But the about-face today speaks to the seriousness of the vulnerability...

No, it speaks to the seriousness of letting 30% of the PC user base twist in the wind, and start thinking about 2020 when the same thing will happen to 7, and maybe start browsing the Apple stores.

Actually, 3.1 doesn't include Internet Explorer either, so it's not vulnerable.

Those AOL 3.0 floppies (which is what most people used before Win95) had a custom version of IE. I'm not too worried though, even though I mess with Win 3.1 a lot myself, the malware's 32 bit API calls to modify the registry won't work, not even under Win32s.

When I think of Peter, I think of someone who is put-upon in school.

When I think of Gwen Stacy, I think of someone way too intelligent to have anything to do with the jock who was picking on Peter.

Makes me wonder why you think that's a valid response. The equivalent would be if Columbus just floated in a circle half a mile from the coast of Spain, never brought back anything of any value, but kept yelling about how everyone in Spain will die if they don't build more boats. That's the Nutter "logic".

Great business model though, Columbus getting Queen Isabella to dip into the treasury to fund experiments studying the reproductive habits of various salamanders while underway off the coast. The only thing Columbus would have to worry about is some upstart named "Sea-X" convincing Isabella that unfettered capitalism is much more efficient and patriotic than having Spanish taxpayers shell out (no pun intended) for a socialized sea program, and getting a contract to deliver salamanders to the Sea Station using funds executed off the very same Accounts Payable.

Does assembly teach "bad programming habits"? JMP looks like GOTO, smells like GOTO, it's GOTO.

Dragging out a case is not new.

I don't think this case was worth the risk of SCOTUS setting an accidental precedence. I'd like to think that SCOTUS was thinking along the same lines.

Putting the SCO in SCOtus since 2004. Just ask Pamela Jones

A world in the "habitable zone" of a class M dwarf star is only a few million miles away, orbiting in a matter of a few days. This means the planet will have a tidal lock, much like the Moon does with respect to the Earth. And that means the night will never end on one side of the world. And that, in turn, will make the dark side so cold the air will precipitate out as snow. Then the atmosphere will equalize, and snow again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ribbon worlds are airless worlds. Forget about Earth 2.0.

Agreed. For one, I hoped that Microsoft was took over by a woman, which could mean that finally someone who cares about the look-and-feel is in control of the company

Because everyone knows us'uns womenfolk are all touchy-feely. That's the ticket. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer just would not stop and ask for directions.

Why would you buy a PC from HP? The amount of crapware on the laptop we got for my wife several years ago was downright pathetic...

1. Buy a Win8x box.
2. Execute the free "Downgrade" to Win7, which won't run the 8x crapware, because in HP's own words, "Windows 7 will not be supported on these new platforms, and no drivers, apps, or Windows 7 content will be available through HP."
3. ????
4. Profit

I'm not much interested in Hollywood versions of classic books, ever since Peter Jackson took a book that is much shorter than any of the books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and stretched it out to what promises to be a trilogy in it's own right. The Will Smith "I, Robot" has almost nothing to do with Asimov's stories. If Hollywood brought the notoriously talky Foundation Trilogy to the screen it would have nine films, be crammed with CGI fleets slamming into one another, the Mule would be more physically intimidating than Sauron and Arkadia Darrell would have bigger tits and ass than Beyonce.

...formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like "amplituhedron"...

LaForge: "Captain, the amplituhedron flux is below seventy percent, we risk a core breach!"

Picard: "Initiate technobabbatron purge! Engage!"

They should do #1 anyway. Stardock already figured out how to run Metro apps on the desktop, and having that option would dramatically help adoption in corporate settings.

What galls people is they have to add aftermarket software just to make the Win8 UI acceptable. It's like getting a brand new car, and having to take it to a garage so they can make the left pedal work as the brake and the right pedal work as the accelerator again.

I misread the other candidate, Julie Larson-Green, as Julie Green Lantern. I think that would be an even better publicity generating name.

Microsoft would win a ribbon for that pick.

Make it illegal to send a text if you know the recipient is driving. Now you gotta prove to a court of law that the sender knew. But it's easy to prove the driver was texting by checking phone records. But no, we don't want to do that, because it would imply making it illegal to text while driving.

Microsoft got burned by all those developers bad mouthing Win8 for months before it came out, which killed sales, and they won't let that happen again. It's a Google conspiracy, you see. Because Win8 is actually a great OS. Who doesn't want to sit in the office all day swiping tiles until their arm breaks off? It's good for your triceps.