You aren't the last person using RSS, but you and all the rest of the people still using RSS are gearheads, and they don't want gearheads. They'd much rather have the type of people that think Twitter can serve the same purpose.

Read the statement from Clem in the summary. Linux Mint updates just as fast as Ubuntu on most things, but has certain updates that could potentially crash otherwise stable machines disabled as a default. If you are really concerned about these to avoid vulnerability, they are easy to enable. Nothing about Linux Mint updates are slow after you enable them.

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu (or Debian). Ubuntu is based on Debian. Gentoo and LFS are an entirely different branch of the distro family tree.

I don't know if this will take off, but if it fails it won't be because it repeated the failure of 3D television. 3D television had one huge drawback that this doesn't: no special glasses needed to watch. Who wants make the centerpeice of the new entertainment system something that takes $150 per person to show off at a Super Bowl party?

I'm reluctant to say current HDTV is good enough, because there was a time I thought SDTV was good enough and HDTV was a waste of money. Now I have two HDTVs and get annoyed when a football game I want to watch is only available in SD. But seeing as most of the early adopters for this type of thing would have relatively recently dropped a lot of money upgrading to pretty good HDTVs that still work great, I'm skeptical it'll take off. But even if the 4K content is limited at first, those 4K early adopters will be able to have large gatherings to show off their purchases.

Google doesn't even try to make money on Android, so that question shows how much you miss the point. Google makes money on web services, and the goal of Android was to have tons of smartphones connected to their services constantly. Android has been very successful at that, along with making sure they aren't beholden to Apple in order to do it. Although I'm sure Google would prefer people used Android over the iPhone, it doesn't really matter to them as long as they are using both platforms to connect to Google services. Platform doesn't matter, profits are still profits.

Potential big difference I see: With Windows 8, you're mostly stuck with the touchscreen interface outside of a few plugins that can hack it into something not completely unusable on desktop. On the other hand, the open source nature of Android makes it possible for OEMs to update the interface to something more like a traditional desktop. We've already multiple OEMs and third-party launchers change the basic interface for Android phones and tablets, it probably wouldn't be that difficult to make a new interface designed for the desktop. Although given the general dislike for OEM skins, it remains to be seen if those interfaces are useful.

But the whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution....

Except when I disagree with how they are exercising their powers, then they are shutting down the government.

What more do I ask? A good product in an unencumbered format at a reasonable price. They're never going to fully stop piracy, so all this wrangling over mucking up the standards is pointless. But as the music industry showed, you don't need it if you make purchasing and using the product more painless than downloading illegal versions. But I guess that's a pipe dream since execs would rather try to squeeze consumers for every last penny than make purchasing and using the product painless.

Except this change still doesn't describe what the big players are doing. All it does is standardize a call to DRM binaries without any standardization of what those binaries do. It in no way describes what the big players are doing in these binaries, meaning we are still going to be left downloading closed proprietary plugins that are only available for supported platforms. Since one of the main goals of HTML5 was to get rid of the plugin mess that was necessary to play media on the web, this is a backwards step that solves nothing.

I did not read anything in the improvement list that solves why people didn't want the old versions. Just improved specs, but a faster tablet no one wants is still a tablet no one wants. What is going to prevent this from being another billion dollar loss? Building fewer upfront so they don't have to throw as many away?

I've thought about the same thing, but doesn't the phone need to be unlocked for NFC to work? (at least on Android, which is what I'm assuming you're talking about since you mention Tasker). I've seen some mods to get around this, but they never worked on my GNex.

IIRC MIT took it over. I believe this is its current incarnation.

If you are really that worried about your grandmother or anyone else stealing your passwords and using them maliciously, maybe you shouldn't give them access to your computer under your account? Or maybe not store your passwords in the browser on a computer that you're loaning to people that would use them for harm if they can?

Are you sure about that? I thought Apple created and patented their own non-standard pentalobe screws and only sells the screwdrivers to Apple techs. It was specifically designed to not work with the screwdrivers available for camera repair or at Ace Hardware. There are many standard screws which are just as high-quality as the Apple pentalobe, going this route only serves to hinder any unauthorized "tampering" with the devices.

I guess I can never underestimate the spin Apple fans will go through to argue that Apple's user-hostile policies are actually good for you.