The government should be all over this since they are going to the "give me all your data" model.
Google should soon safely be able to say: We got one FISA request last year.

I think the bigger thing is that security starts before you even enter the airport. They have less flights, so it's easier, but they check the lists.
Entering the airport you go through security where they check the car. My father in law is a native, they checked his car.
The Janitors are all ex-military or at least look it. They also carry radios and have bulges in the back of their uniform. I'm sure they are packing.
I'm also sure they listen to everyone talking in the airport. They take security seriously.

In fact. Leaving the US we weren't allowed to bring bottles for our daughter. We also got hand sanitizer taken away (it was about 1/2 of an 8oz bottle but since the bottle was big it was denied even though the contents fell below the amount allowed. When we left amsterdam, we walked right through w/ the bottles and anything else.

Altera and Xilinx both have high level synthesis tools out that can target FPGA's using generic C. The Altera one allows you to target GPU's, CPU's or FPGA's. In the case of highly parallel tasks, an FPGA can run many times faster than even a GPU. There are fairly large gate count devices with ARM cores available now so you move the tasks around for better performance. I'd love to see some of these tasks targeting these devices.

My ten year old daughter was in tears because she couldn't figure out her new windows 8 laptop.
Now the laptop was underpowered, but it couldn't play DVDs out of the box and she couldn't figure out how to run her software on it thanks to the removal of the start button. Also, Toshiba added its bonus software which seemed to take over the whole computer periodically since pop ups now take the whole screen.
I was frustrated trying to use it until I found a start menu hack and added it back.

I installed VLC so she can play DVDs and she has a start menu and now is very happy. Perhaps MS shouldn't have tried to do too much too soon?

I took a trip to Florida with my son a couple of weeks after 9/11. The flights were insanely cheap and there was no way in hell another 9/11 would happen. No one on the plane would have sat idle. Look at the crazies who have tried to get into cockpits since 9/11. They have been tackled, pummeled and held down. The stupid scanners don't do anything anyways. Look at the people who have managed to get things through inadvertently (Adam savage with a rapier like razor) or through testing. Also, anything implanted below the skin doesn't show, so there's your next attack.

I've flown with my kids a couple of times in the last few months. When a parent or family with young children comes through, the metal detector suddenly becomes "good enough" for them. I was conflicted when I went on my trip. I had a 3 and 10 year old girl and I wasn't going to have them groped and I was seriously worried about the exposure to the machine, but surprise, off we went to a separate line and through the metal detector, myself included.

Of course on the other side was a guy in a wheelchair who obviously had some kind of muscle problems, his legs were like sticks, but they had to reach under and check out everything since he couldn't stand up.

Sigh

I've avoided it my entire life here in New Hampshire.

Jamie want big boom!

Please do not lump Afghanistan in with Iraq. The Taliban harbored the mastermind of September 11th. There are other countries who might have just gone in and leveled Afghanistan. Iraq is another story all together...

Actually, a better argument is modding a boiler so you don't have to buy a particular gas companies gas, but now can use 'homebrew' gas.

The sinkhole or crater is nothing. Look at the patterns on the right and the mysterious impression below. I can just about make it out "G..o..o.." damn. The aliens are telling us something.

What is the half-life of radioactive rabbit dropping?

The only reason I run windows on my computer at home and my kids computer is games. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Civ5, Steam. If all of those were available under Linux _At the same time_ as the PC counterparts, I would wipe windows off my PC tonight. I am writing this on my work laptop HP DV8t running opensuse 11.3.

A 1000 meter cable obviously means that it's only orbiting 1000 meters off the ground. That's the cable is the plug into the grid, right? Sheesh. It would have to me at least twice that to be practical. Do I have to think of everything around here.