Modded "flamebait", but you're sort of right. The hard part of blowing something up is getting the cash together, obtaining enough explosives, and finding the right target and opportunity, all that without having some security agency get wind of your plans. Finding some poor deluded soul willing to blow himself up for a crappy cause is actually the easy part, especially if you can draw from a pool of religious nuts. And islam has plenty of those, sad to say.

On the face of it, that makes a lot of sense, but in practice it is rarely that simple. If a team sees a 10% increase in productivity, it's often the manager who takes credit, but often enough it's due to that old boy engineer or that senior business analyst helping out the rest of the team and making things more efficient. Unsurprisingly, to make engineers work better you often need an engineer, not a generic manager. This is the difference between managers and leaders, and it's also why I think training (*real* training) and coaching are so important (and, like the engineer, they are undervalued by management). If you're a manager and you think that your staff comes fully equipped for the job, with up to date skills and knowledge of standards, best practices and procedures, think again.

I'm a cynic as well, though I do read their reports from time to time (our company has access to them).

The value of these reports is not insighful conclusions, but in the research that "proofs" those conclusions. Let's face it, everybody knows that cloud-based computing has gone mainstream: it's been around for a while now, there are various stable, standardized and cheap services available for it, and many large companies already have good experience in using cloud resources, even though they have some issues from time to time. What Gartner does is put some numbers to those common insights: how many services, how have cost and competition evolved, what standards have emerged, how many companies actually use it and for what % of their business, anyone using it for business critical stuff, what kind of issues have they experienced, etc.

You're not going to learn anything amazing from Gartner reports, but there is a reason that even smart managers look at these reports to judge market readiness or trends: they provide evidence to support what you probably already knew, and it's a lot better evidence than what Google punters can come up with.

It's silly to punish authors who have a big hit when they are young, by cutting short the copyright on their works, solely because there may be other writers who become successful only late in their life. A life+ copyright doesn't punish late bloomers, only their heirs. And the purpose of copyright is not to ensure an income for writers' offspring, in fact I think the system should be life, not life+. The heirs are welcome to whatever fortune a writer is able to amass, but not to the IP.

I agree, this is a nice device and I am considering getting one as well to replace my aging laptop. I've had my hands on a model 2 which got me interested... for work-related stuff on the go, I still prefer Windows over OSX, Linux, iOS or Android, despite a few flaws.

The only thing that comes to mind after seeing those outdoor pictures in the article: please give us a model with a matte display. I dislike glossy screens in general, but on tablets that will probably be used outside in the sun they are positively horrible. In the photos you can hardly see the screen for all the glare.

Exactly. So in order to secure your phone, you want to throw as many obstacles in the path of the thief as possible.
PIN lock? Good.
PIN lock w/ 3 attempts and automatic wipe after? Better.
Automatic wipe if the phone has not been unlocked in a certain period of time? Even better.
Allowing unlock after a certain amount of time only if the phone can contact a certain server (so it can receive and a remote wipe command if one was issued)? Better still.
Data-at-rest is encrypted? It better be.

To get past security measures like these, you need a fair amount of skill and sophisticated tools. Casual thieves, law enforcement and probably many intelligence agencies will have a pretty hard time getting at this data. The NSA, who knows. But if there's a root exploit that only relies on the ability to hook up your phone to a PC, all of the above is pointless, and any punk off the street will be able to get at your stuff.

I read somewhere else that the remaining vulnerability involved "plugging the phone into a PC". A modified charger might exploit the vulnerability equally well, and it already sounds a lot worse than requiring my direct consent.

For some people (upper management, dissidents and the like), secure communication is not sufficient, they also need the phone to remain secure if it is lost or stolen. If having posession of the phone is the only thing that stands in the way of rooting it using this exploit, it is a serious flaw indeed.

Italian Fascism had very little to do with rounding up and slaughtering of millions. I think you're confusing fascist Italy with nazi Germany.

With that said, the USA is a far cry from a totalitarian fascist state; they certainly have not taken the underlying ideology to heart. However, there certainly are some aspects that are creeping in the practice if not the ideals of US government, it seems. That was GPs point, I believe.

Your job (most jobs anyway) includes working with others. Yes, fucking up too often will ultimately get you fired, but if you think a sterling reputation as a coder will let you get away with being an a-hole, think again. Abrasive personalities and prima-donna attitudes can ruin a team just as badly as a poor coder, and if you regularly rip into other developers in public for making mistakes, you will likely be the one being called in for a serious conversation with your manager.

In case of Linux kernel development, Linus doesn't have one of course, he pretty much is the CEO on that endeavor.

This has nothing to do with political correctness; this has to do with being polite and professional. A useful attitude when dealing with other people, and that goes double when you are a public figure whose word carries a lot of weight. You and he may think being abusive is fine and gets results, well, more power to you. But it also means people will simply start avoiding you and your projects.

6 years ago I set myself a goal that I have reached since: to never work for any asshole again, and to set myself up so that I can comfortably walk away from any job. Now I know I can walk away, and it makes a world of difference in the way I approach my work. My managers also know it, and it makes a difference there too, and in my view I enjoy an altogether healthier working relationship with them. The world needs Linus more than it needs most of us, but that doesn't mean any of us have to stand there and take his abuse while kowtowing to him. The guy needs a good dose of humility.

Not to mention the modifications we have to make to the creationist parks.

From what I understand of the effects of solar flare, there's no point in hardening electronics against them as the effects caused in short conductor runs are minimal. It affects power grids because of the length of conductors involved. Regular surge protection will protect plugged-in electronics against secondary effects on the grid.

That's the problem. My country decided to buy these things and participate in the development as a level 2 partner. That has some advantages, and at the time was cheaper than buying off the shelf, plus we got a good deal of offset orders for our own aerospace industry. However, the projected cost per plane has already increased by 45%, and it's still not clear how much the final sticker price will be, or how the plane will perform.

The one big advantage of buying off the shelf is: you know what you're getting and at what price. However I also know how the Dutch military likes to buy stuff: off the shelf is never good enough, and every design needs "to be peed on", as the expression goes, meaning everyone must be allowed to give input as if marking their territory.

I read "morphine dimples" at first. Then I got disappointed.

Now all we need is a functional aircraft...