It's important to teach prisoners that property rights are bullshit and that fraud is perfectly acceptable. Glad they're on top of that. There's nothing like making people work for something then taking it away to ensure they don't bother trying to do things right in the future.

If our corrections/rehabilitation system can't follow the basic rules of ethics, why would they expect anyone else to?

What we actually need is an emergency broadcast system that respects urgency, priority, and relevance to its audience. We have the technical capability to target an ad to me here on Facebook that knows I was shopping for a Microsoft Surface earlier this week, but somehow this is how our emergency alert system actually works:

Some grumpy old guy 200 miles away storms out of a family meal to walk to the bar. They call the police. Then they find the guy at the same bar he always goes to when he is mad at them. Then the police issue a Silver Alert to cover the entire state, just in case an elderly jerk is healthy enough to walk 200 miles across open prairie but somehow will be in a health crisis when he gets to my town. My phone and all those around me make annoying sounds. Everyone thinks there's an active shooter at the local post office and, since we all hate our local post office for losing mail and lying about it, everyone gets their own guns and heads to the post office. Two days later, the evening news (that nobody watches) reports that the Silver Alert had been issued after the guy was found at the bar, just trying to have a beer in peace away from his annoying family.

Bingo. It's the same with patents. The law only helps those that are already in positions of power and wealth. It's funny because all the little guys think patents and copyright will protect them, so they cheer on the ridiculous extensions. But it'll never save them from a big team of lawyers and they're more likely to get bitten by it than helped.

For years now, the editors have not understood science. Now, they don't even understand scientific notation.

> research-based approach ... they've just lost half the country.

Good point. But that really is a very tiny slice of the SJW pie. The term SWERF is generally a pejorative in SJW circles.

It is actually considered a "major world city" by this UK data center. And this list from a Japanese site. And even this GitHub project.

Tell me about it. I probably parked in San Francisco 50 times over the decade I lived in the area, and had my car broken into twice. I've also live in South Africa for a few years, parked hundreds of times in Durban and other "dangerous" towns and never had a break-in. Or any problems at all. Saw a guy get stabbed at Mission and 16th BART station, though.

There's a few things wrong with JPEG that are covered above and below, but the truth of the matter is this: practically speaking, it's plenty good enough and plenty ubiquitous enough to secure it's place for the foreseeable future.

Text and logos are already handled better by PNG and SVG. But for photos? A high quality JPEG will look perfect to nearly everyone, and just about nobody cares if they can save 15% on a still image when they're slinging tons more data watching HD videos. Especially when that file size saving comes at the expense of guaranteed support on every platform, application, and device made in the modern computing age.

At least as an end-user format, JPEG won't be replaced anytime in the near future regardless of it's fairly minor deficiencies.

I think the Pentium M, spinning HD, and shorter battery life kept it from being as much of a love affair as the MacBook Air (at least the rev I got). You're right that there wasn't any huge technology advancement, but sometimes you have to hit a certain sweet spot. I just remember this thing felt faster than any laptop I'd used before (primarily from the SSD subsystem), and the battery lasted so long I literally never had to think about it any more. I fell in love. It still feels like fast modern laptop all this time later.

You really can't compare desktop longevity with laptop longevity.

Totally agree - this is sad. I am primarily an iPhone user, and have experience with Android tablets, but I had to use the Windows phone for a while and I ended up liking it better than either. The UI is far less intrusive and needlessly complicated: it just works, to coin a phrase. When my Dad wanted a smartphone, despite his fears of being overwhelmed, I got him a Windows Phone and he had no problems at all. Even he was surprised at how easy it was to use. It was easier than the Jitterbug he replaced. Yet as a power user I didn't come across anything I couldn't do - and do easier - than on my iPhone.

I think the tiles setup allows *much* better customization than the wall of icons approach that both Apple and Google went with.

Seems like an example of the market not rewarding a good product, I guess.