Why can normal day to day employees even view plain text social security numbers? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to hide that information like banks do with credit card numbers?

Also, I find it ironic that these two relatively low level criminals will get the book thrown at them, but when the DMV legally sells that information to marketing companies everyone is happy. I guess they don't sell SSNs but still, thin line.

The US might be doing this for honest reasons but then again they might be doing this because US based communications manufacturers are unhappy with companies like ZTE undercutting them using the free and Open Source Android OS.

I bet US based companies can find tons of patents that Chinese companies are infringing. But then again many of these patents are overly broad and are largely being used in an anti-competitive way.

Plus the whole accusation of spying, unless shown to be true, I read as akin to "buying from China isn't patriotic." If the US had evidence of ZTE spying on them you sure as hell would be reading about it right now.

You're mistaken, tape is a lot cheaper than hard drives. You can buy 1 TB of tape for as little as $30. The tape systems themselves are more expensive but the actual storage saving of using tapes very quickly makes it a worth while investment. I'd recommend anyone go and check the cost of tapes Vs. the cost of hard drives on Amazon if you care to.

I am aware that Hard Drive prices have recently increased due to the flooding but even before that, back when HDD prices were low, tapes still under-cut them. Even more so if you purchased your tapes in bulk.

Uhh UEFI literally has no MBR, it doesn't exist. So please explain to me how this exploit functions when the MBR doesn't exist? I think he is booting his drives in the wrong mode, which is to say legacy MBR mode instead of ADAPI/UEFI mode.

No tablet as exists today are incapable of taking good usable notes, or if they are (Microsoft OneNote running on a Samsung Series 7 with Windows 7) then they certainly won't exceed a regular laptop with a keyboard. People love to claim the technology is up to that stage but as someone who has foolishly wasted more money that I would like to admit on the tablet dream, I can tell you that, no, you're just wasting money.

The "main issue" I've found is two things, first off handwriting recognition is crap. Secondly that even when it works there isn't any real integration with the rest of the system, so the resulting text and diagrams is an uncategorised orphan unusable by anything of use.

Android and iOS are great consumers of content but they're terrible producers. The software is lacking, the interface designs are arse-backwards, and all it ultimately results in is an inefficient irritating system that you might have well not use. Things like the Android Transformer almost prove my point for me by opting for a keyboard and Microsoft Word-clone like software to increase your productivity. If the fact that the best Android can do is to copy a "normal" laptop then that is as damning of a statement of the state of tablets as I can tell.

While it is nice of Google to offer this, I don't really understand why people care. The SID was always public information as are the location of the AP. So to then turn around and accuse Google of invade your privacy by recording what essentially you've told your AP to shout from the rooftops seems a little contradictory to me. It isn't like SIDs are personal or in any way linked to you as an individual or even your surfing activity.

So as I said, nice of Google to do this, but I'd question what anyone who opted out really hopes to accomplish by doing so...

Want to know why small business is impossible in the US, three simple reasons: Patents, lawsuits, healthcare.

Patents are granted too easily, cover too much, and cover it for far too long. What's worse is that the damages are absolutely insane and companies can literally have your product banned from the entire country simply because you for example used a "menu" to "navigate a complex system" or some nonsense.

Lawsuits are too easy to bring in the US, too costly to defend, and there is no punishments for bringing frivolous suits. For small businesses one or two of these suits no matter how much merit they have can sink the company. So big businesses just sue for nothing and bankrupt small businesses.

Healthcare, too expensive, significantly more expensive for small businesses than big, and it discourages the best employees from working at smaller firms because they literally will have to pay 100% more per year for basic healthcare.

And while I have the soup box let's talk about political corruption allowing monopolies or duopolies to control the market and make it literally impossible via regulation or market manipulation for competitors to form (e.g. Cable, Internet, 3G, Cellular Services, Health Insurance, Health Providers, Drugs Producers, Children Toy Manufacturing, etc).

I voted sceptic. Which frankly I feel every self respecting scientist should do.

Climate change is a very well understood phenomenon with good cross-supported models and data which repeated shows there is a global temperature increase. But that all being said, there is no room in science for complacency. If someone came to me tomorrow and said "I have contradicting data," I would respond "great, show me!"

Saying you "believe it" is bad science. It is a belief. It isn't evidence or data based. Saying you're sceptical but the evidence up to this point shows X, Y, and Z keeps you a neutral observer which is an important position within the field.

This is a PR stunt. They don't plan to do this, just want to get people doing about their airline. This is the same airline that "announced" plans to remove seats and have people stand, and charge to use the toilet on short-hall flights. They have no intention of doing this, they just want your attention.

That would make sense, except the manufacturers of SSDs and the manufacturers of HDDs are completely different companies.

While there are a great deal of faulty patents granted, one of the larger problems Software Patents in particular face is the 20 year duration. For an industry which re-invents its self every two or three years, twenty years might have well be two lifetimes worth of work. If the duration was shorter many of the obvious junk patents would have already expired and we would be in a far healthier place.

To solve Software Patents you can't get rid of them, we're already in too deep. But you can shorten the duration substantially and make a series of special courts who's job it is to deal with technical patents (and who employ technical experts). The courts are simply too ignorant to be able to understand what it is they're meant to be deciding. They have no expertise in the software field, or in any other special area (drugs, business processes, etc) but yet we expect these people to use their "common sense" to decide things like if slide to unlock or one-click checkout should be a valid patent.

If anyone was wondering how they do it, they're using JavaScript when you click a link instead of allowing the browser to open the link "normally." e.g.

window.open("").location.href = "http://www.example.com";

This results in the page opening as if it was a "new page" rather than as if it came from any

Please read either the description or the article. You just look foolish.

While I agree that Computers are a distraction and do not aid learning in many subjects, I think this takes a good idea too far. Kids today do need to understand how to use computers - it is a needed skill for almost any and all jobs, from a Lawyer, to a Doctor, to an Engineer. While I agree that computers should be kept in the computer lab, let's not keep them out of schools entirely.

Am I the only one disappointed that this revision doesn't support the Thunderbolt port? Even if few motherboards would ship with it at least the chipset should have the support.