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I see that Toyota apologists are in full cry, trying to prove that Toyota unintended acceleration is really due to a bunch of old people who don't know how to drive, young people driving badly, and almost anything other than a real defect in the throttle software. Steve Wozniac (Apple founder and designer) says he can replicate the problem at will, and he claims that Toyota is ignoring him. Wonder why.

Other things to consider:
- The same old and young drivers don't report unintended acceleration for other brands.
- The unintended acceleration in other cars was a real human design defect[1]
- The press (other than Slashdot) has ignored Wozniac as well, for the most part

[1] It seems that if pedals are put in a "stick shift" configuration, throttle on the right, brake in the middle, and (space for) clutch on the left, people don't hit an unintended pedal. Putting the brake and accelerator in the middle space, under the wheel, is more likely to result in error. Since the elderly and young men are somewhat more likely to have driven manual transmission, they are more likely to stomp in the middle of the floor looking for the brake under stress. Call that human error exacerbated by design factors. But those were not situations lasting for minutes.

I'll not write as causticly as the AC who also replied, but I'll agree in principal.

One thing that is obvious and well-known is that it doesn't matter that you don't visit "shady" web sites to end up being subject to potential malware infection. Ad companies are letting nasty ads get through whatever controls they have in place. Serious vetting and the talent to implement it costs money, no doubt. I just found this, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20000353-245.html

My 7 year old nephew's computer was chronically infested and he played games loaded via IE online. These free games sites have lots of ads. No windows virus scanner I tried could get rid of them. Had to use the Trinity Rescue Kit and ALL of its virus scanners to eliminate the infections on one occasion. I don't trust virus scans in windows much anymore. Oh, btw, they were letting him use an account with admin privs. I'm a years-long linux guy, and it's seriously tiring dealing with this, but I'll hazard a guess that you and others of us here are first responders for family and friends' computer issues, so won't get any sympathy :-)

Anyway, I think common sense applies. You're an experienced computer user, but why not be better safe than sorry? Your computer, your rules, certainly, but why take the chance? You have to make it as hard for the bad guys as possible, zero-day exploits and general windows vulnerabilities as common as they seem to be. I wonder if patch Tuesday will some day start a religion?

I saw a video this morning from Edmunds (via cnet) that showed what happens in a Prius when you shift to neutral (and reverse). When shifting to neutral (with the gas pedal floored), the engine is disengaged and idled and the car started slowing. Shifting to reverse does the same thing and the car beeps at you. For these to work, you have to hold the shifter for a second or two.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10468020-64.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

ah... its already been done. The price is right and it looks like the basic features are there.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10281062-233.html

Go ahead internet tough guy and absolute expert, I dare ya to tell this guy what he found is all "hype", because your cred is so much better than his, plus you don't own one, and he does, but you know better that it is all just "hype"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10445564-64.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

covered here previously

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/02/02/1458230/Woz-Cites-Scary-Prius-Acceleration-Software-Problem

and this is hype, burnt brakes and everything

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Runaway-Prius-Needs-Help-to-StopCHP-86965487.html

Please post your back and forth email correspondence with woz when you tell him it is all hype, and that he is wrong and you are right, along with your technical analysis why you say it is all hype.

As I recall, it was proven that Microsoft arranged the Baystar investment by eWeek.

As for whose money sits in the Baystar Capital investment pool, there is no public disclosure requirement of such things for private equity firms and hedge funds. And it's a large fund, so it's clearly not just Microsoft people's money, but given the nature of the relationship documented between Baystar and the Microsoft people who brought this deal to them, I can assure you there's some money from senior Microsoft people there, at the very least.

In any case, the guys at Baystar realized they were pawns in a big game after a short while and pulled out what they could. See this story.

Basically they wrote off $37M of their investment for some common stock in SCO (hahaha). Which went on to finance SCO's legal actions for several more years before they finally went kaput.

Baystar, having invested over $1.5B in equity deals since inception, this was a relatively small write-off. Probably an annoying blip in their overall results, part of the price of cultivating their relationships with Microsoft senior executives.

When people call me a thief for viewing pages without ads (by blocking Flash), I rebut with this. I trust Slashdot. I may not trust Slashdot's advertising partners. And Slashdot doesn't (and probably can't) vet the ads before they're displayed.

Here's a recent example of malware-infested ads appearing on a pretty big site:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466753-245.html

Specifically ads included in the Drudge Report:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466044-245.html

I've often been tempted to go all out with ad blocking, not because I hate ads, but because a new exploit could make e.g. simple images a vector for attack.

When people call me a thief for viewing pages without ads (by blocking Flash), I rebut with this. I trust Slashdot. I may not trust Slashdot's advertising partners. And Slashdot doesn't (and probably can't) vet the ads before they're displayed.

Here's a recent example of malware-infested ads appearing on a pretty big site:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466753-245.html

Specifically ads included in the Drudge Report:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466044-245.html

I've often been tempted to go all out with ad blocking, not because I hate ads, but because a new exploit could make e.g. simple images a vector for attack.

May be not as effective, but apparently marginally saleable. the user experience so far has been terrible but that's the way it is with any new technology.

Now, to make working CPUs out of lead. Solomon's Gold to the rescue!!! Moore's law will be salvaged by modern alchemy!!!

Thus, not a real power issue... that's just the excuse some people make.

I won't disagree that Apple uses a heavy, and many times unfair, hand in management of their apps, but when the 3.0 firmware came out and things like Push notifications and Apple-built multitasking apps came to the fore, a lot of people started seeing substantial battery drainage. Add to this the introduction of 3G and the battery life plummets.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is the only reason, but I think it has a lot more to do with the current lack of multitasking than any conspiracy by all of the upper level execs at Apple.

Now everything I own, from my Star Wars light saber to my Krusty the Klown glow-in-the-dark alarm clock, could potentially with wireless signal. Oy carumba

That's actually been a documented problem in some devices with status LEDs, which inadvertently leaked information due to being tied directly to the (serial) data line, rather than a low-pass filtered version of it.

if you drink too much (it's hard to do, but it is possible), you die

Hold your wee for a Wii

Another two: SMS exploits

There is also a lot of iPhone software that phones home, and here's the problem, the app store as a security measure is a complete and utter myth. The app store is NOT about security, it does not make you magically protected. It's also worth noting that Apple boasts about having hundreds of thousands applications on it's app store- is anyone really naive enough to believe that Apple is capable of doing a full security audit on each and every one of these applications?

The app store brings convenience, uniformity and ease of use to buying, downloading and installing applications on the iPhone and gives Apple a method of controlling what users can do with their iPhone, and controlling whether developers can produce competing products to those Apple provides or instead block them to retain a monopoly on said application type on their platform.

Apple has been a 1-click licensee for quite a while now.

"Core 2 duo? Core 2 quad? Pentium d?"

All being phased out. All a generation old. You're trying to make this more complex than it is by throwing the last generation of processors into the discussion. Although "Pentium" will live on for a little while sitting just above the Celeron line. There's still some value to be squeezed out of the Pentium name.

celeron -> pentium -> i3 -> i5 -> i7

Here's an article that will help clarify. Yes, you might have to read a couple pages to understand the processor lineup from a multibillion dollar CPU manufacturing company. No, it's not rocket science to keep up with.

Mac users tend to be better educated, and less gullible than their Windows counterparts: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-943519.html

Although, Amazon.com was founded in 1994 and first turned a profit 7 years later in the last quarter of 2001! (That article also announces Super Saver Shipping, which "Bezos acknowledged that Amazon's new shipping policy will be expensive in the short run, but could bring in new customers.") And now? In 2009 they turned almost a billion-dollars in profit.

Download.com has it all. Programs of every description.

Open Source. Closed Source. Free Ware. Trialware. Inkscape is there.

It's a painless way to survey pretty much everything worthwhile that is out there - and infinitely more accessible than SourceForge.

File Hippo has much narrower, utilitarian focus, but the essential apps are there. File Hippo's update checker is quick and reliable.

Apple had a cash heap of over $15Billion at the time and no debt.

Seems you are off by at least an order of magnitude.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I doubt that Apple was debt free either, I'm just too lazy to google it.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html
"So far, investigators have recorded more than 642,000 "unique serial numbers" that can be traced to the United States and another 650,000
of them that cannot be traced to a particular country, with the number of unique serial numbers rising steadily
each month since "widespread capturing" of the details began in October 2005.
So they bought up computers, join the networks and map them out :)
What have the discovered?
The shock of people using the pipes they paid for ?

I got to this thread late, this may have been mentioned, but I wanted to explain my reason for adblocking websites. Ads come from a third party, usually. It's that simple. If I visit a site I know and trust, I enable scripting and active content on their page (No Script for Firefox). But, not for their advertising affiliates. I really have no idea where the ads are coming from. If the NY Times can get hit by rogue ad servers, anyone can. Yes, they are not a tech site, but they are a well established major web presence with security and policies on par with most others. ( Article here for that story http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10351460-83.html ). I agree there should be a balance somewhere, but when I visit a page, look at my No Script alert and see the page trying to load scripts from 15 websites aside from the one I'm at, I don't exactly feel inclined to add to their revenue stream.

Really?

Do you also believe that ToS violations constitute unauthorized access to a computer? That approach was tried recently by the U.S. prosecutors. Ultimately the court didn't buy that position.

So... why would robots.txt, which advises me of your wishes but to which I never actually agree, carry any more legal authority than a ToS document to which I do supposedly agree as a condition of using your system?

A few states are joining the debate. A California law that went into effect in July 2004 requires manufacturers to provide customers with information on black boxes in cars and states that the data cannot be obtained without a court order or the owner's permission.

See this old CNET story Rocky road for car 'black boxes'.

Toyota's lack of openess about data that imperils individual privacy is no skin off of my back. If Government Motors wants to penalize Toyota for it, perhaps it should be mentioned that mandating car electronics more accessible is a bad idea. Look at how Google got hacked by China.

Of course, we are talking about botnet script-kiddies after all, so whose to say these upstanding individuals aren't actually minors as well?

The Cnet article provides their ages, which range from 25 to 31.

To be pedantic, if you're a mile south of that interchange, I'm pretty sure you're well outside Cupertino and well into the unincorporated community of Monta Vista. It might be addressed in Cupertino, but I'm pretty sure it's not within the city limits. IIRC, the Cupertino city limits basically run parallel to 85 about a block south....

Yes, I do see rather nasty dead spots in both of the places that you described. What this tells me is that AT&T needs to crank up the gain on their cell sites. There's simply no excuse for not having any signal a mere 2 miles from a tower in flat terrain.... Try contacting AT&T from a land line phone in that area and complaining about it. Given the terrain, one of their network engineers should be able to solve it with a few keystrokes if you can actually reach an engineer....

There's a really detailed coverage map of AT&T's good and bad spots from CNet. In general, if you can see at least a 30% signal outdoors, you should be able to fairly reliably hold calls even inside most concrete/metal buildings. Much below that and you have problems.

From this interview: I've never considered myself at odds with the goals of freedom-first software advocates

And just last September he wrote that "Free software is dead. Long live open source", where he writes:

Free software makes for great headlines ("Miguel de Icaza is basically a traitor to the Free Software community"), but it is far too demanding, and of largely the wrong things, to capture mainstream interest. ... The path forward is open source, not free software. Sometimes that openness will mean embracing Microsoft in order to meet a customer's needs. ...Free software has lost.

Dude, that's you being at odds with the goals of the freedom-first advocates. You can embrace Microsoft all you like. Meanwhile, I'm busy working to minimise the patent and FUD harm they're doing to us. Canonical have been helpful so far in campaigns against software patents. I hope there won't be a new "don't offend Microsoft" vibe that changes this.

I made my submission after first seeing a story in El Reg. While I saw it in several other places, I thought the Dark Reading story was a bit better in highlighting the findings than most. You're right, though. It's very light on the methodology. The press release on VeraCode's site has a bit more information:

...1,600 Internally Developed, Open Source, Outsourced, and Commercial applications analyzed when first submitted to Veracode...

...the first report of its kind to provide security intelligence derived from multiple testing methodologies (static, dynamic and manual) on the full spectrum of application types (components, shared libraries, web and non-web applications) and programming languages (including Java, C/C++ and .NET) from every part of the software supply chain on which organizations depend.

...analyzing billions of lines of code submitted to Veracode for independent verification of software security from more than 15 industries.

(emphasis added)

So. The sample consists of approximately 1,600 applications consisting of billions of lines of code from self selecting organizations; organizations who have an interest in writing the most secure code possible or they wouldn't be subjecting themselves to this process or paying for the service. And still, 60% of all these apps fail the first time through!

I've been following testing results for FOSS for years. I've waded through thesis papers, press releases, magazine articles, Coverity's Scan site, you name it and I've dug into it. Virtually everything else that I've come across covered just a single means; static or dynamic code analysis, pen testing, fuzz testing, bug report analysis, mathematical breakdowns that attempt to address the "why" FOSS works so well, etc. The press release defines a sample size that is at least within shouting distance as the largest two that I know of; a study commissioned by the European Commission to analyze the economic impact of FLOSS which briefly discusses bug fixing, Coverity, and Coverity again.

At most, they might have tackled two methodologies in a single article. This is the first such announcement that I've been able to find that covers multiple methodologies. IMNSHO, that's what makes this an important story. Slashvertisement or not.

(BTW, note that the original announcment was at RSA Conference 2010. I suppose that makes it a RSAvertisement first? Nahhh. Doesn't trip off the tongue. ;) )

""Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google."

I know. Maybe if Microsoft started paying people to use their search engine, or they paid some vendors to switch over to Bing being their exclusive search engine to generate more searches ...

Oh, wait.

""Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google."

I know. Maybe if Microsoft started paying people to use their search engine, or they paid some vendors to switch over to Bing being their exclusive search engine to generate more searches ...

Oh, wait.

Wow... Slashdot's sloagan used to be "Yesterday's news, Today!" But now it seems that Slashdot is gunning for "Last week's news, Today!"

See here and here.

Bill

Wow... Slashdot's sloagan used to be "Yesterday's news, Today!" But now it seems that Slashdot is gunning for "Last week's news, Today!"

See here and here.

Bill

Solar PV is roughly 20x-100x more expensive than coal or nuclear power.

Really? Did you also subtract the subsidies coal and nuclear power get? Yes, they both get subsidized as well.

If I was Obama, I'd toss a billion or so at this scientist and see if he couldn't get mass production of it up and running.

Ah if only... If I were President of the USA I'd veto all subsidies and let a freer market pick winners and losers. As it is now venture capitalists have been investing in different technologies for years, from Sergey Brin and Larry Page investing in Nanosolar to Elon Musk, founder of Paypal and CEO of SpaceX, investing in Tesla Motors.

I mean, as long as we're spending billionS keeping teachers temporarily employed (because their states can't afford them right now), right?

I hate it that the feds have to give the states the money but it was the feds who mandated a bunch of new regulations with No Child Left Behind and other laws. If the feds stayed within it's Constitutional limits federal taxes could be significantly reduced if not totally eliminate the federal income tax. States and local governments could then raise their own taxes if they so chose to. Of course that's only part of the problem. States like California went on a spending spree during the roaring '90s. Then when the economy tanked they lost a lot of revenue. Then there's CA's teachers unions. Try to fire an underperforming teacher and watch the years speed by before they are fired. About the only way to fight the unions is by allowing school choice with charter and private schools getting matching funding. Then watch as the bad public schools are emptied out so the teachers can be fired.

Falcon

Its difficult to get numbers, but Ubuntu alone passed 8m users back in 2008 and has been growing since.

There have been 260 million downloads of AVG's free anti-virus product from CNET. 1.7 million downloads last week. The Adobe Reader for Windows gets about 110,000 hits per week through CNET alone. LimeWire 400,000. Top Freeware in Downloads.

Obama is here to save us from the internet! Don't worry everyone it's not like the Obama administration has ever said anything about your electronics devices on a network as it relates to privacy...oh wait wasn't there something about cell phones and Americans having “no reasonable expectation of privacy” http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html

I'm sure we'll be fine...hey...why does my system tray have a little icon that looks like a dude in a brownshirt?? Never mind, when I mouse over it it says 'Hope and Change' so false alarm..

Let me balance this out a bit, I don't like the patriot act as well.

Layers and layers.
The telco wire tap system is out sourced to telco billing systems outside the USA and needs paper work.
If you in good with the billing system, you have real time insight into most legal wiretaps in the USA.
The NSA looks at all packets, but could not talk about its findings.
What would the Secret Service have? A card system like hyper card.
One person, one big virtual card, a pic, list of past issues ect.
Lieberman also got interested in a p2p hunting system to tag p2p shared media with a unique number and your windows MAC, ip, PC details to tag anyone interested in the noted file - operation FairPlay
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html
So long term Lieberman would love to connect all systems.
A gui to connect your isp, billing details with mobile use, p2p use and any details the US Secret Service has with the NSA.
To do this he has to upgrade each section of the US telco system and make it legal without having too many people asking too much.
The best way is to say every department is real bad, slow, old and will get just want it needs to do a great job - the same job.
The back end is connected and your local NSA/google/DHS Fusion Center in a fly over state starts to log you in real time - all nice and legal.

Some part is open sourced already. http://www.theoscarproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=18.The OSCar. An OSCar has already debuted in Geneva road show.http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10193838-16.html/

Some of us have computers that can handle 1080p at 60, or even 120fps.

Do the newer 120 and 240 hz LCD TVs actually accept a 240 hz signal? My impression is they are just upsampling from the 60 hz signal. Can you set the refresh rate on your computer to 240 hz for them?

Actually studies that show that Mac users tend to be more educated than typical PC users:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-943519.html

Mac users are also found to be less gullible than PC users:

http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/10/microsoft-users-gullible-advertising/

On that last link, I'm also happy to note that Linux users are not gullible..they are actually a even less gullible than the typical Mac user. Just because a Mac user likes a no-fuss system doesn't mean we aren't interested in what makes it tick or the specs it comes with. The weirdest outcome of one of these studies? 85% of Mac users also own a Windows PC (either via multi-boot or hardware purchase). They aren't shy about using either platform.

Its well known that Apple doesn't shove the biggest processors into their laptops (or iMacs) which isn't surprising. Most laptops don't have quad core processors yet either. Most of the Mac line IS laptop hardware so this isn't a surprise. In addition, for typical Mac users, it isn't always about having the latest and greatest. They want stability, good performance, and a PC that won't break down in 2 years. I agree that some of their hardware could get higher end graphics cards and processors sooner, but they make up for it with systems that are rock solid. There is a reason they always top the charts in customer satisfaction and reliability.

I was wondering how long it would take you to start quoting 'home built' costs. I already responded to that. I already consider it a non-issue. Apples prices are comparable to other Manufacturers with the same specs. No surprises here that they cost more than a home built PC.

On the Steam topic - Why double the effort? Because there is money to be made? You do realize that they do make games for Mac? They are already successful in the PC market. Why stop there? I'd take a crack at the Mac if I had the funding as there is a LOT of potential revenue there. Steam obviously does have the capitol.

On point #5 - The iMac isn't user serviceable (well it is for a ./ user, but not the typical end user). 10 years ago, I would have been replacing my video card every year or two. I find as I get older, I simply don't care. I'll use this Mac for 2-4 years, and simply replace the Mac when I get tired of it, and donate this to some family member. One of the advantages of a long career in the IT industry. It does have some financial benefits ;)

I see your point on the display, but I have no use for a second display, nor do I have the desktop space. 27" is perfect for my needs but an iMac isn't for someone who wants dual monitors.

There are a couple of things that were important to me a few years ago:

a) Tear down and upgrade piece mail
b) more flexibility on display options
c) Purchase a faster desktop unit

None of these are important to me now, so the iMac is a good choice for me. If it wasn't, I'd probably just build a hackintosh and be done with it.

Postnote: If you're looking to get a Macbook Pro, hold out a bit..a hardware refresh is rumored to be in the pipe with I5 or I7 options.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/24/macbook_pros_in_tight_supply_new_models_could_broaden_gap_with_macbooks.html

CNET has a nice list of just about every cell phone model out there and how much radiation they put out.
http://reviews.cnet.com/2719-6602_7-291-1.html

Click through the pages for lists by manufacture.

I purchased a BB Curve 8330 a year ago and never (not once, honest) had a dropped call due to poor reception. Audio quality has always been consistent.

I guess the fact it ranks in at #6 of having the highest radiation level has something to do with that =) CNET has written a nice article on the subject with a chart of phones by radiation rankings.

http://reviews.cnet.com/2719-6602_7-291-1.html?tag=page;page

As this could effect MANY big players in unexpected ways.

Company's like Amazon will be effected due to the Kindle reader uses open source software ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10266319-16.html )

Apple would be pretty much killed on sight since all there products run on either OSX or a modified version which is programmed from UNIX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osx ) (which is open sourced) and the open source Mach Kernel from BSD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel ).

While it is not in the US, the London Stock Exchange runs on the open source program MillenniumIT system ( http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/1742203/London-Stock-Exchange-Rejects-NET-For-Open-Source )

Last I knew, Linksys routers run on Linux ( http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2005/12/the_l_in_linksys_wrt54gl_stands_for_linux.html )

Microsoft could also be effected due to their new deal with Amazon with issues towards the patents involved in said deal ( http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/23/1231255/Microsoft-Amazon-Ink-Kindle-and-Linux-Patent-Deal )

Then there is every Android phone since Android is made from Linux ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system) ).

At thats pretty much the tip of the iceberg. Many company's and products run on different versions of OSS, which all would be effected with this. And as you can see, this list of company's effected aren't just a small group of no names, but the big players like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Verizon, Linksys...

I'd wager that their solution is way more CPU-intensive than GPU-intensive.

I'd bet you're right... and you'll be able to do this stuff in realtime at home as soon as you have thousands of cores. More seriously, though, a future without GPUs would be a good thing, if we could get the same performance (or better) without them. Why? Because in order to use the full power of a computer with a big GPU, you have to do two kinds of programming. A computer where all the powerful processing elements were identical would be much easier to fully utilize, and that means less wasted money.

And unless you're on a notebook there is no reason to not have 4-8GB of RAM.

Notebooks have been outselling desktops for a few years now. Desktops are now the minority of computers. Also, 4+ GB of RAM isn't possible under windows unless A: running a 64 bit variant, and B: your system provider hasn't cheaped out and has actually updated the BIOS to support it. Considering how useless Vista 64 was, that essentially limits you to computers designed recently and bought in the last year. (or any OSX or Linux variant for a long time now, but that's another argument).

The 4GB RAM ceiling hasn't been smashed for that long. It will take time to adopt.

HDMI signals that aren't quite good enough for the transmission length and bit rate they're being challenged with do not necessarily fail in a binary "get a picture/don't get a picture" way. On the edge of failure, there's a class of bit errors that are measurable and possibly visible but not so bad that the connection drops altogether. There's a decent intro the topic on the Blue Jeans HDMI Cables Overview, and the visual pattern just before the connection becomes unusable is usually described as a "sparkle". This is not unique to HDMI; similar DVI sparkles have been described for years.

This is not intended as a defense of Monster's products though. Even those paying attention to sparkle issues and the like know that there are plenty of cheap models from sources like Monoprice that work just fine; the comments at CNET on HDMI are a fair description of the marketplace.

Come on Infoworld, you need to learn a thing or two from Cnet! If you're going to have a writer make dubious claims, pimp his own software, and bash Microsoft repeatedly, at least have them do it openly! http://news.cnet.com/openroad/

Well, someone's already started to do that with the iPad, they are going to have 3rd party stylus ( http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10443415-233.html )

Where did you find that the students aren't allowed to take the laptops home? From what I've been reading, it appears that they certainly were. Relevant portion, from Cnet:

Students at Herriton High School in Lower Merion School District near Philadelphia are given Apple MacBook laptops to use both at school and at home.

The other stories, such as one who talked to the kid's sister, seems to confirm that use of the laptops at home was quite common practice, and I can find nothing in the school's statement indicating that they believed the laptop's use was unauthorized or that it had been reported stolen. The only thing I find is that the school accused the kid of drug possession, and that he states the "drugs" were Mike and Ike candies. I can't find a claim by either side that he had taken the machine without authorization or that there was an actual theft/loss report. One would think if someone had reported it stolen, they'd have noted that quite prominently in the letter defending themselves rather than assuring that the system is now disabled.

Yes, and no ...

There's plenty of reasons to be suspect of WikiPedia, not least that officially it doesn't even strive for the truth - just for verifiyability (basically a published source).

However, there have been studies done showing that WikiPedia articles are on average just as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica ones - both have similar average numbers of errors per article.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

This is anything but an unrelated "business opportunity".
Google owns huge datacenters. Google has been known to purchase gobs of dark fibre, at this point I imagine they might very well have sufficient connectivity between their datacenters to sustain operations. Throw in their own little grid (a bunch of thorium reactors, perhaps?) and, given enough thorium, they become self-sufficient. Throw in some wireless connectivity with base stations (remember the 700 MHz spectrum auction? Remember Google's bid?) linked to their fibre network and powered through their grid and you get a self-sustaining ad distribution network that'll reach the whole U.S. without needing any partners.

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Will "don't be evil" cancel that?

If you resists against pulling wires, homepna3.1 equipment exists just for the thing you want:

however devices are hard to find