Yeah, and once this becomes available to authoritarian regimes who don't allow any sort of public protest — Syria comes to mind (not to mention Iran, &c.) — it will be that much easier for them to stay in power, and to identify, imprison, torture, and kill anyone who resists them.

Hope you didn't get it from Apple. I just got a new MB Pro and the cost to upgrade to 8GB was $200 from Apple, and $43 (w/ free shipping) from Newegg.

There's also an element of straight-up marketing. It might cost marginally more to design and build the fancy red "RipJaws X" pictured up there, but it's worth it for brand recognition, assuming the product isn't demonstrably worse than competing ones. Same principle among enthusiasts of under-the-hood automotive work.

One thing it's interesting to realize is that George Lucas had not directed a movie since the first Star Wars (A New Hope) by the time he directed Episode 1, twenty-five years later.

I've seen no-contract iPhones for sale in AT&T stores for about $600. I think they market(ed) them as prepaid iPhones, but presumably they were/are unlocked, because I don't think it would stand up to legal scrutiny to sell a locked device out of contract. Could be wrong. That was in the 3GS days; I don't know if they…

I think Gizimodo — not to mention a few dozen other tech sites — should pretty much just pay Florian Müller for the right to repost whatever he puts up on Foss Patents.

If you want to understand why Apple is doing this, read an analysis of the lawsuit. In particular, scroll down to where a Samsung phone is shown side-by-side with an iPhone, and then just past that where the Samsung icons are shown alongside their iPhone equivalents.

What does it really have to do with NASA's history, though? It was a US Navy zeppelin hangar from 1933 to 1935, when its zeppelin crashed into the ocean. Its historical value is more that it represents an abortive rigid airship program.

Doesn't work anymore, at least for me. I see a "top stories" style arrangement featuring an article about some program named Elyse, which is Windows/Mac only…

Doesn't work anymore, at least for me. I see a "top stories" style arrangement featuring an article about some program named Elyse, which is for Windows and Mac…

Don't give the US military any ideas. Now we're going to be seeing giant Uncle Sam "shock and awe" puppets wandering the mountains of Waziristan.

One thing I didn't realize until recently was that George Lucas hadn't actually directed a movie since the first Star Wars by the time he made that phantom menace thing — a gap of over twenty years.

Light gets upset when something moves faster than it. Like the Cherenkov radiation emitting from underwater reactors at faster than the speed of light through water, and making that angry blue glow.

You also have to take into account the accessibility of offices that issue IDs. Departments of motor vehicles, unsurprisingly, are often not located in places that are convenient to people who rely on public transportation.

You also have to take into account the accessibility of offices that issue IDs. Departments of motor vehicles, unsurprisingly, are often not located in places that are convenient to people who rely on public transportation.

Bribing a maid and going through someone's garbage aren't illegal activities. (The latter actually depends on jurisdiction; in a lot of places once garbage is curbside or otherwise off of a person's property, it's fair game.) Medical records are generally protected, though, and paying someone to access them illegally…

There's really no perfect solution to this. All the options are grammatically awkward, to some degree. I think they really has become an acceptable singular personal pronoun, because of the lack of a gender-neutral alternative.

Good ol' space nationalism — Hoo-ah!

What are physicists doing quoting a temperature in Fahrenheit?

But if you're not 100% sure it only stopped working because it got wet, *cough*, then a drop of bleach turns the water strip back to white.