Government officials seem to imply that the leak was on behalf of defense contractors (and in some cases sub-contractors), and not specifically themselves. It just goes to show that if you want something done right, you really have to do it yourself.

From TFA:

Why do you think the above post shows asocial tendencies? I can't see that when I read it. The way I read it, this person is quite social but has high, yet not completely unreasonable standards to their social interactions. Based on what was said, it seems that the AC has friends who are also like minded. What is asocial about that?

The way I understand it, someone who is asocial would avoid all sorts of social interaction, and not just have standards that differ to your own.

I'm just curious about what makes it asocial, because I experience similar tendencies, though I do not require that people meet me in real life. I do maintain a small knit of friends rather than a large one. It is just rare for me to find people who I really connect with, and when I do find such people, I tend to like to spend most of my time with them. Due to that fact, I don't have much time for others, not that I couldn't find something interesting about someone else as well. Everyone is interesting in their own ways -- though there are a few things I can't stand about some people, but that list is pretty short.

Would I be considered asocial as well then? Most of my friends seem to think I am very sociable though. It's not that I don't care about people outside of my small knit, I just can't focus on multiple people one after the other because doing so leaves me feeling tired, and stressed out.

How is that solving the problem? You're treating the symptom at that point. It seems to me this whole product is a problem.

* The uncertainty of what it is actually capable of, who can access it's features, etc.
* Lack of transparency from Microsoft on their exact intentions with such features.
* Microsofts stance on actively working against the freedoms of their customers, such as with the First Sale Doctrine in the USA.

In general, this product gives off an extremely hostile vibe. I don't want that kind of thing in my home. If you are fine with that, more power to you, I won't try to convince you otherwise, but you need to understand that other people have concerns that are perfectly as valid as your own.

$string = 'It is statistically impossible';
do {
    $string .= ' for it to be statistically impossible';
} while (true);

I think Zero's thought is unrefined, but touches on a valid point. It isn't possible to prove that any speculation about God is accurate. You can guess on it all you like, and you might get lucky, but without some evidence to test your speculations against, it will never be certain. I would say that we are certain of knowledge that is reproducibly and demonstrably true within our current scope. Even if our universe existed inside of another universe where the laws of physics for example were no longer true, the laws of physics would still be true in our universe for as long as it can be shown that they are true and certain. What a loopy loop!

-Attempts his best Homer Simpson impersonation- MMMMmmmmm.. Cooked Intelligence.

We should elect Homer Simpson for guv of California next!

If someone started monitoring me with something like that, I'd probably use it as an opportunity to practice archery, and accidentally miss the target. If you know what I mean. Musta been something in my eye when I let that arrow slip.

I was about to say, "You know, you're arguing with someone who is pasting in text from elsewhere?", but it looks like you figured it out already. Might even just be a troll, hard to say, as I can see an actual scientologist sounding that mindless as well... err, no offense, Mr. Mindless. :)

Agreed, and I'd like to add that those who don't value human life more than property are likely mentally ill, at least to some degree. We are creatures of society and most of us tend to understand the intrinsic link we all have to one another, if only on a subconscious level. Most can see how the welfare of your neighbors and your fellow co-workers benefits everyone. The only ones who don't recognize this are typically those who are mentally ill, or those who pull their blinders tight and refuse to acknowledge it. At least the mentally ill have a good excuse though.

I haven't ever experienced problems with data not being available on MySQL either. Running several Drupal 6 & 7 sites on MySQL. Also, the company I work for hosts their main customer interface against on MySQL and they haven't had any problems in the several years it has been running either.

Is that an issue from 'ye olde' days? I love your posts, but from what I am reading here, it seems like some have problems with bugs in MySQL that aren't actually there anymore. Either that, or I have just been insanely lucky to not have experienced any of them? I'm running Debian stable with apt sources from (http://packages.dotdeb.org stable). So my MySQL version is 5.5.30-1~dotdeb.0.

I couldn't blame you in that regard though, once something leaves a sour taste in your mouth, it's hard to find reason to go back and try it again, I've done the same thing. Though this article is definitely inspiring me to have a look at both PostgreSQL and MariaDB. One gripe I had before (in drupal v6 about 2 years ago) was that PostgreSQL was purported to not support a 'distinct' select by the maintainer of the 'views' module (or possibly a random committer?). It made some of the configuration that I tried to do with views not work out correctly, so I ended up hacking the module code to add distinct support.

Drupal v7 now has a database abstraction layer though, so it now supports specialized queries based on whatever DB you choose to run it on. Drupal 8.. haven't tried it yet, but I looked at some of their DB code using PHP 5.4 traits, and it looks pretty slick. I'm was planning on putting together a new VM soon for testing out Drupal v8 on PHP 5.4, I'll definitely give PostgreSQL and MariaDB a shot.. though http://packages.debian.org/testing/database/ doesn't seem to have a package for MariaDB, looks like mariadb.org has its own repos: https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/.

Should be fun!

First three pages of Googling my name shows nothing about me; though it does show something about "write a prisoner" who has the same name as me. Hmmmm, maybe I should make myself more visible on Google actually.

Personally, I agree with some of what you said about the Anti-MS posts. Though, I've come to pay little attention to them other than the obligatory glance at the train wreck as I am passing by. I'm definitely no fan of MS, to be certain, but I honestly believe that most of the time the posters who post these things actually believe what they write. It's deluded, to be certain, and you keenly observe such, however, your mistake is that you seem to believe that the general readers of Slashdot cannot also observe this. Most people just blow it off and keep trucking though, and there is a good reason most people do that. Namely because arguing with or against someone so obviously deluded by their own perceptions is largely pointless, and the old saying, "Wise men never argue with fools, because people from a distance can't tell who is who" comes to mind as well.

The truth is, there will always be fan-boy's (of anything and everything you can possibly imagine) and I'm sure you know this, but you should try not to let that get to you. They're as much a part of the ecosystem here as at any other aspect of life and I think actually that they probably serve some healthy function in communities, (such as ants and bees and other insects serve a larger more obscure purpose in the world) though what that *may* be is beyond me.

Honestly, I think the bigger problem at Slashdot are derailed/off-topic comments that end up getting bloated with so many other comments which may or may not also be off-topic that they completely drown comments beneath them. It would be nice if they would implement a feature similar to stackoverflow to cause entire threads to sink down when the parent is modded down. Then maybe people wouldn't piggy back on the first post so often.

You presented a lot of good information though, and I am thankful for that. You could be a voice of reason on the site if you stick to the objective side of things and just let your facts stand on their own when they can. There isn't a need to defend them against foolish people who don't bother to read.

Thanks for the info. Google Play just lost another customer in me. I'm using f-droid now as well. Also just purged my phone of any other extra Google anything services. I used PDroid to lock down all the rest which I couldn't outright remove.

I have purchased a few apps from google play store, but they still seem to work with it gone. However, having AdAway removed is just so.. sneaky and underhanded. I don't trust app developers implicitly, AdAway was a basic protection against rogue apps using my power and bandwidth without permission, now Google is going behind my back and attacking the developers of these protective apps so they don't have to deal with me directly?

Lately Google has been upsetting me more and more with their direction. Over the past year I have been slowly trying to phase out anything Google from my life. I just don't trust them anymore.

I can't wait for Firefox OS.

That reminds me of a scene from "Wall-E" where the fat people on the hover chairs only talked to each other via their HUD.

Calling a smartphone emasculating though, that's really far fetched and leads me to believe he has some strange ideas about what masculinity actually is. Either that or he is just really grasping at straws trying to push the glasses. Either way, he definitely doesn't think very highly of the people he is speaking to if he believes rubbish like that will actually persuade them.

You're awesome. You're a strong 3rd on my "Cool Guys" list.

I see a note on the punkspider site to opt out of having your site scanned. Is there a specific way to opt in as well? I would be interested in seeing what results could come out of scanning a few of my sites. I've tried using Skipfish in the past, and a few other scanning utilities, and got a lot of false positives, and also a lot of missed positives. Things I knew were vulnerable and just wanted to see if the scanner would pick up on it.

Thanks for the great work! I look forward to seeing the results, even if some people don't like it. Perhaps sending a notice to "webmaster@domain.tld" would suffice? Possibly even a month or so. Just something along the lines of:

I know I would personally appreciate such an automated approach.

Personally, I don't think there should be a removal from the list option if adequate time is given. That's just my opinion though. I feel like if you've done your due diligence to notify the maintainers, after a month or two of time, the public should have a right to know so that they can be avoided.