that is all

Dear Terrorists, Due to a minor software glitch we request that you stay within 13 meters of your cell phone at all times. No reason, we just appreciate your help. Thanks, The US Government P.S. Don't look up P.P.S. ....no...what whistling noise do you hear?

Two things: What Google did isn't illegal. Maybe it should be, maybe it shouldn't be, but part of this is, in a way, similar to the introduction of the MP3. Sure, you could copy a tape or CD from a friend, but now you could broadcast it to millions worldwide. Similarly, anyone can walk up with a laptop and grab your unencrypted data, but Google just showed that a corporation could do it on a large scale. Granted it was a mistake and what they got was useless. But the politicians have to consider what would have happened if a mapping company wanted more than that, and pressing Google for details on what happened will help them understand (because they're not tech people and don't understand) how this happened and how one would legislate going forward. If the authorities don't do this, and then it's found that Google or some other entity with similar capabilities did do it on a large scale WITH malicious intent then these posts would revert to, "Look at greedy MegaCorp, they can't be trusted with our data." They have to act, even if its stupid. The legislation that's obviously needed is to get the WiFi router manufacturers to make it A WHOLE lot easier to setup the encryption. I just visited my parents, who aren't idiots but are not that tech interested complaining about their wireless. I sniffed around and found that there were FOUR WiFi networks accessible from within their house called 'linksys' and their computers, and their neighbor's computers, and their neighbor's neighbor's computers were all switching between them randomly. You try calling a neighbor in their 60's and say, "Ok, type 192.168.1.1 in the browser bar, select WEP2, and here's a hex string for you." It's not simple, not by a longshot for the average consumer. Teach people to secure their own data and make it easy and you'll solve a lot of what EvilMegaGlobalCorp can do to you maliciously.

I remember in college physics the prof talked about how oil companies use small deviations in gravity to help identify where large oil deposits might be. Oil is much less dense than rock, so maybe that large well in the Indian ocean is a huge oil deposit?

I like the part of the TOS that says you can't use it in North Korea, Syria, or other major/minor axis-of-evil participants. Good luck given the rollout has been so small that I can't use FIOS in San Francisco or Silicon Valley of all places.

Before people worry about the results of their last disease test, I want to point out that people who develop validated lab tests also understand statistics. Thus, if a test as a 99% accuracy rate, it's run in triplicate. Thus, the probability of a false-positive in three tests is lower and in a test of a population of 1 million people you'd get 2 positive, the real one, and the one false positive. That's also why most positives are then retested in a different format to be really sure. Because lab testing companies know you're statistically more likely to get sued by the statistically ignorant and they'll win, thus stack it in your favor of not making a mistake in the first place.