This should never have made it to /. There's nothing in the summary or TFA that explains what we're all supposed to be upset about. It looks like the forwarded emails I get from angry, elderly acquaintances who have nothing better to do all day, since retirement, except to get all outraged over perceived problems which are always just around the corner, but never seem to actually occur.

Now syphons work due to gravity instead of atmospheric pressure. Thanks Obama.

When I was a kid in the 70's, fireplaces were all the rage. When my father finished out the basement he had a Franklin fireplace installed. Of course this meant that one of my chores was splitting wood. And the wood we had was oak, which usually cannot be split with an axe, and requires wedges and a sledgehammer to split. Most of the time I didn't mind the work, but chores are chores and not a lot of fun.

I decided there had to be a better solution to the wood-splitting problem, and when I became an adult and bought my own house I came up with a fantastic solution: I bought a house without a wood fireplace. I haven't split wood in 27 years. Problem solved.

Of course, if some of you Grizzly Adams wannabes like this sort of thing, knock yourselves out. To each his own. :-)

"I wasn't speeding, officer. Someone must have hacked my vehicle. This has happened before. Just yesterday I was late for work because someone hacked my alarm clock. Also the computer forgot my password."

Your system is unenforceable. Or at least about as enforceable as the "10 items or less" lane at the checkout. Or rather, it is enforceable if you want to hire a bunch of jack-booted thugs with arrest authority to keep everyone in line, but that sounds like something outside of the spirit of Burning Man.

Impossible? Hmmm, I don't know about that. Chin Ho Kelly on Hawaii Five-0 can crack any password within a couple of minutes. I seen it.

Apart from a few technology companies here and there, does anyone really want the "Internet of Things"? I have yet to hear someone say, "Gosh, I wish my washing machine were internet-capable". Yes, I understand that tech firms can come up with all sorts of scenarios where they can try to convince us that this technology will be useful, but what have you really gained with an internet-ready appliance, apart from yet another vehicle for advertisement?

"An estimated 13 to 15 deaths and 1,125 injuries may be prevented with the implementation of this new requirement."

Assuming people will actually use their backup cameras. If they can't be bothered with looking behind them or even using their rear view mirrors now, why should we think they will look at their backup cameras in the future?

I have read it, but when I compare it to how the real world works I see no correlation.

Actually, I thought everything in our court system boiled down to "who has the best lawyer".

What really happened was that Wolowitz and Koothrappali rigged the electric can opener to create false postitive results for Sheldon's test equipment. He shouldn't have announced his findings so soon.

"Coronal mass ejections, with in 2012, according to researchers."

My hovercraft is full of eels.

If all they are collecting are email addresses and phone numbers, why do they need such a ginormous new data center in Utah?

Moot questions. I wasn't talking about the plagiarism. I was talking about publishing results that cannot be duplicated.

Well, it's not like this is something new. Companies have been able to trademark colors for some time. And it's not like Fluke is some unknown company -- they've been around for a long time and everyone in the industry knows their multimeters are yellow around the edges. I'm skeptical that Sparkfun is completely innocent in all this. A quick look at their website shows that their company colors feature red, which appears to even apply to their circuit boards and tools. One would think their multimeters would be red, not yellow.

And as for forcing them to be destroyed, well that's how customs has always worked. Thirty years ago I had some alcohol brought back from Europe that I failed to declare. The choice was to pay the tax or have it destroyed and pay for the destruction. Either way you're gonna pay.

Having said all of that, there seem to be lots of other things like this that do make it through customs, and one gets the impression that Sparkfun would have had no problem if their bribe had been big enough.