Really burns me up when companies cry "Free Market! Free Market!" then conspire to make the market less free. Hey Apple, how about if all the manufacturing companies conspire to keep their prices the same so you can't make any deals. Oh, but that would make you angry wouldn't it.

Obligatory

Maybe Terminators, or maybe this

But such supreme knuckle-heads are surely likely to make so many mistakes — like advertising on Facebook or searching there or in chatrooms for co-conspirators — that sophisticated and costly communications data banks are scarcely needed to track them down

The Boston Marathon duo were supreme knuckle-heads and the NSA still did not discover them. So even the knuckleheads aren't found with their surveillance.

FTFY

Maybe it's because Grant and Tory from Mythbusters were there. :)

Agreed. Remember the Apple maps problems.

Also, I don't get why they just didn't phase this in slowly. Why not just have everyone with a name that begins with 'A' get on today, 'B' tomorrow, etc. Or use the last 2 digits of your SSN for it. I bet even if it wasn't strictly enforced and they just asked nicely it probably would have worked out better than it did.

Regardless, what it is, it can't be a solution to all crypto, because these governments apparently asked the newspapers not to publish on the grounds that people might switch to stronger systems that worked.

Or that's what they want us to think...

Not the wisdom of crowds but the wisdom of curd.

FTFY :D

In my thinking, although your point may carry too, Google nuked Alta-Vista because it had a page free from clutter. Back then everyone was trying to be a portal and Alta-vista and Yahoo, etc. looked like crap and I recall the load time being so long because of all the crap they flung at you. This was back in phone modem days. Then along comes Google with a single line on a white page. I thought, "wow, they are not trying to exploit me." and whether they were or not, it worked. Once they established the reputation, then they were able to use their resources to improve the search continually.

This is interesting, but here is an argument against, saying that there was another contemporary text found that had 666.

Much of the recent stir about 616 has arisen due to renewed studies of a group of very old manuscripts originally discovered in 1895 by archaeologists at the site of an ancient garbage dump in Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Many of the Oxyrhynchus manuscripts consist of New Testament papyri, and are very old when compared to other manuscripts. One of them named P115 (also called P. Oxy. 4499), dates from around 300 AD and contains some or all of 12 chapters from the Book of Revelation, including Revelation 13:18. It records 616 as the number of the beast using Greek letters (see figure 1). Because of this manuscript’s age, some have jumped to the conclusion that this must be the original reading. However, this conclusion cannot be made. Other evidence must be considered. For example, three manuscripts from the Chester Beatty Papyri include portions of the New Testament. One of these named P47, dates from the 3rd century and contains chapters 9-17 of Revelation. In its reading of Revelation 13:18, it states that the number of the beast is 666, using Greek letters (see figure 2). So, two equally old papyri have both readings – 666 and 616.

I would argue that it is likely 666 because that falls in line with John's style of writing in the document. John uses explicit and implicit numbers to signify meaning in the text. 7 is the number of perfection- so 7 and lists of seven items are related. 3 implies a unified trinity; good or bad. 10 in both number and lists of ten items refer to human culture. 12 and lists of twelve refer to God's people. Six is one less than 7, implying an attempt at perfection but missing it. It would likely not make sense for John to use 616. A lot of people make hay about the numbers in Revelation, but it's more likely that it was a literary or poetic device John was using to convey symbolic meanings.

Oh, and just in case somebody wants to OT me: my family bought an Apple ][ when they first came out. We still have it. I wonder if it's worth anything :)

Didn't have mod points today so I'll just symbolically give you a +1 funny compliment. This made me laugh out loud.

Agreed. IDK if someone has said this already, but my first thought was simply they forced it down out of embarrassment. I'm sure they were aware it was not theirs to begin with. They are suppressing all video to avoid blame and worse: i.e. loss of fans due to disgust or fear.

Yes, you have a good solution. Having more than one would probably solve that issue. Of course there are still the ethical concerns with the failures involved in cloning humans (do Neanderthals qualify as human?) and those only multiply if you make a whole bunch of them.