I was wondering how impressive it was and attempted to resolve this with trigonometry to find the likely error distance 1 light year away.

This got me in trouble with precision (the angle is of the order 1.0e-11 in Radians) but knowing that the angle is a constant here, the error should scale linearly with the distance.
If we use 400,000 km as the distance to the moon, 1 light years is roughly 2.0e7 times the distance to the moon (Google search calculator).

Thus an error of 20mm = 2.0e-5 km error at 400000 km should give around 2.0e7 * 2.0e-5 km =~ 400 km, meaning at 1 light years away, their error is roughly on par with how far away Ryan Air puts you from your real destination.

Not quite. Windows 95 shipped without TCP/IP and it required the Plus-pack (which TBF was included in many OEM-versions) with Internet Explorer 1.0 to get a TCP/IP stack installed (or install third party software, like Netscape Navigator). Also Windows 3.11 for Workgroups got a TCP/IP add-on pack from Microsoft before Windows 95 was released. Microsoft eventually bundled their TCP/IP stack with Windows 95 in Service Pack 1 which also came with Internet Explorer 2.0.

I'm sure every OS-maker out there has something to learn from OpenBSD, but Theo De Raadt seems incapable of acknowledging that others may have different design criteria than OpenBSD. If they wish to support their customers and gain more business, Red Hat, Apple or Microsoft, for instance, cannot make security the only factor. They have to be quick at supporting some new hardware, provide ease-of-use features and add new features or be considered obsolete very quickly. The same goes for plenty of makers of hardware products.

If OpenBSD was capable of both extreme security and the quick development mentioned above, he'd have proper bragging rights for beating the other players. Otherwise he is simply playing a different game than them.

You have both. His mother will stop using the PC for all her Internet Browsing, Email checking and installing cutesy cats jumping across the top of the Windows and will use it only when she has to, i.e. for writing documents. She will do this voluntarily, because the iPad is so much easier and nicer to use in her sofa.

You also remove all admin priviliges, set it to auto install updates and install ad-block on the browser. She won't care if this inhibits her a little, because she has her iPad to play on.

You will then have removed the biggest attack vectors for her PC and her PC will be much, much safer and easier to manage. And due to the extremely limited use (she will probably use MS office much more rarely than she realises), the PC will last for years before any upgrade or even defragging is necessary.

What happens when the car realises it doesn't need the driver to get around and could easily pop down to the local garage itself when it needs spare parts or petrol/electricity? Or when it gets tired of smelling faintly of sick, or having its lovely seat fabric ruined by small humans?

And if it can tell a paper bag from a small animal from 200 ft, perhaps it can also distinguish a rubbish bin from a human so it knows WHICH ONE TO KILL?

I'm not saying this will happen, I'm just asking questions.

... because this was in the UK.

Furthermore, if I was selling a really expensive TV and a cheap DVD on eBay and got the addresses mixed up, I'd really hope the guy who mistakenly received the TV would be decent enough to send it back (at my expense) and not try to hide behind some "finder's keepers" law. The day everyone screws common decency and just follows the letter of the law as long as it benefits them, then we are truly lost as a society.

Send it back.

"In the case of digital currency, there is no short-term benefit for swapping coins, but there is no loss either."

Are you kidding? There's a major loss; making theft virtually untraceable and thus making theft considerably more attractive. Now even the not-so-clever criminals in western easy-to-reach-by-the-law countries can get in on the online theft game. Not just those that are good at hiding their tracks or are in countries that won't cooperate with your own country's police.

If someone steals your digital coins, they may end up virtually (ha!) anywhere, with little or no chance of ever find them again.

This is what we had with a cash-only economy, except much, much worse, since the thieves don't have to be physically close to you or your money. For most people, moving away from a cash-only economy has had the great benefit that their accumulated wealth is much better protected.

Also, corruption (which anonymous currency is fantastic for) is hardly a "friendly thought-crime which doesn't affect others".

It really isn't fair to compare the price in Europe in euros to a price in Canada in CAD. The price in Euros is priced to the European market with VAT and the European warranty requirements built in. You can't just convert the prices with a currency calculator and a European can't just legally order from Canada without paying VAT and import duties.

The HTC Desire is not to the best of my knowledge available contract free for CAD 300 in Europe and the Jolla won't cost EUR 399 when marketed in Canada.

This reminds me of a former co-worker of mine at a university in Britain. My co-worker was Indian, held an MSc and a Research Fellow position at said university, while also being halfway through a PhD at the same university.

He was scheduled to attend a conference in the US together with our line manager, but had to cancel as the US blankly refused him entrance on the grounds that the risk of him becoming an illegal immigrant was too high. Letters from the university did not help.

Now, you may well be proud of your country, but is it really realistic to expect someone to be so desperate to live in the US that they will drop a relevant, career-progressing and decently paid job in another Western country to work in the kitchen of a golf club as an illegal immigrant?

He now ironically works in the UK for a large, very high-tech US company.

If it really is true that Facebook offered them this much money (this is by no means certain, it could just be an attempt to inflate valuation) and they actually turned it down, it could well be that they feared that a due dillegence may cause Facebook to turn away, something which would hurt their floatation if they decided to do an IPO.

If your company isn't worth nearly as much as you like to present to the outside world, you don't really want close scrutiny.

Indeed. But unfortunately he's pretty close to the mark on point 1 (the broken glass part), otherwise people would have chosen someone else a long time ago.

The problem is that it only requires about 60-70% of people to be willing to put up with Ryan Air's shit in order for the remaining 30-40% to be affected. With those 60-70%, they have outcompeted anyone else on many routes, making Ryan Air the only real choice to/from several locations in Ireland.

Seriously, if there is any other reasonable choice on your route, you have a moral obligation to go with that other choice in order to save the rest of us from Ryan Air hell.

They are probably just bankruptcy jockeys, using "new owners" to purchase out the assets of the old company while shedding debt to gullible investors. The new store can then skim off the income and close again in a few months time, finding more gullible investors to put money into it.

"Very little of this is in a movie — and it was justly derided for the omission."

I object to this notion. It is entirely possible to be a good film, even though the film is nothing like the book. Although I grant that it may well ruin the enjoyment for those that have read it.

"But to find satire on "jingoism" and "American militarism" — however much the Atlantic's Illiberals may want to scratch that particular itch — in that movie is to give it way too much credit."

We can argue all you want about whether it is good satire or not, but only an idiot would not understand that it is satire.

"For the sake of argument all of the $4.26B was iTunes sales. That means Apple gets $1.26B after they give their 70% cut to the copyright/developer. But that's revenue not profit. Well $1.26B is a lot of revenue and again let's assume it's 100% profit (it's not). However, they make almost 6x as much revenue on the iPhone and 18x much on the iPad. In other words, their software sales is a pittance compared to hardware."

A very unfair comparison. You have deducted the major expense from the iTunes sales, but not from the hardware sales. They do have to pay the manufacturers of their hardware you know, just as they have to pay the copyright holders of the songs they sell. They also have to advertise their hardware products heavily, while for iTunes the advertisement is mostly done by others.

I'd be surprised if their margins on hardware is much bigger than their margins on iTunes, so it'd be far more fair to compare revenue directly.