$125 for one ISBN is only "very expensive" when you consider that ten ISBNs is $250. There are plenty of people who are willing to sell you an extra ISBN for cheap.

That said, $125 for an ISBN is only "very expensive" in a country where the average person spends less than $125 for a bag of groceries. Which ain't this one.

On a broader level, one of most baffling things to me has been how little people are willing to invest in their own futures. They'll spend $1,500 on an HDTV, but spend $125 for an ISBN -- when publishing their novel is presumably one of their lifelong dreams -- hell no! I can't afford it! It's so much money! I've listened to long harangues from musicians about how unjust the music industry is, and it turns out all they need is $2,500 to put out an album that's already been written AND recorded. I just can't understand it -- if it's that important to you, if this is what you really want to do with your life, why wouldn't you just put $2,500 on your credit card and damn the consequences? Honestly, I've made my living as a writer for well over a decade now, so I know what it's like to make no money at all ... but $2,500 is such an inconsequential amount of funds to spend on your own dreams that I just can't comprehend anybody complaining about it. In this society, $2,500 is the kind of money you don't even need to ask somebody for ... just fill out a form, they'll send you a card, and you can get a $2,500 loan -- or more -- without ever looking a human in the eye. So ... we're bitching about $250 now? No wait... we're apparently bitching about $125?

I'm not sure that's the main problem, actually. Where spear phishing is concerned, I mostly hear about emails that are crafted to look like legitimate messages from companies like banks, FedEx, etc. If you can convince someone to click through to a website, it's not hard to ship them malware -- particularly if they have the Java plugin enabled.

I've noticed this even when trying to do simple things -- such as whipping up a quick VBA macro for use in Word.

My question, though, is how do you think Microsoft should do it? Those structs exist, they need to be documented ... isn't hyperlinking to a page of documentation the most efficient way to achieve that?

Speak for yourself. I routinely carry a Nook Simple Touch in my back pocket, which is about the size of a 7" tablet. It's a lot more convenient than carrying a trade paperback book. With a book, I'll probably need to leave the house with a shoulder bag. With the Nook, I just put it in my pocket, irrespective of how long the book I'm reading is. When I want to sit down, I just take it out of my pocket and put it on the table. It works pretty well -- provided, of course, that you live in a city where you don't spend the majority of your time driving.

It's true, though. The Nexus 7 fits into the back pocket of a pair of Levi's 501s, though it's a little too long to be comfortable. It will also fit into the inside pocket of a lot of jackets, but it's a bit heavy to carry there.

I wouldn't say that's always the case. And is it a problem with the file format or with the software? If web pages don't look right in Internet Explorer, is that HTML's fault? How about if an HTML5 web page doesn't look right in Firefox 2.0? I wouldn't say a program "breaks" compatibility with a file format change unless the new files can't be opened by the older software. If the old software can open the file, but it looks just a little off, I wouldn't call that breakage.

Oh really? So far as I know, nothing has broken backward compatibility for the Office document formats since Office 2007.

Sure, they have introduced new features into newer versions of Office. Older versions of Office that didn't include those features won't recognize them. But that doesn't prevent the documents from opening in the earlier version -- you just get an error message. But if you create a document in Office 2013 that only uses features that were present in Office 2007, it will open just fine in Office 2007 (again, so far as I know; maybe you know otherwise).

In my mind, that means the Office document formats have been pretty much "stable" for at least five years -- which might not sound like a long time, but in the computer industry it actually sort of is. There are certainly worse offenders.

Seems like what they mostly add to Excel are new visualizations, i.e. new ways to display data, rather than to calculate it. They're also adding things like new PowerPoint visual effects, tools to make it easier to edit graphics from right within PowerPoint and Word, etc. None of it is essential, but it's easy to see how someone who uses the product a lot could think they're pretty cool additions. I suspect these are the kinds of things Microsoft will be pushing with their Office updates, more so than anything really significant.

I have no reason to suspect the file formats will change in any way that breaks backward compatibility. But I'd say you're right on the money with the rest of your sentiment, no cynicism required. Note that the infrastructure for these supposed 90-day updates (Microsoft hasn't said it will actually do them every 90 days) is only included in the Office 365 version of the suite. It has a different installation method and its own software update feature. Microsoft has already said that it will be releasing Office 365-only software updates using this mechanism. What it's doing now is trying to plant the idea in customers' minds that if they don't get onto the subscription model they will be "missing out" -- or worse, that they won't get bug fixes and security updates as fast as subscription customers. The latter is probably not actually true, but you won't catch Microsoft's sales staff denying it.

Care to explain the specific context and the specific reason? From the sound of it, they are arguing against having sex-ed talks at conferences because somebody might not be aware that a sex-ed talk might include topics that make rape survivors uncomfortable. Is there something more specific -- your word -- that makes this specific conference the wrong place for a sex talk?

You've kinda got it backwards. They "added the Neo One" because they had already been selling this model of phone as simply the Neo One. Then in October 2012, for whatever reason, they added the iphone part and started talking about how they owned the trademark, etc.

The phone itself is pretty lackluster. Gingerbread, 700MHz single-core processor, altogether pedestrian specs.

LOTS of novels are written about the workplace. The critical point is that they don't get published.

Here's how it works: Some guy (they're almost always guys) goes to university, gets a BA in English, then goes off and gets a dull office job because he needs money to pay off his student loans, just like everybody else. Time goes by, and about ten years in he starts to grow unsatisfied with his situation and he thinks to himself, "Whatever happened to that novel I always said I was going to write?" And he vows to write a novel.

But what should the novel be about? Well, you know what they say: "Write what you know." And what does he know? Well, pretty much since he got out of college, he's been working at a boring, soul-numbing office job. He hates his coworkers and thinks they're all idiots. The boss is the worst of all. Great stuff, he thinks! He has piles of material to work with. And so he sets out to write his book about a guy working in an office.

The problem is A.) Unbeknownst to him, he is not the first person to have this idea;
B.) When you write a book where the main character is just some schlub in an office going around thinking he's superior to everybody else around him, that main character comes off like a dick;
C.) It turns out that the silly little situations that get you through your dreary days at the office are not really that amusing to anyone else -- or witty, or original, or insightful, etc.;
D.) It turns out that the office is not really a very fertile setting for fiction after all, and that the reason a lot of people who work office jobs bring books with them on the train in the morning is because they'd rather think about something else.

I am being dead serious about all of this. I've been told by literary agents that this type of book is probably the #2 submission received by fiction agents/editors from first-time authors, right after the thinly-veiled memoir of the author's college days disguised as a novel.

Like the latter book, the "novel about my suffering and toil at the office" is best seen as a practice run -- finish it if you must, but then immediately shelve it and start your second novel, which might be about something interesting.

The American version sucks, but I still think the UK original -- like most of Ricky Gervais's stuff -- is really quite bitingly funny.

OK, now I think you're intentionally being thick.

Let's recap: You are the one suggesting that this was the work of one man, acting alone. I am the one telling you that this is virtually impossible, and an attack of this kind would never be done without official government sanction. So explain to me what your new argument is now, because you sure as hell sound like you're making my point for me.

I bow before the superior intellect, Khan.

Yeah? And just when would that proof be made public. You mean the kind of "made public" like when the newspapers you attacked run stories about it and the entire world knows about it?

I am begging you ... begging you, now. THINK. Use your brain.

The part they seem to have glossed over is that this is a secure USB key. Most of the storage is AES encrypted, with just a tiny unencrypted boot partition to handle the encryption.

Mind you, I saw this press release on Friday and it didn't sound particularly interesting to me, either.

Here's something interesting, though. Imation, which has been buying up various companies, including IronKey -- because apparently floppy disks aren't selling as well as they once did -- has managed to shed 88.5% of its share price since 2006.

OK, my guess was right. You really don't understand how things work in China. My recommendation is that you go to the library, grab back issues of some reputable news source (The Economist might be a good place to start) and read up on everything you can find about the last Chinese national election. Along the way you'll learn a lot about how free Chinese politicians are to act independently. (TL;DR - China ain't the US.)

Also, just think about what you're suggesting. This isn't some politician giving an order to have some hapless old man thrown in prison. That kind of thing happens all the time in China, and nobody ever hears about it. What you're saying, though, is that some lone politician, acting completely independently and on his own initiative, hired hackers to launch an attack on the two largest, most respected newspapers in the United States. Not even the largest companies -- the largest newspapers. Exactly how was this supposed rogue, lone wolf politician planning to cover up what he did?