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You can dig deep into your about:config settings and fix it there ((sorry - setting so obscure can't remember it! You might find it to turn it off but Grandmama won't)) and you are right!!! Firefox only pays lip service to privacy. And like their tieup with Adobe DRM https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-c..., their advertising page for "partners" http://adexchanger.com/ad-exch..., targeting you for advertising based on your browsing http://www.pcworld.com/article..., and now Disconnect.me, they're doing favors for businesses. Google was paying Firefox $300M a year http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/... before they pulled the plug and Firefox reached a deal with Yahoo, and they switched searches to Yahoo -- not because it was the better search engine, but because Yahoo was giving them cash http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

Firefox has become a megacorporation. They are not for profit http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb... so that money doesn't to shareholders but it goes SOMEWHERE like executive salaries and just like a megacorporation they care more about cutting deals with other businesses than they do the public because we are not their customers. They are!

You are paying on average 100% to 200% MORE for...what? An average of 8-12% in only SOME games, which are the ones compiled with the crippler.

If somebody offered you a car for 200% more that went 10% faster only on some roads...would you take it? For a stereo that is 12% louder on certain songs? Of course not because you are not getting your moneys worth and if you are spending less than a grand on your system (because AMD doesn't have any ultra high tier $500+ chips therefor Intel doesn't have any competition) then that is exactly what you are doing.

Show me a single game, just one, that can't get easily 30FPS-60FPS+ on an AMD FX8 with a decent GPU like the R9 280 or 290...I seriously doubt you can, because I play War Thunder and World Of Warships with bling cranked and even with shells flying from over a Km away from every direction and tracers lighting up the sky? I have yet to fall below 30FPS at 1080P. And with the money I saved I get to have better parts than you have for the same money, be it better GPU, more RAM, a faster SSD, and these things will let me win in a head to head shootout as almost no modern games are CPU locked anymore. this is what that Intel fanboy found out when he bragged his...snicker...i3 4130 could compete with an FX8320E. He spent almost the exact same amount as me, in fact my system was $18 cheaper, yet I had 16GB to his 8GB and my R9 280 is a full tier higher than his 750Ti, which he had to take as he had to get a weaksauce shitty PSU to try to save a few bucks to get his...snicker...i3 "beast"...bwa ha ha ha ha...sorry, hearing somebody brag about his i3 hoopty was funny as hell!

Finally as for filing charges? In case you haven't figured it out our government is as corrupt as any banana republic., Even former POTUS Jimmy Carter came out and said flat footed the USA is no longer a democracy but an oligarchy, where all that matters is how much you can kick back in contributions. But what you CAN do is refuse to support corruption, and the evidence is readily available, in fact even Intel admitted they rig benchmarks and will pay you $15 to settle a class action (one of several they have had to pay, and they are currently being investigated by the EU and a dozen other countries for corrupt practices, just FYI) where they...wait for it, see if this sounds familiar...paid benchmark companies to use the cripple compiler which then fudged the shit out of the numbers and made the dog slow P4 appear to be faster than the now recognized as superior Athlon64.

But don't take my word for it, look up "Intel cripples compiler" and see for yourself. One researcher even took a Via CPU (the only CPU that allows you to change the CPUID on the fly) and by simply changing the CPUID from"centaur hauls" to "genuine Intel" can you guess what happened? The exact same CPU, exact same test...35% higher score! And fewer and fewer games are being affected by this, as not only has users complaining caused more devs to avoid ICC but modders are releasing mods all the time that remove the cripple flag.

So if you spent less than a grand on your system? you just spent more for less while supporting corruption, simple as that. Look at the links I posted, in real world applications you see the A series trading blows with i5s (despite that being half the price) and the FX8350s trading blows with i7s (despite those being nearly 2 and a half times more expensive) and if you intend to do anything besides just game, like streaming your play or running ventrillo? Then the AMD wins, and usually by a large margin. And I can personally back this up as I like to record my gameplay so I can save my best kills, with no hardware acceleration, software recording only? Still staying above 30FPS with the bling cranked, even when I record 2- 3 hours of footage at a time. I have zero slowdowns or dropped frames despite all the chaos.

Don't just buy the BS you are being handed friend, try 'em yourself and I bet my last buck in a side by side test running the same games you will tell NO difference...but your wallet will.

They already did
http://www.pcworld.com/article...

I rand into this issue with windows 8.1 and my Q8400 on an Intel DP35DP motherboard (actual Intel manufactured board). You can see this article for details, given your similar hardware it's likely rooted in the same or a similar cause.

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article...

If there was an easy answer to this, then everyone would be doing this to watch watch mkv files (with .srt files where you have to choose between them), and other things (streaming from popcorn site or whatever).

VLC on Mac + Apple TV let my wife and I stream DVDs during our honeymoon without any issue. AirPlay Mirroring sends an on-the-fly re-encoded stream to the TV, so it generally doesn't matter what format your content was in originally: if it can show up on your monitor, it can show up on your TV (with a few exceptions).

That said, for the purposes of this summary's question, he'd likely be better served by something like a Steam Link, since it has wired connections for his keyboard and mouse (it can also work with Bluetooth peripherals), can operate wired or wirelessly on the network, is built on top of Valve's In-Home Streaming functionality that is already proven, and has confirmation from Valve (check near the end of the article) to be able to stream any content, not just content from within Steam. Plus, it's just $50. Chief downside: it doesn't launch until November.

Related products or ideas:
- Razer Forge TV/Android TV (seems to be limited in terms of what it can stream, may not have ports for peripherals)
- Wireless HDMI (can be expensive to get low latency, doesn't do anything for peripherals)
- Wireless USB hub (can be expensive last I checked, no clue how good it actually is)
- HDMI over Ethernet ($20ish, but doesn't help with peripherals and requires your home is wired up)

I had been planning to put my next gaming rig in my media room, but at this point I'll wait for a Steam Link and will tuck the gaming rig somewhere out of sight in a distant room (sadly, no server closet or a convenient place to put one).

Believe it or not, they've been trying to implement multi-process Firefox (electrolysis or e10s), but lack of funding and proper direction from management means they haven't been on top of this for a few years.

Sadly the homo community forced Brenden Eich* out, otherwise he was a clear leader and wanted to put e10s as the top-most priority.

Anyway, after something like 8 years now, they're finally almost reaching a point of releasing a (limited) multi-process firefox, but it's been held back primarily due to not only the complexity of the code-base, but management and direction, and mainly due to addons, of which you can check the status here: http://arewee10syet.com/

* Eich is the inventor of javascript, and Mozilla is lucky to still have such a great person working for them since the earliest days of Netscape! He's also the one championing EMCAScript versions.

since games haven't been CPU bound in years

Actually that's not true. Where exactly do you think the performance advantage of AMD's Mantle comes from? In fact the very reason for the creation of DirectX 12, Vulkan (built on Mantle) and Metal is because of the dependence on the CPU resource (mostly on one core) due to high-overhead sequential drivers. Once drivers support these new APIs and games are written with them we will see a decrease in games being so CPU-bound as this load can be spread over more cores but also can be done more efficiently as the driver doesn't need a one-size-fits-all solution or a custom patch for a particular game because this is implemented at the application level.

NB: And be careful if you're thinking of linking to articles about benchmarks, many of them have no understanding of these changes. For example PC World tells us all about how you can expect a phenomenal performance boost because you can do 30x the amount of draw calls in DX12. Though they don't realize that these draw calls they are measuring are at the application level and since the driver overhead is reduced the application burden is increased. Per frame it's around the same amount of calls on both APIs, it's just that in the older API it looks like there are fewer because most are made in the driver - which they can't measure - rather than the application.

this is backed up by Phoronix [phoronix.com] which shows that with GCC you "magically" get a 30%+ performance boost and their numbers match up almost perfectly with Tek Syndicate [youtube.com] who has the $140 FX8350 trading blows with Intel chips costing more than twice the price.

Synthetic benchmarks (and code compilation) are one thing but that doesn't translate particularly well to gaming because it is a completely different task.

I wouldn't say they are failing in deploying robots, it's probably just not as easy as they thought but it is definitely having an impact. And you have to remember Chinese workers have been getting more expensive with 12% year over year for a number of years. So they aren't the cheapest workforce in the world any more. A lot of manufacturing of clothes moved to Bangladesh to name one country.

Here is an example of an article from 2007 which mentions the wage growth:

"Wages in China have nearly doubled over the past four years"
http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/...

___

An article on where Foxconn is with building lights-off factories:

On Wednesday, the company’s CEO revealed Foxconn has a fully automated factory in operation in the Chinese city of Chengdu. “We haven’t talked much about the factory, but it’s manufacturing a product from a very famous company,” Gou said, without elaborating.

The factory can run for 24-hours with the lights off, he added. In addition, Foxconn has been adding 30,000 of its own industrial robots to its factories each year. “We don’t sell them, because we don’t have enough for our own use yet,” he added.

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

___

And an article on the loss of jobs in factories in China:

Automation has already had a substantial impact on Chinese factory employment: Between 1995 and 2002 about 16 million factory jobs disappeared, roughly 15 percent of total Chinese manufacturing employment. This trend is poised to accelerate.

That might not be a problem if the Chinese economy were generating plenty of higher-skill jobs for more educated workers. The solution, then, would simply be to offer more training and education to displaced blue-collar workers.

The reality, however, is that China has struggled to create enough white-collar jobs for its soaring population of college graduates. In mid-2013, the Chinese government revealed that only about half of the country’s current crop of college graduates had been able to find jobs, while more than 20 percent of the previous year’s graduates remained unemployed.

According to one analysis, fully 43 percent of Chinese workers already consider themselves to be overeducated for their current positions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06...

Or you could just set it to boot to desktop by default in settings. I can't say I really miss the start menu, as the start screen's search functionality in 8.1 is pretty good.

April 2013: "Sonatype's annual survey of 3,500 software developers and shows struggle in setting corporate policy on open source and enforcing it" ref

April 2013: "Control and security of corporate open source projects proves difficult | New Sonatype survey finds 80 percent of most Java applications comes from open source" ref

Nov 2014: "Software developers use a large number of open-source components, often oblivious to the security risks they introduce or the vulnerabilities that are later discovered in them." ref

April 2015: "open-source also represents a vast, unpatched quagmire of cyber-risk that’s putting public safety at grave risk. That’s the assessment of Joshua Corman, CTO at Sonatype" ref

"60% of Microsoft's announced titles remain unreleased a year later, and 50% of Sony's announced titles remain unreleased"

It's called vaporware, as in you pre-announce non-existant product to a) get a mention in the tech press and to b) dissuade your competitors bringing out a rival product and/or to dissuade your customer base from buying same while they await your more innovative PRODUC~1 :)

The Top 15 Vaporware Products of All Time

And this is the problem with industry thinking. It is NOT stealing.

In that case, NSA, Google, Facebook et al. collecting our data aren't "stealing" anything either.

They are NOT property law.

Distinction without difference. The infringer gets something for nothing — like a thief. The copyright holder loses something — like a theft-victim.

The term "intellectual property" is an intentional obfuscation

Had the Commandments been the "living and breathing document", that certain folks like to pretend the US Constitution is, something like "thou shall not enjoy artwork against the artist's wishes" would've been found in it by now.

Ideas can NOT be owned.

Why not?! Inasmuch as anything can be owned, why can't ideas be? The deed on my house is just as much a "piece of paper" as anything granting rights to a song. If you can download a song against its owner's wishes, why can't you move into my home while I'm away and change the locks? It is (or ought to be) just as socially (un)acceptable...

They do not exist for the benefit of the copyright holder. They exist for the benefit of society as a whole. [...] Read Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

There is nothing in the article affirming your Socialistic view, that my idea exists for "society as a whole". All the section says on the matter is: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

So, you said an untruth (most likely, lied): the Constitution acknowledges the benefit the authors may derive from their writings and discoveries and leaves it to Congress to develop a system to reward them. Which Congress did — long ago — and it is referred to as "intellectual property".

From what I've read it might be back in Windows 10

These interfaces live or die by the quality of chipset support. Implemented properly (and given freedom to standardize for industry support) this can become a must-have port along the lines of serial, parallel, and yes the original USB. If the chipset interface isn't robust or has native security problems then it will become the next firewire: There by force and overshadowed by alternatives.

What I hope Intel does is create a high-quality set of specs and hand it to IEEE in the form of a high-quality Request for Comments.

SMS notifications are a service provided by google for their calendar product. Hence they are shuttering a service.

They also shut down the SMS google query
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Or perhaps http://www.pcworld.com/article...

For this, I'm told you can blame the lazy-ass programmers at Sun, which provided no way for a Java app to check OS versions other than with a string like that.

"Windows 10 PCs are going to be locked down even tighter than ever before .. you’ll only be able to boot Microsoft-approved operating systems on these locked-down PCs." ref

Microsoft has been dealing with this issue for...ever? Older hardware can't run the newer versions of operating systems.

Unless you have the most absolute low end system then even systems from a decade ago can run Windows 8.1 just fine.

Not really sure why Android is being singled out for such accusations, Windows suffers the same issues, and has always had problems getting people to upgrade.

The difference is that most people can upgrade if they want to and for those who can't/don't want to the older operating system still gets updates and security fixes. For example you pointed out that there are a lot of Windows XP installations going, well these systems received updates for well over 10 years. In fact most 10-year-old systems can quite easily be upgraded to Windows 7+. Now if you have a look at Android Froyo for example, there were a lot of installations of that and while there were updates released for it for just one year most of the systems couldn't get any of those updates and almost none of them could be upgraded to Android Gingerbread.

Many people don't see a point to upgrading for a very simple reason: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But the older versions of Android are broken, they have bugs and security problems that will not and can not be fixed. People didn't upgrade from Windows XP because it was still supported and still received updates and security fixes, then shortly after Windows XP stopped receiving fixes its usage plummeted as people upgraded.

One was the original 386 dx 2 that was pretty nifty, and the next was the Acer Aspire - which sucked ass since it was actually a Packard bell when the company truly sucked at making a PC

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

I've been afraid of Acer ever since then. The next compputer I bought was Alienware - a p2-450 (pre-dell)- after that I started building my own.

Are Acer pc's any good now?

For the past thirty years, experts have told us that Moore's Law is likely to end within ten years.

What do the experts today think? Predictions are in: Moore's Law will probably end in about ten years.

Good to see some things never change.

No company would be stupid enough to destroy the integrity of their primary business for a little cash boost on the side.

Oh, snap. Lenovo was.

Well, Amazon probably isn't quite that stupid.

Not quite exactly what I was talking about, but close: http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Android is the largest platform (because it's used on the most phones.) But iOS stopped losing market share to it some time ago.

The #1 reason why I would fear developing for apple is they have a tendency to block and steal the really good ideas.
http://www.pcworld.com/article...

You're kidding right? WiFi syncing (obvious), using an icon that features both the standard symbol for WiFi (obviously) and the standard symbol for Syncing (obviously). That's what's in common? And nothing else.

It couldn't be more obvious if you painted obvious on it with day-glo paint. You'd have to be pretty stupid to think that was copied.

Yep android are far and away the largest single platform.

http://9to5mac.com/2014/10/31/...

of course if you include the fragmentation of the android versions and vendor specific versions may show a different picture.

The #1 reason why I would fear developing for apple is they have a tendency to block and steal the really good ideas.

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

What a joke. "Modern" languages allow all sorts of security exploits through. Such as this hilarious one involving Ruby on Rails.

I don't think they are spun down. That would kill their reliability.

There is no reason to believe that idling a drive shortens its life. Reliability studies from Google and Backblaze found no failure increase with spin up/down cycles. Total spinning time is a much bigger predictor of failure, so spinning down when not in use likely extends the life.

Biggest factors affecting reliability:
1. Manufacturer: Hitachi is best, Seagate is worst. WD is in the middle.
2. Total spinning time
3. Temperature: Hotter is better (the opposite of what most people believe).

The Apple watch presents no threat to such Swiss watches, any more than a Tesla car presents a threat to Porsche.

And back in 2007 you'd be telling us the iPhone would present no threat to BlackBerry. And before that you'd have told us that the iPod would pose no threat to other mp3 players. The sheer amount of fault predictions that Slashdot nerds have made about Apple are hilarious.

And back in 2007 few people had even heard of Android phones, which now outsell iPhones 5-to-1 worldwide. Who knew?

My dear friend, you do not understand how these things work.

You work at NSA, you are always using the latest, newest, biggest, baddest, sweetest technology ever devised by men. You literally have computer companies begging you to buy their stuff. For a lot of these people (heck, that may even include me) that is motivation enough.

AND, if you are discreet about it, you can even be privy to potentially very lucrative a lot of state secrets. Or even personal secrets, who knows?. Obviously, if Snowden gave us something, it is the knowledge that NSA is not very good at information compartmentalization...

But here is the kicker: if you ever decide to leave the NSA, for retirement or otherwise, the private sector (at least the US private sector) will greet you with open arms and pay you a sh*tload of money to work as a consultant or senior manager. And we are talking about a SH*TLOAD of money, conflict of interests be damned. You are now one of the big boys, kid, enjoy your (semi-)retirement.

No need to betray US interests, no need to reveal super secret information: you are NSA. You are above the law. Just leave your morals at the door, please.

The problem he mentioned was that actual phone operators are for example required to build all kind of gouvernment required bells and whistles into their network (emergency calls, independant power supply, wiretapping access...) while Skype et.al. don't have to spend that money and therefore can undercut them.

Apparently, you are unaware that German police are already tapping Skype calls...

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Samsung also got caught this month injecting ads into TV viewing. They only got caught because they screwed up the algorithm and injected ads into people's personal ad-free videos. And then samsung's genius engineers biffed again by sending the TV microphone pickups back to samsung (which is okay--that's what siri, alexa, cortana, and google do) but doing so unencrypted.

Obviously parasitic ad injection is the the single most lucrative way to earn money on the internet. Your doing it just like google does for nearly all its revenue, selling ads and harvesting click-thru data, but your doing it without the associated cost of attracting customers with a product. No wonder Lenovo wanted this action.

We're not even over the NSA hard drive hacks and now this?

Next you're gonna tell me Americans shove food up people's ass for freedom. Oh wait they do.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of worldâ(TM)s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

"hard drive" isn't even mentioned in the summary. You idiots got misdirected.

The focus should be on the fact that all hard drives from major brands can be fucked with by the NSA and there are no solutions, the focus shouldn't be on some fucking hacking group:

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of worldâ(TM)s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

Why don't you stupid American fucks sue the NSA and all the American corporations exposed by Snowden.

You Americans idiots bitch and moan about little adware from others while ignoring the biggest exploits developed by your own people.

Fuck off.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world’s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

The NSA bugs all hard drives, there are your END USERS.

Slashdot kept burying the story, while minor Chinese related news gets double exposure.

Obvious NSA American dumb down operation at work.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world’s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

It's already all over the net, even non geek sites are all over it.

You call slashdot a geek site? "News for nerds, stuff that matters" my ass.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world’s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

It's already all over the net, even non geek sites are all over it.

You call slashdot a geek site? "News for nerds, stuff that matters" my ass.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world’s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

It's already all over the net, even non geek sites are all over it.

You call slashdot a geek site? "News for nerds, stuff that matters" my ass.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world’s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

Come on slashdot, stop deleting the NSA hard drive backdoor news submissions, it's already all over the net, even non geek sites are all over it.

You call this a geek site? Stuff that matters my ass.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world’s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

Facial recognition mostly gets used for all of the wrong reasons, Facebook tracking, illegal police tracking etc.

'photos of innocent people have been retained in contempt of an explicit order from the court to remove them' - 18million by police

Facebook's new face recognition policy astonishes German privacy regulator

And what about people who don't have Facebook accounts, does Facebook allow 'tagging' of their faces?, I'm already annoyed by Facebooks obvious data collection on me as shown by the fact I get email from them telling me who my friends are and inviting me to join.

http://www.pcworld.com/article... http://www.computerworld.com/a...

http://www.pcworld.com/article... http://www.computerworld.com/a... Hardly anyone is rejecting the subscription model. Look at DirecTV or whatever releasing a seperately branded tv box, HBO is ready to move over to subscription. Amazon. It's what people seem to want instead of more for less.

Meanwhile, the headline of a PCWorld article is "China tightens Internet control by blocking VPN services".

Tim Cook is all for protecting the environment, and for protecting workers' rights. That's great. I hope some day he'll care about human rights.

CUDA was released to the public a year and a half before the OpenCL specification was published.

Yes. And is it open? No.

SLI hit the market ages before CrossFire.

I don't really have a problem with those two being closed, as I imagine they're inherently quite vendor-specific in their workings.

G-Sync is commercially available now and has been for some time, while FreeSync is not.

True. A recurring theme here is that Nvidia tends to be the first to innovate, with the open technologies playing catch-up.

FreeSync and Crossfire are not any more open than G-Sync and SLI respectively.

Apparently FreeSync really is open.

In particular, it's worth noting there's nothing *stopping* AMD from writing their own CUDA compiler for their GPUs -- for instance, the Portland Group has an x86 compiler for CUDA.

True, but unlike OpenCL it's controlled entirely by Nvidia, and I presume only OpenCL is documented for both the user and the implementer (though as you say, independent reimplementation is certainly possible anyway).

Lastly, most people making this argument tend to gloss over the fact that AMD/ATI has also tried (and usually failed) to make proprietary technologies.

Yep. Mantle is the obvious one. ATi Stream was ATi's proprietary CUDA competitor, which iiuc went nowhere.

The reason ATI is more "friendly" to open technologies is that their attempts at closed, vendor lock-in technologies have a nasty history of failing miserably, while some of nVidia's (CUDA, PhysX) are still going strong.

I agree. Personally I suspect it's because AMD just don't seem as good at innovating as Nvidia do. Nvidia seem to be much better at coming up with new ideas: see SLI, CUDA, G-Sync. I suspect that if AMD were as good, they too would make their solutions proprietary.

I fully agree that PhysX and G-Sync aren't open either.

As for Mantle being Open there was the case of Intel asking about Mantle information -- and AMD declining the request.

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

I'm not a CPU expert so feel free to take my opinions below with a grain of salt... (grin)

The biggest change to processors in general is the increased use and power of desktop GPUs to offload processing-intense math operations. The parallel processing power of GPUs outstrips today's CPUs. I'm sure that we will be seeing desktop CPUs with increased GPU like parallel processing capabilities in the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Some AVs will detect and remove PUPs (Possible Unwanted Programs).

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

I think you mean:

The 'invisible hand' is term used as a way of saying that you hope allowing people to trade according to terms mutually beneficial to themselves will actually result in benefits to society and you're wishing on a prayer that they don't have backroom deals, aren't colluding, , regulatory capture, or that one doesn't have a stranglehold on the other bending them over barrel.

There we go.

Anarchy is a system in which trade, industry, the means of production, as well as security, politics, and basic rights are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for profit.

In closed source you don't know anything at all about bugs lurking until someone accidentally encounters it.

Running a third party library with closed source in a closed source application - well, you have many potential problems there that can be flying for a long time.

Don't forget that it wasn't long ago that a considerable bug in Windows was found that had been around since Windows 95.

Anybody remember this:

The Pirate Bay 'Moves' to North Korea (Updated)
The Pirate Bay admits to North Korean hosting hoax

So before you make any accusations, you better be very very sure. Otherwise you risk another Iraq/Afghanistan/etc. disaster.

why are americans such judgemental pricks?

Do you want to sit for eight hours next to someone, who robbed somebody at knifepoint 5 years ago? Do you want such a guy to take care of your elderly (grand)mother? Do you want him to have access to financial (or medical) data of thousands of your customers — until his buddies from prison convince (or blackmail) him to exploit it?

It is not the law that prohibits his hiring. It is that the companies (all of them private) don't want to associate with such people — and in our (still somewhat) free country, freedom of association runs both ways.

This man's judgement clearly failed at some point in the past. He says, he cleaned-up his act — and it may very well be true. But I would not blame people refusing to believe him, nor would I consider such a refusal to be a uniquely American trait. Unless, of course, I were still butt-sore over America's superiority and needed to vent my anger at the misfortune of having been born in the wrong country...