Speaking of Adobe, how is the Adobe user account leak not on this list? Storing passwords encrypted rather than salted and hashed, using single-DES encryption rather than 3DES, using ECB instead of CBC, and storing the password hints in plain text? How in the seven hells did that not make this list when there's bullshit like the Mavericks Mail bug in here?

In this case, I think the answer is yes, but the headline is misleading nonetheless. First, some Chromebooks use Intel chips, so Intel is probably getting a cut of this. Microsoft has more to lose than Intel here.

Second, Windows faces competition from a lot more than just Chromebooks, and I'd argue that Chromebooks aren't the reason why Windows is hurting. Rather, Windows netbooks and tablets have failed to be very compelling, so all the other competitors are doing well. I think that, while Chromebooks are getting more compelling, the biggest driver here is that WinTel laptops are getting less compelling faster.

Third, aren't Windows sales dipping across the board, anyway, in favor of more mobile devices? That seems like the biggest threat to WinTel, not Chromebooks.

30 minutes might be pushing it if you're using optical media, but with a USB 3 flash drive and a moderately fast computer with an SSD, it's certainly possible. But then you spend the next four hours waiting for Windows Update to do its thing.

You think you'll find out about the white supremacist atrocities from their own literature?

Ah, yes, white supremacists. The poor man's Godwin.

Your post is full of assumptions, fallacies, mistruths, and irrelevant information. It's a shame it's been modded so highly. Let me point out just a few in that confused jumble.

Women are not only the majority of voters

So what? Why do you believe that a group always votes in its own best interests?

Even the president has spouted the wage gap myth despite all evidence proving that it does not exist -- Women do have babies

Wow. Just... wow. Let's put aside the fact that research shows there is indeed a wage gap, though not 23%, and that I never said anything about men earning more than women for the same job. Nevermind those. Let's talk about how women have babies. What do you suppose the men were getting up to? Your implication that it's the woman's job to raise the baby while the man is free to pursue his career belies your attestations that you really care about women and men being equal. Should they also not share equally in the duties of parenthood? Why, then, is having a child more of a tax on the woman's career?

The rest of your post is just as confused, misguided, and boring. Who said anything about giving women jobs they don't want, for example? Or Christians, Satanists, or KKK members?

Anyway, it's been fun, but I've already spent more time than I should on someone who thinks that comparing feminists to white supremacists is in any way a useful analogy. So long.

Yes, women rule over us. That's why they make more money than men, dictate what men must look like with fashion magazines, hold 90% or more of the political positions, and head up most corporations.

Clearly, just because GitHub doesn't want to be associated with this idiotic and vile bullshit, they're being controlled by feminists. Quick, everyone, to the free speech mobile. Let's tell GitHub that it's us who get to tell them what they can use their own web site to say. In the name of free speech, of course.

You people should try reading a book once in a while.

The water vapor problem is relatively minor because water vapor also causes cloud formation, which offsets the warming effect because it reflects light back into space. The science is still being settled about whether water vapor has even a positive or negative effect on the climate. They have studied it, but the situation is complex.

Also, the idea that global warming has stopped over the last 15 years has been debunked time and time again. It's a result of dishonest people taking an exceptionally warm year (1998, which remains the third hottest year on record) and drawing a line to a less exceptional year or even an exceptionally cold year (2008, usually) in an effort to mislead people into thinking that global warming has stopped or even is reversing.

The climate is cyclical due to El Nino effects, the solar cycle, and so on, so this is incredibly ill conceived. A running five year average is a better way to go, though given that the solar cycle is about 11 years, even that isn't perfect.

The earth has continued to warm. The last five years have shown a slight pause because of a couple of slightly colder years, but there's no reason to believe this is anything other than a temporary slowing. The long term graphs, especially if you include all of the 20th century, clearly show the earth is warming, and continues to warm.

I think you haven't been paying attention.

Take a look at this AnandTech review for one example.

Intel has been making great strides in GPU performance, especially for notebooks. This is probably primarily driven by Apple, but if you ignore the 4x MSAA problems, it's quite competitive with an nVidia 650m. And I've heard they're working on some pretty big improvements in Skylake.

Technologies like Crystalwell, and the amount of die space Intel is committing to this these days, make Intel a much more credible competitor for AMD and nVidia. Intel isn't going to unseat nVidia and AMD's dedicated graphics from the high-end gaming throne any time soon, but they're clearly angling for the mid-range market now whereas before, they were only after the lower end market. And given their significant power and thermal advantages, they've already got a pretty compelling offering.

No, it is not trivial to go from a non-root user to a root user, at least in a properly secured system. That requires local root exploits such as these. This is the whole basis for running daemons as non-privileged users. Even if Apache has an exploit, if it's running as a dedicated, non-privileged user, you can't get root on the system.

Local root exploits are serious, though obviously not as serious as a remote remote exploit. It's also true that they are usually easy to come by on unpatched systems. But your claim that it's trivial to go from a non-privileged user to a privileged one is incorrect.

Your ideas about security are wrong, and you are missing the first rule of holes: when you find yourself in one, stop digging.

Hey now. He didn't say it was edited for the better.

The linked article refers to a start button, not a start menu. Furthermore, it would be odd indeed for Microsoft to add new features between the preview builds and the final build. The point of the preview builds, after all, is to test the real build. Adding a start menu at this juncture would be extremely strange from a software qualification perspective.

Also, if Windows 8.1 were adding a start menu, you'd think Microsoft would say so in their Windows 8.1 feature list.

Furthermore, from the Microsoft Windows 8.1 Product Guide:

With new desktop enhancements, including the new Start button, workers can easily transition between the Start screen and the desktop. IT professionals can also customize the Start button to open the Apps view, which provides a complete list of installed apps. This list can be reordered by category, date, or name, and desktop apps can appear at the front of the list. Windows 8.1 can also boot right to the desktop. In fact, you can start directly in any view– the Start screen, Apps view, the desktop, or even a single app.

Note that Apps view is not the start menu. Rather, it's the Start Screen's Apps screen. I.e. this.

Funny that when I upgraded my laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 8, the video stopped working, as did the accelerometer, and the bluetooth controller. Fixing the drivers required completely uninstalling all video drivers and reinstalling them. Even now, I've been unable to upgrade the video drivers in that computer past that one version I have working because new drivers cause it to BSOD.

And then, masochist that I am, I upgraded my desktop computer. The sound didn't work anymore. Popped the sound card out and plugged it into my Linux desktop. Wouldn't you know, it worked fine. Reinstalled the driver. No go. Some people claim it's a problem with SoundBlaster sound card drivers on a machine that has a flash hard drive. But apparently it worked fine in Windows 7. I ended up having to use the built-in sound on that computer.

None of this is to say that Linux is perfect and Windows is horrible. All in all, I've had more weird-ass hardware problems on Linux. But Windows is definitely not the panacea you make it out to be. I remember even as far back as upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP, the video card I had at the time didn't work at all on the new OS. There's a reason Microsoft publishes tools for checking if new versions of Windows will work with your hardware and software. It's because their shit stinks, too.

Basic logic fail. Go look up the fallacy, "Denying the antecedent."

pendantically childish

I don't know if that was intentional, but I choose to believe it was for the hilarity.

It's an organization dedicated to subverting the law and what made you not trust them was an absurd prank about moving their servers to North Korea?

Aside from the plethora of religions with NO deity, Christianity (one of the biggest religions) see the problem as being oneself-- that is, the responsibility is being shifted nowhere but inward.

You say he's the ignorant one? Tell me again who, in Christianity, forgives sins? The person who was the victim of whatever sin was committed? No?

Who is it who "paid for all our sins"? That was me, I guess? My responsibility again?

And by what means is it that I'm saved? Salvation is through the self, right? No?

Where is this responsibility, again? Perhaps you might want to look into the difference between responsibility and submission. All Christianity teaches is that you can do nothing by yourself and you have to rely on Jesus for everything - forgiveness, salvation, knowledge. It is the opposite of taking responsibility. Perhaps if you weren't so steeped in your own bullshit, you'd understand that.