nonetheless, trying to raise giant squid may not be a good idea:

That's right, trying to raise a giant squid isn't a good idea, it's an awesome idea!

All [the TSA] does is harrass American citizens to try to make them feel safer. It's bullshit.

Wrong. They also harass non-americans.

it's a teddy bear that keeps the closet monsters away

My teddy bear keeps the closet monsters away; have you ever seen one? I also have a rock that repels tigers.

[Writing a resignation letter] does take several minutes, at least, and requires a word processor and a printer.

Yeah, before the C64, it was impossible for anyone to quit their job!

Not really necessary when you can lock someone up for two years for refusing to divulge keys.

Which is only effective if you want to spy on the public or small-time criminals. Anyone accused of a serious crime facing a sentence longer than two years would still refuse.

I'm not sure why everyone is concentrating so much on time travel and backward causality. There is a perfectly simple explanation for why it appears that LHC can not be activated: it would destroy the universe if it was turned on (much to the glee of a certain group of people whose sanity I will not question at this time). Therefore, the only surviving universes are those in which some event (no matter how improbable) has prevented its use. The upshot of this is that, once one has a universe-destroying device, quantum bogosort suddenly becomes practical. This would also make cryptography based on one-way functions obsolete, so don't be surprised if the NSA is watching very carefully.

Note: I'm not sure if I'm joking or not.

Asus ships the software you're describing with laptops they sell; it came on mine. It takes a bunch of snapshots of your face through the webcam (you're supposed to rotate your head) and then if it sees your face at the login screen, it logs you in.

So all I need to log on to your computer is a lifesize photo of you, or alternately, your severed head?

Wait... We're talking about Usenet here, right? It's cool, I can say that, it only shows up as X's for everyone else-- try it.

You can go Usenet my Usenet-ing Usenet.

Last I checked, most places won't extradite you for things that aren't crimes in their legal code, especially when you did the deed in that country in the first place.

Tell that to Marc Emery.

First of all, no one would be using manual storage to transfer the data.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.-Tanenbaum, Andrew S.

I do realize if you hate mother nature, one could just unplug sensors on any factory setup, immediately after testing. But it is less likely to give you any advantages (more difficult to modify for your gain.)

But not impossible. One resistor on the fuel pump stroke sensor of a TDI engine tricks it into allowing you more fuel than the ECU otherwise would: more power but more particulate emissions under some conditions.