Ironically, those apps (Firefox and Chrome) do a relatively good job of appearing native on both Windows and Mac OSX.

Next you know the young whipper-snappers will take "variables" and call them "dynamic constants"

In Bluetooth (especially Bluetoothe Low Energy (BLE)) they already reanamed them. They call one a "characteristic" (when you include the metadata describing it) or a "characteristic value" (when you mean just the the current value of the variable itself).

I think this is right. They're making more investments in getting their apps on iOS and Android. I think this investment is an indication that they're interested in having their own Android distribution (or one that they can at least partner with) which will allow them control while maintaining application compatibility.

And if so, I'd say that's a smart move. It's probably not a full plan yet, but more of a hedge while they try to push mobile application development by decreasing the barriers between development for Windows desktop, Windows Tablet, and Windows Phone. One way or another, they need a mobile platform with apps.

I think the idea is that Google, Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have all made themselves into a sort of cartel that don't allow the "open source project" to actually be a source of freedom for consumers. Cyanogen is "rogue" because it bucks that system and restores freedom to the project.

One of my problems with LibreOffice (and OpenOffice, and some other FOSS apps) is that it doesn't fit with native UI conventions. It doesn't look like a native application, it doesn't feel like a native application, and it doesn't behave like a native application. Although it may seem like a very superficial thing, it makes it much harder to sell in a business setting. First, because a lot of business users (including "decision makers") are pretty superficial, and using a non-native UI makes it look cheap and unfinished. Second, because if it doesn't feel or behave like the applications that users are familiar with, then it's going to be jarring and confusing, requiring more training and resulting in more help desk trouble calls.

So when I read that LibreOffice "has got a lot of UX and design love", I was hoping that some of the incongruences were fixed. Looking at the OSX version, it seems that it's gotten worse. It looks distinctly like an application written for Linux that was hastily ported to OSX.

Why would you want to adopt a rifle that was in many ways already outdated when it was adopted into service, and is so outdated by now that even Russians themselves seek to replace it?

And what allies use AK 74?

It's off by default. What have you been smoking?

Assuming you haven't disabled it in the bios.

And as an IT professional working in NYC, I'll tell you that the Internet here is... not so great. I'll grant you, it's better than the parts of the country that are stuck on dial-up and DSL, but you can't get FIOS in most places. A lot of people (individuals and businesses) are stuck with TWC as their only viable source of broadband. Sure, you can run a bunch of bonded T1s and get 10mbps for something like $1k/month, but if you want something cheaper than that, you're stuck with TWC.

The problem with that is (a) TWC has slow upload speeds; and (b) TWC is unreliable and will often go offline for a few hours for no apparent reason.

NYC gave Verizon some kind of deal on the requirement that they run fiber everywhere by Q2 2014. Guess what? Didn't happen.

That doesn't explain all those bankruptcies during the dotcom bubble. Rather they built a vast pile of dark fiber (that is, unused backbone fiber cable) and then went bankrupt when the money ran out. Companies like Google have been using that stuff (particularly, the right of ways these days) ever since.

I'd agree in a sense-- but that it could (and maybe should) be like roads. The federal government deals with interstate highways, and the local governments deal with local roads. Basically we could have the federal government making a high-capacity fiber backbone, and then have state and local government deal with running FTTH.

Turns out: not so much. As was predicted by the security community, there are flaws, and after a couple years the flaws were exploited, and the PIN is retrievable. This cycle has repeated (is chip-and-PIN in its 3rd generation now? it's at least the second).

Chip-and-PIN means only that the bank makes you liable for your stolen money, claiming "the card couldn't possibly have been stolen because magic". It solves a problem for the banks, and makes it worse for the consumer - shocking, I know.

PCBs (printed circuit boards), plastics used as insulation, coatings, and physical parts (card holders, connectors, IC bodies, fans, etc.), paint, capacitor innards (electrolyte and the aluminum), lithium batteries (boom!), and so forth in the servers themselves. Then there's the cabling and connectors between servers and between racks, possibly the floor and ceiling materials, lots more paint, any structural materials used to create the room, etc. Perhaps not as much as in a residence or office, but lots and lots of potential fuel.

I don't have a lot of facts to cite that I can back this up with, but my general sense is that Europe (and a fair bit of Asia too) have the belief that it's worthwhile to have the government invest in infrastructure. They spend money to improve roads, bridges, railways, airports, telecommunications, electrical generation, and whatever else. In the US, we assume that infrastructure will take care of itself, somehow, mysteriously.

For a lot of stuff, we just get angry if the government spends money to build/repair a bridge. Railways are considered a massive boondoggle. The Internet is considered an entertainment service. To the extent that we consider the Internet "telecommunications infrastructure", we've decided to improve it by giving massive amounts of money to private monopolies, while not having any actual requirements on those companies to actually build anything with that money. There's a belief, somehow, that Verizon is a good and virtuous company that would love to provide fast internet, if only it could afford to do so, so we just keep giving them money and exclusive deals, and they keep refusing to actually roll out fiber.

Meanwhile, European countries just rolled out fiber. No outrage from the Tea Party to deal with, no big payouts to Verizon to stifle the project. They were able to do it because they simply had the government pay for it.

So what? If there's money for these sorts of games, then there's money for independent examination.