An idea fine in theory, but not in actual practice and/or usability

The end result being that many people just end up stripping those pentalobe screws completely bare because they use the wrong security screwdriver for the job. And then, it's no longer just the user who's locked out of his/her hardware, it's the Apple technician who can't get into the case without breaking it.

Not that this is a problem for Apple, if their proprietary Pentalobe screws are stripped bare, they can just charge the customer for the consequences (just like they would have done if the phillips heads had been stripped also and the case unable to open).

And did you notice? Just before that quote, Sherwin Smith had said that all the people who originally complained had backed down once he gave them a phone call, so they didn't have to do any water testing. In light of the terrorist comment, it's now obvious what he told them to make them back down.

This guy shouldn't just be fired. He should be put on leave on absence and he should be investigated for possible criminal negligence. And all the complaints he received should be re-investigated by an impartial third party.

If someone, that had formally complained, now dies because this guy didn't want to test the water, it will be his head and the heads of any of his superiors that support him, that will roll because of their willful negligence.

I know it's customary on Slashdot not to read the articles before commenting, but here is the relevant part:

Do you think he broke any those hipaa rules? Personally, I would have asked the patient to sign one additional release form (as permitted by hipaa) just in case an identifier like their face gets accidentally released on the stream, but otherwise, I do think the surgeon is appropriately covered assuming everyone followed his spoken instructions correctly.

Speak for yourself.

Most serial killers are men too. And as a man, I don't feel any shame or responsibility for that fact.

And one more thing.

Don't think that we haven't noticed your omission of the iPad and the Mini-iPad in your comparison of the "iPhone" vs. "Android" resolution count.

This omission makes me think that you seem to be aware of the insanity it was for Apple to have hard-coded resolutions and aspect ratios into its platform (when it clearly isn't the first time that Apple went back to the drawing board and introduced new form factors that had been verbotten previously).

To an iOS developer who hard-codes screen resolutions and aspect ratios like a Guttenberg-press typesetter would at the end of the 15th century, dealing with screens of different resolutions, different aspect ratios, and different sizes like Android does would seem like an insurmountable task to him/her, but that's one of the easiest problems to deal with once you start understanding the Android fundamentals and once you start writing your application the Android way (although, some veteran iPhone developers don't even try to do that when developing for Android, so they end up writing an android application like they would have an iPhone application).

If you're going to complain about the Android fragmentation, then complain about bluetooth compatibility between all the different Android devices. That is a pain, a real pain (assuming your client insists on compatibility between all Android phones/tablets, and not just the bluetooth compatibility of certain models with the same chips -- the latter of which is easy enough to do).

Android 2.3.x is for single-processor phones (like the Samsung Pocket).

And no, what you're implying is completely false. Android 2.3 gets all relevant security updates (it just doesn't change its major version number on a whim like iOS does). In fact, if you just look at the security community, most of the secure forks of Android are still based on Android 1.6 or Android 2.x, because those older versions have been vetted and analyzed the most.

They're probably comparing it to an iPad since the MacBooks don't have touchscreens.

I agree. The summary seems to be trivializing NSA's illegal actions. It also seems to be ignoring the ethical dilemma that can arise when you come to find out that your own organization/company/boss/colleagues are acting criminally.

In the case of Amazon, it cut off its services to Wikileaks at the request of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee). That's what Amazon was doing before Snowden. They didn't wait for an injunction, they didn't wait for Wikileaks or Assange to be brought upon charges (they've helped the US government deal with Wikileaks, without having to enter the messy US court system and all the rights that could possibly imply for the defendant).

And now suddenly, Amazon is getting this big fat 10-year contract from the CIA for a private cloud (that IBM is challenging every which way). Oh thanks Senator Lieberman!! And thank you US taxpayers!!! Amazon may not like to pay taxes, but it sure likes benefiting from them!

You won't have to. If this becomes popular, you'll just have to get all your ebooks from p2p.

Like most DRM schemes, it's only the legitimate customers who will lose access to the higher quality content. This is essentially what happened with audiobooks. If you want a high quality audiobook, you don't get it from Audible (which purposefully degrades their quality), or even if you do end up getting an audiobook from Audible, you end up downloading the very same title from p2p because what you find on p2p in the category of audiobooks is usually of much higher quality and of a higher bitrate (than what they're trying to sell online).

Most people do not encrypt their phone (unless their job requires them to), encryption-down-to-the-hardware is a drain on the battery, it heats up your phone, and it makes everything you do on your phone slower (this usually means that the person with an encrypted phone will usually be carrying two phones, one for the job that's encrypted and one that's personal and unencrypted). Most likely, the police will just plug in your personal unencrypted phone into one of their devices, and copy everything there is on it in less than two minutes.

The same reasoning that says you could have been talking on your phone while driving, or texting, could be used to justify that they check that you were not chatting through other applications, tweeting, checking facebook, checking email, inputting/querying a new address into the gps, or taking pictures of the scenery, etc. so the reasoning will go that they might as well just copy everything on your phone since it's definitely easier to do that than having to manually thumb through your phone and check every possibility from the side of a road.

Yes, the latest version, which doesn't have a formal release date yet, which will be "coming out soon", does include Outlook. That's certainly good to know.

If you're one of the lucky teachers or one of the students however, like those in the article, don't count on getting Outlook without being forced to pay full retail for Outlook separately, or pay full retail for Office RT (2013), or pay for full retail for an Office 365 subscription instead. After all even on the more expensive Surface Pro, the Office Home & Student 2013 edition does not include Outlook. And there is no reason to believe this is going to change for the RT edition once Outlook RT does get released.

[humor needed] You know, an actual funny bone, to prevent you from taking every comment too seriously.

Which may be true for some peoeple, but in my case, whenever I get above the 2 GB threshold on T-Mobile, it takes me to edge, but then it's soo slow, everything and anything I try to use just times out (even email).

Now don't get me wrong, the Unlimited data plan for Sprint is also a lie. First of all, Sprint tacks on a dummy $10 premium data fee, which they don't mention when they compare their rates with their competitors in advertisements (the fact that the FTC or the FCC hasn't fined them for false advertisement is beyond me). Plus their 4G unlimited data used to be great in my home apartment, but then it got so bad, I couldn't even get 1 single byte of data even on 3G using their network (even thought, I never changed my home address, they're the ones who either became oversubscribed, or shut down towers in my area a year or two ago). Sprint should just have called their data plan the Unlimited Data Premium No-data plan, that would have been more truthful.