It's a good day to die.

Not really. The OS does not protect you against the internet, because it has only minimal contact with it. Most attacks will not come through the router, and client based attacks should be prevented by the browser. Using XP with Chrome throughout 2014 may not be a dangerous as some people fear, as long as Google includes workaround for relevant flaws of the OS such as font handling.

Agreed. TeX uses a procedural approach, which is really not a good idea for a document. A declarative approach would be much better, and there are alternatives such as lout the demonstrate how well it works. Heck, even TeX has both styles and formatting codes available at all time.

HTML, much abused, has a much saner model. But there is a distinct lack of good editors for HTML. Which also proves zealots wrong who say "a good and well documented format will attract support". MS Word is still the most widely supported document format. Better documented alternatives (lyx, html, lout) are impossible to import/export in anything but a handful of programs.

And to be honest, Word 2007 is a completely different beast from Word 2003. I would even go as far as calling it quite usable - it deals nicely with styles, and it finally has an acceptable equation editor. Float placement is still a bit of a gamble, citations are best left to other software packages, but it is really not all that bad any more. Good enough - typical Microsoft software.

No, it's true. Few dare to do it, but the Surface Pro is competing with top end ultrabooks for some applications. It has the advantage that you can take off the keyboard (and the disadvantage that you need to pay extra for it). Now personally I would rather have a notebook with a decent CPU than an ultrabook, even if it is 3mm thicker and 200g heavier. But some people like to pack light.

Of course the RT is a different matter, it is both an abomination and way too expensive.

Same here. Some of my friends are on the iPhone 4S, and they are not really tempted to upgrade. Some are coming to the end of their contract, and they are contemplating going on a cheaper contract without taking a new iPhone (shock!).

To be honest, Apple got a lot of bad publicity for a lady in China electrocuted by a third party charger. So maybe they feel compelled to be "proactive" against unauthorised third party equipment?

You've got to spend money to make money.

... to good old security? You know, checking who gets into the staff premises of a bank?

I bet they thought it was a low risk area, because it was only handling "data". But "data" is money...

Indeed - I can get an HP microserver for less, complete with case, power supply, and a boot drive.

I think Intel has an advantage when it comes to throughput or computing power, but realistically the Atom is not really that impressive, certainly not at this price.

While I agree that a back button is useful, and the multi-tasking button, in addition to the obvious home button, I think Android has overdone it. In Android 2, they had back, home, menu and search buttons. In Android 4, the menu button has moved on screen, and instead there is a multi-tasking button. As much as I appreciate that Google likes a search button, I think it is just one too many.

They may have picked up the pace, but they also dropped all the devices I own. So for me, this is a non-issue.

I am tempted by the Nexus because of the high resolution screen, but I really want an SD card slot, and dual SIM if possible. Anything like that supported by CM?

Yes, the update system is different on Windows 6, but it is still broken. I often get conflicting messages from the Update program and the Update notifier.

The internal drive being more expensive than the external one seems inherently *unreasonable* to me.

Also the price of a 4TB drive now should be similar to the price of a 2TB drive 3 years ago. But it is not anywhere near, in fact it is nearly twice as high. And that is despite the fact that you have to disassemble an external drive, and that warranty is 1 year instead of 3.

Cost is exactly the problem. It has not fallen in the 2 years since the price spike. Capacity has barely increased - you still cannot buy any internal hard drives over 2 TB for a reasonable price. The whole industry is stuck in the past - even logical 4k sectors that were agreed 2008 or so never materialised.

There is still a place for hard drives, and that is storing media files. HD recordings, picture collections, even large backups. But for most devices, SSD are the better choice.

> This practice of evidence laundering would appear to be very similar to the "Parallel Construction [reuters.com]" process described as in use by the DEA for other giant secretive data sources (with 'Parallel Construction' being the term for "recreating" a fictional chain of evidence that excludes the existence of sensitive data sources. Less friendly audiences might call this 'perjury'...)

Exactly, and that is what most worries me about it. It is lying to the court by omission - so it is not clear at all that this is not perjury on a grand scale. And I used to believe that you should always stay well clear of grey areas, especially if you pretend to be the "good guys".