I challenge your comment that "it would ultimately be a good thing for society". I look around and I'm not particularly impressed. My neighbour downstairs is 29 with a 13 year old daughter and is on social security (called the dole in Australia) - never worked. Based on her first 29 years, I cannot see anything good coming to society for her living an extra 40 years.

Like everyone else on slashdot, I only run Debian and must say I smile when I see reports such as country sponsored malware strikes like this. But it does make me ask an honest question:

How can we be sure that the Linux kernel isn't compromised? I don't really have the time to go through all lines of code and I doubt my security analysis and development skills are up to the task anyway.

What I find interesting about this is not simply the fact they have implemented the start menu and a boot to desktop option. It's the simple fact that when we (Enterprises) sat down with Senior Microsoft Architects and internal consultants two years ago for our Windows 8 upgrade options, they swore black and blue with utter confidence, "It's never coming back". I thought this provided a nice insight into Microsoft's culture and communication.

He may be right that it's only public cloud adoption *now*, but we (enterprises) are looking at the following as our 3 years road map:

1. Implement Open Stack internally, under a hybrid cloud model
2. Use this as the opportunity to bring elastic services to internal enterprise systems (OSB, Salable web apps etc) by making key technology discussions that do not pair us to monolithic vendors (Oracle)
3. Then, when we have the economics and business maturity we can easily migrate our compute sideways into 'any' public cloud

The big problem we have right now is that it's hard, if not impossible, for us to take our big, giant, poorly design monolithic application into the public cloud. We need to implement the cloud methodologies and characteristics internally (elastic, scalable, on-demand etc) before we migrate that compute to a pay per cycle model.

In three years time when we've done the above - I can only imagine how much more stable and mature OpenStack will be.

I truly believe the future of distributed, paid content is for us consumers to be in control, with minimal distribution channels in the middle. As it stands right now, I need to pay Foxtel (Australia) $105 a month, for what they call "IQ2" and a bunch of packages (Standard + Entertainment/Sport). The only channel I actually watch is ABC News 24, which ironically is free to air and only comes with "HD" (another $30) which means I need to switch away to my TV Tuner to actually watch it. The only reason we have Foxtel in the first place is for the wife to watch Channel E and even worse than this, the only reason we have Channel E is because she watches the Kardashians (don't ask) and a few other trash shows.

Here's my point - I have $105 per month where I want to pay TV content creators direction. That is, the Kardashians (*sigh*), Breaking Bad, Suits, and a few others. "In the future", I'm looking forward to media regulation being relaxed (Anyone know why NetFlix isn't in Australia yet?) to using my Android Media Player, and selecting the shows directly I want to watch over the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, feel free to give me free shows and "recommend" shows to me, but do not (!) force me to buy a "Entertainment/Sport" package just for one TV show.

I'm not an Apple fanboi but do own a 2011 Macbook Air (2gb). The only real reason I still have a Desktop PC at home for web and video is because 802.11n cannot stream 1080p (at least not consistently in VLC over SMB). I do not want to buy an overpriced Apple Display for Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. So I'm stuck. I have an Ultrabook (docked to a 24" monitor) I'd like to solely use that's fast enough but it doesn't support the bandwidth I need.

Once the new Macbook Pro's are out I'll finally be able to upgrade to one of them and pair it with a new Airport Extreme (if 802.11ac can do 1080p in my apartment).

Sadly, I think at that point I will probably be masked as a fanboi even though I was really only looking for a powerful Ultrabook platform. None of which was previously possible unless I missed the marketing brochure from a boutique hardware provider (Sony) where they also started shipping 802.11ac.

Please do not use projects "on time" or "on budget" as a success indicator.

My current employer nearly always has all projects in "Green". As an underling (now I'm a Manager and yes I appreciate the irony) it was obvious to me that Exchange 2010 doesn't take 3 years to roll out, even for 10,000 users. Lync (just UM, not even Enterprise Voice) isn't a $1.4m project and it shouldn't take 18 months.

Once a project goes Amber, the PM's just ask for more money or time. Or worse, the Operations Manager kills it so he doesn't look bad. Sadly, he forgets he never delivered the business requirement.

Sorry that's such a poor metaphor. The core operating system for a PC that performs a functional business role is nothing like the disposable items you mentioned. The actual equivalent metaphoric item on the truck is the trucks engine control unit (ECU) or BIOS on the GPS/Radio.

Just to add further clarification, I have my Firefox configured to "Alway use private browsing mode". It's never saved downloads between browser restarts, and in this instance and in relation to the bug you have just identified, it hasn't recalled any history or uncleared download history for me.

So I think this is a simply a bug (albeit, and agreed, one that should have been avoided).

I think the policy should confirm and enforce that all entities need to abide by the wishes of the deceased (without reason). I don't think we can simply come to a single standard act to {delete, freeze, publicitize} the information.

Then, close the policy with clauses that outline in the event nothing is in the will, the information is available via common law practices (for example a spouse having access to a safety deposit box).

If I want my account deleted, so be it. If I want it open to the public, so be it. If I want to hand over the keys to my social media account to my best friend to let him keep posting as me, then so be it.

What I don't want is for my wishes to be for my wife to have access to all my information (Dropbox, KeePass safes, bank accounts) and her to be denied that access.

This makes a lot of sense. Twitter is and has always been a facilitator of open communication, particularly from censoring governments. This is just an extension of that.

I have always kept an eye on Whisper Systems and specifically TextSecure (and WhisperCore) but they never became really "usable". I would (and I think many people) love to be able to securely text message (or via iMessage or Facebook) knowing it's safely encrypted but still highly usable (similar to Pidgin + OTR).

Will they try to use this for corporate evil? Maybe. But at the same token WhisperSystems never had enough power/traction to develop what they really wanted and we (the people) needed.

Agreed!

I've recently invested time and changed *all* my online passwords. Everything stored inside KeePass with random very strong passwords. Even comparing with the 'core' sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Paypal, Gmail --- *ALL* of them have different requirements which I think is unacceptable. Some enforce 14 chars but don't accept alpha-characters while others cap at 20. One big kudos is Facebook was the best and accepted 256 random characters.

So yes, *we* need to agreed on the minimum standard that all passwords can be. I will propose 20 chars, allowing all upper/lowercase alpha-numerics and non-alphanumeric.

Yes I appreciate security isn't just a simple as allowing 256 random chars, but as the above posters suggested, *WE* (customers) should at least be able to expect a certain level of standards.

Why destroy there device? How long will it be until someone finds a way to transfer everyone's locally stored data off there device?

Before those questions are answered, I'd just like to thank Comodo for making my next SSL certification renewal an even easier decision.

Irrelevant if the 'other party' is based out of communist China who aren't shy to publicly admit they have no appreciation copyright infringements.