Guess Google is silly then using the cheapest possible hard drives and accommodating the inevitable failures.

Both parties are guilty of cronyism. Or did you think Hollywood just supported Obama because they think he's a nice guy?

Except he's agreed to abide by the military code of conduct. So it's not as easy to ignore an affair as it is for a civilian. His rank as general is gone.

There are several odd things about this. First, the FBI investigation should have happened when he was appointed to head the CIA so why is this coming out now? Did the FBI just get around to doing their background check or has the affair been known for some time? Moreover, since the only forced resignation was his generalship, why did he resign from heading the CIA?

I doubt this had anything to do with next week's Benghazi testimony. The House is still going to want to talk to him and since he's an American citizen, the House can subpoena him if it comes to it.

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Booth may have been a patriot but he was a patriot to the losing side.

They just might care if the judge shuts down Apple UK for an indefinite amount of time. Contempt punishments are entirely up to the judge issuing the punishment.

I can't for the life of me figure out what Apple thinks they're gaining when they continue to draw attention to the ruling that Samsung didn't infringe.

This is the same magazine that published a multi-page article trying to figure out why Felix Bumgarten's skydiving descent took less time than Kittinger's. Lot's of graphs, lots of math and lots of theories but none add up. End of story. What a mystery! Until a commenter mentions that Kittinger's chute deployed much higher than Bumgarten's did.

If that was the only article in Wired like that it'd be one thing but unfortunately, there are more, many more.

If it wasn't for Steven Levy's rare articles, I wouldn't bother with Wired.

I'll see your three words and go in two; no hyphen: Regulatory Capture.

Healthcare is expensive because the government passes scores of rules that benefit the incumbents and keep out innovation. They pass those regulations because someone ends getting richer as a result.

  Ear Trumpet's developers received a cease and desist from the FDA after they published an iPhone App that tested your hearing and then loaded an equalizer to adapt playback response according to the test results. That's all they were selling - a test and an equalizer with presets. But you can't buy it anymore because the FDA objected.

Another case in point. One of my students' father was trained as an M.D. in China. The family emigrated to the U.S. and the father had to go through medical school all over just to prove he knew what he was doing. The only thing that improved in med school was his English. Were he, and hundreds of thousands other fully capable practitioners, able to come here and just hang out their shingle, you'd see health care costs plummet. But no. The medical profession protects its own from competition by convincing everyone they know best by limiting the number of doctors and med students.

Healthcare would be a hell of a lot cheaper if the government stayed the hell out of it.

Considering it wasn't too long ago that Italy put geologists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake, it's a bit difficult to give this latest development anything more than "there they go again...."

I bought a Asus i3-based laptop for $350 at Best Buy. Came loaded with crapware and no Win7 CD - you had to burn your own DVD before you used the machine. Even with an after-market SSD, it was very slow.

After several freezes, I finally gave up and installed Ubuntu 12.04. It runs much more smoothly than with Win7. It freezes sometimes when it resumes from suspend but it's not bothersome because rebooting takes 15 seconds. Apps start within 2 seconds and I'm simply able to get things done more quickly.

I read that when Jobs was testing the first iphone prototype, the screen was plastic because it was thought to resist fracturing when dropped. After a few times in his pocket getting scuffed up by his keys, he told the team to replace the plastic with glass which eventually led to Apple using Gorilla Glass. He didn't give a damn how expensive or inconvenient the transition was going to be, an easily scratched face wasn't going on the iphone. Though the backing was scratchable, it was made of stainless steel which meant minor scratches could be buffed out if the owner cared to.

Given Ifixit's 30 second test showing how scuff-prone the new aluminum backing is, it's hard to imagine Jobs having greenlit this particular design choice.

Since I can't edit a post, I'll edit it here - Evidently Microsoft might have switched gears on its update policy and as of Windows 8, might send upgrades over the air to all Windows 8 platforms.

Whether ZDNet has it right or not, it's hard to tell as I couldn't find any Microsoft update policy statement.

>Apple supports firmware updates including full hardware support for about 3 years at least.

That is probably why I'll buy the new iPhone when it comes out despite knowing it'll have a proprietary power plug instead of microusb and a walled OS. Maintaining the OS is crucial since no OS is bug-free when it's shipped. Android, by not having a routine patch policy, is just a few bugs away from a clever black hat finding the flaw that'll give them complete control of handsets around the world.

I had hoped that perhaps Microsoft would have understood this but the way they rolled over for the telcos suggests that Apple is currently the only handset company that has a grip on how important a uniform platform is.

If it's worth the $25 a month to you, you can buy a data only plan from Simply Mobile, plug the phone into your 12v line and hide the phone in your car. If your car gets stolen, you'll be able to locate it. That all assumes of course that the phone has GPS.

Enforcement, traffic laws, safety systems don't matter. What matters is the number of people and number of registered cars.

As hard as that may be to believe, Smeed's Law has held up since the 1940's when Smeed first proposed it.

Every advance in safety is offset by people engaging in riskier behavior.

I too have a prime membership but I cast a gimlet eye on Amazon's results when I'm buying. This afternoon, I dropped $100 at a 3rd party that I found with Google and paid with Google Wallet because Amazon's price was close to three times what I paid the 3rd party despite having to pay for shipping in the later case.

You have to realize that Amazon shades the prime prices to cover shipping costs - your $75 annual fee plus the profit on Prime products only works for Amazon if their prices are slightly higher than other folks who break out both costs. Sometimes, like today, the Prime premium isn't worth the price.

I'm currently shopping for a set of wheels for my bike and Amazon's price is nowhere near competitive. They're expensive so I'm taking my time finding a good deal before I buy - in those instances, Amazon tends to lose out because their target buyer tends to be price-insensitive.

The Tevatron in Illinois is capable of reaching 1 tera volts or 8 times as much energy the LHC needed to produce the Higgs.

Seems to me the LHC found it because they were able to pull the signal out of the background which was more a data analysis feat than a "let's smash protons together even harder than we have before" feat.

Then again, I'm not a physicist so perhaps I missed something.