There were several really good ones, but the tessellation really was nice to look at.

How 'bout zip ties? Faster to employ and easier to carry than cuffs.

They're also impossible to readjust and too easy to make too tight. They result in actual physical damage including nerve damage when left too tight. Only real assholes use them instead of cuffs.

Only good thing though is these RT devices will quickly be sold at fire sale and maybe we can put Android on them ;)

Perhaps that is one of the things that M$ aims to prevent in its lock-down of ARM systems. To get certified for Vista8, any ARM device that ships with Windows 8 will never run another operating system, unless it is signed with a preloaded key or a security exploit is found that enables users to circumvent "secure" boot. That will definitely crimp the style of any home modders.

It would have cost them more if you had not bought it at all. You helped the recover some of the costs, whereas if it were allowed to sit on the shelf they would have lost all of it.

Surface could be a failure like Xbox or it could be a complete disaster like the Kin.

FTFY. There is no call to try to paint the Xbox as anything other than a money-loser. It has lost money in recent quarters to add to the historical losses. It may be the darling of advertisers and M$ boosters, but was only in the black a short part of its life and has now returned to being in the red.

Moving into hardware is a bold move for M$, but it's an area that the have not proven themselves in. It's also an area where the are as likely to anger partners as not.

Processing a DMCA take down request wastes a lot of resources for the recipient. Is there any reason sites like Google at not already charging a processing fee? They could have one fee plus a deposit. They get to keep the deposit if the takedown was invalid.

...they're just throwing money into a bottomless pit.

Maybe that's the goal. Who said that Nokia was supposed to survive all this?

That's 3% shipped, not sold. They'll often talk about shipped units to make the numbers bigger, but actual sold units is an even smaller number. It's a phone no one wants.

Isn't this the same company that somehow "accidentally" dropped the browser selection process for european installations of Windows 7 SP1?

Yes and it's also the one that is still bundling MSIE with each copy of Windows, despite the original complaint about bundling. The so-called remedy, the 'Browser Ballot' does nothing about the actual bundling and gives only the choice of MSIE+another browser. And because an increasing amount of the tech media is beholden to M$, the subject is not given the attention it deserves. So between the broken ballot and the continued bundling, it is business as usual for M$.

The so-called remedy, the 'Browser Ballot', does absolutely nothing about the original problem. The original complaint is that M$ is abusing its monopoly and bundling MSIE. So the 'Browser Ballot' even when it works does absolutely nothing about the presence of MSIE. Essentially it gives the users a choice of MSIE + another browser, but MSIE there like it or not and no choice. The press has completely dropped this issue. No surprise since so many are beholden to M$ in some way or another.

Yes. We (and Wikipedia) should be encrypting our communications from the start. A lot has been written about why we should use encryption, some of it from around 20 years ago. It's an uphill fight still these days and many won't become interested until it is too late. If you haven't already, consider throwing your own cryptoparty.

Actually it used to be quite common in parts of the US as well. It used to be called ague. I'm not sure of it's original range, but I think it was even as far north as Ohio. There are variants like avian malaria which have been a barrier to reintroducing eagles and other species.

The ISPs might also be part of the problem but I am thinking specifically those whose products are advertised via spam. Come down on them and the market for spam goes away. They are the ones that are financing the whole fiasco.

Shut down the spammers at the source go after the money. The companies that are advertised in the spam have real contact information in order for them to fleece customers. This contact information can be used to trace the spammers' clients. Cut out the clients and the spammers have to go into another business.

No one thing is going to take down the spam problem all by itself. But you can't continue to ignore the origin of the flow of money. Cut the money off at the source: the spammers' clients.

Next step is go after the source of the bot nets: the Windows hosts upon which they grow and thrive. Get rid of those, get everyone on Linux, BSD or OS X and the bot nets go away.

Will this mean that they will soon also migrate over to XHTML and CSS so that their site will work in more than one or two browsers? I give Diaspora a try every now and again but in most of the browsers I use daily, it flat out refuses to render. Seriously at this late day and age there is no excuse not to be using a foundation of valid, well-formed XHTML. Fancy AJAX bells and whistles can be added on top of that layer, but it should first work across browsers and across platforms to reach the largest possible audience.

Anything short of that is alienating potential users and making the technology look bad. If they are missing such a simple check box, what other problems are they neglecting? I want it to succeed but it will continue to not get anywhere until it can render in regular browsers.