Yes, a range of, say, 5V to 15V would have been nice. But then they would have needed to add a 5V regulator that would be responsible not only for local regulation, but also for powering anything and everything attached to the four USB ports. Might be a bit much to ask of a small, inexpensive board.

I agree fully with your comment about using a micro USB connector for power though. That thing is awful, and it should be replaced with a real power connector.

What impact does file sharing have on the sales of DVD's and BluRay? I would expect advance availability to boost theatrical revenues, as the study indicates. But downloading likely has some negative effect on media sales post-release.

Of course, file sharing would have less of an impact if the industry's media model wasn't broken in so many ways - DRM, unskippable ads and warnings, laughably high prices, region locking, and any other ways movie makers have found to take careful aim before shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly by pissing off their increasingly non-captive audience.

As for theatrical releases, I very seldom go any more. I love the big screen, but I HATE the product ads, the self-serving propagandistic trivia games, and the over-priced snacks that ruin what would otherwise be an enjoyable evening out.

Depending on how specific their criteria, and how high they set the detection thresholds, the following people could be in for serious grief:

1) Gardeners and farmers - (nitrate compounds from fertilizer, + fuel oil from any of a dozen sources)
2) Painters, mechanics, people with Zippo lighters, people who use hand sanitizer, people who gas up their own vehicles - (flammable solvents)
3) Anyone who handles paper money (cocaine)

They'd be better off doing genetic research to figure out how to give us all the olfactory capabilities of blood hounds. Then none of us would have any secrets from each other. Of course, the ass-sniffing thing would get old pretty fast.

FTA:

"I'll be explaining today why emergency legislation is needed to maintain powers to help keep us safe from those who would harm UK citizens."

— David Cameron

No need to explain, David. We all know this is just another excuse for more power-hoarding privacy invasion, and that "those who would harm UK citizens" are in fact you and your masters. Kindly stop pretending and man up. The only "emergency" here is the fear fantasy you're manufacturing and trying to get UK citizens to swallow.

Uh... I put that there. And, hey - thanks for all the money!

Sure. But lots of people participate in sports, just not at the Olympic level. Lots of people play Jeopardy, play the piano, dance, and vamp for photos, to the betterment of their own lives and for the entertainment of both themselves and others. How many people are 'casual programmers' in the sense that they can do a little bit of programming to enrich their own lives and those of others in their immediate circle?

I see this as being more about moving away from excessive specialization and exclusiveness, rather than making all programming so simple that dedicated, hard working, deeply knowledgeable programmers are no longer required. We still need wizards to maintain, improve, and expand the underpinnings and structure of programming, and do the really complex stuff. But it's time for average people to have the ability to develop some basic applications, just as they can now produce photographs that two decades ago would have been the exclusive domain of professional photographers.

FTA: "It found fundamental differences in the structure of the harmonics of the 50 Hz which could be detected because Total Harmonic Distortion was strongly affected by local factors and had as a result little geographical consistency."

Not that any of this is likely to matter. Even if they had a unique spectrum capture of a specific location at a specific time for comparison purposes, turning one computer on, (or off), would totally change the harmonic signature appearing on the local wiring, thereby making the reference capture useless. And a vacuum cleaner running would really mess things up.

For anyone worried about this, running a randomly-swept audio generator through a frequency range of, say, 20 to 150 Hz, and injecting the signal into the audio capture at a level that is just audible without being too annoying, should seriously reduce any chances of the 'power line signature' being traced.

Now if someone is actually injecting a unique signal into the grid for a defined geographic area, countermeasures would be more involved. Recording in a very good Faraday cage, using battery power only, with no cables entering the Faraday cage from outside, would probably thwart any such attempts at tracking. The sweep-generator technique mentioned above would provide additional insurance. But now we're very far into tin-foil-hat territory.

That's only because they picked the low-hanging fruit first, and long-ago compromised closed-source with the sometimes-eager help of the companies who sell it.

Replying to reverse a fumble-fingered mod. Meant to mod you up as Insightful - accidentally modded you down as Redundant. Sorry about that...

And how much greenhouse gas are you going to add to the atmosphere when you make 'millions' of those 'solar lights'? That manufacturing process had better have a very small carbon footprint if you're going to come out ahead with only a 2% conversion efficiency...

This attitude reminds me of how I felt when cell phones started incorporating cameras. I didn't want one, thought it was a stupid idea, and couldn't see how the idea would ever take off. Now I use mine all the time. It was a similar story with 'the cloud', except I saw the attraction and the utility - I just don't like giving up that much control over my data.

The point is that new technologies, (and new uses for/integrations of them), have a way of becoming wildly popular and successful, even when their usefulness or appeal isn't immediately evident to most of us. Smart companies realize that and gamble on new tech and new uses for existing tech; these gambles often pay off big time.

I'm still not happy with MS getting into bed with Open Source though. My first thought was best expressed by an earlier commenter talking about 'embrace, extend, eliminate'. My second thought is 'who's fucking whom here', and I'm afraid I already know the answer.

This, exactly. Now if Microsoft allowed governments to build their own binaries from the source they had just finished reviewing, there might be some reassurance that this isn't just a smoke-and-mirrors act. Then again, the toolchain might be compromised. Somehow I don't think MS will allow governments to have access to the toolchain sources as well. And even if they did, I suspect most governments don't have the resources to conduct such a comprehensive review.