Not to defend it too much, since I agree that this is rather silly of Apple to have done, but we do need to remember that these hotspots are transient, and that for them to be attacked, an attacker would have to both know the location of one and when it will be there. That said, if someone were in a routine that an attacker was aware of, it would be fairly trivial to use this attack against them, and even if they generated a new password, they'd still face the issue again.

In response to your last question, treat it like Star Trek. Society will need to change so that rather than doing work for the sake of doing work/getting a paycheck, people will be doing work for the sake of personal fulfillment. In a society where machines can do all of the work, we'd save the tasks that we want to do for ourselves, be it exploring, inventing, researching, mastering, leading, or crafting. Through those jobs we would find new things that machines are ill-suited to handle, and in which people could flourish.

An analogy! Let me try: your argument is like a car: it doesn't understand what words mean.

Dud
a : one that is ineffectual; also : failure <a box-office dud>

Love it or hate it, the Apple II was a massive success, becoming one of the best-selling computers of its day thanks in large part to VisiCalc, its affordable price, and the wide availability of apps for it, which allowed it to become an important component of the PC revolution of the '80s. Suggesting that the Apple II was overpriced and outdated (as you did in an earlier comment) is preposterous and factually inaccurate, and suggesting it's a dud on the grounds of quality and value (as you did in your last comment) is irrelevant since those are only indirectly related to whether something is a dud (not to mention that those arguments make no sense in historical contexts). The only thing you got correct was that the volume discount being offered by Apple to educational institutions was, while aggressive, still nowhere comparable to the sort of dumping that we're seeing Microsoft do here.

Mmm...yes and no. Clearly, some roles for people involved in transporting materials won't be going away. For instance, delivery folks will still have the actual role of delivering the goods until we develop robots to remove packages from the truck, find the right door to knock on, and locate an alternative destination (e.g. the main office in an apartment complex) in case a recipient is not available to sign. So, it's unlikely that FedEx or UPS will be replacing their drivers anytime soon, since they'll still be paying them to actually deliver the goods.

Big rig truckers may be secure for at least awhile as well, simply because there aren't ubiquitous automated fuel pumps, and most regions switched to self-service fuel stations a long time ago, meaning that you still need someone who can refuel the vehicle. I'd imagine they could get around this problem fairly easily, simply by arranging for full service at stations along certain routes, but truckers do a lot more than just drive. They also make sure that their cargo remains secure as they're driving and things settle/shift, which is something that a self-driving truck would be ill-equipped to handle (e.g. imagine those big flat bed trucks with lumber on them and the trucker needing to tighten the straps or fasteners after a few hours of driving). To say the least, there would need to be additional safeguards in place.

But I'd imagine that cabs could easily be replaced by something like this. Swipe your credit card, punch in an address, and go. Same thing for school busses, where a student could swipe a card as they got on. Even stuff like USPS could be automated to some extent, since a number of routes have mailboxes that are accessible from the road, meaning that they could deliver the majority of letters or mail automatically, then send around a smaller number of vehicles on much longer routes with people in them to deliver packages or items requiring a signature.

Actually, my magic rock is what's helped to reduce the amount of terrorism in the U.S.. But, I'm afraid its magic is running out due to lack of finding. Perhaps you'd like to help fund my magic rock that keeps terrorists away? The government uses magic rocks too, but they toss in governmental jargon and slap acronyms on them to make it less obvious.

Normally I'd say, "Follow the money", but in this case, just ask yourself who benefits from all of this.

Entrenched publishers benefit from the destruction of the used games market.
Entrenched publishers benefit from phoning home regularly to confirm the license's legitimacy.
Entrenched publishers benefit from limiting your ability to share games with friends.
And entrenched publishers benefit from eliminating their competition's presence on the platform.

I'm not sure what Microsoft is getting out of this in exchange, since clearly Sony was able to keep things as they were. My best guess is that they caved under pressure from the publishers and fear that Sony would make this deal and thus secure the better exclusives. Maybe Microsoft did manage to secure some major exclusives from the major publishers that they think will make all of this bad PR fade away over time, but if they did, we haven't seen evidence of it yet. The only third-party published exclusives that have been announced so far are a new Plants vs. Zombies and Titanfall, both from EA. Literally every single other exclusive that's been announced for the One (e.g. Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, the new Halo, etc.) is being published by Microsoft Studios.

In contrast, Sony has already announced exclusives from Atlus, Blizzard, Capcom, Digital Extremes, Square-Enix, and also has a handful of indies with a proven track record on board (e.g. Jonathan Blow of Braid fame is making The Witness, Supergiant Games of Bastion fame are making Transistor, and the Octodad devs are bringing a new Octodad to the PS4).

Yup, but the situations are quite different. In contrast to MW2, which was an end to itself, the One is merely a means to an end (i.e. it's what you use to enjoy your entertainment, rather than itself being a form of entertainment).

In the case of MW2, the only available alternative was to abandon it (and your friends) completely and play something else, which is a hard pill for some people to swallow. In the case of the Xbox One, the obvious alternative is to simply play your game on the competing console that costs $100 less and comes with none of the draconian restrictions. Not to mention that the differences in distribution (digital vs. physical) and price ($60 vs. $500) might make it quite a bit easier for people to make impulse purchases in moments of weakness with MW2, and quite a bit harder to do the same with the One.

There's a big difference between (impotent) nerd rage and crafting antagonistic policies seemingly designed to alienate your core user base.

In the case of the rootkits, those were, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively small matter. They were only distributed on a small number of discs, were relatively simply removed eventually, and didn't have any long-term repercussions. We were rightly outraged, but we also have to admit that the issue never became a large one. It was a black eye, but other than people choosing to take a stand on principle, it didn't really preclude us from purchasing other CDs from Sony.

The Linux removal had longer-term repercussions, but it only affected a very small subset of the audience for the console. Definitely a dick move, but still not something worthy of generating general outrage in the broader community of gamers. We were, again, right in being outraged, but the only users it directly impacted were the extreme minority that were actually making use of Other OS.

In contrast to those, the policies for the Xbox One could be with us for the next 10 years and directly effect the primary audience for the device in an extremely negative fashion. They've created artificial limits on used games (sufficient enough to effectively destroy the market), artificial limits on sharing games, artificial limits on playing single player games (i.e. having to phone home daily), and on top of all that have yet to promise that any of our games (even the single players ones!) will work after the console has reached its end of life and the phone home servers have stopped responding. And all of that is before you even consider the concerns over privacy that now exist since the Kinect 2 has a built-in microphone and is required to be connected in order for the device to turn on or function: concerns which have taken on a whole new meaning in light of the PRISM leak.

The Internet definitely has a short memory, but this seems to be an issue that won't go away unless Microsoft outright changes its policies. The broader gaming community is up in arms over this, as opposed to it just being a geeky issue. As evidence, GameFAQs ran some polls recently which might indicate the current thoughts of gamers, leading up to and after E3.

Before E3 when they asked do you plan to buy a One?, only 5% indicated they would. The next day when they asked the same question of the PS4, about 40% indicated they planned to buy a PS4. So, before E3 the One was clearly out of favor among gamers, but that was to be expected, since MS' debut presentation barely showed any games at all, with them promising that the games would be shown at E3.

Indeed, MS' E3 presentation was very gaming focused and was clearly aimed at addressing the perceived deficiency in games, so, since E3 is one of the most important platforms for reaching the core gamer demographic, we'd assume that the One would see a decent improvement in terms of public perception post-E3. And after E3 GameFAQs had a similar poll to the earlier ones, this time asking about people's plans to pre-order the new consoles. The PS4 went from 40% planning to buy it before E3 to 57% after it, while the One went from 5% before to 7% after. Perhaps even more telling, only 23% of gamers think the One is better than the Wii U, despite the Wii U generally being considered a flop both commercially and among the gaming community.

Again, there's a big difference between angering a handful of people in a niche community and what they're doing here to alienate their primary demographic.

Considering they've confirmed that there's no active development on it at all, considering it vaporware seems inappropriate. Even though they haven't technically cancelled it, it's effectively cancelled, since at this point, they'd need to just about start over anyway if they resumed development on it.

BREAKING NEWS: Tech veteran rips apart Apple's high speed claims

Key word there is "Apple". It's a story involving $media_darling doing something that can be perceived to be wrong if you squint and tilt your head just so. Never mind that it's an industry standard that isn't deceptive or that Apple explains it using plain-written wording and simple, animated diagrams on their website. Media folks are going to take it and run with it because it drives hits, even if that wasn't Glenn Fleishman's intent with his article (I seriously doubt it was, since he runs in the Apple crowd).

You do realize that Aliens: Colonial Marines is their latest release, right? So, since they haven't even put out a game, we can say that they haven't released a single uncontroversial game after A:CM, as should be trivially obvious.

But, giving you the benefit of the doubt, let's assume you were asking whether or not they've released an uncontroversial title since the controversy for A:CM began. Since the A:CM controversy first broken in early 2013, that doesn't help you any, but, again, giving you the benefit of the doubt, we can go back to the actions that led to the controversy. Those actions date back to 2008 (though they were not reported for about five years), and since that time they've released a number of Brothers in Arms games, Aliens Infestation, and even a Wii port of Samba de Amigo, and I'm not aware of any controversy with those.

So, it's safe to say that they have either not released any games since A:CM's controversy, or else they have released a number of uncontroversial games, depending on when you want to define the A:CM controversy as having started.

Hercules in New York may have actually been his first film that I saw.

As a child, I woke up rather early one day, and groggily thought it was a good idea to just go ahead, get up, and start my day...at 3am. So, I hopped down off my bunk and past my younger brother who was still fast asleep, exited our shared bedroom, plopped down in front of the TV, and enjoyed a little Hercules, not knowing at all what it was.

At about 4am, my dad finished up with some work he was doing in his office, and, hearing the TV, was worried someone had broken into our house. To say the least, he was rather relieved to discover his eight year old boy watching TV, rather than a robber he'd have to ward off with the baseball bat he had brought with him. I got sent to bed again, my dad went to sleep, and the next morning we laughed about how silly I was to think that getting up at 3am was a good idea.

I have fond memories of watching The Villain as a child, in which he plays a character named Handsome Stranger. I recall enjoying the Loony Toons antics in it, as a kid.

Actually, despite writing that post above, I went to a Starbucks less than 12 hours later and had a something to drink, since a lunch meeting ended up being there. I can admit that sometimes a frou-frou "coffee" drink actually sounds enjoyable, which is clearly not the behavior of a true snob.

Starbucks is not nearly as bad as some of the other stuff out there (as others have pointed out in response to my previous post), but people who think it's actually good are simply misguided, misinformed, or ignorant, and I'd be willing to wager that if we did a blind taste test with you, you'd agree that Starbucks' coffee is not as tasty as coffee that's properly roasted and prepared.

Says someone who I'm guessing prefers tea? I actually like tea as well and have recently (as in, within the last few months) started trying to get into it more since I've liked what I've seen of it so far, though I'm just a neophyte when it comes to tea.

But yeah, coffee can have vastly different flavors, particularly if you start drinking single-source beans, rather than stuff like Starbucks, where they tend to source from all over so as to maintain a more consistent flavor profile. The flavors start to become more unique and identifiable with single source, for much the same reason that blended and single varieties of Scotch are different.

And while I do rail against Starbucks, I'm not above them or something. Sometimes a "coffee" drink that's really just dessert in a cup actually sounds okay. Ironically, today was one of those days, since I had a lunch meeting with someone at Starbucks, less than 12 hours after making that post above.