A brief read of the patent tells me that this is exactly what Google has patented. It's a system in which a single identity can be used to generate anonymous secondary ones. In that case, Google, and anyone able to subpoena them, would know who the anonymous secondary identity is but third parties wouldn't be privy to the link between accounts.

Phones/Tablets/Whatever

Uh, "default app store" does not mean Google's Play store. It means the default app store for the phone in questions. If Google cuts Acer off then Acer could team up with Amazon for the default app store on their phones. Thus Amazon would earn more money because their store and apps aren't bundled on many phones right now.

I bet Amazon would be interested in providing the default app store.

I don't think it's fair to lump the two groups together. While I will agree that both groups are petty and immature, I think there is a demonstrable difference in the zeal and desire of birthers versus whoever added the brown noser tidbit to Wikipedia.

The first difference is intent. The Wikipedia entry was made before this announcement, as opposed to the birther's claims which didn't surface until the President was at least the presumptive nominee. The Wikipedia entry doesn't reflect well for Representative Ryan. The supposed claim by the birthers would, if it had any veracity at all (hint: it doesn't and never did) disqualify him completely. The intent is not merely to smear the President, as one might think the claim about Ryan is intend, but to disqualify him for his mere personage.

The second difference is zeal. Again, this is merely an edit to a page made well before Ryan was involved directly in the race for President. Meanwhile, the birthers have been at this for the last 4 years.No amount of contrary evidence has stopped the birthers. They've filed lawsuits in multiple states and wasted countless tax dollars on their nonsense.

The third difference is hate. Birthers are more of a hate group than anyone who would put this on Mr. Ryan's page. Nobody likes a brown noser, unless perhaps its your rump causing that nose to be brown. Meanwhile, birthers are hateful racists that are determined to "other" anyone who does not fit the "traditional" mold for American leadership. As others have stated, Mr. Romney's citizenship was never questioned. Neither was Mr. McCain's. The difference is that some believe there should be an unconstitutional religious test for the presidency and that President Obama's skin isn't the right color. Yes, racism is childish and stupid, but it is a particularly hurtful type of childishness and stupidity. There is not a history of enslaving, killing, raping, and dehumanizing brown nosers, instead we promote them to middle management.

The last difference is whom is advancing the issue. The person who put this on Wikipedia did not do so as part of a conspiratorial movement. For all we know it was an old classmate poking fun. There was no fanfare about this until someone removed it for political reasons. Thus, the ones seeking to deny Ryan's status as a brown noser are making this into an issue, rather than the ones presenting that status. This is very different than birthers, who advanced the issue and were generally ignored until their petty cries and expensive lawsuits became too annoying (and the President saw a chance to win a news cycle which might have otherwise gone to other things). So far the ones being petty in this issue are the Ryan supporters who think this matters.

So, sure, you can say the two groups have similar properties but I think lumping them together denies how much dumber birthers truly are.

You're right, Obama's place of birth gives us an excellent opportunity to examine areas of Constitutional law that are commonly misunderstood. For example, where he was born means absolutely nothing because the citizenship of his mother is not in question. So, like George Romney - Mitt's father, who was born in Mexico - President Obama is a natural born citizen regardless of where he was born. The rest is racism and xenophobia.

As for the usefulness of Ryan's brown-noser status: Well it's not particularly important except that Americans like to know the personality of their prospective leaders. When Biden was picked it wasn't particularly important to note that he's a gaff machine, except in the personal context of how others will judge him. Either way, if it is verifiable and people are interested in the information as a part of his profile then it should meet the minimum standards for inclusion in Mr. Ryan's Wikipedia page.

The simplest answer is that Apple has their own retail space, which is likely the top location for buying their products. They get to dictate that experience and others selling their products must follow. Google has the Play store, but if they ever want the Nexus to be a success it must be displayed at big box retailers where potential buyers can try it out. As it happens, big box retailers like packaging that is difficult to open but attractive otherwise. It's a lousy theft deterrent, but they prefer it to having extra security measures to prevent open box theft. Still, Google should probably have omitted some of the plastic seals for direct sale tablets.

I doubt it's an ad or a distortion. It's common for a smaller, more committed user base to be happier with a product. There's a lot of ownership bias. At this point most people have at least a clue what G+ is, and the ones who use it know that they're dealing with a smaller user base. They're happy with it despite its flaws and lack of ubiquity. It shouldn't be surprised.

The slowing of FB adoption is the bigger story. It probably doesn't mark a shift toward G+, but it may be that Facebook is at the upper bounds of users interested in its service. For my part, I didn't close my FB account but I've moved almost all of my social networking activity over to Twitter. I wanted to like G+ but none of my social circles use it.

The problem with local storage is that you're responsible for securing your local device. That makes you much more susceptible to a direct, targeted attack. It also makes you beholden to the security of the various systems you use.

Correct usage of Keepass will likely give you a more secure password database than Lastpass's vault. The non-standardization and decentralization of that method will make you less susceptible to mass database leaks. Even if you use Dropbox (which has some serious security concerns itself) and that service were compromised the attacker would have a hard time getting all of Keepass vaults out. So, that argument holds.

Where it fails is if you are targeted, and even worse if you are not an advanced user. In a hand-spun system like this you are the one who has to monitor for intrusions, and you are the one who has to design the security and maintain it. If you store your password database in Dropbox I believe the exploit of stealing a machine authentication token will still allow an attacker to gain access to your files, which may allow them to begin cracking your password without your knowledge. Once they've gotten a copy of your encrypted file it does not matter if you change your password because it won't change their copy. This becomes a real problem if you're not an advanced user whose setup strong encryption on your database or if you've used a weak password, let alone the issues with a standard user using and maintaining such a system.

Targeted attacks are scary. One can assume that if a victim is targeted it is because the attacker knows there is value in the additional work. If we assume that the effort to decrypt a Lastpass vault is not significantly less than any other strongly encrypted container then we can infer that a compromise of Lastpass (or 1Password, or other such services) would be comparably expensive because each vault has an unknown value. Long story short, I'm far more concerned with a targeted attack than I am a database leak in this case. I'd rather have a service focused on security monitoring for intrusions, even if that doesn't excuse me from maintaining a reasonable level of security on my own devices.

This wouldn't terribly shock me, but it also wouldn't concern me much if it were to happen. While the data in a Lastpass vault is quite desirable, it's also much more securely stored than your average data set. Even if someone managed to get a dump of their entire data set they'd have to decrypt each vault individually. If you follow their recommendations then your vault is likely not easy to crack.

Most of all, I wouldn't be concerned because as Lastpass has shown in the past they take communications seriously. When they noticed strange traffic they immediately told their users to change their vault passwords. This is different than waiting for a whistle blower to come forward and then announcing the breach, or even waiting until an investigation proves there was no breach. That previous incident may have shook the faith of some, but the way the company handled it increased my faith in them.

Should a major breach happen I would simply change my vault password and then begin changing the passwords I have stored in the vault. Since Lastpass would alert me early on that the breach happened, by the time my vault was cracked - if at all - the passwords within would be useless.

I think a key difference is that my.mp3.com required that you prove ownership of the CD, but they did not use your file for streaming.

Also important is the ruling allowing for remote storage of DVR content in the CNN v CSC Holdings case. So there's precedent both ways here.

I don't get this attitude that the lawyers are the only winners. Sure, they're the big financial winners here. This was never a case about lost funds, though. It was a case in which the students sought both relief from invasive practices and a punitive sum to discourage further similar actions. They won on both counts, and since no school district wants to shell out over half a mil because they spied on their students it should be a win for the privacy of teens everywhere.

You're assuming that AT&T commissioned the survey and the report and not Apple. If Apple commissioned the report and the Yankee Group are shills as alleged then that quote is perfectly acceptable.

I would say that if anyone commissioned a report like this it would be Apple, not AT&T. Why? The first hint is that the report this is based on is called "Why iPhones Matter." Next is that AT&T now has Android phones, so why would they try to defame phones in their lineup? More hints show up in the article. Even more in the public summary of the report, which focuses largely on how much more consumer driven the iPhone platform is. Here's that summary:

http://www.yankeegroup.com/ResearchDocument.do?id=53903

However, even if neither Apple nor AT&T commissioned the report or the survey, the information about how the Yankee Group conducts their surveys is telling about the quality of the data. Surveys are fickle things and how you collect the data is very important. Since we don't have access to the data (unless someone wants to fork over the money to buy it) we can't know for sure. The sampling could have failed to be sufficiently random. The questions could have been skewed such that respondents would give more favorable responses to the iPhone, or less favorable responses to Android devices. Seeing the dramatic gap in customer satisfaction, even as Android phones gain popularity (I base this claim on the increasing sales volume), made me question this survey. Realizing that this is the group that had Laura DiDio spreading FUD about Linux doubles my doubts about the legitimacy of those numbers.

This bill is definitely for trolling. Though, I figured it was to try to make the proposed soda tax (which does have a chance to pass) look bad. After all, if we start taxing sugary drinks the next logical step is outright bans on basic spices? Right? Not so much.

Very good point. The industry definitely wants sites to do their policing for them. Though, I think that is just the first part of the attack. Think of what we saw with p2p suits. First they demand filtering, then they claim the filtering isn't doing enough, then they shutter the service. I don't see them trying this sort of strategy against Google, since they would have the resources to fight against it. I do see that becoming an issue against other services, leaving them at the mercy of the Copyright industry.