In the USA, laws are entirely based on trending topics.
Gay marriage is trending, so courts are continually overturning bans.
Marijuana is trending, so States are legalizing.
Women's rights are a perennial issue.

In a sane country, we'd enshrine these changes in the US Constitution, instead of leaving the Supreme Court to decide everything and then Congress or the Executive Branch crafting legislation/regulation in order to comply..

That seems like a reasonable statement to include in the Constitution.
Right?

Some how I doubt that.

I have downloaded before a full version, non-evaluation, fully working copy of RHEL before.... I believe this option still exists for those seeking it, but it is one of those well kept secrets and the link is burried deep somewhere at Red Hat's site. i.e. RHEL can be used for free, without support. It is possible Red Hat may have discontinued this for the "30 day evaluation" variety of free download, and that download link is gone forever, but regardless, Red Hat does not sell operating systems, they sell support, and that is what you pay for that costs. However, CentOS is identical to RHEL and is free to download and use, i.e. costs nothing. Oracle Linux is also RHEL, and also free to download and use, I believe. So no, if you don't pay for the support, using RHEL will cost you nothing.

That's not dumb or anything, but superfluous, considering this exists.

But if you ask the typical user of OS X that never questions anything and always insists on new shiney, any OS older than 2 years old is "obsolete." So this OS is obsolete 10x over!!

disclaimer: I am a UNIX/Linux Windows & OS X systems admin, and prefer OS X for desktop, and even I can't stand the moronic whiney bullshit that the self-proclaimed "expert" mac users puke out... please see comments here to see what I mean, as if you didn't know already.

I see. So if I sell you my Mac and all the software therein, that contains an Aperture install, you could never use it. And being as you post on Slashdot, you are very respectful of software licensing, and you've never heard of The Pirate Bay.

Oh? then wtf is this?

Ok, its another terrible idea from Apple made with absolutely no regard to their very supportive and loyal user base, but you're exaggerating tremendously.

Let me remind you that, although most users seem to be compulsive in how they click "update" whenever there is one available, its is a really dumb thing to do blindly and unnecessary except for three reasons and only three reasons: 1) you have security concerns and the update patches security holes; 2) the update has bug fixes of bugs you keep bumping into 3) the update has new features that you want. If you update for any other reason, or for no reason, you should have your head examined.

Abandoning development on Aperture does not mean that you can't continue to use it until the end of time. If you're happy with how it works now, rest assured, it will continue to work that way forever.

So bash Apple when you get a chance, but ffs relax. Apple is not going to come into your computer and disable Aperture! Its going to keep working for you if its working for you now. And if you were hoping to use it, and are afraid it will disappear forever, well, again, relax, that is impossible. But if you'd like an alternative that has just as much functionality as Lightroom or Aperture, take a look at Darktable, which is Open Source and is not going anywhere.

Well, Ive was one of the most outstanding executive officers this company's ever produced. He was brave, outstanding in every way. And he was a good man, too, humanitarian man, a man of wit and humor. He joined the Software Engineering Group. After that, his... uh... ideas... methods... became... unsound... unsound.

Now he's crossed into California with this mountaineered army of his that... worship... the man... like a god, and follow every order, however ridiculous...

...very obviously, he has gone insane.

click for multimedia

Your mission is to proceed down the San Francisco Bay in a Blue Navy petrol boat, pick up Sir Ive's path at Cupertino, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find the officer, infiltrate his team by (ahem-hem) whatever means available, and terminate the executive's position.

...terminate the executive...

...terminate with extreme prejudice.

It seems like a lot of people seem to have ignored the detail that Snowden picked Hawaii because it didn't have access controls yet.

The NSA and DoD have been rolling out software upgrades across their facilities specifically to prevent another Manning.
Hawaii was not upgraded, Snowden knew this, and he used this knowledge to pilfer data without restrictions.

Perhaps. But I suspect Orion will carry men back from space long before anyone ever figures out what happened to Dragon and its crew.

If you removed all the government subsidies and tax breaks for exploration/drilling/production, those profit margins wouldn't be nearly so fantastic.

Or because the FAA holds the airplane manufacturers to an extremely high standard for their software.
There's no one holding Microsoft or the creator of Flappy Birds to any standard of security.

/I know /. has some programmers who are familiar with airline standards, so maybe they'll chime in.

This isn't soft power at all.
As the cost differential between Chinese manufacturing and US manufacturing decreases, it makes perfect sense to move the manufacturing closer to where the products will be consumed.

US companies have been slowly moving their manufacturing back to the USA (or to Mexico), because it isn't that much more expensive than China + the lack of language barriers and 12 hour time shift makes resolving problems easier.

The fact that the Chinese are now moving manufacturing to the USA means that cost differential has shrunk even more, to the point that the Chinese are willing to put up with the language barriers and 12 hour time difference.

According to the user manual, no internet connection is required.
http://btsync.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/BitTorrentSyncUserGuide.pdf

On page 2:

Connection
The devices in sync are connected directly.
Ðonnection is established by use of TCP,
UDP, NAT traversal, UPnP port mapping, and relay server. If your devices are on a local
network, BitTorrent Sync will synchronize them without the Internet connection.

I'm not saying I like it, and in fact I said I don't like it... but the case law is pretty clear and you're welcome to see for yourself:

Smith v. Maryland - 442 U.S. 735 (1979) AND here's the wiki

It has been this way since 1979: there is no legitimate expectation of privacy regarding specific information when you knowingly give the information to a third party.

Its not a crock and I didn't make it up, as my references bear out. And again I stand by assessment that Slashdot has gone to the dogs and the idiots posting these days don't know much of anything.