As EA has done with so many properties it contracts for, they completely devalued the game of Scrabble with their horrible port. With that example as a predictor of what they'll do with the Star Wars property, we can look forward to seeing a third party's massive success marketing "Laser Swords with Friends" across FaceBook and iOS.

More to the point of challenging forensics is the lack of any rifling leaving marks on a slug to match it to its source weapon.

I doubt the melting-down of a weapon would befuddle investigators any more than when traditional guns are thrown into rivers, lakes, and oceans. When it's gone, it's gone, be it plastic or steel.

That means it's a crime. So... where is the charge sheet, mmm?

Well, corporations are people, so a criminal charge against the ESEA should be forthcoming.

Supporting everything said above regarding the need to fire Ballmer, I'd like to point out one other thing that doesn't frequently get mentioned...

Look at the CEO's of Microsoft's competitors. They're geniuses. They're people who got to where they're at because they made a whole scaffolding of great decisions. They established themselves as distinctly really smart people and earned their ways into positions of leadership.

How did Steve Ballmer get into this crowd? He was roommates with Bill Gates.

Are they also upset that they invented the Tablet PC in 2002 and then Apple ate their lunch eight years later by actually delivering it in an appealing form factor that people actually wanted ?

I'm not sure how you're sourcing this, but this is actually a very accurate depiction of Microsoft's deluded perspective. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was working as a consultant on some projects with Microsoft and was flying to Redmond frequently. I asked him if the people he was working with were feeling disillusioned about where they've been heading and their prospects against the competition. He related that they were proud that their company had already invented the tablet several years ago.

Internally, they must be bragging about that as a morale-booster or something in the face of pretty daunting prospects for what they're working on now.

Seth

Roblimo is trying, but failing as a video producer. He goes onsite to Texas locales without any preparation, research, etc. and spontaneously attempts to conjure up questions to ask people about the event.

Most of what he asks the people could be found on any flyer about the event. Better questions would have been:

1. Is a pinball renaissance afoot? 2. Why wasn't the kid from Kaine's Arcade invited?

Seth

The question is: will doing the DB in hardware even help with anything?

Oracle is quick to mention the benefit of hardware encryption they've implemented that's transparent to the applications accessing the data. This is pretty huge because just about every SaaS I've ever worked on has been cobbled together without encryption in the original design and then later on when it was determined to be a valuable feature, the challenge of implementing it in the existing code base was gargantuan. Transparent encryption / decryption is a wonderful solution, and having it accelerated by the hardware would be tits.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/advanced-security/index-099011.html

seth

To cut a long story short, the reason you hate Windows it seems is because you know absolutely nothing about it.

I think that's the point I'm making here. Without 'knowing' windows is to hate it. Your assertion is that once I would have learned all of Redmond's idiosyncrasies embedded in their UI decisions, then my 'hate' will melt away. An enlightened UI design does not require such a trial by fire.

Seth

What exactly is so bad about Windows? To describe using it as torture, you must have some rational well considered reasons, which I am sure everyone would benefit from hearing.

Here are my top 3 nits to pick on Windows. They sound very random, but that's because they have existed for many releases and would be VERY EASY for Redmond developers to address if usability was at all a priority.

• Command Console doesn't have simple highlight / copy / paste functionality.
• When the default application isn't set for a document type, the first choice that's provided in the resulting pop-up is "Do you want to wander around on the web to find an application that can open this document?" rather than the option of selecting an application from the list of installed applications.
• In SQL Server Management Studio, when you have multiple sessions open, they are tabbed. Even when you only have two or three tabs, the tabs are scrunched horizontally such that you can't read the labels, which usually start with the server name, then the database name. So, if you have six sessions all connecting to different databases on 'foo' server, all six tabs are labelled 'foo...'. Sure, that's not the OS, but that is an example of Redmond not giving a shit to produce quality usability in ways that would be trivially simple.

-- Seth Johnson

Sounds like a trip to the electronics recycler. For all the time you're going to invest into getting some very limited use out of that device, you could just get a decent $300 tablet that will be suited for many uses. Since you're a dad, you know that your time is valuable. More valuable than making this thing marginally more useful so you can save $212.

Put some edutainment apps on their and hand it over to your kids. No need to ruggedize it.

Not that http requests are how these passwords are being cracked, but to entertain you and the others who think so, I'll throw this word out to you:

botnet

Seth

Beardo, This is a great mechanism for me to abuse to lock all your users out of the system.

Great thinking, there.

Seth

Don't get me wrong here, I think Kim is a criminal and deserves to spend time behind bars.

He probably expects he will spend some more time in prison, and he's launching this service quickly while he still has his illicit capital from MegaUpload and before he has to go to prison for running it. While he's in prison, the new Mega service will become lucrative and he'll still be rich when he gets out of prison.

Seth

I'm not sure which 'first time around' you're referring to here... The pump-and-dump ponzi scheme he ran during the late nineties dot-com bubble or the MegaUpload website he ran in the later oughts? Both operations paid him handsomely, and he so far only did a short stint in jail on the stock fraud, but the case is pending against him on the MegaUpload website. He's got more money than OJ Simpson did when he hired his legal 'dream team', so there's a chance he might avoid prosecution for MegaUpload.

But if the guy is already a celebrity, isn't attention-whoring part of his job description?

In a related topic, it's been something of an industry rumor for the past six months that Dice has made a confidential offer to an ex-member of the band, Guns-n-Roses, to change his last name to "dot org".