Holy X-Ray batman. I live in a ski area!!!!! I'm a goner. Nice knowing you all.

Sexual orientation is only one example. As this sort of technology becomes more broadly available, others will use it. Complain to your senator or city official about spending on a defense program or pot holes. Do you think their staffer might look up who you contributed (or failed to contribute) to in the last campaign? You bet they do and those data bases are now all over the web just type in your neighbors name and address to see how they spent their political dollars. Did the official give you the results you wanted or just a thanks for your concern letter?

Apply for a job: Think the the hiring manager doesn't google you to see if you are "their kind of people?" Think what religious affiliation you do or do not have fails to influence if you get the job? Think your membership (or lack) in the NRA might make the difference?

As these personal information aggregaters are able to provide more and more details about your most personal and private life and these conclusions become more and more available to those who have significant impact on your life what happens if that information is wrong? How do you continue to have a private, thoughtful and reflective life if you can not even explore ideas without consequences. What happens when a "friend" of a "friend" of a "friend" gets labeled as a Nazi or a child molester? Are you now tared? How much time, fear and money will we scrubbing our e-reputation like we now have to do our credit reports for fraud and false reports? Will companies sell me their product or provide cell service if I am likely to give them a bad review? Why should it matter to an employer or the government what books I read at night?

Scarred Intellect, fair enough on all points. Hydro was taken off the the table for counting as a renewable for two reasons. 1) They wanted to encourage new renewables to be built and not just count the old renewables and at the time that meant big hydro damns. Including old hydro in the accounting would have resulted in zero new renewables. 2) At the time the rules were codified, hydro was assumed to mean big damns and a certain end to northwest salmon runs. Technology and understanding evolves and there is always room for reevaluation. That said we have also had some near/true extinctions of a number of salmon runs. Even with hatcheries, the genetic diversity of salmon is not what it should be.

Want a solution, how about a little efficiency. Doubling efficiency is a no brainier. Every major energy driver has solutions to double efficiency. Wind and solar costs are dropping like a stone and utility scale energy storage is ready for deployment (see Gates' new gravity storage investment). We just need to build in high expectation for efficiency like we have for semiconductor technology. There is a drastic difference between coal and natural gas in terms of atmospheric impact. Gas also has the ability to spin up turbines in seconds so it needs much less wasted hot standby capacity than steam technologies (nuclear/coal). The way fracking is now done is a real issue, but there are cleaner solutions to that to bridge us to a renewable future. FWIW, tar sands are also a major disaster for the environment. It take a huge amount of energy to get the oil out so there are massive impacts to the atmosphere besides the ugly water and soil damage. Until nuclear is ready to pay their own way I'm not going to believe they have a mature technology. The nuclear industry does not buy insurance to cover their potential damages because they have a get out of jail card from congress. If your neighborhood nuke takes out your region, they only have to pay a tiny fraction of the cost because the industry has a strict cap on liabilities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act). That's right, if MegaNuke Corp blows a rainbow of toxic and radioactive crud all over your town you are totally out of luck. That tells me they know that their technology is not ready for prime time. Even wall street will not take the risk even given the high profits. That has to tell you something if those pirates find it too risky. And on the back end, who do you think is going to get stuck with the clean-up bill when these things are used-up? And who is going to get stuck with finding a home for this lethal crud for eternity?

There are many places such as irrigation channels where you can place micro turbines that will have no ill environmental effect as these do not support aquatic life. It looks like this was not included in the report. For example see hydrovolts.com/ for a unique hydro generator that does not need a damn. These can even be placed in the outflow from some sewage or industrial plants. Not big power, but lots of places you can wedge these in to add distributed generation into the grid - often at the ends of branches where it is needed the most.

So PI is french for IP or more correctly la propriété intellectuelle

A better example might be if you fail to pay for parking at one parking lot, can other parking lots (different owners) black ball you? Can grocery stores join in on the blackball until I pay my parking bill? Can businesses form collaborations to blackball customers? What about in a restricted competition environment such as telecos? On the other side of this, should business be able to refuse to do business with you? If you ran a toy store would you want a convinced child molester in your store with families?

OK, even if a content provider such as Apple or Amazon intends to follow the rules they are sure to unintentionally distribute content they do not have the rights to. What are the chances they will be hit? I didn't think so

The dirty little secret is that those passengers must likely to cause interference are in first class as they are closest to most of the avionics. Imagine the caption making the announcement that those in first class will have to shut off their useless electronic junk, but those in the cheep seats can keep playing. A couple of other points, the jet body is not earth grounded (doh) and when you have millions of electronic devices that have been made by the lowest bidder in China you will get some devices that become major unintentional emitters and can very well jam some of the very weak signals used in navigation or by the emergency bands. I would not like my family to be in a plane when someone switches on their noisy toy 500 feed off the ground of a fogged up airport. Of course the danger are the lithium batteries that keep catching fire, especially if that happen in luggage. Great FAA video on fighting lithium fires on planes: http://youtu.be/gcd34tt8YPU

Arthur Benjamin has an interesting TED talk suggesting that having our main math tract lead to calculus as the end point for most students is a mistake. He argues that statistics should be the targeted end point. As beautiful as the calculus is, I have to admit that our society makes more collective errors due to the public not understating statistics than not understanding derivatives.

Dear Mr. realityimpaired (1668397),

Thanks you for bringing this to our attention. We will now make a detailed search of the cyber criminal's knives.

Further, can you expand on your feelings regarding knives and banking data? Do you feel your banking data is really a weapon? How does having your financial data inside a knife make you feel? Do you have violent feeling towards banks and people who work at banks? Perhaps you would like to chat with my coworkers about these feelings. I'll have them drop by real soon. No trouble at all, we'll let ourselves in.

Warmest Regards,

You buddies in blue at Interpol, pre-crimes division

It is worth noting that this is not his first filing on the topic. He has previous patent 6,671,714 filed in late 1999 that issued in 2003. That patent is for a cute scheme to assign standard email names to everyone.

The claims of that older patent are:

1. A method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of: assigning each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "name@subdomain.domain;" wherein the "name" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same and unique for each particular one of said members such that an only difference between said URL and said e-mail address for said member is that in said URL the "@" symbol of the e-mail address is replaced with a "." and wherein said "subdomain" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same for all members of said group.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said members of said group comprise members of a licensed profession.

When I read the headline I knew I must have misunderstood as /.ers never get off the couch. I thought they were talking about the Hash House Harriers. A drinking club with a running problem.

Sell it on ebay , of course

20 years ago an urban Seattle used country western to chase the street kids away from the outside of their building. This was the heyday of grunge in Seattle!