 12 a.m. By contrast, Amazon and Hulu only account for 1.8 percent and 1.4 percent of downstream traffic, respectively." http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57546405-93/netflix-gobbles-a-third-of-peak-internet-traffic-in-north-america/

Very simply, netflix's business strategy is to shift the cost of business to other users. They are creating a negative externality. Not surprisingly, what results is exactly what economic theory says will happen; more of the good is produced than would be produced if the producer were paying the full costs of production. This effectively limits the potential for competitors to develop and it discourages netflix from pursuing more efficient means of production (more efficient transmission algorithms).

One might make th e"public good" argument about the internet; however, the marginal cost of adding another 'netflix' (a full competitor) would not be 'effectively zero.' thus, large consumers, like netflix can not treat the internet as a public good. Even though a smaller user, whose marginal cost IS effectively zero, can.

Other than needing a Mac as a dongle, OS X is probably less locked down than Windows once you turn off Gatekeeper or at least add applications to Gatekeeper's whitelist.

Sure, DexterIsADog.

Some of these are security videos. Some are just videos people shot. They all involve civil cases.

Question answered by lawyers about release of security footage

Texting Woman Who Fell Into Fountain May Sue Mall . The video in the story has been removed, probably as part of a preemptive agreement.

Kanye West suing YouTube co-founder for uploading footage of his proposal

Peninsula card room sues over violent YouTube videos

Couple sues subway over YouTube post

NJTA sues YouTube over the posting of a video that had been shot with an NJTA camera.

And this link may provide you with lots and lots of articles to read on the subject.

These devices are not always-on recorders, and have a light indicating when the camera is running.

You might wish or expect that Google Glass has such an indicator light. But it doesn't.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57582255-93/hey-google-glass-are-you-recording-me/

Even if it did, who's to say the glasses haven't been rooted, or such a light physically disabled.

Difficult to get speakers and microphone sealed up.

Kyocera managed to do it with the Edge Hydro. Will withstand being a meter underwater for an hour, they claim. And it still has a USB port and headphone jack, I have no idea how they pulled THAT one off.

It's pretty incredible but sadly predictable that Apple can keep winning over juries in its home county of Santa Clara to award it damages mainly for a patent (pinch to zoom) already declared invalid twice by the USPTO. Thanks however to the US's weird system, Apple can go on appealing until 2017 or 2018 before it finally runs out of people to whine to. I'd like to think that sanity could prevail then, but as recent experience shows, the US President would have no qualms about vetoing any adverse judgement against Apple but would be okay letting it stand against Johnny Foreigner.

The thing that blew me away is they had a much more advanced set of issues to deal with than a typical bureaucratic office would.

The Ernie Ball company, the world's leading maker of premium guitar strings that does $40m/year business, transitioned completely away from Microsoft and has almost no proprietary software after being attacked by the BSA. "I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses, We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly" its CEO Sterling Ball said, and added that the transition was a breeze. He says

It's the funniest thing--we're using it for e-mail client/server,
spreadsheets and word processing. It's like working in Windows. One of the analysts said it costs $1,250 per person to change over to open source. It wasn't anywhere near that for us. I'm reluctant to give actual numbers. I can give any number I want to support my position, and so can the other guy. But I'll tell you, I'm not paying any per-seat license. I'm not buying any new computers. When we need something, we have white box systems we put together ourselves. It doesn't need to be much of a system for most of what we do.

But there's a real argument now about total cost of ownership, once you start adding up service, support, etc.

What support? I'm not making calls to Red Hat; I don't need to. I think that's propaganda...What about the cost of dealing with a virus? We don't have 'em. How about when we do have a problem, you don't have to send some guy to a corner of the building to find out what's going on--he never leaves his desk, because everything's server-based. There's no doubt that what I'm doing is cheaper to operate. The analyst guys can say whatever they want.

The myth has been built so big that you can't survive without Microsoft.

I think it's great for me to be a technology influence. It shows how ridiculous it is that I can get press because I switched to OpenOffice. And the reason why is because the myth has been built so big that you can't survive without Microsoft, so that somebody who does get by without Microsoft is a story.

It's just software. You have to figure out what you need to do within your organization and then get the right stuff for that. And we're not a backwards organization. We're progressive; we've won communications and design awards...The fact that I'm not sending my e-mail through Outlook doesn't hinder us. It's just kind of funny. I'm speaking to a standing-room-only audience at a major technology show because I use a different piece of software--that's hysterical.

http://download.cnet.com/usbmouse-exe/3000-18491_4-210097.html

There's such a thing as "enough", and there's no particular reason to press your luck when you already have it.

The snapchat founders have been able to monetize their situation such that they've already got at least 10 million in the bank. That's enough "FU money" to press their luck and ride this thing all the way to the end, glory or otherwise.

Here's a news story from 2006: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html

The feature where they could turn your phone into a surveillance bug probably relied on software bugs or security holes in the firmwares of certain phone models. It's just impossible for the average user to know if their phone was secure or not. Who knows what the capabilities are today with iOS and Android and current phone models?

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html

Many of you have probably forgotten about this incident that drew attention to the FBI's ability to turn on a phone's features even while it's off. I would assume that the two (baseband processor and "roving bug") are connected.

There were credible reports in 2006 that the FBI were using people's phone mics as audio bugs, and that this worked even when the phone was off,. I think you can draw your own conclusions about whether phones have become more or less susceptible to law enforcement interference in the intervening years. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

People just loved the Flickr redesign.

You're confusoing two different things. App sandbox (on Android) with App Store Approvals (on iOS).

No, I'm not "confusing" or "ignoring" anything.

Listen up: recent scandals have demonstrated that Apple's "sandbox" DOESN'T WORK for things like this, as Chalie Miller and a lot of others found out.

Ultimately, keeping withing Apple's "sandbox" is up to the developer, and if you have a malicious developer, it makes no difference.

That was part of my point. No, app developer CAN'T do a lot more on Android than they do on iOS. Lots of people keep saying that but the distinction is illusory. The ONLY difference is that on iOS, they're slightly more likely to get caught because of the app vetting that Apple does.

an 18 month update window

The iPhone might not be any better (I don't know and don't care) but that's fucking pathetic.

As a Galaxy Nexus owner (who just bought a Nexus 5) I agree, an 18 month update window is pretty bad in an industry where 2 year contracts are common. There is a petition to get Google to release Kitkat for the Galaxy Nexus, but behind the scenes, Google is blaming it on TI:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57610844-94/galaxy-nexus-owners-petition-for-taste-of-kitkat/

Microsoft rarely takes allegations of infringement to court, they almost always prefer to settle for royalties or cross-licencing. That being said, the FAT patents have survived many legal challenge and their validity has been upheld.

http://news.cnet.com/Microsofts-file-system-patent-upheld/2100-1012_3-6025447.html

It's not trolling because Microsoft operates in the mobile market, designed the systems in question as a part of their market activities, and continues to use and license the systems in question as part of their market activities.

It's not simply a case of some unknown shell company purchasing broad and previously unknown patents in an attempt to squeeze settlements out major players. Everyone knows whom the FAT patents belong to, what the licencing terms are, and what will happen if they're not licensed.

The best selling smartphones in North America (the iPhone) do not have removable storage and do not use the FAT file system. Other phone manufactures are free to either implement FAT support as a matter of adding value and pay Microsoft the associated royalties, or leave it out.

Unfortunately it became a legend for all of the wrong reasons. Billions of dollars have been sunk into it over the years and many lawsuits have been filed over it demise by vendors desperate to get out of it or force another vendor to stay in it.

http://www.eweek.com/servers/hp-to-seek-4-billion-in-damages-from-oracle-over-itanium/
http://news.cnet.com/Allies-pledge-10-billion-to-boost-Itanium/2100-1006_3-6031773.html
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/09/hudson_intel_plant_closing_wil.html

Unfortunately sales never came close to the billions of dollars that have been sunk into it, and it has been that way for years:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/itanium_04_sales/
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/hpearnings/
http://www.zdnet.com/photos/charts-mining-itanium/21115

I'm sure someone has a comparison of how much money has been invested compared to how much money has been made in sales. I might be mistaken, but from what I've been reading from the beginning Itanium has never come close to breaking even for hardware or software sales. Certainly companies like HP and Oracle spent millions of dollars on their lawsuit trying to get out Itanium.

Itanium has always been nothing more than a desperate multi-billion dollar effort to break free from the chains of x86.

apple is losing the youth, and doesn't give a shit.

this this this.

Android might get "sales" but only because the buyers can't afford good Apple phones. Even the article shows the free Android phones are "selling" (it's free so not really a sale is it?) much better than the expensive Android phones. The manufactures are really the ones hurting here because while Apple easily sells their $400+ phones the Android smartphones are being given away in a race to the bottom, whoever can give away the best android phone is the winner. But Apple will always be able to offer faster and better phones because they actually make money, not giving them away for free.

And people that can't afford a phone are the same ones that don't want to pay for apps so they pirate Android apps which means Android developers don't make money compared to iOS developers which is why iOS has far more quality games and apps than Android. Even popular freemium games like Clash of Clans go with Apple first because they know people that can afford expensive phones can afford in-app purchases. Clash was on iOS for over a year before Android got a copy.

Um, if you want define "mistake" as "making lots of money", then yeah, they made a "mistake". If you look at usage stats though what you see is a very different picture. For instance, iPhones still dominate in mobile web usage, as well as app usage etc.

No it doesn't. Those stats are for iOS (iPhone + iPad) vs Android phones and tablets. And it's only for wifi traffic. On web traffic over cellular networks, Android devices generate slightly more traffic than iOS devices. Basically your link cherry-picked the one chart favorable to iOS.

If you limit the comparison to just iPhone vs Android phones, Android generates more web traffic. And before you pull out the NetMarketShare data showing iPhone still leading: (1) NetMarketShare gets data from only a few tens of thousands of sites, while StatCounter gets its data from millions of sites. And (2) NetMarketShare's figures are normalized to unique visitors per month. i.e. Someone who visits a site once in a month counts as much as someone who uses the site every day. StatCounter counts web hits, so is measuring actual web usage rather than counting number of users. In other words, more iPhone users browse the web on their phone than Android users, but they don't do much browsing. The hardcore phone browser users are on Android and they generate more web traffic than the larger number of iPhone users who use the browser..

Basically the only lead Apple still has is the iPad in the tablet market, and it's rapidly losing that too. Their share of quarterly tablet sales dropped from a commanding 60% in 2012 to 33% in 2Q2013, and now 29% in 3Q2013. Those are quarterly sales, so iPads probably still comprise the majority of tablets in use, which match with your initial stats showing iOS dominating in wifi-based web traffic.

MUCH better than the SG4 (which has high failure rates, and does not look or feel anywhere near as sleek as the Nexus 5 does).

Samsung's customers don't seem to mind...

Samsung edges Apple on Customer Satisfaction
The competition is starting to encroach on Apple's sacred ground of customer satisfaction. The iPad maker has routinely emphasized the feel-good aspect of its product lines, against a more strictly econometric view of the world. A case in point: "We are not solely focused on unit share as I've said many times, but we're focused on usage in customer's side, the loyalty and other things that are very important to us," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company's fourth quarter earning call Monday. So far that focus has worked out well for Apple, but the ground underneath that worldview may have just shifted, if only just a little. In a J.D. Power Tablet Satisfaction Study released Thursday, archrival Samsung achieved the highest score (835), followed closely by Apple (833).

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57609795-37/samsung-edges-apple-in-j.d-power-tablet-survey/

At least by the metric of visual quality. Plasmas have pretty much led LCD TVs in that arena for the entire period where both technologies competed from the same screen size/price range. This includes the 2013 model year HDTVs- Panasonic's VT-series plasmas were consistently rated as the best-quality displays by most reputable reviewers. Now once you start looking at other elements, like LCDs requiring less power, not being subject to burn-in, better peak brightness, and so on, the competition becomes closer, but I would have liked to think that pure visual quality would have kept Panasonic in the market at least a while longer.

This is pretty much the end of another display technology. Panasonic and Samsung were the last two plasma manufacturers targeting the mid- to high-end display market with their own panels.

I have been using Gmail a long time as well, and every few months something seemed to break in my third party setup. I just don't mess with it anymore. My Gmail accounts are for spam purposes anyway. We have heard enough about or losing accounts by signing up for Google+ that no one who cares about data integrity should be using it. I may be an iTool but I have not lost mail.

The question I have to ask is why should I have to setup my third party client every few months because Google wants to bork it's end users. The answer is that Google want traffic to it's site and just mining out email for data is not profitable enough. I know it is a free service, and you get what you pay for, which is why I pay for my mail.

Easy.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10343601-263.html

Sure, if you were willing to fork out some money they'd fix a problem caused by faulty design, but not otherwise.

Let's see...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10027606-1.html (there are dozens of alternatives, the title was just so fit for here)
linux
PL2303
Am I missing something?

If this becomes popular, then so will GPS jammers for any who expect a need to make a getaway.

Then they'll just add some radio direction finding hardware that tracks the GPS jammer. Duh. The FCC and law enforcement agencies are already deploying systems to catch ordinary people using them.

A GPS jammer is just a transmitter after all. Either the criminal broadcasts the position or the tracker broadcasts the position so it's lose-lose.

Shut it down

Perhaps you can show me where the "optional" part is so i can turn it off?

I don't have an AppleTV, but surely you're familiar with search engines that allow you to find stuff.

I think you are thinking of something like this: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/29970-disable-automatic-updates/

No, no I'm not. It clearly states that "The problem is that "trigger happy" kids are updating and leaving me with a new jailbreaking", so he ultimately wanting to put a stop to manual updating, which you would know if you bothered to actually read the first post of the link you posted.

I work in a job relating to airports and have come across a funny little side effect of this. As GPS trackers in company vehicles get more common, so too do employees resorting to the use of GPS-jammers. Those jammers don't just block signals to and from the vehicle in question, but also a significant area around the vehicle. When one of them drives past an airport with his jammer active, this can happen (and there are many cases beside the one in that story).