TV coverage of sports is a mess, and it's a little different than other TV programming. Sometimes sports are blacked out of their local markets, for no reason. Some events are aired over broadcasting networks and some through cable. If your college team isn't in the top 25, you're probably not going to be watching many games on TV, similar to how the coverage of the Olympics truly sucks. There's no reason for this in the age of digital streaming. If Google can break the stranglehold of sports' coverage, it should open the door for competing providers, just like digital music.

This isn't accurate. Fastboot will only flash something that's signed by the manufacturer, unless the bootloader is unlocked, which won't matter anyway if the device is encrypted. Nexus devices are locked too, and unlocking the bootloader wipes all data, so you still won't get access to anything. ADB sideloading requires ADB to be enabled and the RSA fingerprint of the PC to be accepted.

My understanding is that the Play store was patched, so this vulnerability can't be exploited for apps uploaded to and downloaded from there. The AOSP patch addresses the part of Jellybean that verifies the cryptographic signature of sideloaded apps. That has to be updated on the device end--it's the "Verify Apps" option in the security menu. It's not part (yet?) of Google Play Services; it works without GApps installed. However, if you don't download .apk's from the internet, which 99.9% of people don't do, then it's immaterial whether your device is patched because that function isn't being used anyway. So you're absolutely right that it was blown out of proportion.

Disney has made an innumerable amount of money on others' works in the public domain, like Grimms' Fairy Tales. Yet, they have lobbied and pushed for copyright laws to prevent their work from being used the same way.

They have an ARM license and I think they tested a 28nm SOI ARM design a while back. They may not be as advanced as Intel, but I don't think they are over capacity either.

You also have to consider the amount of fuel spent on delivering gas/diesel to filling stations.

Apple has licensed the ARM cpu design, PowerVR GPU, and Qualcomm radios for years. They may design the layout, but not the IP. As far as I'm aware, only Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Marvell have ARM architecture licenses that allow them to design custom logic compatible with the v7/v8 instruction sets. Everyone else is building SOC's with the reference implementation provided by ARM.

The damage has been done. Chasing him down and prosecuting him is just a waste of taxpayer resources, and likely won't prevent any more leaks anyway. The self-aggrandizing NSA hypocrites need to salvage their egos and move on.

There's really no reason to buy a Nook now that there are better tablets at the same pricepoint and comparable ones for less. A lot has changed in two year's time.

They're using an OMAP SOC for the explorer editions. TI stopped development and is phasing out manufacturing of mobile chips. For Google to deliver the millions of Glass devices that they anticipate, they must find another hardware solution. That's a pretty good indication that the current hardware isn't final. The 4430 is overkill anyway, and a more purpose-designed SOC should be more cost-effective and yield improved battery life.

The problem with these patent agreements with Microsoft is that the details are kept confidential. No one but Microsoft knows what the patents cover, the conditions or fees, and which patents Microsoft is licensing in return--which is more likely to be the case. Microsoft releases these puerile press releases announcing something that probably happens in the business world on a daily basis, yet only they feel the need to do this. I have my doubts that these agreements are as one-sided as Microsoft brags, especially since ZTE is a telecommunications giant in China.

My transformer came with Polaris and I also own Quickoffice. They're both pretty good for document compatibility, but the interfaces take a little getting used to. That's the main gripe I have. However, with the tablet is docked in the keyboard, it's much more intuitive--like running an office suite on a laptop.

It may not be the most elegant solution, but hosting your own Mumble server works pretty well for secure private IM and voice chat. There's a really slick Android client called Plumble, and I believe iOS has a basic one as well. The built-in authentication and encryption is sufficient, and the newer builds support the OPUS codec.

Isn't this more of a problem of enforcing device security policies? If the data is encrypted, does it really matter if the device is locked by PIN, pattern, fingerprint, facial recognition, or some other mechanism?

I think there's a bigger picture here that most people don't consider. Internet sales, except for digital downloads, require shipping...and that's not free. I might be wrong, but I imagine that some portion of these shipping costs that everyone pays find their way back to the states in different forms such as road tolls, airport fees, income taxes of employees and so forth. In fact, I'd wager that the USPS would be in far worse shape if shipment of online goods hadn't filled the hole that email has caused. Again, I could be wrong, but I don't think that the states are being screwed like they claim they are, money is just coming to them in a different form. It will be interesting to see what effect this will have on our economy--will consumer confidence fall? For states like CT with huge budget deficits, will increased taxation of consumers take the place of making cuts to overspending?