Shame on them? The NSA is one of the principal funders of pure mathematical research. It was their dollars that created almost all of the encryption algorithms. Most of this research has no goal or direction from the NSA, it's block grants given based on the idea. The program isn't much different than what DARPA used to do with their pure research dollars where they had a group that threw money and anything regardless of application by the military then had a second group that put their money at only targeted research that would yield weapons or defense.

The fact is the NSA funds a LOT of pure theoretical research in mathematics, just because any of it could one day be used to create or break encryption or fit some other NSA need doesn't mean the research isn't valuable to society as a whole.

If the devil payed you to successfully research a method to eliminate poverty would you do take his money?

The is slashdot. Science has no place in speculation!

WE get a pretty UI... Yay!

Because those damn show stopper bugs in Calc are not important. nobody really wants to have an accurate spreadsheet over pretty icons and UI redesign!

By the way, now that I re-read this during a spare moment and once again think about it, I can again respond to you in what I hope to be a worthy way, yet this time focus on a different dimension of the thing at hand.

I would ask you to consider, simply, this other and possibly alien point of view: the "name-calling" types are simply enacting the lower (or if you like, "gutter") form of an idea that is nonetheless technically true. The name-callers are merely those who recognize this but also have a need to make you look worse in order that they know better, or otherwise focus on what they think is wrong with you, with little or no serious constructive suggestion concerning what precisely is wrong with your view and how better to regard the situation. Liike the thinking individuals, they see what the problem is; otherwise, they lack the clarity and objectivity to identify the problem and suggest a sensible solution. By contrast, they're simply bitching. But even those people are correctly identifying that somethng is amiss. They're just the least clever and easiest to ridicule among those who all arrive at the same conclusion.

The issue as I'm sure you know isn't "opened", but rather "opened within a certain length of time." Obviously given unlimited time you can get into anything, and you probably can get into an ATM a lot faster than a decent safe. But once you have the explosion routine down pat, you can probably be away with the ATM money in *seconds*. In terms of practicality and low risk, that's hard to beat.

Well, we have a ways to go before we lead the world in government corruption, but we're world class when it comes to petty political venality.

Free markets don't remain free without regulation.

Monopoly is the usual result of business in which there are high capital costs to enter the market. Local residential service of any sort that requires stringing wires or pipes to individual homes is so ridiculously capital intensive that it is a natural monopoly. Without regulation that market will become a Monopoly naturally and that monopoly will then begin to abuse it's position to displace and harm other business.

As others have noted, internet is the new phone service. It's almost impossible these days to function without internet, that includes finding and maintaining a job, educating your children etc. But there is big money that opposes the regulations this will inspire because there is big money to be made abusing those monopolies, particularly now that regulations that prevented these companies from controlling media systems are now gone. These monopolies can now use their position to prevent the rise of competitors to content offerings which would provide competition to their business. In time they will use the position to leverage themselves into other markets.

There is nothing wrong with TOR other than not enough people are providing capacity. The biggest reason the government can attack TOR is that the number of relays and nodes is so pathetically small as to make it trivial to attack it for a large well funded organization. And your suggestion is to reduce the effectiveness of TOR even more AND put your trust in a system in which the developers themselves can't guarantee it's secure because it's never been audited, unlike TOR, and operates on the exact same principles and methods.

You sir are a fool.

Of I2P, freenet, Tor and all the others TOR is the only one with good financial backing and an audited codebase that more than 3 people have looked at. I2P on the other hand is built on Java with literally one developer and is even smaller of a network, and likely suffers the exact same weaknesses as TOR, the most important of which is that the smaller the number of machines connected the easier it is to crack and track the network encryption and routing.

Replaceable battery? Why? this is not 1998 where batteries only last a year or two. I haven't replaced a laptop battery in 4 years. and it STILL holds 95% capacity.

Dammit, Why do all laptop makers think that nobody does real work on their laptops. 17" 4K display in as small of a body as possible.

GIVE IT TO ME!!!!

It's older gear that is not that expensive. Not bad, but not exactly bleeding edge.

I'm not criticizing; this is more than I've donated to the cause.

How common are datacenter fires? The last time I heard about a computer catching fire was more than 20 years ago, and the fire was minor and didn't spread to adjacent equipment.

I suspect the battery stacks, generator fuel, or high current wiring for delivering electricity would be some points of greatest risk.

Theft is not that common in above ground datacenters, either; the facilities are serious about physical security. It is probably due to the same reason the facility is underground in the first place and why people would like to colocate something underground --- higher security, lower risk tolerance compared to applications for traditional datacenters.

Protection against fire is just another physical security issue being addressed. Without the low-O2.... the risk of damage to equipment by fire would be perceived to be higher in an underground facility with closed and confined spaces than an aboveground facility; less freedom of air to move = potentially greater risk over time of wearing out electrical systems that malfunction and overheat at risk of causing a flame to ignite.

Also, being underground, there would be no easy firefighter access.

That's because there is a limit to how many times they can lie to people, blatantly and without remorse, before the people stop trusting them. My grandparents grew up during a time when this went on, like it does today, but not nearly as much and was not well known (consider Hoover's FBI, or the involuntary radiation exposure experiments carried out against black people, or the use of the CIA to overthrow democratically elected foreign leaders). They saw it as a matter of honor or duty to have trust and faith in the republic and the leaders its processes have put there. That's been shattered and won't be repaired any time soon.

In the personal realm, most people become suspicious of everything someone says after the very first confirmed deliberate deception. The amazing part is that government is given so many chances, that people are so impressed with official symbols and pomp and circumstance that they would ever believe known liars who have never faced any serious consequences for their deceptions.