I sort of see a face in the last one. Admittedly, it is the face of Rorschach, but it's still a start!

You mean that caffeinated bar was SOAP?

Google Analytics uses cookies called __utma, __utmb, __utmc, and __utmz (they have different expiry characteristics so GA can distinguish a "visit" from a "visitor"). Hands-on experiment: If you're not one of the people who blocks GA, open up your cookie jar right now and look for "utma". I expected to find a lot in mine, and I'm still surprised by how many are in there.

It's pretty darn slick. GA got to be popular on its merits. But now that it's everywhere I worry about the aggregative power available to Google (not the individual GA users). Now that NoScript is gaining ground I occasionally worry that I ought to be doing my tracking locally because I won't know how many people have opted out of GA by declining its cookies.

Other laws. Some might call it circular reasoning, but I prefer to think of it as having no loose ends.

If I may, I believe this is about some of the DMCA takedown notices received by University of Washington from the MPAA in the summer of 2008. A few of them were directed at laser printers because researchers at the university pulled some tricks with IP addresses in an attempt to prove that, no, they really don't tell you about identity and, no, the MPAA doesn't care.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/05/entertainment-indust-1.html

I don't know if any changes have been made in response to the embarrassment, nor whether the embarrassment has even been acknowledged as such.

I'm guessing that's where "possession of stolen property" comes from. They're supposed to come and remove the boot after your payment has gone through the proper channels. It strikes me as pleasantly smart-assy to remove the boot for them and include it with payment. Physical locks usually only serve to keep honest people honest anyway. Arresting someone over this procedural irregularity is downright stupid.

My first thought was, "What is this, Boston ?" With the hyperlinks and everything. But no, the student hails from nearby Andover.

TFA doesn't call it a "hoax bomb" this time (i.e., we thought it was a bomb, and it turned out not to be, so rather than admit the false positive and send you on your way, we're charging you for confusing us, kthx) but "terroristic mischief", especially in the obvious absence of any such intent, is at least as bad. We might as well accuse him of being a witch.

This looks like a job for...Sagan-Man!

In that case, I can say this:

Half of all people are more pedantic than average.

You rotate Earth to scroll? I have a teamouse. It scrolls by Brownian motion and then I simply destroy the Universe when the cursor moves in a way I didn

Quotably quoted.