Slashdot Mirror

http://www.wired.com/wiredente...

And Google Fiber is already having positive effects on their cable competition:

http://consumerist.com/2013/01...

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

The Windows 8 start screen is way better than the start menu from previous iterations. The "type to launch" behavior is effectively the same as the start menu (actually faster and more robust) but the added screen real estate makes it easier to find programs if you need to actually look through the list for something.

Safe to assume that you don't know how to use Windows, much less Windows 8, if you're still carrying on with that idiotic position.

Nice shill, but no, it's not. If I want a Mickey Mouse interface I'll go to the Disney website, thanks.

The only thing that's saving Windows 8 is the availability of third party software that fixes the damn interface. Just because I have a 24" monitor doesn't mean I want to use all of it to select and open a single program...and even then, I'd still have to side-scroll to get to ones I don't use often. And 'type to launch' is a better approach, seriously? The only reason it might be considered as such is because nobody can find what they're looking for any other way...so it's a pre-emptive fix for a problem that they knew they'd have.

On a side note, I would be very curious to see the total Windows 8 installed base compared to the installed base for all of the Start Menu add-on programs. As it stands, this comparison of adoption rates between Windows 7 and Windows 8 is more than a little enlightening. And this is in an era where everyone has to have the latest 'shiny'...apparently you just can't shine up Windows 8 enough to make up for the Start screen, but you know how hard it is to polish a turd...which is a shame, because under the hood, Windows 8 has quite a lot going for it. Now if only I could find the hood-release lever :)

Witness Android vs. iOS. Very clear what the better product is, but Android is the PC to Apple's Mac.

Android is a better product than iOS in most measurable ways. Even the much-vaunted "security" of the Apple App store is a myth.

Report finds iOS apps riskier than Android apps
The Appthority Reputation Report for Winter 2014 was compiled using data from the cloud-based Appthority App Risk Management Service. Appthority performed static, dynamic, and behavioral app analysis of 400 paid and free apps spanning iOS and Android to assess the relative security and risky behavior of the most popular apps.

Appthority also discovered that iOS apps are riskier overall than Android apps—91 percent contain risky behavior as opposed to 83 percent on Android.

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

More recently then, Amazon took purchased digital copies of A Christmas Story offline during the holidays. The only difference here is they removed it from a tablet in your possession in one case vs from your purchased, watch and stream anytime library in the other. In both cases you LOST access to something paid for because of someone else's douchebaggery, even if temporarily.

As for should have never been available, that is an oversight on Amazon's part for allowing it to be posted without validating resell rights. You're argument is basically, it's ok for books a million (or barnes and noble or walmart or...) to come in your house and take a book you purchased, at their store, if it 's later determined that didn't have permission to sell it. Just as long as they refund the cost of the book, never mind any damage done to your life, education (I remember reading a few papers being written about the book and the people losing all of their notes as well as the book), privacy, or peace of mind. Honestly, even amazon admitted they fucked up

But Android is not meant for the desktop

Android heads to desktops
http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Could an Android desktop replace your Windows PC?
http://www.zdnet.com/could-an-...

Android vs Windows: Now the battle for the desktop really begins
http://www.zdnet.com/android-v...

Android PCs and other Windows-alternative desktops are for real
http://www.zdnet.com/android-p...

Android desktops arrive as Lenovo eyes your living room
http://www.zdnet.com/android-d...

And, coincidentally...

https://play.google.com/store/...

'Stable sometimes' is remarkable in the absence of hardware MFGs support. It hasn't really been that long since hardware MFGs have gotten behind support for open source drivers. Now that a AAA game developer / publisher / marketplace has come to the free-side of the source, things are looking bright indeed.

Folks are waking up to the reality that it might not be in the best interest of their business strategy rely too heavily on another company for their success. Especially not after MS's reception of W8, it's marketplace, and their shady hardware platform dealings (not informing platform partners, no more pre-release for MSDN access, etc). Even if they fix the issues folks are becoming a bit gun-shy now, rightly so. Why needlessly tie yourself to a ship that might sink or make you walk the plank when it's easy to diversify and get free community support and better PR, thus customer loyalty essentially for free? Starting a new software project (esp. game) it costs nothing extra to ensure it runs on all the major platforms. So, the choice is: Hey, we can make it just work with one OS/platform, or for the same effort, pick up the market share of all the other major OSs too by selecting a cross platform engine / toolkit / compiler at the outset.

Since the olden days the hobbyist / tinkerers / free thinkers could be looked to for indication as to the future market place. PC hobbyists all over online digital distribution and 'social networking' in the BBS era, boom the Internet exploded when exposed more broadly. The demoscene led the way showing nifty tricks in software rasterizing, and later in hardware rasterizing, and later in shaders, before mainstream developers had public products. The homebrew hobbyist gamedev scene has been espousing "cross platform or bust" long before AAA studios realized exclusivity was dumb financially, and now the "indie devs" are echoing sentiments such as "games are art, art shouldn't have planned obsolescence DRM death sentences" and such...

It goes back farther than this: The Renaissance heralded the industrial revolution. Stories about adventure and exploration yielded (re)discovery of America, laymen interest in design progress, space, and technology predicted your nuclear and space ages. It's no mistake the 'wacky' robotic fascination of your late 20th century indicated a largely robotic workforce with huge mechanical organisms for continuous production. Ideas seeded in your 'far-fetched' early adopter culture are converging even now to lead you to the next of your great advancements. Take a look around and see.

I'm jaded too, but my outlook is: Well, finally they got their heads out of that recursive anus -- Wonder how long it'll take AAA and MPAA producers to realize DRM is hurting business, and after that to realize Copyright is artificial scarcity lunacy too: You can ask for enough up front, 'give away', that which you've already been paid you to create, and your competition can't compete with 'free'. Lots of little devs are starting to test the waters of that route: less churn, more stability, free publicity / advertising, more freedom and creativity, zero piracy, simply continue working to continue earning money... just like any other labor market. Just look how long it took those dumb apes to figure out folks buy hardware, not drivers. Everyone alive now will probably be about dead by the time that other stuff happens at this rate, but it'll happen eventually. The market forces of economy work. Just look at the doomed printing press industry. I'm just amazed how long you've clung to the horrible concept of idea monopolies -- those will soon be eradicated as a matter of civil rights: People can sue for patent infringement if a machine thinks about an algorithm? Oh, for kracken's sake.

Sure would be nice if by some strange twist of fate I'm still around when all that comes to pass -- Nothing is more r

IBM

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

Pretty soon people will correlate creditworthiness etc to the distribution of known friends and their credit scores.That algo will mark you as loner, possibly a loser.

Too late. That ship has sailed.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/2...
http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Not nearly as strong as anticipated.

How much of the certified and approved software runs on linux? Hosting Windows in a VM with exactly the same network access gives you the same problem, so that isn't a solution.

If you want to reply at all, you should find out which ones will run on Linux and let some people know about it. I couldn't find one.

And, if you're using a Diebold or NCR machine, you're using the OS they push you towards - Windows. Sure it's possible to resist, but you have to educate ATM purchasing when the vendors are saying the opposite. I'll start.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/113997/article.html

Your turn. Replacing the OS is not trivial, unless you think you can walk up to the people who make that decision and just somehow convince them.

Again I repeat - if something is obvious, chances are there are people who have already considered it. It's all there in that article.

Oh wait that's from 2003, so far outdated by now. Okay.

http://www.diebold.com/products-services/managed-services/atm-channel-management/Pages/software-distribution.aspx

Linux does not appear, Windows does.

Your search - "linux" site:diebold.com - did not match any documents.

Your search - "unix" site:diebold.com - did not match any documents.

I tried linux and unix at ncr.com but all of the unix stuff seems to be non-ATM and the linux stuff is POS. So where ya gonna get the software?

Anti-Virus, printers and hardware devices. A lot of folks who upgraded from Windows 7 found a lot of problems with 8 and once stable 8.1 threw out a new slew of issues including the embedding of .net 4.5 with a myriad of feature issues associated with it. It wasn't smooth from 7 to 8 nor from 8 to 8.1, not by a long shot. Sometimes "Compatibility Mode" just doesn't work.

On the other hand, I have actually had Macs. I've seen how really mediocre they are. It terms of reliability, they're bottom of the heap. The "lets cook our laptop parts" approach to system design can't help.

Looks like what you actually have is Hatorade. Apple has been at or near the top of consumer and hardware reliability surveys for years.

...I dislike Microsoft and Windows with a passion, but at least they don't arbitrarily decide that your PC is too old to run their latest operating system.

Microsoft just did this... Windows 8.1 64-bit has a requirement that your CPU (and BIOS) support the "CMPXCHG16b" instruction, which does not exist on all AMD64 processors, especially early AMD models, and some Intel ones where the manufacturer has (for some reason) disabled the instruction via BIOS--often without an explicit option to turn it on. So, those people are stuck on Windows 8.0 64-bit or need to "up/downgrade" to Windows 8.1 32-bit, which doesn't require the instruction.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2058683/new-windows-8-1-requirements-strand-some-users-on-windows-8.html

Of course, Microsoft is setting themselves up for a lawsuit since they went on record giving Windows 8.0 a 10-year support lifecycle, which has now been changed to a ~3 years, and don't offer a free license to go from 64-bit Windows to 32-bit... Ironically, Windows Server 2012 R2 (which is 64-bit only) does not require this instruction, so there's some real confusion as to what has been gained by this requirement change...

I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but if you have to ask "did they break the law?" then you are absolutely right that you haven't been paying attention.

The courts and congress, prior to Snowden's leaks, did allow it. You are correct there. But what they allowed was not the same as what the NSA was actually up to. They flat-out lied to get authorization for some things, then went off and did others so when/if they got caught, they could say, "But we were told we could do that!" It is a well-documented fact at this point that the NSA lied to both the courts and congress. That, in itself, is not legal.

Then, we have the fact that they are definitely violating the 4th amendment. They are not "just" collecting "metadata." They have the content of every phone call or email you make, your browsing history, etc. and they intend hold it for at least 15 years. As American citizens have the right to not be unreasonably searched without warrant, they have violated the constitution in billions of instances over the last decade.

First amendment rights have also been under attack. Some members of the media have stated that they've been under pressure (not clear if it's from their employers or otherwise) to not run any anti-NSA stories. Some businesses, such as Lavabit and Silent Circle, have had to shutdown because of ridiculous legal pressure to completely legal businesses simply because they did not want to provide all of their information in bulk and instead said they would comply with the law and turn over any information related to suspects. In the case of Lavabit, the FBI demanded they turn over their SSL public & private keys; this is not needed to unencrypt stored information on users, but instead to create a MITM attack on their network. I got a bit off-topic here, but the point is simply that people are forced to behave differently, including limiting their speech, out of fear of government backlash. It is a clear violation of the first amendment.

Then, we have the fact that the NSA is participating in hacking and distributing malware. You know what that's called? Computer fraud. And it's very illegal. If you have some time to waste, go ahead and watch this presentation from 30C3.

But, most importantly, remember that government propaganda is legal now so keep an eye out for their bullshit.

My suggestion too. But make sure that laptop runs linux before buying it (and don't get bricked like some samsung laptops, you are at risk even using only windows). And check that the hardware is supported even if you install Linux on it, some vendors don't (at least the local Samsung representative here don't give support/replace defective ones if you install something else).

And remember, all the antivirus that you put on it won't stop the backdoors that the NSA is installing on them. Installing Linux (reinstalling it if is one of the cases that come preinstalled) is a must if you care at all about your privacy or your data.

or enable developer mode and install the MyVideoBuzz channel http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047326/how-to-add-youtube-to-your-roku-box-the-sequel.html

I'm sorry that I argued against your idea so energetically - and ultimately falsely.

I suppose that my information is grossly out-of-date. In response to your most recent posting, I looked up this subject on the Web, and found an article which confirms what you are saying:

External Reference

In particular, this article states that a BIOS update can be performed in some cases, by double-clicking on an .EXE File, which is by far different from what I had to do (only in 2011, for a contemporary computer) using a USB stick and an .ROM File.

But then I must also admit, that the possible answers to the whole NSA question change completely as well. Since the BIOS can be flashed behind our backs, there is indeed little allowing the general public to know whether 'The BIOS Plot' as such was real, nor what the NSA could have done about it. At that point there is some slight plausibility, even for the idea of the NSA having used that - or having used some other back door - to get into our computers.

but he needs to understand that pervasive surveillance is also bad for business.German coalition favors German-owned or open source software, aims to lock NSA out

There's no shortage of people willing to point that out. Having said that though, there could be some great benefits to us ordinary people if it encourages government adoption of open source and local products.

Germany’s new coalition government listed open source software among its IT policy priorities, and said it will take steps to protect its citizens against espionage threats from the NSA and other foreign intelligence agencies.

Coalition parties CDU, CSU and SPD signed up to the plans Monday in Berlin.

The new government’s goal is to keep core technologies, including IT security, process and enterprise software, cryptography and machine-to-machine communication on proprietary technology platforms and production lines in Germany or in Europe, according to the coalition agreement.

But the government will also promote the use and development of open platforms and open source software as an alternative to closed proprietary systems, and will support the use of those in Europe, the parties said in the agreement. The public sector will need to consider open source solutions as a possibility when purchasing new IT, they said.

They also want to compete on a global level with “software made in Germany” and strengthen the quality of security, data protection, design and usability by doing so

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2081140/german-coalition-favors-germanowned-or-open-source-software-aims-to-lock-nsa-out.html

"Installing Firefox 3.6 on Linux: Only Pros Need Apply"

If the manufacturer was Samsung it was pretty trivial to be exploited, even running windows or by accident.

That remembers me of something. If the malware can brick the PC is probably BIOS/manufacturer fault, as it was in that case. And could be something intended by the NSA... when you force manufacturers to put your backdoors in their systems you can be the one responsible for bricking, either because you did it or because you opened the door.

It makes more sense to me not to just take them at their word. "Yes, we have all your phone calls an emails, but we PINKY PROMISE not to ever look at them!"

But you seem to be more trusting than I, and seem to think that neither the NSA leadership nor its employees would ever break their promise and use all that compiled information for illegal spying.

Image formats have been used to compromise browsers in the past, so automatically loading images in your webmail or email client is a bad idea. Fortunately this is just a change from the default behavior so you can turn it off in the options.

In fact, Microsoft just patched a .tiff image format exploit last Tuesday.

The American people is the BOSS of the NSA; it's in the Constitution.

But the government's argument is that the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction over the NSA's activities. How much more unconstitutional can you get?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/252921/munich_mayor_says_switch_to_linux_saved_money_reduced_complaints.html

The XBox 360 had a proprietary HD while the PS3 had a standard HD that was end user replaceable.

No, it did not. It had a proprietary HD enclosure, which could be bought on ebay for a small amount then the end user could supply their own drive.

It used a standard model hard drive with proprietary firmware. You can't just take any old off-the-shelf drive and slap it in the enclosure, it won't work

read the PDF; seemed like they were trying to cover their asses.

There are plenty of articles and editorials that say otherwise:

http://www.infoworld.com/t/government-use-it/the-terry-childs-case-san-francisco-just-guilty-886
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/28/sf_rogue_sysadmin_password_mess/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149159/terry_childs_case.html

Windows 8.1 - if it doesn't bork your mouse, it might bork Windows 8: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2058683/new-windows-8-1-requirements-strand-some-users-on-windows-8.html

Posting anonymously since I have an interest in this company. A company called Intermedia released a product a few months ago called "SecuriSync". A brief review is here. The product uses end to end encryption and allows varying levels of control as that article will mention. I use it regularly, as do most of the people I work with. We share data with our overseas offices using this method because of the Encryption. Box has some of the same functionality, but not all of it.

As commercial products go, this one is very well done. No learning curve for users, low learning curve for administration. *snark* Hell, even our Windows admins have no issues managing and using the product.

There is an obvious (or should be obvious) problem with _any_ commercial product though. It seems that if you get to a certain size Government agencies may step in and make a company do things. See Lavabit dropping their encrypted email for an example of exerted pressure on companies that want to do well. For now, this product is fine and secure. If it grows, I can't say that the company will not have to give in to pressure or face cancelling the product. I hope it does not get to that point, but we see what happened to others that failed to give in (again see Lavabit).

since they are no longer bound to share-holders; and can innovate for the sake of innovation? No need to bow down to MS Overlords and do as they or the so-called markets please. They can afford to lose a billion bucks in chasing their own dreams.

Well... MS Overlords have lent Dell $2 billion.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048627/dell-goes-private-as-shareholders-approve-249-billion-deal.html

"Dell on February 5 announced that Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake had offered $24.4 billion, or $13.65 per share, to buy out the company. The offer, subject to shareholder approval, included a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, and debt financing from Bank of America, RBC Capital Markets, Merrill Lynch, and Barclays."

No one outside the NSA knows what Snowden knows

Yeah, just him and 4 million other contractors with Top Secret clearance. And their wives, friends, and anyone else they've ever blabbed to. And high ranking military officials, the CIA, any number of Congressmen, State Department officials, etc.

But, yeah, aside from them--and Snowden--all this stuff is totally contained. Our phone calls, emails, and web browsing histories are safe. And no one could possibly use them for anything illegal or unethical.

Microsoft's collaboration support looks pretty half-assed to me. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033437/collaboration-in-microsoft-office-painful-but-not-impossible.html

-jcr

According to an article in PC World they are saying EPIC doesnt have standing to request, so the Supreme Court has no petitioner authorizing the court to appeal. Of Course no one has the standing to go to a Court over this by design (Verizon has to appeal to the NSA or the secret court, not to a public institution) So the supremes might overrule that loophole. Hopefully. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2054900/supreme-court-shouldnt-review-nsa-spying-case-us-govt-says.html

On the other hand, I bought only Intels since the day the G2 series hit the market. Every single one is still in use and none of them have had any problems.

Intel has released their own turkey SSDs too. And the thing about anecdotal evidence is, every OCZ, Kingston, Intel, Samsung, and Sandisk SSD I've bought and put into systems I've built are still in use and none of them have had any problems.

While I do believe OCZ had a higher failure rate, I also think their poor return figures were mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Note that return rates are returns to the store of purchase - they reflect product dissatisfaction within a few days/weeks of purchase, not due to a failure months down the road (which was the common complaint in forums about OCZ drives). People have problems getting the SSD installed, check online for help, see lots of reports of problems with OCZ drives, and elect to return it. With other brand drives, they stick with it until they get the drive sorted out and working. If the manufacture of the SSDs is anything like other electronics, they're all actually made by the same ODMs in Taiwan/China, and the "manufacturer" just slaps their name on it. The problems with OCZ drives failing after a few months of use actually seemed to affect all Sandforce-based drives. (Ironically, I bought the Intel 320s in an effort to avoid the Sandforce drives.)

In fact, I haven't had to reinstall windows as often as I've had to in the past. Not sure if its because Win7 is better than WinXP, the SSDs are more reliable than platter based disks, or both.

If you have both an SSD and a HDD, reliability absolutely should not be an issue. Just clone the SSD to the HDD, then create a data partition in the remaining space on the HDD for regular use. Update the clone every day or two as your backup. If the SSD ever fails, you can just remove it and boot off the HDD while you send the SSD back for a warranty replacement.

(I should note that this works fine under Windows 7. I've had problems getting it to work with Windows 8 and secure boot.)

That's true. Although, I think it'll cause sales of the Steam Machine console, not necessarily Linux in general. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2053680/valve-amd-based-steam-machines-are-also-en-route.html

Why? You can dual boot your Windows or MAC box and get the Linux version right now. That gives more uptake on the Linux side, and convinces other publishers to release for Linux / Steam Box.

That's true. Although, I think it'll cause sales of the Steam Machine console, not necessarily Linux in general.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2053680/valve-amd-based-steam-machines-are-also-en-route.html

Except a) that does squat for the labor market here, reinforcing the point that we don't have enough jobs to go around and b) Foxconn is employing the same tech efficiencies and robotics to reduce their own labor as well, which means fewer global jobs.

Maybe they shouldn't have built it in Utah?


More likely they didn't account in the power budget for the seven secret sub-basements and the underground vacutrain for the reptoids to commute from the Denver International Airport.
honestly, it's like the right hand doesn't know what the left talon is doing these days.

Has China banned Android phones, or are you simply making up hypothetical situations that are absurd in practice?

Ya, its not like China has ever blocked iTunes over providing access to undesirable content..
But really, doing something to hurt Apple's business in China? Like, building a replacement? No, they would never do that.

And like you, I recall China's response to Google no longer censoring search results to be entirely positive. They don't disconnect you if you try to search for a blocked term, right?

The Chinese government has absolutely no problem taking very drastic steps that can be financially devastating to a company. You play ball, or you have problems doing business in China.

JPEG and GIF both have licensing issues; They are not free.

Are you kidding me? The patents for GIF expired long ago. As for JPEG, that's as much a "living standard" as HTML5 is. It's worth researching further, but I'd think the older parts of JPEG aren't too problematic.

The intended replacement for these, PNG, hasn't seen widespread adoption, can't do animations, but has no licensing issues.

PNG has never been and never will be an intended replacement for JPEG, as PNG is lossless and JPEG is (mostly) lossy. And in what way hasn't PNG seen widespread adoption? It is the dominant lossless image format and is used absolutely everywhere. PNG can do animations too (though it's not supported anywhere meaningful), but WebM makes more sense for that. Don't like it? Use good ol' GIF then.
A replacement for JPEG would be WEBP.

Boy I love it when a link is posted as text without an anchor tag!
Linky
<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049860/nsa-surveillance-court-says-no-upper-limit-on-phone-records-collection.html"/>Linky</a>

Was that so hard?

I'd prefer a way to unerase the stuff I did as a minor. There's some info I once had on MySpace that I'd kinda like back, but apparently they wiped all of that... :(

Dude. You're a little behind the times. Blink tags don't work anymore.

According to this PC world article, Can You Do Real Work With the 30-Year-Old IBM 5150? they were able to do basic internet things.

Not really. He just used the machine as a dumb terminal to a modern Linux machine.

At least in theory. According to this PC world article, Can You Do Real Work With the 30-Year-Old IBM 5150? they were able to do basic internet things. But I think that may be bending the spirit of the rules. Also, Contiki was ported to x86.

Did not want to reply to myself but...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048511/hands-on-with-bay-trail-intels-latest-best-hope-for-tablet-relevance.html
This says that prices are likely to drop even lower. With a projected price floor of $200, there is no reason a $300 device would not have a Wacom stylus.
Microsoft horrendously mis-priced Surface Pro.

haswell makes full windows with 100% backwards compatibility in a tablet device a desirable thing

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the Atom line has been the one championing x86 tablets. Also, it is the line Intel feels is their best bet for entry into the tablet and phone market: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7263/intel-teases-baytrail-performance-with-atom-z3770-cinebench-score

The end result is the same, though:
RT is destined for the bin.
ARM SoCs are getting competition from SoCs made by a very potent behemoth.
x86 will rise in the mobile market.

To further support the latter I'd like to note that Intel is also putting effort into getting Android x86 working on the Atom, with success:
http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/asus-transformer-book-trio/4505-3126_7-35827211.html

Also:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044617/new-intel-chief-sees-150-atom-tablets-this-year.html
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/tablets/tablets-atom.html

They claim 4.5 watts for the low power usage scenario. ARM will be with us for a long time. The ARM folks are climbing the feature/performance curve too. Don't worry about AMD, they are bringing out ARM chips too. Including the ARMv8, aka. ARM64. AMD describes more fruits of ARM embedded partnership

Google has gotten lots of $$$$ from the NSA and the CIA and is in complete bed with them. Google gives -everything- to the NSA and CIA

Things that make you go HMMMMM...

http://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-others-millions-1188615332

http://www.infowars.com/googles-deep-cia-and-nsa-connections/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/217550/google_watchdog_white_house.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/10/palantir_denies_powering_prism_spy_system/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-upheld/

http://www.prisonplanet.com/nsa-funds-new-top-secret-60-million-dollar-data-lab.html

Regarding bricking, this could put you in the right context. Maybe it was a "mistake" from Samsung, maybe not, maybe others could or will have the same. And going to Windows 7 don't change the core problem of why is a security risk.

First search result for me on Sony Rootkit Settlement

I don't think that figure include the loss of goodwill, only the cost of paying off the states, replacing people's CDs, etc.