Look, I know most of the folks frequenting /. are ardently anti-MS (Hence all the clever usage of a $ instead of the 'S'), but this is really an embarrassing attempt at click bait. It isn't in the realm of truth and feel sorry for the poster and the people jumping on board with it to fuel some frothing Anti-MS rage or resentment at some perceived slight. Slashdot is poorer this.

You are obviously a complete idiot. There could be no policy requiring students to wear them when not at school. Your asinine interpretation makes me embarrassed for you.

Not being in the path of the worst of the storm. When everything around you stays up and running, your DC probably will too. These guys are genius. Who interviewed these tools and why?

Well, JPEG is pretty much synonymous with image/pic for most "internet savvy" folk. But you're correct, no one, is using "gif" or 'giffing" in daily dialogue. But I think you underestimate the popularity of the short clips. For instance a fairly recent front page entry on Reddit asking "which GIF you would like to be trapped in for eternity" or "What GIF should everyone have saved?" GIFs are good for short, dumb/throw away attempts at memes, attempts at humor, russian car accidents or some quick porn clips judging by what I usually see. They are easy to make and don't require anything from adobe to make. The kids hate flash and adobe.

WOTY looks like its decided by the interwebs..which would explain the recent winners, "App", "tweet" and "occupy". Common on the web seems to be the deciding factor.

I beg to differ. I imagine many more random teens than you imagine are aware of what gifs are.. See Reddit.com Well, I guess if your random teens are all white upper middle to upper class ones..

99%? Doubtful.. But hefty discounts indeed, and Oracle is still obscenely expensive

They also protect people from corporations. See the small time inventor that comes up with some novel household product, they put in the work to get it made, work on marketing etc. then they get a meeting with say, Home Depot or Lowes to see if they would sell the object. Home Depot and Lowes look it over carefully, let their designers take a look..then decide, "no thanks, have a nice day" A month later they are selling the exact same thing, killing this persons idea and dream. If that person doesn't have a patent on this invention, they are totally fucked with no recourse. They spent months or years and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars trying to get this product to market, only to have some corporation take it with no repercussions whatsoever. But that's OK right? Everyone should do work for free for fucking multi-billion dollar corporations.

One would think that maintaining even a basic level of education for all citizens would be helpful in keeping civilization in tact, and therefore, your "civil" liberties. Since you generally don't have to worry about society devolving into 90/10 split of uneducated fucking savages deciding they like your patch of earth and taking it, your family and anything you own because really, they just happened to be there. I mean seriously, what a fucking stupid view. Please, go try and pitch your start up in countries without a public education system sometime. I'm sure you'll have a terrific sense of "civil liberty" when the fucking savages take whatever you brought with you and feed you to their fucking lizard god.

How would a jammer be effective against autonomous drones? If you had said EMP....t.

This is Slashdot, err, I mean DiceNewsAggregator, only Anti-Microsoft comments are permitted. Also to truly fit in, one must refer to Microsoft as M$- see the dollar sign is super clever and shows your OSS cred.

Come on.. Jesus D has had a hard on for Apple for a while now. He is as biased against Apple and Gruber is for Apple. I wouldn't consider either one of them a source to trust in this case. In aggregate the reviews are generally positive.

Hmm..Not sure if missing /s or just trolling..

This. The second I saw that redesign, and the immediate response by Rose et.al, I knew it was over. I really enjoyed Digg, but man they screwed the pooch on that redesign. I recall Rose's "contemporaries" (Rojas/Topolsky) defending it at first, then everyone kind of just quietly tip toed away as they saw the disaster that the Digg team had put together.

BTW..The only reason I use reddit is because I can use an app to peruse the content without the HORRID site interface. And by horrid I mean fucking terrible.

Didn't he already suggest perhaps a penny per trade fee or half a penny, something like that as a way to curb HFT? In any case, either a money or time constraint added to the mix would probably put an end to it as it is today. But that would never happen because too many people make way too much money on this scam.