And blaming the driver.

Actually, I think most people are looking at a picture of a lump of scorched metal that used to be a car which was going fast enough to be completely wrapped around a small tree, and blaming the driver.

You don't need to know the technical specs on the engine or the portfolio of the driver to spend a whole lot of time coming to that conclusion.

Looking at the pictures of the scene its hard to imagine that they were driving anywhere close to the 45mph speed limit.

Yeah, that's pretty much my sense of the whole thing without even RTFA. There are relatively few vehicles certified for road use that would be inherently dangerous when driving near posted speeds under typical conditions. That these "experts" are even considering a problem with the car rather than the driver points to a fundamental problem with the "fast car" enthusiast mindset. If you're driving very fast while barely in control outside of a closed track with full safety gear, you're an idiot.

and yet, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the kinds of things that come out of an average politicians orifices.

Surely you're referring to their mouths.

I'd like to think so, but I'm not a xenobiologist.

The above post may contain toxic doses of sarcasm.

... and yet, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the kinds of things that come out of an average politicians orifices.

Never give personal information to a cold call. Never believe anything you hear from a cold call. If you think it could be legit, conclude the call, look up the *real* number of whatever institution purports to have called you, and call them. Real institutions (even creditors) will understand when you insist on doing this. Do I really have to say, do *not* believe a cold call when they give you a number to call back.

Can't mod you up more than you're at, so I'll say that if this was placed verbatim on a placard stuck to every single device with a connection to the outside world, there'd be a whole lot less of this nonsense.

hmmm....I wonder where they could build it. Oh - I know. Dallas. The tunnel has been dug so all they have to do is drop in a few magnates.

I'm all for putting Donald Trump underground, but shouldn't we cover the hole with dirt afterwards?

Assuming you can tell the difference between Donald Trump and cheap backfill, once you cram him, his toupee, and his ego into that hole then it's pretty much ready to be paved over.

Hey, he managed to Godwin the Streisand Effect

I believe it's called "pulling a Mosley". Or if it wasn't, it is now.

You missed GP's point.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I did.

A guy basically walked into an airport and started shooting, and half the comments on slashdot are bent on discussing the description of the weapon used, how he got it, whether or not it was legal, what kind of magazine he was using, what kind of firing pattern he used, and/or how he acquired the weapon.

I doubt any of that shit mattered much to the shooter, and even less to his victims. So yeah, I don't really get the point.

In which case I'd have to wonder why someone would go through the trouble of procuring an illegal firearm for themselves ... simply to use it in a manner that any legal (and easily obtained) semi-automatic rifle would suffice for.

I might be going out on a limb, but I'd suspect that the details of local firearms laws aren't exactly high on the list of concerns for someone planning to shoot up an airport.

It doesn't need to be much more complicated than "what do I have and what can I get?" although I suppose he might have gone to the trouble of personalizing his weapon like that guy who shot up the Navy yard a while back.

This is a great hack if your intent is to hire a large number of people to pass counterfeit bills at many machines in the same day,

This would be a great hack if your intent was to demonstrate the simplest and least detectable attack against an anti-counterfeiting device, which is a logical follow-through on the "need a few minutes alone with the machine" attack.

I don't find the money-making angle particularly interesting, myself, nor (apparently) do the people who came up with the firmware hack.

The next step in the attack process I'd like to see is a design for a counterfeit bill that'll trigger a bug in the firmware causing it to pass the bill. No need for pesky access to the machines in advance.

It's still better than a SlashBI or Slashdot TV submission.

Granted, it's a low bar.

Since when did copying an existing work become innovation?

Ah, but it's not just a copy. It's a copy of something "on the Internet" and/or "in a browser", which according to the US Parent Office is almost certainly innovation.

Devices running iOS sell at a premium, to people who don't mind paying more for goods they consider superior. Of course people with extra money will be able to buy more advertised products! People who are more cost-conscious will tend to gravitate to Android, and will also likely be more wary of advertising.

Or, perhaps, people who are easily influenced by advertising tend to buy iOS products.

Its not what I'd want in a personal phone - but for a company with people on the rode who need to check secure documents, central calendars, and corporate email there is a market for them.

That's kind of the problem, though. When a corporation issues someone a mobile phone, there's a certain desire and expectation that they're going to be carrying it pretty much all the time.

When that person owns a personal phone that they perceive as "better" than the Blackberry, they start to leave the BB in their jacket/in the car/at home/at the office more and more often, effectively undermining the reason it was issued in the first place. After all, who wants to carry two phones?

So yes, corporations would prefer that phones work a certain way, but they definitely would prefer that they have a presence on the phones their employees actually carry. There's a huge market there for whoever comes up with a feasible way to balance all that.