I stopped using extX filesystems long ago because they lost files after power cuts waay too easily.
That's still better than reiserfs, which does not need a power cut in order to lose data. I still recall a comment from a tech support area I used to frequent: "reiserfs runs really fast until it crashes and you lose all your data. As a result it has a lot of ex-users who are now sadder but wiser."
It is also important to remember that ext3 can be configured for a number of different points along the speed/safety tradeoff, so any stories about problems (with speed *or* safety) should state which mode they were using.
Neither the name "Firefox", or the artwork, is part of the codebase
Both the name and the artwork are included in the tarball. That makes them part of the codebase, for licensing purposes.
Debian choose what was the worst possible choice
Debian did not have any other choices. The other option offered by Mozilla was entirely incompatible with Debian's release and licensing policies and could not possibly be accepted by them. The Mozilla crew are fully aware of this, and have had it explained multiple times - and their reaction was "change the name, then".
Debian wants to change the code-base of Firefox. Fine. allowed.
I'm sorry, you lose. This is not allowed - unless you remove the firefox artwork and change the name, or submit to specific per-change licensing from Mozilla (which Debian's policies do not permit, for a number of practical and philosophical reasons). That is what Mozilla have said to Debian. If you do not agree with this, feel free to take up the issue with Mozilla, because Debian will presume them to be correct on any matters regarding what is and is not acceptable here.
Debian wants to get a free ride
This is not at all true. Debian has been saying to the Mozilla crew for a long time (since several years ago when this first came up): "we'll leave the name alone if you don't give us a reason to change it, but we'll change it if you want". Mozilla previously said "okay, leave it alone for now" but now they came back to Debian and said "you've got to change it now". At no point did Debian attempt to "get a free ride", they just did exactly what the Mozilla developers asked for.
Im sure you will counter with: security patches after mozilla.org stops supporting $VER_NOW dont qualify. Only partially true: with IBM/RedHat/Novell supporting mozilla 1.4 long after.org dropped it
This option has never been offered by Mozilla in respect of Debian's support for Firefox 1.0 (which is still having security fixes applied in Debian, and which is known to have users that are either unable or unwilling to upgrade).
Let us recap with a statement from Mike Connor, speaking officially on behalf of Mozilla (on the subject of whether or not Debian can call the version it ships "Firefox"):
At the time, we obviously weren't taking that part seriously. We are now, and we're saying its not ok.
The software will be essentially identical to Firefox. I think we may see other distributions doing the same thing, as it's just not tenable for ANY distribution to contain software that it can't service.
I distinctly recall an (unofficial) comment from some RedHat developer (I can't remember who now) that basically said "we've looked at it and figured we'd wait and see what the Debian folk will do", with an implication that they didn't really want to go to the trouble of doing anything about it and would be quite happy if Debian did the work for them. This has happened before - the commercial distros like to punt on these issues because they know that Debian will probably do most of the work for them if they wait long enough. Presumably they also figure that if ever a serious problem should occur as a result of Debian cleaning up one of these messes, they can then avoid it (by cutting a deal with the authors or something) - but that hasn't happened before, so it's just speculation.
I just don't want to one day find a vulnerability or incompatibility in IceWeasel that's not in Firefox.
So I'm wondering what you're going to do when you find a vulnerability in Firefox that's not in IceWeasel?
Because that's happened before. There have been security holes in Firefox that Debian didn't have. I do not recall the reverse ever being true. Debian has always been *more* conservative and careful about this than Mozilla, not less.
I am moving away because if the slow as balls release cycles.
This is a feature. A slow release cycle is a benefit in many environments - a high-end teaching environment, for example, absolutely can not be deploying a functionality-changing upgrade more than once a year, because you'll screw over all the work currently in progress if you do it in the middle of the academic year. A lot of businesses also need to keep disruption to a minimum, which means infrequent upgrades - any high end sysadmin will tell you that "upgrade" is synonymous with "downtime and more trouble tickets than usual". A distribution which forces you to upgrade often in order to maintain support is entirely inappropriate in such an environment.
You are obviously not the target audience. Please hurry up and use something else so that we don't have to listen to you gripe about it any more. If you're using the wrong tool for the job then that's your own fault. (Quite what job requires using only software that is less than 6 months old is unclear, but I'll just assume that you do have a reason and aren't simply crazy)
why is Debian "wasting" time patching Firefox when they could be I don't know, releasing a "stable" that isn't 10 years old?
Because Debian thinks that having a release without security holes in it is more important than a release with an increased version number. If you don't care about security, Debian is probably not the distribution for you.
If it is to be renamed then why not do it with some reference to the reason.
It is. The Mozilla foundation were and are considered to be being rather silly (in demanding something that more or less no other free software project does and thereby forcing Debian to rename it, which ultimately defeats the goal of the Mozilla project's trademark rules anyway so it's just *silly*), so the alternative names were proposed in the spirit of sarcasm that such a thing richly deserves. Personally, I'm still sore that my proposed "mozzarella" didn't catch on.
You should try comparing this to the effects of spending a few million dollars on building and running schools. The question here is not "does this accomplish anything?", it's "is this the most cost-effective way?". Make no mistake, this is money that has been taken away from other projects (although given the rather dubious Libyan government, it would be hard to work out what). You don't have to show that it's worthwhile, you have to show that it's more worthwhile than the things it is replacing.
Re:And unfortunately right about YouTube
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it's hard for Google/Youtube to say they had no knowledge of any infringing material that becomes wildly popular
The courts only consider actual knowledge that Google/YouTube had, not knowledge that they might have had. The plaintiff has to demonstrate that they did know this and failed to act on it. The courts do not acknowledge claims that they "should have" known this, unless the plaintiff can prove negligence (failing to read your email is negligent; failing to read slashdot or fark is not, so "wildly popular" has no relevance here).
Furthermore, if the plaintiff had knowledge of the infringement, but did not tell Google about it, then that's an affirmative defence for Google - so this scenario will never occur. Anybody who finds infringing material on YouTube is obliged to first inform Google of this fact, and if Google then promptly takes it down, the matter is considered closed. You can't just take somebody to court without first asking them to rectify the problem, and attempting to do so will severely prejudice the case against you, particularly since judges are not fond of people who waste their time with matters that could have been resolved out of court.
(The rest of your post appears to be a rant without any relevant content - a series of insults does not constitute a point, nor does anything which just says "you're wrong" without any further detail)
Re:And unfortunately right about YouTube
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Ballmer Sounds Off
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· Score: 1
Weird how no US based P2P site has managed to use the safe harbour defence.
All of the lawsuits in the US have been based on the P2P site refusing or failing to terminate specific cases of infringement. That explicitly excludes them from the safe harbour defence, which requires that they do anything within their power to take down the offending material. The courts have ruled that because they *could* have blocked the specific files on their servers, but did not do so, the safe harbour defence does not apply and they are liable for "contributory infringement".
Fibre does indeed have a much greater upper limit, so this whole story is complete fud.
What's more, it's a stupid thing to even be caring about. Why do we use fibre, really? It's much more expensive than copper... over short runs.
We use fibre because (a) it can cover vastly more distance than copper, (b) it is less sensitive to interference (not a big deal with 100Mbit over copper, but a major problem with 1GBit or faster over copper at long distances), and (c) it does not have nasty ground potential problems when moving between buildings (if your buildings use independent earthing rods, they may have different potentials that vary over time, which creates its own array of problems when stringing conductive cables between them - fixable problems, but ones which you could really live without, and fibre is non-conductive).
You will note that "speed" was not in that list anywhere. We don't use fibre because it's faster, even though it *is* - we use it because, in a range of applications, it's vastly more practical. When we use copper, we do so because it's cheaper.
Re:And unfortunately right about YouTube
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Ballmer Sounds Off
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· Score: 1
Hard, of course, for Google/Youtube to argue that something was not noticed if it's being downloaded very much at all.
I'm sorry, did you just claim that anything which is being downloaded by many people must be illicit material? You, sir, are an MPAA schill.
(A) (i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing; (ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or (iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;
Nothing in here says that Google are required to search for infringing material themselves. They merely have to respond when they notice it.
Oddly enough, Google have been doing this for years - it's something that appears in just about every other one of their products in more or less the same manner. And yet, strangely, they have not been sued into oblivion yet, despite the large amount of 'infringing' material which is present both in the Google search engine and its caching service. Despite all the media cartels making noises about this a few years back, nobody has successfully sued Google about this at all. It's a safe bet that they know what they're doing by now.
I've honestly no idea why Microsoft backed down against Adobe.
Personally, I figure that the most likely answer is that they did a deal behind closed doors. The whole "Adobe won't let us" thing would then have been a cover they agreed on to keep the deal quiet. Microsoft agrees not to reduce the market for Acrobat by implementing PDF features (so that clueless PHBs will continue to buy Acrobat just to create PDFs), and Adobe gives them some unknown thing that they wanted.
While this is pure speculation, it seems to me to be the most likely answer - this sort of thing is normal in big business (especially the "agreeing on a public lie to hide what's really going on" part). We usually find out about them anyway, but not until several years after the fact when nobody cares any more.
Re:And unfortunately right about YouTube
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Ballmer Sounds Off
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· Score: 3, Informative
If I were a shareholder, I'd be deeply worried that Google has opened themselves up to a potentially fatal IP battle.
That's because you're either not up to date on US law or you've been listening to Ballmer for too long. Title 2 of the DMCA creates a "safe harbour" which exempts Google (and any other "Online Service Provider") from liability for this sort of thing, so long as they comply with certain rules. Google almost certainly plan to follow these rules to the letter, as they do for all other other services, which means nobody can take them to court in the US for anything posted on YouTube by a third party.
Basically, if you post something to YouTube, it's your fault and not theirs. They are not obliged to screen the content. If somebody sends them a "takedown" notice, they are obliged to presume guilt and remove the content (without investigating). If you then send them a counter-notice, they are obliged to presume innocence and restore the content (still without investigating), and then you and the person who sent the notice get to fight it out in court.
(This is the "good" part of the DMCA, providing a form of common carrier status to hosting companies; Title 1 is the "bad" part, enslaving the US to DRM)
Even though some nano-materials could be highly dangerous to human health?
Just about everything you buy in the supermarket either includes or has been in contact with materials that are highly dangerous to human health. This would just be an insignificant new entry on a list that is already impressively long.
Furthermore, we have historically never discovered that things were dangerous until they had already been used for extended periods of time. Based on this, we can conclude that there is a high probability of unknown dangerous materials being present in our food.
It's still far safer to eat supermarket food than it is to cross the street to reach the supermarket.
When scientists say "probably" related to our actions, that constitutes "strong reasons to think that we are causing"
No. It means "strong reason to think that we are one of the causes". All consensus studies so far, including the NAS one that you attempted to cite, have said that scientists think we don't yet know whether we are a major or a minor cause. That's the big problem really.
In the face of enormous uncertainties, to the extent that we MAY be contributing, the only rational response is to look for ways in which we might be endangering ourselves, and for ways to ameliorate those dangers.
Only if we have unlimited amounts of disposable wealth to expend on doing so. Otherwise, it has to compete with all the other things that need doing.
This is indeed news. It looks like Microsoft are actually getting something right this time!
It has been demonstrated time and time again: showing dialog boxes to ignorant users does not constitute a security feature. Windows users are trained to click 'Yes', 'Continue', or 'OK' to every dialog that appears until it goes away. They do not normally read the text.
All this when in reality the vast majority of researchers and people (at least outside the US) find that there are strong reasons to think that we are causing global warming, and that the consequences likely are devastating for a large portion of the Earth.
That's pure fiction. There have been many studies posted to slashdot alone on this subject, let alone reputable scientific news sources, and every one of them comes up the same: most scientists think the planet is getting hotter, it's probably related to our actions to some extent, and it may have other unknown causes. Most scientists think it is impossible to tell at this point what the long-term consequences are likely to be. "Devastating consequences" is pure Hollywood, there is no scientific consensus on the subject at all (if you think otherwise, show the study). The closest you'll find is a bunch of commonly accepted studies saying "if X and Y and Z happen, bad things will result", where there's no knowledge about whether or not those conditions will actually occur.
Endless debate on the subject and all the numbers you could want (no two sets the same) can be found by following links from wikipedia's article on Scientific opinion on climate change.
Someone had to ask. How is this technique going to maintain a person?
It isn't. Despite the regular press idiocy on this subject, quantum teleportation has got absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek-style transporters. This is a form of communication link, teleporting information from one place to another at the speed of light. It cannot operate on people, rocks, or any other tangible object. We may someday invent a matter transporter, but it won't be using this technology and it certainly isn't what they're studying. To quote from the opening paragraph in the Wikipedia article, which is the very least any ignorant reporter should read before posting nonsense on the subject:
Quantum teleportation does not transport energy or matter, nor does it allow communication of information at superluminal speed.
This is about the next generation of technology that may someday replace optic fibre for long-distance communication links (and may also be useful in the construction of quantum computers, should we ever find a use for them). Nothing to do with Star Trek. If you ever catch a reporter confusing the two again, please hurt them. Badly.
I can't believe why so many Slashdotters are complaining about the decision to limit internet access for a product that isn't activated/paid.
The current version of their code for checking this, in the form of WGA, is notorious for giving false positives on large numbers of legitimate boxes, causing the annoyware to kick in. Microsoft are fully aware of this, to the point where they have written a piece of software which can detect that it is happening - they have not fixed the problem, their solution is for you to reinstall Windows. Microsoft are saying that in Vista, it won't just annoy you, it will lock down your computer. We have absolutely no reason to expect the Vista version to be any more reliable than the current one.
We are talking here about a deliberately induced, box-crippling bug as an additional feature of something that already does not work properly. It's not hard to see why people are complaining, if you look.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to working on the plans to migrate the desktops away from Windows. When this disaster is forced onto the market, I'm going to need them.
MS didnt lock anyone out of the interfaces, they simply closed an UNSUPPORTED interface.
"They didn't lock him out of the house, they just closed the door and locked it".
The practical effect of this action is that third parties cannot interoperate where they were previously able to. It does not matter how well or badly the interoperability previously functioned; it was there and now it is not. Antitrust law says that Microsoft are now obliged to provide a replacement (for example, licensing McAfee and Symantec to install kernel patches - exactly the same thing that Microsoft themselves have the ability to do - at any reasonable price and under any reasonable conditions).
Even regular CPUs have an interface (the instruction set etc) and their inner workings are sealed from the software developers.
The inner workings are usually published in great detail, because they are critical to writing efficient code and compilers for the processor. Once you know the full details of how to optimise code for a CPU, you know more or less what it's operational schematic is. Any academic researcher in chip design could sketch out the architecture of the Athlon64 based on the manuals provided by AMD. Nobody considers that information to be secret.
What you don't know is the actual layout of the circuitry on the chip, which is what you'd need in order to manufacture more chips. You probably don't care much, either. In the case of Athlon/Pentium processors, you're not going to care, because unless you are a chip-making giant you do not own a fabrication plant capable of building those processors and aren't ever going to own one (they cost billions) - and if you are a chip-making giant, you own a collection of analysis equipment which includes a scanning electron microscope, and have already scanned the chips of all your competitors to see how they are put together. It really makes no odds whether they publish that data or not; the only people who could use it have no need for it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's still better than reiserfs, which does not need a power cut in order to lose data. I still recall a comment from a tech support area I used to frequent: "reiserfs runs really fast until it crashes and you lose all your data. As a result it has a lot of ex-users who are now sadder but wiser."
It is also important to remember that ext3 can be configured for a number of different points along the speed/safety tradeoff, so any stories about problems (with speed *or* safety) should state which mode they were using.
I dunno, "Her it dies! where" does sound an awful lot like a Korean to me, at least going by the way the MMOG players talk.
Both the name and the artwork are included in the tarball. That makes them part of the codebase, for licensing purposes.
Debian did not have any other choices. The other option offered by Mozilla was entirely incompatible with Debian's release and licensing policies and could not possibly be accepted by them. The Mozilla crew are fully aware of this, and have had it explained multiple times - and their reaction was "change the name, then".
I'm sorry, you lose. This is not allowed - unless you remove the firefox artwork and change the name, or submit to specific per-change licensing from Mozilla (which Debian's policies do not permit, for a number of practical and philosophical reasons). That is what Mozilla have said to Debian. If you do not agree with this, feel free to take up the issue with Mozilla, because Debian will presume them to be correct on any matters regarding what is and is not acceptable here.
This is not at all true. Debian has been saying to the Mozilla crew for a long time (since several years ago when this first came up): "we'll leave the name alone if you don't give us a reason to change it, but we'll change it if you want". Mozilla previously said "okay, leave it alone for now" but now they came back to Debian and said "you've got to change it now". At no point did Debian attempt to "get a free ride", they just did exactly what the Mozilla developers asked for.
This option has never been offered by Mozilla in respect of Debian's support for Firefox 1.0 (which is still having security fixes applied in Debian, and which is known to have users that are either unable or unwilling to upgrade).
Let us recap with a statement from Mike Connor, speaking officially on behalf of Mozilla (on the subject of whether or not Debian can call the version it ships "Firefox"):
I distinctly recall an (unofficial) comment from some RedHat developer (I can't remember who now) that basically said "we've looked at it and figured we'd wait and see what the Debian folk will do", with an implication that they didn't really want to go to the trouble of doing anything about it and would be quite happy if Debian did the work for them. This has happened before - the commercial distros like to punt on these issues because they know that Debian will probably do most of the work for them if they wait long enough. Presumably they also figure that if ever a serious problem should occur as a result of Debian cleaning up one of these messes, they can then avoid it (by cutting a deal with the authors or something) - but that hasn't happened before, so it's just speculation.
So I'm wondering what you're going to do when you find a vulnerability in Firefox that's not in IceWeasel?
Because that's happened before. There have been security holes in Firefox that Debian didn't have. I do not recall the reverse ever being true. Debian has always been *more* conservative and careful about this than Mozilla, not less.
This is a feature. A slow release cycle is a benefit in many environments - a high-end teaching environment, for example, absolutely can not be deploying a functionality-changing upgrade more than once a year, because you'll screw over all the work currently in progress if you do it in the middle of the academic year. A lot of businesses also need to keep disruption to a minimum, which means infrequent upgrades - any high end sysadmin will tell you that "upgrade" is synonymous with "downtime and more trouble tickets than usual". A distribution which forces you to upgrade often in order to maintain support is entirely inappropriate in such an environment.
You are obviously not the target audience. Please hurry up and use something else so that we don't have to listen to you gripe about it any more. If you're using the wrong tool for the job then that's your own fault. (Quite what job requires using only software that is less than 6 months old is unclear, but I'll just assume that you do have a reason and aren't simply crazy)
Because Debian thinks that having a release without security holes in it is more important than a release with an increased version number. If you don't care about security, Debian is probably not the distribution for you.
It is. The Mozilla foundation were and are considered to be being rather silly (in demanding something that more or less no other free software project does and thereby forcing Debian to rename it, which ultimately defeats the goal of the Mozilla project's trademark rules anyway so it's just *silly*), so the alternative names were proposed in the spirit of sarcasm that such a thing richly deserves. Personally, I'm still sore that my proposed "mozzarella" didn't catch on.
You should try comparing this to the effects of spending a few million dollars on building and running schools. The question here is not "does this accomplish anything?", it's "is this the most cost-effective way?". Make no mistake, this is money that has been taken away from other projects (although given the rather dubious Libyan government, it would be hard to work out what). You don't have to show that it's worthwhile, you have to show that it's more worthwhile than the things it is replacing.
The courts only consider actual knowledge that Google/YouTube had, not knowledge that they might have had. The plaintiff has to demonstrate that they did know this and failed to act on it. The courts do not acknowledge claims that they "should have" known this, unless the plaintiff can prove negligence (failing to read your email is negligent; failing to read slashdot or fark is not, so "wildly popular" has no relevance here).
Furthermore, if the plaintiff had knowledge of the infringement, but did not tell Google about it, then that's an affirmative defence for Google - so this scenario will never occur. Anybody who finds infringing material on YouTube is obliged to first inform Google of this fact, and if Google then promptly takes it down, the matter is considered closed. You can't just take somebody to court without first asking them to rectify the problem, and attempting to do so will severely prejudice the case against you, particularly since judges are not fond of people who waste their time with matters that could have been resolved out of court.
(The rest of your post appears to be a rant without any relevant content - a series of insults does not constitute a point, nor does anything which just says "you're wrong" without any further detail)
All of the lawsuits in the US have been based on the P2P site refusing or failing to terminate specific cases of infringement. That explicitly excludes them from the safe harbour defence, which requires that they do anything within their power to take down the offending material. The courts have ruled that because they *could* have blocked the specific files on their servers, but did not do so, the safe harbour defence does not apply and they are liable for "contributory infringement".
Google merely has to not do that.
Clearly you haven't been reading slashdot much.
What's more, it's a stupid thing to even be caring about. Why do we use fibre, really? It's much more expensive than copper... over short runs.
We use fibre because (a) it can cover vastly more distance than copper, (b) it is less sensitive to interference (not a big deal with 100Mbit over copper, but a major problem with 1GBit or faster over copper at long distances), and (c) it does not have nasty ground potential problems when moving between buildings (if your buildings use independent earthing rods, they may have different potentials that vary over time, which creates its own array of problems when stringing conductive cables between them - fixable problems, but ones which you could really live without, and fibre is non-conductive).
You will note that "speed" was not in that list anywhere. We don't use fibre because it's faster, even though it *is* - we use it because, in a range of applications, it's vastly more practical. When we use copper, we do so because it's cheaper.
I'm sorry, did you just claim that anything which is being downloaded by many people must be illicit material? You, sir, are an MPAA schill.
Nothing in here says that Google are required to search for infringing material themselves. They merely have to respond when they notice it.
Oddly enough, Google have been doing this for years - it's something that appears in just about every other one of their products in more or less the same manner. And yet, strangely, they have not been sued into oblivion yet, despite the large amount of 'infringing' material which is present both in the Google search engine and its caching service. Despite all the media cartels making noises about this a few years back, nobody has successfully sued Google about this at all. It's a safe bet that they know what they're doing by now.
Personally, I figure that the most likely answer is that they did a deal behind closed doors. The whole "Adobe won't let us" thing would then have been a cover they agreed on to keep the deal quiet. Microsoft agrees not to reduce the market for Acrobat by implementing PDF features (so that clueless PHBs will continue to buy Acrobat just to create PDFs), and Adobe gives them some unknown thing that they wanted.
While this is pure speculation, it seems to me to be the most likely answer - this sort of thing is normal in big business (especially the "agreeing on a public lie to hide what's really going on" part). We usually find out about them anyway, but not until several years after the fact when nobody cares any more.
That's because you're either not up to date on US law or you've been listening to Ballmer for too long. Title 2 of the DMCA creates a "safe harbour" which exempts Google (and any other "Online Service Provider") from liability for this sort of thing, so long as they comply with certain rules. Google almost certainly plan to follow these rules to the letter, as they do for all other other services, which means nobody can take them to court in the US for anything posted on YouTube by a third party.
Basically, if you post something to YouTube, it's your fault and not theirs. They are not obliged to screen the content. If somebody sends them a "takedown" notice, they are obliged to presume guilt and remove the content (without investigating). If you then send them a counter-notice, they are obliged to presume innocence and restore the content (still without investigating), and then you and the person who sent the notice get to fight it out in court.
(This is the "good" part of the DMCA, providing a form of common carrier status to hosting companies; Title 1 is the "bad" part, enslaving the US to DRM)
Just about everything you buy in the supermarket either includes or has been in contact with materials that are highly dangerous to human health. This would just be an insignificant new entry on a list that is already impressively long.
Furthermore, we have historically never discovered that things were dangerous until they had already been used for extended periods of time. Based on this, we can conclude that there is a high probability of unknown dangerous materials being present in our food.
It's still far safer to eat supermarket food than it is to cross the street to reach the supermarket.
No. It means "strong reason to think that we are one of the causes". All consensus studies so far, including the NAS one that you attempted to cite, have said that scientists think we don't yet know whether we are a major or a minor cause. That's the big problem really.
Only if we have unlimited amounts of disposable wealth to expend on doing so. Otherwise, it has to compete with all the other things that need doing.
It has been demonstrated time and time again: showing dialog boxes to ignorant users does not constitute a security feature. Windows users are trained to click 'Yes', 'Continue', or 'OK' to every dialog that appears until it goes away. They do not normally read the text.
That's pure fiction. There have been many studies posted to slashdot alone on this subject, let alone reputable scientific news sources, and every one of them comes up the same: most scientists think the planet is getting hotter, it's probably related to our actions to some extent, and it may have other unknown causes. Most scientists think it is impossible to tell at this point what the long-term consequences are likely to be. "Devastating consequences" is pure Hollywood, there is no scientific consensus on the subject at all (if you think otherwise, show the study). The closest you'll find is a bunch of commonly accepted studies saying "if X and Y and Z happen, bad things will result", where there's no knowledge about whether or not those conditions will actually occur.
Endless debate on the subject and all the numbers you could want (no two sets the same) can be found by following links from wikipedia's article on Scientific opinion on climate change.
It isn't. Despite the regular press idiocy on this subject, quantum teleportation has got absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek-style transporters. This is a form of communication link, teleporting information from one place to another at the speed of light. It cannot operate on people, rocks, or any other tangible object. We may someday invent a matter transporter, but it won't be using this technology and it certainly isn't what they're studying. To quote from the opening paragraph in the Wikipedia article, which is the very least any ignorant reporter should read before posting nonsense on the subject:
Quantum teleportation does not transport energy or matter, nor does it allow communication of information at superluminal speed.
This is about the next generation of technology that may someday replace optic fibre for long-distance communication links (and may also be useful in the construction of quantum computers, should we ever find a use for them). Nothing to do with Star Trek. If you ever catch a reporter confusing the two again, please hurt them. Badly.
The current version of their code for checking this, in the form of WGA, is notorious for giving false positives on large numbers of legitimate boxes, causing the annoyware to kick in. Microsoft are fully aware of this, to the point where they have written a piece of software which can detect that it is happening - they have not fixed the problem, their solution is for you to reinstall Windows. Microsoft are saying that in Vista, it won't just annoy you, it will lock down your computer. We have absolutely no reason to expect the Vista version to be any more reliable than the current one.
We are talking here about a deliberately induced, box-crippling bug as an additional feature of something that already does not work properly. It's not hard to see why people are complaining, if you look.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to working on the plans to migrate the desktops away from Windows. When this disaster is forced onto the market, I'm going to need them.
"They didn't lock him out of the house, they just closed the door and locked it".
The practical effect of this action is that third parties cannot interoperate where they were previously able to. It does not matter how well or badly the interoperability previously functioned; it was there and now it is not. Antitrust law says that Microsoft are now obliged to provide a replacement (for example, licensing McAfee and Symantec to install kernel patches - exactly the same thing that Microsoft themselves have the ability to do - at any reasonable price and under any reasonable conditions).
The inner workings are usually published in great detail, because they are critical to writing efficient code and compilers for the processor. Once you know the full details of how to optimise code for a CPU, you know more or less what it's operational schematic is. Any academic researcher in chip design could sketch out the architecture of the Athlon64 based on the manuals provided by AMD. Nobody considers that information to be secret.
What you don't know is the actual layout of the circuitry on the chip, which is what you'd need in order to manufacture more chips. You probably don't care much, either. In the case of Athlon/Pentium processors, you're not going to care, because unless you are a chip-making giant you do not own a fabrication plant capable of building those processors and aren't ever going to own one (they cost billions) - and if you are a chip-making giant, you own a collection of analysis equipment which includes a scanning electron microscope, and have already scanned the chips of all your competitors to see how they are put together. It really makes no odds whether they publish that data or not; the only people who could use it have no need for it.