That's Russian tradition of providing a loan to their allies and then write it off in a few years. A price of alliance, or at least a hefty bonus. USSR did the same.

No, but they caused deaths of more than 100 thousands people in Iraq alone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War). They would better annex it without killing anyone.

Don't forget, that Mr. Snowden is now living in Russia. Taking into account how long it usually takes to switch devices and how Russian PM is obsessed with Apple, I guess we can assume they've got the reason to do so.

Besides, I remember Iran had some troubles with SCADA, and it had something to do with USA.

I've got two Dell laptops - both are Vostro V131. One of them had numerous hardware problems soon after the purchase - the hard drive died and left button of touch pad stopped working. When I've contacted the support, they basically told me, that I've stolen my laptop.

I forgot to mention - I bought my laptop from my company, which is an official Dell distributor. It was absolutely new, no questions about that, in a never opened box.

Well, when the support "tech" guy asked for my company name, I said that this notebook is my own, no company assigned. Nope, - he said - try again.
And I tried - the company that actually sold me the notebook. No luck. In the end, he just said that there is no warranty for a notebook if I can't prove that it's mine. However, there is no way to show them the invoice or something, they simply play the game of "guess which company name I have in my head".

After that, I tried the same with second Dell notebook. I've got it from another shop a few months before. Although I had no problems with it, I just wanted to see if I have the warranty. You guess right - the company is not correct.

If I am able to learn from my mistakes, I will never have Dell again.

P.S. Just got my new laptop. It's Lenovo.

A part of every monthly Windows Update is a program called Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Of course. This is the Common Sense Preservation Initiative by Carnegie Mellon University. As long as there is at least one entity in the Internet with common sense, the human kind is not done.

Jokes aside, it might be used later by governments and corporations, to filter out unwanted images. For example - decapitation images on Facebook or everything else in Arabian world.

If you are the head of major energy corporation, you wouldn't care about 5 millions per year. It's too minuscule.
Actually, taking into account that in your own company you have around 1 million of computers, you could be interested in more energy-efficient algorithms, as they would allow you to sell what you would otherwise waste.

Ordinary users can't revive the dead tablet, even if it only fails to load the touchscreen drivers. Tablet becomes the photo frame, showing the log in screen. Unless other drivers failed as well, or tablet is asking to navigate to skydrive to get the bitlocker key, but you don't have any other computer. Besides, the on-screen keyboard doesn't function, so you can't enter it.

Yes, you can get over some problems with Windows 8 tablet if you have USB hub, flash drive, ISO image of Windows 8, USB keyboard and mouse... But I am talking about ordinary users, not geeks.

Microsoft is well known for juggling with stats. As an example - their stats of Windows Phone popularity in UK.

Here is an oversimplified example: There are 100 devices on the market, 70% are mine, 5% are yours. I sell 60, he sells 30, you sell 20. What is your market share now? 11.9%. There is no word about the cap that market has for your devices.

So, while you are selling less than anyone, your market share grew twice for the period, bigger than of anyone else (perhaps because for Android such growth would mean gaining 140% of the market share).

The point is - if you produce 10 tablets and sell 9, then perhaps you sell more tablets that Apple, if counted in percents. But your stats are miserable when counted in real units. Microsoft relies on percents more and more over the years, refusing to provide real numbers, and I can't help but to conclude that they are trying to play big, while being in trouble.

I would love to see someone installing a 30km/h sign on a highway, making all cars apply brakes, slowing from 100km/h, crashing into each other. Blood, death and gore - that would be awesome video in YouTube!

Seriously, though, this is incredibly stupid incentive even for EU.

Take a look at the Windows Phone market. I believe that most of you don't have Windows Phone to begin with, and you can't go and see what is available there. But if you would... I believe you would come to the same conclusion as I did -

Microsoft should have ban that and similar applications themselves.

And there are quite a few (not free!) clients for Gmail, Google Maps, Instagram and whatever else, at Windows Phone Store, that are:

1. Of way lower quality than original software on Android / iOS
2. Were not created by original authors (Google and Instagram in this case)
3. Cost sometimes ridiculous amount of money. Like 15$, while the original software for Android is free.
4. Require your credentials for named services
5. Authors are unknown guys from the middle of nowhere, usually India or China, which makes point 4 even less pleasant
6. All of them bear the original name - like "Gmail", "Instagram" etc. If you remember, Microsoft forced the renaming of "Windows Commander" to "Total Commander", because it has "Windows" in the name. But here we have a complete re-use of the original trademark. Imagine, that someone would create a program for Android, called "Microsoft Word".

Overall, Windows Phone market is a mess, compared to both Android or iOS markets. It's full of ridiculous crap with ridiculous prices, and Microsoft is fine with that as long as the number of apps at the store is ticking ("look at us, we have apps too!!1"), and corporate names abused are other than Microsoft.

So, I am not saying that Google is not evil, but in this particular case they are doing the right thing.

Just wonder, was Hayden's note about the opposite sex a mass insult of LGBT society? Like - you are not a human being (or at least have no future in IT) if you haven't "talk" to the opposite sex? I think some gay should sue that fag.

And before you think that "fag" is an insult - it's not in this case. See, what Mr. Hayden said can be translated into - "Regular sexual intercourse with the opposite sex turns you into a zombie". Which is FUD and could be a gay propaganda (hello, Russia!) if gays would be that stupid (to use Mr. Hayden's services, that is).

This.

I must admit, I respect Linus more after reading this e-mail.

Just wondering, how much Microsoft will have to pay Europe for Prism scandal. Europe is in financial trouble, and Microsoft is rich, having lots of assets in EU. It would be a sin not to dig into this and make MSIE trial look petty.

And I am not speaking about justice here, just about the court as an effective European cash register.

ISO of the original setup is always available, so you can install the system fresh, install updates and compare if you like. Anyway, I think that if there are backdoors, we'll learn about them from insiders like Snowden, not from security analysts. However, there is a good chance that such backdoors would finish the Microsoft.