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

Neoliberals will shrug this off as an anomaly, but the ability of people of privilege to steal is enhanced by unregulated free markets.

It never fails. When there are no rules, it pays to be unruly.

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.

Do you carry your SATA drive around with you wherever you go and attach it to every computer you use?

Yeah, there's a portable SSD in my bag, with eSATA and USB. There's a couple of 64gb SD cards in there too.

It's smaller than my smartphone and a lot more sturdy. It sits in one of those little slots on the side. Never had a problem with it.

I've had enough of trusting companies like Google to always have a particular service available and to keep their snoots out of my stuff.

On the other hand, if a company that doesn't data mine, and encrypts all data and does not acquiesce to NSA requests, then we can do business. But not for free or cheap because of data mining. I don't like F2P. I don't want anything for free. I don't trust anything that's being offered to me for free or for cheap. It just means the true price is hidden and that's creepy.

Skylab was pretty much done; future mission plans involved refurbishment. Just prolonging its existence would not have been productive.

For "metadata" read "your entire itemised phone bill". I think the layperson will grasp the implications of giving those to the NSA.

Lots of cultures have a myth about a dangerous animal, I don't think you could use that as proof that one asshole shapeshifter was terrorising all human peoples.

They engineered it so "no" doesn't work, unless you flat out refuse to ever let you kid use the tablet. If you say "yes" to one purchase - a reward because they've done their chores, whatever - then the tablet silently allows them to buy anything they want for the next 30 minutes.

The tablets aren't $300 and the children aren't toddlers. Next time you're baffled as to why a lawsuit exists, ask yourself if you have a problem with the actual lawsuit, or the one in your imagination.

It gets worse; the Guardian's comments are full of people sneering about how we are going to destroy this precious natural water resource now we know it's there. Part of me died inside.

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

A "hostile takeover" merely means that non-owners (the management) are opposed to the owners (shareholders) choosing to sell.

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Oh, "The Left" has it's own peculiarities. But the efforts to turn every one of their own inherent properties into an accusation against their opponents is a hallmark of the Religious Right.

Its a subscription-based MMO. $15 a month. In today's market, that is a recipe for fail.

On the other hand, I only play games that I pay for. I don't want anything for free, and most definitely not a game. Every single F2P game gives me a creepy feeling.

And I figure, since I'm not exceptional in any way, there are probably other people like me, who are happy to pay for a game that provides value. In fact, if the game was good enough, and provided enough value, I'd pay even more than the current price-tag for an AAA game.

I'm not much on MMO's or really, multiplayer anything, but by charging for their work, at least Blizzard has placed Wildstar in the category of games that I will consider playing.