The summary mentions "The FCC studied the question several years ago but found insufficient evidence to support lifting the ban at the time." It is not talking about the FAA ban.

The FCC also bans cell phones and some other wireless devices in aircraft, not only the FAA.

It is only takeoff and landing, otherwise you can use them in airplane mode, or even with wifi enabled.

They will likely point out that you can use any address for a Google Account, not that it helps with Gmail.

It's actually the interpretation by the Library of Congress. You also won't be able to legally unlock phones after sometime next year, but you can still root the OS.

The tablet laws affect any tablet that attempts to prevent rooting, using the anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA. A great example of legislation being abused to its fullest.

Honestly not sure... it did hit us on a couple of old boxes, but fixed itself pretty quickly, and we definitely weren't using the affected navy servers. tick and tock are supposed to be used only by gov, and stratum 2 servers. Maybe some servers forwarded the wrong information?

This is the only solution that really makes sense, also the only one that will really work with a drm system included that may demand immediate updates at times. It's the same process used by Google for things like Chrome and Earth. One for deb, one for rpm, with internal logic to add the repos in apt/yum/zypper. Third parties such as Arch or Gentoo can write their processes to pull in that package, open it up and install the files where they need to go, as they do already.

Essentially, it's a non-issue for the distros. They don't really even have to support it.

I was going to mention something similar, because even with the move to mobile devices the text has just become dictated. What is interesting with Siri is you do not HAVE to speak it. If it misunderstands the dictation, there is nothing stopping you from tapping the box and typing what you want it to do in natural language, it will react as if you had said it.

Interestingly, when I looked up "social network" it first listed the movie, then a wikipedia page, then Facebook followed shortly by Myspace and LinkedIn. In fact, at the bottom of the page in the "top references for social network" there was a list of every social network I've heard of, except G+. It did include Orkut though.

If you have any interest, you ought to look into getting a pilot's license. More fun and freedom than airline flying, faster and more direct than a car, usually an airport closer to your actual destination and the trip can be a unique part of the adventure (which may make up for the likely extra cost, though at four passengers it might about break even).

Any pilot. Many pilots train and barely ever talk to a controller until they go for their Instrument rating. Some go out of their way to avoid airspace where they have to talk to a controller (under 18,000 feet most airspace doesn't even require a radio). Sure, commercial flights on IFR plans require the communication and rely on it for separation and such, but it is not like they suddenly fall out of the sky; even today there are commercial flights that land at nontowered airports where the pilots announce their position to other pilots, as was done in the case where the controller fell asleep. Those small, nearly empty airports movie stars prefer for their charter jets are another perfect example.

Although, even with the FAA shutdown, controllers were still at work.

You're forgetting the timeline. MS was already in trouble with the US DoJ. Litigation to get someone out of business was not in their best interests, nor was the IP theft case. Apple still had some cash to burn. Not a ton, but enough that the $150-million investment was not needed to continue operating.

I forgot to mention, you can also view all of the Diagnostics and Usage data on the phone itself, to see exactly what is being sent to Apple.

You opt-in to any tracking and performance logging. It's one of the first options when you turn on the phone, and the preferences for it are pretty robust in what they allow you to enable or disable. Find My iPhone is a different feature, completely opt-in and triggered on demand, and you can use it separately from the built in logging.

The "bailout" was a payoff to cancel IP infringement cases that would have been damaging to Windows, and no, not "look and feel" but actual stolen code. Along with it came the promise of Office for Mac. Apple needed Office, they didn't need the money; Microsoft DID need Apple to drop their lawsuits.

That whole situation, including the decline of MacOS, came from mismanagement of Apple and not from consumers rejecting the products outright. We're at a position where Apple could once again be mismanaged, but it they do their do their job correctly there should be no repeat of history.

One of the things Apple does uniquely is creating a relatively unified platform on all of the carriers they support. There are very few examples where Android OEMs have the same hardware on multiple carriers. Of course the carrier-exclusive hardware is caused by the carriers themselves, but it results in a situation where the OEMs have to support all sorts of devices for the various carriers, and it's not just a different case but in most cases very different hardware. Apple has no similar situation to the Motorola Bionic/Photon/Atrix that are very similar hardware but with just enough feature or software differences to force a reinvention of the wheel every time.