How about, you use a phone with a prepaid data plan only. THen you connect your phone on your data plan to your home server via VPN. Then your home server routes your traffic through TOR or something. Your friends can gchat you, skype call, whatever voip/ims service you chose to use and no one should be able to track you because your number is just a throw away prepaid.

From a self confessed Linux noob. 1) I chose Ubuntu because I read good things about it being easy and familiar out of the box. It was. My peripherals worked, my NTFS hard drives mounted in R/W mode by default. 2)As I got comfortable using Ubuntu as a media server/desktop I began to expand In what I wanted to do. Thankfully everything you want to do in Ubuntu(and probably every Linux Distro) has already been done and google is all you need to work it out. I also found a lot of posts showed you how to do it the windows way, and then how to do it the Linux way(command line). 3) I think its important to help users get around and have things work intuitively, then try and teach them the advanced things when they need them. Ubuntu does this quite gracefully. I have only had to use the command line to get Plex working, permanently mount NTFS drives and configure some Samba stuff but just having a linux computer running in my house has been half the battle of switching to linux. I hope to install it on my desktop machine in 2013 now that Steam has released a linux client.

I know I say this every generation but I wont buy. Sony has failed me as a technology company because it's cool toys are repeatedly being gimped by its media side. Blueray was delayed for over a year by the AACS (copy protection) implementation. I already know the features this will have, streaming blah blah.. cloud blah blah... Here's what you will get, freemium content, microtransaction hell, always online content, single console locked games. Even more updates before you play. Technology should let the user do what they want to do without getting in their way. Sony gets in your way at every opportunity. I have a bad feeling that this will just come close to what consumers want but ultimately fail to deliver.

The article is pretty poorly written, verbiose but sprinkled with some good points.

• xbox is expensive to develop for
• lack of indie content
• terrible ui, updates interrupting progression
• apple or steam may save the day with streaming media gaming device.

There is more to a programming career then programming. When I did my CS degree there were heaps of kids who had already hacked together their own websites/programs/flavour of linux... And they had a massive head start. But there is more to coding then hacking, there is team work, development models and methodologies, test case development and discipline. Brilliant script kiddies found it hard to work in groups and definitely didn't get the best jobs at the end of the course. It was the asian kids, because no matter how good you are there is always an asian kid who's better.

Being so close to Asia, We do this in a big way in Australia.
I went to a high school that had over 40% south east Asian students. When I got to university I found that they were paying up to 10x more for their fees than me. Dentistry for example is over $100k per year for a international student, but for residents its only about $10k. Why would they come here to pay fees like that? Easy migration path once they finish. We do have problems with immigration but its mainly with those who are granted asylum and live off government handouts. Immigration is also what has made Australia the powerhouse that it is.

I work in an Engineering office. Gaming has always occupied too large a slice of my life. The thousands of hours (/PLAYED) I have spent on wow could have taught me 3 new languages to the fluent level, become a master pianist, or ... see endless list of achievements. It wasn't until I was stuck on a minesite 24/7 working 12+ hour shifts with no internet outside of work hours that I broke my lifelong addiction. I swapped games for a gym routine and regular cardio exercise and my life and relationship has been better ever since. I do still dabble in casual games, however I no longer feel the need to get my partner to game, nor game for more than 4 hours a week. Its funny how much time I freed up without games, you have to be more organised to alleviate boredom, my house is far cleaner and more organised and I have become far more extroverted. I go scuba diving, mountain biking and rock climbing. These activities are far more interesting to my partner than playing an MMO together.

Actually we use the term Sambo for a Fish round here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_fish

Because of the stupid few, all handheld laser devices are now restricted imports(ie Banned) in Australia and it is illegal to own a laser over 1mw. (Weak laser pointer power) So applying a film, goggles, blah blah blah. These people need to be educated, they are endangering the lives of these people. They do deserve jail time. These people are the stupidest of the stupid of people and deserve to be taken out of circulation. Now however having a 1000mw laser when you are lost in the bush would definitely help people find you, however I think that these lasers need to be banned like fireworks as the general population is too stupid to respect their dangers.

I don't think that there are many ultra capacitors adding storage capacity to grids. Its definitely on the table for the future however at the moment the capacitor banks that you see at your transmission yards are actually for power factor correction not power storage.

Since youtube probably gets like 1000 copyright infringement notices a day, does that mean they will punish their own service and put it at the bottom of the results?

Flame coat on.
What's missing is iTunes. Samsung Kies has no bluetooth support, the usb micro port is dodgey at best and HTC Sync is also just lacking. Having a Samsung Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab and HTC Desire, the manufacturer fragmentation is not the only pain, you have carrier fragmentation on top of hardware fragmentation. Updating a Galaxy is impossible (bar rooting) without OTA updates which are Carrier Specific. Should your carrier not be bothered with a phone/tablet that they offered 9 months ago you will never get updates regardless of whether every other carrier in the world has an update. I think that the either the OS needs to be further separated from the HMI so that updates don't break the crappy carrier only apps, and whatever apps they have restricted on your phone and do make your phone better, or Google restricts what the branding can do such that it doesnt get in the way of users being able to upgrade their phones.

Apple does this by not allowing carrier branding on their phones. Google is trying to do this with the Nexus line up. I think in the future if I stick with android I will only be buying Nexus devices due to the complete lack of carrier&hardware support I have had with my previous devices. All of them still run gingerbread as their haven't been any updates available for my carrier.

Finally a universal android Sync app for windows/mac/linux which could give the user full access to their phones (and ideally root), access to updates, usb modem, full bluetooth stack, wifi sync and full data and app backup.

Under the the laws of physics i guess that they could verify the note was real, but due to the observer effect in the process of that validation they would destroy the security particles in the note rendering it useless for future transactions...

Well I have traveled Domestically from australia and internationally to places such as the UK recently and not once have i seen a security employee pat someone down. At one airport their was a spread leg station where you had to stand on a platform spread eagle while they wanded you but thats it. Oh and for a while there they were really anal about you taking liquids on the plane... Every person I know who has travelled to the US has nightmare stories about hour long queues at security and missing transfers due to having their entire luggage emptied for them.