I've personally found the best way to sandbox Flash is to not install it.
I honestly can't name a single site that I care about that uses it -- possibly because Flash makes me immediately not care about a web site. I know some people really like it, and it does things they really think is cool, but to me it's been something I've avoided for a long time now.
But, who knows, maybe next week I'll discover something I can't live without that uses it.
Are you sure sale people will be talking to programmers directly?
Oh god, the nightmare scenario... the PHB buying development tools from a salesman.
Neither know what it does or how you'd use it. But, dammit, they've got some really great glossies and a Power Point slide. You need to enter the text in EBCDIC, using reverse polish notation, in a bizarre sub-dialect of Tibetan, and it can only handle files less than 4K.
I really have no idea how a salesman could sell a development tool without either having a technical wingman, or being fairly well versed in it already.
Well, I suppose that's true if your definition of "flawless execution" is "products of questionable quality but excellent marketing and abuse of their dominant position on the market".
If you count the billions in revenue, that might be a fair measure of "flawless execution".
Microsoft was getting paid when you bought a new PC even if you didn't want Windows. I'd call that pretty good from their perspective.
he is talking about addressing a failure in a specific Microsoft product that was called "Tablet PC."
Wow... just wow.
Introducing, the Tablet PC, with new Operating System(tm), which provides Multitasking(tm,sm), Virtual Memory(c), Networking(tm), and Solitaire(sm). Now enabling you to Do Work(patent pending).
On behalf of those of us who spent years of our lives avoiding Microsoft like The Plague (tm), I had not fully realized the extent to which they use Stupid Product Names(tm,patent pending).
Um, no, I'm talking about the Tablet PC initiative
No idea what "The Tablet PC Initiative" is -- sounds like prog rock band or something.
I'm going to assume this was an attempt by Microsoft to innovate the future with a product they couldn't figure out how to sell to anybody? Like the Smart House or all the features in Longhorn which never happened?
If all they were trying to do was jam XP onto a touch screen, no wonder nobody bought them.
The major failing of Tablet PC that I'm talking about is how their interface was horribly ill-suited for a tablet. At least they're doing a tablet-specific UI now.
Well, except for tablets running Windows, or something you've bodged Linux onto... the interfaces on the HP, RIM, Apple, and Android tablets I've seen seem to be tablet specific.
This sounds more like "Microsoft finally has a tablet-specific UI", not that "nobody else has ever done a tablet with a proper UI".
Yes, if you take an interface designed for a keyboard and mouse and slap it onto a tablet, it will suck. But Microsoft is hardly coming out with something that other players haven't already done.
Or do you consider the tablet marketplace to only be relevant if Microsoft is in the game?
Admittedly, one of the major failings of the Tablet PC is being addressed with the Win8 touch interface and app ecosystem.
And, what might that be? All I see is yet another "me too" product from Microsoft.
What is Microsoft bringing to the table that Android, or Apple, or even RIM aren't doing?
All I've seen is the new fugly looking Metro interface, but nothing that suggests Microsoft is filling "one of the major failings of the tablet PC", other than a lack of offering from Microsoft.
He is home educated and doesn't read as well as schooled kids of his age. He hasn't had much science education and no chemistry at all. None of his parents or grandparents have chemistry education beyond the school minimum and none feel confident about teaching it.
At some point, someone might tell you that if you can't keep him up to the standards of the kids who aren't home schooled, he's going to need some remedial education and possibly be required to attend public school -- and possibly lose a year in the process.
I had some cousins who were home-schooled... and there was a curriculum they were required to have covered. And if they didn't, you weren't allowed to home-school any more and would need to transition to public school. I think for high-school or even a little before they all ended up going back to public school.
So, are you helping or him or hurting him in the long run if you can't get him through what he needs? It's difficult to teach something you don't know enough about yourself.
Cheese sauce in the context of broccoli (which is how we got here) is an entirely different thing... that's either Cheese Whiz, or a bechamel sauce with cheese melted into it.
I wonder how a quick fix approach would have been accepted. Something simple like slapping another 32bits on an "extended" IPv4 address and assuming leading zeros on any packet with an old 32 bit address.
Except of course everyone would still need to upgrade to versions which would work with that.
Which would be just as big as getting to them to upgrade to IPv6. Probably even bigger since nobody has ever written code to handle your solution.
I don't think there's anything "quick" about your solution.
I know I'm a terrible person.. but as someone who does a fair bit of highway driving.. I really hope they roll that one out.
What about something like Rain X windshield wash? It's basically a waxy coating that lets stuff slide off it so the water tends to form droplets instead of sheeting.
While they are at it.. paint up my hood and bumper too (much harder to clean).
Again, wouldn't a good coat of wax help here? Stuff might stick to the wax, but it should clean off easier.
That's the funny thing about HP touchpads. The exact same thing is applicable since most users use the devices the way you said.
You'll notice I said "no matter who makes it" -- I'm talking about the generic idea of a tablet, not a specific product.
My brother has a cheap ass Android, my wife and a few friends have BB Playbooks, I know people who bought the HP one, and I think one or two have Samsung tablets.
It's the form factor I'm talking about here. They all give you the same kind of functionality. A fondleslab with internet access, and the ability to play videos and the like.
In all cases, the people who I know who use their tablets largely don't use it the way you'd use a desktop, and aren't going around saying how they can't update the quarterly spreadsheets with it or file the TPS reports. They're passively consuming stuff instead of creating it.
Doubt it all you like. I can vouch for the fact that I still use mine a lot after two years.
Most people I know, including me, who have tablets are dusting them off once in a while, realizing they're useless, and then leaving them until the next time.
Well, the people I know who own tablets aren't for the most part die-hard techies, or mostly just not interested in fiddling with technology if they don't have to. They also tend to be 40+.
It's only people here on Slashdot I hear saying this, and unfortunately, we as a group tend to be completely incapable of seeing the world in any other way than as a geek who wants to ssh into a server. You might discover that the vast majority of people use computers differently than you do.
While I haven't been to an airport in years, I've been to numerous hotels and not seen a single tablet user.
When I travel on business, I tend to be smack in the middle of the business district, in an upmarket hotel mostly used by business travelers.
My experience is more like seeing 2-3 iPads in the hotel lobby/bar in the evenings, a couple of people on the plane watching movies, and usually 1-2 waiting at the gate at the airport. Not as many as people with laptops, but definitely not an empty set. Being able to flop my iPad onto the bar in the lobby and check my email, look up a restaurant, check the news... all of which you can do with a laptop, but in a lighter package.
Feel free to believe anything you want about tablets and if people will buy them. But as someone who owns a tablet, and knows at least half a dozen other people who have tablets, they get used, but they get used differently.
Hell, the main thing my wife uses her BB Playbook for is google from the living room when we're talking about stuff and want to pull up a quick browser. Whip it out, do a quick search, put it back on the coffee table.
My personal favorite was keeping my work webmail open in a browser, while I was sitting in the backyard in the sunshine. Pick it up every now and then to see if you've got email.
For those of us who don't own smart phones, a tablet has a lot of use, just not for the same kinds of things as I'd use my desktop or laptop for.
You may not be able to use an iPad extensively for "work", but I can't see the form factor going anywhere.
Everybody I know with a tablet (no matter who makes it) is using it to surf the web, watch movies, listen to music, read eBooks... stuff like that. They're not using it to write code or manage servers. Which is what most users do most of the time anyway; they're just watching You Tube videos.
When I travel on business, my iPad sees far more use than my laptop. Checking email in airports and watching movies in airplanes and hotel rooms is quite nice and less cumbersome than a full-on laptop. My iPad fits on the tray table in an airplane... my laptop, not so much.
It's a casual device, and a bit of a spendy toy, but two years later I still get a lot of use out of it.
Look at the number of tablets you see in airports and hotel lobbies -- a large number of people disagree with you, and I'm betting the form factor isn't going anywhere. No more than smart phones, really -- which are mostly just small tablets anyway.
Which is fine and lovely if your IT department is willing to implement it.
At the time when the guy was asking for this the response from IT was "we don't care, you have two network drops, that's all you get". So he said the hell with them and got himself the router. They eventually had to resolve his issue because he had about 6 computers in his office.
In many places, IT is still operating like they did in the 90's -- with users needing to beg for scraps because the IT guys just aren't willing to do anything to "their" stuff. Mostly they act like Mordac the Preventer.
Places where IT has learned it's there to support the business tend to be able to get things done better because the tail isn't wagging the dog.
Since I currently work in one of those shops, it's a different mentality -- the business users are the clients, and real business need trumps anybody getting the idea that some infrastructure component is their own little fiefdom to be ran according to their own whims. When a user comes to us, we're expected to find a solution, not tell them it's not allowed.
It's not that straightforward when it's going from behind one NAT network to another, b'cos there exists the possibility of it running into an address collision w/ say, another 192.168.0.23
I definitely agree with that.
Years ago at another job someone needed more network drops in his office than were physically available. So, he bought himself a little firewall/router to use, and it defaulted to the 192.168 block.
Apparently he caused a collision with one of the really important servers and caused an outage (and an outrage).
Needless to say, that caused the need for a new policy that said "under no circumstances may you plug one of those into our network".:-P
One globally unique identifier will be handy even though I would never dream of letting most machines ingress or egress traffic to the internet without passing through some hardened application layer proxy.
To me it seems more like you'd be leaking information out by letting that address be visible to the outside world.
If they don't have any information about your internal stuff, they can't try to figure out how to exploit it.
I can definitely see a lot of organizations deciding to see how this works out for everybody else. Changing to new technology always seems to expose some gaps people haven't really thought through.
And, on the consumer end, the overwhelming majority of home networks using a router/firewall will do nothing at all.
No more dealing with public/private IPs, or the whole NAT shitpile.
And yet I predict internally companies will still use public/private IPs (10.x.x.x anyone?) and use NAT. My internal private network will continue to use a NAT'ed firewall.
I predict this will mostly affect stuff outside of the firewall, not inside. Most companies will probably keep their internal network on IPv4. There's no way they're going to want all of their machines with an internet addressable location.
Oh, and while every IP belongs to only one device, there's nothing saying every device should have only one IP. You could easily assign more addresses to a single IPv6 host than the entire IPv4 internet *has*.
Which just sounds like more admin work that people won't want to do.
I think IPv6 does bring some usefulness, but I just don't foresee everybody changing how their internal networks operate. And I can also see a huge amount of consumer type stuff taking years before it has transitioned. IPv4 isn't going to go away overnight.
Quickoffice will be one of the carrots to lure manifacturers to use the Google branded version of Android instead of rolling their own
The manufacturers will still probably roll their own so they can have branding and the opportunity to inject some additional revenue streams and crapware. The carriers will add theirs as well.
Why sell you a device that doesn't also steer a little more revenues their way or reinforce their branding?
If the manufacturer isn't going to act like a greedy ass, the carrier will.
Here you have a guy who is contesting the evidence against him on the grounds the FISA warrant was obtained improperly. He may win. In most countries they would simply put a bullet in the back of his head and be done with it.
Are you advocating becoming one of those countries?
You get two choices, rule of law and procedure which is upheld, or whatever the hell the state security apparatus wants to do. I doubt anybody who has ever lived in a country where the latter prevails would advocate for it.
When you stop following your own laws and rules, you cease to be a free society.
So if warrants aren't properly obtained, and the legalities aren't observed, they should get thrown out. Walking all over procedure and people's rights in the name of expediency is never a good solution.
But, hey, if you want a world where people get rounded up in the middle of the night without any real legal recourse or process... well, there's always someone trying to do that. Me, I'll stick with advocating for someone keeping tabs on what's going on and making sure the police are playing by the rules.
It's easy to forget those rules and safeguards were put in place to prevent abuses. You have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong or have nothing to hide is never going to work out in the long run.
Lodsys is the troll that went after iOS developers for in-app purchases, even though Apple had already licensed the rights to that patent on behalf of their developers
Something that needs to happen is a ruling that says you can't sue the customers of the people you claim violated the patent.
This is the same tactic SCO was using of trying to shake down for the $699 Linux license or whatever it is.
If I bought a product in good faith, the patent issues between Lodsys and Oracle should stay between them.
This sue the crap out of everybody who is using the software has to go.
After all, taking on the big companies is hard, but if you can target their customers or users, you can oftentimes win. Lodsys seems to have made a business of doing so.
Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
These kind of lawsuits should be treated as tortious interference, which I suspect is the source of the triple damages claim.
You know, come to think of it, I think I agree with your number more than mine.
I just remember picking up one of those apartment rental magazines for something to flip through in my hotel room and thinking "WTF is this?".
The prices definitely seemed astronomical to me, and I remember thinking that I didn't have the slightest idea of how most people could afford to live there. I just can't imagine that kind of housing costs.
I remember being in San Francisco for a while back around 1999-2001 or so. At the time, a 400 square foot studio was going for something like $1600/month because the.com era had more or less caused the same thing.
I remember people saying that if someone chose to move out of San Francisco to work in another state, they were essentially economic refugees... because they'd never have the capital to move back to San Francisco and buy a place because the market would have left them behind.
Hell, I used to know someone with a 2.5 hour commute because he had the choice of a 4 bedroom house with a yard, or a 2 bedroom tiny apartment. Since he had three kids, it wasn't really a choice.
San Francisco has been really expensive for a long time. I'm not really surprised to hear it hasn't really changed much.
How can people who have been pinching NASA's pennies for years now can justify secretly building not one but two Hubble class telescopes for which they have no use?
Same thing they've been using to justify everything for the last 11 years or so -- terrorists and national security, with the odd bit of protecting children thrown in for good measure.
They likely developed something way cooler than these since they were commissioned.
The military-industrial complex does loads of stuff they don't like to tell people about. In this case, we now know they've leapfrogged past this technology into something else -- probably some of the good bits they have locked up in Roswell.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
I've personally found the best way to sandbox Flash is to not install it.
I honestly can't name a single site that I care about that uses it -- possibly because Flash makes me immediately not care about a web site. I know some people really like it, and it does things they really think is cool, but to me it's been something I've avoided for a long time now.
But, who knows, maybe next week I'll discover something I can't live without that uses it.
Oh god, the nightmare scenario ... the PHB buying development tools from a salesman.
Neither know what it does or how you'd use it. But, dammit, they've got some really great glossies and a Power Point slide. You need to enter the text in EBCDIC, using reverse polish notation, in a bizarre sub-dialect of Tibetan, and it can only handle files less than 4K.
I really have no idea how a salesman could sell a development tool without either having a technical wingman, or being fairly well versed in it already.
If you count the billions in revenue, that might be a fair measure of "flawless execution".
Microsoft was getting paid when you bought a new PC even if you didn't want Windows. I'd call that pretty good from their perspective.
Wow ... just wow.
Introducing, the Tablet PC, with new Operating System(tm), which provides Multitasking(tm,sm), Virtual Memory(c), Networking(tm), and Solitaire(sm). Now enabling you to Do Work(patent pending).
On behalf of those of us who spent years of our lives avoiding Microsoft like The Plague (tm), I had not fully realized the extent to which they use Stupid Product Names(tm,patent pending).
No idea what "The Tablet PC Initiative" is -- sounds like prog rock band or something.
I'm going to assume this was an attempt by Microsoft to innovate the future with a product they couldn't figure out how to sell to anybody? Like the Smart House or all the features in Longhorn which never happened?
If all they were trying to do was jam XP onto a touch screen, no wonder nobody bought them.
Well, except for tablets running Windows, or something you've bodged Linux onto ... the interfaces on the HP, RIM, Apple, and Android tablets I've seen seem to be tablet specific.
This sounds more like "Microsoft finally has a tablet-specific UI", not that "nobody else has ever done a tablet with a proper UI".
Yes, if you take an interface designed for a keyboard and mouse and slap it onto a tablet, it will suck. But Microsoft is hardly coming out with something that other players haven't already done.
Or do you consider the tablet marketplace to only be relevant if Microsoft is in the game?
And, what might that be? All I see is yet another "me too" product from Microsoft.
What is Microsoft bringing to the table that Android, or Apple, or even RIM aren't doing?
All I've seen is the new fugly looking Metro interface, but nothing that suggests Microsoft is filling "one of the major failings of the tablet PC", other than a lack of offering from Microsoft.
At some point, someone might tell you that if you can't keep him up to the standards of the kids who aren't home schooled, he's going to need some remedial education and possibly be required to attend public school -- and possibly lose a year in the process.
I had some cousins who were home-schooled ... and there was a curriculum they were required to have covered. And if they didn't, you weren't allowed to home-school any more and would need to transition to public school. I think for high-school or even a little before they all ended up going back to public school.
So, are you helping or him or hurting him in the long run if you can't get him through what he needs? It's difficult to teach something you don't know enough about yourself.
Cream cheese frosting is one thing.
Cheese sauce in the context of broccoli (which is how we got here) is an entirely different thing ... that's either Cheese Whiz, or a bechamel sauce with cheese melted into it.
On cake, cheese sauce sounds nasty.
Except of course everyone would still need to upgrade to versions which would work with that.
Which would be just as big as getting to them to upgrade to IPv6. Probably even bigger since nobody has ever written code to handle your solution.
I don't think there's anything "quick" about your solution.
So, it sounds disgusting and nobody wants it? Cheese sauce on cake?
That would explain a lot.
What about something like Rain X windshield wash? It's basically a waxy coating that lets stuff slide off it so the water tends to form droplets instead of sheeting.
Again, wouldn't a good coat of wax help here? Stuff might stick to the wax, but it should clean off easier.
You'll notice I said "no matter who makes it" -- I'm talking about the generic idea of a tablet, not a specific product.
My brother has a cheap ass Android, my wife and a few friends have BB Playbooks, I know people who bought the HP one, and I think one or two have Samsung tablets.
It's the form factor I'm talking about here. They all give you the same kind of functionality. A fondleslab with internet access, and the ability to play videos and the like.
In all cases, the people who I know who use their tablets largely don't use it the way you'd use a desktop, and aren't going around saying how they can't update the quarterly spreadsheets with it or file the TPS reports. They're passively consuming stuff instead of creating it.
Doubt it all you like. I can vouch for the fact that I still use mine a lot after two years.
Well, the people I know who own tablets aren't for the most part die-hard techies, or mostly just not interested in fiddling with technology if they don't have to. They also tend to be 40+.
It's only people here on Slashdot I hear saying this, and unfortunately, we as a group tend to be completely incapable of seeing the world in any other way than as a geek who wants to ssh into a server. You might discover that the vast majority of people use computers differently than you do.
When I travel on business, I tend to be smack in the middle of the business district, in an upmarket hotel mostly used by business travelers.
My experience is more like seeing 2-3 iPads in the hotel lobby/bar in the evenings, a couple of people on the plane watching movies, and usually 1-2 waiting at the gate at the airport. Not as many as people with laptops, but definitely not an empty set. Being able to flop my iPad onto the bar in the lobby and check my email, look up a restaurant, check the news ... all of which you can do with a laptop, but in a lighter package.
Feel free to believe anything you want about tablets and if people will buy them. But as someone who owns a tablet, and knows at least half a dozen other people who have tablets, they get used, but they get used differently.
Hell, the main thing my wife uses her BB Playbook for is google from the living room when we're talking about stuff and want to pull up a quick browser. Whip it out, do a quick search, put it back on the coffee table.
My personal favorite was keeping my work webmail open in a browser, while I was sitting in the backyard in the sunshine. Pick it up every now and then to see if you've got email.
For those of us who don't own smart phones, a tablet has a lot of use, just not for the same kinds of things as I'd use my desktop or laptop for.
You may not be able to use an iPad extensively for "work", but I can't see the form factor going anywhere.
Everybody I know with a tablet (no matter who makes it) is using it to surf the web, watch movies, listen to music, read eBooks ... stuff like that. They're not using it to write code or manage servers. Which is what most users do most of the time anyway; they're just watching You Tube videos.
When I travel on business, my iPad sees far more use than my laptop. Checking email in airports and watching movies in airplanes and hotel rooms is quite nice and less cumbersome than a full-on laptop. My iPad fits on the tray table in an airplane ... my laptop, not so much.
It's a casual device, and a bit of a spendy toy, but two years later I still get a lot of use out of it.
Look at the number of tablets you see in airports and hotel lobbies -- a large number of people disagree with you, and I'm betting the form factor isn't going anywhere. No more than smart phones, really -- which are mostly just small tablets anyway.
Which is fine and lovely if your IT department is willing to implement it.
At the time when the guy was asking for this the response from IT was "we don't care, you have two network drops, that's all you get". So he said the hell with them and got himself the router. They eventually had to resolve his issue because he had about 6 computers in his office.
In many places, IT is still operating like they did in the 90's -- with users needing to beg for scraps because the IT guys just aren't willing to do anything to "their" stuff. Mostly they act like Mordac the Preventer.
Places where IT has learned it's there to support the business tend to be able to get things done better because the tail isn't wagging the dog.
Since I currently work in one of those shops, it's a different mentality -- the business users are the clients, and real business need trumps anybody getting the idea that some infrastructure component is their own little fiefdom to be ran according to their own whims. When a user comes to us, we're expected to find a solution, not tell them it's not allowed.
I definitely agree with that.
Years ago at another job someone needed more network drops in his office than were physically available. So, he bought himself a little firewall/router to use, and it defaulted to the 192.168 block.
Apparently he caused a collision with one of the really important servers and caused an outage (and an outrage).
Needless to say, that caused the need for a new policy that said "under no circumstances may you plug one of those into our network". :-P
To me it seems more like you'd be leaking information out by letting that address be visible to the outside world.
If they don't have any information about your internal stuff, they can't try to figure out how to exploit it.
I can definitely see a lot of organizations deciding to see how this works out for everybody else. Changing to new technology always seems to expose some gaps people haven't really thought through.
And, on the consumer end, the overwhelming majority of home networks using a router/firewall will do nothing at all.
And yet I predict internally companies will still use public/private IPs (10.x.x.x anyone?) and use NAT. My internal private network will continue to use a NAT'ed firewall.
I predict this will mostly affect stuff outside of the firewall, not inside. Most companies will probably keep their internal network on IPv4. There's no way they're going to want all of their machines with an internet addressable location.
Which just sounds like more admin work that people won't want to do.
I think IPv6 does bring some usefulness, but I just don't foresee everybody changing how their internal networks operate. And I can also see a huge amount of consumer type stuff taking years before it has transitioned. IPv4 isn't going to go away overnight.
The manufacturers will still probably roll their own so they can have branding and the opportunity to inject some additional revenue streams and crapware. The carriers will add theirs as well.
Why sell you a device that doesn't also steer a little more revenues their way or reinforce their branding?
If the manufacturer isn't going to act like a greedy ass, the carrier will.
Are you advocating becoming one of those countries?
You get two choices, rule of law and procedure which is upheld, or whatever the hell the state security apparatus wants to do. I doubt anybody who has ever lived in a country where the latter prevails would advocate for it.
When you stop following your own laws and rules, you cease to be a free society.
So if warrants aren't properly obtained, and the legalities aren't observed, they should get thrown out. Walking all over procedure and people's rights in the name of expediency is never a good solution.
But, hey, if you want a world where people get rounded up in the middle of the night without any real legal recourse or process ... well, there's always someone trying to do that. Me, I'll stick with advocating for someone keeping tabs on what's going on and making sure the police are playing by the rules.
It's easy to forget those rules and safeguards were put in place to prevent abuses. You have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong or have nothing to hide is never going to work out in the long run.
Something that needs to happen is a ruling that says you can't sue the customers of the people you claim violated the patent.
This is the same tactic SCO was using of trying to shake down for the $699 Linux license or whatever it is.
If I bought a product in good faith, the patent issues between Lodsys and Oracle should stay between them.
This sue the crap out of everybody who is using the software has to go.
Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
These kind of lawsuits should be treated as tortious interference, which I suspect is the source of the triple damages claim.
You know, come to think of it, I think I agree with your number more than mine.
I just remember picking up one of those apartment rental magazines for something to flip through in my hotel room and thinking "WTF is this?".
The prices definitely seemed astronomical to me, and I remember thinking that I didn't have the slightest idea of how most people could afford to live there. I just can't imagine that kind of housing costs.
I remember being in San Francisco for a while back around 1999-2001 or so. At the time, a 400 square foot studio was going for something like $1600/month because the .com era had more or less caused the same thing.
I remember people saying that if someone chose to move out of San Francisco to work in another state, they were essentially economic refugees ... because they'd never have the capital to move back to San Francisco and buy a place because the market would have left them behind.
Hell, I used to know someone with a 2.5 hour commute because he had the choice of a 4 bedroom house with a yard, or a 2 bedroom tiny apartment. Since he had three kids, it wasn't really a choice.
San Francisco has been really expensive for a long time. I'm not really surprised to hear it hasn't really changed much.
Same thing they've been using to justify everything for the last 11 years or so -- terrorists and national security, with the odd bit of protecting children thrown in for good measure.
They likely developed something way cooler than these since they were commissioned.
The military-industrial complex does loads of stuff they don't like to tell people about. In this case, we now know they've leapfrogged past this technology into something else -- probably some of the good bits they have locked up in Roswell. ;-)