Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is not a part of the judicial system and is not "some judges".

True. But maybe the article just chose poor links, because federal judge Richard Leon ruled that bulk phone record collection is illegal.

Note also that the hypnosec didn't "write" this submission - like the vast majority of submitters s/he simply copy& pasted the first two paragraphs from the fine article. In other words, both submitter and slashdot admin either didn't read it, or have terrible reading comprehension skills. Probably both.

They'll get to it. Right after they switch to metric

I was under the impression that the Taipei geeks were fiddling with the touchpad and display screen markets, out of their niche in ATM touchscreen displays (which wealthy nations ignored), and that when they were contracted by Apple to make Ipads they said "hey, check this out, we put a screen on it. And you can attach at telephone". And Apple said "heck yah make that" but nothing kept Samsung from doing the same. But that's a general recollection, I don't want to be cited as a source.

I don't remember it happening in that way.

Apple acquired a company called FingerWorks that didn't do touchscreens, but DID do multitouch gesture systems.

Steve Job's vision for the iPhone was a phone that is a piece of glass. I believe capacitive sensors had been done before, but Apple's hardware+software expertise, combined with FingerWorks patents, created the gesture-based interface that now seems routine on smartphones.

To be able to manipulate items on the screen by touch -- incredibly responsive, intuitive gestures, it was a big breakthrough. Even tiny things like the little slider thing to unlock an iPhone was magic, it appeared like a physical latch because it followed your touch.

Swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom, etc etc, those gestures were from FingerWorks, AFAIK.

I've heard that the definition of a Scottish gentleman is one who knows how to play the bagpipes, but refrains from doing so.

Please stop with cutesy loading messages (reticulating splines, fetching slippers, percolating coffee). You were too lazy to include an accurate bar indicating when the loading process would finish, and you are insulting our time wasted looking at your "jokes".

Any tips on how to recreate that standard 1994-1995 486 experience aside from finding an old pc and installing win95?

Chocolate doom has built-in emulation of the adlib chip that was present on the ubiquitous soundblaster cards of the 90s

that litigious asshole John Carmack

Holy crap there is a lot of bile in your post.

Doom was designed to be modded - you had the IWAD that stored the main game data, and you could load a PWAD with command line parameters. Those features were either put in by Carmack or blessed by him.

I'm intimately familiar with what the Doom community became after 1998 when Carmack released the source code (how many other companies do that?)

He was tremendously supportive of the community and personally replied to some emails I sent him over the years asking him about GPL licensing of old id stuff.

He's even got an account here on Slashdot.

The portrait you paint of him does not match anything I've seen or read about him, ever.

you want to destroy a representation of the records, but keep them in storage somewhere?

I was more imagining the records fashioned into a Wicker Man style construction, with Clapper, Alexandar et al as the soft centre. I'd be tempted to do some chanting and dancing around that

How does microsoft do so much user testing and have no idea these products are going to be colossal flops?

I can't imagine the reasoning that went on behind the push for Windows 8:

"Let's unify our mobile and desktop interfaces, because we have a stranglehold on the desktop, people will gravitate towards our mobile offerings"

The public responds "we hate this" and they choose to do it anyway? Don't they do focus groups? Didn't they anticipate that people are disgusted by a touch interface on their keyboard+mouse system?

I'm fascinated and horrified but I'm also pleased because I am not fond of Microsoft, but what the hell do they think they are doing?

Splitter!

Assassination Politics I think he went to jail for it.

What we really need is a kill switch on the DHS, and the other out-of-control TLAs

Well can you have an anti aircraft rocket then?

I would say the Constitution is unambiguously clear on this point: yes. When the government derives all power from "We, the people" [per the preamble] then whatever my government does, I also can do (because it was given the power to do so from me). Likewise, anything the people cannot do, they cannot authorize their government to do.

So unless you want to argue that the Army and Air Force have to give up all of their tanks, planes, and H-bombs because nobody has a right to such things, then the American population has an absolute right to buy them as individuals.

Personally, I think the crimes of Nixon (and cohorts) pale in comparison to the crimes committed by the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations. Where are the impeachments?

Waiting on the American people to elect politicians who don't all dream of one day having their name added to that litany.