I certainly have not seen Surface tablets in the corporate world like I have iPads. A few people have them, but many still have their iPads as their go-to device for everything but actual Office and work stuff.
On the whole, people seem to like them about as well as they like their iPads, but there's been no giant rush to migrate. Most people who "needed" tablets are already on their second iPad, and they have heavily invested in their apps. To switch, not only do they have to buy a new Surface (and a keyboard), but they have to walk away from perhaps hundreds of dollars of app store purchases and lose data in the process; there just isn't a compelling reason for what is essentially a lateral switch for most users.
I had to leave one company because they kept putting me projects with legacy software because I performed better on those projects than my peers. They even bumped my pay because they knew it was important. The problem was I didn't want to do it, and finding a new job is easy for anyone with real skills. I wasn't lazy, I just had better options.
I laughed when I read this followed by your sig:
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke.
Because it's good enough to meet many of today's needs, and it meets society's need to not create a throwaway technology for each and every device that a consumer buys.
I have a large box filled with wall warts that I've collected over the years, but the devices have long ago expired. (Most people simply throw them away along with the devices they no longer power, but when I'm building some kind of little toy project, I rummage around until I find one with the specs I need. I say recycling, my wife says pack-rat.) Either way, my box gives me a pretty good visualization of the amount of waste that one family's worth of demand creates over time. There's little reason to continue down that path.
Ultimately, if some phone maker needs something different in order to innovate, they can still provide one. For instance, nothing in the EU law prohibits a phone maker from adding an inductive coil into the backs of their phones, and charging them via desktop mats. Cordless is "better", right? They just have to also have the micro-USB port. Next year, if all phone makers start licensing inductive charging technology, the EU can certainly step in and modify the standard. Until then, waste is reduced.
Exactly. Imagine a movie that features a realistic docking to the ISS -- there's six action-packed hours of orbital maneuvering that just screams "great cinema!" Instead, they fly, they dock, and the story continues - not the accurate science.
Apollo 13 had a huge advantage these other stories don't: it wasn't fiction nearly as much as it was a recreation. They didn't have to write the drama into the script, they didn't have to invent science, they didn't have to invent an oxygen tank stirrer that might explode (which sounds like a plot device from ST:TOS). They even had first-hand reports from the scientists involved. They didn't have to fake anything.
If you're filming a space drama from scratch, there are a lot of gaps you have to fill in. In a science fiction movie, technology is always just beneath the veneer of the characters, embedded in the very set. Their lives are intertwined with the tech, dependent upon it for everything, so it's always visible on screen, and in the back of the audiences' minds - will the tank run out of air? Will a micrometeor strike rupture the hull? But if that mission has never taken place, the tech is imaginary. We think a manned mission to Mars would require X and Y and Z, but we've not done it yet. That leaves some tech up to the imagination of the production designer.
2001 did a phenomenal job incorporating imaginary tech into the sets. The rotating set shots were indeed brilliant. Even so, how many astronauts would you need to enter an actual 2001-era CPU cabinet to shut down a rogue AI program? While he nailed the vision of centripetal gravity, he completely missed on some of the most important technical advances. In 300 years would Lt. Ripley really need a separate room to access MOTHER? Would MOTHER really still be displaying on a green screen CRT?
These days it only takes a few such mistakes to break the tech-savvy audience out of their willing suspension of disbelief.
You can say "we have a great story, let's have these great actors and actresses carry it. Behind them, we'll place some blinking lights and switches that look all spacey, paint them white, and we'll get ILM to add smoke and rocket exhaust, but for the most part we're not going to worry about it." Or you can say "let's take the design for an actual rocket that might be used for this mission, and build the set to resemble it. For the plot devices, we need a panel to access the cryo stirring control valve, and a different hatch to access the electrical bus, and each should contain all the appropriate parts, lines, hoses, and wires in our imaginary spacecraft. The astronauts are expected to live 40 years, so we'll need 372 cubic meters of storage representing food and water, 69 working CO2 scrubbers, the tanks will need to hold 4.3 million liters of fuel, etc. We'll film all the scenes on the Vomit Comet so that we don't make any mistakes regarding zero-G." They end up spending 30% of the budget on scientists and engineers and sets, and 60% on a zero-G film crew, and they haven't even told you the story yet.
I hope you like Polly Walker and Eric Stoltz, because they're the only actors they can afford on what's left of the budget.
If you want a lame version of the experience, you can buy a cell phone case that has a pocket for a credit card in the back, and they supposedly work with NFC readers.
The problem with changing the systems are the profit models in the current system. Google wants to track your brick-and-mortar purchases. Retailers don't want to pay Visa's interchange rates. Visa and the PCI cartel don't want any competitors. Acquiring banks don't want a system that bypasses them in favor of a direct-to-bank model. So anyone who tries to change anything about the current system is sandbagged by everyone else they have to deal with. And Samsung and Apple want to sell you an NFC (or some kind of payment) phone, but don't dare until a winning model rears its head.
Yes, I should have said merchants would save money IFF they were able to go cashless, and actually eliminate the expense of cash. They won't save anything by shifting half their business to credit.
Moreover, merchants are supposed to have manual means of recording EBT payments for just such a scenario.
Those lead to fraud loopholes, and not just EBT. Someone can claim, "oh, my card doesn't work because the system is down, just fill out the paperwork for me, please." Thats more problematic when nothing distinguishes a "DECLINE-card has no funds" from a "DECLINE-system is broken" to the cashier.
Actually, cash is quite expensive for a store to handle. They have to pay someone to count out change, and to count it again at the end of the day. They have to pay an armored car service to haul it to a bank (or a small business owner has to drive it to a bank themselves, and they hope they don't get mugged on the way. It's easy to steal, so they have to invest in locked cash drawers and safes.
Cash easily costs more to handle than credit cards. Even after figuring in card fraud and bad debt, credit cards save retailers money.
Sorry, but many times paying by phone is seriously inconvenient when compared to a simple credit card. You have to unlock the phone, find the right payment app and open it, find the payment option and pick it, enter another PIN, show some barcode to the cashier, and then it still takes as long as a credit card to approve. Compared to pulling the card from my wallet and swiping it, it's about five times slower.
The place where pay-by-phone gets it right is Stabucks. People are just standing around, tweeting and facebooking about how great the mocha lattes are, and they already have the phones in front of their noses.
Compare that to some lady at Walmart with 2.4 kids running around trying to eat the candy on the shelves, crying because mom took it away, while she tries to unload her cart filled with leaking milk cartons and find a batch of coupons that haven't expired. The last thing I need is to stand behind her as she tries to figure out her phone app.
What most people don't get is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to mobile payment, even though the businesses desperately want one to exist.
Using a system engineering Waterfall approach is fine for designing hardware, and the embedded software that runs in it. I approve of Waterfall when it comes to pacemakers. But when it comes to software, stuff that can be easily upgraded and replaced (because it's "soft"), a test-driven iterative software engineering approach is the only responsible way to create a high quality product. Agile is a known good way to achieve that.
The big problem is that projects generally fail slowly and expensively when the organization ordering the work only knows how to deal with managing a Waterfall project, and they order work from an Agile company.
The Waterfall organization says "we want X and Y delivered on Due Date Z". The Agile organization says "We'll put X on the top of the stack, but might not get to Y by date Z." The Waterfall organization says "Not acceptable, you committed to delivering X and Y on Z, so do it or we cancel the contract." The Agile organization quietly mumbles "whatever, dumbass" and violates their own processes to crank out a bunch of shoddy shit to meet the date. The Waterfall organization says "you met the contract by delivering on date Z, now it's time for the next phase where you promised features A and B on date C. Oh, and by the way, features X and Y suck, so fix them too." The Agile organization quickly cashes the check, again says "whatever, dumbass", and starts cranking out patches and even more shoddy shit. Now they're stuck with a bunch of poorly-performing, non-unit-tested code, and there's no longer a way of fixing it short of a rewrite. Of course there's no time for this rewrite, because there are more features to add and bugs to fix. And checks to cash.
If the Waterfall organization is extremely inept (and any organization that is trying to manage or own software with a Waterfall method is, by definition, inept), and the Agile organization is unabashedly greedy, it's easy to see that they can get years into their contract before some astute bean counter decides to pull the plug and eat the sunk costs. Both sides are looking hard at the shit that resulted from this mess, and both sides blame each other. It's easy to blame the Waterfall organization, because they're generally stupid and incompetent, run by MBAs and not engineers. But the Agile organization needs to show some responsibility too, and call a halt to caving in to unrealistic demands instead of cashing the checks.
Exactly where in my post did I claim it made teaching or learning any better or worse? I didn't. I don't know yet if the students will come out stupid or smart as a result of having iPads. All I know is that I taught them with a textbook last term, and I'm teaching them with an iPad this term, despite the claims that such a feat is impossible.
I didn't say iPads won't get broken, dropped, smashed, go for a swim, get run over, or get placed in the same backpack as a shotput (yes, that's happened to a student's cell phone.) And I didn't say they were cheaper or more expensive.
I have already seen two wrapped in self-funded Otter Boxes and Life-something-cases, because the student knew they were at risk of breaking them. And I do know the price of e-textbooks is considerably cheaper than the price of dead-tree textbooks, and I believe that if half the students can manage to avoid breaking their Precious over the life of about six classes, the savings over paper books will place them at the breakeven point. Every e-textbook used after that will save money, even if the tablet has to be replaced again.
Textbooks are psychotically expensive. That's the primary reason the schools are turning to tablets.
Our school switched this term to iPads for all students. My old-school technique of placing sticky tabs on the pages to discuss no longer works. Yet somehow, I'm managing to use the highlights and notes features of the textbook app to still teach the class. And somehow, my students are managing to do their required reading, and turn in their homework on time.
I don't understand how any of this can happen if a tablet can't replace a textbook. Perhaps you have some reason that it's not working that I'm simply unaware of? Is there some critical function of textbooks I'm missing? I certainly haven't tried fully replacing all the normal functions of textbooks with iPads yet, such as doorstops, anchors, body-building equipment, or fly swatters. But as far as learning tools go, they seem to be working for us.
How is the school supposed to know? If they ordered Li-Po batteries and they tore one open and found the part number on the batteries indicated they were Li-Ion, they'd at least be able to check. But a sheet of glass has no such markings.
And to your point, that's not their responsibility, either. They ordered X, they received Y, breach of contract. Done.
Gorilla glass definitely protects against shock very well. While it may not protect perfectly against edge impacts, (which is the most likely scenario for an accidental drop,) it's still about 10x better than all the other glass options.
It's definitely time to return them if they don't meet the contract specs, though.
After a meal, our team had all divided up the money into our own shares, with each of us kicking in for the tip as we felt was appropriate. I always tip at least 15%, and so do most of my friends. One guy on the team said "I'll collect all the cash and put the whole thing on my credit card so I get the 1% cash back reward." We didn't think anything of it, so we let him do it. He stuffed all the cash in his wallet, then wrote out the credit slip. But someone noticed that he tipped 5%.
There's a guy who was never invited again, to anything. Ever.
Still doesn't mean I'm going to license anything from Google.
The military is like porn in that respect. There's a lot of money to be made in creating new tech that serves either one. And once that tech is somewhat matured, it can then start finding new uses that weave it into everyday life.
To reverse the situation, why didn't people build the first automated robots as guide "dogs" for the blind? Or go back into history and ask yourself why were phonograph players marketed to everyone for playing music first, and not as 19th Century audio-books for the blind? Because Thomas Edison wanted to make a lot of money, and selling a handful of record players to some blind people weren't going to pay his bills. Selling a handful of guide-dog robots won't pay the staff at Boston Dynamics, either.
People who create things want to make money from what they do. That means they either try to sell their things to the people who have the most money, or they sell their things to a really broad group of customers. At this time there doesn't seem to be a broad domestic market for robotic wildcats, nor for a lot of four-legged-self-balancing-motorized porn robots. That kind of leaves the military as their go-to source of large piles of cash.
Loud? It's an engineering prototype. The idea is to get it running first, then worry about the non-essential stuff like mufflers, armor, weapons, storage racks, etc.
Other efforts mounted by the agencies include attempting to direct traffic toward NSA-operated servers, or attacking other software used by Tor users. One presentation, titled 'Tor: Overview of Existing Techniques', also refers to making efforts to "shape", or influence, the future development of Tor, in conjunction with GCHQ.
What that says is "hang on to old copies of TAILS and Tor, and don't 'upgrade' them." Sure, they're going to keep trying to attack them, but for right now this is as close to evidence as we'll ever get that says they're effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Would be comfier at this rate.
Heck, they'll just shorten the ceilings then and stack in two tiers of passengers.
The only trust I have in airlines is in their ever increasing capability of making passenger flight uncomfortable.
I certainly have not seen Surface tablets in the corporate world like I have iPads. A few people have them, but many still have their iPads as their go-to device for everything but actual Office and work stuff.
On the whole, people seem to like them about as well as they like their iPads, but there's been no giant rush to migrate. Most people who "needed" tablets are already on their second iPad, and they have heavily invested in their apps. To switch, not only do they have to buy a new Surface (and a keyboard), but they have to walk away from perhaps hundreds of dollars of app store purchases and lose data in the process; there just isn't a compelling reason for what is essentially a lateral switch for most users.
I had to leave one company because they kept putting me projects with legacy software because I performed better on those projects than my peers. They even bumped my pay because they knew it was important. The problem was I didn't want to do it, and finding a new job is easy for anyone with real skills. I wasn't lazy, I just had better options.
I laughed when I read this followed by your sig:
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke.
Because it's good enough to meet many of today's needs, and it meets society's need to not create a throwaway technology for each and every device that a consumer buys.
I have a large box filled with wall warts that I've collected over the years, but the devices have long ago expired. (Most people simply throw them away along with the devices they no longer power, but when I'm building some kind of little toy project, I rummage around until I find one with the specs I need. I say recycling, my wife says pack-rat.) Either way, my box gives me a pretty good visualization of the amount of waste that one family's worth of demand creates over time. There's little reason to continue down that path.
Ultimately, if some phone maker needs something different in order to innovate, they can still provide one. For instance, nothing in the EU law prohibits a phone maker from adding an inductive coil into the backs of their phones, and charging them via desktop mats. Cordless is "better", right? They just have to also have the micro-USB port. Next year, if all phone makers start licensing inductive charging technology, the EU can certainly step in and modify the standard. Until then, waste is reduced.
Exactly. Imagine a movie that features a realistic docking to the ISS -- there's six action-packed hours of orbital maneuvering that just screams "great cinema!" Instead, they fly, they dock, and the story continues - not the accurate science.
Apollo 13 had a huge advantage these other stories don't: it wasn't fiction nearly as much as it was a recreation. They didn't have to write the drama into the script, they didn't have to invent science, they didn't have to invent an oxygen tank stirrer that might explode (which sounds like a plot device from ST:TOS). They even had first-hand reports from the scientists involved. They didn't have to fake anything.
If you're filming a space drama from scratch, there are a lot of gaps you have to fill in. In a science fiction movie, technology is always just beneath the veneer of the characters, embedded in the very set. Their lives are intertwined with the tech, dependent upon it for everything, so it's always visible on screen, and in the back of the audiences' minds - will the tank run out of air? Will a micrometeor strike rupture the hull? But if that mission has never taken place, the tech is imaginary. We think a manned mission to Mars would require X and Y and Z, but we've not done it yet. That leaves some tech up to the imagination of the production designer.
2001 did a phenomenal job incorporating imaginary tech into the sets. The rotating set shots were indeed brilliant. Even so, how many astronauts would you need to enter an actual 2001-era CPU cabinet to shut down a rogue AI program? While he nailed the vision of centripetal gravity, he completely missed on some of the most important technical advances. In 300 years would Lt. Ripley really need a separate room to access MOTHER? Would MOTHER really still be displaying on a green screen CRT?
These days it only takes a few such mistakes to break the tech-savvy audience out of their willing suspension of disbelief.
You can say "we have a great story, let's have these great actors and actresses carry it. Behind them, we'll place some blinking lights and switches that look all spacey, paint them white, and we'll get ILM to add smoke and rocket exhaust, but for the most part we're not going to worry about it." Or you can say "let's take the design for an actual rocket that might be used for this mission, and build the set to resemble it. For the plot devices, we need a panel to access the cryo stirring control valve, and a different hatch to access the electrical bus, and each should contain all the appropriate parts, lines, hoses, and wires in our imaginary spacecraft. The astronauts are expected to live 40 years, so we'll need 372 cubic meters of storage representing food and water, 69 working CO2 scrubbers, the tanks will need to hold 4.3 million liters of fuel, etc. We'll film all the scenes on the Vomit Comet so that we don't make any mistakes regarding zero-G." They end up spending 30% of the budget on scientists and engineers and sets, and 60% on a zero-G film crew, and they haven't even told you the story yet.
I hope you like Polly Walker and Eric Stoltz, because they're the only actors they can afford on what's left of the budget.
Or a return trip.
++++++1! Would LOL again.
If you want a lame version of the experience, you can buy a cell phone case that has a pocket for a credit card in the back, and they supposedly work with NFC readers.
The problem with changing the systems are the profit models in the current system. Google wants to track your brick-and-mortar purchases. Retailers don't want to pay Visa's interchange rates. Visa and the PCI cartel don't want any competitors. Acquiring banks don't want a system that bypasses them in favor of a direct-to-bank model. So anyone who tries to change anything about the current system is sandbagged by everyone else they have to deal with. And Samsung and Apple want to sell you an NFC (or some kind of payment) phone, but don't dare until a winning model rears its head.
Yes, I should have said merchants would save money IFF they were able to go cashless, and actually eliminate the expense of cash. They won't save anything by shifting half their business to credit.
Moreover, merchants are supposed to have manual means of recording EBT payments for just such a scenario.
Those lead to fraud loopholes, and not just EBT. Someone can claim, "oh, my card doesn't work because the system is down, just fill out the paperwork for me, please." Thats more problematic when nothing distinguishes a "DECLINE-card has no funds" from a "DECLINE-system is broken" to the cashier.
Actually, cash is quite expensive for a store to handle. They have to pay someone to count out change, and to count it again at the end of the day. They have to pay an armored car service to haul it to a bank (or a small business owner has to drive it to a bank themselves, and they hope they don't get mugged on the way. It's easy to steal, so they have to invest in locked cash drawers and safes.
Cash easily costs more to handle than credit cards. Even after figuring in card fraud and bad debt, credit cards save retailers money.
Sorry, but many times paying by phone is seriously inconvenient when compared to a simple credit card. You have to unlock the phone, find the right payment app and open it, find the payment option and pick it, enter another PIN, show some barcode to the cashier, and then it still takes as long as a credit card to approve. Compared to pulling the card from my wallet and swiping it, it's about five times slower.
The place where pay-by-phone gets it right is Stabucks. People are just standing around, tweeting and facebooking about how great the mocha lattes are, and they already have the phones in front of their noses.
Compare that to some lady at Walmart with 2.4 kids running around trying to eat the candy on the shelves, crying because mom took it away, while she tries to unload her cart filled with leaking milk cartons and find a batch of coupons that haven't expired. The last thing I need is to stand behind her as she tries to figure out her phone app.
What most people don't get is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to mobile payment, even though the businesses desperately want one to exist.
Using a system engineering Waterfall approach is fine for designing hardware, and the embedded software that runs in it. I approve of Waterfall when it comes to pacemakers. But when it comes to software, stuff that can be easily upgraded and replaced (because it's "soft"), a test-driven iterative software engineering approach is the only responsible way to create a high quality product. Agile is a known good way to achieve that.
The big problem is that projects generally fail slowly and expensively when the organization ordering the work only knows how to deal with managing a Waterfall project, and they order work from an Agile company.
The Waterfall organization says "we want X and Y delivered on Due Date Z". The Agile organization says "We'll put X on the top of the stack, but might not get to Y by date Z." The Waterfall organization says "Not acceptable, you committed to delivering X and Y on Z, so do it or we cancel the contract." The Agile organization quietly mumbles "whatever, dumbass" and violates their own processes to crank out a bunch of shoddy shit to meet the date. The Waterfall organization says "you met the contract by delivering on date Z, now it's time for the next phase where you promised features A and B on date C. Oh, and by the way, features X and Y suck, so fix them too." The Agile organization quickly cashes the check, again says "whatever, dumbass", and starts cranking out patches and even more shoddy shit. Now they're stuck with a bunch of poorly-performing, non-unit-tested code, and there's no longer a way of fixing it short of a rewrite. Of course there's no time for this rewrite, because there are more features to add and bugs to fix. And checks to cash.
If the Waterfall organization is extremely inept (and any organization that is trying to manage or own software with a Waterfall method is, by definition, inept), and the Agile organization is unabashedly greedy, it's easy to see that they can get years into their contract before some astute bean counter decides to pull the plug and eat the sunk costs. Both sides are looking hard at the shit that resulted from this mess, and both sides blame each other. It's easy to blame the Waterfall organization, because they're generally stupid and incompetent, run by MBAs and not engineers. But the Agile organization needs to show some responsibility too, and call a halt to caving in to unrealistic demands instead of cashing the checks.
Actually, STOP with video interviews entirely. I don't have flash installed, and even if I did, I can read faster than your talking heads can yammer.
Exactly where in my post did I claim it made teaching or learning any better or worse? I didn't. I don't know yet if the students will come out stupid or smart as a result of having iPads. All I know is that I taught them with a textbook last term, and I'm teaching them with an iPad this term, despite the claims that such a feat is impossible.
I didn't say iPads won't get broken, dropped, smashed, go for a swim, get run over, or get placed in the same backpack as a shotput (yes, that's happened to a student's cell phone.) And I didn't say they were cheaper or more expensive.
I have already seen two wrapped in self-funded Otter Boxes and Life-something-cases, because the student knew they were at risk of breaking them. And I do know the price of e-textbooks is considerably cheaper than the price of dead-tree textbooks, and I believe that if half the students can manage to avoid breaking their Precious over the life of about six classes, the savings over paper books will place them at the breakeven point. Every e-textbook used after that will save money, even if the tablet has to be replaced again.
Textbooks are psychotically expensive. That's the primary reason the schools are turning to tablets.
Be kind. He learned his math on a tablet.
Our school switched this term to iPads for all students. My old-school technique of placing sticky tabs on the pages to discuss no longer works. Yet somehow, I'm managing to use the highlights and notes features of the textbook app to still teach the class. And somehow, my students are managing to do their required reading, and turn in their homework on time.
I don't understand how any of this can happen if a tablet can't replace a textbook. Perhaps you have some reason that it's not working that I'm simply unaware of? Is there some critical function of textbooks I'm missing? I certainly haven't tried fully replacing all the normal functions of textbooks with iPads yet, such as doorstops, anchors, body-building equipment, or fly swatters. But as far as learning tools go, they seem to be working for us.
How is the school supposed to know? If they ordered Li-Po batteries and they tore one open and found the part number on the batteries indicated they were Li-Ion, they'd at least be able to check. But a sheet of glass has no such markings.
And to your point, that's not their responsibility, either. They ordered X, they received Y, breach of contract. Done.
Gorilla glass definitely protects against shock very well. While it may not protect perfectly against edge impacts, (which is the most likely scenario for an accidental drop,) it's still about 10x better than all the other glass options.
It's definitely time to return them if they don't meet the contract specs, though.
After a meal, our team had all divided up the money into our own shares, with each of us kicking in for the tip as we felt was appropriate. I always tip at least 15%, and so do most of my friends. One guy on the team said "I'll collect all the cash and put the whole thing on my credit card so I get the 1% cash back reward." We didn't think anything of it, so we let him do it. He stuffed all the cash in his wallet, then wrote out the credit slip. But someone noticed that he tipped 5%.
There's a guy who was never invited again, to anything. Ever.
Still doesn't mean I'm going to license anything from Google.
The military is like porn in that respect. There's a lot of money to be made in creating new tech that serves either one. And once that tech is somewhat matured, it can then start finding new uses that weave it into everyday life.
To reverse the situation, why didn't people build the first automated robots as guide "dogs" for the blind? Or go back into history and ask yourself why were phonograph players marketed to everyone for playing music first, and not as 19th Century audio-books for the blind? Because Thomas Edison wanted to make a lot of money, and selling a handful of record players to some blind people weren't going to pay his bills. Selling a handful of guide-dog robots won't pay the staff at Boston Dynamics, either.
People who create things want to make money from what they do. That means they either try to sell their things to the people who have the most money, or they sell their things to a really broad group of customers. At this time there doesn't seem to be a broad domestic market for robotic wildcats, nor for a lot of four-legged-self-balancing-motorized porn robots. That kind of leaves the military as their go-to source of large piles of cash.
Loud? It's an engineering prototype. The idea is to get it running first, then worry about the non-essential stuff like mufflers, armor, weapons, storage racks, etc.
This quote from TFA was particularly insightful:
Other efforts mounted by the agencies include attempting to direct traffic toward NSA-operated servers, or attacking other software used by Tor users. One presentation, titled 'Tor: Overview of Existing Techniques', also refers to making efforts to "shape", or influence, the future development of Tor, in conjunction with GCHQ.
What that says is "hang on to old copies of TAILS and Tor, and don't 'upgrade' them." Sure, they're going to keep trying to attack them, but for right now this is as close to evidence as we'll ever get that says they're effective.
People often claim that the NSA is watching exit nodes, and can tie Tor traffic back to the users. This apparently claims the opposite.
So do we know for sure if this a real leak, or was this "leaked"?