I wish I could buy a house for just three times an average annual income. Heck, I'd be extremely happy to get a small apartment for that amount of money.

Thank you for this eloquently written post, which conveys what I actually wanted to say but obviously failed horribly with. I wholeheartedly agree with all of it. I just wish there wouldn't be a need for a Peter Finch, and that when something needs to be done it should be carefully calculated to reduce the damage as much as possible - something that is rarely on the agenda for mobs. If we all considered our actions more carefully there would be a lot less violence in this world.

Technology and faith are in no way mutually exclusive. Science and faith (at least the orthodox kind) are somewhat exclusive, since one relies on critical thinking and the other requires a lack of it. Granted, it is possible to be able to think critically yet choose not to apply that skill on ones beliefs, but the people who do that are few and far between (and frankly I have never understood why they do it that way).

Anonymous Coward calling someone a coward, oh the irony. Anyway, this isn't about standing up for oneself or someone else, this is a simple risk/benefit calculation. Even Power himself told them not to do it. IMO vigilante justice sometimes works out well, other times it crashes and burns. Apparently not a popular opinion to voice on Slashdot though.

A bunch of people monitored the thief for a while and then confronted a possibly armed criminal face to face without even bothering to call the police? For a laptop? Just how little do these folks think their lives are worth? While it's always nice to hear these stories when they end well, I'm just waiting for the inevitable armed criminal who gets a little too nervous during such an intervention and the following bloodbath.

All engineers take note of what they did and how they did it, it's up to us to do the same thing if something like that happens in our country.

The tax actually applies to all memory cards, which means that it applies to the (usually MicroSD) ones in phones that people do put legally and/or illegally obtained music on. In other words this is only slightly more stupid than the really stupid law on CDs and DVDs.

I wonder how long it will take them to find pork and drugs in his house. Maybe even get creative and throw in some controversial literature as well?

I thought that was the whole point of Facebook?

That could be said about pretty much every single technological improvement. Every little helps - we wouldn't have the technology we have today if we dismissed breakthroughs because they didn't completely revolutionize the industry.