More probably plunging oil prices have wiped out the Iranian governments revenue stream. There is speculation that one of the reasons Saudi Arabia is continuing to pump oil and crater oil prices is to cripple Iran, a bitter Shia enemy, and defund programs like uranium enrichment, missile development, their miliary in general and their support for other anti Sunni groups in the Middle East.

The other speculations for continued Saudi efforts to crash oil prices are to wipe out frackers in the U.S. so they can regain more political control over the U.S., to wipe out expensive offshore and artic oil exploration, to punish Russia at the behest of the U.S. or because Russia is a key benefactor of Iran.

1) Most of the important functionality (including the WebKit/Blink browser engine) are now embedded in Google Play Services, which you can't manage.

2) Total ownership of a device with a proprietary radio isn't realistic - even if you managed to install straight Linux on the thing (unlikely) the underlying firmware is in the bag.

3) Better to return that machine and go with a Yoga 2 Pro honestly. You'll have the ability to install Linux on it and have far greater control over your data.

4) A rooting tool is inherently untrustworthy as it exploits flaws in the target system. How can you truly know whether an oft-used method is trustworthy?

If you're not interested in the above, you don't really care about your data and shouldn't bother rooting it.

Just run the cable through a guitar amp. I mean, what can possibly go wrong?

People have been designing virtual networks for decades. I2P is well advertised on Freenet, itself a well-known secure network.

Nothing new here. The security and reliability of none of this software is proven, it may not even be provable due to the distributed nature. That reduces the problem to one of how many people you're ok with knowing what you're doing.

I honestly doubt any severe repercussions will occur, the DMCA is too weasel worded. Defamation is another matter. Accusing a company like Atlassian of hosting pirated porn is a serious commercial matter. (Slandering open source developers is another matter, freedom of speech and all that, America hasn't really grasped the concept of reasonableness and balance.)

Accusations that are clearly defamatory against a commercial entity can harm political donations, jobs in battleground states, and inflict restraint of trade, on the long run-up to a major and likely to be bitter election... That is clearly not going to fly with elected judges and elected political representatives.

The question is whether legitimate businesses involved in legitimate trade will simply ignore the action or file for defamation. Winning or losing doesn't matter, most of the porn companies are probably small enough that bad publicity and legal fees will cripple them. Obviously winning (even if by default) would be better, it would create case law on the issue.

The problem with DMCA is that we've been here before many times. And there have been DMCA cases the industry has lost. Yet nothing has changed, no precedents have been set, no behaviour on the part of industry or takedown farms has been modified. You'll have to do something new.

Much of that inflation dates back to massive spending and debt from the Vietnam War and the creation of OPEC spiking oil prices, neither of which Jimmy Carter have much to do with. LBJ and Nixon are the ones to blame, if you were alive then you would remember the failed attemps at wage and price controls under a Republican administration, Nixon. Carterâ(TM)s presidency was doomed before it started because of the mess he inherited, and there was very little he could do about it.

Interest rates were 20% because Paul Volcker and the Fed set them to 20% in 1979 to break the back of an inflationary spiral, which he did, and that is not something Reagan can take any credit for. Carter can only take credit for having appointed Volcker to the Fed. Volcker was one of the very few great Fed Chairmen.

The legacy most working people can thank Reagan for is jacking payroll taxes up to to an inescapable 12.5% on all working people, while he was cutting taxes on the rich.

A key reason we have income inequality today is working people pay an inescapable 12.5% in taxes on their wages not counting sales, propery, state and federal income taxes. Rich people pay 15% on capital gains, and those taxes are incredibly easy to dodge.

The Kindle does not support LaTeX3+Lua. I refuse to accept that books, real books, can be circulated as a cut-down HTML5 file. Doubly so after reading a large number. Formatting errors, image errors, broken linkage, broken tables, random start page, broken tables of contents, screwball fontage - these convince me that HTML-only writers should not be allowed near a computer until launched by canon from the top of the Matahorn.

If they dont have evidence they dont know they are criminals.

You are vulnerable to Social Engineering (and almost everyone is), no security of any kind will ever work. Become a Scottish crofter, it's your only hope of a life.

You are a private individual, see all XKCD coverage. Same remedy.

You are Sony, abandon hope now. You wouldn't even make it as a crofter.

You are anyone else, encryption is not enough. You want segmentation, active NIDS, proxies and firewalls at the gateways, HIDS on the machines, role-based access controls, host-to-host IPSec, security labels on packets, total removal of all vulnerable protocols, disk encryption, strong authentication and Neuromancer's Black Ice. A platoon of extreme freediving Ninja with enhanced magnetic sensors in their eyeballs would help, too.

Science fiction isn't fiction that has elements that aren't science but might appeal to geeks who like science.

Science fiction isn't science fantasy.

Science fiction isn't pure fantasy with stuff science geeks like.

Science fiction isn't biologically improbable females fulfilling spotty teen fantasies.

Science fiction is science that is fictional. Very different animal and naturally restrictive.

That's life. Or will be.

Absolutely wrong on all accounts.

People are the least important part of a story, they exist solely to represent something. What they represent is almost never another person. In fact, it is never another person.

Science fiction is about the universe, about meaning, about the nature of reality. There are perfectly good science fiction stories that don't include people, or indeed any living thing. And that is fine.

Stories that are people-centric are no more science fiction than vampire stories are history, or Microsoft manuals are about learning.

This isn't up for discussion, it is the way the ontology is. Don't like it? Fine, don't call your crap science fiction. It's very simple.

...It's Cheers in Space, or Eastenders on Mars, then no it is not science fiction. It is Cheers in Space or Eastenders on Mars. There is no science and there is precious little fiction.

I donâ(TM)t blame /. Its hard to have insightful commentary on our society any more.

Who would have figured Wall Street and the The City would rape the global economy in 2008, and instead of going to jail the central banks rewarded them with free money for six years and theyâ(TM)ve tripled their money as their punishment.

There was a brief glimmer of protest in the Occupy movement and it was crushed like a bug. The Department of Homeland security has turned most small town police force in to something resembling an occupying army you would see in Iraq, and they seem to be spending much of their time arbitrarily confiscating cash and cars for profit, no judge, no jury, no trial.

The Five Eyes are not just spying on some stuff, they are spying on EVERYTHING and we all know it and there isnâ(TM)t really anything anyone is gonna do about it. To stay on topic, 60 minutes had a shill do a great peice on the nice kids that work at the NSA.

We figured the Republican brand was destroyed as of 2008 and we elected this hopie changie President. It turns out heâ(TM)s pretty much as bad or worse than the previous clown and nothing changed. There is a high probability the next one is gonna be worse than the last two. In six years the Democrats have laid such waste we are welcoming the Republicans back. We donâ(TM)t really want either of our parties any more but they arenâ(TM)t going to allow us an Option C.

Its hard to find biting satire or piercing commentary that does it justice and you know it isnâ(TM)t gonna change a God damn thing. After everyting thatâ(TM)s happened over the last ten years, there should have been change, our civilization was ripe for it. There just wasnâ(TM)t any. The man seems to have his jack boot on our necks and heâ(TM)s got us down.

Hey, stormtroopers'll dig trenches anywhere. Even on airless spacestations.

Movie makers edited out lens flares at one point. There were a LOT of complaints. So many that even in pure CGI movies and animations, lens flare is now edited IN.