For the past several decades, the US political system has considered these to be equivalent. Google "only remaining superpower" to read the evidence. You'll also find lots of uses of the phrase by non-Americans implying that they accept this as fact. Some of them complain, of course, but they often do so in ways that effectively acknowledge the fact of US rule. The US government is now immune from any so-called laws and is free to use its power as it likes anywhere in the world.

That may have been true 10 or 20 years ago. Nowadays, here in the US and in many other countries, the common media and governmental meaning of "terrorist" is now "anyone we don't like".

This is a rather familiar sort of linguistic change that has happened to many other words in the past. There's not a whole lot we can do to persuade people to stick with the original definitions. After all, we can't even persuade people to stop using "literally" to mean "figuratively". What's our chance of persuading politicians that they shouldn't similarly retarget handy insult words to refer to their opponents?

"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be bake for breakfast!"

"Transform and Roll out!" from Transformers. I always cover my mouth when I say it, so I look like Optimus Prime. "All Systems Nominal" from Mechwarrior. I love that sound as my computer boot up sound. Then "Engines Shutting Down" as my shut down sound.

Whoa now, that just ain't true. Not at all.

Techies tend to forget how ridiculously hard it is for non-techies to administer their computers. Apple's iOS frees its customers from complexity, it frees them from stress and worry about viruses and Trojans, it frees them from the repercussions of being successfully hacked.

Sure, for your typical geek-o-matic here, OMG-I-don't-have-root-and-I-can't-allow-that! But for regular people, Apple's walled garden is a blessing.

I only took a quick glance, but it looks like the MacBook Air is half the weight, has a better CPU, better graphics, more USB 3.0 ports, much better battery life, lots of useful built-in apps, etc.

Exactly how did you compute that your Asus Vivobook S200E "ultraportable" is a "better MacBook Air than a MacBook Air"?

It's especially difficult for the Media, since for most of them, "computer", "IBM machine", "Microsoft" and "Windows" are synonyms. A few have heard of things like unix and linux, and some even use a mac. But hose gadgets are never called "computers", so they're not relevant to any news story dealing with computers. In common speech, saying that some new virus infects "computers" is all that needs to be said, since there are no brand names in the computer industry, only IBM and Microsoft (and maybe Apple, if that's a brand name).

I have seen a number of instances where some geeks will try to bring up non-IBM/Microsoft systems, and the media folks are clearly baffled by why people would try to change the subject, when the topic is clearly computers, not those other electronic thingies. I remember back in the early 1980s, when IBM first introduced their new DOS machines, and the reaction of lots of business and media people was "Finally there's a desktop computer." They didn't see any need to mention the brand name, because computers didn't have brand names. (The more knowledgeable did know that computers actually do have brand names, but since there was only one, it was a waste of time and page space to mention it.)

While I can appreciate your sarcasm, I also followed the summary's first link to the report at labs.bitdefender.com, and thought it was interesting that in the "Related posts" in the column at the right, there's a Tags section, and the very first is "android" in a large font. There's no instance of "window" or "micro" or "soft" on the page. The obvious inference to a reader is "Hmmm ... Can this actually be a major infestation on android, i.e., linux?"

But no, this list of "Related ... Tags" appears to be some sort of subtle redirection or FUD or something, because as others have already reported here, this is indeed yet another MS Windows trojan infestation. The report page lists keywords including "android", "bitcoin", "facebook", "etc, but doesn't mention MS or Windows as related.

Anyone have any idea why the folks at bitdefender might do things this way?

Why do you hope for that? Microsoft pretends to reinvent itself regularly, but one thing remains constant through the decades: Their goal has unswervingly been lock-in from top to bottom, while trying to nickel and dime you the whole way.

For nerds, this means locking you into their programming languages (e.g., VB or C#), or if not that, at least lock you into their APIs (so that you're as good as locked in, even if you're using C or C++). It means abandonment of entire domains that no longer suit them (look up how woefully out-of-date and ignored the C part of their C/C++ compiler is).

It means locking you into their platforms, whether that be the operating system (Windows) or the browser (Internet Explorer).

It means high prices (have you seen the prices on Windows Server and/or Microsoft Azure lately?), which is not-at-all nerd-friendly. It means guaranteed stagnation in those domains where they achieve dominance. It means product churn for the sake of profits. It means ignoring customers and forcing bad implementations on them (*cough*Metro*cough*) and then taking forever to admit it was a mistake and fix it (when is Windows 9 due out? Next year sometime?).

Just because some new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss is singing some unicorns-and-rainbows song doesn't mean the core of Microsoft is going to change. They're still after the same things they've always been after: Lock-in so severe that the pain of escape ensures most people remain slaves, and profits, profits, profits.

If you think you have nothing to hide, you should probably spend a bit of time studying the history of the FBI. Leading an exemplary life has never been a protection from them, if they suspect you may be part of whatever conspiracy is popular at the time. A few decades ago, it was Communists, and having no connection to any Communist organization was never protection from them or their colleagues in organizations like HUAC. It's quite clear that the "anti-terrorist" push nowadays is no more concerned with whether you have anything to hide; if they need a scapegoat and you're handy (perhaps because your name is vaguely like some name on one of their lists), they'll go after you and make your life a hell on Earth.

Having "nothing to hide" is one of the most naive misconceptions going around, and has been for at least a century. Dig into the history of the FBI and assorted other similar organizations. Google can find a lot of it for you. Then come back and tell us again whether you have anything to hide.

(And they probably already have a copy of your pron collection, added to their own. ;-)

Now, now; that's a feature of humanity that's spread quite evenly throughout all societies. Yes, it's the American way, but it's also the British way and the Italian way and the Iranian way and the Chinese way and the Tahitian way and ...

Americans have no particularly valid claim on assholeness (assholicity? assholitude?). Look around yourself, and if you don't see any, it's probably because it's you.

Actually, here in the US not one person in a million can tell you anything at all about what fascism stood for. The term is now just one of a growing list of political insult terms with no actual content.

Of course, the fraction of Americans who can actually define socialism or liberalism or any other -ism isn't much larger than one in a million. Such terms are really just the modern equivalent of tribal names. You're expected to hate anyone with a label different from yours, but you're not expected to actually know the meaning of any of the labels. Once you understand this situation, American political rhetoric becomes much more comprehensible.

If you're a pilot who's "airspace" includes a volume in which a fireworks display is scheduled, please informs us of that fact, because I don't think I'd ever want to be a passenger in a plane controlled by a pilot like you. The possibility that your plane might hit a drone would be the least of my worries. ;-)

Wait; there were jet aircraft flying through the fireworks display's volume? How did the drone miss getting a picture of that? That'd have been really fun to watch, especially when the fireworks started hitting the airplane.

(Given that there was a fireworks display going on in that airspace at the time, I'm kinda doubtful that there were any pilots in the area who weren't well aware of them. And I also sorta doubt that there were any children running around under the fireworks. That's usually strongly discouraged at fireworks displays, and this one was over water. ;-)

It seems to me that if you were to forgo the complexity of automated driving on the byways, highway-only algorithms and equipment would be much easier to deploy. If I owned a shipping company, either locating my endpoints near a major highway or having a human driver take over at waypoints located near a major highway would still make this option extremely advantageous. I've said for a long time that I would much rather be driving next to an automated vehicle that only experiences an "incidents" once every 100,000 miles or so, verses next to my fellow humans who -- these days -- seem to experience "incidents" every few miles.