Check the compliance label on the back

If it doesn't comply with DO-160G then it should be stowed for takeoff, landing, and taxi.

The Surface RT is pretty slick in person

My wife ordered a barebones 32GB RT last weekend and it arrived just 5 days later here on the East coast (of the US). It really seems to be a decent unit. Nicely packaged and has lots of expansion ports (compared to her iPad 2 certainly). Windows 8 seems to suit it (as opposed to how 8 seemed on non-touch equipment). You don't need to buy a stand for the RT because the back folds out into a stand. I would say you can skip the expensive keyboard too as a standard Bluetooth keyboard works fine with it. You can tell it is Windows because when you first get connected to the Internet it takes a break to install updates. Having seen the RT close up, I think the product might actually do OK in the market. I'm not praising the RT because I'm a Microsoft fan (I'm a dyed in the wool Linux fan), but because the folks that engineered it and built it deserve a tip of the hat for a competent job.

But the War of the Worlds really happened

I've been to Woking and I've seen one of the Martian fighting machines. The other films are based on fiction as far as I know.

Both ends of the call?

I wonder if Ethiopia will seek extradition for the folks at the far end of international VOIP/SKYPE calls. I can see the states going along with that in exchange for the extradition of Ethiopians who "pirate" videos and music.

Floating Wanda (the Fish)

Wanda the Fish who has been swimming happily in my Gnome panel for years suddenly was still and floating belly up (not sure a fish has the tits required to go tits-up). When clicked upon, instead of a random fortune, I got a message that the water needed changing. Once into April 2nd, GMT?, she resumed her normal swim. That was scary.

Yet another Sun Tzu quote?

Did he really say/write all those stupid things? He must have been a remarkably annoying fellow to have around. If Hollywood ever films a Sun Tzu biography I'm seeing Rowen Atkinson, Adam Sandler, or maybe Larry the Cable Guy in the role.

If 46 percent are doing it

I suppose it is too late to reclaim the word Piracy to mean hijacking ships and their cargo? Arrrr!

Go for it

I would back a permanent blackout of Wikipedia to US IP addresses. It would be interesting to see what evolves in a US-only Internet where content corporations rule. We would still have the Internet to use for shopping and for reading carefully regulated non-infringing official news releases, of course. There will probably even be a US only replacement for Wikipedia that will give more balanced coverage of international topics such as censorship in China. I do love new clothes.

AirPrint

It would be nice (for future reviews) to point out which printers support printing from iOS via AirPrint. With the iPhones and iPads taking over the household, I went for the wireless version of the HP CP1025 to get that capability.

Get a Mac?

I'm a Linux user, myself, but I've had good results with convincing my friends and family to replace their Windows PCs with products from Apple. I could never get them to keep their Windows systems patched and virus signatures up to date, and I could never stop them from clicking on the most ridiculous attachments. Then there were the drive-by downloads from banner ads. Once they switched to Macs, the problems just went away and did not come back. I can't imagine that they all got smarter. I'm surprised that SANS didn't include a recommendation to stay away from those easily infected Windows boxes as a one-step security solution.

As long as it is open, like Apple products.

My MacBook is running Windows XP, my Dell Mini 9 is running OS X Snow Leopard, my "designed for Windows Vista" Gateway PC is running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, and my Nook Color is running Android. If PC makers lock me out, I will just have to switch to Apple hardware to retain the ability to run whatever I want on whatever hardware I purchase.

Good old days

Back from 1986 to 1991 I worked on the flight software for UARS. The onboard computer was a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 that I think was made by IBM. It used magnetic core memory, which was great because you could turn one side off for years and when you powered it back up, not a single bit was flipped. Memory words were 18 bits, so we did everything in Octal, not Hexadecimal (since 18 bits made 6 octal digits). The design language was FORTRAN 77. Once we got the FORTRAN running in simulation, we converted it to NSSC-1 assembly language manually (no compiler). Seems to me it ran about 150K instructions per second. UARS was a good satellite and worked for a long time.

Flawless record - easy!

If I was Google, I would spend far less money perfecting the autonomous driving part and about five minutes ensuring that searches for "Google Robo Car Accident" produced either zero results or else a full page of sponsored ads for auto insurance.

How about a compromise?

I would be willing to go along with 64 bit IP addresses, but 128 bits is just plain silly. Can we get an IPv5 that preserves all the stupidity of IPv4 but simply doubles the sizes of the addresses? I'd be willing to bet that we could get away with just 48 bits for the next 20 years or so.

Beer logo because we obviously would need an Internet Draft for this.

OK, ready, set, DOWNVOTE!

I can empathize with the chicken

A few months back I had reason to climb into one of those really big dumpsters (tossed something in by mistake) and I was shocked to discover that they only weld steps onto the outside. The inside is smooth as glass (and a bit slimy). Thought I was a goner! Fortunately I was able to pile up enough trash to climb out before the trash truck arrived. I'm thinking it likely that the chicken made the same mistake that I did.

Not getting one for Dad

I want one to keep my Furbies entertained. That should be a riot to watch!

Lena/Lenna required

It is pointless to discuss a new image compression algorithm without side by side (uncompressed / compressed) pictures of Lena for reference.

Would this work?

I wonder if the shareholders could be counter-sued for funding the CEO's alleged escapades!

p.s. Do you suppose we could have a Barrister icon (with international "not" slash) for these "I am not a lawyer, but..." topics?

Microsoft needs the geek army

Windows is only usable if you have someone to fix it when it breaks. Businesses have paid IT departments. Everybody else relies on the billions of unpaid hours donated by the geeks that they know. When I get a crashed Windows PC to fix nowadays with XP or Vista, it goes back with a fresh Ubuntu install. No way I'm spending 40 hours looking for Windows drivers and coaxing all those hundreds of Windows updates to install themselves. When Microsoft loses their army of unpaid Windows repairmen (and women), they will no longer be viable. That's why Microsoft needs Linux, because they need the geeks that come with it.

Nonsense

The statement that "their systems will start to accumulate attackable vulnerabilities" is nonsense. The vulnerabilities have been present for the last 10 years and were attackable during the entire time. It would be more accurate to say that they "will be running systems with an increasing number of vulnerabilities which are widely known to hackers."

Not the most respected testing lab

Not by Engineers, anyway. I believe that would be MythBusters. At this point they are the only folks I would trust on this.

missing htonl ?

I'm thinking that code ported from big endian processors like Motorola to small endian processors like Intel explains the 1.1.168.192, 1.0.168.192 and 1.2.168.192. On big endian machines you can omit the htonl macro and you still get Network byte order. There are lots of code examples available on the Internet that do just that.

This might be something worth test marketing

How about a special version of the iPhone for the states where they add Flash (more crashes) but make it work on Verizon's network (fewer dropped calls, better 3G)? Give it 6 months then drop the line that nobody is buying any longer.

It's Friday evening and I'm too sozzled at this point to think of what is wrong with this idea. Just thumb it down if you must, but have a good weekend regardless.

OK, if they support it

My beef with Windows current embedded offering, Windows CE, is that support for the development environment is non-existent. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been a release of a manual for Platform Builder since 2002. When Platform Builder is working, it is great, but when it isn't, you are really screwed!

Tattoo: Great Idea!

I don't currently have a pacemaker, but it might be worth it to get a tattoo of my router's WEP key just for convenience. It would be cool thing, in a geeky way, to show off at the beach! If they increase the key length down the road, I can just add extra hex digits at the end.

Wizards!

Here in Middle Earth, we keep the wizards around in case the dragons, or worse, return. Profit counts for nought if you are being dipped in catsup by a Balrog! My buddy Gandalf here, he works for beer.

That's it for me!

I give up. Routing is just too difficult to secure. From now on it's circuit switched data and point-to-point protocol for me. I'll just sign off here with a +++, AT OK?

Bigger can required

Regardless of the intent, each generation of IE is simply a bigger can to hold the worms from the last can plus the recently added worms. No risk of less developer work being required going forward.

... Slower Gigabit Ethernet?

I realize that this article has a marketing slant, but that oxymoron woke me up!

<Mines the one with the pocket full of BNC T-connectors and 50 ohm terminators.>

Can't trust anyone? Nonsense!

You can trust me.

Nobody would have suspected a thing...

if they had been losing money.

Huh? What?

"Bulgarian" in the headline without "Airbags" in the story? I just wasted a click there!

Fog

Taking off in the fog is a bad idea. I guarantee that the pilot knew that in his gut before he started down the runway. Every month the AOPA magazine prints at least one true story where a pilot knows they shouldn't take off, but they do anyway, and things go horribly wrong. It is sad to lose the pilot and passengers, but fortunate that the day care center that the plane fell onto was not full of kids.

Pyros

Explosive Bolts (a.k.a. pyros). The only way to release anything in space. If you don't use this opportunity to play with them, what are you saving your fingers for?