Secret court finds secret spying OK. News at 11...

I would replace "Android" with "WP8" for almost all of those (all, once Amber drops on my device), because I've got karma to burn at the moment and it's true. There's a shit-ton of copying going on in iOS 7 from WP8, WebOS... and Android.

I can confirm this as a US citizen who travels to Brazil every 12-18 months. It's not quite as bad as Russia, but it is a pain to have to go to the Brazilian embassy and get a visa just to go to Brazil on vacation, plus the additional costs of the visa.

Exactly. A similar thing happened in Finland a few years ago. The previously state-run mobile phone and internet provider was sold to a Swedish company and as a result, the hub for all the data flowing into and out of this provider moved to Sweden. The problem was, the Finnish government used this provider, and suddenly all government data was "overseas". This was/is illegal. So, they had to quickly build new datacenters in Finland to host all the government data. I would also speculate that Sweden's close ties with the US had some impact to the urgency as well.

Note, this was well before the whole Assange affair which also seems to smell of US interference/cooperation with the Swedish government in order to get him on Swedish soil so he can be extradited to the US for prosecution.

No, this belongs on a "news for nerds" site. If you are so dependent and coddled by the whole app-store experience, then you are not a nerd and you need to use that other news site you mentioned.

A real nerd/geek/whatever label you want to use is not going to be bothered that he/she can't get their apps through a single source.

In the US, almost NOBODY buys mobile phones off-contract. Yes, most of us know that is the worst way to buy a mobile phone, but the simple fact is most Americans don't want to pay up-front for the phone. The average US consumer will not do the math and figure out how much more they are paying on-contract, not to mention that US mobile call and data rates are among the highest in the world. I've been trying to convince my parents in the US, who are in their 70's and retired, to get phones off-contract, but they just don't get it. All they see is the bigger up-front cost. It's a cultural thing, Americans tend to want their stuff now and with no starting cost, even if it costs them more over time. I see this both in the consumer and business worlds.

Carrier lock-in via contracts and locked devices is still a big issue in the US, unlike many other parts of the world.

Disclaimer: I'm an ex-pat American living abroad for 12 years.

Sounds to me like you're just lazy. XP is missing all of the usability improvement that came in later versions (not necessarily counting 8). How do you snap two windows side by side in XP? Oh wait, you can't. How do you utilize more than 3GB of your memory in XP? You don't, unless you use the bastard child that was XP 64-bit, which almost nobody supports by the way. For me, 8GB is a good starting point for RAM for what I use a PC for.

There are LOTS of usability tweaks in later versions. Please, just let XP die, it's had a good run but it's time to bury it. It's also ugly as hell next to a modern OS.

I won't hesitate to guess that a majority of people are hanging on to XP only because they've got a cracked copy and don't want to buy a legitimate newer version.

Ever heard of the internet? I hear you can search for things and actually download them! /sarcasm off

Totally agree, they should mass produce these and make them available at multiple touch points for anyone to pick up, train stations, kiosks, shops, etc.

Two words: artificial scarcity

For reference, please refer to gas prices at the pump.

To further refine that, it's a lack of mental healthcare PLUS the easy availability of guns that is the problem. One without the other would not really be a problem.

The difference compared to the US is that in Switzerland, all those guns are kept at home by people who have been trained and serve(d) in the military. As in, they have been through a selection process to weed out the unstable idiots who should not have guns, because you do not want unstable idiots to have firearms period, whether in the military or not.

In the US, any Billy Joe Bob Gun-nut can go out and buy an assault rifle with little more than a basic background check. There is no training requirement and there is no psychological check in place to prevent guns from ending up in the wrong person's hands.

I find it very interesting to read so many people here defending XP in light of its security weaknesses. We're talking about an OS that has a horrible security model out of the box and encourages applications to be designed to run with full admin privileges. If you are a developer stuck on XP and you haven't updated your software to work properly with the newer security model introduced in Vista, well shame on you. You've had way more than enough time... 7 years to be exact.

XP is the "odd one out" now, with regards to how you design a good, secure Windows application. There are 3 newer versions of Windows and the 4th is coming next week, all with a similar, much more robust security model. XP is now the bastard child, different from the rest. Sickly.

And don't forget the 64-bit question. While 32-bit XP was very widely used and adopted, the 64-bit "edition" was an instant bastard child, born out of the unholy union of XP and Server 2003 64-bit. Very few applications support 64-bit XP and with good reason. While it was the first 64-bit Windows on the desktop, its compatibility with existing and even new applications was never a strong point. It was a niche product and never gained widespread support. If you need 64-bit support, XP doesn't cut it. We work with very large datasets, and 64-bit is basically a requirement for much of what we do.

We are about to release the last versions of our software that support XP and I can't wait for the day we drop support completely. It's an additional testing burden when we already need to test all newer versions. Plus, it behaves differently than the rest. Continuing to support XP today drives up costs and limits adoption of newer and better technologies. It had a good run, but now it's time to let it die. There are newer and better Windows versions.

Hmm... maybe the TSA needs to be talking to ICE (immigration and customs enforcement). Because recent articles point to ICE having used traveler information to specifically target "dissidents" returning from outside the US in order to perform an illegal search and seizure. In the most recent high profile case, a journalist (iirc) returning from a vacation in Mexico had all his electronics confiscated at the border because he had an association with a support organization working on behalf of Bradley Manning. This was before Manning's conviction. ICE kept his stuff for 7 MONTHS, while they sifted through all his documents and files. It's even rumored they shared the data with other three letter government organizations. Nothing was found to justify such an illegal search.

Isn't that basically the same argument the US military uses to justify rape and not go go after the perpetrator?

Really now? Show me a netbook with an IPS screen and 4 cores that sells for less than $349. What? Can't find one? Whoops...!