If I don't personally assemble the bits on punchcards by hand, I don't trust anything! I figure I should have my trusted JVM ready to go in about forty years...

No one said Microsoft actually knew how to gain market share. The old tools of threatening OEMs with a fate worse than death don't work any more, so Redmond is a bit of a fish out of water.

Because Microsoft aping competitors' tactics years behind them has worked so well of late.

But that NAS is likely sitting at your location, which means if it gets burned down by insane meth heads or swallowed by a sinkhole, you're good and screwed.

For my business, I use DFS that replicates our shared drives at all three locations, so I feel fairly confident that an almost up-to-date mirror of the data is being held at two other locations, all of which are separated by a lot of miles. Coupled with offsite backup, I feel the business data is secure.

At the moment my personal data is on Dropbox, with my absolutely confidential data in a Truecrypt container. Still, Dropbox is kind of expensive for the 7 or 8gb of data I'd like to store, so I will definitely be considering Google's offering. Since both work the same, at least for the PC versions, in that each computer has a full copy of the data, if Google goes offline or pulls the plug, I still have my multiple copies sitting around.

If they can mine my TrueCrypt container, then they're doing something amazing.

How remote is remote? Are we talking over the internet/sms or are we talking if you control a cell tower?

Yes

Um, SGML dates back to the 1960s.

Exactly. I have no idea who this Uwingu is, and don't fucking care. They have no international recognition that I'm aware of, and thus have no particular right to name anything.

If they're so keen on names, let them name their own underpants.

A patent holder can sue *anyone* who's using their patent. Whether that be the company who implemented the infringing device, the company bundling that infringing device into their product, the company reselling that product, or the consumer of the product. Apple have chosen to sue Samsung, presumably because they think they stand more chance of getting what they want by doing that. They could equally sue Google, the local supermarket who are reselling the phones, or you - the end user of the phone.

Valid or not, if the patenter can threaten you with it until you have to spend millions or billions in patent lawyer fees to get it _declared_ invalid by a court then that's pretty good protection in its own right.

The original iPhone wasn't exactly running "real apps" - it ran a fixed set of software that Apple shipped with it. There was no iTunes store, no third party software. Official support for third party software only came around after people started rooting the devices in order to write software for them. Conversely, the likes of Symbian, PalmOS, etc. were doing third party apps *years* before the iPhone appeared - I certainly wouldn't have called the original iPhone a "smartphone" since it lacked most of the features that made Smartphones Smartphones. Also, at the time the iPhone was being developed, a number of other vendors were developing similar devices - Apple just happened to get to market slightly before everyone else and did their usual job at marketing (Apple are *really* good at marketing).

So really, the current line of phones is pretty much a natural progression. Patenting a natural progression of technology just because you happened to sell first what everyone else already had in the works seems pretty bogus.

Her cause, so far as I can tell, is to stop Federal spooks from spying on her. It does not appear to be stopping Federal spooks from spying on anybody beyond the rarefied circles of Congress.

Amen. I have no idea who this guy is, so I can't imagine any other question to ask him.

I don't think it's at all out of order to take some pleasure in one of the most-pro NSA people in Congress being hoisted by her own petard. Is it wrong to take pleasure from the chickens coming home to roost for Feinstein... well maybe a little, but I just can't help myself.

No shit! Congress happily gave Federal agencies powers to spy on virtually every human being on the planet, so they can fucking well live on the same sphere we do.

Don't feel so great when the shoe is on the other foot, eh, Feinstein? Well, a big "fuck you" from the rest of the world.