After I read TFA, I thought it might be a fun thing - like an XKCD version of Facebook. Then you mentioned Bit Strips, and my vision turned to horror.

God, I hate bit strips. Can't really say why, but it annoying really fast. I think it simply gave the masses yet another reason to say something stupid.

I'm be more interested to know if they shared their private key for SSL/TLS. Since Apple's Safari (to the best of my knowledge) does not support perfect forward secrecy (PFS), someone recording the encrypted session could later decode the session contents if they ever acquired the private key at any point in the future. The conversation might go like this:

NSA: "Hey, we won't bother you all the time with requests if you'll just give us a copy of your private key."
Apple: "Well, that would save us a bunch of time, effort and expense...but if the users ever discovered..."
NSA: "No worries. Just hand it over whenever you get a new one."
Apple: "Yeah, I guess we could point out we never give out the current one, only old keys we no longer use."
NSA: " Well, just deny it, saying you did not give out the current keys. You can leave out that little detail about the old keys."

I should point out that IE doesn't support PFS either, so Microsoft could be in the same boat. I think Chromium and Opera support PFS, but I'm not 100% certain.

(This is not my field of study, so if I have this wrong, I'd appreciate a correction.)

Because all you did is call him a nutjob. You've added nothing to the conversation, other than an insult.

That's not an Android fuck-up. That's the OEM's problem, and it has nothing to do with Android. I chose Nexus devices (4 and 7) to avoid this, as these are the devices Android was written for. For any non-Nexus device, you depend on the OEM for certain things that may or may not occur. As a Slashdot person, surely you know this, right?

I don't disagree. I'm not talking about IBM themselves, but executives outside the IT industry who don't understand the nuances of the PC market, and the whole concept of the FOSS movement. Those folks think Apple is doing it right with a closed garden, and were surprised that Android phones outsold Apple, Nokia and Microsoft.

My dad can't understand why people would buy a phone from that hippy (Jobs @ Apple), when you can get a phone from solid companies like Nokia and Microsoft. He thinks Google can't keep giving stuff away for free and it's all some huge con game - it just has to be.

The real issue is he is having a hard time recognizing the world has changed, and he needs to reevaluate his beliefs. Of course, he still thinks Japan copies everything from us and their cars are poor quality.

What's new here is the trend. Companies saw the RepRap project spawn a bunch of companies with a lot of compatibility from the start. Non-RepRap companies are seeing this as a threat to the investment they made using traditional methods (closed design, proprietary supplies and software).

Business people understand the IBM PC clone model. You had a market leader that everyone copied. The old-school thinking was they failed to protect their intellectual property, and lost market share to competitors who copied their design. In other words, they believe IBM could have kept nearly all the marked had they done a better job of keeping it closed, and bought Microsoft while they could.

RepRap and projects like it have upended that thinking. Arduino is seen as a component, not a product, by these people. But 3D printing is getting a lot of press, and business people are starting to take notice. When you create a 10 year plan, and can achieve a huge reduction in R&D spending, along with a reduction of risk, they take notice.

One of the concerns is the believe the a mature market only has room for two main competitors. That means you have a lot of losers. An open source machine makes it much more likely that your company will end up as one of the two majors, and that is a huge reduction of risk. This is becoming a hot topic among many executives. Many are somewhat scared and unsure what to do - if anything.

This is a bit unexpected. I've actually designed many products that are used to construct the grid, with several patents, so I have a bit of knowledge about it. Yet my post was modded flamebait. Wow - talk about shooting the messenger.

This is correct. The solution is not ready yet. People forget how bad pollution was with horses, and how much cleaner gas-burning cars were. A buildout of the current grid to handle electric cars is incredibly wasteful.

Solar isn't going to work for this. Nor fuel cells. There is a solution that will ultimately win. But it will take a radical change in the power distribution network. I'd love to go into detail, but I'm unable to for reasons I choose not to discuss.

Given the current state of the US electrical grid, I'm not confident it would fare well against a sudden increase of large battery packs being plugged in at once. Yeah, we can setup delayed or offset charging times, etc. But I'm not sure lawmakers or even the utility executives have a good grip on this.

But that might be the plan. A brownout would drive demand for the government to invest in the grid. Maybe.

But I'm not in a position to run the number, so I could be full of shit.

I think this is the SSD market maturing. For a while, Intel had good, but expensive drives. Then Intel stagnated for a while, as OCZ aimed to be the performance leader, but firmware issues and failed drives burned a bunch of us. Fast forward to today, and we see Samsung being very price aggressive with fast drives that are reliable. That's a perfect storm for OCZ.

Customer service was so bad, that I couldn't hear a word of their marketing.

Well said. Thanks you.

I'd like to add that this is also a dynamic range issue. B&W film has a dynamic range of about 10 stops. But Kodachrome (the only transparency file I've used extensively) is only about 5 stops. Shooting a very dark-skinned bride in a white dress was a challenge. My Nikon DSLR has about 12 stops of dynamic range, making my life much easier.

I guess Huawei will start marketing the advantage of their "Water Gap".

"Our jack-booted thugs are water-gaped from your USA facility, while the same cannot be said of our competitors."

Ok, I'm willing to trade an inch of room for free booze.

Thanks for posting. I've been thinking of trying this.