Oddly, I read this and thought the exact opposite. Most of the deals I've seen on Slickdeals since Black Friday have been in the 50- to 80-cents-per-gigabyte range. The latest deal, posted just yesterday, had an Intel 180GB SSD for $100 after rebate. That's 55-cents-per-gigabyte. That's only one deal site, so I'm sure there's other deals that I've missed.

The store doesn't matter so much as the price. Where you shop has become less important than how you shop. If you're only focusing on a few retailers, and not leveraging the Internet to comparison shop and crowdsource deal opportunities, then I'm sure SSD prices are still quite high.

And yet, none of that pertains to this treaty at all. There's not even a need to defend the US and its actions here, because this entire argument is a derailment of the primary one: whether or not the US should sign this treaty. Instead we're ranting about completely unrelated treaties on topics that hold no bearing to this discussion. The only tidbit of the entire rant we can apply is that the US does not always consider itself beholden to treaties it signs.

If we apply the only relevant part back to the actual topic what are we left with? Well, I would say that your standpoint is a great argument against signing this treaty. This is because any effort to hand control of the core systems that support the world wide web must be binding and complete. If the US is not going to honor those then what will happen when we have competing regulatory agencies and systems? I don't think it will be pretty.

It's interesting that the only useful nugget of that rant seems to work in favor the US actions, considering the rest of the rant is against it.

I think the biggest difference is the amount of integration that the factory systems now have. For instance, in one of my cars the stereo controls the bluetooth system, and to my understanding there is not an aftermarket head unit that supports this. If I choose to put an aftermarket head unit in my car I forfeit the built-in hands-free bluetooth and steering wheel controls. For other vehicles this is even more of an issue: some are integrated such that much of the vehicle's functionality is built into the same interface. Switching out components to support newer technologies is not going to work on such vehicles. I wouldn't want an aftermarket head unit that can't control my digital HVAC settings.

Another difference is that the technologies you listed were largely application-specific technologies with set standards. Smartphones are complex systems with few set standards. Yes, the individual features that these phones support may have standards (emphasis on may), but the phones themselves likely have little more than a defacto standard and it is the manufacturer's/OS developer's whim on when those will change. The iPhone changes much more rapidly than a music-specific format does.

WBP is half "church" half legal machine. They know the law and they work within it. They have to be very careful because they will be arrested and punished if they overstep their bounds at all. To that extent, WBP members have been arrested and I'm sure that members will be arrested in the future.

It is very common to want legal justice to enforce social norms, as is the case here and with the WBP protests. In fact, many laws are enacted to do just that. If you're going to openly eschew social norms, say by making a highly inflammatory video, then you are wise to make sure there is no way that you can be punished for it, as the WBP do. This guy clearly did not do that, and his rap sheet makes it clear that he is something of a habitual fraudster. The prison door was open and waiting for him before he did this and that was spelled out in his agreement. Should we now be weeping for him because he provided an easy excuse to push him through it?

Freedom of speech is so often used as an excuse to avoid any sort of punishment. Freedom of speech is not, and never will be, freedom from consequence. There is plenty of legal precedent for consequences to speech. You can be fired for certain speech. You can be jailed for certain speech. In this case, the consequence of his speech is that it caused media, and later prosecutors, to look into his background and expose that he was in violation of parole. He is not excused from his existing probation limitations because he created something that is constitutionally protected.

And, since I find what he created to be abhorrent, I will gleefully celebrate his further incarceration.

The tax wouldn't be as effective as the ban. The ban was needed to push the industry forward and enable them to be profitable making the newer, more efficient bulbs. The tax would need to be exorbitantly high for cheap-to-produce incandescent bulbs to be as expensive as the more efficient bulbs. If the price isn't adjusted enough for competition then no manufacturer could invest in the infrastructure to produce the new bulb, it would be too risky, and thus adoption would be slowed. The most telling part of this: this legislation was drafted with the help of the industry.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/20/ameripac/conservative-pac-claims-democrats-banned-incandesc/

It's also worth noting that, while current opposition to the "ban" is primarily from Republicans, the bill was passed by a Democratic Congress but signed by a Republican President. So, the bill is not anti-consumer. It isn't anti-industry. It isn't particularly partisan, either. Now if we're lobbing complaints around we should perhaps worry about the mercury content of the CFL bulbs that are now making their way in larger quantities to landfills, at least there's some small amount of legitimate concern to that.

A brief read of the patent tells me that this is exactly what Google has patented. It's a system in which a single identity can be used to generate anonymous secondary ones. In that case, Google, and anyone able to subpoena them, would know who the anonymous secondary identity is but third parties wouldn't be privy to the link between accounts.

Phones/Tablets/Whatever

Uh, "default app store" does not mean Google's Play store. It means the default app store for the phone in questions. If Google cuts Acer off then Acer could team up with Amazon for the default app store on their phones. Thus Amazon would earn more money because their store and apps aren't bundled on many phones right now.

I bet Amazon would be interested in providing the default app store.

I don't think it's fair to lump the two groups together. While I will agree that both groups are petty and immature, I think there is a demonstrable difference in the zeal and desire of birthers versus whoever added the brown noser tidbit to Wikipedia.

The first difference is intent. The Wikipedia entry was made before this announcement, as opposed to the birther's claims which didn't surface until the President was at least the presumptive nominee. The Wikipedia entry doesn't reflect well for Representative Ryan. The supposed claim by the birthers would, if it had any veracity at all (hint: it doesn't and never did) disqualify him completely. The intent is not merely to smear the President, as one might think the claim about Ryan is intend, but to disqualify him for his mere personage.

The second difference is zeal. Again, this is merely an edit to a page made well before Ryan was involved directly in the race for President. Meanwhile, the birthers have been at this for the last 4 years.No amount of contrary evidence has stopped the birthers. They've filed lawsuits in multiple states and wasted countless tax dollars on their nonsense.

The third difference is hate. Birthers are more of a hate group than anyone who would put this on Mr. Ryan's page. Nobody likes a brown noser, unless perhaps its your rump causing that nose to be brown. Meanwhile, birthers are hateful racists that are determined to "other" anyone who does not fit the "traditional" mold for American leadership. As others have stated, Mr. Romney's citizenship was never questioned. Neither was Mr. McCain's. The difference is that some believe there should be an unconstitutional religious test for the presidency and that President Obama's skin isn't the right color. Yes, racism is childish and stupid, but it is a particularly hurtful type of childishness and stupidity. There is not a history of enslaving, killing, raping, and dehumanizing brown nosers, instead we promote them to middle management.

The last difference is whom is advancing the issue. The person who put this on Wikipedia did not do so as part of a conspiratorial movement. For all we know it was an old classmate poking fun. There was no fanfare about this until someone removed it for political reasons. Thus, the ones seeking to deny Ryan's status as a brown noser are making this into an issue, rather than the ones presenting that status. This is very different than birthers, who advanced the issue and were generally ignored until their petty cries and expensive lawsuits became too annoying (and the President saw a chance to win a news cycle which might have otherwise gone to other things). So far the ones being petty in this issue are the Ryan supporters who think this matters.

So, sure, you can say the two groups have similar properties but I think lumping them together denies how much dumber birthers truly are.

You're right, Obama's place of birth gives us an excellent opportunity to examine areas of Constitutional law that are commonly misunderstood. For example, where he was born means absolutely nothing because the citizenship of his mother is not in question. So, like George Romney - Mitt's father, who was born in Mexico - President Obama is a natural born citizen regardless of where he was born. The rest is racism and xenophobia.

As for the usefulness of Ryan's brown-noser status: Well it's not particularly important except that Americans like to know the personality of their prospective leaders. When Biden was picked it wasn't particularly important to note that he's a gaff machine, except in the personal context of how others will judge him. Either way, if it is verifiable and people are interested in the information as a part of his profile then it should meet the minimum standards for inclusion in Mr. Ryan's Wikipedia page.

The simplest answer is that Apple has their own retail space, which is likely the top location for buying their products. They get to dictate that experience and others selling their products must follow. Google has the Play store, but if they ever want the Nexus to be a success it must be displayed at big box retailers where potential buyers can try it out. As it happens, big box retailers like packaging that is difficult to open but attractive otherwise. It's a lousy theft deterrent, but they prefer it to having extra security measures to prevent open box theft. Still, Google should probably have omitted some of the plastic seals for direct sale tablets.

I doubt it's an ad or a distortion. It's common for a smaller, more committed user base to be happier with a product. There's a lot of ownership bias. At this point most people have at least a clue what G+ is, and the ones who use it know that they're dealing with a smaller user base. They're happy with it despite its flaws and lack of ubiquity. It shouldn't be surprised.

The slowing of FB adoption is the bigger story. It probably doesn't mark a shift toward G+, but it may be that Facebook is at the upper bounds of users interested in its service. For my part, I didn't close my FB account but I've moved almost all of my social networking activity over to Twitter. I wanted to like G+ but none of my social circles use it.

The problem with local storage is that you're responsible for securing your local device. That makes you much more susceptible to a direct, targeted attack. It also makes you beholden to the security of the various systems you use.

Correct usage of Keepass will likely give you a more secure password database than Lastpass's vault. The non-standardization and decentralization of that method will make you less susceptible to mass database leaks. Even if you use Dropbox (which has some serious security concerns itself) and that service were compromised the attacker would have a hard time getting all of Keepass vaults out. So, that argument holds.

Where it fails is if you are targeted, and even worse if you are not an advanced user. In a hand-spun system like this you are the one who has to monitor for intrusions, and you are the one who has to design the security and maintain it. If you store your password database in Dropbox I believe the exploit of stealing a machine authentication token will still allow an attacker to gain access to your files, which may allow them to begin cracking your password without your knowledge. Once they've gotten a copy of your encrypted file it does not matter if you change your password because it won't change their copy. This becomes a real problem if you're not an advanced user whose setup strong encryption on your database or if you've used a weak password, let alone the issues with a standard user using and maintaining such a system.

Targeted attacks are scary. One can assume that if a victim is targeted it is because the attacker knows there is value in the additional work. If we assume that the effort to decrypt a Lastpass vault is not significantly less than any other strongly encrypted container then we can infer that a compromise of Lastpass (or 1Password, or other such services) would be comparably expensive because each vault has an unknown value. Long story short, I'm far more concerned with a targeted attack than I am a database leak in this case. I'd rather have a service focused on security monitoring for intrusions, even if that doesn't excuse me from maintaining a reasonable level of security on my own devices.