Easy. For both the homeowner checking his gutters as well as a airplane pilot flying overhead, self-preservation is a big factor.

OTOH, third parties flying vehicles around other people is an inherently callous (and cowardly) act.

'Denial' isn't just a river in Egypt.

Quadcopters are dangerous, and those are just the toys that don't carry packages across town.

This is a question of public safety being sacrificed to suit Amazon's corporate goals and customers who will pay premiums for faster service.

Actually, no. Eventually you won't be able to go for a swim because the accompanying Canfield Ocean effect is leading to anoxia and eventually copious amounts of hydrogen sulphide gas being spewed from the oceans into the atmosphere....... You won't be able to breathe.

Its like putting those large golden padlock images on e-commerce pages: Over time, people will absorb them as trust indications and then scammers will increase their success rate by draping their spoof pages in these symbols.

A user has to understand what a browser or email client is, and learn to look for trust indicators in the areas that frame the content.

Adding a PGP interface inside a content area is just STUPID.

I completely agree. I think cert and key management *would* be a lot simpler if operating systems presented keys and certs as first-class objects instead of little scraps of gobbldeygook texts with an empty-page or question-mark icon.

This is a security failing that is hard to overlook for projects with far-flung participants. Any time data is downloaded it could be subjected to MITM attack.

Core git coders appear oblivious to the problem. Even so, how hard can it be to replace SHA1 with SHA256?

Have a nice day, mods! :)

Cases in point:

1. The ridiculous FAT long-filename patent
2. The subpixel rendering patent (despite prior art being shown)
3. Outright patent-troll behavior: Refusing to disclose a stack of patents its using to extort for-profit Linux distributors behind closed doors.

If MS comes out of the closet and enumerates #3 and opens a dialoge with the community about them, THEN I will believe their hype about being open-source friendly. Otherwise, they are in the business of growing their Android-derived revenue using submarine tactics.

Also, explain to us why MS shuts out FOSS AV and document formats (the consumer-oriented ones); Not only from their products but from standards-making processes.

And don't forget there are billions of Android devices that can understand Ext* disk formats.

So only MS gets to embrace and extend; Who would have guessed? Break a single rule in Microsoft's .NET standards and they can come at us with both barrels.

The irony here is MS are using licenses that are thought to be the most libre as a cover to keep the developer community fenced-in to their platform with patent threats. Re-purpose any of the patented code and.....

Also, I'd like to remind you that MS still enforces at least two very silly patents against FOSS distributors: The FAT filename-length patent and the subpixel-rendering patent (which has prior art). And IIRC there is a raft of patents they are using to threaten Linux distributors which they still won't reveal, so they are still in the business of wielding shadowy threats which I'm told is actually illegal.

MS needs to make good on their past and current patent trolling. If they don't then we have no reason to believe they are doing "open source" in good faith.

Its trivial to get Windows to recognize a Linux partition and refrain from telling people to format those volumes.

No kidding. MS still pursues violators of that silly long-filename patent. And they STILL demand a cut from Android distributors for other patents they refuse to disclose to the community!

And that makes them hostile to open software in my book. They insist on treating Linux-formatted disks as essentially blank and have Windows tell the user the volume must be formatted to be used; fixing this would be simple in the extreme and would not even require an ability to read an Ext* volume. They stonewall AV formats like Vorbis when they could be added easily to existing apps. Really, the list goes on. The place where they have capitulated is formats that are intrinsic to the web (while parading their proprietary stuff as "open" hoping enough people will take the bait).

MS still promotes lock-in. And from what I gather even their new .NET licensing terms are designed to leave you on the hook.

Vorbis made it into a lot of products that were not Apple or MS, from Sandisk to Samsung.

Daala is shaping up to be excellent as well, but its biggest competition may be VPx in the long run... Google announced they would start 18-month release cycles for major VPx codec revisions after 10. That creates a Chrome-like effect on the mindshare of early adopters, so it should be interesting. Of course, who is backing Daala? Mozilla... who may get dragged into release-cycle competition with Google on another product. :)

http://www.nojitter.com/post/2...

That stat about VP9 meeting 60% of Youtube delivery is interesting.

Honestly, I don't think anyone has raised the question with them. They have responded very well to the concerns of Qubes users, developers and other communities. Something tells me they would love to emulate the Apple of the 1970s and supply schematics.

I don't get this part. You're against closed design for motherboards but not for firmware?

The hypocrisy charge doesn't hold. Purism is a tiny startup and they are not going to be able to deliver the whole kit and kaboodle down to the last transistor to you immediately. In the meantime, we can have hardware whose documentation is thorough and therefore FOSS-friendly with no mystery drivers; We can have all open software and firmware on a powerful system if Intel is willing.