This is right on the money. FB's security model is poorly thought out, and the indifference of the CEO to privacy concerns probably has a lot to do with it. In generally, the ad-hoc revisions of their privacy settings (which have at times forced users to opt out of more permissive settings) are indicative of a poorly thought out security model. The kind of "attack" that is effective (and has been used against FB users) is the "viral app" -- basically, the typical facebook "app" requires that the app is able to perform actions on behalf of the user and see the users data, so most users don't think twice about checking these boxes.

This is a fallacy -- because it assumes that the "number of seats" is a fixed quantity. As long as the foreign students pay for their education it's probably a win for the American students. As long as there is more money coming in, there will be a way to increase capacity.

Grad school programs in the US are pretty good. People come from all over the place. Students from other countries (UK, Europe, Australia) are usually better prepared than their US counterparts. The US education system isn't so much uniformly "bad", it's just quite variable. Some students take first year grad courses in their final year and come out with a very strong background, but others are taking 9th grade math in college. Some students also come over because it's a reasonable path to immigration, so even if the programs themselves weren't very good, being in the country can open doors.

If Google wants to retain G+ users, they should seriously consider not ignoring entire parts of their existing userbase. To this day, Google Apps users cannot log into G+ - they have to maintain a seperate gmail account just to use the service. Imagine how many users would flee Facebook if they were forced to maintain multiple accounts - it's extra work for little return.

Well played. Now, go take your alzheimers medication before you forget. *duck*

1976. Now get off my lawn.

I'll pick on Linksys. Products which overheat, have bug-ridden firmware, and an utter lack of quality control do not belong on the market.

Remember that small workgroup switch you'll often find stuffed behind a file cabinet in small office environments? It's the one whose existence you only become aware of when one or more people suddenly cannot connect to the network. A brief power outage / moon phase / random fart caused that switch to quit receiving packets, requiring a power cycle. Yep - Linksys switches are infamous for this.

The WRT600N wireless router was a decent piece of hardware, but suffered greatly due to substandard firmware. Not only was the web interface prone to random acts of stupidity like refusing to clear a field (DNS entry #3 was one such field which could not be cleared without a complete factory reset), but wireless connections to this router would become inceasingly unreliable over an approximate period of 24 hours, at which point the router would drop connections completely.

Then there's the WRT120N. This router shipped with a slight flaw which prevented Intel 2200 wireless cards (Centrino) using the Intel drivers for Windows from obtaining a connection. How did QA miss that little bug?

Seeing the quality of products Cisco has shipped under the Linksys brand makes me wary of using Cisco-branded products as well. Any company which could put such badly made and tested products on the market doesn't need my business.

Leopard won't install on any machine with a cpu clock of less than 800 MHz without some prodding. Apple also removed the drivers needed to support the old G4 Sawtooth series machines , since none of those ran at 800 MHz or above, as shipped.

There are ways around both issues, of course - it's possible to use OpenFirmware trickery to fool the installer into thinking your, say, 667 MHz G4 is an 800 MHz. The developer's preview of Leopard also appears to have Sawtooth drivers, meaning that theoretically, one can do a Leopard install on a Sawtooth using a few kexts taken from the preview. Whether this is legal or not, though, is another matter.

Of course, this is a moot point when it comes to Snow Leopard, which completely lacks support for the PPC platform.

You asked what to do with your PS3, and I provided an answer. Another option is to simply keep it and deal with the crud Sony is going to shove down your throat. It's up to you.

Agreed. I couldn't bring myself to buy a PS3, or anything else from Sony, once that whole fiasco with the rootkit blew up. My PS2 is likely the last Sony purchase I'll ever make.

There are other companies on my personal blacklist for similar reasons, including a certain fruity company from Cupertino. Sadly, treating customers like trash is becoming fashionable nowadays.

You bring up a good point, identifying a potential market segment that could be monetized.

I think I'll start a new business venture to provide a place where buyers and sellers could meet, and swap money for used items. Perhaps it could allow for bids to be placed, like an auction house, since the potential exists for there to be more demand for a particular item than there exists supply for it.

Now that I'm thinking through this new concept, I see all sorts of possibilities unfolding before me. Now, all it needs is a catchy name...

Ooh, I know! I'll call it 'eBay'! I'll be rich! Muahahaha!

That might work. A 6 ft soldier would appear to be displaced by about 4.5', if that ratio holds.

I beg to differ. Comcast tried to charge me for the cable box I returned. The poor customer service rep sounded a bit befuddled when he verified that the equipment had been returned, while a bill was generated anyway.

In the end, *all* ISPs suck.

Which begs the question - why bother paying for a commercial distribution in the first place?

As has been pointed out here on /. many times before, any industry whose business model relies on controlling the channels of media distribution is now dying a death from obsolescence, thanks to ubiquitous electronic distribution.

This legal move by the networks, which obviously has no customer benefit, is clearly a sign of this malady. We are now seeing more and more suits like this as companies, desperately trying to cling to a failing business model, turn to the law to prop up their house of cards. And it is their last, best hope. The government is quite likely the only organization more resistant to change than the media industries.