From TFA:

"This release implements support for the Secure Element. A netlink API is available to enable, disable and discover NFC attached (embedded or UICC ones) secure elements. With some userspace help, this allows to support NFC payments, used to implement financial transactions. Only the pn544 driver currently supports this API."

In other words, the kernel now contains the necessary API so the PC can correctly talk to a NFC Secure Element which is needed to be able to make payments over NFC, in tandem with userspace tools.

So yeah, the label is a bit misleading...

Technically, every Nobel Prize also rewards all the winner's teachers...

The problem is that one of the rights you do not have is the right to go wherever you please.

Thus, the government is not infringing on your rights. They are requiring that you waive certain of your rights in order to obtain the right to enter their territory. Merely protesting against it won't help.

You're coming at this from the wrong side. You're assuming this exists to allow a consciousness to be detached from a physical body. I'd say it's more likely that this allows a consciousness to form, to emerge, from any and all 'proper' physical bodies.

In other words, the development of a foetus just needs to create the physical neurons in the brain. Conscience will then emerge from the firing neurons on its own. And because it wasn't tied down to the actual physical body to begin with, some leeway remains to project it outside.

You're asking how we evolved from a consciousness tied to a body to one that isn't. What proof do you have that consciousness was ever tied to a body to start with?

No, they do not sell the episodes individually because they want people to buy a whole subscription.

Sounds more like they reinvented the Python console...

Or, you know, bash.

Any shell, reallly.

Except that it's not only about the safety of the passengers, it's also about the safety of all the people living and working in places where terrorists might crash the plane into.

At least quote the whole paragraph, if nothing else it makes discussion *here* a whole lot easier.

“The agreement is seeking to address a number of very different issues of which some are serious problems of public health and public safety, for example trade in fake medicine,” Ms. Schaake said. “But that issue doesn’t compare to the alleged cost to society of online piracy. It seeks to kill 20 birds with one stone. It risks not solving the legitimate concerns but causing incredible collateral damage.”

I read this as indicating that both issues are simply in different leagues when it comes to importance. The phrasing "alleged cost [...] of online privacy" seems to indicate she sees the fake meds as much much more important and that she's worried that the inclusion of anti-piracy stuff is harming these legitimate concerns.

The thing is, it really should be Android. I mean, under Android you're free to develop and distribute an app designed just for crashing the phone. I'm sure such a thing would never get past the Apple censors.

Did you read that article you linked to?

"Cancer survival in black men and women was systematically and substantially lower than in white men and women in all 16 states and six metropolitan areas included."

Tell me that doesn't show that the more money you have in the US, the better your chances of survival.

Because disasters that have passed are no longer newsworthy, and disasters scheduled for a hundred years from now aren't newsworthy yet.

In other words, if it isn't about "more or less now", noone would care and you wouldn't hear anything about it.

Women have testosterone, just not as much as men.

Your post is mixing two different points: open vs. closed source, and projects done by a whole team vs. a single guy. You can't compare closed source software developped by a big company that's staking its survival on the commercial success of said software with an open source hobby project of a single guy, and then make a general conclusion that closed source is better...

Tried and busted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2005_season)#Episode_35_.E2.80.93_.22Border_Slingshot.22

No, 0.999... IS exactly equal to 1.

Which is why floor(0.999...) should be exactly equal to floor(1), ie. 1