As a spectator, I wonder how many of the recent presidents I can think of will/have written or said anything as insightful and eloquent as any of the quotes above.

Expanding it out the senate - even with all those extra stuffed shirts to choose from, how many now?

I hope they have a good EULA ;-)

I don't have my 'phones handy, so had to watch with the sound off. The video doesn't show the machine actually working, which makes it a pretty boring watch. Hell, even the guy in the checked shirt looks bored talking about it.

I know us geeks aren't great at PR, but if you've got a machine that does something and you're at a trade show, then make sure your machine runs 24x7 - even if it's not your machine and it's just an incidental part of what you do, it's still better than leaving it idle.

Wasn't there some bug where Chrome left your microphone on and used Google's text-to-speech to listen in on everything you said? (http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/speech-recognition-hack-turns-google-chrome-into-advanced-bugging-device/)

I'm sure Firefox has some "duh!" bugs too, but I have to say, this Chrome was was pretty awful.

> wish there was another choice. the whole mobile data thing really unnerves me with how bad the scene really is.

http://jolla.com/ ?

...and be sure to spread that malware that uses Tor for command and control. Even your elderly neighbour could be a terrorist! Add to the fact that she gives sweets to the kids that come around asking if they can get their ball back from her garden, and you've got a paedo-terrorist. They're the worst kind of all.

You're confused who the 'leaders' are. It certainly isn't the politicians, and it was never the people.

...and a few other places besides. The toilets at my work are probably the first place these people should be looking.

You realise dropbox is free, right? Why should they do something expensive like offer encryption on a service that is (a) free, and (b) for sharing files. Sharing's hard if your stuff is encrypted, and sharing is the source of most of Dropbox's value.

If you want encryption, then fine, do it yourself. You obviously know that your stuff won't be indexable or shareable so won't be calling for support or slagging Dropbox off online when you find indexing and sharing not working.

There's room to suggest Dropbox should offer a pay-for encrypted service. The thing is, no matter how well they do it, it'll always be vulnerable to government interference, and it'll never be fully trusted anyway. BYO means no government interference and trust *for the relatively small number of people who care* without raising the costs too much for the multitudes who don't.

There's a difference between doing something as a service that you're paid for by others and something you do for yourself. Having taxi drivers, or lorry drivers or whatever recorded is different than having private car drivers recorded.

I'm not saying your point is wrong, but it's more complex than you make out. You do make a good point about the data only being accessible in an accident situation, as opposed to in some non-event that the government decides is important enough call an "emergency requiring that we listen in".

If you're one of the first predators, why would you need body armour? (and no, I didn't RTFA)

This is why the volume of ads is higher than the programmes they're in. Damn you GCHQ, I don't want your new soft drink, I want my freedom from tyranny!

In other news, they're also dusting off all their old bottles invisible ink, newspapers with holes cut so you can see through while 'reading' and that box of old fake moustaches and noses from the basement. From now on, be on the lookout for anyone reading a paper from the 1960s sporting a massive nose neighbour. Extra points if they're writing into a notebook with a pen that appears to have run out of ink.

The better solution is to use a Windows Phone. You can be sure no one will want to buy that on ebay ;-)

I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but how many "modern air wars" have there been in (say) the last 50 years? The Falklands war is one - how many more have there been? How many do we expect in the next (say) 50?

It seems to me that conflict is getting smaller. That is, it's less about taking over entire continents and more about killing a few people at the train station to get in the media and get some fear going. AFAIK, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan used some air support, but there was no "air war" as such (maybe some people trying to shoot down planes, but that's entirely different from dog-fighting).

That said, if another state of reasonable size was to decide it wanted another state's land, then things scale up quite quickly. However, how much of that really causes "air wars"? The issues in Ukraine suggest that the implications of state-based action is more financial than it would be military.

When the Eurofighter project was in full swing, I wondered the same thing - I mean, how many times do we think we're going to need such a thing? That said, it came up with (what looks to me at least) as a pretty cool aircraft with some cool tech inside it. Shame it's all classified :-(