>> anomalous thrust/acceleration

Must have been a Trekkie that posted this. There would be no ST:TNG without a Federation shit-tonne of anomalies to investigate.

>> Ribbon was most likely introduced simply to distinguish the look and feel from free Office apps, particularly Open/LibreOffice. That's right, I think it's more marketing gimmick than UI innovation

Not exactly, but you're close. To use the ribbon, you have to freely license it from Microsoft...and promise that you won't use it in an Office clone. So...it's an IP shield as much as it's a UI paradigm.

I'd just be happy with an announcement that the online Office 365 apps would finally get the features they need to quit making them toys (and forcing everyone to download docs to local Office apps anyway).

Second to that would be an option in Office 365 to default to "yes, when I opened the document, put me in f***ing editing mode by default." Hell, call it the "Google Docs" mode if you want.

>> Astronomy students need a hook to be intersted in science?

General education, basketweaving and social science majors hoping to dink through a 100-level science elective on their way to an $20K annual salary need a hook to be interested in science.

There - fixed that for you!

>> Are you calling Luke Skywalker a nerd?

No, Mark Hamill is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

>> They hate us.

That's a lot of rage for a mid-Monday. You may want to move to Colorado and get a hobby...or just get a SlashDot account like the rest of us, you f***ing n00b.

>> why do we need a walled garden?

This is for India (note the primary video is in Hindi) and other places used to paying for crappy Internet. In these cases, a less-crappy Internet from Facebook is deemed (cue Martha Stewart) a good thing. However, if (or when if you're Google) someone figures out how to give Indians full-blown Internet for free, then Facebook's partial Internet thing dies and two years later no one will remember it anymore.

mod parent up
all it says = true

The Bard's Tale - a pretty widely played RPG in the 1980's - had "hobbits." But I also doubt EA paid anything for its use of "Mongo" (Blazing Saddles) or any of the the ripped-off tunes in the software: everyone was just a lot less uptight then.

>> Instead, it's some guy blindly pursuing some nerdy "open source is the best!" dialogue like it was 2003.

Duh - the author's disabled. It's taken him 12 years just to resolve the driver issues on his adaptive devices to write and submit the article from his Linux desktop.

>> Law-enforcement officials also don't want to reveal information that would give new ammunition to defense lawyers in prosecutions where warrants weren't used

I didn't get this either - shouldn't this normally be part of the discovery process?
(Remember that scene in My Cousin Vinny where Vinny discovers...er...discovery?)

>> also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019

This should be the headline: Bipartisan bill renews Patriot Act for four years, with minor tweaks

In fact, I think there's really no reform. From TFA:
"data would instead be stored by the phone companies themselves, and could be accessed by intelligence agencies only after approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court"

Um...guess what happens as soon as this bill is passed? "Hey Obama, er, I mean secret court, can we please continue access all the data from those boxes we installed at the phone companies again? Of course? Well, thanks!"

What's the point of predicting riots if all we're going to do is stand around and give people "space to destroy" when they do riot?

These aren't thunderstorms...

>> So basically, Google is giving you access to their hash, salt, and saying "Enjoy unlimited cracking attempts...

Not exactly. The 37-bit version is just less than 25% of the full 160-bit SHA-1 so, as the source mentions (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/google/password-alert/master/SECURITY.md) the intent is to keep enough of the password to tell when the same password has been tried twice, but not enough of the hash to allow someone to authoritatively crack it. (I hope - haven't seen the proof of 37-is-the-right-number yet.)

This isn't the first time someone's used hashes with high collision rates to see if the same passwords are being tried without actually storing enough of a hash to flag the password. See this article for a different example (trying to tell badly configured clients from brute forcing attempts): http://www.filetransferconsult...

In Soviet Russia Cargo Boxes Open You!

You're right - I do feel better.