The problem is that Microsoft had the manufacturers use an implentation that's hard to use for non-Microsoft OS's. The FSF proposed a fair implementation, but Microsoft said no. That alone proves what their goal is.

X.509 authentication is quite a bit more secure than passwords and dead easy to use. However, it relies on the user keeping the certificate safe. Smartcards fix that problem, but most devices don't have built-in support for them.

Just look at how insecure credit cards are. They could at least make them smartcard-only devices and use real cryptographic security. As for online banking, USB smartcard readers are cheap.

On the other hand, when banks are dealing with each other's money, they can really go all out on security. Although the range is still limited, several banks have set up point to point high quality fiber lines with quantum cryptography devices on either end, which is perfectly secure like one-time-pads.

Wacoms are active digitizers. They actively sense where the stylus is with an antenna that sits behind the screen. The stylus itself is active as well, using induction. The pen's circuitry then sends back a signal indicating its rotation, angle, and tip pressure. You can make an active digitizer draw by pressing the tip without even touching the screen, and hover actions can be used due to being able to sense the pen above the screen.

The whole point of a tablet is that it's more portable than a laptop. As someone who has used a nice stylus-based convertable tablet/laptop for several years, I feel confident saying that touch based input is only superior in a dual device for a very niche list of applications. Even an accurate stylus is only useful when needing to draw or write math. Even a mouse is inefficient enough that shortuct keys are ubiquitous in GUIs. Additionally, Microsoft has forgotten that blocking view of the screen is distracting and very bad UI design; this applies to both touch input and the new "start" menu.

I have a Fujitsu t5010. The tablet functionality on a full blown laptop is very nice for students or anyone else who needs to be able to draw, write math, and type. Adding touch/stylus functionality to a laptop is a high-end feature, and the main drawback for current models are that too many corners were cut. A hybrid has to have substantially better hinges than a normal laptop, which is something the more expensive Fujitsu hybrids excell at, but is nonexistant in the case of the Surface Pro.

The reason hybrids haven't taken off is that they are a very niche product. Nothing in my Masters program requires more than a keyboard, so I no longer use the tablet functionality. An artist would need a very high end system with a very good screen and full wacom integration, which would carry such a high price tag, I've never seen such a system.

Because tablet functionality is useless when you need to be productive (have a real mouse and keyboard for tactile feedback), what I see as the best course of action would be to design laptops and tablets to pair via a connection like USB 3.0. The laptop could provide the raw processing power if required, and the tablet could clip to the back of a monitor and disable the laptop's lid-closed power switch for ease of use without a table. This would also allow for quick keyboard access and dual screen real estate when working at a table.

We've mistakenly executed enough innocent people who were found guilty by trial to throw the entire death penalty into question. The idea of not even having a trial is obsurd.

Plus, this is something that doesn't inconvenience the user in any way and is extremely cheap. Companies have shown many times that they are willing to accept injury lawsuits as a cost of doing business rather than design and test products for safety in the first place. The same goes for regulations when those regulations aren't strict enough to prevent selling such items in the first place (just look at the EU/Microsoft cases).

Just to add, another possibility would be to provide a powerful enough source of electricity to alter the magnetic orrientation within the crystal without actually melting it.

The article says the switching depends on the direction of the magnetic field, so that sounds like it has to be sustained.

However, it could be possible to use magnetic nanoparticles to provide that magnetic field, which is the solution proposed in the second half of the article. A stronger-than-normal electric field could be used to rotate those magnets. The problem is that building such a structure is very difficult. A bottom-up nanotech approach combined with our current top-down lithography would introduce far too many contaminants. Trying to get a nanoparticle solution to go exactly where you want it is extremely difficult, especially due to the high surface forces that make nanoparticles like to stick to things. The difficulty of using a traditional top-down approach is making the nanoparticles able to rotate. There would need to be multiple types of resist used, likely, one to define the shape, and the other to be removed at the end to provide spacing during fabrication. The high surface forces as mentioned previously would also pose a big problem. Nanocrystals lack the stability given by long-range order and, especially with sub-10nm crystals, can have unique crystal structures due to this large stress. In order to mainain stability and not try to merge with neighboring crystals, there either needs to be an electrostatic barrier or physical barrier. Because it's impossible to keep something passively balanced with a electric or magnetic field, there would need to be the additional complexity of a pivot placed at the necessary angle. It's possible that something like graphene could be used to provide lubercatoin of the pivots, but this means that both the graphene and magnet would have to have compatible crystal structures so that the depostion growth grows with a known crystal orrientation (for knowing where to place the pivot).

On the other hand, this technology could be very useful with current technology in MEMS (microelectromechanical systems). A field of these transistors could be used to very accurately know the position of a magnet, in, say, an actuator, or on a spring for an accellerometer.

I just hope this doesn't end up like ACPI, where everything is broken and only companies with secret specs can be made to work easily.

GPS chips, at least those designed in the US, are required to not function above 18km altitude or 515m/s for specifically this reason. Otherwise, they are classed as a munition. It's possible to get unrestricted GPS chips from other countries, but you couldn't just strap on any old common GPS chip.

I have the plugin itself enabled, but NoScript means it only actually does anything if I request it to.

Under this law you could make an incredibly abusive TOS: It is illegal to "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains ... information from any protected computer." A definition of "protected computer" is anything connected to the Internet. You could easily write a TOS that forbid any access to a website, and merely loading the homepage would be illegal the way the law is written. Bypassing authentication is not required to break the law. Even worse, if there were no TOS at all, there would be no authorization given. Although it's way too broad, it's apparent why authorization was made the only consideration: If, conversely, if any data a server offered freely to public requests was termed authorized, then injection attacks could be said to be doing exactly what machine was programmed to do unless a TOS specifically detailed what was authorized input. That brings things right back to the TOS being able to define what is authorized. The law needs to be much more detailed to avoid being too broad, yet avoid "it's not a bug, it's a feature" type defenses.

Even WPA/WPA2 Personal isn't too hard to crack in most cases because most people don't use secure passwords. When I set up my wireless network again after moving I decided to go all the way and set up RADIUS using TLS (though I'm not paranoid enough to enable additional OTP auth). Although configuring FreeRADIUS is far more than a typical user would be able to do, most of it could be automated fairly well with reasonable defaults and automatic key generation.