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This is merely a waltz for the public. China knows what they are getting into with Alibaba, the ability to take what they have lying around and sidestep having to find someone else sell it for them. Right now China basically manufactures for the world but they sell at small margins so that resellers / contractors sell the goods at a markup to the rest of the world. Alibaba gives a chance to sell directly to the consumer. The Chinese government wants Alibaba to seem strong willed so "The West" builds confidence in buying their stuff. In reality most of what Alibaba sells is leftovers and over runs.

I personally don't think China would leave something this public to chance, most of Alibaba's backers are the who's who of Chinese nationals and Chinese mainland (which the govt controls) makes everything Alibaba sells. It's hard to picture Alibaba being as rogue as they put on.

It makes sense for Microsoft to bide their time until they can just run everything on an X86. Why when Intel is only a couple of years away from making a (barely) suitable tablet processor would they commit to 2 architectures. Microsoft knows the tablet/portable arena is the way forward and the PC is just the bread that sops up the gravy, if they wait it out a bit they will have 1 install base rather than ARM vs X86.

So does this mean playing a 7/2 split can win any hand? The pros were just doing it wrong?

How about if everyone seeds just one torrent to bootstrap? Possibly a list of all available magnet links and use DHT to sort it all out.

You mean: "The Surface Pro is a stable platform with industry leading device interoperability!"

I think the interesting thing is if there are ever any laws passed that deal with personal data cloud providers would go out of business out of fear of being hacked. We've sold ourselves so cheap if "personal data" ever becomes a thing, most of the internet would collapse. Well maybe not Wikipedia. But the rest of it for sure.

Exactly. It's a little convenient that the FBI is spilling the beans when they are about to interview a bunch of interns. They just want to spread the word and turn up the heat on these guys before the big day. I bet a choice few will be sweating buckets behind the desk when the day comes. The chances of them being able to staff more than a hand full of people that have never downloaded a MP3 in the Napster / Bittorrent era is just not going to happen. It's also an advantage of staffing people that know the culture.

But I digress.... Good luck guys!

Even better idea:

Go to Low End Box and browse through hosts. Each one in the comments section will have a 10/100MB test file from one of their servers. As a bonus it will also tell you the geographic location of each server.

Something as an obfuscated driver will definitely not stop a major competitor unmasking processing units in a lab. That is what they do to their own hardware to troubleshoot, throwing the latest Nvidia or PoverVR across the same desk would be trivial. The blob will likely never go away. What ever the hardware is really capable of we may never know but any group can set up a kick starter to do the same unmasking, for the right price.

I think it has much more to do with the rates they charge for their services rather than their race.

A new console would have loaded the patched routines. The question of needing the reboot would depend on the first terminal.

How do you propose it gets around blackouts? If it did you would have the entire epicenter relying on fringe cell phones for service. It's like having an entire town piggy backing on a handful connections. Those who are in range will have their batteries toasted before you could say YouTube.

This is just a fluff piece. Lying would be so ingrained into an agent of this type that their own mothers probably don't know their names anymore. If someone asks you your name for something like this you just make up a name, that is their job. If anyone asks just say your name is Lorem Ipsum.

Don't forget, if they are looking to obtain the contents of a single device that means they already have enough on that particular person to look into what you are doing. It's not like they found a person actively engaging in a crime and say "well we can't access his email or his smartphone we mine as well give up".