It's not, actually. There are already asymmetric crypto algorithms which are believed to be quantum-resistant. They are typically based on the hardness of vector problems in n-dimensional integer lattices, or problems that have been proven reducible to such problems such as learning with errors.

I mean (from Wikipedia/US antitrust law) "they restrict the mergers and acquisitions of organizations which could substantially lessen competition". Last I checked there are dozens of navigation apps and companies there, and by dozens I really mean nx12. Plus, it's not like "the" two market leaders merged to monopolize the market (i.e. "they prohibit the creation of a monopoly and the abuse of monopoly power"). Overall, I really don't see much of an issue here, aside the fact the Google managed - again - to buy something useful, which some of their competitors probably aren't that happy about.

If the citizen was making false complaints to Homeland Security, that would be actionable, but this is TDEC complaining to HS that the citizen is a terrorist. IMHO, this would render the TDEC official the person wasting Staatssicherheit's time with a false complaint. If that's terrorism, then Mr. Smith is encouraging and/or procuring terrorism by having his staff make the reports.

You're not "smug and superior". You're full of ... reason.

Sure, but that sounds like pretty much any business. The idea that one man in a garage can get millions of users overnight thanks to free advertising in an app store is awesome, but it was never going to last and it was never how 99% of businesses are built.

Wow. It's easy to forget that the entire industry of programmable computers is younger than a lot of ordinary people walking around today. It makes me wonder what entirely new industry I might see develop from nothing over my lifetime.

That, and more significantly the iPad / iPhone difference has caused me far more headaches than Android's zoo of screen sizes.

Android was designed from the ground up for arbitrary screen dimensions. iOS wasn't. iOS couldn't even deal with it effectively until iOS 6.0.

What you're missing is that quite a few APIs get backported to older OS releases. It's less efficient to have apps contain copies of the libraries like that, but it does work. The trend is in this direction e.g. with play services. Obviously you can't backport everything like that, but a lot of the important stuff is (like new map widgets, etc). The difference between ICS and jellybean, API wise, isn't that huge. The big leap was Gingerbread to ICS. So, you really only have to pick between those two. You can just pretend Gingerbread doesn't exist if you like, the market share will still be larger than iPhone.

Except that cheap Android device are still a million years better than the old JavaME feature phones were. If people who buy cheap phones aren't buying your apps, maybe the issue is nobody is selling them a useful enough app? There's certainly an untapped market there. People should see that as an opportunity, not some sign of "weakness".

Heck, I'm an advanced user with plenty of money and the fact is, all the apps I want or could need on Android are free anyway. I bought TuneIn Pro because I listen to net radio a lot and it was worth it. Otherwise the apps I use most frequently are gratis.

Yes, exactly. A lot of the reason Gingerbread sticks around is because it's not a bad OS at all and it is the last version that had non-OpenGL based graphics. So it can run on pretty meagre hardware compared to ICS+. Some manufacturers are using Android's openness to fix the OS version and push down the price rather than keep price stable and push up the OS. Both approaches are valid and both are needed - the fact that Apple is blind to this market reality says more about them than Android.

Anyway this ignores the fact that Apple routinely updates older devices to the 'latest' OS that is actually something claiming to be the latest version, but doesn't have most of the new features. It's easy to play games with version numbers if you simply strip out anything requiring the latest hardware and still call it the latest OS.

Agreed, it doesn't seem or look like to be anything next-gen in it, I read it through and through and I couldn't find anything revolutionary in it. That in itself shouldn't be a big issue, one of the most important points being to develop on free non-patent-encumbered ideas. So I'm OK with it, depending on how far they'll get with it implementation-wise. But I still don't see why would it be next or next-next gen. We'll have to wait for the "Coming Soon" to arrive.

Not to mention good footage of heart-stopping and/or hilarious shenanigans in Russian traffic. Have a look on YouTube.

These cams are rather inexpensive these days; no need to be messing around with web cams and servers in your car.

I had to talk to AT&T recently, and they pitched U-Verse, and I gave my usual, "Oh, I have several TiVos, so I can't use your service." The guy said they now support TiVo. Could have been a idiotic sales pitch, and Google isn't helpful (years of comments that it doesn't support it overwhelm the results), but if it's important to you, might as well call and ask.

Political rallies... Solzhenitsyn wrote about a rally were people were applauding Stalin, and no one dared to be the first to stop! Of course someone had to be the first; apparently the story had no happy ending for him.

I've seen my share of BOFH and not just in IT. Seems to happen most with people working in relative isolation (having few or no professional peers around) and under a high work load... like sysadmins in a small organisation, but also accountants or paralegals. And if they are the only one in that position, it'll be that much harder to replace them. In larger organisations, a real BOFH would find himself escorted out in the street in the blink of an eye, possibly facing charges as well...