Minor counterpoint: I've had a couple of OCZ SSDs. Both are 2 years old and still running smoothly. However I -did- have issues with them reformatting themselves randomly when they first came out until I found a firmware patch for them. Since then no worries.

However, there are plenty of manufacturers out there. One disappearing isn't really going to affect anyone but their stock holders and employees.

Seriously. Write some code, publish it on Github. Spin up a single serving web page, does one interesting thing as soon as you arrive. Remember, everyone else with resumes could be pretending, you're actually doing stuff.

For work experience, sign up on freelancing sites like odesk. Take jobs just to do them. Nobody knows how old you are, there. Even if all you can do is sysadmin -- well, admin some cloud services!

Pretty sure I can pull up some prior art dating back from before the patent system.

If it doesn't come with a fully functional Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Angry Birds etc then it is virtually dead. Not barely working apps but fully working apps that are equal to their iOS / Android counterparts. BB already has great email support but they will need to have good Google Calendar sync, etc as well.

If the apps work ... and the right apps are there ... then it won't be as hard as most people think. Outside the geek/techno realm people care few shits about the OS. It is all about the app ecosystem. It has to have the big apps on release and it has to see new apps come out at the same time as on the other platforms.

And ... from what I've read ... there is actually a decent chance of this happening.

One of the things people don't realize is that while BB has a smaller share ... people on that platform tend to be willing to pay for apps more often (and more per app) so as long as BB can get this out the door properly (big if, no doubt) the developers may well join. Especially if their app support team is as good as I've been reading and porting is as simple as they've made it sound.

Will -I- buy one? No. I want an open platform for my own purposes. But my exec bosses? They couldn't care less about rooting/jailbreaking/shell sessions/etc. And most of them don't care about fringe apps, they just want their core apps to work excellently and their phone to be secure.

Actually I think a few of these cases getting out and being better known -would- prevent many cases. Face it, this didn't start proliferating as a problem on it's own. People saw the news where a few of these cases happened and though "oh that's funny, I could do that too, no one can catch me". Cases skyrocketed over the last couple of years since the news got posted.

That same approach can be made to curtail the problem. It just requires an equal amount of energy being put into it.

The only problem I see with this particular article was that it was very clear just how much of a dumbshit the guy with the laser was. If he had been inside a building or car going from place to place to change where he used the laser from he probably wouldn't have been caught. Likewise had he discarded the laser the second he saw a police car coming, while out of site of the helicopter, chances are fair they wouldn't have found the evidence either.

What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window? And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky? Brainstorm it. If you find something, great, but that's a pretty damned huge problem.

Whenever I look up my maps location on a non-GPS device using Google maps ... Google is VERY good about pinpointing the location in my home. This is due to my other devices, with GPS, reporting the information back to Google. Google knows "oh, that SSID is at these coordinates".

Not rocket science. Not foolproof either, but good enough for a project like this.

Well duh, the iPhone 5s won't be released this year.

They were combining the population of those countries. Poorly written but not that hard to figure out.

The question misses my key factor: Reliability.

Yes, SSDs have a limited lifespan, but it is relatively predictable.

HDs on the other hand, especially with as much of a commodity (meaning nearly non-existent quality controls) as they have become, are completely UNpredictable on reliability.

The same HD from a different batch might fail nearly immediately whereas the very next production run might produce a drive that will last for many years.

I got VERY tired of it.

I run SSD for the majority of my apps. My data I stick on a separate large mirrored array.

The hybrid drives may be fairly cheap, but they are inherently as unpredictable as HDs (they use the HD less, which is a bonus, but they add a second layer of complexity, which is a detractor, so I end up considering them equivalent).

I had some problem with my first SSD due to firmware issues ... but once cured all of my SSDs are still running solidly while I've had multiple HD failures of newer HDs.

3He will power the world!

And yet, from a UI perspective, Win7 and Vista were very nearly identical. A few tweaks here and there but really not MUCH different and definitely sharing all the major paradigms. And those paradigms were gradual evolutions based on prior Windows interfaces.

That's exactly the point that Cowboy Neal is trying to make ... Win8's interface has radical departures. Unless they are willing to backtrack ... yeah, Win9 will refine them. But you might as well start getting used to them.

Perhaps she wanted to, I dunno, watch TV?

I wonder if some of this isn't really being caused by how popular it is to block ads via extensions. I use AdBlock Plus and Do Not Track Plus. I'd be willing to be I appear very much like the "no Javascript bot" to their analytics program.

Then again, since I never see the Facebook ad that they are worried about, maybe not.

I'll admit the MySpace to Facebook comparison was closer. However ... comparing Facebook to AdultFriendFinder? Either I don't hang out in the "right" Facebook groups or this is total bull. They are not even close to interchangeable in purpose, audience nor function.

I suppose the reason I find the concept of this article sad is that we're moving to a place where instead of an expectation of privacy ... we now have an expectation of no privacy. I post photos, sure, and status updates and events. But I'm careful about the permissions on them and I don't post EVERYTHING nor will I. If that makes me suspect, well, I guess suspect me. But it -should- show I have a reasonable level of intelligence on what I keep private.

While I do use Facebook, I have a number of friends, neighbors and co-workers who do not. And I don't consider them suspect. Why would I? I don't go "oh, my neighbor is always frequenting that gaming site but refuses to use Facebook, he must have something to hide".

I also have a number of friends who either maintain multiple accounts (because they hate dealing with permissions) OR keep their account obscured so that you have to know that it is their account (different name, odd profile photo, different email account, etc). Purely because we ALL have people in our lives we don't want to know EVERYTHING. Is that the next step for being suspected?

Glass walls. You don't want them. At least not until everyone in power can give up their judgements about peoples' personal lives.

And in this case the chief didn't make law.

The chief clarified to her officers what the law already is. Seizure of recording equipment without the recorder actually causing some form of disturbance (the officer being disturbed) does not stand up in court. Officers tend to know this, too, but are used to being able to bully their way through the issue.

The policy from the chief was not a new thing in the sense of the law. It was a new thing in the sense of the policy acknowledging it.