or the banks? Because you can't have it both ways: Either the government regulates money for various reasons (crime, abuse, economic stability) or it doesn't. You can't have a situation where the nifty "hacker" currency that you like is exempt for all regs and you can do what the fuck ever with it, but traditional monetary instruments are regulated to try and stop shit like what happened in 2008 (in no small part because of the repeal of many regulations).

So you have to decide how you feel about government regulation of the economy, currency, investments, etc, and then be consistent with it. Reason isn't just to not be a hypocrite (though that is a good one) but because if instruments and investments denominated in dollars are regulated but ones in Bitcoins are not, well guess what all the Wall Street scum will do? That's right, use Bitcoins.

NDEs are something that only a small percentage of the population experience. Most people just black out. Same deal with blood loss in the brain due to a centrifuge or the like. The government has studied it on military pilots and while most black out, some have NDE like experiences. At this point, we don't know why only some people experience it.

And forward any interesting business intelligence or gossip to anyone who might want to know.

That is the point all you TPM-ranters seem to be missing: It is 100% optional to use. In most cases I've seen, it is off by default because people just don't give a shit about it. On my system I go and have a look in device manager and, oh look, there's no "Security Devices" category, which is where the TPM appears if it is turned on. My board either shipped with it off, or without one (I haven't bothered to check in the BIOS) and it is a new Z77 board.

I could see the issue if this was being required, but it isn't. You can choose to turn it off (or more likely to just not turn it on). Then there's no issue.

It really seems like something that some people just want to be a big evil issue so they pretend it is. There's lots of screaming about it, that is backed up by a big lack of knowledge about it. Just chill out, don't use it, and go on.

Also not only does Windows 8 not need secure boot, it doesn't even need UEFI. You can run it on a system with a BIOS, or on a UEFI system in BIOS emulation. My desktop is set up like that. My motherboard had some issues with UEFI boot as well as my video card, so BIOS mode it is. My laptop did not, so it is UEFI boot (it is faster) though without secure boot, it is just regular ass UEFI boot.

I swear these paranoid types need to spend a bit of time getting their learn on about new technologies before whining about them. You'd think if you cared so much about privacy and control you'd actually take the time to understand what thing do or do not affect it.

The amount of knee-jerk that goes on with this shit is pretty amazing.

Well their terminology may be a bit off but the idea is actually correct: You can't, at this point, be "cured" of alcoholism. You can stop drinking and that is what you need to do, but the addictive nature is still there. If you start again, you'll overdo it and spiral down the addict path. If your brain/body is such that it will get addicted to alcohol, then it will always be that way, and no amount of time will change that.

That's really what they are saying and it is correct. You don't cure an addiction, as in become such that you won't get addicted to the substance, you just stop taking the substance.

As an example take a look at nicotine. There actually are people who do not become addicted to it, my mother is one of them, they are just very rare. Most people, if you use it more than a little bit you WILL get addicted. We all understand that, so those of us that don't wish to get addicted avoid it. Also once you've quit smoking, you recognize that you can't start again, you can't do it "just a little bit," you'll get hooked again.

Well for alcoholics, that is how alcohol works. Most people, 90%ish, aren't like that. They do not get addicted. However for alcoholics it works like nicotine, they do get addicted. So the only answer is avoidance. There's no amount of time after which you are "cured" and can no safely drink, you just need to stay away.

Same thing goes for any addiction. You are never "cured" you just stop taking the substance. You can't ever go back to taking it, or you'll head down the path of addiction again.

Of course, the part that the NSA et al seems most interested in is the source and destinations of your mails to map your associations. By sending via your ISP smarthost you're still handing them that info, so if you want to cut them out of the loop you need to vpn the mail relaying outside their grasp and ensure encrypted smtp/tls direct between endpoints.

Your random mail idea does screw with them in a nice way tho as it'd mess up their social graph and probably get yourself classified as an uninteresting spammer after which you can freely inform islamic insurgents how they can enlarge their manhood and obtain large fortunes from Africa by sending a small upfront payment.

But for actual secure comms it's probably better to use i2p or some other darknet. And traffic on that screws with the snoops as well.

You do realize that the definition of taking means that the one whom the thing is taken from no longer has it? If I take your apple you don't have it. If I take your book you no longer have it.

If I pirate your book you still have it. Because I copied it. I neither took it, nor stole it, I copied it. And if you didn't see it, you'd have no idea it had happened, nor could you demonstrate or even experience any loss, while had you been robbed you'd certainly notice it.

See, physical property rights are actually demonstrably real and arguable as part of natural law, while imaginary property rights cannot be demonstrated or argued without their own previous existence.

If it's society's job to ensure that someone can benefit from creative works, why is it handing the creators something which is utterly worthless? The right to control copying of an abundant product is worth nothing without the distribution network which is not owned by creators.

Oh, right, because copyright is intended to benefit the distributors and not the creators. The creators are merely a cheap excuse and as they are not particularly scarce and most cannot independently gain access to end consumers to a significant degree, they hold no bargaining power and thus have the choice of between getting screwed or getting nothing. Perfect. For the distributors.

If 'copyright' had actually been about incentives for producing creative works it would have been constructed to automatically hand creators a significant portions of the end user transaction. A guaranteed significant cut would actually be worth something and would actually let someone focus on creative works full time.

But it's not. And most 'creatives' would have a better chance of striking it rich by working selling fries with that and investing their proceeds in the lottery than by playing a game which is intentionally stacked against them every step of the way.

They don't subsidize phones, that is one of the reasons they are less. So you either need to bring your own, or pay the full cost, which can be $600-700 for top of the line smartphones.

I don't think this is a bad thing, I like T-Mobile for ending the subsidized contract nonsense but you do need to consider that price wise.

Let me direct you to two facts:

1) Anecdotal evidence isn't very valid.

2) That was written in 2011.

So my anecdotal evidence based on newer drives (2012 and 2013 drives)? Zero failures over 5 drives. So I guess that mean by his crazy/hot scale that SSDs are perfectly stable, not at all crazy!

Look, drives fail. All of them, in the long run. It is a question of how often, and how long. I've had plenty of HDDs fail on me in my career in computer support. I don't have stats on SSD vs HDD failure rates, and it would seem neither do you, and neither does that dude. However if you reason for disliking them is you've had a whole one drive and it has failed, well that's a bad reason.

Far too many people on Slashdot need to do some foreign travel, or at least a good glass of perspective and soda. The US is far from perfect on, well, all fronts. In terms of privacy there have been some very disturbing developments lately (though anyone who thinks it is the first time needs to learn history). However that does not automatically mean the US is horrible, the worst country in the world, that other countries have no abuses, or at least none worth mentioning.

Russia has real, real problems in terms of human rights, basic freedoms, government control, and so on. They are sliding towards the bad old days of a soviet like system at an alarming rate. It is far worse than anything happening in the US. Now none of that means what is happening in the US is good, but please stop with the bullshit.

Honestly it is a literally childlike view of things where there is only a binary system of morality: good and bad, and they are always opposed. So if the US does something bad they are bad and that means anyone against the US must be good.

They don't do any in the consumer space, I know of, but they make heavy hitting enterprise SSDs. They don't normally sell them to channels, they sell them to VARs like Dell who use them in their stuff.

Look at Ubuntu: They support standard releases for a year (they've reduced it) and LTS releases for 5 years. That means from the date of initial release. RHEL is 10 years of support for their 5 and 6 releases (7 for 3 and 4) and then you can buy 3 more years of support for extra money.

OS-X is a bit different in that Apple supports two version older than the current one. That in practice means about 3-4 years of support, but is harder to plan since you don't know how fast releases will come, you don't get a defined, guaranteed, cycle.

So... Where's the company that gives a much longer/better support cycle? Because I sure don't see it.

It is at a heavy cost. A car receives support anywhere close to as we think of it in the software world for only a few years or a certain mileage limit. During that time, if there are problems, they fix it. However after that, it is your dollar. Also it is only repairs, no updates.

I have a 1996 car and the dealer will still work on it, you can get parts, but the charge quite a bit for both the parts and labour. There are no updates to it, no improvements. Subsequent models got a more powerful, turbocharged, engine but I don't get to have that retrofitted unless I want to spend serious money (and the dealer won't do it, someone else would have to).

People need to STFU about MS support as it is actually very good. Their OS support is 10 years from date of initial release. So when an OS comes out you are guaranteed security fixes for at least 10 years from the release date. Sometimes they'll extend that, but you get at least 10 years. That is split in to 5 years of general support, meaning it tends to get service packs and often new features, and 5 years of extended support meaning it tends to get only security updates.

That's not a bad lifecycle. Even the LTS very of Ubutnu is only 5 years, OS-X is two version behind the current, which translates to like 3-4 years. At 10 years of support, with no subscription or anything, MS is not bad.

It isn't like this XP thing is sneaking up on people, it has been known for a long time, some people are just choosing not to deal with it.

Also, realistically, if you get the most current Windows on your computer when you buy it, it'll last for the life of the computer. Even if it is a couple years in to support, the computer is likely to be very old and slow, and probably breaking down, by the time it goes out. For example if you bought a system with Windows 8 on it today, it would go out of support in January of 2023. My guess is that 9.5 years from now, whatever you bought will be showing its age pretty badly, if it even still runs, and be due for a replacement. Heck even a system with 7 goes out of support in January of 2020. So over 6 years until you'd need to upgrade, and again, might be new system time at that point.