Hey I wonder what happens when you try to login too many times incorrectly? Apparently nothing:

Holy cow, that seems an open invitation to crack logins left and right...

It's not supposed to be a market. It's supposed to just be a front-end to redirect you to your state's market, IF your state wasn't too lazy, negligent or incompetent to setup their own sites. If you didn't want to take what you get after dropping the ball, maybe your state should have taken care of you correctly?

Why didn't your state setup their own exchange like my own, New York? It worked great. The fed site redirected me right to new york's site.

Easy Peasy.

I guess if the state you live in just couldn't get the job done themselves, and NEEDS TO RELY ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DO IT FOR THEM, well, beggers can't be choosers, can they?

I don't think I've really noticed that much overhead from Steam - and isn't the DRM portion all when you launch the game anyway? It's not fair to blame achievement hiccups on DRM for example..

By the same token, there's nothing that'll magically make the DRM scheme ported to the W3C efficient.

Yes there is, because no browser will want a bad implementation. When the browsers get to implement it themselves, they will make sure it works well - especially Google and Apple who will make money on it working well.

Kickstarter investors are just as much investors as anyone else. There's no way Clang would have reached the goal they did without proposing the custom hardware.

I've written off Clang as a loss, which is fine - the more ambitious a project is, the more that is possible. But in the future I'm not sure I'd back a game project with custom hardware asking for less than a million or so, or with a very clear plan on how they are delivering on the hardware.

User apps are not allowed to use multitasking,

User apps are allowed to do anything for around ten minutes after they are shut by the user (they may be killed sooner if they use too many resources or the foreground app needs all the resources).

User apps can also have periodic tasks that run in the background (in iOS7).

User apps can also run indefinitely in the background under some conditions, like for navigation or... for background audio. So it might be some hiccup in the text to speech system operating while the app it is attached to is running in the foreground. I would think anything reading text generally would keep reading even if you closed the application, though it would depend on the application and how it set up the audio session...

Surely Apple's decline is a result of neglecting their PC line

What neglect? Retina Macbooks last year. They've already done the Haswell Macbook Air earlier this year. They've also incrementally updated the line with other features also.

That is why Apple Mac sales are not sinking at the rate all other PC vendors are sinking at. Staying level is a remarkable accomplishment when the rest of the industry is in steep decline.

Only the Mac Pro was really neglected, but that's a part of the market that doesn't matter much on the whole and so even if it's a smashing success, with not effect numbers greatly (either way).

The new pro, I think will be a dud

Holy cow, you are missing a major undercurrent of interest there. The new Mac Pro is going to drain the remaining life out of high end PC sales from other companies.

And just like today, DRM will be a bastard and suck down CPU cycles

Wrong. That happens because so much DRM is served out of CPU hogging things like Flash and Silverlight.

As part of a standard browser makers can make DRM far more efficient. There's no reason why DRM has to consume significant amounts of power or bandwidth - playback of iTunes video doesn't, for example.

I totally agree with you.

Which means you agree with my point - that DRM increases availability of everything to everyone.

A standard for such protection means more people will put up content they would not have before.

So what is the problem? We all know the DRM will be cracked, so it's not like technical people will be unable to retain whatever is supposedly protected.

Okay, where is the DRM'd video available today that I can play back on every device that I own that has sufficient processing power and display capabilities for video playback?

There is none because it's NOT PART OF THE STANDARD.

What you are asking for will become true once it is.

And that is why the standard is better, even if you don't like DRM. It serves more people, and those with less common devices.

Which is the reason why some who hate DRM oppose it being part of the standard, because it will inevitably increase use of DRM... but it will also mean, as I said, that more people get access to more video content.

To the master, Weird Al.

Mac sales were actually UP in Q4 last year - so how have they "dropped for four quarters"? As for the other three quarters, it's dropped something like 1% while the rest of the PC market screams into the ground at mach 3. All of which ignores the computers coming down the pike that will boost Mac sales again...

I'm not sure what leads you to introduce lis into every Slashdot post you make. But you really should consider at least sticking to the truth when you troll, it's marginally more effective.

In a few years, what will really be the functional difference between the Macbook Air and an iPad with a clamshell keyboard?

The Macbook UI will primarily controlled be controlled by touch offscreen (mouse/pad), the iPad will be primarily controlled by touch on screen.

That is the difference, and there is no reason to have that change.

DRM's purpose is to limit web content to those users who have the money (resources) to pay for it.

That is utter bullshit.

There will be a tone of free DRM'ed content, just as there is today.

The DRM will in fact make MORE free content likely because the people giving out the content will feel more assured that people cannot copy it. A false assurance, but that's what will happen.

It also allows for more paid content too - but it's hardly for the rich as you imply, Netflix is very cheap for example and with a proper DRM standard they could move away from Silverlight and just use browser DRM.

Video providers ALREADY use DRM in browsers today. Why are you and others thinking it's WORSE to have a standard for this instead of having the node-podge of Flash and other solutions we have today? We are you not rushing to support something that can kill both Flash and Silverlight in one fell swoop?

Check Home Depot. You can get a talking smoke/CO detector (if you really think you need the CO) for $30. You disable it by pushing the big fat button right in the middle.

Yes, I have one AS I HAVE SAID ALREADY.

My wife cannot reach the middle button.

It doesn't help you figure out which room is triggering an alarm. So if I shut it off because of smoke in the kitchen but there's also smoke somewhere else, I'll never know...

I don't think you are grasping the advances the Nest has made in the most common interaction scenarios people have with detectors, which are plain and clear.