The interface changes were the 'in two minutes' gut-level issues that made me hesitate before upgrading. The reason I'm glad I waited is that shortly thereafter a number of incompatibility issues came up online with libraries I have to use day to day, most notably Oracle client drivers.

I'm a software developer, and I primarily use OS X. RailsConf this year was virtually a sea of identical 15" MacBook Pros. I also use Linux, of course, and primarily deploy on Linux servers, but OS X (pre-Lion) has been a great dev environment. When you add in the fact that mobile development generally requires targeting iOS, which absolutely requires XCode....

My boss upgraded to Lion, and I used it for about two minutes before deciding to stick with Snow Leopard for the foreseeable future. Lion feels like a toy. It's almost like the OS needs to go in two directions, if they want to pursue this iOS-on-the-desktop feel, and do something (but better) like when they offered A/UX as a marginally-compatible alternative to Mac OS.

It's not endemic to the UK or Europe. I was told the same thing trying to take a picture in a Target parking lot outside of Baltimore, MD. I didn't think much of it at the time, but what if my car had been damaged and I needed to document it for insurance purposes?

Furthermore, (and this might be a UK/US discrepancy) IANAL but I was pretty sure all a strip mall security guard could do was ask you to leave the premises. Confiscating private property seems like a torts lawyers dream, IMHO. All you would have to do is refuse to surrender your camera/phone and taunt the minimum wage rent-a-cop until he slugs you, and never have to work again.

Actually, I think I might spend more time photographing strip malls... working sucks...

As much as MS products disgust me in general, I have to agree they didn't fail too hard on Office 2010 (Well, I use Office 2011 for Mac when I use Office, but...). I also agree that LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org feels kinda clunky and gross. I use them all the time on Linux and OpenSolaris, but... damn, does OpenOffice make my old SunBlade 1500 crawl. And they're not that much better on a new Core i5 laptop running Debian. I don't care about the startup lag inherent in JVM bootstrapping, but I feel like they're crushed under the weight of legacy code from the StarOffice days or something. I use Java apps all the time, even god-forsaken Oracle Java apps (SQLDeveloper, anyone?) and it's not this bad. I wish them the best of luck, but I'd really rather use iWork at this point, if I'm going to use a 'productivity suite.'.

Of course, Real Programmers use vim + LaTeX + maybe Slidedown for these purposes.

The difference between keys, and algorithms or protocols, is while the latter can be reverse engineered, a strong key is practically impossible to recover, even when every detail of the implementation of the cryptosystem is known to both parties.

To put it in simpler terms, "security through obscurity" would be not telling anyone where my house is, and hoping they never find out. Better security would not be handing out copies of my house key, having an alarm system, and dealing with novel intrusion techniques as they arise.

Kerckhoff's Principle specifically applies to cryptosystems. Not only does TFA describe more of a generalized application to systems and code, but it's not really describing 'security through obscurity.' It's describing informational arbitrage, i.e., profiting (not necessarily financially) from an imbalance of knowledge on one side of a two-participant game.

The dynamic adaptive approach has its merits, particularly as it is increasingly clear that most security is only the illusion of security, maintained until it is breached. But traditional 'security through obscurity' refers to systems for which the only security measure in place is maintaining the secrecy of a protocol, algorithm, etc.

It seems to me the ideal approach is a balanced one, that embraces the UNIX philosophy: cover the 90% of most common attack vectors with proven security measures (and update practices as needed), and take a dynamic adaptive approach to the edge cases, because those are the ones most likely to breach if you've done the first 90% correctly.

Of course. It's a 2^10-element array of patents, the reporter just took the index of the last one and reported it as the count.

You have to sign up for API access. It looks liek this is early stages, plus they want to create an architecture for devs to build on, less than a site for browsing. So hopefully we'll see apps using their API soon. I'm going to play with it.

I'm lovin' it... if it encourages any of the nerdier nerds, I think if you just built this with a REST API, the lower-level nerds (like me) would be happy to throw together front-ends for the unwashed masses... +1 for the idea...

In addition, just wanted to mention, WHO DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING?!?!?

Right, you shut down internet access ANYWHERE in this country, and ZOMG, Anons are pissed!

People forget that the internet is serious business.

Hopefully, Google will jump on the boat with the folks at The Economist who argue that the U.S. patent system as it stands should be abolished.

But I'm not holding my breath.

In civil cases, the burden of proof is usually on the plaintiff. The key is to not appear intimidated, comply with any court-ordered audits or reviews, and make sure every you have records for every license, every piece of software, on every machine.

And going forward, use FOSS as much as possible...

More typically, it goes:

Dev: We should use MongoDB.
DBA: THE END IS UPON US!!! The Beast and his armies shall rise from the Pit and make war against God!!! ZALGO!!! HE COMES!!!

They aren't selling anything to the Belgian press, unless the Belgian press decides to buy into AdWords or something. Since the Belgian press seem to prefer to opt out of Google's services, I don't see how they can complain when Google decides to comply (perhaps) overly broadly with the court order.

Besides, there's always Bing.