You realize this is about the paper. There is nothing to stop his colleagues - who he happens to know have a suitable lab and skills - from calling up and asking for the info. This just lets him choose who gets this dangerous piece of knowledge

This guy is right, by keeping the DNA Sequence out of the paper it prevent ye-random-crazy from having a go at synthesizing some. On the other hand, it doesn't stop research into cures, because any legitimate researchers can just email or phone the guy.

For those of you who haven't been in academia; part of your job is knowing who the leading guys in your field are. This new stuff is nasty, so it makes sense to secure it behind a 'have I heard of this guy' and 'what has he done lately' check, if only to make sure you don't have an accidental outbreak.

Back in ye olden days currency was backed by gold, or other goods. In this modern age of fiat currency currency is backed by the economy of the society which issued it. That is to say, the value of the GBP is that with about six of them (£6) you can get a relatively unskilled minimum wage worker to do an hour's worth of work for you. With £10-20 of them you can get the same hour or so's work from a range of increasingly skilled professionals.

If you are interested in this, then you might want to read Making Money by Terry Pratchett

"the system compiler will still be clang"

Or the Onionequse version: FreeBSD's move to revolutionary new swording system adds a whole new meaning to compiling

Out of interest, do you have a way of automatically failing over to a self hosted version of the scripts if google is for some reason unavailable?

The trouble is that Google that what you see as Google's services is only the tip of the iceberg. To most people Google is search, Gmail, Youtube, etc. What they don't see is the GoogleAPI javascript stuff they host which is used by hundreds of sites all over the net. Try surfing with noscript for a while and see what effect it would have on you.

"Here is a unicycle. You will ride it wherever you go."

Yes! That! The right technology in the right place, rather than just because it's shiny.

For basic typing, which is only one specific case, swype comes close to being suitable. However, swype is still limited. It guesses what you are typing based on a weighted dictionary of common words. While it may be fairly accurate it is still only a guess. Add to that it will not be able to handle uncommon words or symbols as well.

In other words: programming on one of those is a pain. Accurately entering lots of numbers is a pain. Playing Doom would be a pain.

To sum it up: swype may be good for inputting basic text on capacitive touchscreen devices - and this may be enough for 90% of people - but it doesn't hold a candle to a keyboard in many other areas.

All that said, that was still only one case: text input/keyboarding. Don't forget all the others.

People keep coming up with these nice shiny user interface devices, but they always seem to forget how important tactile feedback is.

Sure I can type on a touchscreen keyboard, but it takes twice as long, because I have to actually look at the screen and check that a) it has noticed I am typing, and b) it has correctly recognised what I had intended to type. With a proper physical keyboard I can pick up such information purely by proprioception, audio and tactile feedback.

The same sort of issue applies with any sort of hand waving interface: there is a much greater potential for the computer getting it wrong, and it takes longer to recognise & fix it when it occurs.

Untill these things can be made as reliable as a physical push button I think people should be a lot more careful where and what they use them for.

Only in the naive combinations case, when we discard the priors.

In other words, the probablility of 1234 being the password is not just 1/num_possible_combinations, but also the probability of 1234 being the default chapter AND the default password not having been changed.

I imagine much the same was said back when Wozniak was working on the Apple I and Apple II computers

Sure, while it's still a fernickerty process requiring some skill it'll be niche. When it's developed to be quicker, reliable and more accessible then I think we'll see them becoming more mainstream.

The obligatory XKCD link

The contents of which, incidentally, will be one of the first things I do in the event of getting an Occulus rift

It is difficult, but possible. Just.

No, but without a google account you cannot use their app store, and without an account of some sort somewhere you cannot use the calendar. I personally have setup a Zarafa server with Z-push to mimic an Exchange with active-sync. Using that allows me to use the calendar and sync my email, contacts and calendar without using google at all.

That depends. If they are apps from someone who has realised that Google Play is not required, and just distributes the APKs then sure, easy as pie. If they are apps that are distributed solely via Google Play then, no, not easily.

You can however install them on another android device and use something like APK Extractor to copy them to install on your phone. I keep one of my old android phones for this purpose

No. I haven't had to at least. I would warn you though that if Google have this information from another source (i.e. Google wallet or whatever they call it) I wouldn't put it past them to 'helpfully' fill it in for you

Not to my knowledge. Only the paid app get your info afaik.

The first thing I tend to do with an android device is root it, and install a custom ROM. Typically Cyanogenmod, but sometimes others. I would recommend you have a good look to see which devices have the best developer community before you buy.

Second, if you don't have an exchange server available, set one up yourself on a machine you tend to leave on in your home network. That will provide most of the functionality you'd be missing by not having a google account tied to your phone. (If you are feeling adventurous you could set up a VPN and have secure access to this anywhere.

Apps wise, go grab one of the OpenStreetMap apps, which will have you covered for maps and route planning. Grab something like EStrong File manager so you can access network shares. And finally, grab something like ConnectBot, so you can ssh into your machines.

I think that pretty much covers my setup