Well, maybe you're right and Cisco want to put a false feeling of "anonymity" to compromise more high profile targets with their preinstalled backdoors. Or maybe it's just a way for Cisco to make more money on the back of its customers. In any way, their method cannot guarantee anything, since the shipment is just the last step of an order, and the order can be compromised at so many earlier steps.

If you RTFA, you would notice that "boxen" is used in the original article. Also, "boxen" can be used as the plural for "box", but it is uncommon.

If I check their annual revenue report ($47BN between July 2013 and July 2014), well, some people buy Cisco gear...

I think "safe browsing" depends on your paranoia level. You can always be more paranoid, but until I see this BIOS flashing attack grow to a large scale, browsing to serious, public, common websites seems to be still pretty safe. If you think you can be targeted by GCHQ/NSA-esque organisations, then you can increase your paranoia level.

Well then, let's just make your system secure enough so you can't be compromised in the first place: Firewall, up to date base OS, antivirus, antimalware, and do your crappy things in a sandbox (VM). Use your base OS for safe web browsing, documents editing, email. Use your VM for TOR, torrents and all other unsafe things.

If you read TFA, it says the attacker has to already have access to the remote computer to root the system, so being cautious in the first place should be OK, or at least sandboxing your hazardous activities in a VM could do the trick.

More like Picard's implants. Even after removal, he still can hear the Borg...

Talks about liability of self-driving cars are already taking place, and it appears that when a self-driving car being in self driving mode has an accident, the car maker would be held responsible. Now does this means lower insurance costs for people who have self-driving cars? I doubt it, but car makers will sure have to have pretty expensive insurance coverage...

I think a big part of the traffic jams is because of the slow reaction time of humans. If, when a light goes green, all the cars release the brake and push the accelerator at the same time, traffic would be incredibly better. However, I love driving my car, so it's not a question of "is it better to have a human or a computer behind the wheel" for me, it's just that "I love driving, period."

If you want anonymity and/or privacy, just don't go with the big companies. Period. I use openmailbox through TOR and using email addresses with false names, this does a better job at anonymity. As for privacy, I f**king keep my personal info to myself.

For someone who "hesitates to comment", you have a lot to say! Even though I don't fully agree with your comment, cause Microsoft has turned some pretty good stuff into crap (Win7 > Win8, Win98SE > Win ME, Nokia > /dev/nul), I hope that your thoughts will materialize. They can do good if they put the right resources at the right place to do the job (Win Vista > Win7, Win2k > WinXP).

I think "more original" was more in the sense of "more special", talking about something better. Not "more original" in the "origins" sense of the term...

Sorry, I should have specified that the Greens are against any form of ARTIFICIALLY POWERED transportation. I have even heard a green saying that we should limit our physical activities because, you know, we have to consume more food when we do exercise, and food production puts great strain on natural resources.

Well, can't we just actually live and let Darwinism do its job?

In fact, the greens are against any form of transportation in the first place.

Bricking an OS? It's just like the guy don't actually know what a brick is. Bricking something is to break an actual object to the point where its only use is to be a doorstopper. Thie is the Urban Dictionnary quote:

Haha! "When I tried to install Linux on it". Sounds funny reading that thread...