FreeDOS was also a popular way to do firmware updates because it gets you to a well known state that's single tasking and nothing could interrupt the process. Especially nice was it was small and you could put it on a floppy with tons of space for your firmware and other things.

Though nowadays, since most people don't boot from floppies, they now use Linux based update software - sure it's multitasking, but it's a nice controlled Linux environment to do stuff in. Especially since it doesn't have to all fit in a 1.44MB floppy - a thumbdrive or CD will let you easily a large amount of space so you can even have multiple updaters so the user only needs to download one huge "do it all" that figures out what needs updating over downloading and making a half dozen update disks hoping to have the right model and revision.

And especially these days where DOS drivers are getting fewer and farther between, if you need drivers (e.g., SATA drivers), you're more likely to find it in Linux than in DOS. So for those things like SSD firmware updates, a Linux boot drive will likely be able to talk to most SATA controllers without the user needing to reconfigure their PC. For the leftovers, they can try using legacy mode, but the number of people who need it are far fewer.

FreeDOS is almost never used for production - they have specialized boot images running Windows or whatever, then just wipe it with the final OS image

Canadian IT head here. Just spent the morning reading over the law that this is in knee-jerk reaction to. I think Microsoft's reaction is warranted. According to the new law, a company can be charged up to 10 Million dollars for an infraction (read single email) of un-solicited email. The law is poorly formed, and not well thought out, as well as lengthy and vague enough to create a broad swatch of culpable people.

What it boils down to is this. If you send an un-solicited email to someone you have not done business with in the last 2 years, and they have not opted in before and, and they believe your email to be spam, boom, you are culpable. Also if you install software on someone's computer without explicit, but easy to understand examples of what the software is/does you can also be held culpable.

And you know how people fix it? They dump their mailing lists and ask people to sign up again.

Yes, I've gotten about 40 of those emails asking me to sign up or bye-bye. Good! I re-signed up for 2 honest ones I really couldn't live without. And out of those 40 of them? Well, most of it was list sharing since they happened at work.

Sure, it means your 30,000+ member mailing list gets trolled down to 1,000 or less. But that's a GOOD THING. A lot of people gave up unsubscribing years ago, and I'm sure as companies merged and separated that mailing lists got munged up.

If you're so worried about it, all you need to do is dump your complete mailing list collection and start anew. Then implement double-opt-in, and expiry dates in your mailing lists.

It's not hard. At our company, we simply sent out one last email that said "Please sign up for our mailing list" and detailed that because of the law, we're deleting the entire mailing list and starting afresh, and if you want to receive the emails, just click to join and double-opt-in. Put in a 2 year timer on them to ask them to do it again in 2016, and you're done.

If you're worried about emailing someone you haven't done business in two years? Don't put them on your mailing list EVER. Have a checkbox that simply invites them to your mailing list.

It's not hard. Dump your current list. Add a timer to every email address on when they signed up. Then do double-opt-in and you're done.

Whine whine whine, they gave me an email on the order form and I can't market to them!? Good. If they wanted, they could sign up! They gave you an email address for the order to send them status updates on the order not for putting on the "what's hot this week" list.

All email a company produces in Canada form this point on have to include a link in the bottom or ability to opt out of all future email.

What's wrong with that? If I don't want your email, I most likely don't want all your email. I don't care for your weekly specials, your yearly specials, your weekly sales on computer parts, your email catalog of discounts, etc. One click should get me out of all of those. And no BS "your request will be handled in 3-4 weeks" - this is the 21st century. If you can add me in 10 seconds, you can remove in 10 seconds. You don't have to send it ot the CEO to approve.

Companies are whining because the rules mean they can't do a lot of crap anymore. I'm sure most of the people on that Microsoft list no longer work in a way that makes it relevant anymore to them, they were just lazy to remove themselves and clicking delete is a lot quicker than trying to find out how to unsubscribe.

Hell, I bet it also removes a lot of auto-spam from the list. Remember why most mailing lists end up on antispam lists? Because it's easier to click the "Spam" button on your email client, GMail, Hotmail, etc.

So no more adding me to your marketing mails because I happened to place an order with you for one item only you sell in Canada, that I might need again in 5 years.No more unbounded email list growth - prune it, and prune it aggressively (the built int timer helps - if they don't do anything after two years, to be honest, you probably ended up on their auto-delete spam filter after 6 months). And no more blatant list misuse. You merged with another company? Well hell, start it afresh in your announcement email. Companies shouldn't be acquired for their marketing lists, after all.

That reminds me of this post by Brian Krebs. How hard would these things be to set up with some nefarious device that installs a Trojan on any phone that connects? I imagine a well-crafted overlay panel wouldn't be too hard to put on one of these things, or they could come by at night and just install it internally. Sounds too dangerous to me, I think they're going to find this is more trouble than it's worth.

Except I'm fairly certain the vast majority of Android and iOS devices now ask for permission before they allow this. I think it was added somewhere in Android 4.2 or 4.3, and in iOS6 - they ask you if they trust the computer on the other end (yes, you can tell if it's a computer or a charger). If no, they stop negotiation and go dumb.

Who ever said that the IRS definition for the purposes of taxation is the correct one to apply to a RFRA claim over contraception?

I highly doubt that the Waltons would qualify, given that billions of dollars of WalMart stock is held and traded publicly.

The opinion restricts itself to "closely-held corporations" (a phrase used dozens of times) rather than /all/ corporations. They don't define with precision what that exactly means -- that kind of drudgery is the domain of the lower courts -- they did point out that Hobby Lobby is privately held by a small number of folks from the same family. It would seem clear to infer that "closely-held" is sort of an antonym to "publicly-held" here, so I think there's virtually no chance any lower court would allow Wal Mart or Exxon to assert a RFRA claim.

Now, since companies under 100 employees are already exempt from most of PPACA, the net net of this only covers the rare company that simultaneously large enough to be hit by the mandate but still owned closely enough to merit RFRA protection. In other words, not too many in the scheme of things.

[ Full Disclosure: I don't support what Hobby Lobby believes, I think they deserve to lose on the merits. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to make a molehill into a mountain for rhetorical or fundraising purposes. ]

We must go even further than that. We must entirely eliminate all carbon and carbon-containing compounds from the earth's biosphere. Otherwise, oxidation of organic compounds will once again result in the release of CO2.

As a side effect, doing so will eliminate all danger of young children dying due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Think of the children!

But are you happy with the way that iPhoto pulls all your images into one gigantic database, which (a) gradually swallows up your entire computer and (b) a corrupt library means you have lost ALL your images.

Actually, the original photos are still fine even if the database is corrupted. The iPhoto database is just a folder, and inside are the main iPhoto database where it's indexed everything. Also inside it are your original photos, untouched, and I believe the modified ones.

So no, your photos are always safe, you may lose the index and I believe option-clicking iPhoto will let you rebuild a corrupted database.

Apple is a lot of things, but being completely idiotic isn't one of them.

Oh... bullshit. There were almost 6 times as many Android devices sold last quarter than iOS. How are we still propagating the "Android is for geeks" line?

Because Androids are cheap as crap. As in free.

Google said they had 1B unique Android devices in the last 30 days. I'm pretty sure the top-shelf flagship phones sold int he past couple of years total under 100M (the SGS4 sold around 50M as of October 2013, and the SGS5 is probably around 20M so far).

So less than 10% of Androids sold in the past two years are flagships, of the 1B unique devices that Google recorded last month.

That means the rest of the phones are the free or crap phones that have crappier screens, crappy processors, or crappy RAM. Or what people get for $50 and under.

The people who buy the LG are the build-your-own-PC crowd. The people who buy Androids are ones who see iPhones, see the price tag, and gets the carrier salesperson to sell them a "works like an iPhone but it's FREE!" deal.

Heck, I'm sure people will run to the store, see the LG, see the price tag, then just get the salesperson to sell them "works just like the LG, but it's FREE" phone.

(Though, who buys a phone on the cusp of 64-bit ARMs? The reason the iPhone 5/5s is so fast is because of the ARMv8 architecture...).

If you're going to Canada first then the US, you're in luck because there's a really easy SIM to get for Canadians heading South.

It's called Roam Mobility and they're a US MVNO that sells their SIMs in Canada (if you're on the west coast, head into a London Drugs store, go to the cell department and ask to buy a Roam Mobility SIM.

If not, they do sell the SIMs online. It's a fairly nice option for Canadians heading to the US for days, weeks or a month. And it's pretty much no-questions-asked - you just buy the SIM and activate it online for however long you need.

In Canada, well, prepaid generally is a bigger bother - while you can buy SIMs by heading to a store, they aren't too happy about selling them (less money for them). As an earlier poster said, you probably want to use Wind or Mobilicity if you can (if you do Wind, pay for the US package and you can roam in the US as well, which isn't too bad a deal)., but you will need a phone that can do AWS (e.g., the iPhone 5/5s can, last I checked, as well as the other regular bands). They can sell you one, but beware that unlocked ones like Nexus phones are WILDLY overpriced (I've seen a Nexus 4 be almost $600 - yes, you could walk into an Apple Store and get the iPhone 5. The Nexus 4 sold for around $250 or so off Google Play). But that's only if your current phone doesn't do AWS (I mention the iPhone 5 because it does, as well as regular bands from other carriers. I do know that there often are special AWS models of popular Android flagships like the SGS3 (a friend tried to activate one and couldn't because it didn't do AWS), and I think the Nexus 4 couldn't either unless you got the special one.)

Oh, and no carrier, despite having the "no contract price" on the phone will ever sell you a handset for that price unless you actually were in a contract and wanted an out-of-sync upgrade. Other than Wind or Mobilicity, who are prepaid services, that is. (As I'm no longer in a contract, well, it means my phone options in Canada are limited to Apple if I wanted in-store service, or Google if I wanted to put up with Google Play (bleh - I got burned badly with the Nexus 7 when I could buy it retail for cheaper, and have it sooner than when Google finally fulfilled my order! I mean, I could walk into a store and buy one, or order it online for free shipping and have it in my hand a couple of weeks sooner (stupid UPS)).

2600 is a business with plenty of history and should have lots of proof they're doing OK, if that is in fact the case. Getting a line of credit to make up for the lost issue or two shouldn't remotely be a problem...which means one of three things: they're not doing "quite well", they're incompetent, or they are, in fact, trying to take advantage of the community.

The problem is, the magazine industry, much like the newspaper industry, isn't doing all that great. And niche publications like 2600 aren't doing that great either. First, they don't take advertising, which means if you've actually shopped 2600, it's among the more expensive publications out there for what you get on the surface. It's actually very high priced.

Second, it's not like they're a mainstream magazine - while you can probably find them at Barnes and Noble, they're not really available elsewhere other than at a specialist magazine retailer (mostly again, from a cost and audience perspective).

Third, well, the information in it you can probably find it online, like most other computer and information technology magazines. And that is killer. Most other computer related magazines have stopped printing a deadtree edition for that reason.

Finally, while they have gone electronic, I'm not sure if their distribution is all that great - I see them on B&N, I don't know about Amazon as I don't use Amazon for ebooks.

Their distribution in the end isn't that big - I have to look it up, but every magazine sent through the USPS as media mail has to have a distribution panel in it where it describes how many issues were printed, sold (broken out by subscriptions and retail sales), returned, and pulped. I'm fairly certain it isn't a huge number - perhaps 10,000 or so issues per quarter. That isn't a lot of money after printing and other costs.

Basically they've been the victim of the internet age.

I'd *love* to have a prehensile tail. How many times have you wished for an extra hand?

Have the sensual / sexual implications and possibilities not begun to dawn on you?

And besides I already have two hands, a third grasping appendage with a different set of strengths and weaknesses would add more options.

OK, maybe they have.

Do I feel the need to flag the next thousand adverts I'm sent as being repetitive, sexually explicit and misleading, in alternating sequence? And then look to see if anyone I know has done anything interesting that I didn't know about. Then log out again for another couple of months.

Web 2.0? Yeah. Right.

WTF are you, AC spewing out of your hole?

The Nazis didn't outsource the creation of Enigma to the Americans. They brought it from the Poles (who had already broken it and given the keys to the British). Or something like that.

Speaking as someone who has spent years doing gas analyses in the oil industry (i.e. I have spent a lot of time thinking "that's a lot of flammable material ; if we handle this wrong, I may die."), and who recently had to shave his beard off (5 years of lovely growth) due to poison gas concerns on a well I was drilling offshore (nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide) ...

I'm not particularly happy about "Joe Sixpack, Car Mechanic" working with hydrogen, because it is a bastard for leaks. A thorough-going bastard.

And I'm not terribly ecstatic about a fairly nasty gas like ammonia sitting around by the ton in tanks maintained by Joe Sixpack's brother. (I once broke a carbouy of 880 ammonia solution in water - and had spend hours cleaning the laboratory out ; that is nasty stuff. But it's nowhere near the lethality of my beard-sacrificing gas, H2S.).

And I'm fully aware of the hazards of hydrocarbon fuels too - I get paid to find the damned things.

On balance, if the conversion efficiency were adequate, I suspect an ammonia storage with local (i.e. within the engine block, where Joe Sixpack uses his best tools and concentrates, with the manual in hand) formation of hydrogen for use, either in an IC engine or in a fuel cell, could well be the lowest risk outcome. It certainly bears looking at.

It took me 30 seconds searching to find a couple of dozen papers in this general field of research, by someone called "McElrath". I know that it may seem heretical to you near-7 digiters, but some people use their real names (or in my case, profession) here, and have done for approaching two decades now.