So a malum prohibitum or civil offense is enough justification to make something blockable? That's not even a slippery slope, that's halfway down the hill. Build the infrastructure and it WILL be abused, particularly if it's all behind closed doors.

> I have read there has been a dramatic increase in bed bugs over the last decade in major urban centers. There is a very good reason why it has.

Yeah, that's where the most people are and where people move around the most. If you live in the boonies you never see people in on business trips, and you're more likely to own a house with no close neighbors instead of live in an apartment with a constantly-shifting set of neighbors. Less vectors.

> People have been told to save energy (and the environment) by using cold water to wash their laundry.

And they aren't people in the country? Got news for you: When you have your own water heater instead of a coin-op laundry, you look for ways to save hot water.

> While your laundry comes out smelling and looking clean just the same, you STILL need to use high temp wash under certain situations, like washing your bed sheets.

Wow. You're an entomologist like Rosie O'Donnell is a metallurgist. First off, the bugs don't live en masse in the sheets, so that won't halt an infestation. Second, when you're trying to kill bedbugs in fabric, it's usually recommended to DRY it on high heat and not even bother tossing it in a wash cycle unless you were going to anyway.

> I mean this is why I hate stupid green alarmists because they can't apply rational common sense to anything.

Try not to look in any mirrors. Learning the concept of self-awareness might destroy you.

In the real world, paying someone to get money back (and getting nothing) is a Nigerian scam.

In the music world, paying someone to get money back (and getting nothing) is business as usual.

McCarthy Geller

... not seeing it. Even as eye candy she's meh.

Don't worry, I'm sure the Internet will be polite enough to avoid spoilers until then.

Great, now all the idiots who treat the LaHaye/Jenkins literary trainwreck Left Behind like it was scripture are going to pitch a fit, because there the antichrist is the result of genetic engineering to combine sperm cells of two gay lovers which is then used to artificially inseminate a woman.

About what I've found. External hard drives get passed around a decent amount between someone who understands where to get stuff and someone who just wants to watch movies.

Not exactly moving from strength to strength, there.... Unless "nicheiest fandom possible" is considered a strength.

No, but there was one about Adam Sandler as an ad exec that spent time focusing on his real-world-product clients.

And yet, if I had a nickel for every "If it makes my family safer I'm for it." and a penny for every "I don't have anything to hide." said non-sarcastically, I'd be able to buy myself some real privacy.

I liked the 2600 Pac-Man. Not a patch on the other versions, but if someone wanted to play Pac-Man in our house, it was fun, it worked, and had a decent pace.

And then after we ran it for a few hours the vitamin would sometimes split into two pieces placed randomly that couldn't be picked up. And then there was time my mom got the score to roll over and was annoyed that there was no victory message or kill screen. Good times.

> If the Time Lords have 13 lives, do their time cats get 12*9=117 lives?

They'd better. That damn Splinx easily did stuff that mowed through my lives like I was a Time Fruit Fly.

To a certain extent, but there's a difference between a camera that might be there and might be online and one that is almost guaranteed to be there and online on a userbase of, if they pull 360ish sales numbers, about half a million in the first month. It's a more attractive target from a company that has never had the consumer's best interest in mind. I'm suspicious of them and I'm suspicious of their security. As for physical switches, eh, I like my USB camera for that reason. When I'm done Skyping I'm done recording, but I can still watch movies fine. Fine, I'm paranoid.

Because then it's there from moment 1. It's not a separate purchase where you go out and buy the camera and mic, and plug it in or unplug it as you need it (or not if you don't care), it's just there. It's not a fringe option, it's something that anyone who can get code on the box can rely on to be there and ready to go, whether they're legitimate or not, be it a misunderstood utterance innocently triggering some social network sharing function or some creep getting his rocks off.

It's not likely, I admit. But just because I'm not likely to get robbed if I forget to lock my door once doesn't mean I should never lock my door. It's getting harder and harder to maintain one's privacy in our connected world, and I don't like parts of the digital privacy fight pushing their way into the real-world even more than they have. I haven't tried to get the government out of my bedroom just to invite some other faceless entity in and pay for the privilege.

Unless it suddenly decides that its inability to see is a problem and starts throwing errors because, hey, it's always on and should always be seeing something. It's too soon to tell that of course, but I don't like how this is shaping up.

And the minute you can watch TV and play games on a powered-off media centre/console I'll jump right on that bandwagon too.

Because there's no history of a recording device on a Microsoft OS getting hijacked for the lulz.