micro-USB will be a EU standard in January and it seems this is not just a dead-letter law: All major phone manufacturers have already agreed to go along. EU is a market of half a billion people so in practice this _will_ be a global standard, unless some other major market area starts to actively fight this by standardizing on something else.

Apple desktop OS worldwide usage share is growing quickly? That's interesting, if you have any data to back that up, please share.

I remember all the apple sites reporting on "30% growth in market share" earlier this year but when you try to look at the actual data, it doesn't seem to be anywhere to be found... If you have anything more reliable than fansite headlines about worldwide usage share changes, I'd like to see them.

Mini server pricing is a joke though. I was just in a Apple store and checked the price tag as I'd really like one. It was ~1200€ (that's about $1600). So yeah, you can get OS X server on low end hardware. You just need to pay high end price for it :)

Oh wow, I hadn't even noticed the orcs and men. Oops... I still say that's a minor feature in the xkcd map.

Minard's work is awesome because the other data sources cleverly tie into the army size changes: like I said, it's about pointing out patterns that otherwise would require quite a lot of text. I don't see Xkcd doing that (or even trying to).

3. Access to this network is actually free if you have any other Free subscriptions.

Huh? Those subscriptions are advertized as including this wireless service and the price is naturally included in the subscription price. How on earth can you call that free?

I see this state of mind from a lot of people, but I just can't understand the thought process... Maybe it has something to do with the fact that non-subscribers can use an alternative method of payment and subscribers think "I don't need to use my credit card to pay, so I'm getting it free!"

This was found in 2005-2006 (see e.g. http://www.nmrc.org/pub/advise/20060114.txt). After that it has been reported in mainstream technology press at regular intervals. At this point the story does feel like a rehash and yesteryears news -- even if _you_ hadn't seen it before.

The sad thing is, the bug was also fixed (according to MS) a long time ago. The fact that this still goes on tells us that a lot people are running Windows XP that hasn't been patched in many years.

AC uses a car analogy about slashdot posters... and manages to be insightful.

Bravo, sir.

You seem to think there is a Law of Supply and Demand. There isn't, not as a natural law or as a law of man: it is an economic model. The law (the legal one) on the other hand does say that price gouging is illegal -- at least this is true in all legislations I've lived in.

So... it looks to me like your "laws of supply and demand" do get overturned when necessary and that most civilizations seem to disagree with your interpretation of right and wrong.

Huh? Minard's map isn't even close to the xkcd version:
A) Minard doesn't depict time, except on the few points on the temp scale, he uses both graph axes for location
B) There are no multiple actors in Minard's map
C) XKCD map only trie to convey character proximity over time: the major point of Minard's map is connecting several seemingly unrelated data points: it makes recognizing patterns easier.

So... I agree that Minard's map is a "better" inspiration for this work (and maybe it was the inspiration but xkcd-references were better /. material), but how on earth is the xkcd map is a knock-off of Minardi? That makes no sense at all.

On the other hand, most people underestimate the cost of (and especially the difficulty of finding) _competent_ developers...

He is, naturally, only describing one side of the coin: With a well executed GoogleTV approach you get one UI to use. With Apple you need to switch between totally different UIs in the Apple box and the cable box -- maybe yet another one in the TV itself.

I don't see how one option is clearly "more simple" or "easier" than the other. But I do know I'd like to have just one UI.

That point was not related to information security at all, yet you apparently accuse me of infosec paranoia (the point was about choice, but more on that in end of the post). Security is just an example of the many things that can go wrong when users choices are artificially limited.

This is what matters: with Skype and other communication methods that work over proprietary protocols I'm tied to whoever owns the protocol. If the provider becomes evil, my _only_ choices are to stop communicating totally using this method or continue using the evil provider -- this is not how a free market should work.

You mentioned Google specifically, let's take a closer look at that example: I currently use Google as my xmpp/email provider but the "address" I give people is on my own domain. If I want to change either xmpp or email provider, I can do that by asking my DNS provider to change the relevant records. My contacts will never notice a thing a thing Google doesn't have any say in my decision.

If you can't see how Skype and Google are different from the example above, then I just can't help.

Finally, I hope you realize this isn't about infosec paranoia, it's not about security at all.
It's about being able to choose your service provider -- ensuring that there is a real free market on this level as well. It's great that there is "protocol-level" free market (e.g. Skype vs xmpp vs Facebook chat) but it's important to realize that there should be competition below that as well. If you disagree, would you really be fine with the idea of a single telephone service provider for the whole world?

I don't get your "You think that the carriers are going to let them?" comment. Carriers love it when CDNs want to park a server inside their network. Ads are no different: less traffic through the external tube, faster load times for customers.

It's a classic chicken and egg problem: Everyone realizes that making the change sooner rather than later would be cheaper -- as we wait, the total estimated costs keep rising and rising. The problem is that for an individual actor this is not true: making the change before others is not cheaper, in fact it's probably more expensive.

The end result is that everyone waits and waits until the pain of IPv4 is totally unbearable. Ungodly amounts of money will be spent in stop gaps and workarounds because for the individual companies that is still the economically smart thing to do.

You're still free to do weird things in your network for whatever odd reason you want, go ahead.

As a counterpoint to the specific example you mentioned: https://panopticlick.eff.org/