This kind of thing shouldn't be hard at all. You don't need complicated logic puzzles or any such thing. You just need something that's hard for a computer to figure out, but easy for a human.

For instance, render a 3D scene and ask a question about perspective. "What is the person holding in her right hand?" "What is the person looking at?" and similar such questions. Trivial to render. Hard to figure out, because it's far beyond simple image recognition: you have to see and interpret what's going on in the scene. It doesn't have to be confusing or hard at all. (And rendering is super cheap these days.)

Definitely funny, but not exactly ... you could have a Zombie Preparedness Plan or Alien Invasion Plan or Ant Uprising Plan ... you might even write it yourself, but that doesn't mean you actually believe it's going to happen. It's just what you'd do if it did happen, quite probably involving a speech where you utter your surprise that it actually happened.

RIM, whether they like it or not, is transitioning into a services company.

I wonder if this is the route we will see MS take. As relevant to the story they've already been doing Office as a service (most likely to compete with google), though I don't know how good or useful this is. I'm sure they could be doing this for other businessy/enterprisey products. Mostly they need to figure out they really aren't a leader or top dog, and focus on what they can do well, not try to compete with everything poorly. I doubt without a culture change (starting at the top) this will happen, though. MS has seen everyone as a competitor that needs shut down from day 1, so this would require huge sweeping change.

I fully expect to see BingBook+ before this is all over though, years after even Google stops caring about social networking.

Disagree. They've been losing relevance for a long time, and we're noticing now that they're struggling to find any relevance. They did have a lot of relevance to lose, as they squandered away what relevance Windows had, trying for markets they were weak in (server) while neglecting markets they were strong in (desktop), all while continuing to be so far behind the curve they just don't get what's going on until it's years too late (mobile).

They might have been a strong player in the game console market, but then they pulled an XBone.

Business is still pretty big, but with Windows losing day-to-day familiarity with users, their last bastion is going to erode quickly as users start asking "why can't we use something else?" I fully expect them to throw billions at trying to find relevance for years to come, though. This all might be foreshadowed by RIM and Blackberry: originally king at business, trying to fit in elsewhere, disrupted by technology they didn't grasp, falling behind, throwing money at trying to stay relevant, while everyone else wants to move on.

Well hooray for you, but I have to reboot win8 (game machine) constantly. Apparently, it has a well-known bug where it sends a reset command to the hard drive under certain conditions. This can cause the drive to go away until you power-cycle the machine (even the bios doesn't see it). It's not a BSOD: everything just stops working and you lose anything you were doing, because the drive it was running off is now gone. (It also blows away UEFI stuff, but fortunately you can get it booting grub again from the windows side.)

Happens extremely randomly on two entirely different systems with three different drives. Lots of reports. No fix.

Bluetooth? I'm sure it will have bluetooth .. do you mean "able to make calls"? That'd be nice, but I don't see anything about it.

However, their philosophy is more "a wide range of devices for every need" than Apples "one device, take it or leave it." Samsung has a whole range of devices differing in small features and size ... Tab 3, Tab 10 3, Note 2, S4, Mega, etc. Pick a size and whether you want a stylus or not and they've got a device for you. Whether it's a phone or not doesn't seem to have a huge impact.

No, a company cannot be evil. Each and every one of the members of the company can, but the company cannot. A company doesn't exist without people

No, a person cannot be evil. Each and every one of the cells in the body can be evil, but the person cannot. A person doesn't exist without cells.

It doesn't matter that much if one is slightly faster in Javascript or rendering when Firefox will halt up for 5-10 seconds rendering a new tab. Maybe it's faster than Chrome, but if I have to wait for it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much Firefox devs work on "UI sluggishness" if it's a single thing can lock up all input to the browser.

It is being done all the time. What is this fraudulent nonsense even doing here on /. Was this not already debunked enough?

No, it's not debunked; that is, no one has shown it not to be what's claimed. However it has been shown that even if it is what it claims it's no better than an optimized classical simulated version. It's like someone claims they have a quantum chicken, and it may be quantum chicken, but it still can't cross the road faster than a fast non-quantum chicken.

Simply having the source code doesn't mean you have the ability to actually use the source code to make bug fixes should the need arise.

And yet, it still means that you can fix it, or even rewrite it in something else, if you want. Not having the source code means this is between much-more-difficult and impossible. The lesson here should be that everything we use should be open source, including compilers and libraries, not "well in theory I might have problems, so screw that whole open source thing .. proprietary all the way!"

Judge: You're lying, that's perjury, go to jail.
Defendant: But there's no proof!
Judge: The confession you refuse to give would be proof; refuse to give it, you're in contempt, deny it and it's perjury. Jail!