MS will provide information only "after our investigative and remediation cycle is completed..." In other words, after the vulnerability is discovered and fixed, and the patch is ready to roll out.

Then, "disclosure will happen just prior to our security update release cycles."

So the disclosure amounts to this:

"Tomorrow's MS Windows Update contains a security patch that fixes a serious vulnerability in your system. Oh, by the way, you have a serious vulnerability in your system."

I can, but I don't imagine that most of my audience would be willing to do so for two reasons:

• A family might not have a spare PC to dedicate to use with a TV, and it's a pain in the behind to haul it back and forth between the TV and the computer desk and keep plugging and unplugging cables. As for buying a second PC to keep by the TV, national brand PCs with NVIDIA graphics tend to cost significantly more than a game console.
• Sure, just about every HDTV can take the VGA and HDMI signals from a PC. But at the end of the last holiday season, 54 percent of US households with a TV still had only an SDTV, and these SDTVs won't likely be replaced until they fail. Unlike PCs, consoles have SDTV output as standard equipment without having to by an obscure $40 adapter cable. I could mention this adapter in a game's manual, but would that be enough?

Same here. Except I don't even drive. I live in New York City, and the majority of my trips are made by bus. When someone else is paying for it (interviews and the like), I'll go by train. Taking the bus costs 10-15% of what plane fare would cost, and with security the way it is and overcrowded airport takeoff schedules, the four hour travel time by bus is roughly the same as flying. Taking the train is the best for time, but costs a lot more than the bus (at least $100, as much as $200).

No seriously, how many people came here just to post that same silly "if you are broadcasting your data..." argument?

Slashdot should always allow you to moderate someone redundant (with heavy metamoderation) or allow people to mod themselves redundant, maybe a system to offer another poster all your child posts if you realize you are just repeating the same things.

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Aaaaaaany way, I don't think the government should have access to such info precisely for the same reason I don't want Google to have it and in fact, part of my complain against Google's data mining is that it enables governments to outsource fascism.

My policy is that, anything you don't want your government to do, or you don't want them to do without a warrant, you don't want a corporation to do freely either.

The "broadcasting your data..." is silly for reasons I won't get into in this post.

That's not true, I'll use Firefox until someone else duplicates the functionality of Firebug. I just don't see the browser as some sort of panacea.

Most of the people I've "friended" are in other States. I never "friend" someone I see more than once a week, because I connect IRL. But I've got friends I've known since 1970 that I keep in touch with on FB. And FB was wonderful when a friend got deployed to Iraq.

It must be that nasty global warming striking again. Or maybe its oil from the Gulf of Mexico that has reached out of orbit!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Jupiter_impact_event + Missing Belt = Scary

in 5, 4, 3, 2...

Not all real estate is property (more specifically private property), even though the legal term is "real property. I just dislike absolutes. But i admire the twist.
To state that it is fundamental is perhaps close to the truth. Was the concept of property evolved at all among hunter/gatherers?
There were/are some interesting takes on property even among native americans and aboriginals.
As for the state-monopoly on justice (and violence), that's just for the poor, the lawful and the powerless. Heavily armed (private) security seems to be the norm everywhere else.
I would in fact postulate that there is little real valuable property in any modern society, NOT contingent upon the owner's ability to fend off would-be takers with physical force.
It's just that legal and other forms of (state)force are more prevalent.

This is true... for now. Android developers don't make as much money as iPhone developers... unless you're one of the iPhone developers who's app doesn't match Apple's whims that month.

There are reasons for this, some of which are inherently temporary. Yes, Android device sales beat iPhone sales 1Q2010, and they probably will this quarter too. But there's a vast installed base for iPhoneOS apps... that's where your sales materialize.

The other thing is that paid apps are an evolving thing on the Android Marketplace. Still much of the world can't buy applications yet. This has not only lead to fewer sales, but a better selection of free software, as developers want to get their feet wet in the Android market, even if they had to do it free. Presumably, Google will get their act together on international sales, just as Apple ultimately did.

I may be mistaken but I believe they have stronger privacy laws.

Well, the Russians could have done what the rest of continental Europe did: briefly offer token resistance and then capitulate to save lives at the cost of their freedom. But the joke was on the Germans, USSR didn't have any freedom to lose!

This whole revisionism that swings the pendulum of near-complete responsibility for toppling Germany from the US to the USSR is just as wrong-headed as the original assumption. Do you really think the USSR could have survived a German military undivided by multiple fronts powered by an industry undisturbed by coordinated day and night bombing by the US and Britain? You might try telling the families of the crews of the 18,418 US aircraft lost over German-held territory how it was the Russians alone that did much of the damage. Lord knows that the nearly 1.7 million missions flown by the USAAF alone were just larks to go have tea on B-17s. Nevermind also that the US provided a significant amount of material support including wholly assembled aircraft and trucks to the USSR during WWII to supplement its initially crippled industry. The list goes on.

Neither the US *nor* the USSR 'single-handedly' won WWII, nor did one or the other do 'most of the damage'.

its funny i know but i like fast changing text like "connecting to 8.8.8.8..." and "looking up host google.com" and "loading image 9 of 56 (243.6kbits/s)". it makes the wait seem even shorter. specially since i now know that many programs just keep incrementing the progress bar even if nothing is happening (like opera mobile). i keep worrying over if it is really working or not.
similarly i dont like the loading logo animation of win7, i would prefer to have hundreds of lines of text scrolling on the screen, telling me as each file/driver/program is loaded.

You honestly think that Chrome OS is going to be on a NETBOOK? Google has hinted many times it's going to be something similar to an iPad. Not only that HP confirmed a week ago that their using "possibly" going to use Chrome OS on their slate device...