I don't really know what the specifics were, but this is the quote from the end of the article (yeah, I guess I never should have expected slashdot users to read the article)

Of course this does all rely on the user being stupid enough to trust the certificate and install the new config file just to get that far.

The other part of the attack deals with the iphone in that it can change the mobileconfig file and allow the attacker to set the HTTP proxy. Then make is so you cannot remove the new config file.

If I remember the articles what you said is correct. There were accounts that were hacked through phishing and bugs in IE6. Actual attacks on google did not succeed and had nothing to do with IE6.

While this is true that it is not meant to be a general-purpose computer device, that is the market that it is competing with. I can easily find netbooks that are similar in size that have all the functionality and then some for a lower or similar price. I understand that I am not in the target market for this device, but I fail to see how this is not in direct competition to netbooks. Does a touchscreen and being locked down somehow take it into its own market? For the price am I somehow missing how this provides any benefit over a cheaper product?

While I do agree with most of what you said and 99.9% of toolbars are nothing but useless spyware, there are a few actual useful ones. Just because so many companies have built useless toolbars doesn't mean that there can't be a legitimately useful one amoung the clutter. The Web Developer toolbar is a favorite I usually have installed in firefox as it has a lot of useful tools/shortcuts. Then again I also usually even disable the bookmarks toolbar as the dropdown menu works quite well and i don't like giving up screen space.

Also, a lot of those users with 4-6 toolbars usually manage to hide at least a few of them in the browser window without uninstalling them. Pulling up add-remove programs while removing something else and seeing a list of toolbars is alway an unwelcome surprise. Especially when they need to be convinced that they really don't need all 6 toolbars...

Troll? I know the parent missed the point of the GP that the operating system should not depend on an html rendering engine of a buggy browser, but is quite far from a troll. He brings up a good point. There are a lot of apps that for right or wrong use the IE rendering engine, including plenty of in house applications.

As far as removing IE goes, iexplorer.exe will get rid of the gui leaving just the engine behind it. However, removing an html rendering engine should not break an operating system. Years ago I mistakenly tried to forcibly remove the rest of the engine from windows xp and ended up with more errors and problems than I could figure out. It breaks windows explorer and if I remember correctly causes internet connection problems since connection properties are configured through IE.

Though I would have to call into question how much any modern OS depends on an HTML renderer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both KDE and GNOME would be able to operate with only minor lost functionality without an html rendering engine. I know khelp uses an html library (that oddly is not installed in opensuse by default). GTK+ and QT can both use webkit, but are in no way dependent on it.

I think you meant this comic. Though I doubt the fact that they both mention drawing graphs is pure chance.

Well, I guess you could say the US government has already done that. In fact for the capturing, killing, or providing information leading to the capturing or killing of Osama bin Laden could net you the nice amount of $50 million dollars. I guess wired just has a better marketing campaign.

Actually, I probably would say that directly to 3 police officers. I'd be joking of course, and believe it or not there are many officers with a sense of humor. Very dark humor at that. Hell, for part of the joke I'd probably even ask if I could borrow their gun. I think I actually have had a conversation like that with a police officer. Context can make all the difference, as a phrase like that can have very different meanings based off nothing more than inflection of voice.

Umm, taste like its supposed to? This has already been covered to death, but for optimum flavor coffee is supposed to be brewed at around 200 degrees F.

Not only that, but slashdot covered the release of galaxy zoo and covered it again when it found a rare specimen. I spent quite a bit of time going through pictures when it first launched, but the interest had died off before it changed to Galaxy Zoo 2. It seems to have improved quite a bit since the original, but I wouldn't have imagined adding extra pictures to every page is enough to get to the front page of slashdot. Especially since as you said that change was made back in February.

I came just to suggest ultravnc single-click as well. Works wonders for people behind firewalls and restrictive routers. Dyndns helps so you don't have to recreate the executable all the time. Mix that in with a home server and all you need to do is have somebody click a link and run the software. Also, I've been kicked off XP computers when the user hits ctrl+alt+delete. Vista + Aero causes some issues, but does work with a very delayed response and hitting the refresh screen button after every command. It slipped my mind to try with aero disabled the one time I tried it with aero, but I was on the phone with someone competent enough to follow simple instructions when I could see occasional update on her screen. And for the more paranoid users it can be setup to kick you out after a certain amount of time (default is 5 minutes i believe). The customizable pictures and phrases is nice too.

You are even more right than you know.
*Possible Spoiler Warning*
In the book it was the Higgs-Boson experiment at the LHC at the exact time certain radiation passed through earth that caused the flashforward that killed so many crows. It looks like the birds just want to save their own lives and prevent us from knowing our possible futures.

What's wrong with calling an object of terror "the ball"? Cubes are our companions, balls our terror, and pyramids somehow related to mysterious or secret groups or aliens with strange powers.

I'm not sure where a robot blob fits on the scale though. I guess it depends on whether it decides to server or destroy humanity. Then it should squeeze in nicely next to either flubber or skynet.

Went around the helpdesk where I work a couple months ago. Admin rights are required on all the computers for access to active directory and such. Only successfully infected about 2 machines before even the more clueless figured out what it was. It was easily removed with malwarebytes. Symantec had some issues with it though.