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They were first investigated by the German authorities for collecting WiFi addresses (not even private data). During that investigation, they accidentally falsely stated that they did not collect private data beyond unique WiFi addresses. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/google_streetview_logs_wlans/

Some time after that, they corrected their accidental false statement with the "admission" you're talking about. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20005051-266.html?tag=mncol;txt

So they were "caught" by the German, they accidentally lied to them, then they rectified their statement by saying that they accidentally did store users' data, they were investigated by half world as a result of that, were accused of impeding the investigations by the FCC in the USA, and they were "caught" by the French having stored sensitive data.

Why not use the seawater to cool your cooling fluid instead of using saltwater directly?

Have a look at ships' hulls and see what saltwater does to metal.

I tried to look under a 50 year old naval ship but I couldn't see the hull because it was *still floating*! There are lots of aluminum hulled boats on the water too, and aluminum reacts even more strongly with seawater than steel.

It's almost as if there's a way through good design, alloy selection and regular maintenance that metals can survive contact with water. Now if only someone could figure out how to use seawater for cooling...maybe they could even make it work for a nuclear reactor. I wonder how the Navy keeps it's shipboard nuclear reactors cool?

Why not use the seawater to cool your cooling fluid instead of using saltwater directly? Pump the heated waste water far offshore.

I hear that salt water tends to corrode steel. Just a rumor though.

Also, due to using seawater as emergency coolant at Fukushima, we learned that the presence of salt in the water causes the fuel rods to oxidize much more rapidly, and dissolve.

Not the best idea in the world, unfortunately.

Yeah you're right, seawater cooling would never work.

Note that I didn't say to send the seawater through your reactor, use heat exchangers to cool your "clean" cooling fluid that's circulated through the reactor.

how exactly do they delay all of these in all countries ?

You are right, Apple don't appear to be trying to delay every single Android device from every single manufacturer. But then again, they don't have to. If you check out the "Android fragmentation" graphic you will notice that the vast majority of devices are sold by only a few manufacturers - Samsung being the largest, with HTC, Sony and Motorola trailing. Apple has sued Samsung, HTC and Motorola - the curiosity is Sony, who haven't been sued yet. Why not is speculative: Why hasn't Sony been sued by Apple yet? But Samsung is clearly the biggest target, their Galaxy S line of phones is extremely popular and has outsold the iPhone almost every month in some of the largest Western markets (check the graphic at the bottom of this page that covers UK sales).

I'm all about anonymity when appropriate, but trust me, the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. couldn't possibly care less about your latté habits

Of course they do - that's the whole point of the NSA's data mining efforts.

If they know that a group of interest meets at 8pm on the 1st, 17th and 23rd of each month, and you buy a Latte from the Starbucks next door to the meeting place only on those days at 7:45pm, then you become a person of interest.

What about the Compaq TC1000 which was released ~7 years before the first iPad. HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 - TM5800 1 GHz - 10.4" TFT.

Stop trying to come up with lame excuses. Apple hasn't come up with anything new since the early 1980's. They just take what someone else built and remake it. They know that all they have to fall back on is patient lawsuits because there WILL be better devices released by other companies within a year that Apple first releases their model. What it boils down to is Apple us using patient lawsuits to prevent it from getting crushed like in the 1980's

It was largely driven by an EU law forcing all mobiles phones to have microUSB connectors, because people were so sick of proprietary connectors and the overpriced phone chargers that resulted.

A link to an article about that law you're talking about. CNET News Mobile Apple, others agree to universal cell phone charger standard in Europe

I still don't understand how Apple is getting away with not following the standard.

The Aurora shooting suspect left a digital path a mile wide indicating he was up to something nefarious.

No, they've got nothing. He doesn't use facebook

Do you have a citation that SCO was proxy for Microsoft or that Microsoft had funded SCO litigation?

Unless you believe Larry Goldfarb committed perjury, it's clear that Microsoft had a hand in arranging SCO's funding in a bigger way than merely buying licenses to patents SCO didn't own.

I'd guess somewhere between $750 million and $500 million... but both of those figures may be before tariffs—note that Apple makes off with a whopping 30% of each app sale.

Packaging can be weird to understand. Some of the simplest-looking boxes are often hard to manufacture and use to package a product on a assembly line.

Remember that customer experience while unpacking is perhaps the most transient, short-lived event in the life of a product. Other factors such as safety while transport, shelf-appearance and the quality of the product itself is far far more important. And lets not get started about environmental costs of packaging.

It is easy to get all of it if you have a profit margin like Apple does - about 50%. The Nexus has a profit margin of barely 5-7%. So yes, they may cut corners on the box.

But something tells me people who want a Nexus get that the packaging is irrelevant enough as to be worthless within 2 minutes of the customer having finished it. Unboxing is where the function of packaging finishes.

While SRI International, through the help of defense-sponsored research funding I might add, did indeed create what we call SIRI at Menlo Park, it was NOT without foundations from countless years of already done research by companies such as Dragon International, IBM and CMU Research. The creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking had far more to do with SIRI than you seem to want to acknowledge:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20061241-248.html

Give credit to them where it is due.

For the slashdotter with more experience: Can 3d Stereo be achieved with regular commodity LCD monitors?

Given their current prices, you should go for 3D-enabled LCD monitors, e.g. the HP 2311 gt. Look for reviews like this one. I personally strongly recommend passive displays (less expensive, and way more comfortable e.g. under fluorescent light).

And if you want to show stuff in 3D easily, why don't you give Tao Presentations a spin?

That is why Apple ditched EPEAT in the first place. Being able to disassemble toxic components "with common tools" is a requirement of EPEAT compatibility. Did EPEAT just magically excuse Apple from this?

FTFA linked in TFA: "EPEAT requirements hold that electronics must be easy to disassemble, so their components can be recycled. The iPhone, the iPad, and the new MacBook Pro with Retina display don't pass muster..."

They have been around for quite awhile. Over three years ago my bank at the time sent me a new card with a RFID chip with no explanation other than a marketing letter promoting it as "new & improved".

Bull. I checked and it turns out that my card was one of the ones compromised during the Heartland Payment Systems breach that was announced during the Obama inauguration. ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10146275-83.html )

They didn't bother notifying me for 6 months. I cancelled the card AND the bank for trying to pull a fast one.

In other news, it is easy enough to kill the RFID by nuking your card in the microwave.

Note to TSA: I am not a terrorist even though I used the words "kill" and "nuking".

Same with Steve Jobs. The guy was not technical, at all.

I used to think that, too. But maybe not...

If you look closely at the Steve Jobs memo auctioned by Sotheby's on June 15, 2012, you will clearly see that apparently Jobs DID have some component-level hardware design skills when he worked at Atari.

OnStar says it can't be done, yet the FBI was granted a warrant to do exactly that. On appeal the 9th circuit determined that issuing the warrant was improper. So, who do I believe, the FBI (for whom the information is adverse) and the courts, or OnStar who would obviously like to tell us it isn't possible?

Weighing those sources, I'm more inclined to believe it can be done.

OnStar does admit that they get tracking data even when the call button isn't pressed and that they can do so even if you cancel the service. Bottom line, if you want privacy in your vehicle, remove the OnStar system.

I am also a former mechanic though I stuck to small engines and commercial trucks..

I had no idea Apple was pursuing slide to lock on devices where it isn't present. Would you care to provide proof of that, and perhaps suggest why they're being allowed to do so? Heck, perhaps even suggest what interest Apple have in doing it?

The fact that Apple is suing over Galaxy Nexus is all over the news.

As for the interest, it's fairly obvious: Apple wants to be the only one selling popular smartphones, so they're suing their most successful competitors. Add to that a well-known unhealthy obsession with destroying Android.

You're being intentionally obtuse, but that's nonetheless exactly right. Whoever put it there first could have taken a patent, and would have been idiotic not to do so if it was different to whatever contraptions were used to steer before the wheel.

I'm being intentionally obtuse because the patent in question is so obviously idiotic.

Thankfully, no-one patented the steering wheel as a concept (I guess in the age where they were still rapidly patenting actual inventions, like, you know, a diesel engine, it really did look silly). Which is why automobiles swept the market so fast.

I digress, but my point stands... Slide to unlock isn't particularly more innovative than so many other ways of opening a touchscreen device. It's characteristic of iOS devices, and that's why Apple are going after it.

And my point still stands as well - if Apple sees slide to unlock as merely a "distinguishing characteristic" of their device, then they should get a design patent on it. Except if they do it, it would be much more limited, e.g. only applying to cases where it's slide horizontally left to right to unlock - whereas they really want to patent the idea as broad as possible, to use it as a stick against their competitors.

It is possible to discern the TV program (or DVD movie) being watched by looking at the data transmitted by a smart meter: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57364883-245/researchers-find-smart-meters-could-reveal-favorite-tv-shows/

That link really doesn't demonstrate the answer to the question of "how will they read power consumption down to the device level"?

No, but this one does.

Basically, the meters read (or at t least, can read) the power consumption to a very fine degree of accuracy every 2 seconds. That's enough to figure out what TV channel you're watching (by watching power fluctuations caused by varying brightness levels of the TV). And with that level of detail it would also be fairly easy to make good guesses at: what time you leave for / get home from work (lights/kettle/coffee machine/cooker); when you're in the shower; how many people are in your house; whether you're on holiday... it all starts to get creepy pretty quickly...

Apple enjoys 73 percent of the Tablet market share...

For the record, no, they don't.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57453525-92/idc-forecast-ipad-up-android-down-blackberry-irrelevant/

"IDC now expects iOS to grab 62.5 percent of the tablet market in 2012, up from 58.2 percent in 2011."

I don't know where you got 73% from, but that's incorrect (to say the least). If you have a different source that confirms your 73%, I'd be curious to see it but all numbers I've seen are close to 60-ish%. And, while that may be a strong majority, it is not a monopoly.

I know a hot topic gets multiple selections, so do Slashdot editors pick the one with the single worst article? This news items is covered in several reputable places, yet, they selected a submission that looks like it was written by an 8th grader. They use AP's Tweet to make it look like an official AP story/headline. There's brilliantly nonsensical lines like "Proview is continuing their lawsuit in Santa Clara for $1.5 billion dollars while allging fraud and unfair competition. The case was soon after thrown out by a judge."

Google's been buying dark fibers since at least 2005. So, they likely do have the capacity to do this in a lot of areas.

Yea look at this. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57463603-263/google-yes-chrome-is-crashing-macbooks/

It should be removed you know you can't fix software it gets old and can never be updated and streamlined. Google should quit while it's a head and concentrate on it's own OSes.

Can't help but think that RIM's current situation is a lot like what Apple faced with Copland back in the mid-90s. After several years of trying to build their own next-gen system they gave up and purchased NeXT, which we now know as OS X. After numerous OS delays and corporate near-death experiences they finally launched OS X Public Beta in 2000.

What saved Apple from bankruptcy was the iMac.

What saved Apple from bankruptcy was MS's $150M investment, which allowed Apple enough running room to bring out the products that turned the company around. Granted MS's investment at the time was more an attempt to keep the major (and only) secondary player around to point to during their antitrust trial and say "We are not a monopoly! There's Apple" than anything else.

Yeah, the thing is the shells that have taken this form (since Windows 3.11) over the years usually were administer by someone else and presented you with the few options you were supposed to use.

At Ease

Novell Application Launcher

Tiotha

AOL Kids

iOS

Microsoft is probably planning to distribute Metro apps exclusively through their online store. So they are adopting the user interface used when controlling what the user may run. They do this for the money, let's not pretend there is any other reason.

I really hope apple keeps this option!

Nexus 7 is shipping now.

No, its available to order now in the Google Play store, with units shipping in mid-July. See, to pick one of many sources, here.

It's the Q that's shipping in July (together with the Jellybean updates for existing Google supported devices.)

Those, too, but so is the Nexus 7.

What was so "innovative" about the shape of the corners on the iPad that it needs this much legal protection?

Nothing, but patent trolling is one of the fastest growth industries in the US. In addition, it prevents newer, more agile companies disrupting established revenue streams with novel products. It's no surprise companies like Apple are joining in.

Patent trolls curb innovation and cost the U.S. $29B in 2011

A new study shows that patent lawsuits are not only costing the country billions of dollars but are also placing the burden on small and medium-size companies, which slows invention.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57461110-93/patent-trolls-curb-innovation-and-cost-the-u.s-$29b-in-2011/

What's particularly innovative about the ipad design? Like what's so innovative that it deserves a patent? (i personally believe the ipad to be an innovative device, i just don't see what's so special about its design)

Samsung's innovation is substantial... they used to actually have innovation. But looking at their history its obvious that if it wasn't for Apple, they likely wouldn't have changed the designs of their tablets which, prior to the iPad 2010 release, were completely different:

Here is Samsung's early tablet, the 1992 Pen Master
Not too bad for 1992!

Fast forward to 2006... we have the Samsung Q1
Also, not a bad offering at the time... but, again, completely different than iPad, in 14 years Samsung's basic tablet design has not really evolved much, besides the advancement in the underlying technology, they added some buttons to the bezel... a new innovation.

Moving forward to 2011, we have the Samsung Series 7 Convertable.
Just a glance reveals the impact iPad's 2010 release had on Samsung design... even with a keyboard, the new tablet is far more similar to iPad's design than previous Samsung tablet designs, though it still runs a newer version of Windows, the bezel width has decreased and the buttons have disappeared.

As for Samsung's current offering, we have the Samsung Galaxy! The bezel width has expanded from the design of the Series 7, and Windows is replaced with a version of Android that is not all that different from iOS. Here it is with Apple's iPad:
side by side

I'll leave it up to the discriminating slashdotter to decide if Samsung has possibly encroached on any of Apple's design patents, even if a legal expert and the only authority that matters has already conveniently done this for us (but what could they possibly know that slashdotters don't!).

If you're looking for good examples of how one can avoid encroaching on Apple's designs, look at Apple's Mac Mini and its competition. PC manufacturers have offered a multitude of small PCs that perform similarly to the Mac Mini without having to resort to copying it outright. They have innovated a plethera of attractive designs that don't even come close to looking like the Mini while still retaining a small desktop footprint. The point here is that it can be done... the design of the iPad is not the only possible design for a tablet... Samsung themselves have proved that, yet they have aparently abandoned the idea of innovating their tablet design any further.

All of you must be a bit new here, or a bit on the whipper-snapper end of the age scale.

Gates destroyed a lot of companies through anti-competitive business practices which had very real potential to offer choice and alternative in the market. No, most people don't care about that because "look at the Gates Foundation!!".

I'm not young, but I don't care about it because a lot of those companies deserved to die. Clearly if you know what you are doing you can take on MS and win (Google, Apple etc), so it's a safe conclusion that the companies that died simply weren't good enough to compete

Netscape had a great product before Microsoft ruined that company.

Netscape ruined themselves. I distinctly remember the day IE4 was released, the company I worked for had an MS guy come in and do a demo. No Netscape guy ever showed up, and after using both browsers for a few months, it was clear that IE did more and cost less. When Firefox came out, IE got dropped, and when Chrome came out it Firefox got dumped. No MS conspiracy, just the best product wins (Best judged by the market, not by what some nerds in their mum's basement think should be better)

and The whole SCO, Novell and Microsoft Linux thing a Gates effort to ruin Free software.

When you watch some really great companies, and products, get decimated by corporate strong-arming over 20+ years you tend to become a bit bitter towards anything Microsoft or Gates. Even the philanthropy. I wouldn't be surprised to find he's making shady money on it.

Again who cares. If the products really were good they would stick around (see Chrome, Android, Dropbox, Facebook or any of the other myriad of free apps that are popular and aren't MS). You are just making excuses. Everyone is playing to win, Bill is just better at it. Now that Bill is doing charity, he will do that better than everyone else too.

http://www.amazon.com/Channel-Master-CM-7000PAL-Digital-Recorder/product-reviews/B0033TJPJW and http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-video-recorders-dvrs/channel-master-cm-7000pal/4505-6474_7-34142156.html describe an over-the-air DVR with no ongoing fees. If you have decent digital reception, you can get your locals that way, and distribute that signal over CAT-5 or coax to the other sets in the household.

I really find very little Gates says or does that I actually argue with.

All of you must be a bit new here, or a bit on the whipper-snapper end of the age scale.

Gates destroyed a lot of companies through anti-competitive business practices which had very real potential to offer choice and alternative in the market. No, most people don't care about that because "look at the Gates Foundation!!". Netscape had a great product before Microsoft ruined that company and The whole SCO, Novell and Microsoft Linux thing a Gates effort to ruin Free software.

When you watch some really great companies, and products, get decimated by corporate strong-arming over 20+ years you tend to become a bit bitter towards anything Microsoft or Gates. Even the philanthropy. I wouldn't be surprised to find he's making shady money on it.

That's not what I was talking about from the beginning which was quite clear. You are trying spin it when caught that what you were saying doesn't make sense.

You were talking about a live demo from the beginning, and said it was "no big deal". That is what I keyed in on.

What? The iPhone is not a router. It was not doing anything with "untested volume.". Jobs tried to surf with it. It was not receiving any data. I have no idea what you are imagining.

What any consumer might imagine and the kind of thing that happens all the time: when faced with a stressed environment, the product failed due to a design error. I call you a fanboy because the idea that the product might have been at fault doesn't even enter your mind, whereas the typical consumer sees that Jobs expects everybody to turn off their WiFi for the damn thing to work.

I don't remember any journalists immediately blogging "OMGZ. iPhone wifi doesn't work!". At best, they joked about it the glitch.

"awkward", "embarrassing and rare", "a bit sad"

You're right, in that most just accepted it was an understandable WiFi congestion, but there was at least one person who was uncertain and hinted at a problem with the phone:

"It wasn't clear exactly what the actual Wi-Fi issue was, but it seemed that his demo iPhone may have had trouble staying connected to the Wi-Fi network it was supposed to be attached to given there were so many other options around. (If anyone can better diagnose the problem let me know.)"

Apple was the first to use Intel Core CPUs, which were an enormous improvement over the cooking devices known as the Pentium 4.

Um. . . no. Intel launched the Core architecture in January 2006, at the same time as both various PCs and the MacBook Pro and iMac were refreshed. Apple didn't get some exclusive six month-contract or something. . . and with SB and IB, they've been about two months behind the most expeditious PC makers both times - the first IB Mac launched less than two weeks ago, when the first PCs were shipping in April.

How can Apple possibly be leading the hardware market when they're using the same hardware that goes in PCs? The only hardware they lead in is displays.

If you covered the entire property of a typical single-family home with solar panels (*all* of it, not just the roof of the house/garage), you still wouldn't be able to take in enough energy to charge a typical eCar in under a week.

What are you talking about? The Chevy Volt charges from empty in 13 hours on a 120V circuit pulling a bit under 1KW. Its range on that charge is about 40 miles. Generating 1KW is easy - here is what it looks like - those plug straight into your existing outlets using built-in circuitry. Of course, people drive very different miles per day and live in different places, so I'm not saying it's currently feasible for most people. (I happen to live in New Mexico and have an 18 mile round-trip commute). But what you said is a big exaggeration.

"Having a custom hosts file is all fine and good, but that does not mitigate Deep Packet Inspection: FTA: The company's proposed advertising system, called Webwise, is a behavioral targeting service (similar to NebuAd) that uses deep packet inspection to examine traffic... and the ISP BT Group has been criticised for running secret trials of the service." - by nullchar (446050) on Wednesday June 20, @06:19PM (#40391691)

Hmmm, maybe I am blind (or I am otherwise "off" & haven't had my coffee yet this a.m. either, lol), but I couldn't find that quote from the source article..

* Can you point me to a link that has the quote you used? Thanks...

(I'd be more than willing to discuss this too - sounds interesting enough is why, & maybe I can learn something also...)

APK

P.S.=> Thanks for getting me the source link to the quote you used, because I honestly couldn't find it either in the CNET link here http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57456273-83/behavioral-data-tracking-rising-dramatically-q-a/ OR here from the Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/16/antiphormlite/ ... apk

You fail again in your understanding of the issue. The issue is that ISPs are hiring a company to do deep packet inspection to spy on a user's browsing habits. Adblock plus cannot help with this issue.

Maybe if you spent less time being snarky and actually tried to understand what you were reading you would actually appreciate the significance of the issue.

Just to be sure, I will provide you with a references:

The company's proposed advertising system, called Webwise, is a behavioral targeting service (similar to NebuAd) that uses deep packet inspection to examine traffic... and the ISP BT Group has been criticised for running secret trials of the service.

Also the fact that this service is not opt-in, is concerning. Seems to me like this is an issue that Slashdot people care about (except for you?).

References:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57456273-83/behavioral-data-tracking-rising-dramatically-q-a/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm

Because then 80% of the internet websites you love to see for free will cease to exist as their advertising revenue stream dies. I'm sure you'll have no problems paying for all those sites, right? Just like slashdot users just loved it when the NY Times put up a paywall.

Not correct. You certainly can have advertising and advertising revenue without going to increasingly more targeted data mining of the users.

The % of iOS devices running the latest OS (a varient, i.e. IOS 5 vs. IOS 4) in the wild is EXTREMELY high. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57450474-37/apple-365-million-ios-devices-sold-80-percent-running-ios-5/

True... and Apple is becoming famous for making us pay for what we already have, and as a consequence, stifling any growth that would come from existing technology. They are an embarrasment to tech, even if they do put out a shiny well crafted piece.

WTF are you talking about? Are you really serious?

Let's break your unsubstantiated remarks one phrase at a time:

Apple is becoming famous for making us pay for what we already have

What are you talking about? iTunes? Seriously? And how is Apple different in that regard from, say Amazon? You don't have to repurchase your 30 year old copy of Sgt. Peppers, you could have sucked it right up into iTunes (or whatever player you wanted) from your barely-playable vinyl copy (if your turntable still worked...).

Rip. Mix. Burn. Remember who's ad campaign that was?

stifling any growth that would come from existing technology.

You're serious, right? You do realize, of course, that you're talking about the same company who won a Grammy Award in 2002 for "outstanding technical contributions to the music industry and recording field. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a PC company."

How is that stifling growth that would come from existing technology? The technology existed; Apple just made it accessible to many, many more people. How is that "stifling" anything?

They are an embarrasment to tech

Again; you simply cannot be serious!

Not only is this yet another wholly unsubstantiated statement; but, it is belied by even your own very next statement, and I quote: "even if they do put out a shiny well crafted piece." (emphasis mine).

Do I really have to say anything more? The first and second clauses of your sentence cannot both be true. And considering the several tech industry awards they have received, I would venture that your statement about them being an "embarrassment" to anything is quite laughable, and in fact is an embarrassment... To you!

Yes, who can ever forget when Hewlett-Packard received the corporate death penalty for running a cell phone hacking scheme through a third-party contractor.

Let me know when hackers are subject to the death penalty for phone hacking, then we can talk about corporations. And you can't really forget something you didn't know.

Plea hearing postponed in HP spy scandal redux

SAN JOSE, Calif.--More than four and a half years after a California judge effectively dismissed criminal charges against the major players in Hewlett-Packard's spying scandal, federal prosecutors are bringing the case back to life.

  A father-and-son team of private investigators went before a judge today in the U.S. District Court in San Jose intending to plead guilty on charges relating to HP's controversial probe of boardroom leaks to journalists, which took place in late 2005 and early 2006.

Matthew DePante, 32, and his father Joseph DePante, 64, were arraigned last week on charges of conspiring to . . .

...the post mixed together two of them.

Yes, it was for comedic effect. Regardless, the RIM execs responding to the warnings would probably be someone like these guys.

Although I both loved the idea of the courier (details here: http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet) and understood the idea of cancelling the project, I'm not really sure I understand your reasoning. Why would a tablet, or the double-screened-courier for that matter, not fit in directly with the Windows and Office cullture?

Bill Gates did not like the concept. It was too different from his concept of what a tablet should be.

See:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20128013-75/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/

Here is another article on the topic: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57451057-83/phil-zimmermanns-post-pgp-project-privacy-for-a-price/ Is so little editorial work going on that posts can get through without even a single link to a story?

Phil Zimmermann's post-PGP project: privacy for a price:
https://silentcircle.com/

Phil Zimmermann released PGP for free, but he's planning to charge about $20 a month for his new Silent Circle encryption service. It's unlikely to be applauded by encryption-wary law enforcement agencies.

Declan McCullagh | by Declan McCullagh | June 12, 2012 5:30 AM PDT

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57451057-83/phil-zimmermanns-post-pgp-project-privacy-for-a-price/

"PGP creator Phil Zimmermann says he thinks people will pay $20 a month for secure communications.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

He rocketed to privacy stardom over two decades ago with the release of PGP, the first widely available program that made it easy to encrypt e-mail. Now Phil Zimmermann wants to do the same thing for phone calls.

Zimmermann's new company, Silent Circle, plans to release a beta version of an iPhone and Android app in late July that encrypts phone calls and other communications. A final version is scheduled to follow in late September.

This time around, Zimmermann is facing not the possibility of prison time on charges of violating encryption export laws, but a more traditional challenge: convincing would-be users that protecting their privacy is worth paying Silent Circle something like $20 a month.

"I'm not going to apologize for the cost," Zimmermann told CNET, adding that the final price has not been set. "This is not Facebook. Our customers are customers. They're not products. They're not part of the inventory."

Silent Circle's planned debut comes amid recent polls suggesting that Internet users remain concerned about online data collection (or at least are willing to tell pollsters so), with Facebook topping health insurers, banks, and even the federal government as today's No. 1 privacy threat. Yet even after a decade of startups that have tried to capitalize on these concerns, consumers spending their own money remain consistently difficult to persuade that paying for privacy is worth it.

Zimmermann hopes to overcome this reluctance by offering a set of services designed from the start to be simple to use: encrypted e-mail, encrypted phone calls, and encrypted instant messaging. (Encrypted SMS text messages are eventually planned too.)

"We're going after target markets that have a special need for this," Zimmermann said. "For example, U.S. military serving overseas that wish to speak to their families."

One sales pitch unique to Silent Circle is Zimmermann's own history of high-profile support for civil liberties that recently placed him in the Internet Hall of Fame, including spending four years under threat of criminal indictment for releasing PGP in the early 1990s. At the time, encryption software was regulated as a munition, meaning unlicensed export could be a federal felony. Zimmermann later founded PGP Inc., now owned by Symantec.

Symantec has focused far more on selling PGP-branded products to corporations, not individuals. Symantec's Web page for PGP Whole Disk Encryption, for instance, boasts that the utility "provides organizations with comprehensive, high performance full disk encryption" to protect "customer and partner data."

PGP "moved too far away from individual users," Zimmermann says. "It was geared so heavily toward enterprise that I felt it was hard to use for ordinary people. That was kind of sad. My original intent was individuals. Now I get to go back to individuals again."

Also involved in Silent Circle are Mike Janke, a former Navy SEAL sniper turned privacy advocate; Vic Hyder, a Navy SEAL commander and founder of a maritime security firm; and PGP co-founder Jon Callas.

Silent Circle's app will securely scramble conversations -- using end-to-end encryption and the ZRTP protocol -- between two people if both are using its software. If only one person has the

Phil Zimmermann's post-PGP project: privacy for a price:
https://silentcircle.com/

Phil Zimmermann released PGP for free, but he's planning to charge about $20 a month for his new Silent Circle encryption service. It's unlikely to be applauded by encryption-wary law enforcement agencies.

Declan McCullagh | by Declan McCullagh | June 12, 2012 5:30 AM PDT

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57451057-83/phil-zimmermanns-post-pgp-project-privacy-for-a-price/

"PGP creator Phil Zimmermann says he thinks people will pay $20 a month for secure communications.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

He rocketed to privacy stardom over two decades ago with the release of PGP, the first widely available program that made it easy to encrypt e-mail. Now Phil Zimmermann wants to do the same thing for phone calls.

Zimmermann's new company, Silent Circle, plans to release a beta version of an iPhone and Android app in late July that encrypts phone calls and other communications. A final version is scheduled to follow in late September.

This time around, Zimmermann is facing not the possibility of prison time on charges of violating encryption export laws, but a more traditional challenge: convincing would-be users that protecting their privacy is worth paying Silent Circle something like $20 a month.

"I'm not going to apologize for the cost," Zimmermann told CNET, adding that the final price has not been set. "This is not Facebook. Our customers are customers. They're not products. They're not part of the inventory."

Silent Circle's planned debut comes amid recent polls suggesting that Internet users remain concerned about online data collection (or at least are willing to tell pollsters so), with Facebook topping health insurers, banks, and even the federal government as today's No. 1 privacy threat. Yet even after a decade of startups that have tried to capitalize on these concerns, consumers spending their own money remain consistently difficult to persuade that paying for privacy is worth it.

Zimmermann hopes to overcome this reluctance by offering a set of services designed from the start to be simple to use: encrypted e-mail, encrypted phone calls, and encrypted instant messaging. (Encrypted SMS text messages are eventually planned too.)

"We're going after target markets that have a special need for this," Zimmermann said. "For example, U.S. military serving overseas that wish to speak to their families."

One sales pitch unique to Silent Circle is Zimmermann's own history of high-profile support for civil liberties that recently placed him in the Internet Hall of Fame, including spending four years under threat of criminal indictment for releasing PGP in the early 1990s. At the time, encryption software was regulated as a munition, meaning unlicensed export could be a federal felony. Zimmermann later founded PGP Inc., now owned by Symantec.

Symantec has focused far more on selling PGP-branded products to corporations, not individuals. Symantec's Web page for PGP Whole Disk Encryption, for instance, boasts that the utility "provides organizations with comprehensive, high performance full disk encryption" to protect "customer and partner data."

PGP "moved too far away from individual users," Zimmermann says. "It was geared so heavily toward enterprise that I felt it was hard to use for ordinary people. That was kind of sad. My original intent was individuals. Now I get to go back to individuals again."

Also involved in Silent Circle are Mike Janke, a former Navy SEAL sniper turned privacy advocate; Vic Hyder, a Navy SEAL commander and founder of a maritime security firm; and PGP co-founder Jon Callas.

Silent Circle's app will securely scramble conversations -- using end-to-end encryption and the ZRTP protocol -- between two people if both are using its software. If only one person has the

One of the newly announced Asus tablet/laptop hybrids - Tablet 810 - is a Medfield (or rather Clover Trail, which is basically "Medfield for tablets") device.

Audiophiles hate it when you recommend BOSE or SONY, but I did have a lot of happiness with my Sony MDR-NC200Ds active-noise cancelling earphones. They list for $120 or so but I was able to buy one on sale for $80. I don't know if they are often on sale, but you might be able to get one for $80. If you can, do it. Not only are they great earphones (at least to my ears), they also cancel noise actively, which helps during commutes or airplane flights when you're seated right behind the engines.

http://reviews.cnet.com/headphones/sony-mdr-nc200d-black/4505-7877_7-35020456.html?tag=rb_content;contentBody

Monoprice's $23 headphones have gotten some pretty good reviews:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57337747-47/how-good-can-$21.59-headphones-be/?tag=mncol;txt)
http://www.head-fi.org/t/608453/monoprice-dj-headphones-8323-review

They sound good to me, but I'm not a serious audiophile, I just use them to cover up background office noise. I think the sound is comparable to the $80 Sennheiser's I use at home. (which, a friend tells me are completely unbearable compared to his $500 Sennheiser HD650's, so I refuse to listen to music through his headphones, 'lest some of his "golden ears" rub off and I find myself needing more expensive gear)

Aside from stability issues others have mentioned, a snake large enough to house all the stuff in the rover would be very well, large I think.
link chosen from google image search becasue you can get an idea of scale from the people standing beside the rover. http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-20013071-239.html
Combining and recombining like a Japanese cartoon robot works best in cartoons. Sand and other realities would make it difficult to execute well on Mars