"Assured"?!? No, the gullible & the innocent assumed that the US wouldn't collect info (spy) where it could. Anyone with any knowledge of history knows that todays friends can be tomorrows enemies so it is prudent to avoid getting blindsided.

Those crying "How could they" clearly have little knowledge of how the real world works. They "discover" that the US has plans to invade Canada and breathlessly scream how evil the US is for planning ahead for every contingency.

Spying by the DGSE is already authorized by French law and with essentially no limits compared to the NSA. Oversight by an independent judiciary (even a secret one)? Not needed here.

Of course you would, Candide...
The only difference between the NSA & the DGSE is that the DGSE has essentially no legal limits, as confirmed by a recent French interior minister. When asked if the DGSE performed the same data collection that was so scandalous for the NSA, he replied "Yes, but here it's legal". Result? One line in French Newspapers...

You can continue to be "shocked, just shocked" that spying is being performed by organizations who's explicit mission is to spy, but we all can see through your Capitaine Renault impressions.

Yeah, well for some people, even video footage of people discussing who and how to DDOS / deface is insufficient evidence. Not because evidence is insufficient to convince a jury to convict but because they are ideologically opposed to any limits to their imagined "electronic freedom".

No middle name, it's just a letter & he'll be sentenced to the base 10 ascii code representation of that letter -- Uppercase if he's lucky...

At least we know what /. articles we'll be seeing in a few months: Anonymous hacker XYZ convicted to Y years of prison for participating in last year's attack of Canadian computer infrastructure...

Yech, did you _have_ to boring JB into this?! Pthaugh!

JB aside, marketplace popularity does usually indicate which of two products is generally preferred through sales figures. Just about everyone agrees that Dark Side Of the Moon is a better album than Atom Heart Mother & the sales reflect it. You can give whatever points you want, that doesn't change that your "production equipment" based judgement is a niche so small & off the mean of desireable features in a tablet as to be be irrelevant to 99% of the people looking To purchase one.

A few years back I heard a salesman vaunting the merits of a Bentley being fuel efficient because it could shut down a cylinder or two on the highway. On a quarter million dollar car it is completely illogical to purchase it because you can eke a few hundred a year out of your gas mileage. Microsoft's attempt to sell surfaces because they are faster similarly completely misses the point on why the enormous majority of people want to buy a tablet.

That is in fact what many people have been doing & is in part why the 6+ and other phablets let's have been selling so well. Now compare sales figures for the 6+ & the SP. That yawning gulf is another data point that should tell you that once again, only a tiny minority cares that a desktop replacement SP is faster.

Don't forget to also write down that most people don't want a heavy, "tablet" that has poor battery life to replace their PC with, they want a simpler, lighter device with better battery life. We wouldn't want you to miss the point

Yup, that was back when Apple's market position was small and getting ever smaller & people like Michael Dell we're saying that they should just shut down, sell off the assets & give the money to the shareholders. Not at all the same company today.

My first Mac was a Mac II. I used it for over 10 years but even upgrading to a 68030 & running A/UX couldn't make up for the fact that it was a niche device & I used non-apple gear for over a decade before Apple rediscovered mas market appeal with iPhones, iPads, & rMBPs.

MS touting that the SP is the fastest tablet misses the point on why almost everyone uses tablets.

So Microsoft has made the perfect niche device for you. That's great for you but only adds a tiny exception my point: Other than for minuscule & specialised use cases, nobody cares that the their desktop replacement tablet is faster than all the other tablets that are massively outselling the SP.

Not according to the sales figures I've seen where Surface sales figures are minuscule compared to IPads & android tablets. For every person saying "I want a PC equivalent tablet and am willing to pay the price in weight and reduced battery time", there are thousands that aren't.

The millions and millions of people who bought iPads and android tablets don't care that Microsoft has a heavy laptop replacement.

Dragon will not be going up half empty. If NASA only uses 4 of the possible 7, the remainder of the mass budget will be used for cargo which should greatly offset the cost/seat lost. Not totally, as astronauts to orbit are worth more but closer to $25m than $35m.

I have exposed more than enough info in my profile for anyone to contact me. That I do not expose more is to avoid lazy twits, among whom I can now count you.