No one has talked about preventing people from going there ... just preventing them from coming here. Not necessary really - just isolate them for 21 days before they can return.

I have to conclude from the supposed difficulty that they store the metadata without noting which numbers are unlisted. Or more correctly, were unlisted at the time, since that status may change.

That was my first choice as well

Postponing the obvious quote for the moment, the question with any backdoor is what's to keep the bad guys from finding it. (Okay ... the other bad guys. Picky, picky.) If something is known to have a backdoor, the hackers will do whatever it takes to find it. Breaking in to some manufacturer's system, bribing someone, or just brute force - once they find it, they know what it is on all similar systems. If anyone has a backdoor then the supposed protection is meaningless.

The quote? Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Benjamin Franklin

Do devices count? Are calculators toys? Cars (other than some old beater you go to work and/or shopping with) or other vehicles? Firearms? Geometric (as in, solid) puzzles? While I do have a collection of the latter, I play with the others more often ... so are the puzzles not toys?

The name Algebra originally comes from Arabic, and likewise we owe the number zero to them. Fact is, they taught us the math of the ancient Greeks. And now they don't want it?

For some definitions of likely and usual anyway. In probability, "unlikely" generally has a specific meaning defined in the paper, hence "not unlikely" is not necessarily likely. Probably not unique anyway.

Does it have to be grief? One of the strangest features of XBasic is ragged arrays. It's sort of somewhere between a linked list and an array, as long as the types match you can access it as an array (as in, arrayname[x,y,z] ).

Full disclosure: since all the other official developers seem to have run off, I'm technically the lead developer at this point.

There are times when recording would be bad. They can't offer a potential witness anonymity if they are recording everything, can they?

Really, I'd like to explore another planet ... but that's not going to happen.

Safeties can be bypassed. No doubt there will eventually (if these things get off the ground) be some sort of hacker toolkit developed to allow either the owner or the equivalent of "script kiddies" to make the car do whatever they feel like. Just like rooting you phone and installing Cyanogenmod. It'll happen no matter what the FBI says - but hopefully require physical access. If the FBI/NSA try to get their own ... well, let's call it a rootkit, where they could override the software remotely even if it was hacked ... then anyone else will be able to as well. Someone will sell the secret to the Russian mafia or whoever, and all the criminals will have it.

The FBI's concerns may be valid, but are moot - just use a human driver.

I gather that "remote areas" somehow excludes deserts? Amazing ...

I do wear a watch, and can see uses for a smart watch - but almost all the stuff listed in the summary would be excluded! Music? Requires headphones or speakers, better to leave it on the phone. Pictures? Um ... how? Are you planning to use the screen as the viewer and thus have the lens wear the clasp would be? Sensor has to go with the lens ... seems it would be too prone to damage. GPS could work - already seen watches with a built-in compass, but navigation is probably a bad idea (small screen, and sound/voice would be better with headphones again). What watches are mostly for is telling time, so how about a watch that can sync with your schedule to remind you of appointments? A watch could reasonably display small amounts of text (like addresses or tweets) but input is rather limited - currently. Hmm ... install enough motion sensors that the watch could track your hand on a virtual keyboard or virtual mouse? But that's only one hand - and not even individual fingers - so would require some training to get it to work right. Looks like we'd better just stick to time and leave most of the "smart" stuff for the phones.

Back in what has to qualify as the computer stone age, a high school Biology teacher I worked with got a bunch of A/D converters and wired them to his networked C-64s, I wrote the software myself. We were measuring the acceleration of gravity (okay, not a Biology experiment, but he saw it in a magazine and wanted to try it himself) and graphing student's heartbeats and so on - in 1986. So really, the oscilloscope part is trivial. Might even be able to use the existing A/D and DSP from the sound card, if you can figure out how to feed your signal to the Mic. input. (Yes, 1986 - the school board wanted him to upgrade to PC XTs, he preferred to use what he had. When they saw what we did with those old C-64s, all they could do was scratch their heads.)

Favorite? KDE (though the old version was slightly better) Second? Enlightenment.

When I look for a desktop, I expect a basic set of tools to come with it, and design consistency between said tools. KDE seems best in terms of tools (aka desktop accessories if you prefer). Gnome's tools seem like they are chosen by committee, rather than actually designed for that environment.

And yes, desktop environments should include Windows and Macintosh OSX as options.