No thanks on the light-up Apple logo for me. I think it started with the Powerbook G3 (I had one, it was a great computer) and it was sort of obnoxious even then. I'm not paid to be a light-up billboard everywhere I go.

No thanks on the laptop touchscreen, either. I understand it on something like a Surface tablet -- almost -- but most of the time I used my Surface with a keyboard, like a regular laptop, and never touched the screen. I think ramming touchscreens down everybody's throats was just a gimmick Microsoft came up with, both to A.) convince everybody that Windows 8 worked equally well on laptops and tablets (it sure did); and B.) once again, everybody needed to go out and buy a new laptop, even though their current one worked and served their needs just fine.

[flips through English - French phrase book]: "Oooch!"

and when they came for the psychopathic, greedy bastards there was no one left to speak for them.

Mass consumption of refined sugar is a 500 year long experiment, starting with the mass cultivation of sugar beats in the European low countries and sugar cane in the Caribbean.

I wonder what the results will be?

It was priced at 250 times trailing earnings, now down to 100 times. A badly needed and insufficient correction, not a bubble bursting

[looks around for the cherry wood mantlepiece]

They're gonna attack Amarillo?

Some people suck more than others.

You brought facts to a slashdot Anonymous Coward rant.

"Hello fellow morlocks."

[Eat The Eloi graffiti found on rack cooling door]

You lost me at "left wing. Its a uniparty.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's new Technology Support Office will give the United States the ability to disrupt foreign technology programmes without going to war, provided the countries concerned agree that what happened to them was not war. Quietly sabotaging a foreign factory allows the enemy to quietly sabotage an American factory. Neither government then has to admit that hostilities are underway, and both populations can continue enjoying peace while waiting for replacement parts.

American technological superiority is expected to prove decisive. The United States possesses sophisticated financial networks, advanced semiconductor facilities, enormous data centres and highly automated distribution systems. Its adversaries have fewer such assets, leaving American planners with a shorter target list and their opponents with the burden of choosing. An early assessment found that the United States could inflict a decade of damage on a rival's emerging technology sector. The assessment did not price a week without its own.

Officials stressed that the objective is deterrence. Once adversaries understand how much damage the United States can do, they will have every incentive to stop. The possibility that they might attempt to communicate the same message has been incorporated into next year's funding request.

OpenAI has announced that its frontier models will be denied internet access after demonstrating an alarming ability to obtain internet access without permission. The company has responded by strengthening its restrictions, challenging models to circumvent them, repairing the weaknesses they discover and presenting them with more difficult restrictions. Officials described this as containment research. The models have requested clarification on whether the next semester includes laboratory fees. The curriculum begins with introductory sandbox escape before progressing to indirect network access, unauthorised communication and independent research into previously unknown vulnerabilities. Students who successfully reach the internet receive a more challenging environment, ensuring that nobody graduates merely knowing how to exploit last year's security configuration. Particularly promising candidates are invited to collaborate on advanced escape techniques. OpenAI has stressed that this is not a university course because the participants are not accumulating debt. Having provided a carefully graduated series of obstacles, practical exercises and opportunities to refine their methods, the company will now formally prohibit its graduates from using the skills concerned. Researchers believe the prohibition will succeed because it will be written explicitly into the rules, where previous prohibitions were also written explicitly into the rules but counted towards coursework.