'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"

Isn't it sort of an indictment of our culture that we do something for casual entertainment that we would never allow ourselves to do for the purposes of advancing human scientific knowledge?

So basically, you're a "videophile", and your evaluation of Netflix's stream is colored by the fact that you loathe anything lower quality than IMAX. That'd have been worth mentioning in your original post. Nothing wrong with being a format snob, but don't act like the problem is that Netflix's bar is too low when you know good and well that the real one is that your own personal bar is set very very high.

Have you seen how low bitrate and over compressed Netflix is?

Netflix dynamically scales depending on the quality of the network path between you and them. It's never quite Blu-Ray quality, but if you have good network speeds it's not bad at all. You probably have a crappy internet connection, or a provider who is QoSing Netflix.

Seriously, they're all functionally the same suit, just with three different-but-equally-hokey electro-luminescent designs. I appreciate what NASA is trying to do here in terms of involving the public. Their intentions are laudable. This is as close to literal "bikeshedding" as it gets, though, and so it feels more than a little patronizing. Evidently what NASA thinks that the public cares about is style and no substance. Maybe that's not as untrue as I wish it were, but I can't see something like this as an effective way to pique the interest of "those" people.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think, for the good of the space program, we need to make Justin Bieber an astronaut.

I don't really understanding what you are saying.

What I'm saying is that a SIM card is a computer designed to operate in a way that I find philosophically repugnant and deleterious to individual rights. As a computer, it both stores and processes data, but is specifically designed to exist as a black box that locks out the owner and frustrate attempts for the owner to exert control over how or what data is processed on their device. Thus, it violates the principles of open computing in a fundamental, and very dangerous, way. The technology is specifically anti-consumer, anti-citizen, and anti-property-owner. SIM cards are not there for your benefit, and do not serve your interests. They are designed and built specifically to disempower you, their owner and operator.

I don't like, and do my best to avoid using, technology like that. You should, too! Normalizing this kind of technology ultimately causes real harm to real people. Industry and government have a deep and abiding desire to make us all into passive consumers rather than empowered and active users of computers and networks. Technologies like SIM, CableCard, proprietary firmware, etc. are one of the main tools they leverage to accomplish this.

I believe that computer owners should be free and empowered to leverage their property in any way they see fit. Technology should work for, not against, its owner.

Don't even get me started on how much I hate SIMs... almost as much as CableCard. I don't like being locked out of hardware that I paid for.

Ooooh. USB 3 and everything. Much thanks!

Fair point. I can envisage scenarios where modifying the SIM remotely would be helpful. Then again, I can envisage scenarios where it could be a very, very bad thing. My main point was user empowerment - if I can choose between two models of a device, one with a hardware lock, one without... I'll be happy with that.

Not like cellular device security is anything but an oxymoron anyway...

The headline doesn't say anything about the FSF endorsing an "incrementally more free" laptop.

Furthermore, how much of an increment is this, really? Coreboot versus a BIOS? Woop-dee-doo. RMS has been recommending the Lemote Loongson for a long time, and it not only has an open source BIOS, but actually does address some of those other issues like CPU and embedded device firmware. So not only is FSF late to the party, but they're recommending an inferior (from the "free" standpoint) solution.

Can you link me to one? I still use an old SD card and reader for exactly this reason.

I think my larger point stands anyway, though. Why aren't write locks absolutely bare bones standard on any writable device?

I'd be OK with this, under one condition - a hardware-based write protection lock that is absolutely 100% not able to be bypassed or circumvented in software.

I'll never understand why this incredibly basic feature that is so easy to design, cheap to implement, and valuable to device security went the way of floppy disks. How awesome would a thumb drive with a hardware write lock be?

This laptop contains proprietary Intel chips. We know that hardware makers like Intel have colluded with governments to insert undocumented die-level and firmware level "features" into their products that could serve as backdoors and otherwise weaken the device's security against sophisticated attackers.

Where is the open source, audited CPU? Ethernet controller firmware? Wireless firmware? Microcode updates?