I can't deduce from the article how it works with these tv's.
But even if it has that feature, it's bound to fail from time to time, and send personal conversations to its server. So even with that feature i would expect the EULA to mention this.

I'm also wondering the same for when i'll buy my next tv. I don't want some smart tv, but will i find something decent that is not smart? I would love high end dumb a as a brick tv's/screens, but us technical minded folks are probably a minority? I can't really imagine who uses the smart tv functionalities. All i've seen from it so far is tv's being able to play a lot of files, but still a lot of other files don't work for any number of reasons. They'll support a lot of services, probably not all the ones you want. Maybe you can browse the internet on them. On a strange browser, and after you've seen it work an though "this is great" you'll never do it again since your pc is way superior to it.
Maybe i'm just not the average consumer XD.

how is it remotely avoidable when your tv has voice recognition? like systems like siri it'll send it off to a remote server for analysis and to see what it has to do :). It will pick up random conversations and try to see if it's a command. I'm not endorsing things like this, i would never want a smart tv, i'll attach a htpc or raspberry pi or whatever to it if i want such features. But i can understand that things like that are pretty unavoidable with voice commands, and don't sound that much like a spying nightmare, just a logical result of voice recognition...

and most importantly: free shipping.

i'm wondering, can there be anything in there that justifies this cost?
most of the hardware isn't stellar (the software is android, probably not the fastest chip, some decent batteries and screen on it, some audiodecoding software that is probably already available for all android devices)
So all that is left is the hardware for actually creating the audio signal, which should be worth a lot in this thing, is there really hardware that is so suberb in quality that it's worth this price?

Do we really need clickbait titles like "disco clam" on slashdot...

I just have to wonder if it's not just a PR stunt.
These kind of threats from hackers does indeed sound unbelievable. Hacking a pc and setting up a terrorist strike are quite different skill sets.
Am i the only one wondering if this is just a hoax from Sony/the authorities to make people change their stance on the hacks? In the beginning everybody was like "serves them right". Now everybody is like "Omg, poor Sony, i would watch the movie if i could".

These threats seem like the best thing that could happen to them after the hack. I'm kind of wondering if it isn't a bit too convenient.

And if you don't want people to be able to use your site in different ways than you intended, don't put it on the internet. it's that simple :p.

It's always easy to say don't use something if you don't agree with it, but a lot of things are just too big to ignore and if you can just work around the issues and enjoy it how you want it, why the hell not?

no, he means a CEO :)

Can you explain? what part of the .net collections would be lacking?
If you see comparisons between .net and java, it's usually that the past 10 years .net has evolved and java sometimes catches up a tiny bit.
I always thought that java collections were weaker since in .net even an array is also still a collection, they have collections for just about anything you need, and with LINQ you've got an incredibly powerful way of manipulating/creating/accessing collections.

Okay, and suppose you took this course and created your own roman numeral reader. How sure are you that they won't find something on the internet that is "too similar"?
I agree it's important they learn to do their own work, but i would be wondering how high the odds are for false positives...

It's probably that students are unsure where the line is drawn.
As mentioned in the article if you're working on a programming problem, it's natural these days that you look online when you're stuck on a problem, is this cheating?
Also, there are only so many ways you can solve a problem (certainly small programming problems in courses). How sure are you that your solution isn't too similar to something someone put online somewhere, or another student who thought the same way you did?
Even if you didn't actively cheat, depending on how this would be tested, a student should almost consider "confessing" just to be sure not to get expelled if similar code is found somewhere (and the internet is big...)

and if it's patented, i doubt the dirt cheap claim will become true anytime soon.
why would they offer it dirt cheap if they can just make it a bit cheaper than current solutions and get a lot of profit

you mean how we see the universe? because i doubt the universe cares much about the data we generate....

it will be 2 hours now?