Or perhaps Sprouticus discovered *after the trial* that the guy was guilty.

Everyone breaks laws every day. It's unavoidable. The fact that what she did is "wrong" is unimportant. Toss her from the trial, perhaps. But anything else is a waste of time. And in reference to your analogy, I don't get your point. Are you saying that if I kill someone and bury the body and *don't* say anything that it's better? No, you'll say, it's better that you don't kill someone, and you're right. But the woman on the jury already committed the "crime" of making her decision before the defense presentation. It's *way* better for everyone that she made this known than if she'd kept it hidden. In this case she is not being punished for making her decision early, she's being punished for letting it be known that she did so.. And that's stupid, since everyone benefits from that knowledge.

Why should she be punished at all? She had already made up her mind. If she'd not opened her mouth she'd have necessarily influenced the jury with an opinion established before the defense had a chance to present their case. She did everyone a favor with her posting.

$250 is far too high a fine for this. Kicking her off the Jury - that's OK. All that's happening here is that she's being punished for expressing what she thinks. The judge and defense should be happy she did so in time to get her out of the system.

how do you write 5 pages about something like this? 3 words per page?

I can't help but agree. It's our minds that make us human and if mine were going I'd want to have the opportunity to neatly kill myself.

I don't have children, step-children or any other variation on extended family, so I'm on my own. Technology that allows me to continue to live on my own when/if I become frail would be welcome. I hope, if I become senile, that it happens gradually and/or with lucid phases so I can remove myself from the population and avoid becoming a vegetable.

who doesn't have a bank account or a credit card?

My rental car had a sticker warning of cancer-causing chemicals last week. In a state where you have to drive if you want to do anything, like get to my meeting, am I supposed to not drive? If you warn against everything, then none of the warnings matter.

What do you suggest? Sonicwall seems to offer what you suggested, but a previous poster had bad things to say about Sonicwall. I've got mixed feelings about Sonicwall, but their new SOHO stuff looks interesting (TZ100 or TZ200)..

I recently took my old Core Duo macbook (not pro) in to the apple store with a swollen battery and they replaced the battery no charge in 5 minutes. And apologized for my trouble.

You can almost always talk them down to $150, and mine works flawlessly. Best $150 I ever spent. My (basement!) office now has great cell service, as does the rest of my house.