> I've never read so much crap...

Your illiteracy isn't something about which you should be bragging. Learn to read and then read about Microsoft and you'll read lots more crap than you ever thought existed -- all earned by Microsoft through its incompetence at software engineering.

> I bet that all of them hadn't tried Windows phone 8

Your wagering skills aren't something about which you should be bragging. Windows Mobile has been a scourge since 2002 when Microsoft owned the market, and lost it through sheer incompetence and bullying. Nobody's left around who would try "Windows Phone 8" or whatever Microsoft releases now because they've had 13 years to fail to corner the market -- and all they've done is demonstrate the wrong way to do things.

> The phones are great. The OS is excellent and works well on low end phones too

Your analytical skills aren't something about which you should be bragging. The phones -- hardware wise -- compare poorly with one and two year old Android or IOS phones. The OS is hardly stable, and the app store a joke. Yes, it works well on low-end phones because it is a low-end OS that doesn't push hardware to any limits -- fortunately -- because the hardware it runs on IS low-end phones.

> Cortana is brilliant

Your girlfriend in mind only. You really should look up what "brilliant" means and realize that an artificial voice recognition software can't be brilliant. Then if you decide to learn English and use an apt word like "useful" you'll find that anything with Bing as the search engine is an exercise in frustrated futility.

> Just look up the specs of the newest Lumia 640XL

Perhaps you should "just look up" that this is a discussion about Microsoft potentially acquiring BlackBerry, not a discussion of how much they suck, or how awful they are, or how they took Nokia down the proverbial tube. The Lumia phone is history. It just hasn't got there yet.

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RIGHT!

The Amiga Workbench was multitasking - the first of its kind for "microcomputers" and it was the bread and butter of airport displays, sports announcers annotating where basketball or football players were moving on the field, and real-time "video toaster" displays for TWO DECADES after.

It was only in the late 2008-9/2010+ timeframe that Windows replaced Amiga displays for those things for realtime video annotations.

So yes, the Amiga did it first better. (Grandparent was right)
The Amiga did it for longer than anyone (sorry, Parent)

So sorry the mods are like 15-20 years old and are bored by history and facts.

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The analysis paper starts out by saying "With hundreds of millions of devices expected to be traded by 2018, flaws...could be a serious problem." Unfortunately that same analysis focused on Android operating systems PRIOR to v4.4 (KitKat), which was released in October 2013 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history).

Since then, Android has released major versions (4.4 Kitkat, 5.0 Lollipop) and various major updates within those families (4.4.2, 4.4.4, 5.1). To put this in perspective, they're talking about risks in 2018 from software no newer than 2013 while writing and publishing in 2015. That's a classic case of picking your data to fit your conclusion, or cherry picking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_%28fallacy%29).

There were many fixes in Android security systems in 4.4 and also in 5.0. 5.0 now supports hardware encryption on e.g. HTC and OnePlusOne platforms among others. To apply "anyone can get the key and brute-force a password"[paraphrased] is to deny that no, you can't.

It's often more convenient for "researchers" to provide something with glitz and hype to catch the media's attention, but in this case the hype cherry-picks data that ignores two years of active open-source development and many security updates.

Poor science and hyperbolic headlines make for brain-free reading.

Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ
CPL-H

The taxi lobby and the insurance lobby are organizations that stand to benefit from this law each in their own way.

The taxi lobby doesn't have to contend with competition from Uber drivers [regardless of your quip about taxi service].
The insurance lobby doesn't have to contend with Uber drivers' increased risk from above-average mileage without additional insurance premiums.

It's a win/win for the existing industries and a lose/lose for Uber drivers and Uber passengers.

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1. He has no obligation to "come free and clear". That's just something you made up, and something LEOs wish, but not a requirement under US law.
2. If he was "personally threatening" then he would have made a threat.

I'm sure it will come out that this guy WAS pranking... seeing as he offered no specifics to make either a *usable* warning or a *credible* threat.

That doesn't change everyone bending over to pretend this is a crime; that we can't say "bomb" in an airport; and that we must be otherwise conditioned not to say "4/16" in Virginia. (or "9/11" anywhere even though that's what you dial in an emergency and we have to tell the children that's what to dial. Think of the children.)

I can't imagine how horrible it must be for people who's birthday is April 16th and who live in Virginia to ever discuss their upcoming party. "4/16 is going to be a blast!"

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"this was a clearly-made threat" That's what law-enforcement says.

A plain-English reading makes it out to be a warning or a tip - not a threat.

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I've read the previous posters' comments, and I understand all about the freedom of speech, the misunderstood Oliver Wendell Holmes quote about "fire in a crowded theater", and that "speech by computer" shouldn't equal a crime (right, it shouldn't).

HOWEVER, in all these great discussions it seems everyone is accepting and begging the question that the original comment about there being a repetition of XX/YY is a THREAT.

Sorry guys and gals, that's an anonymous TIP, a WARNING, a PREDICTION, the kind of thing that kindly old lady on the 900 number tells you, something your mother says if you touch a hot stove, etc. Call it what you will, but it's not a threat.

A threat requires an INTENTION to INFLICT or CAUSE HARM. It may even suggest that the person making the threat will be the one doing it. Google threat or here's an easy definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.c...

Fundamentally this guy said something on the Internet. He has now been excoriated as "an idiot" "said stupid things" "ha ha he'll get ***ed in the holding cell" "serves him right for making a threat."

It's only a matter of time before the LEOs say "You can't say those things and live."

Yes. In the United States we can.

I'm disappointed /. readers decided to punish the victim and accept the TSA-airport-attitude that "if you say bomb then we'll arrest you right then and there" and then when a passenger does say "bomb" we call him a stupid idiot. Stupid is the idiot that accepts this as his way of life and defends this insane idea that somehow making speech unlawful is either Constitutionally ok, or even helps our security [theater] at all.

Cheers guys and gals,

E

Yea, right mate, because laws are all genuinely for the good of the people, right?

No need to challenge, ask, rebuke, or seek to have it overturned.

It's the law.

Try not to speed on the way home, will you?

The UK ISPs are paid by their customers connect to the Internet.

The UK ISPs are blocking connections.

There are no "pirates".
There is no "piracy".

There is only UK ISPs not allowing their Internet customers who have paid for to reach all Internet sites to not reach all Internet sites.

Shame on UK ISPs.

There is nobody else to blame.

UK ISP customers. Sue your provider.

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This guy flew his aircraft into the DC ADIZ.

http://www.aerolegalservices.c...

He did not land on national property or attempt to deliver mail, but other than heinous
things, it's pretty much the same.

He was given a 30 day suspension of pilot privileges.

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I installed it on my OPO. It's not impressive. Going back to CM11 shortly.

NOTE: Do *NOT* install this if you use an encrypted filesystem. It will hose itself up and be stuck in a "couldn't mount /data; reboot" loop. First, format /data the hard way -- without preserving encryption or *ANY* files on there.

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Seriously, today's /. April Fools' things have been gangrenous post-rotten.

Yes, I love FireFly and everything about it.
Yes, I even liked Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Today's /. April Fools' things have been atrociously stupid.

If you don't fool anybody it's not an April Fools' joke... you're the fool.

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This guy walks into SpaceX.

Elon Musk says "You here for the interview?"

"Naw... just here to put in the Brawndo fountain."

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Pretend you wanted to drive 8000 miles. The IRS expects that the cost per mile allowance is $0.50 based on gas, oil, tires, vehicle depreciation.

To drive those 8000 miles the apportioned cost would be $4,000. You can get 10 round-trip tickets London-NY off-season and 5 on-season for that.

During your trip if you follow your manufacturer's recommendations you'd need to change your oil three times. So would everyone else. At equal intervals. What a pile up at the mechanic at 3000m, 6000m, and just past it. Yuck!

If you have average street tires then the trip there and back would kill half your tires (so they only have half left on them you need to replace them on this trip).

If the speed limit was set at 100MPH and there were no stops you'd actually maintain that, but given that you will stop to stretch your legs, etc. that average goes down to about 80. That's 100 hours of driving, which with two drivers and sleeping in the car is 5 solid days. What's the value of 10-man-days lost?

Finally even if all those things were true, the largest cargo that could be transported is a triple-tractor trailer -- 3 containers. This ship can do 18,400 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.... You'd need 6,133 trucks to equal that and it would take them 5 days. The cargo ship can make it in 3-4.

This is a nonstarter from every possible fiscal angle for the end-users, even if the road magically arrived today.*

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* note that I didn't address at all that by the time your European car reached the US, it would not be homologated for street use by the DOT so you'd need to rent a car here anyway, and vice versa.

The article is misleading. Transmission and reception on the same "frequency" is done today. However, there's some other "discriminator" in the signal. Either modulation method, phase, shift, orientation, or "something" is different so that the receive and transmit don't collide.

This article -- despite its misleading introduction -- talks about a limited application whereby RX and TX can occur using the same frequency *BAND* (they say "spread spectrum") and allow full-duplex communication. The advance is that this is all on one chip.

What would be truly revolutionary, like the example of two people talking to each other at the same time, is the ability to transmit and receive using the *same* exact method by both transceivers. THAT would be the holy grail.

Not there yet.

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