...and TFA says it's accessible over WiFi.

I think I know what would get disabled first on the damned thing if I owned it...

Was kind of thinking the same thing, actually... I'm pretty sure** that no one would be stupid enough to have the thing accessible over wireless, which leaves you the task of actually sneaking up on the damned thing to reprogram it. At that point it becomes a physical access problem.

** not perfectly sure mind you, but it counts as a fair no-brainer.

I won't use it personally, but not out of hostility.

Professionally, I'll see it here and there, but my 'workstation' is a MacBook Pro, and I haven't had to touch a Windows box in months (mostly to set/troubleshoot Puppet on one occasionally) - I mostly hang around Linux. MS Office is as close as I usually come to touching any Microsoft product in my day-to-day work.

At home I only have one installation of Windows left - it's a Windows 7 VM sitting on my personal MacBook Pro that I open once in awhile (I have a few legacy CG tools hanging around on it). Otherwise, the missus has an iPad and a laptop w/ Linux Mint, I have a couple of Linux boxes hanging around acting as media and storage servers, and there's my MacBook Pro.

I suspect that in 5 years, I won't even have to bother with Windows on a professional basis.

FTFY.

A Windows 7 diehard, I see...

Crazy as it sounds, I actually want to see a project that converts services.exe over to a systemd-like layout - with full registry integration, of course.

Why? Well, mostly because it would create such a singularity of suck that space-time itself could be torn, all by the mere act of booting an OS rigged in such a fashion.

The boomers have begun to retire... in droves.

Yeah, everyone has embarrassments in their past, but it's still no one's right to go combing through them. Most employers are smart enough to stick with criminal background checks at the most (because seriously, a conviction for embezzlement may be an embarrassment, but it's also something an accounting firm would want to know about before hiring someone...) I have never had an employer (or individual therein) demand to see my facebook page or try to friend me on it, and I doubt that I ever will. They don't have time for that (and seriously, with an uber-common real life name like mine, good luck sussing me out from the zillions of others).

Sibling is right though - GenX will be the last generation that had some semblance of privacy WRT online history.

True, but personally, I propose that the age be raised to 30 before deletion... let the kids get a taste of those consequences, then have said consequences hang around long enough to learn from it. Only then should they get a do-over.

Could be worse: SCO could still have some money left, and...

I think you have to be a lawyer and have ownership of a patent first (it doesn't have to be worth anything, but you have to be the rightful owner of it...)

Sadly, it's part of the risk... you either fight, or you pay up in a settlement.

Now nothing is stopping those companies from litigating against the troll for their money back plus interest, legal fees, etc etc.

That said, I'd love to see an instance where a defeated patent troll is forced to make the contested patent public domain if they are 1) not using the patent in a product they themselves sell, and 2) launch more than x number of lawsuits and/or get x number of settlements over it.

It would up the risk to the troll, making them think very carefully before litigating (or even threatening to do so.)

urgh - meant Fluorine... stupid autocorrect. :/

More likely, someone could run a forklift into one of the massive Fluoride gas tanks and puncture it (the gas is used to surface polysilicon wafers), wiping out a couple of hundred people Union-Carbide-style.

Thing is, if she manages to get the job, she'll forget about even trying.

External health costs? Do you have any idea how many highly toxic chemicals are used, in quantity, to turn polysilicon into a working solar cell? *

Better idea: Use environmental and workplace safety laws to enforce and minimize those health costs, instead of using the concept as a cudgel to push cronyism.

* I have worked in the solar industry - even the polycrystal and monocrystal cells use an astounding amount of toxic gases and fluids to prep and coat a solar cell, and don't ask what goes into a thin-film solar panel...