This post highlights the possibility that the NSA could spy on Americans in America by working with a foreign partner to act as a proxy in exchange for the NSA spying on their people, sort of like wife-swapping. Obviously, it would not be Saudi Arabia, as they lack the resources for such a grand effort. However, the British could do it quite well. More importantly, it fits with the American business trend of outsourcing and off-shoring work. As for Saudi Arabia, they see like a good place to outsource 'enhanced interrogation'. It would be ironic, too, given that we have so many Americans who would be more than qualified to do the dirty work. I guess they could move to Riyadh.

The difference between a republican and a democrat -- a donut blimp. Figure it out.

The last machine that I recall using 8" disks was an NEC PC 8086. Running DOS 2.1, it was shaped like a microwave oven. That was in the mid 1980s. The diskette held about a megabyte, and there was no HDD.

The DDN network is likely an X25 WAN with bisync lines (RS422 or V35), a.k.a. ARPAnet. Bisync was notorious for going down due to 2-bit errors, making data look like control characters. I had a script that could reset a line, and you couldn't tell if the signal had gone down. That meant it was possible to tap into it. Diskettes could carry malware, and as several have mentioned, machines that booted from them were victims of some of the first PC viruses. Theirs probably boot from socketed EPROMs, which are easy to swap. All this was architected before network security was an issue. Fortunately, most terrorists are too young to know about these antiquities. However, if the Air Force believes it is invulnerable because it is ancient, then we are doomed.

Antimatter is so derisory. Must we put such a polarizing label on something we do not fully understand? If people referred to me that way, I would not hang around, either.

Of course it matters that we are made, and whatever we are made of quantum-wise, we should be proud, even if it destroys us when we come together.

I vote for calling it 'matter-of-fact'.

P.S. I appreciate StartsWithaBang renaming it from, "Why are we layered fatter?"

The Internet once again gets too much credit. Johannes Gutenberg started it all.

Too late, the feeding frenzy has begun -- http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/0...
He is better off wearing a sushi suit in a shark tank.

It would not be the first time the deceased left a will with a prank inside. Given the vulture-like disposition of some relatives, she might have left the map to her fortune inside the iPad. I would. Without the password, the data would be lost, as the password is used to encrypt the data.

. . . that it was actually the K**h brothers who contracted with the Russian Mafia to invent Bitcoin, and they set Nakomoto up as the fall guy. I'm sure it is totally bogus, in spite of the salaciousness and viral rumor-mongering appeal. Has anyone got any completely unsubstantiated confirmation of this?

This is the end of the motherboard era. LIke Mainframes (that are doing well, BTW), the motherboard has seen its heyday. Intel is de-emphasizing them in favor of processors for mobile, and AMD is looking pretty sad, see http://www.techradar.com/news/upgrades/graphics-cards/motherboards/computing-components/processors/computing/pc/why-the-pc-of-2020-could-be-bad-news-for-modders-1117302

As a desktop guy from way back (my 1st was a H89 that I built myself), I find this news to be depressing. However, the handwriting is on the wall. Once the volumes of desktops drop, the motherboard will become the exotic anomaly and hardware hacking will be the domain of the Raspberry PI generation.

. . . the world will end . . . for someone.

Fog will do it, too.

I live in the shadow of Google but have AT&T DSL and use it to watch Netflix. In the past six months, performance has deteriorated significantly, dropping from an average of 1.35Mbps to 800Kbps and sometimes less. AT&T has tested the link to the CO and found it meets their service level standards.

I have spoken with other locals who expressed similar problems with Comcast. If you look at the sales of iPads and other tablets, their growth seems to track against this slowdown. Have these new tablets, streaming YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix, put a strain on the local ISPs? I doubt if theISP's provisioning would keep up with sudden demand.