These "hackers" just made Christmas a lot less Merry for many children that just got some nice new Christmas presents.

They've already made their point that they can bring down the gaming networks of two evil empires, they should just stop DOS attack and let the kids (and the not-so young gamers) have their fun on Christmas.

Just because the computers ON spacecraft were primitive (because they were made to be failure proof in extreme conditions) doesn't mean that advanced computers ON THE GROUND weren't developed to design and test the space craft and its components.

You've clearly demonstrated thinking so focused on proving your point that you missed the obvious.

To eliminate the competition in an upcoming tournament:
1) Hack into your competitors' computers and install online game cheats.
2) Wait for VAC to catch the "cheaters"
3) See your competitors banned from the tourney
4) Profit!!!

It's definitely for the backers' own good that the experience be the same for all players... so just one month before release we tell them that we didn't bother to implement the single player offline component.
/s

It took a while for me to decode all that marketing speak to figure out that they were canning single player. It was a deliberate design decision they must have made months ago, and just conveniently "forgot" to tell the backers.

The article says: "over 2 million people left the Guandong province of China and returned just a few days later--that's equivalent to the entire population of Chicago upping sticks"

Sounds pretty major, right?

Well, let's see according to Wikipedia, the population of Guangdong province was 105,940,000 in 2012. So approx. 2% of the population traveled out of province for Chinese New Years. 2% doesn't sound that big compared to "the entire population of Chicago" eh? To put it into perspective, the population of California is approx 38 million, and for Thanksgiving long weekend in 2013, "Statewide, 4.46 million will drive to holiday destinations, and 533,000 will go by plane." according to the AAA. That's over 12% of the population traveling. Granted, not *everybody* left the state. If one just counts the ones the flew by plane, 1.4% of California's residents flew somewhere over Thanksgiving. 2% doesn't sound like that much now.

Honestly, after reading the news reports about the super crowded trains during Chinese New Years, I would have expected the number of people traveling out of Guandong to be *much* higher than 2%.

Ref: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

It doesn't matter what internal "rules" a country or its homegrown companies break, all may be forgiven. However, if any foreign companies break those rules, hellfire shall rain down on them.

It's not just China. The US does the same thing, as do many, many other countries just not with the same methods.

Too bad that even with 10 years experience, you cannot figure out if a computer/tablet runs Microsoft Windows or if it runs Android. The Dell Venue 8 runs Android, the HP Stream and the Dell Venue 8 Pro both run Windows 8.

I own an Asus T100TA that also runs windows 8 and when I add a microSD, it shows up a drive D in windows. It looks and works like any other drive in windows. I can install programs on it no problem.

However, the Venue 8 is an android machine and with the newer versions of android, Google has really restricted what can be stored on an external microSD card and what each program can access on them. You're talking about restrictions on an Android platform and applying them to a thread about Windows 8 machines. Meh.

Actually, in the world, it is abnormal to be caucasian, since other "races" are more numerous, I'm not sure which one, but it would probably be asians.

In most parts of the US, it still is "normal" since it's the largest visible "race" if you consider people with "white" (as opposed to brown or yellow) skin as being caucasians.

True, there can be negative connotations to the use of "abnormal". Especially if in context to medical results, since abnormal usually only means that your results are in the "we need to talk" range.

But I don't see it as being even close to some of the other terms used to describe Homosexuals in a derogatory manner in severity. Should one use "not normal" instead?
It's abnormal to be a nerd. Definitely I'm not ashamed to be a nerd, but I'm also not "proud", it's what I am, what is there to be proud about just me being me? And if it's abnormal, then it just means I'm not normal. I'm OK with that.

But calling somebody a "Deviant, Disgusting, or wrong" to be gay to their face is definitely RUDE, but everybody is entitled to his/her own opinions, no matter how much one disagrees with them. Hey, a lot of vegetarians find my habit of eating animals "disgusting" or "wrong". It would be rude for them to say that to my face, but I respect their right to be disgusted that I eat animals.

I definitely do not consider homosexuals "Deviants", nor their lifestyle "wrong". I also feel that homosexuals should NEVER be discriminated against just because of their sexual orientation. But I don't think it's "normal" to be a homosexual until it becomes the largest single human sexual classification.

Definition of abnormal: deviating from the normal or average.

So approximately 10% of the population is homosexual, therefore, "abnormal" is a proper term to use to describe people that are homosexuals.

Note that mensa members are abnormal, so are people that make more than $100,000 year. It's not a necessarily a derogatory term, it actually a proper factual description.

Yeah, posting to slashdot is definitely "abnormal" too since most people don't even know what slashdot is. ;-)

Are you implying that the Salton Sea was naturally formed?
According to wikipedia, It was formed by an accident in 1905 which overflowed the canals carrying Colorado River water to California, so THERE ARE NO NATURAL replenishing flows for the Salton sea because it is NOT NATURAL.

The Salton Sea is an example of Man's impact on nature. Once was a vast stretch of desert, now is a fetid lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Please, please, please. Pretty please with a cherry on top?

All the android makers have abandoned the high end keyboard phone. It's a niche that needs filling. It's not going to reinvigorate the handset side of the company, but would help pay some bills with minimal investment.

You don't understand Asian culture, or Japanese culture in particular.

When one is "responsible" for something, even if one wasn't directly involved with the failure, the failure is attributed to EVERYONE responsible and is a major loss of "Face". It's especially bad in this case since it wasn't just an error, it was a planned deception by the lead researcher. So every project this person is associated with will now be "tainted"... (yeah, a bit different than Western culture) so pretty much his career would not advance any more.

Sure, suicide is a bit extreme, but in Japanese culture, as opposed to other Asian cultures, it's more common.

The auto correction is ALWAYS messing up with my technical terms when I try to type on the google keyboard. I shouldn't HAVE to manually enter them into the dictionary, shouldn't the damn thing learn after 10+ corrections by me?

Also I noticed that typing while in landscape, with a physical keyboard phone, I can see 100% of the screen, with my new touch screen only phone, (yeah, I finally gave up on trying to find a decent slide out keyboard phone after my Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G started to eat batteries for breakfast and would take pause breaks for a few seconds at a time, and replaced it with a 4.3" touch screen only phone), the KitKat text entry dialog and virtual keyboard takes up the WHOLE screen... I can't see a thing from the original screen.

I can also type without looking down at the physical keyboard, I cannot do that with swyping. If I hit an "n" at the beginning of a word rather than "m" the predictive keyboard gets the word choices completely incorrect and I have to stab at the backspace virtual key, some times missing and getting a bunch of "l"s instead. That *never* happens with the physical keyboard.

Yeah, I'm one of the few that would pay $600 for a top spec slide out keyboard phone.

No, no, no, it's "Goldfish soles nipping at my toes."

Same here... "Spoon!" would be my choice.... well maybe I'd use "Spork!" because "Spoon!" is the Tick's "go" phrase. ;-)