Counting votes doesn't need to be complicated. Plenty of democracies around the world do this quickly and easily with something called... pen and paper, and you have scrutineers from the various parties in place to observe the counting to make sure nothing untoward is happening. Easy.

Only the USA seems to have made a mountain out of a mole hill when it comes to voting. It's hard to fathom.

In Australia we just count ballot papers and the results are phoned into a central booth, and tallied up. I can't believe America keeps finding more and more difficult and failure-prone ways to do the bleeding obvious. It's not supposed to be this difficult, FFS!

Wish I could +1 this comment. It's absolutely spot on. The EU today is not the EEC that Britain joined originally. I Britons back then were asked to vote on a political union, a European army, etc, they would have voted 90% against it.

Whatever the causes of climate change (anthropogenic CO2, sunspot activity, whatever), it is real and it has been getting warmer and dryer for decades. People like me who used to equivocate and down play the role of humanity are finally starting to realise that there is something in it. The scientists are right and there is no left-wing/greenie conspiracy to tax the air and control everybody's lives. I live in Australia and this bushfire season is the final nail in the coffin for the continued survival of species like the koala, sadly. Humanity has become a plague on this planet and I don't know what the solution is, but reducing humanity's contribution to climate change is the least we can do.

Maybe they're bringing back the column browser in the "Music" app which replaces iTunes???

Next they'll be getting rid of folders because we shouldn't have a need to organise our files. Just stuff them all on the "hard disk" and use search to find 'em! Means they can be lazy and not maintain Finder anymore (which is already as basic as it gets).

The new "Music" app is a complete usability abortion :-(

Who even uses these silly things? As if I need a device in my home to say "Hey google, turn up the volume"... I presume it also lets me order things online but there's no way I would trust a brief voice command to order the thing I wanted - correctly - and certainly not at a reasonable price.

Who cares if a pointless product is faster?

Maybe Oracle should try innovation rather than law suits as a way to make a buck.

I'm hoping this is sarcasm ;-)

I wish Slashdot had some kind of "like" button or "upvote" thingy... I'd be madly clicking it on your post right now

That might be Oracle's short to mid-term goal, but in the long term, nobody will touch Java for new developments, and the rent they can collect from a technology synonymous with the plague will be very small indeed. They'll then be left trying to gouge customers with database license audits (for those companies still dumb enough to choose Oracle to store their data, that is).

I'd have no problem developing apps in c# instead of Java. I'd imagine that a company like Google could successfully pull off something like a transition from Java to .NET, but I suppose they'd be more likely to choose Go or Dart or something.

Amen my brother! It's so annoying to have someone almost speaking in tongues (or so softly you can't hear it) or to have the background music so loud you can't distinguish the dialogue.

I wish directors would make actors speak clearly so that we could understand what is being said half the time. Yes, speaking softly or in a particular way might be the effect the director is going for, but if your audience has no idea what was said, then that's a problem. There has to be a happy halfway point between speaking almost inaudibly (as the director wants) and loud enough so that we can actually hear it. Some shows also play background music far too loudly which obscures the dialogue (one of the worst offenders is Grey's Anatomy). I always put the subtitles on whenever they're available.

I've always used mine in 'clamshell' mode with an external Kinesys ergo keyboard. My almost virginal MacBook Pro keyboard might actually be worth more than the laptop itself, LOL.

It's an interesting innovation but they're not going to ship enough of these things to create a viable market for them. I personally wouldn't buy a chunky phone like that on the off chance I'd want to unfold it to double my screen size. Just be happy with the 6" 19:9 or whatever it is screen and be done with it. Is the extra price, weight, and bulk worth that occasional convenience for all but a few strange people? No.