And how are your website's users supposed to reach you in the meantime? As soon as you switch your DNS to point to the new servers, the DDOS follows. Try again.

If anyone's found a solution better (or more cost-effective) than Prolexic or a similar DDOS-prevention service, do let me know. That's some crazy-stupid protection money we're paying out, but it has proven effective.

When did this take place? The BOS-SFO flights on Virgin often have half or more of the guests using WiFi, and those A320s hold 146 passengers. They've had in-flight WiFi since the fleet launched, as far as I know. Certainly since 2009 since I first flew with them.

Is using Google really cheating? That's exactly what you're going to do outside of a school if you don't know how to come up with the answer.

It's important that students understand fundamentals but to be honest anything beyond basic algebra is going to be useless for most people. Even as a software engineer, I use "advanced" math... never. For people wanting to go into careers that require that kind of stuff, they should take those classes or pick it up during an internship.

Then again, that applies to basically every subject. It's good to push slightly advanced stuff so students can find what they like and find enjoyably challenging to pursue it further (I took a lot of bio-type classes, remember none of it, and have used it precisely zero times outside of a classroom), but there's a point past a certain baseline when it's just going to frustrate people and take their time away from subjects that could actually turn into careers.

I've never managed to kill a calculator (graphing or otherwise) and it was definitely put through some abuse during high school. I wasn't exactly throwing it against walls, but I wasn't terribly careful about throwing it in a backpack containing thirty pounds of textbooks either. There were a thousand or more of them at the school as every student had one, and I can't once remember overhearing someone complaining about a cracked or otherwise damaged calculator. Yet at least a third of the iPhones I see are cracked in some way (oddly, this doesn't seem to be the case with many Androids, but I see far fewer of them so that might just be selection bias)

They cost so much because they're devices that are the only accepted model for school use. If someone made an equivalent and sold it for $50, TI wouldn't drop the price because the equivalent hadn't been certified as acceptable for test-taking.

Of course the whole thing is absurd. Algebraic solvers aside, being able to plug numbers into a calculator is all you'll be doing with one outside of very specific fields. Memorizing formulae is totally unnecessary, although knowing which one to use is important - and a calculator isn't going to solve that (Wikipedia or Google, on the other hand...)

I'm more surprised that there aren't decent graphic calculator apps for smartphones. I get the whole thing with physical buttons (and agree), but the last time I had to actually graph an equation I think I had to use excel or some janky web app because that's not in my day-to-day work so I don't have my old TI-83+ sitting around from high school.

They're private companies; they have every right in the world to restrict who they do business with - just as not anyone can walk into a bank and get a loan with equal terms for equal amounts, not everyone can get a merchant account to process credit card payments.

The only thing it would take government intervention to legally stop would be cash donations. And given that the summary suggests the organization is more or less performing money laundering, that's a relatively likely outcome.

Only in TV shows. In real life, that's tampering with a crime scene.

Sure, but that's not relevant. Apple is not a government bureau; they have a right to reserve service to anyone. They exercised that right, then called the police when the person refused to exit the store (which is then trespass). After that point, any misconduct on either side would have been from either the police or the woman (or both).

This isn't DRM, this is just having really weird store hours.

It does, but you can still sue for damages.

Either way, sounds like Not News to me. The fact that it's based on a Yelp review rather than a sign tacked up somewhere doesn't change the nature of the case.

Sounds like you've never fired a gun when you weren't holding it correctly. It's easy to do some nasty damage to your wrist or shoulder by simply having a bad grip. You can also get some fun burns if hit by a spent shell being ejected, depending on the size of the round.

Doesn't compare to what the other end of the thing can do, but still... they're pretty dangerous from every angle.

From TFS:

The only way to perform a card-present transaction and get the better discount rates and lower fraud liability is to provide the magnetic strip data. Anything typed in is considered card-not-present, even when you type it in when the card is in your hand (otherwise merchants would just lie and get the better rates).

What this brings about is the question of how merchants are verified as the line between consumer and merchant is blurred... there's no significant change in how things are actually processed behind the scenes, no matter how pretty the UI. It's a bunch of cryptic nonsense based on IBM mainframes from the '70s. Ever seen the integration spec on one of those bad boys? It's nasty - to the point where going truly direct requires a PCI-certified dial-up modem or dedicated leased line installed in your locked cage in your datacenter. Thought using a SOAP API sucks? Try translating your ASCII to EBCDIC before sending it over protocols that predate TCP/IP.

Tech rumor sites seem to handle this fairly well by simply having a second twitter handle from which they do the live-tweeting of event coverage. If you only want normal news, just follow the main feed; if you want a deluge of pithy comments, follow both. Opt-in spam.

Sounds like the sportscaster crew could learn a thing or two about this "internet".

To be fair, I'd take the whitehouse.gov petition route knowing that information, simply due to the increased visibility. There's no state-level equivalent AFAIK, and bringing awareness to the issue (ridiculous or not) is still of benefit.

"The White House responded to over 25,000 petitioners" is a lot catcher than "a couple of people emailed their senators, then posted about it on Facebook".

Like TFS says, the mobile version is free. Just another moron trying to make a quick buck.

My concern with blizzard's authenticator is that they seem to have rolled their own implementation rather than adhering to an open, defined spec (HOTP/TOTP). And like so many of these services, there's no good way to move it to a new device without disabling 2FA temporarily. People do upgrade their phones, after all.