The problem I see with this is that sometimes security vulnerabilities are accidentally found by people that aren't even looking for them. Such a person should be able to report the vulnerability without fear of legal reprisal, but the current legal landscape makes that impossible.

Interesting timing on this story, considering the situation I find myself in and was considering options just this morning. I own a 3+ year old iPhone 5s that has a dying battery, meaning it will suddenly shut off with a dead battery even though it was reporting a 40% or greater charge just a few moments earlier. I obviously need to do something, so I decided to take stock of my options:

• Replace the battery in my existing phone and continue to use it.
• • Apple quotes $80. The nearby Batteries+Bulbs quotes $60. I could do it myself for about $30, but I'm not sure if I want to mess with it.
• Replace the entire phone with a newer model.
• • The iPhone SE is the only option I'm seriously considering, as I have no interest in Android and the 6 and 6S are too big for my liking. The SE starts at $400, but I can get a $150 credit by trading in my existing phone, bringing the out of pocket cost to $250 (I wouldn't do financing on it).

I haven't yet decided, though I am leaning to keeping the 5S. My existing phone, with a new battery, would probably have at least 2 years of useful life left in it. The SE doesn't really have anything in it that is all that compelling to me compared to the 5S except for Apple Pay support, but I don't shop at Apple Pay locations very often. If my phone were a 5 or 5C, it would be a different story, but the 5S has aged remarkably well and holds up well to Apple's more recent offerings.

In general I agree. Major changes should be avoided, but minor tweaks here and there would be good. I support adding Unicode support, as that doesn't change the nature of the site at all but adds some useful functionality. HTTPS support should be there as well.

I also feel that the site should be IPv6 enabled. This wouldn't change a thing about how the site operates, as most users (even those that understand the difference) won't know whether they are connected to it with IPv4 or IPv6 unless they specifically check, but as a tech site, it should be blazing the way on this, not lagging behind.

In any case, I'm glad the beta site has been scrapped.

iOS can do this as well. It's under the iCloud Family Sharing system. There is an "Organizer" account, and then each member of the family gets their own account that is linked to the family, either as an Adult or Child account. Every account shares payment information. Adult accounts are able to make purchases without oversight, whereas when a Child account attempts to make a purchase, it sends a request to the Organizer to approve/deny the purchase. When a child comes of age, their account should be removed from the family sharing, at which point they can add in their own payment information.

I don't let my kids know my password for any service, and this article illustrates one of the main reasons why.

I thought someone might say something like this, but there is a clear response to it that fits the theme of my original post.

Yes, it is true that most movie and video game music is pretty boring without being attached to its original material (much like Beethoven's Egmont suite I mentioned in my original post - with the exception of the overture, essentially the equivalent of a Main Title theme in modern terms - it's not all that interesting). That said, the vast majority of music written during the 17th through 19th centuries (the period of time that what people now call "classical" was written) is not heard any more. What we hear now is the best music, the music that has survived the test of time. The same will be true in 100 years - most video game music will be virtually lost, never heard again unless someone happens to dig up the actual game. Some of it, however, is actually quite good, and will survive to become part of the standard classical repertoire. I think the Zelda Symphony alluded to in the article is a potential example of this.

I am a performing professional classical musician who also happens to enjoy video games.

I am saddened by the attitude that many people have that by performing music such as what comes from games that the orchestras are somehow "cheapening their brand" or that it is "diluting the culture." To claim this is to completely ignore why people listen to music in the first place, and where much of "classical" music came from. This elitist attitude is what has significantly contributed to the decline in attendance numbers seen over the last few decades.

Mozart was a party animal. He was essentially a 18th century rock star, complete with the fame and lavish lifestyle that implies. As much as he was a musical genius, he was terrible at managing his personal affairs and died penniless, buried in an unmarked grave.

Beethoven, who is often called the "Father of the Modern Symphony" (thanks to his groundbreaking work in his 9 Symphonies), was also very much involved in the popular music scene of his day. His Egmont is music that was written to be performed alongside a production of a play of the same name (only the overture is performed with any regularity today, as the play itself is pretty awful). This makes it essentially 19th century movie music.

When Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first premiered, a riot broke out among the audience. This wasn't just because of the nature of the music itself, but because that was the culture of performance at the turn of the 20th century - the audience was looking for something to get riled up over, and the music hit that emotional chord perfectly.

Modern performances are often formal affairs that remove the context of the music from its original conception. This isn't always a bad thing, as a good performance of a Mozart Symphony can be very exciting, but to try to stick to that because of some idea that it's meant to be that way is to ignore what the music actually is. Modern orchestral composers don't compose symphonies any more, they compose for movies and video games. That movie and video game music of today will be tomorrow's classical music. I've already seen performances of movie music from 50 years ago or so programmed into classical performances (not the pops concerts where such music usually resides), and such will become more and more common as time goes on.

In any case, something that increases awareness of the medium is a good thing. Today's kid that attends a video game concert performance might be tomorrow's grandmaster concert soloist, inspired by the music they heard when they were young. Even someone just making the leap from attending a video game concert to deciding to attend a classical concert isn't a very big one, but is extremely important to the long-term health and survivability of the genre.

I hope that this effort of GM's succeeds at least well enough for them to continue R&D into EV's, but there are 2 significant problems I see that they'll need to overcome:

First, they'll need a high-speed charging network that will allow for long-distance road trips. Public charging infrastructure is too slow to realistically allow for a trip that is further than what one can do on a single charge. Granted, with 200 miles instead of 40, this is significantly better than what's out there now, it's still not good enough for someone that wants to occasionally take their car on a multi-state road trip. Tesla's supercharger network gives them a competitive advantage, and GM will need something similar. Tesla has said that they are willing to share access, but it has to be on their terms. If GM is willing to buy in on that, we might see a Bolt capable of using Tesla superchargers - this would solve this issue for GM.

Second, the established dealer network has no interest in selling EV's. Most of their profits come from after-market service, and EV's have (theoretically) significantly less service needs. To this end, the dealers are motivated to push traditional ICE's over EV's in virtually every case. This is the major reason why Tesla does not use the traditional dealership sales model. No car salesman will direct you to a Bolt - you'll only get one if you come in specifically wanting one and push past their sales tactics to get you into something else. Buyers of the Nissan Leaf have reported resistance to and sometimes outright hostility from dealerships over wanting to purchase an EV. Unless GM is somehow able to break the dealership cartel and begin direct sales themselves, this issue won't be overcome anytime soon.

Another thought: at $30,000, I strongly suspect it is priced as a loss-leader, meaning it is being sold under cost. Tesla needs the economies of scale of their massive battery factory they call their "gigafactory" now under construction in Nevada in order to achieve a $35,000 price point for the Model 3. It seems unlikely to me that GM has managed to bring the cost down so much without a gigafactory of their own. It seems likely to me that the Model 3, at $5000 more expensive, will be superior to the Bolt in virtually every respect (Tesla has repeatedly said that their 200 mile range will be a real-world figure, while the Bolt's 200 mile range will probably be an ideal figure in perfect conditions, though I'd love to be proven wrong about the Bolt).

All this assumes that GM actually delivers as promised, which is far from guaranteed.

That said, more competition in the EV space is a good thing, so I hope the Bolt does at least well enough for GM to continue research in the area.

Well, if your current ICE does last 3-4 years like you hope, maybe you'll be able to replace it with a Tesla Model 3. 200 miles of range, base price of $35k, expected release in the 2017-2018 time frame.

I'm actually in a similar situation - my car is showing signs of age, and while it is running fine now, I can't be sure how much longer it will. Most of my daily driving is under 30 miles, so a Nissan Leaf would do the majority of the time, however once a month I take a trip that is about 100 miles round trip. Granted, unlike you, it's generally pre-planned (I actually have one tomorrow), but it's often enough that the idea of renting a car whenever I do it sounds like too much of a hassle. Also, since my 30 miles of normal driving still happens on those days, an EV has to have a minimum of 130 miles of real world range before it is even an option. To be an option I'll consider, 200 miles is minimum to cover those one-off cases of needing to go even further.

The Tesla Model S is currently the only option that meets that requirement, but it's far too expensive for my budget. That said, I have high hopes that the Model 3 will be my next car.

My experience with Comcast as an ISP is that the service itself is actually pretty good, if a tad expensive. I have a high-speed, low latency connection with native IPv6. However, I cringe whenever I have to contact their customer service for any reason. Their policies seem designed to make any customer interaction as painful as possible, and I have never had a positive experience when I have had to call them. This recording does not surprise me at all, as the representatives that cancel service probably have metrics that state they must save a certain percentage of those that call to cancel (my guess is that particular rep had been threatened by his boss that if he didn't do better in that regard that he'd lose his job).

If they want to fix their bad CS, they need to make fundamental changes to the way they approach customer service. A good starting point is to give their reps more authority to deal with issues themselves and not be beholden to policy. If the company doesn't trust their employees to make good judgement calls on what's good for the customer and the business, then they shouldn't have hired them in the first place. When someone calls to cancel, it is OK to politely ask why once, but if the person refuses to answer it should be left at that. Remove any metrics that are in place about how many saves a rep must perform.

That's all fine, until the fourth movement starts. ;-)

If it hits, Opportunity is hosed no matter what. The comet will kick up such a dust cloud that Opportunity's solar panels will not be able to keep it powered. The comet is big enough that it will have a direct effect on the entire planet.

Curiosity, on the other hand, would do fine unless it is unlucky enough to be caught within the blast radius. Note that even if they know now exactly where it will hit, if Curiosity is within the dead zone, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it - it can't move anywhere near fast enough to get out of the way when faced with something this big. The best we'd be able to hope for is that it would be able to get some spectacular shots of the final approach and is able to transmit them fast enough before the end.

That said, assuming it does survive the initial blast (pretty good odds, actually, given just how big a planet really is), having a functional probe on the ground would provide invaluable data about the resulting dust cloud and how it affects the climate.

The summary is poor. The petition itself actually states "We ask that the White House ask the Librarian of Congress to rescind this decision, and failing that, champion a bill that makes unlocking permanently legal."

Probably laziness. You need an integer variable, you just use int without thinking about whether the value might ever go negative or not. This probably happens all the time, but it is extremely rare that it actually becomes an issue. After all, a signed int can store a number up to just above 2 billion - how often do you need to store numbers even approaching that big? The same thing happened in World of Warcraft with gold. For a while, the gold cap was (2^31)-2 copper (which translates to 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 46 copper) - which indicates they used a signed int despite the fact that it's impossible to have a negative value of money in the game.

At some point (I'm not sure exactly when, but I think it was during the Wrath of the Lich King years), they changed it to use a 64-bit value, and the gold cap is now 1 copper shy of 1 million gold. That was an artificial limitation - there's no real reason why they couldn't just use the entire 64 bits if they wanted to - I don't think anyone would ever be able to reach the 2^63 (assuming a signed 64-bit integer) that it could store.

Something to keep in mind is that spy satellites looking down have the same problem that astronomical ground-based telescopes have looking up. Specifically, they have to look through the atmosphere, and the distortion that causes puts a pretty firm upper limit on how clear images can be. Yes, there are tricks that can be done to minimize the issue, but those tricks only go so far. I doubt they'll ever be able to read a newspaper from orbit.

That's why Hubble was useful in the first place. As a telescope, it's not that impressive - far bigger and fancier ones exist. What sets it apart is that it is above all that atmospheric interference.

Ok, so the Mobility Radeon HD3400 is slightly better than the GMA 4500, enough that it does technically make the cut for meeting WoW's minimum requirements, but it is still an underperforming, dated chipset. Performance in WoW will still be sub-par. And yes, I have first-hand experience with the HD3400.

Seriously, do your kids a favor and get them a new computer with Windows 7 (or even Windows 8) preinstalled. A $500 desktop machine will do just fine, and won't spoil them in the "beefy" category.