Indeed.

I have been down the track of being frustrated with systemd and pulseaudio, and have somehow managed to get over it as my requirements changed.

I used to go a lot more coding than I do now, and for many years (since about 1995) I was pretty much a committed slackware user, since the distro never got in my way, and everything "just works".

I appreciated Arch for much the same reason at first, since in its early incarnations there used to be a lot of similarities with Slack, but with a more "modern" package manager. As time passed, though, I came to feel that the team behind Arch became less focused on stability and more on chasing concepts of "elegance", that (while valid) just got in my way.

Now that my primary computer is an android tablet, I don't much care about distro wars, I just run Mint on my desktop/laptop machines, and don't give it any more thought.

Not just Guitar Hero, Destiny, too. And it's working —four of the top five PlayStation® Store for PS4 purchases are Destiny in-game currency this week.

Those that figure it out will survive.

Hmmm. From a terrorist's point of view, those who bypass encryption entirely will survive, at least for long enough to do what they intend. A one-to-one conversation on a beach or other exposed place is a good way of achieving this, and it would appear that they know it.

Those IS nutjobs seem to have learned that the best way to avoid being trapped in the mesh of surveillance programs is to fragment their operations to the extent that they all operate as lone wolves. It clearly works.

Most people who need to be concerned about excessive and intrusive government surveillance are everyday people who just like to have the bathroom door shut while they're having a dump.

If Skype is the issue, a lot depends on how the provider intends to block it. Some sites just block port 5060 (IIRC), leaving the user free to configure his Skype client to use port 80. If the ISP tries to block that, there will probably be one or two complaints.

Maybe I'm just showing my age (OK, downhill side of 50), but it seems to me that just about any whitegoods type of appliance these days is made to such shoddy standards, it would be pretty much impossible to attribute failure to vandalism on anyone's part.

A dishwasher or washing machine from just about any reputable manufacturer used to last 20+ years. Nowadays we can count ourselves lucky if they work for 5 years. So much for advances in technology. :(

Thanks for the clarity - it's much appreciated!

This is the type of approach most of us "law hackers" (aka "armchair attorneies") would try as a next step. The flip side (and the down side) is that AT&T will never allow the actual issue to appear before a judge. They will:

- parade out yours terms of service agreement as a contract and request sunmary dismissal
- cancel your service
- bury you in motions: change of venue to their HQ state (which is likely in those terms of service), dismissal insufficient standing — you're not an expert, you hacked your gear to obtain incorrect figures, et cetera

At the end of the day, they can simply outspend the average user, and it's in their best interest to do so. Lending any sort of credibility to such a lawsuit would expose them to similar suits from other users — up to a potential class action. The lawsuit will never even make it to anyone technical for review of it's merit. They have an in-house legal team and many firms on retainer to deal with just such suits.

It all sucks, but that's the real world view for the little guy in our legal system.

Technically, I believe PS4 simply hasn't added these features to it's OS yet. Many features of the PS3's XMB still aren't supported on the PS4 or on the Vita yet. In fact, the Vita even emulates the XMB to provide access to many of these features.

Sad, but regrettably accurate if past outcomes predict future behaviours.

I read this, and thought, "Wait, I'm currently playing this in simulationâ¦" It's sad that this is manner in which life has chosen to imitate art. It also raises the question, "Did the researchers see the game and decide to try it? Is the game really a covert proof-of-concept? Or is this *really* just a coincidence? (Go away you nutty conspiracy theorists!)"

Well said.

But just to throw a spanner in the works, it doesn't hurt to mention that even the so-called "classic" version of the site is looking pretty damn fugly at the moment for a logged-in user who has left any non-default settings in his profile. So (at least in my case) the beta could easily be seen as an improvement.

Except that I am aware of at least one case where a guy DID get fired for buying a non-IBM machine. He was a new broom on a long-standing Burroughs site (this was back in the '70s), and he reckoned he was the shizznit, without the requisite experience to back that up. When the directors heard that this fool had splurged on an IBM box that was virtually incapable of functioning in their company, he was dismissed immediately.

Back in the late '70s, I shared a house with a guy who had a pet Bengal tiger. The animal was a real pussy (of the non-edible kind), but one time a prowler came round, sticking his head through an open window. The pussy-cat snuck up, put his nose to the intruder's face and purred or growled or whatever it is they do. That guy's screams were quite funny.

You would do better to read up on why some distros elect not to use systemd, despite the fact that it is becoming quite popular in some quarters. For my part, I consider it to be an unnecessary complication, so am happy that my preferred distro (Slackware) still elects not to implement systemd by default.

I'm going to change my name to William Shakespeare and claim royalties for all those plays (and sonnets, of course) that have been reproduced without my permission. That'll show 'em.