If you tick off enough people to where their retaliation is able to significantly impede your business, it seems to me that the grudge they're holding against you must have some merit. Unless it's one guy with a large botnet, can there really be that many "wackos"? It's kind of like the difference between a "cult" and a "religion". That said, DDoS attacks, are not the right way of going about this.

4. You're in an area with very poor signal

Additionally, Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize for the idea that being isolated from international competition, which can be the result for protectionism, can be a good thing for a growing economy.

Jimmy Carter was attacked by a scarier-looking swamp beast than that!

I'm wondering how many consumers are like me, in that I wanted a netbook a heck of a lot worse, before I got a really good smartphone. I may still buy a netbook down the road, but I feel a lot less of an urge now.

Somebody get Whitey Bulger a Twitter account!

Finally a 1984 reference that I can get behind. People toss out "Big Brother" any time surveillance comes up, but it never quite fits. There was so much more to that novel than the pervasive surveillance. I always feel like referencing it in a discussion about surveillance does the book a disservice. However, I'm going to bless this one. Selectively watching students at home is about as close to the "telescreen" as you're going to get.

"Darwin Award" winners are pretty overwhelmingly male.

Are there really that many people who go actually take the term "unbreakable" literally and need to be protected from "blatant false advertising"? Personally, I just mentally translate it to "really tough to break accidentally".

That only works if the air temp is lower than 98.6. This sort of thing works by harnessing the difference in energy between the "hot" side and the "cold" side. Sure, it would work well at room-temperature, but who needs cooling at room-temp? About the only time you really need cooling when the air is significantly below normal body temperature outside is when you've got a fever, or are heavily exerting yourself. I definitely could get behind a headband that powers an mp3 player when I'm on a jog. It could have military applications, but it would be fairly limited. When it's 120 degrees in Iraq, this thing wouldn't work even if the soldier was running a marathon while dragging a broken down Humvee.

AFAIK, We don't have (many) diesel cars because of California's smog problem. I never want to say anything with 100% certainty on /., but I will say that I seem to remember reading an article that California has a ban on diesel cars, dating back to the 70s when the sulfur content in diesel was contributing heavily to their smog problems. With CA being such a large auto market, American manufacturers quit making diesel cars, and a lot of foreign companies quit importing them in major quantities. GM used to make diesel Caddilacs, but I don't think I've seen one newer than the mid-80s. The thing is that diesel is a lot cleaner than it used to be. It really needs to make a comeback.

Sony has launched a multi-million dollar effort aimed at figuring out how to put a rootkit on a vinyl record.

So, the Wachowski brothers are famous, but not famous enough for people to remember what they're famous for?

I am drawing a blank coming up with a scenario whereby I couldn't just create a hash of the SSN, and use it as the key instead. Most databases servers can do this for you. If you need to search by SSN, you can just hash the searched field, then match the hashes. Obviously, you need to be extremely careful passing the SSN to the server, but it doesn't seem insurmountable.

While I don't disagree that all diplomatic avenues need to be exhausted prior to military action, developing weapons is hardly contradictory to that. The lead time on weapons development is long, and you need to be able to field a first rate army, if it does come to that. You can pursue diplomacy as the first, and virtually only option, while simultaneously preparing for the worst. I like the US carrying the big stick. It's the not walking softly I'm not too keen on.