Metal aircraft don't necessarily have to suffer so badly from metal fatigue that they have to be replaced inside of 15-20 years. Fatigue depends on usage patterns and there are 747 still flying after 30 years of regular use and with good maintenance should be able to last at least the better part of another decade. USAF engineering studies project that their B-52 fleet would not reach the fatigue limits of it's wing structure until the 2040s but keep in mind these B-52s do not get flow as hard as the 747. The B-52s that are now in service left the factory in the mid 1960s. An American airforce veteran I met a few years ago told me that there are actually cases of the third generation of soldiers from a military family flying B-52s. Dunno if that's true but theoretically it sure could be. Just about the only criticism you can throw at the B-52 is that it could do with an upgrade to more modern fuel efficient engines which Boeing estimated would increase it's already impressive loiter capability by 46%.

...and practically wiping out the aboriginals.

Well the Airbus affair has been public knowledge for years. Hopefully Airbus only made that mistake once. Prism is nothing more than a logical evolution of the ECHELON system and anybody who was surprised by finding out about it should reexamine their world view. That being said, nobody has the kind of access to the Internet backbone that the USA has and few have the economic resources to build the kind of surveillance systems the Americans have even if they did have access to the key points that 90% of all internet traffic flows through like the US does. So I'd say the USA's intelligence services have a very distinct advantage over other the intelligence services of other nations. Still, look on the bright side, perhaps this will lead to the decline of the Google and Facebook monopolies as consumers demand alternatives and finally bring about Linux's long awaited year on the desktop as governments around the world are finally forced to realise that 'Microsoft patch tuesday' actually seems to be 'NSA vulnerabilities-we-no-longer-need update tuesday'. Perhaps the rest of the world should organise a boycott of all US based online service providers and businesses that rely on the Internet? I wonder what reactions that would trigger?

Buying a phone is about more than performance and top-of-the-line hardware. I have yet to experience Apple orphaning a product before the warranty period expires, I have seen Android device vendors do that. I'll gladly buy an iPhone with hardware that's 6 months out of date because my previous experience with Apple has taught me that I'll get at least 3 if not 4 years of guaranteed OS updates and like most of the other 'Apple fanboys' I know, I actually intend to use the phone for 3-4 years before upgrading. My experience with Android vendors is decidedly mixed and ranges from: 'drag their feet for 3-8 months before finally releasing Android OS updates' to 'orphan their new Android device 6-8 months after launch'.

And such explanations would probably look something like this: "Opinion number M-9458985 needs to be kept secret because [blacked-out] which is a very serious allegation that has been confirmed by [blacked-out] and [blacked-out] as well as the following independent intelligence sources: [blacked-out]. If this opinion were to be made public it could easily have the following horrible consequences: [blacked-out]"

That's how people wit performance mania think, the cheesy car analogy would be: If you buy a Mercedes today and BMW comes out with a model tomorrow that has 16 more horsepowers your Mercedes is hopelessly obsolete and you have to upgrade ASAP.

Considering what these smartphones cost you'd think one could expect 4 years of OS updates without having to root/jailbreak the device. Say what you will about Apple and it's walled garden, they don't orphan devices often. With the iPhone line they have provided 3-4 years of OS updates. My mum uses an iPhone 3GS bought in 2009 that is only now, 4 years later, being dropped from Apple's official OS update list.

I don't see maturity as a problem. If there is money to be made drive manufacturers will throw enough engineering and computer science talent at the task of solving the teething troubles. What interests me is that if SSDs mount a major invasion of server-rooms and data-centers worldwide it also means that we will now finally start to see SSD pricing drop like rock. Cheap high capacity external SSD drives, I can't wait. If we are lucky this will also popularize Thunderbolt with PC motherboard makers since that's where you start seeing some real performance advantages, i.e. when the time it takes to make a backup of your laptop/desktop system to an external drive drops by half or more compared to USB 3.0.

Grow a pair of balls and dispense your spelling nazi lectures under your username.

That price tag has less to do with any real belief that a CD is worth 200 grand a copy and a lot more to do with the unshakable American belief in the effectiveness of the brand of 'come down on them like a ton-o-bricks' justice that has filled your jails with hoards of people doing rediculously long mandatory minimum sentences for things that are misdemeanours in most other countries.

I don't think the significance of this development is so much commercial as it is geo-political. Not that long ago, if the Soviets had done this, it would have caused a major shit-storm. This is a subtle but deliberate and clever provocation on part of the Chinese since they are effectively invading what the USA has regarded as it's 'sphere of influence' for about 200 years without firing carrying a single gun but still doing something of considerable military significance. I'm not sure what the PRC is trying to achieve here but between the recent hacker attacks, this and a whole lot of other pinpricks the PRC is poking a sleeping Grizzly with a stick. I'll actually be surprised if this won't eventually lead to some sort of US counter-provocation. Traditionally this would have taken the form of a couple of US carrier group steaming through the Taiwan Strait with full brouhaha and unofficial orders to Navy pilots to deliberately interpret the limits of PRC airspace rather loosely. This would then have been followed by the US congress approving a massive package of arms sales to Taiwan. Who the hell knows, perhaps approval of F-35 stealth fighter sales to Taiwan has been deliberately kept in reserve for just such an occasion?

Are you sure? One born every minute...

LOL :-) I can see it now Google Android 5.0 'Caries'...

You must be new here. Every Apple related story posted here draws several times more people who log on just to tell each other how much they hate Apple and how they would never buy an Apple product because they all suck than it draws in Apple Fanboys extolling said products virtue. Any Apple Fanboy that shows his face here gets shredded, it's like throwing a child into a shark pond. The purpose of Apple and Microsoft stores on /. is mostly to goad the hater crowd into boosting click-through rates....

Right, and cupcakes, donuts, eclairs, froyo, gingerbreads, honeycombs, ice-cream sandwiches and jellybeans make you fat and give you diabetes... I shudder to think which unhealthy snack will be co-opted by Google next (although I will concede that Android 'Donut' is a slightly better choice than Android 'Carrot'). Oh, and don't even get me stated on Canonical's Gusty Gibbons, Natty Narwhals and Saucy Salamanders.