That's kind of narrow view of what tech is. If you want to have a real conference, you should be trying to develop a discussion which requires different perspectives. I don't think diversity is a function of color or gender, but if you go looking for differing ideas and opinions the odds of getting an all white, male group are exceedingly low. If a conference doesn't introduce you to new ideas, what's the point of going.

It's hard to imagine that in a country as diverse as the UK would produce a panel consisting entirely of white males without there being some bias on the part of the organizer. Maybe he just invited his friends, in which case he probably wasn't getting the "best", he was just getting the most agreeable (to him).

A couple points, I wonder if this is the magic factor Microsoft has been banking on to drive wireless carriers into selling more Windows Phones (as opposed to pushing Android). ?
Has anyone trademarked Paranoid-Droid yet ? I think I see a future Android/Linux fork possibility. I'm not sure how much more data Google would really gain by directly providing the service vs. what everyone is already willing to give away.

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how this isn't exactly like the anti-trust situation where Microsoft bundled their own browser with Windows. Except that Microsoft didn't actually restrict the software you could install, only the default/bundled stuff.

The scanguage II gets its information from the ecu via the can-bus just like the instrument cluster on the dash, and as such, is no more accurate. The only real way to properly gauge average fuel economy is by comparing the litres or gallons put in vs. the km or miles since the last fill up.
I will say that while the Kia we own doesn't get the claimed fuel economy that was on its window sticker, at least the speedometer doesn't read 8% higher like the '08 Mini Cooper S we traded in. The scanguage is only as accurate as the ecu, which is never more accurate than the sum of its sensors and calibration.

I'm one of those people affected by Kia's bogus mileage claims the most with the 6mpg difference. I traded in a Mini Cooper S for a optioned out Kia Soul Exclaim Premium. Both cars had the same ratings according to the window stickers, 28 city, 34 highway, EPA ratings have gotten significantly better (with some obvious exceptions) in recent years. I typically get about 2mpg less than sticker due to my driving style, the crappy 15+% ethanol laden gas, and the hilly terrain around where we live, but on longer drives the highway mileage always lines up if I compare the gps-read-miles and the gallons out of the gas tank. True to this finding, our Soul has been getting 6mpg less than it's rated and other owners on the Kia Soul forums say the exact same thing.
Really it's common sense and I knew the window sticker wouldn't be completely correct when we bought the car. Any time you see claims that a companies top of the line trim with much bigger, wider wheels, a larger engine, and an automatic gets the same mileage as their entry level trim with the little engine, skinny tires, and a stick shift, you know someone's not doing the math. I am a little shocked to see the EPA actually picked up on this and delivered a solution. Kudos to the guys in charge for once. I'm also pretty happy with the solution. I know some Mini-zealouts will rage on me for saying this, but our 2012 Kia is 100x nicer to drive around the city and on longer road trips than our Mnii was and it's even better now that they both are on equal (effective) gas mileage terms.

Good point.
And kudos to whomever spotted that script. I thought they were being sneaky using the light grey font so it didn't stand out. I popped the page over to my portrait monitor and sure enough the layout changes quite naturally to keep the Samsung notice out of sight.

Reminds me of when RIAA went after pirates of "The Love Guru"...
You can hardly call it a lost sale if no-one really wanted it in the first place.

I stopped installing Firefox onto all the machines I work on earlier this year when Flash instances started crashing it. This has been going on since about Firefox 13-present and Flash 11-present. I'm not going to mourn the eventual death of Flash, but I'm not limiting my browsing while I wait for the websites I use to replace it. If I wanted a sucky web experience, I'd get an Ipad.

It's one thing if you couldn't install Firefox or Chrome on your PC, but the whole browser issue is a bit of a dead horse. I don't see Apple getting smacked around for the browser defaults in their OS, nor Google. Faulting Microsoft for setting up IE is a bit like getting after Ford for selling a car with seats already installed.

Seriously, learn the shortcuts.
I was as upset about the loss of the start button as anyone, but having come across a list of the new windows key shortcuts, I'm now able to get things done faster than ever. The final version of Windows 8 is a 10000x better than that buggy POS preview edition.

Steam is full of crap as far as Windows vs. Linux goes for gaming. They're just shooting their mouths off like Acer did because they're afraid of any competition. I've got Steam and all my games installed on both my pc and notebook on the Windows 8 desktop and they run just as well, if not quicker now than they did under Windows 7. It wouldn't take Steam more than half an hour to turn their storefront into an "app" just so they're searchable in the marketplace. PC gamers aren't so stupid that we can't find the desktop or the site that sells PC games.

If Valve wants to invest in making Linux a more consistent experience for millions of different hardware configurations with a slick interface, that's super ! I don't think they can do that, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

We had a guest speaker at an ASME meeting a month and a half ago talking about this very issue, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar. She was speaking about her talks with congress about the importance of replacing these weather satellites and the response she got from the representatives was "why do we need satellites, can't we just get our weather from the internet".
A republic only works if you send your best and brightest off to handle the day-to-day decisions.Representatives that got their job via a popularity contest are usually no more fit make technical decisions than guys and gals who won the homecoming king & queen positions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrj9Wc2L84

Well put.
The MS approach is quite different from Apples. I'm not crazy about the extra mouse clicks required to get some things done under Windows 8, but a seamless experience across all my devices (or screens) feels like a net productivity gain. I ve tinkering with Linux and even OSX, but I still use Windows everywhere I want to get things done. Linux has some great components, but 2 copies of the same distribution aren't even guaranteed to be binary compatible let alone sharing a common structure. At the end of the day I want to be able to log into my profile, launch solidworks, office, or whatever program I need, and get work done.

I've been running the latest ROM from project Jandycane over on XDA, hardware acceleration works just fine. The one thing I haven't bothered to sort out yet is the sleep mode. With the stock Kindle Fire ROM you can hit the power button and leave the Fire in your bag for a week or two without the battery running down, now it's running in the background as if it were a phone and the battery's flat in a day.
Otherwise, it works far better now that it did unmodified.
If you want to run Amazon apps, just register it as one of your android devices and re-send the apps to it.
This article is a bit dated, Jandycane is now on 1.7.3 updated last Oct.1st, but it hasn't changed that much.
http://www.androidauthority.com/kindle-fire-jelly-bean-tablet-ui-jandycane-custom-rom-105945/

I tried that too, it also broke all my games and all my productivity.

Linux is a great idea and has many powerful tools, but for everyone who's not a comp-sci major, the OS is just supposed to launch the programs you want, and preferably do it fast.

A $99 'lazy tax' for everyone who doesn't want to format their hd, perform a clean install, setup their drivers, and download a ton of patches, etc...
meh, sounds pretty fair to me.
Those same people could have avoided all that junk installed on their pc if they'd just bought a computer assembled by an enthusiast company or a local computer shop in the first place. Those low prices at Best Buy or many online retailers are subsidized by all the crap they pre-load the systems with. Complaining about the crapware on an HP is like complaining about the ads on a "Kindle with special offers".

I tried to argue a reckless driving ticket using math and physics when I was younger. I was in the right and proved it conclusively based on the officers statement, but the back-woods judge just changed the charge to a misdemeanor and fined me anyhow for "anything you might have done in my county". When I asked about appealing his decision, the judge pointed out that it would cost $300 and him being the only judge, he'd probably say the same thing next time. If the court's looking to collect some money, the court's going to collect that money one way or another.

I wonder if Apple has a similar policy, although you can bet they have Microsoft Office installed everywhere they need people to be productive.

I hate Bluray, yes the picture and sound might be better than dvd (even with upscaling), but the DRM is a nightmare. Blurays in our LG theater system take 4-5 times as long to start up as dvd's and more frequently than not, new releases are incompatible until LG makes a firmware update available. If it doesn't play, it's as useless as an AOL cd. Once the movie starts I'm not worrying about the diff between 5.1 and 7.1 sound, nor am I nitpicking every pixel. If I am looking at little details like that, it means the movie is crap and I'm bored out of my mind.

Completely agree.
I'm reading way more now on my Kindle Touch than I was before. While the cost of books is about the same regardless the format, physical vs e-book, I only like to keep really good hardcovers in our library. With the Kindle I can find a quiet seat almost anywhere and immerse myself because I can carry it anywhere and when one book is finished, I just select the next book and carry on.

Tablets are not e-book readers, they're little computer screens. I don't like reading anything for very long on the computer, even code I want to go over, I'll print out to review. If it's not interactive,