Who at the company said that this would be a good idea!? I wonder how the conversation in that meeting went. "Well I'll agree to invest in this new technology but ONLY on the condition that we use encryptions for the sole purpose of making it HARDER for the customer to fix their $40,000 investment." The only thing that would make this better is if Chevy Ford or Chrysler helped to pioneer this piece cerebral excrement.

Look at the photo on this article, why would these folks ever want their faces attached to this job? Think of the following exchange that might happen at a party they attend. Man at Party: "What do you do for a living?" Tool that works for Facebook: "I enforce petty decency laws on people's personal Facebook pages" Man at Party "Thank God there are folks like you combating the posting of areolas and bringing this country back to Christ." Seriously, what do they think they're accomplishing? We're not living in Ireland at the turn of the 20th century.

While I applaud Mr Specter's apparent inclination toward good judgment, this seems to be the latest in what has become a disturbing trend. As the last of the sensible say "to Hell with the republican party," this leaves the most extreme to run half of our country's major political parties. While I've heard talk about a possible third party emerging out of this political turmoil, in 2012 we will most likely be faced with the decision between a republican or a democrat. The recent exodus of moderates from the republican party leaves only the profoundly stupid and the religious zealots (though these two categories are far from being mutually exclusive) to chose 50% of our realistic presidential candidates. This shouldn't sit well with anyone. I say that a push must be made to register reasonable people in the republican party in hopes of moderating what is currently a juggernaut of poor judgment.

"The court found the defendants guilty of helping users commit copyright violations 'by providing a website with ... sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and through the tracker linked to the website.'" Hmm, Google's search engine returned links to individual torrents on Pirate Bay by an even more sophisticated search capability. It too provides simple download and storage capabilities. I will concede that I know of any special Google tracker, however it does provide "sophisticated search functions" for a person to seek out this apparently illegal application and as we saw in the statement above, that sort of an association is good enough. The trumped up justification for this sentencing is so sloppy, it's an embarrassment to legal bullshit artists everywhere.

Certain levels of E coli in certain areas of the body are necessary for us to live, but it doesn't stop us from calling it a pollutant when we eat spinach that's loaded with bacteria. The reasoning behind your statement is accurate but trivial outside of a middle school science class. Of COURSE CO2 is necessary for life but I can't think of one harmful substance that doesn't have a positive application somewhere in the biosphere. Instead of getting all caught up in some moral conflict about whether a molecule is innately good or bad, look at the context of the discussion; it is entirely reasonable to call carbon a pollutant given discussion above.

Hmm, that example isn't terribly reassuring, especially given the current legal battles cropping up over water rights. Given the amount of capitol that it takes for the company to put the satellite up in space and keep it in geosynchronous orbit, I think they'd get a bit pissy if someone starts mooching power (I think I would).

Ah, I always think of radio waves as being longer than microwaves (AM-FM spectrum), but you're right the radio spectrum does cover microwaves. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm sorry, but what's all this talk about microwaves? Didn't the article say that we're dealing with radio waves or am I missing some sort of implication here? This seems perfectly reasonable, I've heard of people in military zones building series antennas to serve menial electrical needs (back in the day where wireless communication involved high-power radio transmissions). It created a wretched dead-zone for the troops but certainly didn't cook anyone; I believe the wavelengths are too large to bother organic molecules. Hell it's even possible to do this with AM-FM radio today (though you won't get much out of it). The only issue I'd see is the crafty old electrical engineer living close by who decides to build a series antenna to skim his power needs off the company.

I was hoping someone would say this. Doesn't this approach institutionalize a means by which the government can make it more expensive to express and consume content that it finds objectionable? This a back door method to restrict our most basic of liberties; it's essentially the foundation for a dissent tax.

The situation that is described by this editorial piece is cause by something that we are all to familiar with: our culture has not yet gotten used to the extraordinary communicative power that the internet has given to people. I can't really believe that anyone would think that legislating some clumsy anti-snooping law would really fix the issue, rather we'll simply have to watch it play out. The real question at hand is which will change first, the manic inclination of people to express themselves or the hand-wringing tendencies of companies disbelieve that their employees actually have lives outside of their work. I'm optimistic on this point in that many stubborn, opinionated internet users are productive members of society, meaning that eventually the job market will be forced to pull themselves out of the past and accept the diversity within their workforce. Does anyone really think that the companies who hire the least opinionated/controversial in society are going to have a competitive edge of innovation? Of course not, progressive thinking in this situation will benefit the companies that are so inclined to apply it. We just have to tough it out through a couple decades of waiting for this antique hiring practice to fade (unfortunately I'll be getting out of grad school during that period and let's just say I certainly haven't held back on my self expression).

As a graduate student in physics at RPI, I'm often disappointed by the lack of physical examples and applications of the material that plagues the teaching of our field. While projects on the latest in our field is terribly sexy, I'd encourage you not to forget that the basics of physics holds some great and terribly interesting insights. I've found that in our rush to learn the latest craze in the field, many HIGHLY intelligent students in physics lack a comprehensive understanding of the basics of their field. While I can't come up with any particularly good suggestions in my scotch-induced stupor, might I suggest some sort of clever experimental process to confirm lower level theory that ties together course work that the students have already encountered.