because it is ?

AND... if the summary is right (won't bother reading TFA), it's a _LOCAL_ exploit. which means, if you don't run telnetd, have all system accounts locked and have a strong passwords on your user's account, even if you have sshd running it shouldn't be a big deal.

now, if:

- you have a webserver;
- it allows uploads OR allows users's code to create files on /tmp;
- whatever temp dir the webserver uses allows execution (i.e. doesn't have "noexec" on /etc/fstab);
- your PHP/phyton/ruby whatever is not configured to deny execution of system commands;

then you DESERVE to be rooted, just so you can learn how to properly secure your server the next time;

disclaimer: yeah, this is how i learned.

you didn't get the point. manufacturers DON'T CARE for the android brand. they care for THEIR brand. android for them is just another checkbox on the features list, like:

* compatible with android: Yes.

the part of "divergent UIs" is not android's fault, even because it's not a fault at all. in a higly competitive market, where any of the other oferings have the basics covered, purchase decisions are based on details. this means making your phone look different, but still interoperable with the competitors is crucial. for what i understand, MS won't allow vendors to customize the UI, and this can be winphone's undoing. if all handsets have the same hardware, the same OS, the same interface, how will the consumer diferentiate them ? it'll cause the same problem that plagues PC makers. undiferentiated products with razor thin margins, and phone makers don't want this to happen to them. android allows customization, so manufacturers can diferentiate their offerings, while keeping compatibility.

wishing doesn't make it true. they _whished_ the market was theirs, when in truth, it belonged to symbian; and now it's shared between symbian and android. they can't "take back" something they never had. they were just one more player among many. and what'll keep them as a minor player here, is everything android has going for it that winphone doesn't have: free form factor (phones and tablets of all sizes, with varying capabilities), pricing (it's free and open source after all) and possibility of customization.

newspeak=doubleplusungood

FTFY

people used to buy disposable batteries for electronics in decades past, so if a fuel cell lasts something like a week in a moderatelly powerfull notebook and were cheap enough, i wouldn't mind.

now, your idea of a home algae tank is unfeasible. methanol is an alcohol. you can make alcohol at home. home made alcohol goes by the handles "beer" and "wine", depending on the source material (grains or fruits/sugars) and the yeast used. but it'll be diluted enough to be useless to power anything other than yourself at a party. methanol producing algae would be the same. they'd start to die by the time the concentration reached a critical level, leaving a solution of mostly water and some methanol.

to be used as fuel, it'd need to be distilled, a time and power consuming activity, with hazardous/poluting by-products. ask anyone who ever made moonshine.

if they really want those, they can buy detailed copies from the russians. do you really think the KGB or it's successor agency, the FSB, didn't invested enourmous resources in obtaining them ?

and trust me, if they could infiltrate the manhatan project, NASA was a piece of cake for them.

two things comes to my mind. one is to make it more dificult for other countries to kickstart their own space programs, even if it's just for research or comercial purposes.

the other, is to keep a few large compnies like boeing and lockheed from having competition inside US. since the expense of keeping track of all those kinds of documents and regulations can be too much for small startups, only the big guys will do it, because they have the resources.

business people in US keep babling about how they're against regulation. but that's only when those reduce their bottom line. but when regulation prevents competion and increases their profit margins, the more the better.

that pastor's call for koran burning is hate speech. here in basil he'd be in jail for it by now.

i don't about hitchens, but the onion is satire, something that's constitutionaly protected here and, IIRC, in US as well.

well, then chalk this as another missed opportunity for dell.

mike dell seems to have a talent to be always behind the curve.

instead, you'll strugle with HP's crap. those are getting as bad as everybody else's.

IBM won't buy them. IBM wants nothing to do with the same PCs they invented nearly 30 years ago, that's why they sold the PC business to lenovo. found out that their market is with corporations, not consumers. when the largest buyers of printers, PCs and notebooks became end-users (instead of their bosses), they jumped ship. and i don't blame them.

i just got out of linuxcon brasil, and i saw an idea there that could save dell if they pull it right. it came from john maddog hall (funny guy, BTW. loved his talk).

it's one of the ideas he's pushing as part of project cauã. really small, ultra low power computers that can remainin an always on state running linux (of course) attached to the back of TVs or small monitors, with really nice broadband, so you can watch videos, listen to music, play games on the TV, control home automation, VoIP, cell phones (with a buil-in femtocell), and other stuff. also make a tablet that can sync sith the little thing behind the TV, and who knows ?

of course, they'd be competing with apple on that, but if they play it right, make the vertical integration work as well as apples and leverage the low cost of opensource, it might just work.

don't give them ideas man. please.

it's bad enough to have facebook tracking your every move on the interwebs as it is.

make it opensource and i'll do my best to collaborate.

[citation needed]

not as well designed as you might think.

i live in a house with other 2 roommates, so it was classified as a "colective residence", this caused some problems for the 2 enumarators (a nice midle-aged lady and a 20 something boy). seems the interface is very linear, they have to input avery answer ano after another, and if they need to correct anything, it's kinda confusing.

i don't know if it's by design (to avoid fraud) or a typical case of good programers that are lousy at interface design.

but, minor annoyances appart, i'm still satified with the process and proud of it.

by experience, i can say that wages here in brasil are about 4x lower for the same job than in US, so if labor was the reason for the high cost of US census, it should have costed 4 gigadolars, not 13.

other factors, to take into account:

population size:

brasil has an estimated 200 million inhabitans, US 300, barely 30% difference
the largest states are also the ones with lower population density, but the state of amazonas dwarfs alaska.
i doubt that alaskan landscape makes it as dificult to reach the population as the amazon forest does here
no matter how much people in US complaints, their roads are much better tha ours, movement is easier across the nation

all put togheter, the US census still is disproportionately more expensive than ours. score that for digital technology.

by the way, in the field of government automation, is brasil 2 X 0 US (the other point being our all-electronic elections)