I'm missing the point? You're telling me that if I buy 2 screws to replace the 2 stock screws in the locked-down restricted iPhone that I willingly purchased, that I am now a freedom-loving patriot of liberty? If I wanted that kind of freedom (replaceable battery, etc), why would I have gotten an iPhone in the first place?

If you want the freedom to replace your battery, or anything else about your phone, then don't get an iPhone. It's that simple. A kit with a new screwdriver and 2 screws does not make the iPhone any more free, it just means you can use a different screwdriver to take the case off. It's still the locked-down restricted iPhone that you know and love, just now with different screws.

Right. So if the freedom to replace your own battery is something that is important to you, then that's the kind of phone you get, not an iPhone.

It's such a weird promotion.

Well yeah, if you have the right tools then you sure do have the ability to open it. It's not magic.

No, not really. You'll be set to open up the phone using a different screwdriver. Congratulations.

Ready to go find a screwdriver. But not the one that opens the original screws, the other screwdriver that opens the new screws. Congratulations on your newfound freedom.

Not really. Since you have an iPhone at all then people will know that you really don't care about restrictions, or you wouldn't have gone with an iPhone. The kind of screws on the phone don't affect that.

But then you said "Fuck all that", and bought an iPhone anyway.

I'll take t, w, and the character "/" while we're at it.

I understand the feature has limited use (and, having never purchased a PS3, I have no personal experience with it either way), but the fact is that one month they were saying publicly that they would not remove that feature, and 3 or 4 months later they had changed their tune. I'm not commenting on the specific feature in question, just the fact that they did a complete 180 in a few months and removed a feature that they previously had committed to support. If something similar happens with the PS4 I wouldn't even be angry about it, I would expect it. I would be slightly irritated at anyone who wanted to complain about how Sony could do something like that though, those people should have learned.

But, maybe things are completely different now with Sony, maybe the PS4 is the best thing to happen to gaming since the joystick. Time will tell.

Eh, if someone uses a bluetooth vulnerability or something to unlock my car remotely and steal everything out of it (or take the car), I'm going to tend to be more angry at the perpetrator for specifically victimizing me than the car vendor for making a design that turned out to not be as secure as they thought it was. With the rootkit CD in particular, there was a certain level of trust that putting an audio CD into your computer was not going to cause software to be installed that might open your computer up to additional attacks. It was a breach of trust, as if I buy a stereo for my car that just happens to have a planned backdoor that will unlock the doors. You don't expect that to be in something like a stereo, or audio CD. That's a long way to say that I still blame Sony more than Microsoft. Looking after my computer security is enough of a job without expecting malware from things that should never contain it, like a professionally pressed mass-market retail CD. I'll admit though that the default autorun functionality in Windows XP was a bad idea, the functionality where it pops up a menu to ask what you want to do with the CD makes a lot more sense.

I think I caught most of your meaning, but it doesn't matter why they removed it or how useful it was or whatever. The said they weren't going to remove it, they advertised it as a desirable feature, and then they removed it. They can use the "but hackers" justification for anything they want to change about the PS4 also. In the end it's all about protecting their business interests, and they have been shown to protect their interests even if it means removing or changing features that they previously said they would not change or remove. Maybe Sony learned from the backlash from that and will only do something like that as a last resort, but then again people have also learned from Sony's behavior and don't trust them. Shit, I'm still angry about the rootkit thing, I haven't trusted them since they decided that was a good idea. A PlayStation has never been an option for me, for me the choice in consoles is between Microsoft and Nintendo, if I even want a console at all. I'm happy enough with my PC as it is.

To be fair, there's also nothing stopping Sony from changing anything and everything about their PS4 software at any point. And Sony does have a track record to create suspicion that they might.

That's what it seems like. It's pretty rare to see such a major change in such a short time from a company like Microsoft. On one hand, it's good that they're listening to customers, but on the other hand they seem to listen to some pretty stupid ideas before they get to the part where they ask the customer.

Might as well go for the actual numbers, right? The original image is 1.3 billion pixels, not exactly 1 billion. The MastCam (2 cameras) can take true-color still pictures at 1600x1200, just below 2 million pixels. It can also take video at 10fps at 1280x720 (720p). There's another camera, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which also takes 1600x1200 pictures but is meant for closeups, it has a focal length between 18 - 21 mm and can zoom up to 14.5 micrometers per pixel. The descent imager is also 1600x1200, but its job is done. There are 13 other cameras at lower resolution. The rover has far and away the best camera suite we've dropped on to Mars.

Don't worry, anyone who got to the second sentence in the summary knows that.

The plan is to ascend Mt. Sharp. I'm not sure how far up they're planning on going, but they want to study the geological layers in the mountain. It's going to take a while to get there, though.

Shit, is it mid-century already? Where the hell does the time go?

From where does one get a degree in .NET?

Yes, your mastery of HTML and websites is truly something to behold.

The solution is authoritarian.

I'm sure they notified the plugin authors, just keep your plugins updated. Their PDF report has a description of the plugins (including lines of code and downloads), but blacks out the title.

No, it really wasn't. His mistake (you know, other than the actual murder) was agreeing to give the police his shotgun and answer questions when they showed up at his house. He shouldn't have started answering questions in the first place, he should have told them to get a warrant for them, and a lawyer for him. When he decided to answer questions he was already hosed, it was only a matter of time until the police moved their pieces into checkmate and then he's going to be screwed, and that's exactly what happened. He wouldn't have been in that position if he didn't answer questions to start with. The job of the detectives is to gather evidence for a conviction, they aren't there to help the suspect. They aren't asking questions to try and clear his name, they're asking questions to try and get evidence for a conviction. His mistake was answering those questions, not failing to answer one particular question. He obviously didn't have a good answer to the question about whether or not ballistics would link his shotgun to the scene, so he was an idiot for allowing the police to get to the point where they were going to ask that question. It took an hour for them to get to that question, but that was their plan, to catch him in a lie. He wouldn't have been caught in a lie if he wasn't answering questions without a lawyer.

That's right, starting your rebuttal with a 1-word sentence like "Wrong." is intellectually about on par with "Nope.". Just get to the substance.