It sounds like if you're a YouTube fan and own a WM8 phone it feels pretty good.

It is absolutely bizarre. It's like the whole country has stockholm syndrome.

Fortunately, we live in a time when we can just flout the unconstitutional and undemocratic copyright laws. The sad part (and this is also to the big corporations boon) is that it actually hurts the little guy who wants copyright protection. The average pirate doesn't see the difference between pirating a 50 year old Beatles record (copyright held by God knows who anymore, the estate of Michael Jackson?) and a brand spanking new one, because, legally, there is no difference.

The government is inefficient, that's why, here in the US, we've privatized it!

I, too, am a phone thrower. I have been super impressed with the durability of my iphone in the $30 apple bumper (that is not sarcasm, but $30 is ridiculous). I have absolutely throttled the thing at the ground more than once. I will stop doing that from now on. Promise! But, I digress.

The onscreen keyboard is fine... in landscape mode. In portait mode, it makes me want to murder people. You have to be like 4 years old to use a keyboard that size. I haven't owned a phone with a physical portait keyboard in like 8 years (the venerable Moto Q), and I wouldn't buy one these days. How hard would it be to ALWAYS let me use the landscape onscreen keyboard? I'd even choose it if the app didn't rotate and I had to read sideways. Using the portrait keyboard is that bad.

Also, I might actually like the portrait keyboard if I had swype (yes, I like swype). I had iSwype installed for a while (an unofficial swipe clone for iOS), but it had a few bugs which I couldn't get over (and swype is pretty limited without some learning capability which iSwype doesn't have).

20 years is the blink of an eye. Time remains to see what the result will be. I will say this: if you have no leverage, you really will be fucked if there ever is a war.

That's a pretty bold statement. Just because you hear people say it a lot doesn't make it true. The world has a long history of the little guy winning in wars. No weapon trumps manpower. Evenmoreso, because a weapon can be used by whoever holds it. It supposes that in a hypothetical revolution the revolutionaries would not be able to subvert the military in many cases. We live in a tenous balance and it benefits both the people and the powers that be that we don't war. I mean we see neckbeards and teenagers hacking into major security companies. The fact of the matter is, a weapon is a weapon, and in a war, it doesn't matter who "owns" it. All that matters is who actually possess it at that moment.

So basically evey human society until modern times was basically populated with psychopaths? Right. You're right. You're so right, you're more right than basically the entirety of human history. You'll have to let me know how it feels sometime.

I love this guy. Americans have long held fast to one truth (which I wholeheartedly believe in):

Freedom is not free.

It's not only a piece of war propaganda, but one of the very founding principles of our great (once greatest) nation. There is a cost to freedom. The world is going digital: and that means cyberwarfare and hacking and all sorts of nefarious things. And, I know some security people who like to ask "How will we solve this?" The answer is the same as it always has been: with the sword. We are a country that believes (at least on paper) that power can only be granted by the people. So, having an armed populace makes sense.

And, I'll finish it off. I wholeheartedly believe that NRA line: the world would be safer if more good people packed heat. But, the real problem is this: our government cannot be trusted. They fuck us over and over. In my 30 years I have NEVER been rewarded for trusting my government. I have no problem with gun control in theory. But, I don't trust the government. They are constantly reneging and changing the rules. If I can't trust my government, I want my guns. Period. And, I trust my fellow countrymen a lot more than I do my government (who has been turing police against us my entire life). That's all there is to it. I want the people around me to have guns.

Have you found windows to crash often? I haven't. Not 8, not 7 and not XP (at least less than ubuntu in XPs case). I really dislike windows and I don't use it (I use Ubuntu), but one thing windows users seem to be missing is the crashstravaganza that is ubuntu/unity/compiz. Oh, you've got like several tasks going, because you know, computers? Let's just crash compiz or completely lock up. LOL. Now spend the next hour saving everything, rebooting and opening everyhing back up. Awesome!

I know this is /., but geez, split hairs much?

Tell me about it. I've had the Nook Simple Touch for a year and a half, and while it's rooted, I've never really gotten most of the cool hacks you see online to work (e.g. multi-touch). It's like if you want to spend a weekend on it without doing anything else, sure, you'll probably get it to work. Then I think about how much I make at work, and how much I could get paid just working a weekend. Then I could buy the most expensive e-reader in the world and still have money for ice cream.

Why can't we both have drones? Rules and regulations that are proper for civilians are also proper to place upon police (since they are also civilians). Same goes for all weapons bans. We're taking away the citizenry's constitutional (that is to say natual, God-granted) right to own useful weaponry and arming our police forces to the teeth so they can shoot our compatriots' dogs and seize their property. I don't want American exceptionalism to be another failed experiment and in 100 years the world is back to having NO government where the people come first (you might argue that that's already where we are).

That's pretty much how I read it. Eric Schmidt is already the worst person in tech. He is one of the greatest threats to the American way of life, traditionally rooted in the idea that humans have many natural rights, not the least of which is privacy. He also seems to be a very real threat to the already well eroded foundation that government power is granted only by the people. I seriously hope he chokes to death, and I mean that.

OOPS! their != there

Ubuntu, arguably the most popular distro for end-users (and less arguably, the highest profile), logs everything you type into dash. They don't even warn you. I've only just learned this. Their is even a privacy entry in dash with NO mention of this (and most of those controls don't do what you expect, even worse than any facebook privacy controls I've used). Does Windows 8 do this? I doubt it. And, you think linux is going to win the hearts and minds of the people because they are concerned with privacy. I, for one, will be screaming caveats and warnings if anyone EVER suggests that some popular linux distro has better privacy control than Windows.

The other popular end-user linux variant is Android, and it's a privacy nightmare.

I'll admit that this is distro specific, but if your argument does not apply to a user friendly distro, it's moot. Linux COULD differentiate itself on good privacy, but the one big user friendly distro definitely does not right now, and it's only getting worse. Sadly, I really don't see this happening. Linux distros are always playing catch up because they're always following.

I think we're going to finally see end-to-end encryption popularized for email. You can now mod me funny.