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

There was a thread recently on slashdot about the negative image of "Linux Inside". If you needed any kind of example of why that might be the case, just look at that tablet.

“Move to low cost-of-living area of the world, set up shop working remote, work ten hours a week while building a huge nest egg.”

Income: $16,000
Rent: $9,600

I'm not sure what you'd consider to be a huge nest egg, but after other living expenses I can't see much being saved at the end of the day. Good luck saving for buying an apartment.

Don't worry, the NRA will start defending citizens rights to drones as soon as that happens.

Drones don't kill people, RC operators do.

It's an interestingly skewed viewpoint, that immigrants coming to the US are coming to take experience away, not bring it over with them. Now, with the Visa process that you have with H-1B I expect that would often be the case - the process is so awful, I can't imagine many people coming over through it unless they were low grade developers planning on working in IT sweat shops. Otherwise, there is a wealth of experience overseas that the US is being prevented from sharing with.

Has anyone here actually read the indictment?

It's online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/documents/megaupload_indictment.pdf

Try from page 31 onwards.

They also have a huge number of electric vehicles. You'd be amazed at how many people drive them. Why? Because they're incredibly cheap, and with vertical development totally suitable to get from A to B. I've driven one to the office a number of times. They're surprisingly powerful, far more than you might expect.

The capacitor technology may or may not be great (I'm not able to comment on that part), but they are experimenting with the infrastructure you'd need should that turn out to be effective. I can also quite happily say it works, at least from an end user point of view.

Before anyone else comes in again with "security through obscurity doesn't work", running ssh on a non-standard port certainly isn't.

There's plenty of people out there who are scanning port 22 to find SSH instances. You can bet there's databases out there of IP addresses which responded with ssh and their ssh ident string that they returned. The second an SSH hole is found, those lists will be the first point of call for an attacker who wants to hit known vulnerable systems before they get patched.

If the people building these databases had to scan all ports to find ssh, they'd be spending a very very long time portscanning the internet.

Local staffing and building costs can't explain it all. Dell still have massively inflated prices in Aus, and from what I can see they barely have any local presence. Everything is shipped and operated from out of Malaysia.

Go to Dell's website. Compare the prices in various regions, incl Aus. The prices in Aus are generally close to double what they are in other regions. Double. Seriously, double. When I worked out in Asia, it was cheaper for us to get someone to buy them elsewhere and fly over with them.

And before anyone says that tax in Aus is high, and it's expensive to ship to there, that includes any import duties and the cost of the flight.

On top of all that, you still have to deal with Dell.

If they're providing client routers whic is doing that it's news to me. Would be very interested to know details though. To be honest I wouldn't see the point, it wouldn't be able to do anything you can't do upstream. Re the original article, the suggestion was there was a device inside their network. Again, I really doubt that.

Please take this article with a pinch of salt. I was working in Shanghai in 2008 and spent a few years out there. We had a server room, leased lines, an ICP license. Yes, the internet there was filtered and monitored, but that was all done at the ISP level or beyond. I've never heard of any situation where the government installed a monitoring device attached to a server. I really doubt that's what happened, and it sounds like the person quoted in the article doesn't work in IT. Most likely they had a managed leased line and the telecoms provider was being proactive about the service. That's not uncommon.

I heard a lot of speculation and fears from colleagues who came over. I had our HR manager tell me how she knew her blackberry was getting monitored because she could hear it getting tapped. Seriously, your mobile doesn't get routed through an analogue exchange with a tape recorder attached. There's a lot of misunderstanding and mistruths that get spread around. That's not to say censorship doesn't happen. A number of people I know had blog posts removed because of sensitive keywords - that actually seemed to be regarded as pretty normal, and they weren't worried about being dragged away for a 'cup of tea' with the authorities. The reality is generally a lot more normal that you'd imagine though.

In terms of what happened to the CEO's mail account, I think it's much more likely that their machine was compromised with malware. Malware is rife in China, mostly as there's still a huge amount of software piracy. I've seen plenty of download sites in China with files riddled with trojans. Given that their personal email was also broken into, it does sound like their machine was compromised rather than line monitoring. The device attached to the server? I don't buy it...

What you are missing is that you're thinking about private car ownership. These are much more likely to get popular on a pay per use model, where you rent them for a journey. Effectively they'd be somewhere between a bus, a taxi and a car share scheme. Think about the benefits here against all those models:

• Mass public transport is efficient, but struggles with capacity planning - you can't run a bus route on demand very easily. As such they very often run somewhat empty.
• Taxis are expensive as you're paying for a driver's time as part of the service. They're also often privately owned, so they're unused for the majority of the day when the driver isn't working.
• Car sharing schemes require a local pool and you have to walk and collect them. You also generally need a subscription to access them, so you get a key fob or card.

Certainly in European and Asian cities, car ownership is not that high, but it is very useful to have them occasionally. Maybe the driverless cars aren't going to be that popular initially for US suburban dwellers who use their car on a daily basis, but I can see it being massive for urban users elsewhere.

You know you could always use the car for shopping but public transport for going to / from work. That's not particularly unusual you know.

Eat healthier