Just in case the earth gets demolished by a Vogon fleet I've got plenty paper bags for all sizes of human heads. Just send me youre Name, Visa Card (for age verification), Social security number (I don't have a good reason for this one), telephone number, address, and your medical record and I'll be happy to ship you bags for the whole family. As a bonus I will add a bag of peanuts (the size they used to but not serve anymore on airlines) containing salt which everyone knows you'll need a lot of in such situations.

You mean to tell me that as a parent you have no interest or concern whatsoever on who your children are talking to? Are you a parent? Are you even past 10?
Keep in mind that the amount of information children get to by simply talking is limited to friends, school and adults in the family. It's a very small circle compared to the Internet. They won't be talked to by child pornographers or by extremist idiots unless you take them to some place where they can meet such people. Teens are more exposed to potentially dangerous information than smaller children but this is why they are also more often involved in things that have the potential to destroy they're lives. When a parent finds that his child is hanging out with the wrong people he does try to intervene. On the Internet it's all within a click just like you said. Set children in front of a computer without any parental control and they'll get to some ugly staff in no time. I won't even mention teenagers here.
Since you are so quick at using "plain stupid" here is a piece of advice for you: It is better to shut up and risk to be thought of as stupid then to open your mouth and make it certain.

You are waaaay off. The Japanese earthquake as well as the Haitian earthquake are all caused by the LHC to set in motion the end of the world in 2012 when the LHC will finally give birth to a black hole as well as a planet and a wormhole which will hit the earth and change it's direction of rotation. East will become sunset and nobody will survive except a U.S. family (obviously from L.A.). This family will also stop the attack of the invading aliens pouring through the wormhole. It's all out there. Just read the news.

You must be right. There is no information on the net that could affect a child's development in any way. All the reports of them being exposed to excessive pornography, violence promotion, racism promotion, and bullying through social media must be simply censors doing their work in the shadow to keep children away from this wonderful, peaceful and harmonious place called the Internet.

Having said that I hope you don't have any children right now. I believe the concern is more than valid even so the PRC government actually does it for political reasons rather than social ones.
Information can be dangerous to children because they don't know how to separate valuable objective information from the rest. I have seen one to many teenagers turning to racism simply because they've been given false information or information presented in a certain way. Most of the information on the Internet (and in any other form of media) is not objectively presented scientific information. Only a 10 year old, or a 15 year old may not have the capability of extracting the valuable information from within all that noise.
I hear that INFORMATION is a good thing all too often. It's neither good or bad, but it can be easily manipulated both ways. If the receiver of the information does not have the means of removing the nuances and subjectiveness from the package it's probably best if he/she does not reach that information without some help. And yes, the Internet is definitely 17+.

I had the same issue in a slightly different scenario. Subjects in a clinical trial needed to record the severity of their symptoms while in a large room for several hours. In my case we didn't need the answers on spot but needed a way to transfer them into a database. We did not have enough money to equip everyone with a laptop/handheld so we went for paper, scanner and image recognition. If you don't need the results of the vote instantly this turns out a fairly cheap solution. Image recognition works well enough when you need to only differentiate a filled circle or square from an empty one. Again, depending on your requirements manual verification of the collected data is advisable. Hope this helps.

When advertisers say that you "save" money by taking advantage of a deal, they are altering reality. Do you mean to say advertisers are not honest? I don't really need to spend money to save money? There's no free in "buy 4 get one free"? Well....well...this is...very distressing...I,...I,...need to rethink my whole life. All these years trying to save by taking on all the deals...

NO. It's impossible. Get you're facts straight. Next you'll tell us there's no Santa and no Easter Bunny and that we've evolved from some chemical mixture struck by lightning. Get real, wakeup!

Yet when the screw-up is major we somehow know where the issue is. For example we know that allowing Microsoft Outlook to do more than it's suppose to is a security flaw. It has been said numerous times. That is the sort of example I was asking for. Only outlook is not the OS, it's a separate application

It's interesting how difficult is for Microsoft to get recognition for anything they do to improve from the tech savvy communities. When they take a positive step people do nothing but look for ulterior motives that would only point out that Microsoft did the good with an evil purpose. Let's stop for a moment and give them credit for what they really do. Many people in this post have asked what right had Microsoft to participate in the whole deal or whether it served some interest for them. The way I see it is they helped stop a major issue without installing some ugly piece of software to all their users. Well done.
It's also unfair to blame all these issues on their OS security. I am the first to say that up to Windows 2000 (including) they had major security issues. In fact, W2K was the first release where they tried being more cautious. (I am speaking about the Desktop and not the Server). Everyone complained about access as administrator being dangerous. I know lot's of people that used the Administrator account on their home machine so that they can easily install software and change settings without the hassle of logging in and out. I do know Linux users who used the root account. Despite everyone saying: Do not login as root/Do not login as Administrator. Microsoft finally got UAC up and running and everyone criticized them that the system is now asking for permissions for any step. Is that fair? Is my Ubuntu system not asking me for my password every time I perform administrative tasks? Yes it does. And I'm happy about that. It's good. And the same goes for UAC. Yet, most seem to think it's stupid if Microsoft did it. Most seem to fail to see that Linux users don't get their Windows boxes infected either. Why? Because most Linux users are savvy enough.
I have an open question to anyone here:
Identify one of the software architecture flaws in Windows that make it insecure and how would you fix it?

Interesting. The space occupied by the LHC one minute in the future must be pretty far off given the speed at which the Earth travels in space. Those Higgs singlets of tomorrow will have to be pretty smart and good space travelers to locate themselves in the LHC today. I think the movement of the planet in space is also a response to why a man won't be able to travel back to murder his parents or himself. That travel would need to be executed in both space and time and for now we can't move that fast in space.
My understanding is that this is a theory and one of the 2 authors qualifies it as "long shot". So probably the best answer to the title of this post is : "?". Unless the title poses a rhetorical question, case in which the best answer is "," .

The article talks about "distribution of mass". Of what I can tell there was no mention of the mass itself to have changed.

I know people who consume pirated media because the legit one is too expensive.
Others do it because the pirated media offers a level of convenience.
For example music. If it's bought on the iTunes store it can only go on Apple devices. While the pirated mp3/ogg or other can go on any mp3 player.
TV shows. I know a lot of people whom prefer to watch the pirated stuff because commercials are stripped out. That gives you 20 minutes of continuous shows. In addition, I am in Canada. You pay at least 70 $ for a decent package of cable TV. The basic runs for around 40 $ and it's really basic. At over $100 you get a combination of channels that would probably cover all or most of your preferences.
Movies. Another category has setup a media center computer with xbmc or boxee or the like and just enjoy having the comfort of playing them without bothering to search a DVD and then find out it's scratched. In many cases, these are small PC's that don't even have an optical drive. Some of these individuals would also buy the media if they really enjoyed out but it's hard to say if those are or not representative.

So yes. Lower prices would help solving part of the piracy issue. But there are still a number of independent reasons people use pirated media which are not addressed by lower cost. I don't think there's a "silver bullet" solution here. And DRM is surely not a solution. We've already seen it does not work. If Apple proved anything is that a combination of convenience and low cost helps against piracy more than any DRM encryption. People who buy from their store do it because it's relatively cheap and it's immediate. Many times, fetching a movie or song or TV episode from the iTunes store is faster, and with less hassles then finding a pirated copy. People also feel more secure getting media from them because they think it's malware free (I know some people here may have an argument here, but, I am only saying what the general consumer perception is based on what I hear from most people I talk to).

I think one could argue that it would be nice that all software be open-source so that at least it's user may know what it does, or customize if he has the expertise. This obviously falls in the realm of political and social views.
Calling non-free software "evil" is greatly exaggerated I think. I personally get payed for programming. The employer I have is one that at least at this stage does not want to give his product away for free. He cannot afford it. This is not a piece of software than anyone would be paying support for. If he doesn't capitalize on selling the product his investment will never return and he would not be able to pay me in turn. There may be some business model where even this particular product could be given away for free but I'm a programmer not a business man so I don't know it.
Let's not forget though that non-free does not mean closed source and open source does not mean free. There are a number of products out there which are open source but aren't free to use, as well as those that are free but not open source. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Notepad, Calculator, Solitaire or Word Pad are just a few examples of free software which is not open source. Yes, I know they are bundled with Windows but that was and still is Microsoft's strategy at gaining market. If anyone remembers the days of the dreaded Windows NT 3.5 Server, it did come with a bundle that few of the commercial competitors on the server market would offer. Is someone to say that Internet Explorer is "evil" or "not evil" simply because it's free? There are plenty of tools out there that can show you what sort of information is being exchanged by any piece of software on any computer so if you want to verify you're software is not a "big brother" tool you can verify that even without having the source code.
My experience has also shown me that both OSS and proprietary software, free or not, can be good or bad quality. So that qualification can't possibly be about quality.
I am typing all this using a Linux based OS that has no proprietary software installed whatsoever. Not even drivers. (I do not have high requirements for my graphics so I just left the OSS driver there and didn't bother with the proprietary one).
I do get involved in OSS development but so far I have not been able to make a living for me and my family out of it. What pays my salary is still the non-free, closed source stuff.
Finally software is a "product". Yes I would also like to say that all "non-free" cars, houses, foods, yachts, boots, toys, tv's ..., are "evil" by simply extending his claim.
Conclusion: I could sit and think about someone telling me "closed source is evil" and maybe even agree to it in a while. But I am sorry if I cannot take seriously someone saying "non-free is evil". So for the time beeing, I'll still drive an evil car, live in an evil house and drink my evil beer.

No. It's the actual very late release of that operating system (call it what you may). What they called Vista was a complete release in the same degree KDE 4.0 was. Only the good people at KDE had the decency to admit they're 4.0 release still needed a lot of work while Microsoft never has issues related to decency.

sad....very, very sad. True nonetheless.
Maybe someone should send Mr. Jobs and the associates an e-mail, or even better, a keynote to explain that the sad bastards they're ripping off are in a recession. I can tell they didn't notice it.

Why is everyone so pumped about comparing these guys and talking about them? They haven't changed their behavior and approached in the last ten years one bit. Apple still makes incredibly expensive stuff that sells I don't even know why and Microsoft is still taking blows for their security related issues just as they have 10 years ago. Apple still consolidates Microsoft's position in the operating system market by creating an equivalence between Microsoft and PC in their idiotic "Get a Mac" campaign while Microsoft does not fail to re-confirm that their higher level of innovation goes to copying Apple. With that, Apple's happy, Apple fan-boys are happy, Microsoft is happy, we pay ridiculous prices for a damn phone, but we're happy 'cause it makes us cool (...yeah, right!).

Now could someone tell me please:
What was the news, or at least the element of novelty in the cited article?
or if there wasn't any:
Why did the guy write the article?
or
How the heck does this qualify as: "News for Nerds"?
Thanks