It was East India Company tea that the 'founding fathers' dumped in the ocean. And East India Company-related trade restrictions that they suffered under.

In this specific case, BMG was a separate music company that Sony purchased shortly before the scandal. There wasn't a guy working in a Sony office in Japan who approved the rootkit. It happened nine years ago, it didn't actually act as a backdoor to people getting hacked, and I think it's time for Slashdot to get over it.

That's like the first the paragraphs, you should read the rest of the article. It's interesting and informative.

And is an interesting point that the stock market views yahoo as a negative three billion company with a thirty billion investment in Alibaba.

It was pretty obvious what they meant even without looking at the hyperlinks.

Warning the following is an off-topic and totally uncalled for rant - my apologies to Annie who innocently shared something cool that got me itching for a outburst/creative writing spree from the pits of PTSD hell... stream of consciousness word salad shit... you have been warned! do not read further... unless you want some COOL GUNS!

Hey everyone, I got a good idea to get some cool guns -- So, if you are a cop - then you can have and shoot lots of different guns all the time, with ammo like chocolate, nails, microwaves, infrared, bullets, bigger bullets, toxic and noxious gases and loads of harmful electrical overdose inducing ammo without needing to care if you are dominating and harming people (people are just targets to shoot) as you can become numb to emotional reactions to your actions.. pretty cool job because everyone who isn't in on this cool business strategy, will hate you but cant express it in a meaningful way that can make you stop hurting them - sweet eh? - plus, since you could be legally immune to retaliation or investigation, Did you know that the police department doesn't have an Internal Affairs division to make sure you aren't abusing your victims? A bird told me this, so its probably not true as birds cant talk because I always shoot them with my cool guns. Anyways they weren't really important. Stupid fucking birds poop on cars and so we should get rid of em. - I think they were all laid off -- anyways, where was I -- oh yeah anyways,,, you can do anything you want with your guns to anyone you want and never worry if you will be held accountable for anything, cant be sued, cant be prosecuted, being completely above the law, FYI since I am explaining to you guys this cool way to have lots of cool guns, the tool that gets you the money and shit is called the law. The law is a cool and really really really loaded book of pedantic and very petty rules you can use as excuses/reasons (call it what you like they are the same thing) to exert robbery and kidnappings or can even give you the right excuse for lethal force if something a victim is doing sorta matches something in the law book you get to use for this method of income redistribution and paternal lordship - Into BDSM? Like to be a Dom? This book gives you so many more options to role play with than that cheezy hippe book called kama surta - The Law. Remember it, its the way you win on the force. So back to guns, Its so its cool to be reckless and murderous as following orders is completely indifferent to the "morals" and objections of you live targets - all because its the only thing that matters when you have cool guns and supreme authority -- its all about getting a thrill because people hate it and its pure evil and nothing can stop you. Schadenfreude! Some German word that sounds like a German getting shot by a sawed off mossburg or a blond guy or a fat guy with a buzz cut shooting someone identified as a suspect with a wallet because someone said they shoplifted some bread and probably you should intervene with you gun or ram that fucker with your car (don't worry, you can get a replacement car in tip top shape with the tank filled up and facebook or liveleaks waiting on your new replacement lappy that's attached to your dash tomorrow for free - ram away! you are covered!) and tackle them and then beat them for that.
But. if you have empathy and it holds you back from this great opportunity, then you could be unfortunate enough to miss a payment and your car that you have to pay for on your own may not smog and someone can attack you and you can say... i mean if you are stupid and dont have money, you can say "stop hurting me!" and someone with the Law Book authority will still be legally allowed to rob you.. so dont be a civilian, they dont have free cars and guns like the cops do - lame eh? I shoot animals and eat them as regular animals know that fucking guns need to stay as they were originally intended to be be - cool evolutionary bits assembled into a biological reproductive sword tool used for mating, or banging that ass, not as joyous and slick looking murder or dom toys for humanity's least intelligent and most savage genetic throwbacks who get free gasoline and ammo all day to harass and rob people who are vulnerable...like shooting fish in a golden barrel the fish paid for.... for cash and RESPECT (out of fear of death) from your victims of course. So, best idea is, if you want a gun, want free gas, a nice car with a laptop mounted in it for you and some cool surveillance gear so you can intrude on anyone's privacy without limits, then join our armed forces at home or abroad - or on a broad. Just think, you can hold people in your car until they pay you (they will get a loan shark called a "bail bondsman" to pay your ransom in less than a couple of hours if they are able to figure out how to use the phone you left for them next to the advertisements for loan sharks in your rape dungeon! (yes you get your own rape dungeon too! awesome eh?) The fools will pay you to do it to them! They will kiss your ass or you can pistol whip them after you take away their clothes and stuff them in a box until they beg to kiss it! Its the best job ever! So, if you want cool guns, I urge you to join the military or law enforcement. You also get free gas, tons of respect, your own TV show that's been on longer then The Simpsons (they also make sure to only show you "winning" so don't worry if you think you might not do a good job on TV,) you get a big gas guzzling V8 or bigger car or SUV, you get free repairs and upgrades, you don't need to register or smog it, you don't need to follow the speed limit, yield to traffic or follow signs, and the best part -- you get RESPECT from people who you can rob or kill - without ANY repercussions! Oh yeah, because your job is "dangerous" and you are protecting people from themselves! Dumbasses! Neato huh? If your real good at it you can make a killing off those dumb poor people, bums, smelly people, people who don't have a free car like you, people called "minorities", people who look like they could be portrayed as being bad people, people with disabilities, autistic people, people with ADD/ADHD as they are really easy to find making a error and not obeying all the words in the amazing profit tool you have, the law book! A fantastic bit of words assembled for maximum coverage of all possible scenarios that allow you to intercept a mark and have a reason to beat them into a pile of hamburger with a state of the art telescoping steel baton! cool eh?

...without overbyte.

But with all the OOP being done, who cares about that anymore? Too big, too slow? Throw more storage and CPUs at it, and offload some of it to the user's machines, never mind that they've never tested their bloated crap on the generation or two old systems that most people use....

In the nineties, when I changed jobs, and didn't have a company paying for my subscriptions, I had to chose between Dr. Dobb's and the IEEE Comnpute - that was easy, I dropped Compute.

It's a real shame.

              mark

That's not how copyright works and I ask you to disclose that law. Anyway, Guardians of the Galaxy is less than $20 for a DVD, less than an hour's work for most people here, and is the mostly popular thing getting pirated. I seriously doubt you can stretch any law to mean "things have to be really cheap, like maybe just a buck or two, or you can take it without paying."

In god we trust, in all others we monitor.

In this day and age there is no protection. Look at a live threat map and see whats happening day in and day out - countries are attacking the United States as a target and the United States in attacking itself. Its clear the genie is out of the bottle and nothing you can do, no matter what OS you use will protect you if you connect to the internet. Its time to be aware and the best defense is to remove all ingress points entirely... if you have something to hide, stop being insecure and let it all hang out if you are on the web and own your data publicly - chances are you arent into kiddie porn and you arent a murderer or a credit card thief, and more likely than not, especially if you are reading this, you need to be connected to the net 24/7 - SO, LET IT ALL HANG OUT AND SHOW THE WORLD YOU ARE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE AND YOUR VICES, INTERESTS AND INTELLIGENCE IS NOT INTERESTING OR UNIQUE! BARE IT ALL SO WE CAN BE COUNTED AND BOLDLY FEARLESS OF YOUR DATA! (um yeah srsly lolz) ;-)
-DJfuQ

According to the FBI complaint against Benthall, he registered the black market bazaar's servers with the email address blake@benthall.net.

Lucky they had a mole on this inside, or they never could've taken down that criminal mastermind.

Who is this idtiot OP? If you do the simplest websearch, the inflation rate for the US in the last year is 1.7% (which, off the subject, is higher than the "raise" I and my coworkers got), so in other words, NASA's funding is absolutely static.

But then, the GOP secretly believes that the world is flat, and was created 4004 BCE....

            mark

Piracy promotes ideas, innovation, allows good things to spread

I'd link to pirate bay if it wasn't down...they showed the top downloads and literally every single one was a commercial movie or game or TV show from a major publisher. The exact same sort of thing that is popular without piracy, only now you don't have to pay for that copy of "Guardians of the Galaxy."

I don't know if wild Slashdot speculation that Microsoft might fundamentally change their business model to something word that everybody would hate is enough of a reason for them to move to an entirely new OS.

I don't know, I have a second browser and a second office suite and some old-school games and some programming tools and some translation tools and still have like 12 gigs left. If I want to watch downloaded videos I stream them from my desktop computer. 32 GB is fine if you're not using it for modern games or to house all your media.

Not quite 15", but the HP stream is a $230 14" laptop with a 32 GB ssd. Windows, office, and the various bundled apps take up about 15 gigs of that. I have the 12" version and speed is fine, you just can't use it for games, and if you want to keep a large collection of music or pictures (or whatever) you need an external drive or SD card.