China's status as the world's largest manufacturer - and soon the world's highest-tech manufacturer - plus all those IOUs they own means that they will be able to do whatever the hell they want. China's not interested in raising their standard of living too fast, if it means that a huge disparity exists between the poor and the really dirt-poor. China doesn't want the manufacturing to race to the next developing nation, and it's big enough that they know there will always be suitable numbers of desperate unemployed population to keep wages (and worker demands) very low.

But China's not stupid, they're plowing this money and tech into their military. Their submarine navy for example isn't made to carry nukes, but they ARE made to act as underwater troop carriers.

They seem to have all the same functions as the free press, albiet without any hollywood gossip or corporate owners.

Is there some legal definition which excludes WikiLeaks from being called a media organization?

He says it as "th3j35t3r" because he is a Lisp programmer...

Comcast is doing WONDERS to educate the public about the importance of DNS.

Years ago, just after the SECOND major Comcast outage, I switched from Comcast nameservers to some pretty old and reliable AT&T nameservers at 4.2.2.1. Of course there was OpenDNS also but it's a pain to remember their DNS server IP addresses.

Since then I switched to Google's free DNS - same benefit, but faster and "8.8.8.8" and "8.8.4.4" is -incredibly- easy for people to remember.

Now with Comcast's THIRD major DNS outage, people resorted to using Facebook and Twitter using just their mobile phones. Guess what? Nearly everyone who bitched about Comcast got a reply from some friend, just go plug in these numbers in Network Settings... and many did! The word IS spreading....

Nokia *alienated* their user base, sadly.

As an n800 owner, I expected the hardware would become obsolete... eventually. I could see making the n800 with built in GPS... but then the n900 as a PHONE and then signaling to the developer base that Maemo5 will abandon the 800 + 810 user base... that hurt. Then the n900 was obsoleted before it even shipped.

Nokia gets praise for making a system that was largely open, but they weren't open enough. When a product is truly open, it can not be killed by the manufacturer.

I suspect developing for MeGoo is inly slightly more relevant than developing for the nostalgia/emulator crowd.

I'd like to see a tablet that's truly open... something that encourages hacking, as in a tablet equivalent of the Arduino platform (a popular micro processor based on open sourced hardware).

As a web developer, the iPad kicks ass for getting work done.. actually *replacing* my laptop for many things: reviewing online (or offline) documentation, checking email, and oh.. testing my work via Safari Mobile. If your work IS the web, the iPad rocks. In a pinch, I could code on it using a bluetooth keyboard, but that's not really what it is best at obviously.

At the very least, it makes a hell of second or third monitor (and has a much better display than the standard 75DPI used on most desktop and laptop displays).

I do have some serious gripes, primarily that of depending on iTunes to sync everything (but I get around that well enough with an old Linksys NAS200 stuffed with 2Tb in drives, a TZO.COM dynamic dns account, and port forwarding on my home router).

I actually held off on an iPad until the Samsung Galaxy reviews came out... I only use Linux at home and work, and a droid for my phone... I -really- wanted my platform to be a droid. My last "Internet tablet" was a Nokia N800 running Maemo... a pity that Nokia smothered their tablet line and moved the OS goalposts so many times (even now, the n800 is impressive... but lacks newer software).

Maybe in a couple of hardware revisions, android tablets will get there. I'm sure of it. But right now Android is not designed for tablets, and people are trying to force it into that hardware...

You are either trolling here, or you grew up in some kind of rich bubble.

Would you care to at least cite some respected source for this insulting "fact"?

I think public school teachers are *saints* for doing what they do... all that college debt of a masters degree, simply to enter a career field whose starting pay is well under $ 30K?
Then once they are working, they will too often discover they have to pay for classroom supplies out of their OWN pocket (and often it is because public-school bashers like yourself lobby to starve schools of funds).
Are you serious?

I think everyone will agree there are bad teachers, and even bad schools. Superintendents are grossly overpaid politicians. You have the same problems in fire and police (but for some reason the libertarian crowd does not attack those public servants, yet anyways)

I live in New Hampshire, the so-called libertarian utopia. You can see the harmful effects of the state model of (under) funding schools, leaving poor towns to fund poor schools. It's not a secret that most of the state's biggest income earning "libertarians" were either educated in out of state public schools or had parents wealthy enough to foot the bill for their college. It's a trendy politic to be anti-civic.

>Of coarse I would prefer that USians start following the Chinese example, and value education / hard work,

Oh, the irony of your statement...

But I do agree with you that US conservatives admire China. Thanks to Republicans, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Communist Party of China working hand and hand.. it's only a matter of YEARS before US workers go on strike, l demanding the end of all holiday overtime, workman's compensation, anti-discrimination laws, and anti-child labor laws. Why? Because it will be the only way to compete.

And that's why conservatives do not want to tax imports from countries who execute democratic "activists". Conservatives know they do not have the votes to return to the 1860's, but they CAN slowly and silently fiscally weaken the US economy with underinvestment and unfair trade policies, until there's really no alternative for the American majority to accept as all the hard won gains collapsed.

This can be found somewhere more mainstream.. no need to promote the Brietbart site:

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/11/18/Man-rejects-fruit-jar-suit-settlement/UPI-38081290112519/

Damn, I forgot to close the quote tag just before my reply, starting with "OK,".

I was with you through this part:

This is FUD.

You either do not know (or understand) what the "onion/layered approach" is regarding security.

An onion model assumes that vulnerabilities WILL happen, and therefore permissions are restrictive by default. If there is real world exploit on multiple levels, it is the OS fault.

Permissive systems assumes that no exploits will occur, or rather that all KNOWN exploits are now defended against (ok, job done, let's go home guys...). If there is real world exploit on multiple levels, it is the USER'S fault.

Guess which model has stood the test of time?

I get really annoyed when mouse jockeys try to say that Linux would be just as insecure as Windows IF ONLY MORE PEOPLE WERE USING IT. Your argument is based either on ignorance of UNIX, security, or out of defensiveness for your livelihood: you do profit from people's misfortunes using Windows. It is not your fault they run Windows and you enable that to continue - they choose this. So you shouldn't feel any need to emotionally defend Windows with an attack on Unix.

PS - if you actually TRIED sending "Happy_puppy_screensaver.sh" to a newbie who runs Linux, it would fail for more reasons than you could ever know.

It would be impossible for the Linux user to run emailed scripts by clicking in the email. Even if you had the user save the file, it would still not run. Even if you talked the user through how to enable the file's execute bit via chmod +x, it STILL would NOT infect the OS with malware. If you talk the user into running "su" to gain root permissions, only then are we talking real damage. THAT is what an onion layer is like.

Here's another example:
On UNIX, there is 1 permission to read a file, and a different permission to allow execution. These permissions go on users, files, directories, filesystems, and even partitions.

Windows thought it would be a great "convenience" to just assume if you have permission to read something, it must be OK to run it also...

The DOS/Windows way of "read permission + file extension == execute" was widely laughed at before Windows even existed. In fact when Microsoft wanted a secure GUI system, they actually did security the UNIX way (OS/2).

You can legally block signals on your own property, but you have to do it passively so as to not affect the property of others.

Courts have ruled against jamming. Fine.

But the wording of the court decisions and FCC regulations do not prohibit you from building structures which degrade or -passively- block cell signals.
Thick walls containing lots of rebar will block signals, but are not always practical on a train car. :-)

There's nothing illegal about painting walls using paint with a high concentration of metallic particulates mixed into the paint. There was some company who has patented this idea, but you could mix paint containing a fair amount of copper dust, and that -will- cause reception problems inside the room.

There are automated cars - they're called trains. Unfortunately, they only get $1 in federal aid for every $300 in federal dollars spent on subsidizing highways. Rail would have a fighting chance if both subsidies were ended, and if both wars were paid for using a tax on oil (which, given the point of the wars, seems only fitting).

You do know the story comes to us via The Register, right? The US is not planning to disable car phones. You have been taken in by a hoax.