Apple chooses the hardware that runs their software to ensure the experience is consistent.

Microsoft, on the other hand, creates a software OS that needs to go with many different hardware configurations. Each hardware vendor needs a mini-microsoft team to sure that the hardware they are making, will work with the OS. Just as Microsoft outsources QA, I imagine these hardware vendors do the same. I think this explains the problems with windows, since the quality of the product varies from manufacturer to manufacturer (which is incidentally why MS started to put out their own hardware tablets).

Hopefully these MS stores will offer some kind of support for questions Windows users will have, but I think they will probably staff them with sales people that won't be able to help much with technical questions.

Pretty astounding given how long the S3 has been out. I guess people don't care enough about their data usage to investigate their data.

My girlfriend once discovered that a gas station charged her card 0.03 when she didn't pump any gas (I think she got a call and had to go before actually pumping). I imagine this S3 browser issue is comparable to the gas station incident.

I'm failing to see how you'd be able to achieve a faster internet connection by having your network-limited main internet connections, connected to a larger bandwidth leased server (unless you are underutilizing the bandwidth of each connection). I guess the Connectify software (closed source, not-free), is just a load balancer, using the highest bandwidth connection when possible and available.

From your website:

I'm not sure why anyone would trust closed source software, especially ones that claim to be "totally safe". OpenVPN would seem to be a safer bet.

An additional benifit is that if you disappear, your projects will live on. If you host your files and code on your own server, when you decided to close it down, it goes with it.

I've seen far too many dead links that I would have loved to see...

is that citizens of a once legitimate regime in Syria, fighting to get their story heard by the people of the world.

Ever wonder why the US and EU call the "Syrian" rebels "rebels", but the Mali rebels as "terrorists"? Why do we support the revolution of a sovereign country? Perhaps the revolution ISN'T for the good of the Syrian people, but good for the US, EU, and Israel?

Thanks for the reply kermidge. In an ideal world, we could trust that what we say and write online is private, but as you've said, that's not how things currently work.

I'd like there to be an 'email for files', where you can send a file to grandma easily and without worry, even if that file has all of your account information on it. It is a problem currently that hasn't really been solved, which is why I'm looking into it.

While it will probably be one of those projects that I start and give up on, I think it could be useful to some. Better to be upfront with reality than pretend that this project you WILL finish, unlike the dozens before it :)

Have a good one,
dehole

RMS does not believe in mobile telephones, because they innately track your location, which limits your freedom...

Thanks for the insight, I guess people do view email in that fashion.

I think a new paradigm of digital communication will need to be developed, and gain popularity, for there to be a secure messaging alternative that people can accept. I'm currently working on a secure alternative to DropBox and Rapidshare's sharing tool, which will allow you to share files without a server middle man.

If I'm successful in making it, perhaps you'll read about it on Slashdot :P

When your using HTTPS (SSL) to compose your message in a webmail interface like gmail, that connection is secure. Once you send that message from google mail, that message and all of its attachments are sent in clear text between google mail and the destination email server. I imagine it would be secure from being read by a third party if your recipient also has google mail.

Since the networks that these large email companies use are huge, it can be assumed that you have to be a pretty large business in order to have access to the fiber between these mega mail networks.

Google is an advertising company that happens to offer many great products, the problem in my view is that they use every drop of information they can to improve their advertising. I personally do not trust advertising agencies with private information, and I am changing my preferences so that those advertising agencies have as little information about me as possible. If that means switching to a paid email offering, that is something I'd be willing to do.

Emails are like postcards in how the text in the email is transmitted between the servers involved. Email leaving my email server will be transmitted in plaintext between my server, and all of the hops between it and the destination mail server. Thus anyone in between the sending server and destination server can read/copy the email and all attachments.

ANYONE in between the gmail and the yahoo server can fully inspect and copy the message, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. Did someone lie to you and tell you that your email or chat messages are private?

We claim to have the right to privacy, but when we don't do anything to protect that right, we essentially lose that right (see the Patriot Act). I DO NOT agree with what the government is doing here, which is why I advocate securing/minimizing your communications if at all possible. When it comes to the people's rights vs the governments intentions, lately it seems that the government wins.

and should be treated as such. Do you think a post card is a secure way to communicate with someone? If you want your messages to be relatively secure, encrypt them so only the two parties conversing will know the contents. Then they would need a court order to get the encryption key ( if said encryption key doesn't violate your 5th amendment right to not self-incriminate).

I think its better to encrypt everything, rather than having some off-handed comment taken out of context. I have had 0 luck of convincing anyone else I communicate with to employ such measures though, so eh... Face to face communication is more secure anyways.

I worded my statement to indicate a reduction of Insulin medication, not an elimination, although my opening sentence does imply an elimination of costly medication, which isn't what I meant.

It's good to hear that you are moderating your consumption of carbohydrates, I imagine it is helping you. I believe a low carb, low fat, high protein diet would be a dangerous diet to peruse, but I would need to do more research into that combination. I have found that a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet works wonders for regulating my blood sugar, reducing my weight, and generally making me feel more healthy. The only risks of a high fat diet are that you need to ensure that you are consuming enough electrolytes (potassium in particular), since with a high fat diet, you tend to lose your water weight, hence your not able to store electrolytes as easily.

Another concern about a high fat diet is cholesterol. From the research I've done, it seems that there are two types of LDL's, and it is the small type of LDL that is more dangerous for us, and a high carb diet generally has a higher number of small LDL's that a high fat diet. Dietary cholesterol has little impact on the cholesterol in our blood, since it requires less energy for our body to generate the cholesterol it needs, than to metabolize it from the food that we eat.

Everyone needs to do their own research to ensure that what they think is healthy, actually is. I don't claim to provide the evidence to change anyone's beliefs, I'm just remarking on the results of the research I have done, and its effect on my body.

This is an example of how medical research dollars are used to create expensive treatments to this problem. The hospitals would go broke if diabetics regulated their blood sugar not with expensive medicine, but by restricting how much carbs they eat.

Why should they regulate the amount of carbs? Well consumption of an excessive amount of carbs (low and high glycemic) naturally get converted into sugar for our body to use as fuel. The problem is that when we consume too much (> 100g per day), it causes our blood sugar to rise too much, and if our body doesn't respond to it fast enough, we can easily die (hence Type 1 and 2 diabetics needing to closely monitor their blood sugar).

Our bodies can use Carbs, Fats, or Proteins as its main fuel source. If you switch from using carbs, to using Fats (such as the ketogenic diet), suddenly your blood sugar isn't changing very much, and you usually can reduce your insulin usage over time. It helped me a whole lot, so perhaps it can help you too...

Debian Testing exists for those who want newer packages, aka "Debian Mainstream". I believe its impossible to make everyone happy, and I agree with the Debian approach to their product.

I think there are at least two kinds of people when it comes to linux, there are people who want to get things done, and people who want everything to be perfect. For those people who want everything to be perfect, they switch DE's, switch distros, and try to find the perfect combination of tools, often giving up on a distro that is good enough, to find one that is 'perfect'. The other kind of people realize that their operating system is just a tool that lets them do other things (create things, surf the web, look at kittens), and once they find a OS that lets them accomplish what they really want to do, they stay with it because they aren't looking for something that is perfect, they only want something that is good enough and reliable.