Ye. The threat of yet another karaoke version of "My Way" would definitely drive most normal people to suicide-bombing!

The 9-11 attacks killed a piddling amount of people compared to road traffic accidents, or even people shot by the various US police forces. Probably construction and farm accidents both killed more people. I don't have the data.

The reality is that terrorists are a tiny proportion of the threats to the average American.

There are only two possibilities:

a) The European view: Americans are a bunch of spineless, knicker-wetting, yellow bellied softies, or

b) The American View: those Corporate American Commie bastards have infitrated our gummint!

I wish to propose a third way: both of the above!

Probably most users just think their ISP is a POS but so are all the others. Like most other things in the UK with a "regulator".

If BT isn't blocking you as a result of government policy, then it is probably because their DNS settings are corrupt - again.

How was that patent even slightly valid? Parity was known about before WW1 - and by implication probably before An Wang was born!

The IBM709x series were in use around about 1970. By 1974 the system 360 was all the rage, and bytes were in common use, so probably over 40 years ago.

If there are 9 or 18 (or even 36, if it's a particularly large DIMM) identically-marked chips, that's ECC. If there are 4, 8, 16, or 32 chips, then it's probably not

In the days of the AMD586, it was common for mother boards to be sold with fake ECC. There was actually a "fake ECC" chip soldered where the ECC should be. Often, these boards had defective RAM in too, but would pass the BIOS fake memory test! Memtest86 was written because of these boards.

I bought one myself and was astonished that it was cost effective to deliberately engineer defective machines. Memtest86 may not be very good, but it would flush these boards out, which was the problem when it was written.

Realistic testing for the kind of problem in this article requires knowledge of the layout of memory cells to know which is ajacent to what, as well as prolongued testing. However, it should be possible to produce a background task that does the test continuously and put it in the idle loop. This is often done in embedded systems. Perhaps the memory chips could hold a guide to the cell layout.

And perhaps people who sell defective memory chips could face a class action.

they're a lot more likely to pursue it.

You obviously have not tried it.

Well, he isn't apparently suggesting the police or state should be able to place a camera in every home

No. Install it yourself, and let them use the backdoor. Saves the state a lot of money. He is not as stupid as he looks.

As it is the same telcos providing the service in all countries, why are there any additional costs?

There is no reason on earth why calling from France Telecom in London to France Telecom in Paris costs more than France telecom in London to France Telecom in Manchester (Or Deutche Telecom for that matter).

In the case of Hutchinson 3G (a Hongkong company) IT ALREADY DOESNT!

What you see here is "we have the technology to fleece you" being optimised.

There is a huge difference between data sent over the internet and data physically stored on a device.

Yep: You can be certain the NSA already has a copy of one of these.

You have the right to remain violated!

It will take a lot more fixes than this for me to ever buy another NVidous product. I am not a Windows user, and their drivers dont work at all on other OSes..

The malware writers will never agree to i!

Very, very, very few phones come with an external battery charger,

You might need to download the eBay app from Playstore. External battery charger and two batteries is £10 ($15) for most phones. Sure 1/2 the batteries only last about 6 months, and some of the chargers explode, but the rest last for years. At that price, you can't lose. Just buy more!

£ is GBP, not Australian. Something is badly wrong with Slashdot (and not just Beta)

Lots of people - possibly outside of thhe USA - have to go for DAYS without a power source - perhaps because they work (or play) away from home/ I normally keep a stack of four batteries charged. While this usage pattern my not be common in America and Japan, it is for much of the world.

As for removable SD car - I want to be able to instantly swap content OUT as much as in. I do not want to take one client's data onto another's premises ever. And I may have recreational content I do not want in the work place. I would guess a lot of people would like to be able to swap out the porn when they go to work/partner's house, etc.

I used to be an HTC user - but they stopped removable batteries and SD cards, so I switched to Samsung. I LIKE the plastic back. Doesn't break or scratch - and anyway, I only have my phone out of the fake leather case when I am changing the battery or SD card (or using it for satnav).

Thinness? WTF? Functionality is 1,000 times more important than appearance to most users. Curved screen edges? how breakable is that? a $700 device that won't last a month in the real world? If I wanted an iPhone, I would buy an iPhone.

My first response to the announcement was to check out Xaiomi. My sister-in-law (not a tecchie) - whose contract was up, and was waiting to hear the announcement - won't be buying this. I cant see many people over 30 who will.