i totally agree with Gruber. No one is forced to buy anything. It’s a free market. People are obviously seeing it as a worthwhile luxury, like me. New iPhone 11 and loving it. I’ll keep it 3-4 years then upgrade instead of buying a cheaper phone that has 2 year old components in it already and feels older sooner. Phones are topping out spec wise but it’s still better upgrades overall than laptops at the moment year on year. And, I use my phone multiple times a day for 20 things (alarm, calendar, email, jogging, music, maps etc etc) whereas a laptop is almost just a web browser on a big screen. For me, I’ll pay more for something truly excellent that I literally carry 24/7. Modern phones are the stuff of science fiction, can we all be grateful instead of whinging that it’s ‘just a phone’? They’re not!

I live in the UK and enjoy premier league football. It used to be that sky broadcasting had the rights to all premier league and champions league games and it cost roughly £30 a month for their sports package. Fair enough, quality and coverage was very good. But, it was decided sky had a monopoly. So, BTs TV network were allowed to purchase some games from sky to break that monopoly. BT also then massively outbid sky on champions league games and so Sky lost that on their channels. The end result is anyone wanting to watch one of the top teams in all competitions now had 2 sport package subscriptions to buy. So cost doubled, at minimum because neither company would sell you the missing Content for a fair price unless you took their full tv/broadband package at the same time. I literally had two internet connections at one point until I saw sense and looked at other options.... And now amazon is getting some premier league games too, which you have to pay for as well. Is it any wonder folk are sick of it?

Perhaps. But, given national security levels of paranoia, would they really trust MS that there are exploits/bugs they are unaware of?

I.T. is already the future line of defence for countries. The cost/benefit ratio is insane. An American F35 looks to be costing $100 million per plane. PER PLANE! That is a lot of very smart $100K per year hackers. An office block of this folk looks to be a way better investment than something that can be shot down in one evening. And, to talk about the article, it is completely natural that Microsoft and the US government will become more embedded (if not already, but secretly). It is a huge advantage, like the US control of DNS. Not to say the US wants to leverage that position, but it it really is something which warrants more dialog. Overall, China/Russia will not accept Windows as a national OS. Forked linux variants will take over. I don't want to be doom and gloom, but there is no way that China/Russia will accept that they will run their infrastructure on an unknown codebase. This decade will be know as the decade where countries realise how much 'everything' relies on computer systems. Trump has highlighted how fickle things can be. China already have their own Linux variants but in effect, they have to keep going on their own path for very acceptable reasons. And, never mind they are stealing this, GPL3 be damned, they will never agree to anything like that.

It's not supposed to be repairable!!! At this price-point and form factor no-one really wants to go there. You are buying a small and portable computer (it is a computer) that is marketable to schools as being better than a bag of books. It is in someways, but vendor lockin is a big problem. But, that is another question. Variations in learning are welcome but it seems like there are certain prescribed ways to do things that cannot change easily. On the positive, the new iPad is well made and will get bashed and bruised and will last a students curriculum. But..... Apple is a premium product and chromebooks are not. Apple can't quite get to the realisation that $300 is still too expensive for school education. $300 is a significant outlay per pupil. And that is without pencil/keyboard. Chromebooks are cheaper and more 'cloudy' which reduces cost in managing almost everything (at a loss pf privacy etc...). Apple doesn't want to be left out of education but it really seems they can never break their business model of making premium hardware at dell prices. Apple can't win education but I'm glad they are trying.

Why should they get him? Its a charge for a crime in Sweden. For an Australian. In Ecuador (kinda). Bordering Britain. Yet we all know they will piggy back a million other charges under it because it happens to be convenient. The whole thing is purely political. There are worse criminals wandering the streets but its a charge and they will enforce it because he is a VIP criminal. No-one see Assange as a public threat under the current charge. But by-God will they nail him on everything else.

Given that their entire market value is based on all that data I doubt it will happen. They can never apologise for this, they have to say that users willingly gave over this information for sale/mining. And perhaps we did, but they have to spin the 'problem' as a user permission/education issue vs corporate profiteering on said data. So here comes the tools to put the control back in users hands just when they need it.

It seems like this new feature was waiting to be launched much like those news articles ready for when people of fame/stature die. I wouldn't trust them. This tool is a reaction to the news and stock value, not because they want to empower users.

Someone get down there and leave a wifi hotspot. As much as Assange is a polarising figure I can't help but think the world is better with him. A little chaos keeps everyone honest. There is a reason authorities hate him so much, some down to him obviously, but really, I see it more of a silencing effort. More whistleblowing is good, Wikileaks does good. Look at facebook right now. The Facebook/Googles/Governments of the world need to be continually checked on what they are doing, else they will keep reaching deeper until stopped.

it seems like the MS win 10 strategy is making Linux distros follow suit. I wish Linux could get its own USP before copying MS. I love Linux mint but it's still catching instead of leading. open source is amazing, but how is this different to an apt-get upgrade? I shouldn't have to know this!

I can see you point, but if the people who created the website made sure their page worked in multiple browsers to begin with then there wouldnt be a problem. No-one made them use features of IE which arent part of the web standards, and hence makes the site incompatible with other browsers. But, can see where you are coming from I just dont think it is cut and dry to blame MS entirely for this one. My 2 cents anyway.

(1) "They are not. They are being punished for illegally abusing their monopoly power to prevent competition." - Ok. Preventing competition? How? By having a web-browser pre-installed on a computer? Gimme a break. Not long ago a file manager was a pretty exotic piece of software. No-one says explorer is abusing a monopoly yet better alternatives exist. Why arent people suing MS for this? It ships with every copy of windows, stop them! I think an internet browser is a fundamental piece of software for any user. And Microsoft supplies one. Wow, that's really evil of you Microsoft.

(2) - "...remember the Media Player thing in Europe?..." Yeah, I do, and look how that helped everyone.

(3) - "Come on, are you that stupid?" Yes. Yes. Yes. If i want a better browser I research the alternatives and get one. The fact Joe six-pack doesnt know there are alternatives is because he/she has no need to get one! My mum can do 100% of her surfing in IE. She doesnt need an alternative. I dont see you providing a single argument justifying your stance on this. Just meaningless 'microsoft is evil and must be punished' stuff usual typical of slahdot.

Sure. But I cant get round the fact that Microsoft seem to be getting punished simply for not promoting the use of a competing product into their OS. If this gets through then the next thing criticised for being bundled will be CD copying software (bundled in XP/Vista, monopoly!), movie making software (bundled in XP/Vista, monopoly!), disk defragmenter, backup program etc... . Sure, these arent the best on the market, but they are useful. If you want a better one you buy it. Also, if you want a better browser you download it. Windows wont stop you. In terms of the web I think more browsers being used would be a good thing but the reasoning seems a bit of a stretch to my mind.

I agree that Microsoft has a monopoly. But if Apple had the monopoly, do you think Steve Jobs would give people the option to install Opera when you turn on your Mac? Hell no. MS dont stop me installing another browser so whats the big deal? The fact the majority of users dont know there are other browsers out there cant be blamed on MS. What next, some office software supplier whining that wordpad is an unfair use of MSs monopoly. I cant see why that's different. Hell, instead of whining, why doesn't opera do something proactive like pay for some adverts in nationwide papers explaining WHY people should use their browser instead of IE.