Companies have already tried screwing with net neutrality though.

Most recent example I can think of is Phorm, which replaced adverts on webpages on the fly with ones that paid the service provider.

Other examples would be Fox blocking viewers on Cablevision (yeah, weird reverse example), Comcast throttling video from outside its own network (they got a C&D over it from the FCC), and several examples from Canada (including one where the ISP - a phone company - was deliberately degrading VOIP traffic from competing services unless the user paid them an additional monthly tariff).

Companies like Netflix, using your example, can already get faster service through co-locating and using CDNs (essentially, data centres connected directly to the ISPs own infastructure). Net Neutrality doesn't prevent that - it doesn't stop someone taking steps to make their service faster, but stops people degrading base level service. It's an important distinction.

I beg to differ : Most burglars are repeat offenders, and known to the police already. All it takes is one of the local police officers to recognise the guy and they *will* arrest him, since he was stupid enough to leave a calling card. They don't even need to investigate this one, just arrest him, stick him in a cell and call the prosecutors office.

Hmm... wasn't aware of that.

That said, there's still the issue of source code being available to other governments. One would think that they would have noticed anything obvious.

Of course, if they've added something not so obvious, then Linux might not be safe either given SELinux is also attributed to them.

I think it was an attempt at a joke based on the rate at which exploits against the Windows platform are discovered.

That said, Microsoft does share the Windows source code with governments (Source, and yes, I consider that to be a bloody stupid move on MS's part). That being the case, any flaws the recipient governments have found but not reported back to Microsoft could be considered back doors - assuming that any exist.

Without trying to sound whack-job conspiracy nut here, the obvious answer would be sleight of hand. If they used the alleged backdoors to poison hostile infrastructure, then their enemies would eventually link their problems to the platform and move on to something else - at which point the FBI would lose its advantage.

Alternatively, if they're using them (assuming they exist) for covert intelligence gathering, they'd still have to be careful not to play too bold a hand and give away the source of their information. That means taking care not to act on information gathered solely through a hole like this. The ideal method would be to find or create a pretext to take some seemingly unrelated action (e.g., raiding a company that their 'enemy' does business with looking for evidence of tax evasion or something) and then using what they find *there* as the basis for action.

If they're careful they could potentially keep on top of a target without ever showing their hand - but the moment they take direct action based on information obtained through an exploit, their targets' going to scratch their heads and start wondering how that happened. Eventually, they'll figure it out and the FBI lose their hole... so direct action is something to be avoided if they want to retain their advantage.

Basically, prioritising long-term advantages over short term gains.

Unrelated : Slashdot, can ye please be fixing ya text box in Chrome? It's the only one that seems to break with mouse input, and there *has* to be a reason for that. :(

Because mass speculation is fun!

More seriously, some of the code obfuscation competitions out there show that code auditing alone may not be enough to track down every vulnerability - a single dedicated enough individual can probably slip something past that's too subtle to notice, especially if they're making a lot of 'good' commits at the same time.

Now realise that the article suggests that there may have been several people at this and the problem becomes evident.

Basically, over reliance on the 'many eyes' security model has always been futile.

Rogue -> Ro(w) + Gue(ss).

Rouge -> Rou(lette) + (ca)ge

I never seem to have any problems with them... but that could be a Brit thing. Divided by a common language and all that. :)

Numpty.

robots.txt is just a plain text file - all you do is create the file in notepad, save it, and upload it to your website like you would any photo or background image. There's no 'Bigwheels'... even a kid can do it, even on the free hosts.

And yes, it does compensate you, by sending traffic to your site (how did you think search worked, by magic?).

Seriously : user guide for dummies

That wasn't intended to stop people finding porn though, just to stop the kids stumbling into it by accident.

'Course, the kids can still find it on purpose, short of their parents wising up and installing some parental controls.

If you stop using them they've no longer got any reason to cater to you though - as you're no longer a customer. They'd no longer have reason to avoid the stupid things as your 'vote' has already been cast.

Which means when they do cross the line, there's fewer people left that can make an effective boycott, and the impact is less visible.

In other words, choose your fights carefully. I for one believe the slippery slope argument to be dangerous when overused, and will save my vote for when it's actually needed.

No, you'll be fine.

I did make a point of saying 'freeloaders'. Talk Like A Pirate Day will be completely unscathed. :)

Autocomplete is the only thing that's changed... they're not stopping you from typing it manually and they're not censoring sites or search results.

So, if you're boycotting Google over this, apparently it's *you* that cares about autocomplete.

It won't even affect it - It's only autocomplete, not the search itself.

Basically all this means is that the freeloaders (I prefer not to use the term pirate) will need to type 'torrent' manually instead of having it pop up magically. Big deal... given the lengths some of them go to already an extra eight keystrokes (including the space) isn't going to dissuade them one bit.

Google can't magically stop people using the terms outright as it would affect a lot of other searches as well. For instance, someone searching for a water torrent stock photo... Google isn't doing anything to affect that.

AltaVista didn't even have autocomplete, IIRC, and they've not said anything about it changing search results at all.

Because your PC can use the 52 in the living room and the same sound system, but will normally look better if it's properly configured. The Xbox360 and PS3 are using 5 year old graphics technology, and a $100 GPU for a PC will outperform one nowadays. Given that a TV runs at a set resolution, this extra power can either be thrown sideways into PhysX objects, used for higher resolution textures, greater particle densities or stronger antialiasing.

For a good example, compare Mirrors Edge on the Xbox/Ps3 to the PC version (the mission Ropeburn is a good example as it uses all the games features) - even running on PS3 era technology (a Geforce 8800), the PC version generally looks better.

Of course, most people haven't cottoned on to this yet and don't have a gaming PC set up in their living room. Given the consoles are likely to have another 3-5 years before being succeeded, it wouldn't surprise me if this becomes more common. Especially given how similar these consoles already are to PC's - software updates, installs to hard drives, web access - it's only the interface that's really different.

Games For Windows was a flunk, but if they got games (including Steam/D2D) integrated properly with the Media Centre (pretty sure it's now part of 7 by default, haven't upgraded yet myself) there wouldn't be any reason to have a console anymore. All you'd do is set up a guest account on the PC that loads the media centre in fullscreen mode, with user switching enabled in case you decided to do some work on it.
Wireless joypads for the PC have been available for a long time, and a machine capable of beating a console in performance can be had for a similar price (remembering that if you're using your TV, you don't have to buy a monitor!).