Yeah, judging by the popularity of Gmail, people being concerned with their data being harvested doesn't seem to be a concern at all. I think it was just plain executed badly.

Yeah, I saw my first stink bug in months in my bathroom yesterday, right after hearing about this news. Amusing. I doubt there will be noticeably less of them in the spring.

It's kind of strange that on the same day Canonical is being called out for not being 100% free about everything, another article discusses Google's actions with Android, which is much, much more closed and yet most of Slashdot seemed eager to rush to their defense.

Maybe the author had a cold.

Whatever will we do without your whining? The place just won't be the same without a dozen off-topic childish posts on every topic!

I've used all my mod points on "Offtopic" today. I was fine with the protest until Slashdot responded and opened a discussion area for it. Now, if you want to discuss beta, go to the beta article. Other people who care will be there, too. Maybe you can even effect positive change.

Spamming every single discussion is, quite obviously, now Offtopic and other people with mod points seem to agree with me.

Near as I can tell, Apple isn't doing anything to try to make Free software disappear. They are, however, creating many alternatives ever since GPLv3 made it unviable for them to continue to participate in that community as much. Even now, though, if you look at all the packages they use and contribute to as part of MacOS X (the core of which is all open source, although most of it isn't Free Software), there are many GPL packages among them: http://www.opensource.apple.co... . It does seem that with companies like Apple actively participating in Open Source but not as actively participating in Free Software, that to a certain degree it's proving many of the anti-GPL folks' points and probably really pissing off RMS.

There are such records. The Bible discusses silk, and the Romans loved it. The Silk Road was established about 1800-1900 years ago to supply the Roman empire with Chinese silk. Later the Romans attempted to breed their own silkworms.

As for extensive pre-Colombian contact, I would assume based on the exchange of plants, animals, metals, disease, and technology, that such contact would stick out in the historical record. In my opinion it's far more likely that the carbon dating was inaccurate or that the interpretation of the plants as American than that extensive pre-Colombian exchange existed.

This attack is not an all-or-nothing thing, either. 51% is just the threshold to be able to guarantee success. Controlling 40% of the mining capacity is enough to be able to double-spend a transaction that's been confirmed 6 times with 50% confidence.

Here's a list of semiconductor manufacturing plants many of which are in the United States, including some of the most advanced fab lines in the world. It's true, as others have said, that assembly almost always happens in Asia now, though, but that's not a requirement if you're not price conscious. As for the capacitors and such, I think there's been less concern about them from a security standpoint.

These predictions were made in 1964. "The pill" had just become available for birth control use in the United States a few years previous, but only in some states and only to married women... it wasn't generally available to any woman who wanted it in all states until the early 70's. Maybe it was because he was a male, but not realizing the impact this would have on the (developed) world seems to be one of his bigger oversights.

The real comparison comes in how good the machine is at doing what you need it to do. If you're making a movie or doing serious sound editing, video editing, or modeling, this machine and the accompanying software is clearly top-tier, compared to trying to assemble a full workflow yourself that includes the hardware, software, and infrastructure integration. And the fact that you just order it off the shelf and it comes with everything and integrates with everything isn't really priced into this comparison.

Measles is tracked in part because it's really easily preventable with a safe vaccine which had eliminated it on the North American content a decade ago, and because it's one of the single most virulent diseases known to man. In a susceptible population, breathing the same air of someone who has it will make you 90% likely to get it. Many of the "pandemic" worst case scenarios is the measles virus combining with a more deadly virus to create a super virus, but even without that measles complications are common and can lead to permanently reduced vision, encephalitis leading to brain injuries, or other long-term problems. In the developed world the death rate is something like 0.3%, but in the undeveloped world it's sometimes over 25%. Nasty, easily preventable stuff worth tracking.