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This response was supposed to be a general "what should I do" not "what can I do" type of question. I used the browser topic as a sample, but yes they have released the patch. If a vulnerability was published today, you cannot just assume tomorrow they will have a patch ready to ship and hence why the question was asked how to handle a situation of such.

It depends on the size of the shop and the IT staff. As a one man IT shop, I would be the one creating, testing, and implementing. Not saying everyone is bad at that, but I happen to know my scripts and GPO objects. In the workaround, they clearly gave instructions for running the fix at a command line. That part would not be difficult to do and if it were serious enough for a large organization, they would most likely already have a rapid test process in place for a vulnerability like this. You would still have to educate the users on a new browser should you push one out, but at least you can reduce the time needed for IT to go to every computer and manually install the software. You wouldn't have to instantly switch it to default.

As for the GPOs to manage the other browsers, it depends on how they store files. But to prove you wrong on Chrome not having them, here: https://support.google.com/chr...

EMET should have been a 3rd option, but I wouldn't recommend every shop immediately go out there and implement it without understanding it. There are many complicated things that it helps mitigate and improperly implemented could cause more headaches to the help desk. That being said, I have started to research it for other reasons so I won't knock it being a worthwhile investment.

Also, you better hope you are on the latest version of EMET, because 4.1 has been bypassed and it is only a matter of time for newer versions: http://bromiumlabs.files.wordp...

Now go back into your hole since you are too afraid to stand behind anything other than AC for your post name.

Not to mention, if the enterprise also uses GPO's to manage browser functionality / appearance / behaviour, woops, none of that on Chrome/Safari/Firefox...

There are custom administrator templates available for firefox and chrome. I'm sure there are some for Safari I've just never used them.

https://support.google.com/chr...

http://sourceforge.net/project...

There are scores of free alternative launchers, all available in the market.

Can someone explain how this isn't silly? He wants it backed by intrinsic value, which I think may be missing the point of Bitcoin, and his example of the perfect thing with intrinsic value is "stocks"?

Stocks do have intrinsic value because owning a stock is equivalent to owning a company, and all the company owns (factories, farmland, guns, whatever). Bitcoin, on the other hand, has no intrinsic value.

Partly because of this, stocks are also much less volatile than bitcoin and are better at being a store of value. For instance, compare this recent bitcoin chart with this S&P500 chart over the same period. As you can see, the difference between the min and max stock is about 4%, while bitcoin is about 40%. That's 10x worse.

Is there a way of transferring stock (for instance an S&P500 ETF) as easily as bitcoins can be transferred? I don't know, but it would be very cool, and definitely much better than Bitcoin. So anyway, his idea is probably unworkable, but it's not silly or ridiculous IMHO.

Many choose to ignore anything that contradicts preconceived ideas, "accepted thinking, "settled science". TEPCO was certain a tsunami was no threat. They were told about it repeatedly. Arrogance and hubris from men that are accustomed to being the smartest man in the room. This is the fatal flaw. Not the technology. The people.

Transuranics were spread far and wide. How? A very serious question. I do not take it lightly, nor listen to fool's rant. Measures of Xenon gas isotopes would decisively prove/disprove this theory due to a half life measured in hours. That information has not been released. Why?

Arnie Gundersen is no ranting, stoned hippy. He was a gung-ho Nuke industry pro, a true believer. B.A. Nuclear Engineering Cum laud from the serious and respected Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1971) . Master's degree in nuclear engineering thanks to a prestigious Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship (1972). 40 plus years nuclear power engineering experience, holds nuclear safety patent, licensed reactor operator, former nuclear industry senior vice president, managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants in the US.

There is nothing of a lightweight in the man.

Arnie found radioactivity in an office safe.(IIRC) Well, how could that happen, he properly asked, and insisted on an answer. He was fired. Became a whistleblower, they tried to destroy him. He ended up broke, but not broken, and now "out of the priesthood". He dedicated his life to increased safety. His approach is cool, calm, fact based, science. After Fukushima he decided there are no safe Nukes. Because, People.40 good years, and one very bad day. The risks are not manageable over the long term. Odds are, something is going to break. The proof is in the results.

Here, many links about finding fuel bits http://www.zerohedge.com/contr...

google of prompt criticality Fukushima https://www.google.com/#q=prom....

The google search does not yield a scientific rebuttal of his argument. Nor have you attempted to rebut the argument. Nor evidently even bothered to watch the vid? Here is the link, again http://vimeo.com/22865967

Fukushima is permanently abandoned. You say the risks are over stated. Was the evacuation an error? Inside the buildings, levels are so high that machines cannot function. Men must enter this dangerous place, risk their lives for other's mistakes, for the next 40 years. Is this an acceptable risk?

The entire industry is threatened, Germany is shutting down. 5 closed last year in the US, another 8 plans canceled. Why? They have themselves to blame. The men in the industry did not listen, called it FUD, scaremongering. They did not act, repeatedly ignored warnings, repeatedly dodged safety issues. Now Japan has 50 reactors turned off. Very expensive rusting junk.

Now here in the US, a move to lower safety standards?

To the question? Fukushima is permanently abandoned. You say the risks are over stated. Was the evacuation an error?

Marcelo, I did not manage to find links to Mr Stansbury? If he has written about this, I am interested. Thanks. And Thanks for the good discussion. These are serious issues, of great consequence.

Now the complete lack of being able to use GPS outside of the city for T-mobile is downright annoying, but more of a failing of Google maps not to predownload the entire route.

Google Maps supports offline maps. It had been removed in a previous update, but it looks like it's back (I still have the pre-removal version).

This has happened before...
http://scholar.google.com/scho...

This is why there is no CCR, and why Fogerty gave up music entirely out of disgust after this lawsuit. We missed decades of great music from a genius that we'll never get back. Remember this the next time a record company tells you that piracy is theft.

The militia as the word was defined at the time meant every able bodied man.

Still is, as a matter of fact. The only term in that sentence whose meaning has changed in the last 250+ years is "well-regulated."

"Arms" is still a generic term for "armaments," "State" still refers to the individual states, and "The People" still refers to individuals. Amazing that certain "well-educated liberals" don't know that. Guess they should have studied harder.

... as usual go ape shit at slightest reason. Calm down morons, nobody is taking away you dick extensions.

Aye, because an anti-gun nut would never stoop to outing the personal information of gun owners for malicious purposes...

I think the lesson here is that regardless of what side you take in a particular debate, somewhere out there a lunatic jackass agrees with you.

You don't tend to see the left calling for banning guns either; just restricting their construction, sale and use.

No, *YOU* don't tend to see it, probably because you ignore it.

https://www.google.com/search?...

It's frightening how much shit comes up on that search.

What does his having a dumb ass have to do with driving?


Hint: Using words like "literal" doesn't make you look smart if you use them incorrectly.

F-Droid is explicitly FOSS (and the source inspection process doesn't seem particularly rigorous, more like a verify yourself type approach, so a very small niche)

I must not be understanding something. How are apps under a free software license necessarily "a very small niche"?

Humble Bundle is available on Google Play

I don't see how they get away with that given the non-compete (section 4.5) but whatever.

If cost truly were legitimate barrier to entry

Cost isn't much of a barrier to entry to established firms in the most developed countries because the tools and license for one year cost less than a week's salary for a programmer in a developed country. But it is a barrier for students, part-time developers, and developers in less developed countries that have a lower overall wage level. It causes there to be a smaller proportion of $0 apps on iOS because developers feel they have to recover the cost of entry. (That and Google's early failure to deploy Wallet quickly enough.)

The only PC you need for AIDE is an Android tablet; pair your keyboard and start coding.

Unless of course your Android device is a phone (not a phablet or tablet) which it most likely is, making it a tortuous exercise. But that's neither here nor there, still the only issue is $ cost, which really doesn't appear to be a problem.

So of course you need to have a PC of some sort

The only PC you need for AIDE is an Android tablet; pair your keyboard and start coding. There's no way Apple will port a subset of Xcode to iPad in the foreseeable future.

Humble Bundle is available on the Google Play store. https://play.google.com/store/...

The whole reason for scoffing at Smart Watches is that this is not an original idea, but it is idea that has been tried many times over the last 50(!) years and has always been Epic Fail.

Just a few examples: the HP-01, Texas Instruments, etc.

Basically the repeatedly demonstrated recipe for Epic Fail includes: Tech company comes out of a watch with the latest technology presuming they are God's Gift to Humanity by originating the latest "big thing" into an old and mature technology. Like clockwork, said Tech company is brought back to Earth and reality when:

1. the market fails to materialize
2. the price is deemed trivially too high for what is offered as value
3. the technology isn't even very usable
4. most sales end up being fanatic early adopters but no one else
5. Tech company finally realizes they have a worthless dog that is not in their core competency to build well, sell cheaply or satisfy markets so they quickly drop the watch

This has specifically happened with watches enough times (dozens) that the pattern and end-game is already well known. Simply announcing a tech-hyped watch foretells the inevitable result. Basically "tech companies" and "watches" in the same breath are a recipe for Fail.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I did.

Wells Fargo offers them. Chase does too on their Sapphire (travel) card I believe.

https://docs.google.com/spread...

I called WF and upgraded my regular (non-gold, non-platinum) to chip and PIN. It also does FastPay, but don't ask for that, or you might get a card that doesn't work with Chip and PIN.

Don't try to do it through your local branch, they'll likely have no clue.

Broccoli has more protein per calorie than steak does [drfuhrman.com]

Of course it doesn't, that page compared 357grams of broccoli with 34grams of beef.

(relevant part bolded)

34g of beef = 113 calories.

357g of broccoli = 121 calories.

Calories and weight are two different things.

Broccoli has more protein per calorie than steak does [drfuhrman.com]

Of course it doesn't, that page compared 357grams of broccoli with 34grams of beef.

(relevant part bolded)

34g of beef = 113 calories.

357g of broccoli = 121 calories.

Calories and weight are two different things.

I feel people are pretty good at this. In a clinical setting, we ask people to rate their paint between 0 and 10, 10 being the worst pain imaginable. Another way is to use a visual analog scale.

At least, people appear to be aware of degrees of pain, but only relatively. It does differ with personality and previous experience. So, it might be better to use for tracking perception of change in a condition than actual pain measured.

If mice actually feel less pain or not sounds very hard to tell. It might just be that they ignore it more in light of other things, like the hunter who just entered the room (funny that, why would a male human give this effect, when I'm pretty sure most of the mice's natural predators are just as dangerous if they are female..).

Nice try but Apple users get to use both Apple Maps AND Google Maps (or scads of other mapping applications).

Not to mention that Google has has it's own mapping issues...

"HTTP Switchboard doesn't use the problematic API, which doesn't work reliably because it is asynchronous. It injects Content Security Policy header synchronously: it is rock solid in preventing JS from executing."

So I did a little checking and Http Switchboard appears to disagree with your 'rock solid' assessment. This is from late last year and is not resolved yet. This post by HTTP Switchboard author Raymond Hill, also from late last year, indicates he is still struggling with an asynchronous API. A temporary workaround was proposed to disable javascript entirely and then let the extension only activate rather than suppress, but this had undesirable and unworkable side effects.

"Reputation is something to respect, but hard technical facts come first for me."

Indeed. It appears the hard technical fact is that Chromes architecture still prevents proper noscript.

Well they marked the bug as 'fixed' back in 2010 but I have continued to hear it does not actually work right. Here is one example. Giorgio (the NoScript guy) knows what he is talking about on this subject, so I suspect despite your screenshot there is still a problem.

about netflix.

http://blog.netflix.com/2014/0...
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+J...

The problem with using color, of course, is that a certain group of people are color blind.

I'm reminded of an old friend of mine who is red/green color blind.

My grandfather is Red Green Colorblind. If he survives another 12 years or so 3D printed organs may sustain his life long enough for him to get digital cameras as occular implants, and cure his color blindness.

Until then, I gave him a smartphone and installed one of the many color identifying apps. He has since replaced it with a non-talking app that allows one to zoom in and display the hex color code of the camera's video input or pictures... Don't remember what it's called off the top of my head, but this "color picker / identifier" should come standard on phones -- I mean, auto white balance is doing just that anyway. It's a failure in accessibility that the data is not surfacable in the default UI.

Image search: https://www.google.com/search?... sa=X&ei=b6JeU6HtBcW62gW2gIGgBQ&ved=0CE4QsAQ&biw=1430&bih=962

We stop eating meat, people breed until the damage is equivalent to what we're doing now.

Ah, westerner pretending the problem is poor people having babies, when you have to get 30 people from developing nations to match your narcissism.

The conservative vision is to keep around the useful people and make sure they're doing well.

The rest nature will sort out.

Social Darwinism isn't going to make conservatives appear less sociopathic, you know. Also nevermind that you define "useful" as in "how much money my daddy made."

Invoke-WebRequest http://www.google.com/ -OutFile c:\google.html

...now they allow you to create pseudonymous sub-accounts that cannot be tracked back to any real life identify

I'm sorry, that wasn't possible when I joined G+. Back then they ban accounts with fake names

And setting one up doesn't sound so easy to me.

The use of actual pseudonyms is a little more complex. All pseudonym requests will require some kind of evidence, which could range from a URL to your scanned driver’s license. Google+ is not, however, accepting new pseudonyms. This is designed for “established ones.” Horowitz explained that the new account naming option is intended for “people who have earned credit in other social systems and want to redeem that credit in Google+ We will swing the doors open and welcome them to our system.” Google will destroy all documentation you send them once the account verification process is complete.

And the G+ faq pretty much wants you to use real names. No help on making these pseudonymous accounts there.

A lot of hoop jumping just to get some anonymity, won't you say.

there are a lot of indi games coming out that are launched by ONE guy. [...] They're published by steam

For mouse-and-keyboard genres, that's fine. And for games in genres that use multiple gamepads and one monitor, that will become practical once Steam Machines become widely available. Until then, does Valve publish stats on how many Steam users use the Big Picture mode? Last time I checked (18 months ago) it was about 1%. So games in multiple-gamepad genres, such as fighting games, party games, and cooperative platformers, tend to be developed for consoles. And to release a game on a console, I would need to become a licensed developer with SCEA or NOA. Or are there statistics showing that a substantial number of people connect a PC to a TV?

For mobile devices, if a game is point-and-click like Bejeweled or Fruit Ninja or one-button like Canabalt or Flappy Bird, anyone with a computer can get started on Google Play for about $300 to buy a device and a lifetime developer certificate. But for games in genres that heavily use directional control, a touch screen alone isn't going to do very well. I tried playing the trial version of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure on my Nexus 7, and I kept missing the jumps because my thumb kept drifting to the side of the on-screen jump button. I tried again with a keyboard and it was fine, but I imagine that few Android gamers are going to want to buy and carry a keyboard around to get the same experience that they already get with a major dedicated handheld game system. I haven't been able to find sales figures for the Bluetooth gamepads that clip onto Android phones. It appears that in order to release a game in a genre associated with directional controls, I would need to become a licensed developer with SCEA or NOA.

As such, you could do that anywhere in the world.

I mention cities like Austin, Boston, and Seattle because the U.S. video game industry appears to be concentrated in those cities, and I've been told that the best way to demonstrate "relevant video game industry experience" to console makers in an application to become a licensed developer is to have worked for an established video game studio for several years. It's like acting: you'll eventually have to move to New York for stage or Los Angeles for screen.

But it still requires specifically an iPhone

They are working on it

"... before I knew to block all those trackers..."

Ghostery for Firefox.
Ghostery for Chrome.

Google is on the way down, sadly. Part of the URL for Ghostery for Chrome is: mlomiejdfkolichcflejclcbmpeaniij

This Slashdot story is about Google, but the linked story only gives "facts" that are apparent on the surface. Below the surface, Google is going the way of Hewlett-Packard, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Tektronix: Slow and sometimes fast degradation. Yes, I feel I am qualified to make that statement.

Or Google. https://support.google.com/goo...

And virtually everyone else that offers payment processing services

Sorry - you were attempting to imply that Apple was akin to the Mafia because they charge the same rate as everyone else for the same service. As you were.

I'm afraid I don't see how 3D printing brings any benefit here - a laser cutter or CNC machine fed with durable, stabilized sheets of plastic would be faster and produce *far* more durable pages.

Of course you're right. Etching by laser on solid sheets of plastic or slow-corrosion metal is the thing. Just desperately trying to come up with ways in which 3D printing might be useful to salvage the time I've spent reading about it. Never mind all the time others have spent trying to make it work.

If you want to place a barrier between knowledge levels, call them 'magnification-stops' in your approach where certain technology and knowledge obtained by the years like 1700, 1800, 1900, 1950, 2000 is encoded with successive difficulty --- then if history is any clue you're best bet is to change medium and method at each stop.

Optics for example. The advancement from a lens allowing the eye to discern Mars clearly to one able to construct a great microscope may be an accident of local geology, quartz and silica, or a single individual's experiments in glass manufacture. There could even be an alternate history where mercury in spinning dishes is optics. You have a clean progression to 100x magnification with a single stage, then it takes compound lenses and take it to 1000x You can push it a little further by using filters to reduce the color component, but you hit the wall of visible light.

Now to break that Reading Rainbow 800-1000x barrier we're in the realm of coherent photons using lasers to 'read' (project and reflect through optics) or scatter (holography). And further on into using streams of electrons where the only usable means optick is electromagnetism shaped by precisely wound coils and some gruesome electronics.

Could there be a single object that is an Easy Reader through all possible optical resolutions, but also incorporates successive levels, the greatest of which is only readable with electrons? That is a challenge but do-able since you can read through things with electrons. The visible stages act as protection for this fragile inner layer.

Perhaps for the intermediate stages requiring laser technology the colorful yet color-challenged field of 2 dimensional holography might offer a solution... something that resembles Asimov's Prime Radiant without the computey stuff, where a coherent beam of laser light will scatter off of foil and project material onto the wall, and precise movement of the object or the beam will 'scroll'.

This being Slashdot, I have to suggest that at some point the Thing will might digital, where we apply leverage to Hamming and Huffman for encoding and error correction... BUT now the content is sub-coded in a series of arbitrary choices that represent our evolution of information technology... and not necessarily anyone else's. To one familiar with the optick perusal of language-symbols, going digital, which we've done gradually -- to those who have only our Prime Radiant as a guide -- it would be a wall of incomprehensibility that would take time to crack.

I just had this idea that at some low resolution text might offer a delicious recipe for Taco Sauce, and a tiny dollop of this concoction makes its way into a tiny space between the letters... completely obliterating the 13th century.

Completely losing the 13th century has happened before. The circumstances surrounding its disappearance (but not its present whereabouts) can be seen here in the brief clip from the 1975 movie "R

You are quite right. And yet, I can't shake the feeling of respect for them — they are doing a much better job collecting and using the data, than the government agencies do. Surely, Department of Energy (for just one example) would love to have such details of our energy use. But they can not and — run by bureaucrats and politicians, rather than profit-motivated free people — will never able to.

Intelligent energy-use would be very helpful in reducing costs, waste and pollution. Somebody should be collecting this information. Given a choice between a government agency and a corporation, I'll always choose the latter:

• They would not send armed thugs to "euthanize" my livestock.
• They would not shoot my dog.
• If one starts misbehaving too much, I will not need to "raise awareness" and wait 4-6-8 years — I'll simply switch to competitor

. And so on. You've heard it before. This is just another example...

Third party candidates have no chance of winning because every possible candidate is vetted for suitability by the ultra rich. It's even got a name now, it's called the Sheldon Primary

I suspect Google will eventually use G+ to power Google Now. You could ask your phone for movie recommendations and it will reply with a curated list based on what movies or youtube trailers your G+ friends have seen.

Now that social networks have supplanted personal webpages/blogs and small independent sites are dying from inactivity Google has less and less to crawl. They need G+ to power their mobile search (Google Now) and make their results personal, it might not make money on its own but they can't kill it, it's their long term lifeline - it might completely change over time, but it'll be a gradual evolution not a restart.

Googe+ has a nice communities feature that i like. https://plus.google.com/commun...
People can subscribe to page dedicated to a topic they like and post to the page.

G+ is centered around your interests, not your high-school friends. This data is more valuable to Google.

If you won't post something to G+ with your real name chances are you shouldn't be posting it. It reduces the amount of "keyboard warriors" on the site and increases the value of the data. yes i know there are legitimate reasons for anonymity, but in these situations G+ isn't your best outlet.

The people against Google's single sign in policy are misguided, Google can create a standard sign in form for all their services and make you sign up to each one. Or you can fill out one form and use the services you like. It's the same thing.

I reiterate that everything I post is merely my own opinion, not an official statement.

So the EFF is a bunch of paranoid speculators?

Yes. That's not a bad thing, mind you. We need people like them being paranoid and very skeptical, ready to call attention to any actual problems. The only issue I have with that EFF page is the implication that Google might sell private data to someone with enough cash. The concern that it's available to government is perfectly valid. Avoiding giving information to Google is one solution; another is to get our overreaching government back under control.

If you choose the former you can still use most Google services. Just opt out of the tracking and Google won't keep the data about you and won't be able to give it to the government.

What about scanning e-mails in possible violation of wiretap laws?

That's done with user permission. Don't want it, don't use gmail.

How about the EU, are they a bunch of paranoid people?

Sometimes. Again, like the EFF that's largely a good thing. Your link doesn't have any specifics, so I can't offer my opinion on in what ways their paranoia is good and where it's excessive.

How about Google's latest land grab in Chrome, forcing third party developers to put all their apps into Google's Web Store under the guises of making Chrome more secure?

"Guise"? Nice try at framing the debate with loaded language.

Anyway, I actually don't agree with that decision either but I think the Chrome team (some of whom I know) were absolutely serious about the basis for their decision. They're not evil, just wrong.

Google's business model is making money off of you, you're the commodity so you either go along with it or you just start saying Moo like all the other cattle. I prefer to opt out of Google's practices wherever possible.

Certainly that's your option and it's one that Google specifically tries to enable.

If that means ripping out Google Search, Maps and other apps that's fine because there are alternatives to them that don't come with all the hidden strings.

This is where you're wrong. There aren't any hidden strings. You can choose not to believe that, of course, but I challenge you to demonstrate evidence of said strings. And I'll point out that the CM developers apparently don't believe that having the Google apps on your device is risky.

Regardless, you're certainly free to use what you like. That's why Android is open source, and why Google tries to ensure (to the degree it has control) that all devices are unlockable and flashable, etc.

So the EFF is a bunch of paranoid speculators?

https://www.eff.org/issues/pri...

What about scanning e-mails in possible violation of wiretap laws? http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

How about the EU, are they a bunch of paranoid people? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

How about Google's latest land grab in Chrome, forcing third party developers to put all their apps into Google's Web Store under the guises of making Chrome more secure? Envious of Apple I guess?

Google's business model is making money off of you, you're the commodity so you either go along with it or you just start saying Moo like all the other cattle. I prefer to opt out of Google's practices wherever possible. If that means ripping out Google Search, Maps and other apps that's fine because there are alternatives to them that don't come with all the hidden strings. The whole thread here was based on Cyanogenmod which has provided great ROMs ( I have 6 devices running Cyanogenmod ) without all the bloat and the pure android experience are now creating a phone with, drum roll please, Google bloat and tracking. Sorry, that's not a step in the right direction.

Seems to me if it is auto uploading pictures it has internet. Have you considered using this newfangled "search engine" at www.google.com to find out how to turn this off? https://support.google.com/plu...

I dont use G+ or use a smartphone, but I found that in a few seconds. I'm 100% sure you took longer writing your post about how it sucks it does that than it took to find a solution.

I tried playing the demo of the game Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure , a platformer for Android, with the on-screen controls. I couldn't make jumps reliably because my thumb kept missing the jump button. An on-screen control lacks the tactile button edges that my thumb would use to align itself over the control. But when I paired my ZAGGkeys Flex, the control was fine, and I realized that the game was fairly obviously designed for devices with a hardware keyboard. I imagine that a lot of other games in non-point-and-click genres benefit from physical buttons in the same way.

If Verizon Wireless is the only option for broadband in your area, I would hate to see the bill for a family of four that uses Netflix. How about downloading a 13GB patch for a single game? Can these people send their bills to the state for reimbursement?

Really dude? You're going to adopt a smug superior attitude regarding Wikipedia while providing no sources whatsoever to validate your own claim?

Here's a non-Wikipedia source if that makes you feel better. Feel free to refute my claim with actual facts instead of smug superiority.

It could possibly happen that ISPs might actually upgrade their networks for once if they're getting paid more.

In the years 2010-2013, Comcast has seen net income, after taxes and expenses, of between $3.6B and $6.8B. Part of this was earned by operating a service that is delivered over physical infrastructure that they didn't build and have effective monopoly control over. Tell me again how they haven't had enough cash to do any upgrades.

What I see happening is more extortion of the content providers like we saw with Netflix.

• Comcast: "That's a nice data stream you're sending to our customer. It'd be a shame if something were to throttle it. You should buy some of our data transmission insurance. Then we'll make sure nothing like that happens"

All the while, they'll be complaining about how their customers are trying to actually use the bandwidth they purchased and how streaming services (other than those sold by comcast) continue to put stress on the comcast network.

Those articles contain nothing but paranoid speculation. Do you have any actual evidence that Google uses your phone to track you without your permission? Android does do location history, which you can turn on or off. Gmail does scan your e-mails to provide targeted ads, which you can choose to use or not. Chrome can track web history, which you can turn on or off. Google Analytics is used by most of the web to track user visits, regardless of the browser you use, but you can opt out of that as well.

If you use an Android phone but opt out of Google's tracking, you won't be tracked. In many cases (e.g. location history and web history) you have to opt in if you want to be tracked.

Google's primary business model is based around using user information to provide targeted advertising, absolutely. However, the company doesn't want to track you if you don't want to be tracked, and doesn't do it surreptitiously. https://www.google.com/goodtok... gives you links to pages that will show you what Google knows about you and let you control it.

(Disclosure: I'm a Google engineer. I don't speak for Google, though, and nothing I post on slashdot -- or anywhere else -- is an official company statement.)

The last time someone's music got into my kernel it was Sony with a rootkit. At least these folks are open about nabbing root.

They really screwed the pooch on this deal. Since their name is 'netcat', I'm waiting for the song to be released via telnet server as ANSI music. That way I can netcat the netcat album with my cross platform old school Codepage 437 + PC speaker enabled terminal emulator from GNU, Linux, BSD, OSX, iOS, Android, Windows, MSDOS or even DR-DOS. Maybe I'd buy in if the cover art was a sick scroller.

In all seriousness: Any FLOSS publicity is good publicity. Windows or Mac folks can run Linux in a VM to try out the audio; It's not my cup of tea, but sort of neat.

Because Most People HATE itty bitty keys on phones. You might like them, but I'll never go back to a physical keyboard.

Generally speaking once you figure out Swype (Swiftkey or similar), you'll also never go back. I can type nearly as fast as a regular FULL size keyboard on my Android Phone.And for short messages it is even better than mashing who knows how many keys trying to type on microscopic keys.

Or ... you know ... you could just Google for Sliding Keyboard case for your phone ...

FibreChannel and Ethernet are pretty narrowly purposed towards networking.

FireWire was narrowly purposed towards low latency, high bandwidth transfers. That's why there was never a FireWire mouse or FireWire printer ports. It was overkill for these purposes. It was never designed to connect any and all peripherals. You are completely missing this point.

In theory they could be competitors to USB and Firewire and Thunderbolt but in practice they generally are not. You can do things like drive a monitor over Ethernet but people rarely do so. Similarly you can connect to a network over USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt but in practice people rarely do.

Oh really? Search for Thunderbolt dock. You don't use TB like this but many others do.

Thunderbolt on the other hand is being aimed at video and storage much like Firewire is/was. USB overlaps with those use cases fairly heavily.

Again, it is not. According to Intel and others it is aimed to almost expose PCIe bridge to connections rather than replacing USB. USB again cannot do what this. It adds a layer of complexity on top of it.

Virtually everyone has USB storage and USB monitors have become a thing. I have a USB monitor I use fairly often and it works great.

Since when? No one I know has a USB driven monitor so it cannot be everyone. Yes they have monitors that have USB ports but these are to use as a USB hub. The input is VGA, DVI, or HDMI.

Which matters not one tiny bit to most users. The few who need the modest advantages of an old version of USB over an older version of Firewire have it available to them. The number of use cases affected is pretty much the very definition of niche.

Again you are completely missing the point. If you need sustained transfers like digital video back in the day, you wanted a FireWire not a USB. That's why professional used FireWire long after everyone else stopped using it.

I could do the same thing using Thunderbolt but it would cost me a LOT more money to do it plus I'd still need USB for the mouse and keyboard.

How the hell is TB going to cost you a lot more money? If your laptop has it, then it has it. Now if you don't have TB and you have to get a new laptop to get it, that's a different story. But if your laptop didn't have eSATA or USB 3, then you are going to have to get a new laptop to get it, it's more expense than your old laptop. A TB dock also has USB ports, BTW.

However the latest incarnations (3.0 & 3.1) of USB are fast enough that they can do video too for the most common use cases out there.

Again there is a reason why professionals are getting TB devices.

Thunderbolt is technically better but there is a strong chance that won't matter any more than it did for Firewire. Anywhere USB and Thunderbolt compete I don't think Thunderbolt will fare well even though most of us would probably prefer it.

Other than the fact that Intel is the one pushing it and is part of their ultrabook specification? Other than most of the laptop manufacturers are starting to make laptops with it?

If the game design document says "All doors should be openable, provided the door is unlocked, the player has the key or the player is willing to take a reputation hit by breaking and entering", then your job as a game developer is to implement doors as specified in the game design document.

If the game design document says "Doors are graphic inserts for effect only", then your job as a game developer is to implement the doors as specified in the game design document.

If the game design document doesn't say how to handle doors before people start building the game, then the game design document is incomplete.

Incomplete game design documents, like incomplete architect blueprints, lead to stupid things like what you get by googling "architecture fails".

Where did the game design document come from though?

600 kilotons TNT is about 2.5e15 J. In comparison, the sunlight incident on the Earth is around 174 petawatts, meaning it takes roughly 20 milliseconds for that much solar energy to be absorbed (clouds, oceans and land masses) by the Earth (taking into account the ~30% reflected power). In comparison, the total world annual energy consumption is around 5e20 J. So, I wouldn't be too worried about added heat due to asteroids.

Sources:
https://www.google.com/search?...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...