Why? More work for them... And you forget that this is Comcast, a huge entertainment conglomerate, not some streaming video startup or small regional isp. So they have the muscle and can "negotiate" with other content providers and lobby groups. If an anti-porn group raises an issue with them they will happily comply with filters, maybe even create a nice portal only accessible at night and with opt-in where you can buy safe adult content from Penthouse and Playboy - and maybe get a nice funding from somewhere for the filters because they are progressive and innovative on protecting children and a cut of the Penthouse / Playboy revenue because they are driving customers there. They do not care how they will get their money, and the worst customer is one who just wants a "dumb pipe".

It is still Samsung who is providing the updates. Sure, you can unlock the phone more easily and put Cyanogenmod on it, but if you want "supported" OS it is still yet to be seen if Samsung updates the Play Edition or not. But choice is good, from reading reviews; would I buy an "Play edition S4" - probably not (battery life is actually worse, getting rid of TouchWiz doesn't give any real peformance boost, extra camera goodies are gone), and when the manufacturer version reaches it's end-of-life and you have to put Cyanogenmod on it to get to the newest stuff there probably exists an unlock hack for the bootloader anyway. If you wan't to unlock the phone from day 1 of course the story is different.

No, Ahonen is not fun. He is bitter ex-Nokia worker who has now self-promoted himself as an expert Nokia-analyst. His every blog post keeps repeating (in very boring and long way) the same old song - how strong Nokia was in 2010 and how badly is has been since, but he really doesn't offer *any* insight on what should have been done.

He completely (on purpose) forgets that Symbian was in really deep shit. Everyone else had abandoned it, developers generally hated it and Nokia devices were famous for their cost-cutting (too little RAM, slight differences on Symbian releases making cross-device development a huge pain, crashing built-in software) while Apple and Android were offering superior tools for developers and superior devices. Sure, going with Microsoft may have been a mistake, and it can still prove to be a catastrophe if MS does something nasty like decides to ditch WP in the failure bin. But just taking an arbitrary point in time (the end of 2010) and pretending that everything was fine and implying everything would have been fine and rosy also after that (without telling on what strategy) is just delusional.

This,

I do not live in the US, and we do have here (an evil and communist) centralized SSN system.

Still, companies and even government agencies sometimes (although they are getting wiser...) use SSN's as passwords when they should not - SSN should be public, your "GUID", and just identify that "I am this person", but not verify that identity. It is stupid - because once the SSN leaks out it is extremely hard to change, and you can't manage your identification method on per-service basis (on some less important cases you could resort to no authentication at all, on some use passwords, and decide that on the really important ones you have to be present and provide biometric proof).

Your address and name - well, it might not be wise to yell them out loud on every occasion, but they are not secrets either. I can imagine that the original poster shreds all his snail-mail thoroughly, but majority of people do not and that information is readily available in the trash for any passer-by.

Unfortunately these people are experts in hiding their tracks - more skilled than the ones they are suing.

Sure - eventually they will be barred but until that they can just make up new shell companies and name a hobo as a CEO for the price of a wine bottle - or better yet, just use someones name without their knowledge instead. One the judges get pissed, deny everything and refuse to testify, repeat and get a fee hundred thousand each round - keeps a few people employed.

I would not be surprised at all even if the producers they claim to represent are not aware of what is done using their products - I would guess that in the industry today you have to be nice to the customer and offer options, and that is what most are doing, not name and shame (because the competition is fierce, and there are free legal alternatives).

Let me guess - Macbook - $1000+, the Win8 PC $500+ with built-in crapware. Win8 installer doesn't require your email or name, just like Mac doesn't. But Windows really, really would like you to register for a Microsoft account, and the Mac really, really would like you to register for an Apple ID.

I do not defend the crashing installer - customer experience should not be that, but I strongly doubt that all those virus scanner trials and add-on try-before-you buy media players cheap PCs are cramped with do play a role here a manufacturers don't care to test enough.

Sure - anecdotes are not evidence so this is not complete analysis of the situation:

When travelling to US (from Europe, from a Visa Waiver country) the reception has been...bored. The most hassle has been on the EU side, where US destined flights are treated "specially" with the nude scanners and all that - but on the actual border, it has recently been "How long long do you plan on staying in the US - ok, 3 weeks, I will stamp you for 5, here, scan your fingers." Really, really bored. Ten years ago on my first visit they actually talked to you on what you are going to do and when you are going back.

Another anecdote - I just traveled to UK a week ago, the airport was full with "You are checked more carefully for your own safety" -posters, the guy at the passport check smiled, no queues.

I would not say Orange is insignificant and there are others, some national or operating in a small area with a large market share and grand plans for expansion (the Sonera part of the last company I linked is the former Finnish national post & telecom office, which was split up as a several private companies in 1990s - the "Telecom" part then became Tele and further Sonera which spent billions of euros on auctions for an example in Germany for 3G licenses, which never did anything and both Sonera and Telia still being minority-owned by Finnish and Swedish governments their actions have spurred a lot of discussion on how to handle "taxpayers money").

It is not complete bullshit. If the software allows you to hand-correct the texts you dictate and vast majority of people do so while driving - that is then how the software is used. In software projects (at least in good ones) there is a testing period where the actual use is monitored, and people can be very creative in using the software in ways the designer did not mean to.

The only question is - what to do about it. In case of an business software used inefficiently the answer is often quite easy - make study why users are not using the features the way designers intended and make them better (better UI, better access to new features, training, etc.) - in the case of Siri and texting - a tougher one. Maybe the only way is to make the speech-to-text so good so you don't have to mind ending up on damnyouautocorrect or your business contact thinking that you are drunk.

There are two basic models, auction and beauty contest. Those who favor auctions usually point out that for "common good" auction is better, because even if it yields huge sums of money to the government which may be seen as a tax prices are (when the money is a lump sum, not percent of revenue or profit) always going to be as high as the consumer is willing to pay for a service. The advocates of beauty contest say that it gives a better chance to newcomers and favors large scale adoption of new technologies more quickly.

I'm not entirely in favor of either, the key part is to make the auction fair and have boundaries or the beauty contest relevant in terms of what must be implemented (not too strict, not too lax) and evaluate properly. Where I live, Finland (and I think this applies to Sweden at least partially as well) we have one of the lowest cell service prices (well below UK and US, Hong Kong and other very dense areas do beat us) and we have had a hybrid model where there has been elements of both in place for bidders, depending on the situation (economic, need to get new technology implemented, politics, you name it) the auction sum or the beauty contest criteria has been the more relevant factor. We now have 3 separate nationwide networks and several virtual operator on top of those (some "cheap labels" of the network owners, some operators renting the airspace and providing cheaper and/or different service than the network owning carrier).

As a resident of Tampere I find this objective...no wait, I don't - kudos to you, sir :)

The trial was held at Oulu, a northern medium-sized city in Finland. It should be noted that this was one of the most high-profile cases copyright holders have had and it dried up to quite small convictions - 45 000 euros is not insignificant but quite different than the 6 million the rights holders were asking for.

Yes, European courts operate differently. There is no such thing as inadmissible evidence in Finland - the court is free to take in to account even evidence which was obtained unlawfully. Only thing that limits evidence is testifying - when you testify you are under oath and lying is prohibited (unless you testify for yourself, then you are free to lie as much as you like).

This has its merits (fewer cases are thrown out on technicality reasons) but it also creates things like this where evidence is not necessarily as pristine as it should be.

I do not. In my country the crime rate is 2.2 compared to 4.8 of US per 100 000 people (homicides).

It is not really about gun control, you have to take into account many things, if compared to my country US is a jungle (double homicide rate) is more lax gun control going to help? I seriously doubt it. But feel free to convince me otherwise.

How common those situations actually are?

I mean really - a situation where you or someone else is in immediate danger of dying or getting seriously injured and having a gun can prevent that? And please don't cite every gun death as preventable by the other party also having a gun - it doesn't work that way.

What if the perpetrator doesn't have access to a gun? These are not black & white situations and luckily in most parts of the civilized world we do not live in a jungle anymore where the strongest can just eat the weakest and people do not generally want to kill each other even if they are desperate and resort to robbery.

First: I do agree. We need ATC to provide separation. But also the separation rules and inefficiencies in air traffic co-operation are the biggest delay (and fuel consumption) factors today. Ironically, USA with FAA and same administration over the whole country is doing better than Europe which has a different ATC authority (state operated or company owned / contracted by state) in every country because states like to be sovereign in that matter.

There also can be VFR commercial flight, in a municipality airport I did parachuting more than often on a good parachuting day (obviously parachuting is not done in IMC) the ATC would ask the arriving commercial plane if they would accept a visual approach and so they did not have to clear our ascending jump plane completely out of the IFR sector. Most of the time the pilot happily accepted the change to visual (yes, they obviously had IFR plans and VFR only would never be an option, but just presenting a slight differentation from "IFR only" here...).