Not much else to do but agree. However, you should really give KDE4 another shot. Ever since KDE4.5 or so, it has been a fully-usable (albeit heavy) desktop environment. It's achieved the level of maturity and configurability I've always associated with the KDE3 line, and has added several features that are genuinely useful (such as window grouping, tiling support, a full semantic desktop, and several powerful UI scripting techniques), as well as the traditional KDE integration technologies. After some early 4.x struggles, I'm once again in love with the full KDE user experience.

I've done my tour of GNOME2, XFCE, KDE3, Enlightenment, xmonad, GNOME3, Unity, and KDE4, and I would, for primary desktop purposes, choose KDE4 without hesitation at the moment. Definitely worth giving it another shot if you haven't already.

So, as an aside, isn't the entire point of a tech aggregator to provide a technical summary? Not just copy and paste the article's summary... anyway...

FTFA:

In other words, Intel has added new capabilities to Clover Trail that allow enhanced power management, and Linux doesn't currently support it. Anyone who thinks that this will continue to be the case for much longer is a moron, especially if Intel continues to release its architecture datasheets, which we have no reason to think that they won't.

The article really says: It can't run Linux because there's no support for it in Linux, and there's no support for it because it's literally brand-new.

It really doesn't matter what I think. This is how the standard was designed and implemented, and IE using it in its current form is clearly abuse. Apache's solution not only restores the (admittedly little) value that the tag has. It's also one of the only ways Apache has to actually take a stand against MS's abuse.

If DNT ever does get worked into law such that ignoring it carries fines and/or legal penalties, then its value ceases to be derived solely from web sites' acknowledgement of a user's explicit request and, instead, becomes largely derived from the threat of financial penalties. This, being a much stabler source of "power" (although, you know, rights and all), would nullify Apache's argument for their response and they should (and, I would bet, would) remove their new behavior.

Until then, it is what it is, and their response is very justifiable under those conditions. MS has turned a well-intentioned standard based around a gentleman's agreement into a marketing bullet at the standard's expanse, and Apache is fighting back. Props to them.

This is not an attack on privacy. This is the only valid option.

If you look at the details of the Do Not Track Header, you'll see that there's not much to it. It's an optional HTTP header that represents the user's request not to be tracked. There is no mechanism to actually enforce this choice; any party can easily just ignore the header and track you regardless. The entire purpose of the header is to express a user's intent, and, therefore, the entire value of the header is derived from that intent.

It's like the "Baby on Board" car signs: If I place one in my car's windowpane, polite drivers should see that sign and grant me additional driving space and courtesies, and I may be able to drive in the carpool lane. Imagine, now, that everyone always puts that sign in their car by default because they want the additional driving space and courtesies. The value of my sign is significantly diluted; not only does standard driving operation make it impossible to honor those requests, but my own actual situation gets lost in the noise. Drivers will surely ignore the little yellow sign altogether, and it becomes worthless.

Unless "Do Not Track" is actually an explicit expression of a user's conscious intent, it will face the same hypothetical fate and become yet another ignored standard. Its only value is derived from its explicit intent, and Apache and Fielding are taking steps to ensure that the value is not compromised.

Came here to say this. There will always be a vacuum for leaking facilitators, especially with the vast-reaching scale of the Internet and strong cryptography and anonymization technologies, and it will always be filled. Even without Wikileaks, there are other sites like Cryptome. Hell, even Gawker's filling that role. Hell, here's a compiled list. With decentralized file-sharing sites, any torrent tracker or public file server can operate as a host for information. As Brand famously said, "Information wants to be free", and the "99%" of any country will continue to be hungry consumers of that information.

It doesn't matter if Assange wants to be a showman or douche things up. He doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. He's merely the current public face of a system that has always existed and will always continue to exist. You can't make an example out of a thing like that.

The Powers that Be aren't stupid. They have to know this. Our job as the Public is to systematically remove any alternatives that they have to being good and respectful to their fellow man, and leaking is a critical and and inevitable part of that mission. With the Internet, we are closer than ever to having the tools to actually accomplish this. This doesn't mean that all leaks are good and noble; it does, however, mean that we need to respect their role in making the world a better place. It also means that legislating against this inevitability is both futile and self-destructive in the short term.

Oh goodie, someone who talks like this...

Sounds like we've got it right this time, though! Assuming you're referencing Junk DNA, there's a world of difference between "no discernable function" and "superfluous". Additionally, even with an upper bound in DNA functional density, there's no reason to assume there isn't also an optimal upper bound to superfluous-to-functional DNA ratio. Adding a massive chunk of DNA to an organism is going to have some effect, you have to agree, and with no functional purpose there's very little evolutionary reason not to just whittle it down to nothing. After all, if there was actually a benefit to more superfluous DNA, evolution's had plenty of time to add it.

So, I guess, thanks for really not saying anything at all.

There is a lot of naiveté in this part of your response. First, "good enough" is a form of optimization; it's just an optimization across factors other than straight efficiency. Second, there is a cost to copying useless DNA, bacterial cell or not, and unless there is a benefit to offset the cost, an organism that sheds that DNA will be fitter than one that doesn't. If, for example, I stuffed a kilogram of extra DNA into your cell, it'd probably matter, even if you aren't bacteria. You're asserting, without any logic, that this cost fits into some magical "good enough" threshold you have just conjured. Cool threshold bro.

It's painfully obvious that my "what if it's already been done" statement was not referencing other synthetic human works, but rather the natural genome. Just a heads up, but your genes may be missing some padding around your Broca's Area expression ;)

It's a cool thought. Another possibility, though, is that evolution would, within a few (relatively speaking) generations, completely reject the the superfluous DNA as inefficient and/or unfit. Duplicating it costs energy and matter, and transcription errors and/or cross-gene sharing may actually ruin critical parts of the animal. Given evolution's tendency towards optimization, it seems almost inevitable that the information wouldn't survive in even the short (again, relatively-speaking) term.

Another independent (and conflicting) fun thought is: "what if it's already been done?" Would be cool if we were walking books :)

This does raise a worthwhile issue: I couldn't find anything in the article that says that the US requested that Demonoid be shut down for this meeting.

Now, the US Authorities are likely quite happy that it was shut down, but that's a different point. Doing something to please a trade partner isn't necessarily being its "bitch". People, corporations, and countries, the US included, suck up to each other all the time as a sign of respect, deference, and/or good faith and to gain a more favorable status. That sounds like what this is: the Ukraine knew that the US would view the move positively, so they did it as a gift to strengthen their status.

If the Ukraine knew that Obama loved candied walnuts and consequently brought him a few bags for the meeting, nobody would say that they were his "bitch". Just because this gift is despicable doesn't change that fundamental intention.

You sneaky jerk! Now I can no longer honestly say I've never used Bing.

Hepatitis C++? Hepatitis C#?

Objective Hepatitis C. *shudders*

Well here's the thing - assuming that they can, through some judicial voodoo, examine all of your computers and other systems, how could they ever hope to prove that you didn't have malware on your system at the time the alleged crime occurred that has since been removed (by itself or by you)? The burden of solid proof just seems impossible to meet.

As a quick follow-on regarding "preponderance of evidence" (and legal burdens of proof in general) mentioned in another post: If I'm infected with a downloader malware, or if I have an open WiFi point, I could argue that this points to the likely scenario being that I didn't download anything illegally.

In the case of downloader malware, if someone finds stolen art in my basement, and, upon further investigation, discovers that someone else has built a hidden tunnel into my basement and used that area to store tons of stolen art, no person in their right mind would say that I likely stole that one specific piece of artwork.

In the case of an open WiFi access point, if a car used in a hit-and-run was found parked in a parking garage amidst several other random cars, no person in their right mind would say (by that fact alone) that it's likely the parking garage owner committed the hit-and-run.

I suppose all pirates should self-infect with some malware and run open access points just for plausible deniability. Sandboxed, of course...

So in all of these cases, as a technical person, I can't help but wonder how they're connecting an IP address to positive evidence of a specific person's deliberate action. There are countless plausible scenarios where a person can own a number (IP address) involved in a crime and yet not themselves be aware of or involved in said crime. Some examples are:

• The defendant has (or had) an open WiFi access point at the time. The crime was committed by someone who used that connection.
• The defendant has (or had) a secure WiFi access point with bad credentials at the time. The crime was committed by someone who guessed those credentials.
• The defendant has (or had) a secure WiFi access point with secure credentials. The crime was committed by someone who obtained those credentials (overheard them, password reuse, friend-of-a-friend, etc.).
• One of the defendant's computers is (or was) infected by malware at the time, and the malware performed the crime on behalf of someone else.
• The defendant's IP address was spoofed by an employee at the defendant's ISP who was the actual party committing the crime.
• The defendant was tricked into executing commands resulting in the crime on their system without knowing what those commands were doing (jerk tech-support guy, etc.).
• The defendant's system performed the crime without the defendant's knowledge during routine execution of third-party content (Flash, Javascript) laced with malicious code.
• A friend or associate of the defendant performed the crime using the defendant's systems without the defendant's knowledge or permission.

In all of these scenarios, the crime could have been committed without any knowledge of the defendant. In some of these scenarios, the defendant has little-to-no chance to detect or thwart the crime. How does any lawyer convince any judge or jury that the person on trial committed a crime in light of this?

From a defensive point of view, what is the minimum number of compromises that one should run in their own network to provide themselves with sufficient plausible deniability from this type of thing?

• Can you prove I didn't have an open WiFi enabled at the time, or that my password was bad? What if I reset my router's logs daily?
• Can you prove I didn't have malware? What if I sold a computer recently - it must have been infected, since all of the ones you confiscated aren't - and wiped the disk prior?
• Can you prove someone didn't use my computer without my permission? What if I didn't have a password on it and frequently left it lying around work?

Furthermore, from an activist's point of view, imagine someone built a malware variant that monitored browser usage (Google, Facebook, etc.) for movie names and automatically downloads movie titles that were mentioned to a secret directory? I've now got a piece of malware that automatically, without any user knowledge or intervention, downloads illegal files that that user is interested in. What if the malware downloads new movie releases instead by monitoring public release knowledge bases for titles? Is being infected by such a malware enough for innocence? If enough people are thusly infected would the entire concept of using IP subpoenas for prosecution fall apart?

Just food for thought. I'd really like to know how someone can be held criminally-liable unless the prosecution caught them using the illegal file or captured an attributable confession.

He is technically correct, assuming that the act of "GUID allocation" involves the correct use of a valid GUID generation algorithm by the software in question. That said, as you noted, it's remarkably easy to spoof such a GUID (in this case). His statement implies that a GUID positively identifies a user, which it does not, and is thus a misleading statement.