Now that marketing departments cannot track emails being viewed, the next move by Google will be to sell this tracking information back to the companies' marketing departments. They will probably set up a protocol to do it, or a nice dashboard/UI for it. In fact this might be good for smaller companies whose marketing/IT departments are small such that they don't have the ability to code in tracking images and cookies. Even good for larger companies - would cut down the infrastructure and development time; no more needing to host images on a server, with databases, etc...

Could be good for everyone involved.

I have been an Opera fan for a long time. The latest release, Opera 15.x seems a bit of a mixed bag for me. I agree about the "showing its age" for 12.16.

It always had a number of points of difference from the others (Firefox, Chrome, IE). But Opera 15 feels like Chromium with a new theme. I guess it's because of WebKit. But the configuration pages are almost identical to Chrome. Not that this is a bad thing, really - their reason was that they would contribute to make WebKit better, which makes business sense. But it's a bit of a "if you can't beat them, join them". I really resent the lack of ability to change the default search provider in the URL bar. I use DuckDuckGo and although I can add it as a provider, I am still limited to the usual "big 3" or 4 providers as default. Why, Opera? Chrome has this ability?

Now, regarding Mail, etc. I am using the independent new Opera Mail client and love it. It's in my opinion, way better than Thunderbird in the UI - very clean and refined and a evolution of the previous Opera Mail (integrated into the browser). Seems not much development is going on with it though, there haven't been any new releases since it was first released. And it's not that heavily marketed...

The thing I liked about the "old" Opera was it's difference from the other browsers. It's a bit of a Norwegian quirkyness, with some awesome innovations thrown in. And it worked well. I loved how it was different. But it seems more watered down and vanilla now, just another browser. Why use it? Not much reason now, might as well use Chrome and have better plugins. Or rekonq or arora, etc. All WebKit browsers.

Totally agree with being jibbed regarding Linux support too. So I use Chromium. Half because the Firefox UI is a bit ugly in KDE.

Just to clarify, the NHTSA hasn't said anything to Tesla like the summary states. It has clarified its rating system. That is all.

That article is written like a high schooler's blog.

I feel compelled to let anyone here who has not RTFA to not bother. It is a poorly written blog entry that's nothing but hyperbole and speculation. It's also badly researched and contains a lot of inaccuracies. One of the commenters is the CEO of DDG and he corrects some of the misinformation.

I've been using DDG for 2 years and it is great. Not always as good as Google but a good alternative for most searches. Make sure you set it to your region (settings).

Referring to your comment about it being reverse engineered, I don't think this is a major issue for the US. According to Wikipedia, the drone is not stealthy black and does not contain stealth design elements (eg. sawtooth shaped gear cover panels) because there is a somewhat higher likelihood that they will fall into enemy hands - due to the single engine design and lack of pilot. So, the drone was designed with failure in mind, and in this way, cutting edge stealth tech cannot be given to the enemy to reverse engineer.

The discussion following this article is focussed on university graduates getting into the private space industry. Fair enough given the author's specific question, but what about experienced engineers? I have 4 years experience in the power industry at a highly reputable international electrical engineering company and would like any tips or advice on moving toward/into the space industry.

The trouble with engineering, particularly electrical, is that it's very faceted and once you have experience in one field, it's difficult to move into another.

Quick, there's doubt by some in the science community about Supersymmetry! Let's get a whole bunch of us together and write articles and blogs about how the whole idea of Supersymmetry is crap! Maybe we can come up with some reasons of our own too!

Hmm, why won't the mums, dads and business people join me this time??

There's doubt!!!

Right from the start I didn't want on G+ because then G will have all my mail history + personal chats, search history, browser tracking history, mobile/cell phone data (Android) PLUS social data. What other personal current data of mine is there?

Glad I have a G Apps account and can't even enable G Profiles nor G+... I won't be joining anytime soon.

I don't want a g+ account, simply because 1) Google is a marketing company, and thus is very interested in my personal data and 2) I own an Android phone, synching all my contacts to my Gmail account, and I do searching using Google (it is the best), and use Google Maps. So, they already store pretty much my life story in emails and chats, and know all my contacts and some addresses. Where does it stop?

I am a believer of not keeping all your data eggs in the one basket. I already feel like I do. And g+ will just be much worse. This is why I don't want a G+ account.

But then again, they could infer all the info which I would put into g+ from my emails and chats and contacts anyway, so what is there to fear?

hmm, someone gimme an invite. :(

Damnit, I posted this without being logged in.

"Shooting beams of electricity" sounds like Ghostbusters, not real world physics.

CAPITALIST America my friend.

And the fallacy that companies actually care about their customers, is just that, a fallacy. They care when sales are going down and that's it.

Could this be a return to the golden days of the 50s where huge oligopolists/monopolies run by statesmen that actually cared about the workers and customers? Pfft.

Don't know about Korea but from what I've heard from Chinese friends, bribery is a regular part of business in China. This will just put IBM at a disadvantage.

Interesting how the US govt doesn't get charged at home for torturing people at prisons it operates in foreign nations, in the same light that IBM is charged here for its conduct offshore.

Anyway I support disciplining businesses who conduct themselves inappropriately, at home or abroad.

Amazing stuff.

The thing with contracts is that they are an agreement between two parties. In this case a large corporation with money and bunches of legal experts, and a teenager who wants the latest iConsumable. In B2B, both parties NEGOTIATE the terms of the contract to an acceptable level for both, but a consumer cannot do this as they don't have the power.

The only real answer is either:
1) Buy a phone outright, or second hand and don't sign one of these draconian contracts (win for you but nobody else), or
2) Somehow get a massive group of consumers together which then have power, and using the media to assist, force the company to amend the terms of the contract. Unfortunately this is difficult to do.

It's really sad that large companies now treat consumers like this.

Not iFLAC?