This is interesting in an article about unique browser features. Maybe a better article would go through features rarely known about. Like in Safari you can click the "reader" button in the URL bar and it consolidates multi-page articles in to a single page including the images. There is a Firefox extension called "repagination" to do the same thing. Given how much I see people complaining about multi-page articles, it would have been nice for this article to have covered this.

Similarly, Safari and some Firefox plug-ins allow the user to grab the corner of text input boxes and resize them, which is an indispensable feature once you've used it, but was also overlooked in this article.

It is also less than useful to assess threats based upon the number of malware titles of different types, rather than the number of infections caused by different types. For example, self propagating worms have fewer unique names than trojans do, but account for a much larger number of infections per name. When last I looked, self propagating worms still accounted for about half of all infections.

How is that a great business strategy? The number of iOS developers buying Macs contributes basically nothing to Apple's bottom line compared to iPhone sales driven by their large number of iPhone apps. The great business decision is keeping the dev environment under their control and making it Mac only is just easier and cheaper than maintaining it on Windows as well. This leads to apps that conform to UI guidelines and leverage all the built in functionality of iOS and are updated in a timely manner to take advantage of new additions to iOS. Apple doesn't have to wait for third party tool developers to add features to support what Apple puts in iOS in a new release. They build it into the tools and in many cases the next recompile of the app takes advantage of the new function. That is what is smart about Apple's dev tools, not some barely noticeable increase in Mac sales from selling to developers that want to target iOS. It's about promoting iPhone sales because that is where the money is.

The idea that the term "app" was applied by Apple first with regard to the iPhone is misguided. Apps were the standard end user programs on NextStep, which was purchased by Apple and made into OS X. The ".app" ending was the file extension for the bundles. This goes as far back as 1995, at least.

On a related note, I had the opportunity to help a Linux on the desktop noob the other day and was embarrassed by how bad software installation still is for users. on Windows you stick the CD in and double click the "setup.exe" icon. He can manage this. But he has this new Linux (Mint) laptop his brother gave to him and still needs to run some Windows software for work. Here was a chance for me to show him how easy Linux has become.

So While I'd like WINE to be installed by default, I realize that is not always going to be the case. And while I'd like Linux to automatically recognize .exe files and offer to do the right thing (install WINE and run them in response to user command) I recognize it isn't there yet. But at very least I figured I could walk him through opening the package manager GUI, searching for WINE, and installing it. No such luck, as WINE only had a placeholder in the package manager. So on to the Website and click the link for Ubuntu... oops, Mint despite claiming compatibility doesn't know what to do with that. So it's back to apt on the command line which leaves him totally confused and out of his element and afraid to install software on his new machine. So one to the Windows software. Stick the CD in the drive and double click the exe. Nope no luck. it won't run claiming it needs to be executable. So I click properties and try to make it executable. Nope, fails at that too. Back to the command line to find out the non-existent metadata would be stored on the CD so it needs to be copied locally first. Finally it is installed, but no shortcut is in the launch menu and I have to dig through the WINE files to find a shortcut and put it on the desktop. And after all that, WINE can't find the USB ports for some reason. That is when we gave up for the night and started heavily drinking.

My point here isn't that Linux on the desktop sucks. It is that while it might be great for managed installations with set applications, I don't think it is very usable for the home user yet and there are a lot of really obvious areas for improvement. Hopefully Canonical will keep up the good work.

I think you're being overly generous. My understanding from talking to people in the UI design industry is that the ribbon was an attempt to implement the adaptive UI design from the University of Washington, but failed because they couldn't get it working properly so they just kept the look of that interface while abandoning the functionality. That's not to say the UofW did not take Fitt's law into account, just that there is no indication the Office developers did.

A push towards extreme capitalism is not "conservative" and I really wish people would stop applying that term. Moving to tax absurdly less progressive taxes than we had even under Reagan isn't conservative, it's extremist. Literally it is pushing the balance of economics to an extreme not seen since the days of old. Both Libertarians and Republicans (regardless of whether or not one agrees with their economic policies) are advocating for extremist economic policies in relation to historical norms for the last 50 or 100 years. Do not make the mistake of thinking they are pushing the status quo. For the last 20 years the economic balance has been skewing further and further to the extreme end of wealth consolidation.

Sure they are, but the US infrastructure isn't ready for them. That's the point of starting with the luxury market.

Your assertion is ignorant. The vast majority of the US market is multi-car homes where at least one car is used for local commuting much less than 250 miles a day. Electric cars fit perfectly for that application.

Yeah, because nobody commutes to and from work as 90% of their driving? Well, except fricking everyone!

It takes a huge up front investment to enter that market, so it is not practical for a smaller company, the way the luxury/performance car market is. Economy of scale is hugely important in the mainstream market and basically does not apply at all to the luxury market. It is just the same as Segway, gyroscopic systems are very expensive, but people will pay it for a cool toy. Once you're making enough from the toys, you scale up and can make affordable systems for the handicapped.

Tesla is like Segway. They create a luxury product because that makes money and they use the income to scale up and create more mainstream products, like Tesla's upcoming consumer grade sedan. They are the closest thing to an innovative car company the US has left and to my mind instead of bailing out the big players we should have taken the public share in them after the unions refused to take control and handed it over to Tesla and let someone actually doing something smart have a shot at turning the US auto industry around.

To nit-pick Satan was a role in judaism, not a character. Early versions of the old testament books refer to "satan", but it is a title, "the adversary" and seems to refer to any angel god sent to stand between a person and an act he did not want them to commit. It wasn't until late new testament re-interpretations that Satan came into the stories as a particular angel, one arguable working against god instead of at his command.

First, a natural monopoly is one where a single party naturally has control of a resource, like owning the only water source in an area. What you're describing is a government mandated monopoly where, for the sake of reliability and easier regulation the government passes laws creating an artificial monopoly. There's no physical reason we can't have multiple sewer systems and natural gas, water, electricity, etc. distribution networks. It's not really a good idea, but it is the law that prevents it from happening not nature.

Second, right now state governments are so bent over by the corporate players here they are passing laws banning co-ops and local governments from competing with those corporations. The idea that they are likely to regulate the monopoly abuse by these players is fairly laughable. And, since there exist federal laws preventing the abuse of monopolies, it's likely that is what will eventually be used to curb this behavior. Antitrust law is interesting, however, in that many cases begin as private lawsuits or lawsuits by individual states and are then taken over by the feds under the Sherman act.

A scientist believes the theory with the most scientific support, while still experimenting. It is not scientific or rational to look at a theory, see it is not 100% explained, and thus decide to believe an alternate hypothesis with no scientific support.

I take it you failed thermodynamics? The second law applies to closed systems and overall entropy, not localized entropy within a system. We can't even definitively define the universe as a closed system and you think you can assess the overall entropy in the system?

Everything is very mysterious until you investigate. The scientific method is the best tool we have for such investigation. As a scientist I disagree with your characterization. By the same token you could claim gravity is very mysterious and thereby imply it is not really be happening. The only qualitative difference is that people understand the theory of gravity better than the theory of abiogenesis.

Who cares? You are simply making an ad hominem attack. That has NOTHING to do with the validity of the examples, which are fairly easy to research if you have any doubts. I don't give a rat's ass if Media Matters is biased so long as they provide factual information. Further, who said they would cover all aspects of media? Oh yeah, no one but you. That is straw man attack, so you've crammed two logical fallacies into a two sentence paragraph. Maybe you should take a rhetoric class.

I don't believe what Media Matters is telling me, I do happen to believe SOME things they've compiled, but which I've also seen from numerous other sources and about half of which I've seen both sets of footage myself. But then, that's beside the point, which is that Fox news distorts the facts and is demonstrably not a "reasonable news source" as the previous poster claimed. If you want to refute the point I made you'll actually have to show how those examples are not factual.

Media Matters watchdog compiled a list of Fox News, not talk shows have in the past few years:

• Bill Hemmer Accused Obama "Czar" Of Condoning Statutory Rape
• In March, Fox News's Martha MacCallum presented a clip of Vice President Joe Biden saying "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" -- and presented it as from an interview that weekend. In fact, the clip came from a 2008 campaign event at which Biden was quoting Sen. John McCain.
• In April, Fox News's Wendell Goler reported on an Obama question-and-answer session that was cut short to make it seem as if the president wanted a health care system "like the European countries." In fact, he was just restating a question -- he went on to say that he opposed such a system.
• In May, Fox News's Jon Scott said the network had decided to look back on how the stimulus "grew, and grew, and grew." In fact, the entire report came from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release, complete with typo.
• In October, Fox News's Trace Gallagher and Bill Sammon claimed that Senate Democrats would like provisions of the PATRIOT Act that helped catch a suspected terrorist to "go bye-bye." It was a total distortion of both the proposed changes and the terror case.
• Wallace had a former Bush administration aide Jim Towey as a guest on "Fox News Sunday" in August and together they pushed numerous falsehoods about a Veterans Affairs administration pamphlet on end-of-life issues.
• In a segment on Obama's budget in April, the network claimed it was four times bigger than President Bush's costliest plan. That simply isn't true.

I could go on and grab more outright falsehoods and intentionally misleading edits by Fox News on their "real" news programs, but I think that should suffice to make the point. If you believe what their so called real news is telling you, then you're believing lies and being misled. I've heard the same argument you make repeated by more than one person and I think it's important to shed light on the issue. Fox's hard news may not be as blatantly biased and full of lies, but it still serves up a healthy serving of falsehood.