Is this really new to anyone who hasn't lived in the cage for the last 80 years? This business model is a de facto standard since Phil Taylor Farnsworth invented the tele. Nothing to be upset about. You don't have to use Google if you don't want to. Besides, I'd rather be a product of a company that does no evil than a client of some other companies that do.

I clicked the link and here's what I got: "Server Error 500 - An unexpected error seems to have occurred. Why not try refreshing your page? Or you can contact us if the problem persists." with a cute parallax scrolling animation of GitHub logo falling down the Grand Canion. I've never seen 500 error on GitHub before.

Linus writes: "since I did a github account for my divelog thing, why not see how well it holds up to me just putting my whole kernel repo there too?"

Why not? Because you just broke GitHub! That's why!

And now let's all remain silent while the instant, distributed, cpu-intensive, encrypted https slashdotting of GitHub starts in 3... 2... 1...

I wrote: This is the only place where the word "security" is used in the article. Of course it should be: This is not the only place where the word "security" is used in the article. It is interesting to search for "security" only to see lots of promises and no real content. Here are some direct quotes from the article:

meets the growing security concerns convincingly ... contemporary security benefits ... security is a big issue ... dispel those remaining security doubts ... rising clamor of a weak security model ... extinguish such doubts of security ... security issues are set to be dispelled ... security advantages would be available ... more security protection than ever ... enhanced security ... would help stop invalid manipulation of the site to add to the security concern of the users globally ... updated for security purposes ... deal with the constantly growing security issues ... security is the foremost issue that would be solved

Yes yes, I get it. Security. Right.

"The newest version meets the growing security concerns convincingly"

Convincingly to whom? This is the only place where the word "security" is used in the article. Sorry, but I am not convinced until I see a good evidence that the community of PHP content management systems has finally started to take our security concerns seriously. Will Joomla stop being the laughing stock on DEFCON? This is what I am interested in, not just words that don't seem particularly convincing to anyone experienced in Web security.

Can't they just wait to learn more about what's in a store display window till the store is open? I feel sorry for them. It is called oniomania and I don't really think that we should use technology to worsen the suffering of people who are seriously addicted and need our help instead of blatant exploitation of their condition.

The correct order should be:

1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by H.Abelson and G.Sussman with J.Sussman
2. Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (sic!) by G.Sussman and J.Wisdom with M.Mayer
3. Operating Systems Design and Implementation by A.Tanenbaum and A.Woodhull
4. Modern Operating Systems by A.Tanenbaum
5. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 1 by D.Knuth
6. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 2 by D.Knuth
7. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 3 by D.Knuth
8. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 4 by D.Knuth

I am sure that The Art of Computer Programming Volume 5 by D.Knuth will be next on the list. I have seriously been counting the years to the estimated 2020.

I only regret that Gerry Sussman hasn't written more books and hasn't recorded more talks. I will buy everything he writes and I will listen to everything he says. Please, Gerry! If you read this then please drop everything you do and just start talking to the camera. I have watched your every talk and lecture that I could possibly find on the Internet many times - from the 1986 lectures at MIT to your lecture on mechanical watches. I seriously believe that everything you say should be recorded for future generations. I don't know anyone else who can talk about anything at all and I listen breathlessly like I was hypnotized. I'm sure that many people here could say the same. Let this be an open letter to Gerald Jay Sussman: Please write more books and please record more lectures for the sake of the future of computer science. And thank you for your outstanding contribution that you have made so far. It is something that has shaped literally generations of passionate enthusiasts of programming. Thank you.

The term weak typing means something very specific in computer science, namely a property attributed to the type systems of some programming languages that have either implicit type conversion, ad-hoc polymorphism or both. Using it as the title of this story that has absolutely nothing to do with type systems whatsoever, together with putting it in the "developers" section and tagging it with "programming", is highly misleading as it make us all anticipate a story worth reading which it certainly is not. I can only sympathise with all of the fellow Slashdotters expressing their disappointment. It would be nice if the stories where better titled next time. Thank you.

Here are some links that were missing in the story:

1. Bulldozer
2. Ivy Bridge

People seem to be surprised by the delay and I have an exactly opposite reaction to that story. I remember when I was reviewing the first drafts of Buldozer (or actually Piledriver to be more specific) and I was surprised that the original date when it was planned to be released back than would have made it way ahead of the curve predicted by Gordon Moore. I was saying that it should be delayed some time so it actually is more accurate to the prediction and it has been delayed, however I will never know whether it had been done for that reason. The point is that in this industry there is something called "too good, too soon" which is not always desirable. Nevertheless, I hope both Bulldozer and Ivy Bridge will be available soon because they are both brilliant pieces of engineering.

While leaking browsing history is nothing new in principle, this time it is the service whom you trust with your history that is actively broadcasting your browsing habits in the form of a cookie. It should be at least marked as Secure and used only in encrypted connections. I wonder why Google is using an HTTP cookie to store information that could be stored in many ways that seem much better suited for that - from the database backend to HTML5 web storage. Anyone knows why did Google use an HTTP cookie for that? Is it more reliable or more efficient than the web storage or a database?

The problem with this industry (and not just this one in fact) is that while the industry never stops innovating, the individuals on the other hand hate innovation like nothing else. All of them? Of course not! Otherwise we wouldn't have any innovation. But most of ordinary workers do. And why do they hate it? Because it ultimately means they have to learn something new just when they finally got used to the old way of doing things. Do you find it surprising that most of the big things in computer science that we today take for granted, like the OOP, lambda calculus, or even high level languages needed about 20 years to get mainstream acceptance? It is roughly equivalent to a generation of programmers. If people refuse to constantly learn better ways of doing their job then the only real way to "learn" those things as a company is to hire new programmers for whom those new ways are just as natural as the relational model for you and me. It is not at all surprising that you won't find a lot of old and experienced programmers who can write high performance servers based on event loops, because not so long time ago we all thought that the only way to write servers was to use threads. Most of the people never change their opinions so if you want a programmer who understands how to write high performance servers then you will find it very difficult to hire someone below 40. The loom industry in the 1700s were also "age-biased" because the old people refused to learn how to use power looms. The history keeps repeating.

"During the talk Eben explains that the $25 price point was decided upon because it is the cost of a textbook so it made sense. Students buy textbooks, so a PC priced the same is a natural fit and hopefully an easy purchase for them, their parents, or their school." [emphasis added]

Students also buy milk but it doesn't mean that therefore computers should cost the same as milk. I don't think that a real computer should be worth the same as one textbook because of the fact that many more than one textbook could be downloaded on it and thus much more money could be saved by children if that is really a fully functional general purpose computer that the story makes us believe it is. It is worth noting that unlike the $100 laptops, this computer is not complete. It doesn't have a keyboard, it doesn't have a display. It has a HDMI port - yes, that will help poor children who can't afford a computer more expensive than $25. Also, are they going to carry a plasma TV around to use it? Quite frankly I think that it would be a much better idea to offer a Fuzebox kit from Adafruit - a do-it-yourself retro video console kit with open source software and open source hardware - or even an Arduino kit with TV output. In this case however all we have seen so far is a promise to deliver a $25 embedded board which is nice but it can hardly be called a computer, and especially not a computer that poor children in developing countries would need the most. We don't even know how much RAM will it have, whether it will run Linux or even if it will be useful for anything more serious than hacking a simple embedded Linux project. Don't get me wrong, I think that embedded projects are a great way for children to learn how computers work. But this is not a substitute for a laptop, notebook or netbook that those children need. Even a tablet would be a better idea but we all know this is not going to happen because apparently taking a keyboard out of a netbook makes it somehow ten times more expensive. We need a cheap laptop, a fully functional, self contained computer that children can use instead of textbooks, not as just one of them.