By making it available on Firefox OS handsets and on those Android devices that don't ship with Google Play Services, such as Kindle Fire series, several devices popular in China, and phones with CyanogenMod system software installed that don't have the Gapps.

Not if the ad blocker detection script returns the key for decrypting the text of the page. Working around that would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in Slashdot's home country.

Java is disabled by default because Oracle neglected to clean up security holes in its VM. Firefox 23 hid the "Disable JavaScript" option because it would cause excessive support costs when people "Disable JavaScript" and end up discovering that all their add-on applications have stopped working.

Enjoy paying $9.95 for a 30-day pass to each web site. NYT and WSJ already headed this way when the ads weren't paying enough.

If trilateration signal in a given area is marginal, the data collection should mark the area as marginal. If marginal area surrounds unvisited area, one can be fairly confident that the border is between a visited area and a no-signal area.

Not if Mozilla plans to make the data available to the public under terms more permissive than the WiGLE EULA. It could be an example of what Google's Greg Stein called "license pressure".

If by "uptime" you mean wall time between reboots, I don't see how it differs. A desktop PC is rebooted monthly to install updates, and it is put to sleep (suspend) after hours. A server is the same; it just doesn't sleep unless it's used only during business hours.

Thank you Anonymous Coward for the correction:

Touché. But that's still 18 months of the server being able to do its job of serving instead of sitting and looking for updates, 18 months of one fewer annoyance that might push IT into "screw it, I'm switching to Linux" territory.

I seem to remember reading that the time used by the previous update conflict resolution algorithm scales exponentially with the number of updates issued for a particular platform. Until recently, the number of updates wasn't big enough to cause a problem, but after 12 years of updates, this has changed.

Because other products using the same update mechanism aren't quite as soon-to-be-obsolete.

Probably assumed that a "piece" was a firearm, and a "codpiece" was a firearm in Call of Duty video games.

ObXP: Do Call of Duty games even run on Windows XP anymore?

Windows Server 2003 is supported longer than Windows XP despite using the same update mechanism and nearly the same kernel. Extended support for Windows Server 2003 ends on 7/14/2015, and this problem will only get worse for servers over the last two and a half years of extended support. So there's a benefit for making a fix for Windows Server 2003. And if the same fix applies to Windows XP, it doesn't cost Microsoft that much to release the fix for both, and the gesture of goodwill could help deter companies from switching to GNU/Linux or OS X instead of buying Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell.

As I understand that press release, MPEG-LA has committed to refrain from charging a royalty for making already encoded videos available to the public without charge. It didn't mention anything about royalties for obtaining lawfully made encoder software in the first place, such as the encoder needed to thumbnail a 1080p video down to 720p, 480p, 360p, and 240p.

Even rewording didn't save Xio Software from getting sued by The Tetris Company.

By incurring data overages. Web page: 0.1 MB. Web page with video advertisement: 1 MB or much more. This tends to add up when a satellite or cellular ISP gives each subscriber only 5000 MB per month. And as others have mentioned, malware authors like to install their crap through Flash Player vulnerabilities.

Until you start having to "Don't block" pretty much every site you visit that isn't A. paywalled or B. run by a charity.