Fair enough. The mental image of a device that "radiate people" gave me a good laugh. I'd mod you up if I could.

But the safety of the machines is still somewhat in question. The government says they're fine, but researchers in the field aren't quite so sure. You can't just go around radiating people. Beyond the obvious privacy concerns, there are health concerns as well.

"Bullshit. Microsoft has never sued or to my knowledge threatened to sue to prevent anyone from calling a window manager a window manager."

Obviously. Their protected mark is Windows. They can't go after people calling their products window managers. But that doesn't change the fact that of the time of its inception, Windows was a window manager and the App Store was an application store. They're both awfully generic.

In the same manner, should Apple's trademark be granted, I would hope that names like the "Blackberry Application Store" would be similarly protected, where a "Blackberry App Store" would be in violation.

But, like I said, I don't know enough about the law or the full text of the trademark filings to make a clear decision one way or the other. I don't think the comparison is completely ludicrous, though.

Yes, exactly. That's why I was thinking the wording of trademark application could be important. Did they explicitly register it in regards to an "operating system"? Or was it the more generic "Computer software" or "Computer application"? The implication I was making was that since Windows was not a full "operating system" on its own at the time of filing, it may be registered as simply software or something to that effect.

There are certainly some subtleties here that make it unwise to go around calling people idiots, which is all I was really getting at.

No disagreement here, and I certainly never claimed it absolved them from blame. I only wanted to point out that in some manufacturing processes all these problems could be caused by a single point of failure, and does not necessarily imply widespread deficiencies in the assembly process.

The person I was replying to implied that since there were several different problems there must be lots of people on the assembly line who were making mistakes. I just meant to point out that that is not necessarily the case.

Of course, when Windows was originally released (and trademarked), it was a window manager that ran on top of the MS-DOS operating system. It didn't grow into a full operating system until later. The first version was released in 1985. Even when the Windows trademark was filed in 1990, it was still running on top of MS-DOS.

I think you could potentially argue that Windows = Window manager is just as generic as App Store = Application store at the time. It probably depends upon the exact wording of the trademark application, which I can't seem to dig up anywhere, but it's certainly not clear cut enough to go around calling people names over it.

Do you know that for certain? At least one other manufacturer, Dell, assigns the assembly of an entire machine to a single employee. Somebody's first day on the job could result in a machine like the one shown here.

The reason I've always been skeptical of using the Pwn to Own contest results in the way you have is that the guys creating these exploits are going to go after the most valuable targets first. Invariably, that's the Mac in the category. Even if the retail values of the devices are close to each other, the resale value of the Mac is going to be higher.

So, to make the most money from Pwn to Own, you go after the Macs.

Then, you have the notoriety factor, given that Macs have press for being more secure, whether that's accurate or not, you're going to get more press for targeting the Mac.

This is presumed to be a PS3 exclusive for the time being, because as you mentioned... the "premier" Netflix streamer (Roku) can't do it yet either. All the boxes physically support it, it's just Netflix lagging behind.

You can periodically grab these new for $150 or less, and there have been several big deals in the past few weeks for $130. Don't pay $200.

Is my reading of that statue correct, in that you cannot even call yourself an engineer if you're not professionally licensed? As a digital board designer (Electrical Engineer) having a PE is useless in this field. But if I were to move to NC, I couldn't call myself an Engineer even with a Masters in Engineering? That sounds ridiculous.

It depends what metric you use.

The GP was most likely referring to Market Capitalization. By that measure, Apple is bigger than even Microsoft and Wal-Mart... second only to Exxon Mobil, which it trails by a fair amount ($330b to $368b).

I think the "companion article" is not as related as the posted claimed it to be. After having read both, they're about two completely different topics.

The article doesn't say which models and brands were attacked. I'd be curious to see which ones they got.

These keys are certainly extremely useful. The key on mine detects if its inside or outside the car, and can even open the trunk if I touch a button by the tail lights. The fact that the manufacturers haven't considered the security ramifications of these keys is unsettling.

From the description, this seems to be a variation on the standard man-in-the-middle attack. These manufacturers should know better.

It sounds like he had the point just right to me. Neither he nor any of the other parent posts state that you should be able to take a modified XBox online. It's generally thought that the loss of online access is an acceptable, though annoying, side effect of modding.

This case is NOT about being able to put a modded XBox online. These guys are perfectly happy to use their XBoxes "Off-road." This case is about whether or not it's illegal to mod it in the first place (or more accurately, whether someone can mod your it for you). That is where, for once, a car analogy is actually pretty accurate.

Where was it suggested that racial profiling be used? Israel has had great success with passenger profiling, and there's a whole lot more to it than skin color.

Unfortunately you need trained and intelligent security agents to make it work, something we're never likely to be able to commit to. Cheap, poorly-trained TSA agents frisking people down looks more impressive to travelers than a couple relatively-expensive guys highly trained in interrogation techniques and reading facial expressions.