Even if Silent Circle is secure, that doesn't mean that the cell phone is secure. The safest mobile innernet device is probably an iPod Touch.

-How to make it say hello in Basic once, or use a goto command to make it repeat forever.
-How to hit ctrl+c to make it stop
-How to use basic commands like catalog ("cat", eventually this because "dir"), list, run, save, and print.
-The difference between a KoalaPad and a mouse.
-And eventually how to play Zork and Oregon Trail.

You beat me to it. That's 'forced' just poked me in the eye when I read the summary.

Yep -- had a 'born again' high-school classmate who posted that on facebook, saying something to the effect of "If this isn't proof, I don't know what is."

I try to stay out of religious conversations on FB, but I did feel the need to post "1. That's Photoshopped. 2. It's not showing what you think it is showing. 3. you may want to research the inspiration for that photo, though I take no responsibility for what you find."

I think it would be more harmful to those people junking up the web if we made a browser extension that clicked on every +1, like, and follow button you surf past.

They should have released office applications for iOS at 2x the price of their iWork equivalents. Then they should have moved all that into the metro style, and released basically the same metro designs for Windows 8.

That might have cost them more than it produced in revenue, but now the result is that millions of people have been delightedly using their iPads for a couple years, and they're doing ok without MS Office. Even enterprise users. And MS still doesn't have an announced plan to bring Office to Metro (Windows 8 Style, whatever).

Including Office in Windows 8 RT might attract a lot of people to the platform. But it might also be the only way they can get Office deployed on a lot of tablets. Like, great, but also technically shovelware. I'd love to say that Microsoft has their work cut out for them, but that implies that they are working on the right things now. Dunno. I hope it works.

"What is 'The wrong gameshow host'".

  -- correct --

"Thanks Pat. I'll take Minor mistakes that get trolled on slashdot for $300."

Uh... You aren't contradicting his valid point. He didn't say HTML5 was failed. He said it was a mistake to do HTML5 to the exclusion of other client platforms. How can you disagree with that? He's running a giant software company - they can support a few platforms. They will have different merits.

I wish HTML5 fans hadn't convinced the world it was the 2nd coming of Christ. My favorite web apps worked great with HTML4. Now every web page tries to run enough JavaScript to lift itself into orbit.

Advertisers agree to honor DNT only from browsers that display the setting behind a door labelled "beware leopard".

It's bullshit anyway - any standard based on advertisers behaving ethically is a nonstarter. Apple's default no-third-party cookies seems worthwhile, if circumventable. Why not do more of that? If there are Moz people working on the DNT standard, I feel like they are being suckered.

If it's google's display advertising business you're concerned with, I don't really understand your concerns. If it's any of the many less scrupulous parties that you are concerned with, they're just going to ignore DNT.

PvP launched 5 months before Penny Arcade according to Wikipedia. It might not make any sense now, but when Penny Arcade launched, they appeared to consider themselves the fresh young upstarts and PvP the entrenched old-guard of videogame web comics.

Really? Give me some examples of "legitimate innovation", please. Because I'm really curious as to what you consider innovation? iOS isn't innovative? Pinch-to-zoom, bounce-at-scroll-end, inertial flick scrolling, no keyboard, no-scroll-wheel-no-nav-keys, simple app install-deinstall, tap-and-hold to rearrange, that all existed together in one integrated package? Real innovation only seems "obvious" in hindsight. The best proof is the huge slew of criticisms which came out about the iPhone when it first came out. All the moaning about the shit it was missing or didn't do but absolutely needed.

Before the iPhone, the BlackberryOS was considered the nadir of handheld computing. And Android back then looked a heck of a lot like a Blackberry OS. Now that paradigm considered a backwater. The move to mouse+gui wasn't that natural an extension from keyboard+tty, it was innovation. The move from the Blackberry+Palm+WinCE paradigm to iOS wasn't a "natural extension". It only seems natural in hindsight.

Wikileaks used to be stronger for his leadership. Now he's accused of being a rapist, and the accusations aren't going away. If he secures his freedom without facing these allegations, Wikileaks will never be respected again.

Assange claims he can't face these allegations because he will be extradited to the U.S. and I expect that is correct. That either means that they beat him, or that he really is a rapist. So what if we gave him the benefit of the doubt? He has still been beaten. The question is whether beating Assange also means they have beaten Wikileaks.

Openleaks sounded like a total pile of crap when it first launched. I hope that there are other capable people that share the core values of Wikileaks. Every day until Assange hands over leadership and control to those people, Wikileaks is further diminished.

I respect and learn from thoughtful people with opposing opinions. I enjoy debating things to challenge my own ideas as much as others.
 
However, there are many many people who employ magical thinking, strong emotions, horribly broken logic, and herd mentality to arrive at their opinions. It is scary that these people vote. No matter what their beliefs or opinions are, they are incapable of post-Dark Ages thinking.
 
And then we pass laws preventing public schools from trying to cure the problem. Here in 2012 it's still "What you can regurgitate" that determines success in public schools. How rational you can think, how abstractly you can think, or how deeply you understand something are all of little consequence.

I'm usually an Ed Norton fan, but nothing was lost IMHO.