And just to add to it, the article's author fucked up, mixing up flashes from red light cams (usually people making a right turn on red without a complete stop), while speaking about the revenue from speed cams.

I live in Chicago... Read TFA--not red light cams, but SPEED CAMERAS!

First off, because of state law, the speed cameras can only issue a ticket for going 6+ over the limit. So, 25 in a 20 school zone, or 35 in a 30 "near a park" zone is OK. Second, the 6-10 MPH over the limit is a $35 ticket. BFD. Only when you do 11+ over the limit (e.g. 41 in a 30), that's when it shoots up to $100. Finally, speed cameras are NOT allowed on Lake Shore Drive, Lower Wacker, and (obviously) Interstates.

On top of that, because of state law, the city had to paint "SAFETY ... ZONE" on the street in each lane, along with putting up extra speed limit signs with "PHOTO ENFORCED", by every camera installation, on that street and on all intersecting streets...

Just looking up Toyota, Ford, and GM (all USA), each allows you to go to their respective websites and type in a VIN to let you know if there's a recall associated with your vehicle... So while there isn't a law to that effect, they already have this. If you're too lazy to go to the manufacturer's site to look up your vehicle by VIN for the 1 or 2 vehicles you may own, either from the government or the manufacturer, then I don't know what else can be done. This is on top of the paper mail and e-mails you are likely getting. And on top of any lawyer ads you might see on TV--"Are you injured? [Automaker] had many recalls... Sue them!"

...nobody.

Seriously, cloud based backup is not the panacea you want to believe that it is. Think about it... With "unlimited storage for $5/mo", how does a company like BackBlaze have any viability? Right now, if you were to store 10TB of data (which has been thrown around in some of the other posts), their ROI is insanely high. Even if they went cheap and bought SATA 3.5" drives, a 4TB drive (on Pricewatch) will run $118, or $28.3167/TB. Let's say they can buy drives in bulk at $25/TB, 10TB would cost them $250 worth of equipment. At $5/month, their break-even point is at 50+ months--and that's assuming NPV is not important...

Now, let's throw in Visa/MC charge fees, bandwidth costs, additional hardware for RAID, office overhead, other equipment, legal / NSA requests / DMCA takedowns, etc., and the simple ROI of 50+ months easily balloons to 100+ months--if not out to infinity. There's no way a company like that is viable at current media prices, especially since your data is available on-demand (e.g. no delays for their tape to transfer to HD media)...

Viability of your backup solution is just as important whether it's longevity of tape & a physical drive you actually buy or the business plan of a cloud-based option.

I can confirm that Windows 8.1 x86 on 2GB RAM runs great--even on a 5-year old netbook. I loaded Win 8.1 Pro on a 2009-era Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (it had a now-unsupported XP) with an x86-only hyperthreaded Atom processor & IDE SSD--and it flies. I even put a new Intel 802.11ac WiFi-Bluetooth miniPCI card in it. I can't use Metro apps (1024x600 screen doesn't meet Metro's 1024x768 requirement, darn it), but after loading Start8, I don't care. I have a very portable little desktop machine that flies with Office 2010, Firefox, etc.

My only complaints are that Chrome actually performs quite poorly on sites with heavy AJAX (specifically Yahoo Mail), and that Flash is better off left not installed (darn). But Firefox appears to be much better optimized for low-end hardware, so I just use Firefox with no Flash.

In addition, the "monthly updates" are generally security fixes that exists to solve a security hole--where proper interaction with the component shouldn't cause problems before or after the applied fix. They generally solve one security problem within the component (e.g. buffer overflow at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx when called by yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy). That's why they've generally been trouble-free. Microsoft has recently gone on-record stating that Patch Tuesday will now be getting more such non-security feature updates, and they won't be optional.

Generally speaking, old-school Service Packs were both the bundling of hotfixes and new kernel-level features (e.g. USB 3.0, 4K drive sectors, UEFI support, etc.). In the world of Win7 and lower, Patch Tuesday was generally limited to security fixes and parameter changes (e.g. daylight savings time changes). Microsoft would also make available optional updates to Windows components (Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc.) that you could apply as desired.

This model isn't true with Win8.x. They're putting out kernel/feature updates every few months, trying to appear more Agile. A few months back, there was a mini-furor over Update 1 in that you had 30 days to test & apply it to your systems, or get no new updates. There was no beta of the release code that administrators could test ahead of time, as was customary with Service Packs. Some users flipped--specifically companies. Microsoft backed down a teeny bit, but only offered to create a branch for those who wanted to hold off on Update 1--for one extra Patch Tuesday cycle (4-5 weeks).

This is a perfect example of why Microsoft should go back to doing Service Packs and not these seemingly random "feature updates" that have become the norm with Windows 8.x and Office 2013 (non-MSI / "click to install"). There's no standard codebase anymore and feature updates are just being installed willy-nilly, with no real support window for delayed installations. (At least with a SP, you had a year to test & work around a problem before MS pulled the support plug). This is another reason why companies don't want Win8.x--kernel-level updates with only a few days warning. (Articles were still talking about "Windows 8.1 Update 2" as recently as 2 weeks prior to August's Patch Tuesday). I'd hate to be an NT administrator fretting over all my 2012R2 installations right now.

Instead of getting a SP for Windows 8, we now have 8.1. Instead of getting SPs for Windows 8.1, we now have 8.1 Update 1 and 8.1 August Update. We have updates that come through the "Store" app. This is one of the reasons (granted, not the primary one) why the uptake of Windows 8.x is now slower than Vista's uptake some ~2 years post-RTM, and why Windows 7 is gaining market share, at the expense of XP and Vista. Companies don't want this model and the headaches that go along with it.

So, for Win9, just go back to a Service Pack model and make everybody happy. Yes, SPs cost a lot of money to put out, and yes MS ends up looking old-school, but the rigor with testing is (presumed to be) significantly higher than some rushed, "little" update. Windows 8.x is broken, and Microsoft keeps pitching a newer, faster cycle of feature updates, but this just proves they are incapable of properly handling such a model... Microsoft: you are not Apple, and you don't have to try to emulate them.

As for myself, so far my two Win8.1 installations (one x86, one x64) and one of 2012R2 in a VM are not showing problems from these updates... But I have only myself to blame for not waiting a few extra days. Of course, now MS will have to come up with an out-of-band fix (with even less testing) within the next ~3 weeks or will have to have 2 sets of patches for September's Patch Tuesday--one for those who haven't uninstalled these updates and one for those who have. Pure stupidity...

Seriously, Microsoft... Internet Explorer has cost the company & its shareholders BILLIONS (wages, lawsuit settlements, DOJ/EU investigations, royalties, partnerships (e.g. AOL), etc.), yet made it $0 in income. If it wasn't for Bill Gates' inflated ego back in the mid-90s against Netscape, and if Microsoft would have partnered with a company like Netscape (back then) or Mozilla/Google/Opera (now), they would be in even better financial shape than they are in...

Sure, one can argue that MSN made a lot of money because it was the default homepage on IE, but MSN would have made the same amount of money if Microsoft bundled Netscape with Windows & set MSN as the default page--and would have pushed off all the R&D and risks onto a 3rd party. But no--almost 20 years later, we're still dealing with the hangover of those decisions. Business students should be doing case studies on the MS-IE debacle...

So, Microsoft, please deprecate IE!!! Do the world, and especially your shareholders, a favor. Stop at IE11. You've proven that you can deprecate things and support them on newer OSes (e.g. Jet/ACE). And since you'll need an HTML engine in future OSes (e.g. HTML Help, etc.), throw some money at Firefox (or Google, Opera, etc.) and force all "newer" internally developed programs (e.g. Visual Studio) to call this engine--while "older" apps stick with the deprecated engine (which still receives security updates) and/or are moved to the newer one over time... IE and its engine becomes a legacy feature and be done with it.

But, alas, the inflated IE ego syndrome still permeates within Microsoft...

Save money on Verizon or save money on things marketers want you to buy? What's the difference--if you're still saving $$$?

Imagine a brave new world where you walk into a Whole Foods and the "VZWAds" app pops-up a coupon for $0.50 off a $4.99 gallon of "365" brand milk, $0.30 off some couscous, and $1 off the pre-made food bar (minimum $15 purchase) for lunch? You needed milk, have no idea how to cook couscous, and you were getting hungry for lunch--but $15 worth of pre-made food is a lot, even at Whole Foods... After using that coupon, and scarfing down your huge lunch, you get another popup that gives you $0.50 off a Starbucks "mocho-choco-latte-cremo-supremo" venti-sized drink--but, HURRY, only if you buy one within the next 30 minutes at the Starbucks right next to Whole Foods! You've never had that type of drink, but the discounted price makes it worth trying! Then, the cloud concludes that you're probably low on cat food, since you last bought 36 cans a few weeks ago, so the app pops up yet another $0.50 coupon, this time for cat food at PetSmart! And all of these places are in the same strip mall...

Just thing of the possibilities!

I agree--I just don't see how this is the case. Sure, one person's Cleartype settings would be different from another's, so are we saying that the exact subpixel rendering is calculated? The article also mentions fonts installed... So, if I add a font, or a font like Arial Unicode gets updated (e.g. install a new version of MS-Office), my CANVAS fingerprint is now different/broken?

The claim of 90% accuracy for PCs is shockingly, quite high... But if tablets & mobile devices have problems with this and PCs don't, something don't smell right. So, is this trick working on a somehow poor implementation of CANVAS--that somehow creates different images on different PCs--but the same image on the same PC? What about a PC running Firefox vs. the same PC running Firefox in a VM (same OS or different OS)?

Uploading is still a fraction of what downloading is... Most home consumers, even those with IoT devices or heavy P2P users, are still net consumers of online information. (Think Netflix, Windows Updates, VPN, remote desktop, etc.) I see it as a gift I didn't care to receive but one that I wouldn't pass up. So, I have to ask, what's the point?

A more valuable gift would be continue the lack of symmetry, and bump existing download & upload speeds by some percentage. Until Netflix becomes P2P, most people wouldn't see much of a benefit from this... (e.g. Netflix streaming still sucks but my uploads to YouTube are 40% faster!)

Really? There's enough encryption, licensing, hardware, etc., that prevents most users from rooting their Android & iOS devices. I have an Android phone and I am a nerd. But I'm still afraid to put Cyanogenmod (or another distro) on my phone for fear that it'd be an expensive one-way trip. Manufacturers have come a long way since the simple hardware that Rockbox could be used on... (Notice how Rockbox hasn't added any devices lately--and that the project is receiving less submissions...)

And just because something has been open sourced & the code has been dumped onto Sourceforge or GitHub doesn't mean someone's actively working on the project. And most manufacturers would not cede control of the code, even for 5-10 year old devices, lest that code be used by a competitor--or worse, by someone filing a lawsuit for a defective product...