Way to pick at the smallest detail of his point.

Personally I'd be happy with a simple installer wrapper I can use in lieu of being forced to give full admin privileges to software installers so they can execute whatever they want as well as shit files and registry entries all over my tidy hard drive

Something that makes a simple zip file with a text file inside with the names of files, their relative locations, and registry values needing copied, and it copies the files and creates the reg entries. Why do I have to give shit free rein to infect my computer with whatever crapware it wants just to try out a program?

Directshow = Video
DirectX = 3D Graphics

Silverlight uses its own video implementation, not Directshow.

They are not the same thing.

Thank you. About time someone with sense spoke up.

Create a private bnet channel/game with all your LAN buddies and it'll run just as well as LAN once you get in the game provided they use the same game hosting model they used for SC, WC2 Bnet Ed and WC3.

Link: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/Mozilla-Firefox-Final.shtml

It still brings up the "Thank you for testing this RC" screen though when you restart. Perhaps they forgot to change it?

I think the bursts are due to Firefox's sqlite writes every 15 seconds even when the browser is idle. Who thought this was a good idea?

I'm quickly running out of synonyms for 'pointless' to troll all these Twitter stories.

As long as I don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The problem is in the abuse of this, like the footage that came out of the police using their night surveillance equipment to spy on individuals having an evening with a lady in their penthouse.

So as long as abuse is monitored and actively discouraged, what's wrong with being watched while you're in public?

Any OEM with any brains at all will re-add IE to their system images, lest they field a mass of tech support calls claiming their computer doesn't have 'the internet' because they don't see the big blue E on the desktop.

This will only affect people buying at retail who likely already know how to install and configure an alternative browser, but now have to download via FTP or flash drive.

"I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way."

Clearly he has never read Youtube comments.

Err, nevermind just read TFA and they don't even have a real keyboard. Sigh, oh well.

I'm not a Linux fan myself but that is actually a pretty attractive feature set for $100 and I would seriously consider buying one if they were:

1. Fully supported: I don't have to hack anything to get something working, ever. That means after updates too.

2. Battery life was really ~10 hours.

3. Flash worked (sadly a web necessity).

4. Hibernate works flawlessly.

5. ARM repository is respectable and frequently updated.

6. It at least works as fast as my P3 1GHz on WinXP.

6 check marks there and you've got a check from me for a nice light web browsing / word processing computer.

Has the font situation improved in Linux since like 4 years ago?

After a code review it was revealed the button1.onclick was vote++ instead of vote==1 and some people are doubletapping the screen.

I knew we shouldn't have outsourced that function to Mrs. Stewart's 4th grade computer class, but hey times are tough.

You provide some interesting information but I wasn't claiming that it was true (hence the supposedly), only that the US Gov likely thinks that it has a vested interest in fighting piracy.

The resources used to fight piracy could indeed be used to fight something else, but that the system as a whole hasn't gained is not a certainty. If they shifted resources from focusing on finding snails breaking speeding laws to piracy, then I don't see how everyone isn't technically better off.

Everything you say about the effects of cracking down on piracy are true. Indeed, not all pirates will purchase in lieu of not using at all, but some will. There is some gain there, whether it is substantial or not, nobody knows.

As for the shifting money from private sector to government. That is an economic concern, and while I'm sure the government would prefer economic growth, I doubt they are averse to shifting money their way in this manner.

A good point, however, fighting piracy supposedly increases spending since the pirates can't free-ride, which means more tax dollars; so both sides have a vested interest in that.

In this case, the tax revenue from MS is still substantial, so Uncle Sam is probably better off with them here than overseas. Whether MS would be better off overseas is unclear.

Who will blink first?

Maybe the government can fight back by hinting at tariffs on software imports if they go overseas? I'm sure US sales are a significant portion of MS's revenue.

Anyone know of a similar occurrence in recent history (obviously won't be of this magnitude)?

What in the hell are you talking about?

MKV is a video container file format, it stores the video/audio/subtitles in a documented fashion that allows media players with a proper MKV splitter to be able to parse and use the streams within. Similar file formats are AVI, and MP4.

Matroska does not aim to supplant DVD/Blu-ray. I think you might be assuming that MKV is a disc format that claims to be able to play on all hardware DVD players, which is not the case.