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You're a bit behind the times. Both Linux and OS X are now more vulnerable operating systems than Windows.

Show me one Linux vulnerability in the last year that didn't require a highly skilled attacker combined with a set of highly unlikely conditions, or rely on the system to be poorly configured. Hell, forget the year limit. Show me one from within the last decade. Good Luck!

I guess you've forgotten about this. Or you can search for ShellShock or Heartbleed. And then there are the kernel bugs that cause race conditions last December, or last May's bug that allows users to get privileged access or do a DoS, not too good in a shared hosting / shared server environment. This bug has nothing to do with a "poorly configured system". It's a flaw.

Here's the security vulnerability list for the linux kernel for 2014, with 133 bugs.

Some of these bugs made the evening news, so I don't know how you missed them all,

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

Of course it is because when you get Windows you don't have a "MSFT tax" you have a "MSFT tax BREAK" that so few FOSS users seem to be able to grasp!

Look its REALLY simple, 1.- Somebody who buys bulk (in the case of MSFT bulk is defined as over 10K licenses) gets Windows MUCH cheaper, last figures I saw was between $0-$50 depending on version and device, 2.- the OEMs then GET PAID to put trial versions (or in the case of Google their toolbars and browser) on the install image, 3.- When combined with the discount this can often make putting Windows on the system a money EARNER instead of a cost,4.- You have the economies of scale on the Windows side which Linux doesn't and finally, 5.- LINUX COSTS MONEY to the OEM because they have to keep their own custom version of a distro (which they have to pay developers to maintain) because otherwise updates can shit all over their drivers. Before any FOSSies poo poos this idea because "Linux doesn't shit on drivers, you're a liar Hairyfeet" I would point out Dell has been having to deal with the piss poor Linux driver model for many years and just as i have seen how badly the driver model really is and therefor has NO choice but to keep their own distro, at a not inconsiderate cost, just to keep users from screaming "update foo broke my drivers!"

So this is why Linux will ALWAYS be more expensive than Windows, because if you look at total cost to the OEM for going with Linux over Windows? Windows is the cheaper alternative. Its less brittle, doesn't require you to have your own fork, the OEM doesn't have to pay a dev team to update its drivers constantly, it can place trialware on the system. Linux is only "free" if your time is worth nothing and for OEMs this is simply not the case.

Until recently they didn't. EE launched a service a few months ago, and Vodafone is launching one this quarter.

Nov 2008: "RPX is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Charles Rivers Ventures. Its two chief executives, John Amster and Geoffrey Barker, previously served as vice presidents of Intellectual Ventures, another company in the business of purchasing patents."

This wasn't used against you in your senate run (which certainly lacked any semblance of tact), but I GUARANTEE you that your past will resurface when you did things like this:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1005572/how-mike-capellas-castrated-carly

...Carly did not tell Capellas that the sad love affair between Heloise and Abelard ended up with the man in the affair being castrated... when Capellas found out he shuddered and said: "I'm glad I didn't know".

And this, as well as the "bad hair?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/09/carly-fiorina-open-mic-vi_n_606723.html

"God, what is that hair?"

That's why The Inquirer calls Facebook the People Catalogue.

Cool, so let's say we apply your thinking to music files. Would you be okay with a virus (written by the software/music owners) that goes about moving parts of your music files to /dev/null, so long as it determines the music files are illegitimate? Nothing is broken, after all. The pirated parts are just moved out of the way. 'Course, the files are no good anymore, much like the clone devices.

Before you answer, realize that you're asking for Microsoft to bless this virus into windows and damage millions of PCs worldwide.

"Two NVIDIA Tegra processor modules are at the heart of the electronic components in the Model S, which "command a sizable price tag," according to Rassweiler. Here is a look at how they work."

Um no... Nearly all of Tegra3's design wins (including 2012 Nexus 7) were due to it being cheap...

Also, how is this news? It's been known for ages that the Tesla HU used Tegra3. http://www.theinquirer.net/inq... (March 2013) - and I've seen documentation dating back as far as 2012 that Tesla was using the T3.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inq... I think I have to go vomit now.

In short, Hangouts will not use your call minutes. It does use data, so may eat up your data plan if you're not on Wifi. It's a fairly efficient protocol, so you may not notice the hit to your data cap.

Wow, even "in short" is too long....

Longer explanation:

Google Voice and Hangouts are two separate things stuck together, with a little bit of GooglePlus paste. It makes things a bit confusing, since they both do "voice and text communication".

Google Voice was a purchased product, Grand Central. Grand Central grew up before smartphones and the cell plans back then were very different than we know today. As such, it's very phone number centric, and there are features to optimize costs based on rules that are no longer current, so the features make less sense today.

Think Grand Central/Google Voice as "product for geeks to do cool things for dumbphones" It did for phones what every programmer wants to do always; it created an abstraction layer, or in English, a virtual manipulable phone number. For incoming calls, that meant: trying any of possible multiple "real" phones to find you, call screening, and voicemail. For outgoing calls, it allowed calls from any of your "real" phones to look like it came from your virtual (this was clunky, oy!) and also helped with long distance - you called a "local" number and typically got better rates than from your phone company. Also, when you made a call, you were calling "cell" numbers out, back when carriers price differentiated on that. Or you could have outgoing calls look originate by a call to YOUR phone, from your virtual number. This helped when you could get the "5 friends I talk to for free" or whatever plans. All of this kind of clunky and confusing. I juggled all this, because it was worth it for me to have a personal virtual number mapped to my work phone, and then had only one device to carry.

For Google Voice, to make an outbound call on a smartphone, you'd go into the Google Voice app, tell it to call some number. Google Voice would contact Google servers, and (depending on settings) Google would call you and make the outbound call, or you would dial out (to yet another virtual number, hosted at Google). THIS IS WHERE THE VOICE MINUTES YOU READ ABOUT CAME FROM. All these calls used cell minutes, either inbound or outbound.

Now, Hangouts was invented as a Skype competitor. To really compete, it needed to be your messaging app. SMS? Sure, lets bake that in, and tightly integrate with both SMS and Google Plus, two very different beasts. What could possibly go wrong? Skype out? Well, we can do that. Lets have data only, VoIP dialing to POTS lines, and lets use the Google Voice number.

So, now my phone has a Google Voice app and a Google Hangouts app. Both can make calls out, in different ways, looking like the same number. Both can make SMS out. Google Voice has SMS as data out, but incoming can come in as "true" SMS as well. How can that be confusing? Oh, and Incoming SMS for "classic" Google Voice came from a "virtual Google phone number" not from your friend, so you could text back to the virtual number and they'd get from your Google Voice number. But.. incoming calls always came from their real number, unless you configured it to come from *your* virtual number... As I write this out I marvel at how I kept this in my head straight for so long. My Phone Book is littered with "GVoice" entries, the virtual numbers that every contact you get an SMS from or dial out to gets mapped by Google. Confused yet?

So, Google Voice still does the normal phone line juggle, so uses cell minutes (this is what you asked about). Google Hangouts uses VoIP, probably using WebRTC. It's a new protocol, and last time i checked, most VoIP apps (including Asterisk) haven't been able to connect with it. On iOS/iPhone, outgoing calls on Hangouts are VoIP only, no audio minutes. Incoming calls are through normal cell service. And all of this can change without notice. Confused? :)

Yes I'm sure this has never happened to a private company or multiple major financial institutions, or academic institutions, or security companies or IT companies.

Major financial institutions, academic institutions, security companies, and IT companies don't force us under penalty of law to use their wares and put our personal confidential information at risk. Furthermore, few if any of them have managed to create something of such colossal expense, enormous failure, corruption, and risk we see now.

Yes I'm sure this has never happened to a private company or multiple major financial institutions, or academic institutions, or security companies or IT companies.

Oh wait.

...Linux source is readily available while Windows source is not?

To the general public that is true, but don't forget this leak and more recently this disgruntled employee. And remember - these are only the leaks of source code that we know about. I am sure that a lot more of the source is available to those with fewer scruples than you or I.

Bill Gates admits that Ctrl Alt Delete was a mistake

Also uses planes, apparently since 2012

You're making shit up. What he actually said is "we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft,"

Sure he's cancelling the XBox Original TV Shows idea, but in all honest that idea was incredibly stupid and really added nothing to 99.99% of XBox users.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inq...

However, the patches issued by Google, which ensure that Android's OpenSSL PRNG is initialised correctly, thus fixing the bug, might not be within reach for all Bitcoin users who need to update their mobile operating systems as soon as possible. This is because, as Klyubin explained, the patches have been provided to "OHA partners".

The term "OHA partners" refers to the Open Handset Alliance, whose members include Android handset makers such as Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson, for example, and the respective mobile phone operators.

Though it's good that these phone makers received the patches, the concern for many Bitcoin users now is whether these partners will roll out the patches to their customer bases.

or something else I'm not getting?

From the end of the actual trial.
Apparently, WordPerfect for Windows 3.11 was not compatible with Windows 95. Novell was outraged that Microsoft did not retain whatever it was that WordPerfect required exactly how it was in 3.11. Novell asserted that Microsoft broke compatibility solely to give MSWord a headstart on Windows 95 systems, that changing unpublished system APIs had no other possible benefit for an operating system.

If the source can support it, the cable will handle it just fine.

Not necessarily. Some cheap cables don't have enough conductors to safely carry 2A. Also USB-PD is a power delivery extension that allows cables to identify their current limit using the ID pin originally added for OTG. These cables have the standard USB2 or 3 icon enclosed in a "battery" outline.

There is a bug in the downstream power standard Intel chipset when used for USB-PD. You can't actually run it at 2A, or you have to only run it that way in ports that won't let you charge and communicate with the device at the same time, as a hard-wired option. We found this out designing the initial ChromeBox, which is why two of the back USB ports are not really that useful for charging.

If you're using something other than an Intel chipset in your PC, yeah; the TI USB-PD/OTG implementation works, although I don't think there's any laptop hardware or desktop hardware that uses it. I think it's mostly used in drives and drive enclosures.

Apple tends to get away with it because they use discrete electronics separate from the USB controller to handle downstream charging; of course, this makes their hardware more expensive, but it works, which some people value.

I'm not sure how many power bricks are intelligent enough to do the USB-PD negotiations.

There's some rather nifty drawing board plans for 100W power deliver for things like monitors, but so far, they've only been been demonstrates as FPGAs, rather than someone spinning them into silicon. The article on it is here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inq...

There's no way the market share on Android explains the malware for the device; Android is not 98% of the smartphone market, but it DOES have 98% of the malware.

This is exactly why for any non-technical user I cannot recommend Android. It's too dangerous for people who are not technically ept enough to properly manage security or know when something is fishy.

Yes the onerousims are much. Verily, Microsoft can't touch anything like GPL V2.

In related news, Police are on the look out for a group of programmers pretending to be them

http://www.theinquirer.net/inq...

Firstly, Cameron didn't say it was necessary. He merely used that example to illustrate what he was saying.

Cameron's first act as PM was to repeal Labour's ID Cards Act (which was compulsory fingerprinting, numbering and recording on a national database to hook up all govt databases) and destroy the hard disks Guardian-style. Maybe this is where he got the idea.

He also attended the inception meeting of NO2ID, the immensely successful campaign that Labour's Home Minister Secretary at the time, David Blunkett, acknowledged in his final speech.

The Tory Snooper's Charter was a mess. Expert after expert (including industry data-rape experts from Google et al) slagged it off in official proceedings and even an open letter. We're kinda used to Govts being clueless about IT but what was properly disturbing was how the Home Office ignored all this clear and helpful feedback. So certainly, Theresa May should be sacked.

I'm not sure Cameron ever stepped in until now. Under pressure from his party, Clegg eventually said he wasn't going to support any such Bill and so that killed it for this Parliament.

We badly need an Act clawing back some of the surveillance powers of the state. They can do already do any surveillance at the ISP level they want as well as lock up people for not disclosing their public keys. There are no checks on that power whatsover in this country bar possibly The Guardian.

So that's a summary of where we are. The debate I wanted to highlight is how do we assess Cameron's views on this:

Few people know this but Cameron used to write a column for the left-wing Guardian. And he was far more liberal a couple of years before he got into power.

Has he gone from liberal to totalitarian in 3-6 years? If so, why? Is it merely scary-sounding intelligence reports or is it possible that our secret services are blackmailing him?

Or is he merely trying to shift the cost burden of surveillance from the state to the ISP/customer? And if so, why is he talking about a dead Bill which he has almost no chance of reintroducing (since he'll almost certainly be kicked out in 2015)?

But the "dirty little secret" that doesn't get brought up enough frankly is a lot of those "single threaded loads" is as rigged as quack.exe was back in the day thanks to every Intel compiler made since 2002 being made to put out crippled code for any chip that Intel doesn't want to push. Oh and for those that use the "Intel just knows their own chips and optimizes for them" excuse that lie has been disproved and the proof was the last gen Pentium 3. You see the last gen P3 was curbstomping the Netburst P4s in early benchmarks, yet when the cripple compiler comes out? Suddenly the very same Netburst chips are winning by 30%!

And the bitch is that any of these so called review sites could test for rigging trivially but they won't for fear of losing Intel advertising revenue. To see if a program is rigged all one has to do is run the code on a Via CPU, Via CPUs allow one to softmod the CPUID so if you change the CPUID from "Centaur Hauls" to "Genuine Intel" and suddenly the chip scores 20%-30%+ higher on the test? Then the program has been rigged by ICC, simple as that.

All of these sites like Anandtech and Tom's have more than enough money to pick up a Via chip and keep it around for testing but they won't bite the hand that feeds so everyone should consider their tests to be tainted and as worthless as Quake tests were with the rigged drivers. It would be nice if someone would run some real tests so we could see real numbers, wouldn't be hard to do as GCC is free and there are plenty of FOSS programs like Firefox one could compile with GCC to give accurate tests but so far no review site will do this for fear of pissing off Intel. How they didn't get busted for antitrust is beyond me, this is every bit as bad as "Windows isn't done until lotus won't run" but they were allowed to bribe AMD to the tune of 2 billion to drop the lawsuit and with it the investigation.

Oh it wasn't just TFA, look above and below you and see how every single post that said anything positive about AMD was downmodded. Not just one, or two, EVERY SINGLE ONE. If that doesn't prove that the mod system is completely broken here? Then honestly I don't know what does.

But watch how quick they burn this...AMD has the "bang for the buck" sown up, nowhere can you get a quad CPU with a graphics chip capable of BF4 in the Intel camp for less than triple that, nowhere at all.

Oh and before the fanboys trot out any benchmarks? might help you to know they are as rigged as "quack.exe" was back in the day as Intel's compilers put out crippled code that it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to disable, and guess what compiler is used by most if not all the major benchmark suites? You guessed it. Try running a real world test with programs compiled with GCC or even AMD's compiler (as AMD doesn't "return the favor" and rig their compiler, in fact they hand out the code so you can see what it does for yourself) and you'll find nearly all the tests come within less than 20% of each other and the only ones they manage to pull away to a whole 30%? The top o' the line i7. 300% price increase for less than 30% real world performance difference...sorry but the bang for the buck is still with big red.

I looked up some companies by name (too bad you posted as AC and didn't mention them), and here is what I found:

Intel reveals a neuromorphic chip design based on memristors and spintronics

HP and Hynix postpone memristor-based memory to avoid cannibalizing their flash business

This pearl deserves to be quoted:

"In terms of commercialization, we will have something technologically viable by the end of next year. Our partner, Hynix, is a major producer of flash memory, and memristors will cannibalize its existing business by replacing some flash memory with a different technology. So the way we time the introduction of memristors turns out to be important," said Stan Williams, Hewlett-Packard senior fellow and director of the company's cognitive systems laboratory, during a conversation at the Kavli Foundation.

SanDisk and Toshiba are testing a ReRAM (memristor memory) chip

HP working with AMD, Intel, ARM and others to release memristor-based "nanostores".

A working memristor has already been proven in the lab by HP and they are now working with AMD, Intel, ARM and others to release what they call "nanostores". A chip that combines the memristor and logic of the CPU can prove to replace all current microprocessors and memory architectures.

A startup named "Crossbar" will try to beat HP to market with memristor-based ReRAM.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2102435/aes-encryption-cracked

Your Welcome.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2290640/germany-warns-against-using-windows-8-due-to-security-risks

You just revoke the keys and suddenly the machine can't boot.

It's funny how the NSA accuses China of inserting back doors but Snowden shows how the NSA inserts back doors. China hacks into systems but Snowden shows the NSA has hacked into tens of thousands of networks. And now the NSA is bragging about preventing a shutdown button when we already know it did the exact same thing.

and just after The EU mandates micro-USB as a common phone charger

Oh? I did a quick google search and all I could find was that they abandoned the entire .NET/Windows platform complete and switched to linux.

eg: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1588339/london-stock-exchange-switches-linux

Can you point me to a link saying they are still using .NET?

Yes, and we all know they would never collect data for no apparent reason.

It really is a silly question. IBM has an artificial brain with as many synapses as a human brain right now. Fusion energy is on the verge of a breakthrough, 3-D printers are almost cost effective on a per-household basis, solar power is dropping to the cost of coal power, Moore's law has held steady for decades... We are at the start of a second industrial revolution that will put everything in history to shame and without the exploding population from the first one. The world will be totally unrecognizable in a hundred years.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2287932/kim-dotcom-s-prism-busting-encrypted-email-service-will-be-out-in-2014

You know why you hate TMRepo, which BTW you should be fucking ASHAMED of comparing a JOKE SITE to Stromfront you douchebag, but you know why you hate it? Because like all good jokes its FUNNY BECAUSE ITS TRUE.

I can answer ALL of your arguments with the top 20 TMRepos, you know why? Its the SAME FUCKING EXCUSES the FOSSies have been using for a fricking decade, that's why! How do you think TMRepo came to be? a guy got tired of hearing the same old FOSSie bullshit and decided to just start listing them and tada! TMRepo.

So go back to your circle of loon, go back to pretending that the OEMs haven't all walked away from your broken mess because they got tired of the broken shit which even ESR can't make work while claiming that android is Linux.

Know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result and that is Linux in a nutshell which is why me and every other B&M retailer and OEM have run away screaming from your mess, why even Dell hides it on a back page and gives you multiple warning before they will even sell it to you and just FYI unlike the Windows versions NO SUPPORT because even they know that shit is gonna break. I mean for the love of God fricking God Windows 8, the most hated windows since MSBob, got more users by its second month than Linux has in its entire history, what more proof do you fucking need that your current bullshit direction ain't working?

BTW know why I can produce so many citations and all you can produce is insults? because just like TMRepo I've heard the same excuses from FOSSies for so damned long i know EXACTLY what to type into a search engine to cut through your lies, but you hang onto your bullshit but if you have the balls take the Hairyfeet challenge, I dare you, double dare you to film it and upload it, you'll find that even giving Linux just HALF the support cycle of Linux it WILL fail, know why? Because the "let the devs do it" driver horseshit is just that,total fucking horseshit and IT DOES NOT WORK, it will NEVER work, and THAT is why even the other free OSes refuse to use his fucked up driver model!

Riiight, because Linux doesn't have problems which is why it did so well on netbooks, but that is to be expected with Linux having such a well thought out roadmap. Of course to have remote assistance you'd have to have functional hardware acceleration but who needs that, right? Why Linux is so secure and so much more stable than Windows why even needing that feature is unthinkable!

The ONLY person moving the goalposts IS YOU. I have been posting here for ages, everyone here knows I run a RETAIL shop, and I sell to Joe and Jane Average, your Brian the backhoe operater, Bill the Bank teller, Mary the checkout girl, the people YOU HAVE TO SUPPORT if you expect Linux to EVER become more than a hobbyist niche OS like Haiku.

And what do Linux advocates call "solutions"? Sci-Linux, RHEL with its minimum $300 a year for updates, the mess and drama that is CENTOS, ironically they have NO choice but to move the goalposts because the ones that are supposedly aimed at consumers is laughably terrible, like Ubuntu whom Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the planet, couldn't keep working on a single netbook without paying a team of devs to run their own fork. Now Dell can call Shuttleworth at home if they wanted, if THEY can't get drivers that will stay working thanks to the fucked up design who in the hell can?

In case you missed the memo its consumer consumer consumer now, with everyone focusing on the consumer, yet all i get told is that your "solutions" are either targeted at niches so small that you could fit every user in your average HS gym and have seats left over, cost waaaaay more than Windows (as I said $300 a years just to get updates with RHEL which again is targeted at workstations NOT consumers) and told this is viable. Bullshit, its not, and its the reason why Walmart, Staples, Best Buy, Asus,MSI, I'll be happy to wallpaper the page with citations if you wish, they ALL tried Linux and ALL found it wanting.

Do you seriously think Apple is not fronting the cash for TSMC's upgraded fabs? Paying cash up front to suppliers so that it can get first access to the newest parts is one of Apple's key strategies and it's the reason Tim Cook got to be the CEO.

TSMC rejected exactly such an offer from Apple:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2201520/tsmc-rejected-billions-from-apple-and-qualcomm-for-exclusive-access

According to Lora Ho, CFO of TSMC, the firm is not even willing to allocate a fab to a single vendor and said, "You have to be careful. Once that product migrates, what are we going to do with that dedicated fab? We would like to keep the flexibility."

While "need" might be subjective, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how the internet continues to believe that Samsung doesn't care about Apple as a customer.

Even accounting for the fact that these articles are a bit dated (and I do mean a bit - one is months old and the other is less than a year old), it's clear that Apple is a SIGNIFICANT part of Samsung's finances.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/08/07/apple-now-accounts-for-8-8-of-samsungs-revenue/

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2269565/apples-iphone-and-ipad-chips-generated-83-percent-of-samsungs-processor-revenue

I don't know too many companies that are happy about cutting out 9-ish% of their revenue just to spite a rival. That is a HUGE portion of a company's bottom line. I don't know of any company that is willing to lose 83% of a divisions revenue.

So, no, Samsung may not literally _NEED_ Apple - they probably won't fall into bankruptcy if Apple cuts all ties - but it would be foolish to think that Samsung doesn't care about Apple's money that is stuffing their coffers. It would be silly to think that Samsung is happy that Apple is shifting their supply chain away from them. Say whatever you want about Samsung (and there certainly is a lot that can be said about them) but I have to assume their upper management is smart enough to know that losing Apple as a customer is a very bad thing.

How the talking heads on the internet haven't figured that out is beyond me. I guess their hatred of Apple is blinding them to the facts of the business world, namely that companies like having customers that bring in a lot of money and dislike losing customers that bring in a lot of money.

If all you are gonna do to defend is quote bits of the circle of loon do us both a favor and don't bother, okay? What is sad is every bullshit defense of Linux and Torvalds bad practices i can cover with 7 or less TMs from linux TM repo which is a fricking joke site made to highlight how much of it is just the same old bullshit excuses.

lets see, just from looking at the first couple of lines you've invoked our developers can do no wrong, the more developers the better the software linux supports more hardware and Linux friendly hardware AKA "blame the victim" just for good measure.

You know why its soooo damned easy to pick apart yours or any other defends arguments JUST using the TM Repo? because its the same shitty pathetic excuses we've gotten from linux for the better part of the decade, the exact same ones over, and over, and over, it never changes. Its like the old joke "If I gave you a sandwich that is 95% shit and 5% ham, would you call it a ham sandwich?" because THAT is what you get, the devs can go "its everybody else's fault" and you'll buy it, they can say "works for me!" and you'll take that as a legitimate excuse, and when there is obvious fail rubbed in your nose, like with Dell having to run their own God damned repo just to keep the drivers from shitting on themselves thanks to those "great devs" shitting all over the internals? why the community will counter with you don't need that.

This is why I have anything to do with linux blocked from my feeds, because its pointless, its like talking to young earthers, there is no amount of evidence or citations that will change their mind because it ALL comes down to religion and faith. I mean for the love of Christ the ONLY argument against a driver ABI you've gotten from a dev is so damned Church of GPL he actually writes "And I hope all non free drivers are broken often"? I mean WTF more evidence do you need? RMS dropping his pants and showing a GPL tat on his ass? In ANY other org his ass would be FIRED with a capital F, but because FOSS has become a fucking Scientology style religion he was cheered!

So do us all a favor, if you can't come up with an argument that wasn't covered by TM Repo a half a decade ago? Keep your pamplets to yourself. You know what the definition of insanity is, right? Well its been 20 years, Linux is down to 0.97% and falling, if that doesn't wake the fucking community up nothing will, let 'em sit in the corner and wonder why you have tens of millions that would rather take the risk of stealing the other guy's product than take yours for free.

Of course i'm sure you'll counter with stable kernel API nonsense and maybe imaginary problems kill windows just to be safe.

Component sales to Apple are a relatively small percentage of Samsung's profits...

Even assuming the numbers in these two articles are off a bit and slightly dated, I don't think "relatively small" is an accurate representation of Apple's impact on Samsung's revenue. Feel free to cite contradicting numbers if you can find any but I seriously doubt you will - Apple is a massive client for Samsung.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/08/07/apple-now-accounts-for-8-8-of-samsungs-revenue/

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2269565/apples-iphone-and-ipad-chips-generated-83-percent-of-samsungs-processor-revenue

That said, Samsung may have still decided to go for the short term direct profit route of increasing their device sales at the cost of their long term relationship with a massive client, but don't think for a second that Apple is a small part of Samsung's revenue stream.

There were plenty of MP3 players around before the ipod (and good ones too!).

Before the iPod, MP3 players were either small with low capacity or used huge fragile laptop drives. They had horrible interfaces and slow transfers.

Android was in development for a long time before Apple released the iPhone, as were various other similar projects (for example, OpenMoko; which was never taken seriously by the industry, but basically got quite a long way towards producing something similar to the iphone quite a long time before the iphone was actually released). Development takes a long time - Google didn't see the iphone and immediately magic up a competing platform, they were both developed simultaneously and Apple happened to get there first.

This was Android before the iPhone.....

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2170500/googles-android-prototype-smartphone-blackberry-rip

Ah fuck off. It's actually a good and interesting question to see what the various specialists come up with.

Nah, it's called getting a set of basic user requirements and then looking through a set of products to see which match the list. This just reeks of laziness and namedropping on slashdot so someone will post the solution for you.

By the way, I'm looking for a toaster on linux, it needs to be able to have 6 settings, usuable by many people (including students). I need to be able to develop toast on it, but it also needs to run an operational toasting environment, preferably on the same hardware. I would like it to be fully scriptable, and I need to be able to hook it up to an LDAP. It would be nice if it came included with a coffeemachine, which should also be fully scriptable. I've found the Coffee HOWTO, but haven't bothered reading it. Could you guys give me an opinion on how to adapt this to my toaster project? I've looked at relays, resistors and capacitors... They all seem very nice.

Please spend a little more time reading the manuals and typing in a few requests in Google before posting this to Ask Slashdot: be a bit more professional.

Fuck it, karma to burn anyway.

You could try doing a little basic research before posting your question.

Here's a toaster that meets more of your requirements, though it runs NetBSD rather than Linux:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1018836/toaster-pc-runs-bsd-makes-toast

Let us know if that doesn't meet your requirements for some reason, there may be some NetBSD packages that can do what you need.