I will apply all the patches that the vendor supplies in an automated way where possible and where not, as soon as is practical. While it is true that a vendor could screw up a patch, it is also true that my hard drive could die, malware could get on my system, an other hardware or software problem could corrupt my data, or I could just screw up and delete data myself.

To protect myself from any of these occurrences, I keep regular backups. I take these backups at a frequency similar to the amount of data I am willing to lose in the event of any failure (including "evil" actions on behalf of my OS vendor.) For me the frequency of backups is generally daily.

Note that I use the term OS vendor instead of Microsoft here, this because I run several computers with several operating systems (Microsoft, Linux(s), others) and I have had them all screw up a patch.

Since I have chosen not to write or personally review the source code for all the software I use (because I don't have that kind of time), I choose to outsource that work to several vendors, one of which is Microsoft. Yes, there are risks to running software from Microsoft (or any other vendor), Microsoft may not have my best interests in mind. However their software meets my needs and I have made the calculation that the value the software provides outweighs the risks.

Or if you are down for 2 days ($200 million), and the cost of having a fully redundant system is more than $200 million (equipment, people, process, ...), from a business sense, it may make more sense to just accept an occasional outage.

Or they ran the numbers and calculated that even if they have an outage like this, the cost of that outage would be less than the cost of preventing it. If all you care about is the bottom line, you might not care if you inconvenience a bunch of customers for a few days.

It is our fault because we (the TV purchasing public) continue to buy. If we refused to purchase things that were overly complicated, manufacturers would create simpler products.

As a side note, I don't personally think TVs are too complicated. That being said, without regard to if they are or are not overly complicated, the quality and complexity of products in the marketplace is ultimately the consumers fault.

Make it so that the person placing the call potentially pays to call me. I get to set the price. I agree to split that price with the phone company. The phone company agrees to play an automated message to the original caller informing them of the price and giving the caller the option to to complete the call or not. When my phone actually rings I get the option to press a key to waive the charge. Fun and entertainment ensue.

I agree that the cases you listed are not too exciting. The one case that I have seen that is pretty exciting and useful is text translation. Nokia has (had?) a pretty slick translation application where you could point your phone at some text and it would translate it on the fly, in place. Works great when pointing it at a menu or something where you want to see the translation alongside pictures and other positionally useful information. It would translate and overlay the translations it could do, and left the rest of the image as is.

I would be more worried about those unlawfully carrying than those who are legally open carrying or those who are legally carrying concealed (with a permit). My guess is that most folks who are open carrying are doing so to promote / exercise their rights and are being responsible about it. The last thing folks emphasizing their rights want to do is perform an action (shoot someone in this case) that has the effect of generating negative public opinion.

I think that all if not most new cars do have data recorders (black boxes), the question is: What should these data recorders record, and who should have access to the recordings? There is a wide possible spectrum. I would tend to agree with you if we required storage of the last few minutes of mechanical parameters likely to indicate the cause of a crash and make this data only accessible via a court order. I would tend not to agree with you if the data recorders stored months of mechanical data, computer logs, GPS history of where the car has been, video and audio of the drivers actions and or if this data was routinely uploaded to the cloud with no restrictions on access or monetization.

The parachute description is all true, you can't truly test a packed parachute without using it, repacking it, and then not knowing for sure that the last pack job was good. However you can test the process. If you pack it yourself or pay a professional to do it for you, and it passes a test, you can have reasonable assurance that if you follow the exact same *process* again (pack it again yourself, or have the same professional do it for you again), you will have a usable parachute.

In the backup case, while arguably in this example is not as life critical, the guy should have validated the *process*. He should have either had the skills to make and restore a backup, or he should have tested the process by having the vendor demonstrate that they could restore a backup on his behalf. If he had done this at least once, he has a legitimate complaint that his data is gone. If he had never attempted a restore (on his own, or by asking Google to do it for him), I wouldn't consider his complaint legitimate.

Actually, if you haven't successfully tested a restore of your backup, you don't have a backup (and it must not be that important to you.)

Perhaps we need to put down our keyboards and screens and lean how to talk to each other again, in person. If we don't, we risk going back to being animals.

This is a prime example of what should be on the site. Thanks )

As other posters have said, his words are those of an idiot.

Any possibly that he is actually saying that known crypto algorithms have been broken by the US? I doubt it, but it is interesting to ponder.

Although not magic or anything and it does what it was designed to do, it is still pretty darn cool, especially considering how long ago it was built.

It's the only way to be sure.