I'm pretty sure they would just (as they always have done) kill anybody non-zeta who tries to sell drugs.

Legal or not, the cartels would still be the ones selling drugs. In fact it would probably be easier for them, now that it's legal!

This sounds like a rather week strategy to me. Presumably anything they can make proprietary extensions do will have an OSS alternative before too long. That having been said, anyone who uses these proprietary extensions knows that Oracle can make them expensive if they want to - so if that really is a problem, they just wont be used.

I do however share your concern that Oracle will stop at nothing to milk some money out of MySQL - and unlike OpenOffice.org, MySQL is used everywhere by a very large amount of people. I guess pretty much the only good thing is that PostgresSQL is a solid alternative.

Well IE9 HAS to be the best at "catching attacks aimed at making the user download Web-based malware".

That's because only the most stupid web user (read: the most stupid 50%) click banners which go "OMG YOU MUST MAKE YOU COMPUTER FAST AND NOT HAVE VIRUZES NAO!". And yes...they are using Internet Explorer, because quite frankly, they aren't smart enough to spot that Chrome/Firefox are better than IE.

This should be both +5 Funny and +5 insighful.

Remember that Google was founded in 1998. So its ~13 years old. I don't believe anyone is predicting that the online "buck" will move to China (or for that matter Russia) within the next 13 years. Sure it's moving, but it will be much longer before the spending power of an average Chinese person comes close to that of a "westerner".

My point is Revotron is probably right - those are not the markets that will propel Google to further greatness - at least not by short or medium term Google time.

Once you practice a little bit with LaTeX (we're talking using it for a couple of weeks) there really is no headache.

In fact, the lack of headache from LaTeX is what makes it better than any WYSIWYG editor out there (LyX is good, but still a headache imo)

Why shouldn't a robo-plane be able to look out the window? If I was building one, I would add cameras various places on the exterior, and always cross reference all measurements before making a decision.

The SELinux issue appears to be a temporary bug. The thread you linked says: a) next version will have it fixed and b) gives you a one-liner for how to fix it yourself.

I think usually the bands get permission to do cover songs. Or rather, they have their manager do it for them.

This just in: 15% of developers steal the passwords of 80% of all (stupid) users!

Seriously...isn't this just a tad "evil" behavior? Even if its done to prove a point, surely this guy shouldn't be stealing his users passwords?

I really don't know how they could miss that poll option - it was the first thing i thought of :-)

Actually that's just what they want to convince you! If you truly believe it would take very expensive tools to do the job professionally, then I guess there's next to no chance that you'll do it yourself, as the investment is too large.

This reminds me of the kind B.S. chefs have been telling us for an eternity: all that matters is you get fresh and awesome ingredients, then you'll have great flavor. If you live by this you'll be making pretty uninspiring dishes - eventually, you'll put it down to lack of talent, and the restaurants win :)

I'm not saying there's a conspiracy by the way - just pointing out that the above statement is misguided...

I don't agree with your metaphor; Sony aren't simply walking down the street, they are responsible for the security of more than their own network (in the metaphor, their own life) - they are responsible for the data and identity of all the customers they keep on file.

So it's more like a bus-driver, driving a bus down a road.

Now a SQL injection is only possible if the coder who wrote the Sony server software was an incompetent moron AND no proper code review has been done. Securing your inputs is not at all hard. If I can do it, so can Sony.

In the metaphor, this is equivalent to the bus company neglecting to have the bus repaired/maintained regularly. The result is that the bus is held together by one bolt. Now the person that undoes that bolt is a criminal, yes. But the bus company sure aren't free of blame by a long shot.

It seriously sucks that kid manufacturers these days sell 'em with cheap second rate cameras. It's not like their cheap you know - would it really hurt just to add something half decent?