Unless they did it intentionally, in which case they got to make an open-source app on Microsoft's dime.

The installation program could be written as a cross-platform script interpreted by a native program. Better to maintain one cross-platform program if it means you don't have to for the others.

Because people that use Firefox probably have heard about this patch and realize it is Microsoft's doing, thereby shifting the blame correctly to Microsoft.

I think you misspelled, "I'm too stupid to properly spell check a sentence."

Unless you fill it with movies which are easily 100 times as large as MP3s.

To prevent them from finding the usb stick you could memorize the code to the encryption program and simply retype it everytime you want to use your data instead of making the usb stick.

The only problem with this law is the definition of sex offender. As many others have said, you can become a sex offender by public urination, or sexting, or having sex when you are 18 and you partner is 16. For them, being banned from social networks is not a just punishment. It has absolutely nothing to do with the crime. Banning social networks makes more sense for sex offenders with a history preying on others, especially through the internet. This law seems overly broad and they should make it apply to only a subset of sex offenders.

Or putting it inside an A/V cabinet.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Programming . Clearing out an entire block is different than a write. Writing to an SSD is only possible by setting the value to 0. So when I save something to the SSD it is really only writing down the 0's of my file and just leaving the 1's alone. This is not the destructive part of using flash. The part that uses up actual write cycles is clearing a block back to 1's. This is explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Erasing .

Taking from your list of actions: Pick a random block:
1. GC comes along, swoops up block, eliminates junk by flashing entire block into 1's (awhile later)
2. OS requires write, swoops up block, writes only the 0's from the file leaving everything else untouched.

In this manner each step does half of the writing amounting to one write when combined. This is exactly how all SSDs work. The major difference announced in the article is that they are separating the two steps.

Normally this is impossible because the SSD doesn't know if something can be cleared until the OS is trying to overwrite it. This makes writes take longer. The new firmware hopes to make writes faster by moving the first step into the idle time of the drive (by figuring out when a overwritten block is unused) sort of like how you can set up a download to only run when your not using the internet connection. It allows for more efficient use of time that the drive would otherwise be doing nothing with.

From the summary: "This isn't a concern on fresh, new SSDs, but over time, as files are written, moved, deleted, or replaced, many blocks are a left holding what is essentially orphaned or garbage data, and their long-term performance degrades because of it." The are talking about clearing sectors of garbage data that is no longer in use. It would have to be done anyways before the sector can be reused. The new firmware is simply doing that time consuming step early while it is in idle. The actual number of write cycles is not changing.

Theo what is a way for iPhone owners to use their phones in emergency situations on a low battery. The how is

Sounds non obvious enough to me.

The great thing about virtualization is that the trojans required by the school won't know to look beyond the virtualization because they can't tell the difference between real and fake hardware.

Only on Slashdot would this be modded +3 Informative.

The do this so used gamers have to pay for the full game. Because you cannot buy used DLCs the used gamers have to pay the publisher to get them. Now the publisher gets money from used games. They only release them on the Xbox because it has a much larger used game market than the PC. I agree that it sucks, but it works.

That would be fine if the TV manufacturer had a choice. If the manufacturer wants to make TVs they have no choice but to pay. They can't make their own standard or leave it out as that would be illegal. In this case the designer doesn't deserve to profit. He is legally required to profit.