That's a stupendous way to end software development overnight. Yes, Apple had a bug. All software has bugs. They clearly intended for a different outcome and surely never expected Google to actively attack it.

Of the two, Apple made a mistake but acted with good intentions (at least on the surface, but there's no point going full tinfoil because then there's no point having a conversation about it). Google acted maliciously, and if someone's going to be held accountable for this then it should be them.

In before "lol fanboy": I would say exactly the opposite if, say, iCloud.com exploited a bug (not a feature: a bug) in Chrome to do the same thing. In this specific case, Apple seems to have acted honorably and Google unhonorably.

Hey -- don't ignore the DESIGN part of "Modular Design". A crime novel may follow a pattern seen elsewhere in other crime novels, but lifting while chapters out would constitute breach of copyright. Just because creating something according to a certain methodology is known, that doesn't make your methodology that you labored developing worthless and public domain.

Considering Clarkson developed the present format of Top Gear AFTER they had cancelled it due to weak ratings, hen single-handedly pitched and sold the concept to the BBC, created the character of "The Stig" (originally to be called The Git -- since race car drivers are all gits) and brought in Hammond and May and is the central host, key figure and driving personality behind Top Gear... YES Clarkson did quite literally and figuratively 'make the show'.

Actually, as a Developer I completely trust Comcast Business. True broadband, excellent upstream rates, and great QoS and reliability. Outages are infrequent and dealt with rapidly, their customer service is actually knowledgeable and the turnaround time to get an install is under 48 hours (I had a tech out installing at my new rental the day after I signed up for service and hadn't even had a chance to move in yet. I know many other small businesses and startups that use Comcast business and who have the same positive experience. Comcast Cable however are an evil cabal of raging assholes that love nothing more than abusing their customers. But Comcast Business and Comcast Cable are two different divisions and run independently of each other.

And don't worry, it can't turn into Skynet because Amazon doesn't have nuclear weapons.

Python's string library isn't remotely what I'd call "overweight", but its strings are immutable. Some algorithms that are quick in other languages are slow in Python, and some operations that are risky in other languages (like using strings for hash keys) are trivial (and threadsafe) in Python. But regardless of the language involved, it's always a good idea to have a bare minimum of knowledge about it before you do something completely stupid.

Ahhh AC -- the product of the gadget generation that simply can not grasp the concept that new technology does not come out all nice and shiny like an iPhone -- but takes decades to become powerful and useful to the masses. Perhaps AC had been around in the 70s or 80s and seen the evolution of the PC from a curiosity, to an expensive utility to a common place commodity he'd have a better appreciation for product evolution. In a few years, given advances in materials and fabrication technique, I'm sure even AC will start to see the potential of 3D printing as something beyond a pipedream.

Probably an SF Bay Area transplant -- to them anyone not fervently clamoring for a Authoritarian Government to telling everyone what to eat, drink and how to generally live their lives is conservative. I hate the Bay Area and regret moving here -- leaving by this Summer I hope.

Well, considering that one of the areas I'm not entirely happy with is media transcoding times between various audio and video formats on some fairly sizable files, with this I think I'd see a profound effect on FFMPEG's performance.

To all conservatives, more government regulation is uniformly bad.

To all liberals, more government regulation is uniformly good.

And so there we have the two sides, one pressing us to a feudal-style Private Police State run by Corporate Fascists, the other into a Authoritarian Police State Run by Big Government and Corporate Citizens. Either way we are already good and fucked regardless of who you vote for.

Not necessarily. Sure speed bumps are common, but usually incremental. Doubling performance over a single generation is not too common in desktop computing these days. I was going to buy another laptop next month since I always have a spare and I just retired my spare. But was planning on going with the new Macbook or an Air for their slightly smaller form factor. Now it looks like I'll might be opting for another 13" MBP.

I am pretty miffed to read this. Nothing like paying a load of cash for a shiny new laptop only to find out a couple months later that you'd have been way better off waiting.

We are past the point of merely saying anything. We are to the point where only an outright civil war will stop our slide into a Totalitarian Police State.

Julian Bashir, because every Space Station needs an overcompensating closet case.

Yeah, well, it's not too hard to escape from unicode hell...