... the beginning of the end is near...

Interesting study.

Now please explain Sarah Palin.

I love it:

  'All that foam cushion and padding probably didn't add all that much comfort. All that's been taken out,' he said. 'You haven't really lost all that much if the airline does it right.'

Pure speculation at its finest and spoken by a person who probably doesn't travel much.

Maybe so, but you can bet the manufacturer keeps track of the items shipped by serial number and to whom they have been shipped.

If it ain't broke, then why does MS still keep pushing out patches for XP? Because there are exploitable holes, that's why.

The whole thing falls apart after April 2014 when MS stops pushing out any patches for XP. Zero-day exploits will undoubtedly appear shortly thereafter, and now black hat hackers will have a huge incentive to target XP machines because they know that once they are in, a patch is not coming to close the hole. Think about that for a moment...

The only way to keep an XP machine safe from attacks after April 2014 is to unplug it from the internet completely.

Please let it die, it's had a good run. It's time to move on.

"*Big Pharma Companies* have been powerless to stop the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and are increasingly desperate to develop novel drugs."

Here's a hint: Stop indiscriminately throwing antibiotics at everything that moves. It's precisely the over-use of these drugs that has created the problem in the first place.

+1 Insightful, where are my mod points when I need them.

Same here in Finland. My last two cars (VW, Audi) did not even require routine service until they hit 30,000 km (19k mi). With my daily commute that's about 2 years. In between, just top off fluids, if needed. The routine service is little more than a simple oil change, checking the brakes, tires, etc.

I completely support Tesla's idea of selling direct, even if I'm not an owner (yet). I hope that they someday find a solution for batteries in Nordic climes, so it's a viable car here as well. After all, we already use the grid to keep our cars warm and start-able in the winter.

I find it appalling that some states, including my own home state, are using legal means to try and block Tesla from entering the market. Whatever happened to the so-called free market in the US? This sounds decidedly less free market.

Native Texan here born and raised, and 100% true.

Fortunately, I decided to leave the state (and the country, for that matter).

Not necessarily stupid, but ignorant. They are not the same.

Nope, it's the kossu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kossu

Secret court finds secret spying OK. News at 11...

I would replace "Android" with "WP8" for almost all of those (all, once Amber drops on my device), because I've got karma to burn at the moment and it's true. There's a shit-ton of copying going on in iOS 7 from WP8, WebOS... and Android.

I can confirm this as a US citizen who travels to Brazil every 12-18 months. It's not quite as bad as Russia, but it is a pain to have to go to the Brazilian embassy and get a visa just to go to Brazil on vacation, plus the additional costs of the visa.

Exactly. A similar thing happened in Finland a few years ago. The previously state-run mobile phone and internet provider was sold to a Swedish company and as a result, the hub for all the data flowing into and out of this provider moved to Sweden. The problem was, the Finnish government used this provider, and suddenly all government data was "overseas". This was/is illegal. So, they had to quickly build new datacenters in Finland to host all the government data. I would also speculate that Sweden's close ties with the US had some impact to the urgency as well.

Note, this was well before the whole Assange affair which also seems to smell of US interference/cooperation with the Swedish government in order to get him on Swedish soil so he can be extradited to the US for prosecution.