Yup. And neither of us have any experience (perceived or real) with the actual terrorism and sabotage. I bet a determined pro can come up with three dozen workable plans within an hour.

I disagree with the '97 ruling, but powers like this given to the Federal government disturb me even further.

They can put you away for good for being "sexually dangerous" but not for being a mortal danger to the lives of others?

Not that it makes it any more right, but it isn't the commerce clause. It's their second favorite misused clause.

Well, I and other non-American slashdotters are curious.....when Texas periodically calls to secede from the Union.....why isn't the rest of the country jumping up to help them along their way? ; )

iTunes on Windows is pretty badly coded, I know enough people who've had it either attempt to take over their media or in one extreme case, deleted the DVD-ROM drivers (don't ask, I have no idea how). Therefore as they require the program to access the store, it's 0-2 as far as access to decent mp3 stores goes.

Exactly! Oh, except Amazon won't let me pay for their mp3s because I don't live in America. Plus I run Windows so putting iTunes on it is one of the less clever things I could do.

This is what I don't understand about the whole debate. Why can't the browser vendors just build their tags to use the *built in* codecs that are available on the underlying platform? All users of (modern) Windows and Mac systems have these codecs. Built in. They are licensed to use them - full stop. They *paid for it* with their Windows & Mac OS license. Why do we need to even talk about re-licensing them? Just use the damn things, that are *already there*. If they are not there, show the user a nice page about software patents and how evil they are.

We don't argue about the fact that FireFox relies on the user having a graphics card that is probably patented from top to bottom to display the graphics FireFox renders. Or an audio card. Or an OS that can display windows etc. These all exist at the layer below the browser. So should the video codecs.

Just turn the monitors off, turn the iPad off and make it dark!!!!!

Citation needed. You're saying it's silly to investigate the likelihood of cell phones or microwaves causing cancer because you're more likely to get it from the sun. What is that based off of? Gut feelings about the relative likelihood?

In science and especially health-related scientific questions, you test a hypothesis, you don't just assume. At some point someone thought the question of "could the sun's rays be causing cancer" was silly because obviously the sun, giver of all life, could not be causing ill effects aside from some sunburn. We needed to investigate whether or not cell phones were causing cancer because we didn't actually know.

Furthermore, even if the sun did cause far more cancer than cell phones, you might want to take all the steps you can to avoid cancer, as most of us do. If cell phones -were- linked to cancer, you could stop using one and still reduce your threat of cancer, much like how we've taken steps to ensure we don't get skin cancer from UV rays.

While admittedly my cheap-ass netbook struggles a bit with videos, it's only the higher-def ones that trip it up. I don't use my netbook for "proper" TV watching (I have larger screened computers for that), and it handles YouTube et al just fine.

The more expensive ones certainly perform better, and I'd be willing to bet that you hit ones that can handle the full gamut long before that whole price difference is eroded.

men: urinals + toilets = x women: toilets only = y present day: y x future: y = x ... future is not fair, since women can take y number twos, while men can take only x - urinals.

As the title says; 60 percent!? Really? Except for my girlfriend (wich by the way stopped using it when she met me because I recommended better protocols) I don't know anyone who's using it or have been using it.

I should have been clearer. Those are just non-US countries in the list; there are plenty of US patents there too.

I'm certainly not an expert at any of the respective areas of science this involves, but does anyone know if we could re-oxygenate the water even on a temporary basis? Jokes about bubbling skeleton pirate treasure chests aside, would it be possible to run tubing down to the floor of the affected areas and pump air in? I realize we're talking about a large area and this wouldn't be a small task but would that at least temporarily solve this particular part of the problem?