http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6HvS0pOoJc&feature=player_detailpage#t=23s

That's a good question... You're probably thinking of the Democratic Congressman named Weiner who actually did accidentally post a picture of his... well, weiner from his phone.

It's long been a well-known secret among technologically capable people (like you, dear reader) that it's very easy to download the video files for youtube videos. Extracting the audio is just another simple step away from that. Google has ignored such services in the past because they really don't care if people download these videos or the music on them. Sure, it might eat in to their revenues a little bit, but not much, since most people will just keep coming back to the site anyway.

The real issue here is that copyright holders (those big evil RIAA members) never realized how easy stripping music from youtube videos actually was. That's the only reason they let all their music go up on the site (albeit slathered with advertising and overlays.) Anytime someone draws attention to how easy getting the audio (or video) actually is, it makes copyright holders skittish. They think that this guy has somehow discovered some sort of technological loophole that allows him to download the files in a way others can't (he hasn't.) Google is probably under tremendous pressure to shut this guy down, and they'll do it just so that nobody starts asking questions about why it's so easy to do what he's doing anyway.

Better that one man takes the fall (and just shuts down his site) than that the whole world suffers losing unfettered access to youtube source files.

The first sign that something is wrong with the company is when the CEO feels obligated to say, "There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now."

It may not be the thing that he's trying to reassure us about (it probably is,) but RIM sure looks and acts like a duck that isn't going to be saved. Now Mr. Heins is just quacking like one.

It looks like the rockets that launch the capsule may eventually be built in Utah, but that capsule appears to have been built in Louisiana. It's probably pork just the same, but I don't think Orion is really benefiting Utah just yet.

There are at least two huge differences. First, auto insurance is not required at a federal level. This argument was never over whether any level of government had the right to impose such a requirement. States, for example can and do. Second, and probably more important, not every person in the country has to have auto insurance. If a person rides their bike everywhere, or takes the bus, or hitches rides with his friends, he doesn't have to have auto insurance. There, governments (state governments) have said, "IF you choose to drive in our state and on our roads, then you MUST be insured to a minimum level." In the case of Obamacare, there is no decision to do something (other than continue breathing) that would require you to buy a product. You simply must do it. You must purchase insurance not to your own satisfaction, but the government's.

That's a good point. I think the best tactic to combat this would just be to play up the 'tyrannical majority' argument in its most generic sense. Everyone (religious people, atheists, gays, heterosexuals, traditional minorities, and increasingly middle class white people) likes to think that everyone else is out to get them and would gang up against them if given the chance. You don't even have to suggest it to each group, just put it out there in a general way and everyone will think you're talking about them.

And if so, how soon? Will you allow participants to view results of a survey/poll immediately after they vote, or before? Or never? What about all the demographic data you will likely tie to each vote? Will that be available (in an anonymized form) for public inspection? That could be just as interesting as the prospect of a poll-informed internet representative.

.sec is just a fat finger slip away from .sex, which I can only assume will some day be its own TLD at the rate ICANN is handing them out. Can you imagine accidentally stumbling upon https://discreteaccountants.sex/ ? Hold that thought. I just had an idea for a startup.

Does Slashdot STILL not properly render unicode text? I recognize those characters as being Russian characters in UTF-8 being rendered as Latin-1. Shame on Slashdot! ?

and a PC at work. The PC at work, by necessity, takes up the bulk of my computing time, nearly 6-8 hours a day. One of my PCs at home dominates that time, but sometimes I sit on the couch and code or browse the web on my laptop while watching tv. I'm really not sure how to answer this question, but I put the amount of time I use my main PC at home as 'my pc' or about 20-30% of computing time, I estimate.

Sure, Mac has been making strides, and I have a friend who swears by 'Pages' and 'Keynote,' but it's the iPhone, iPod, and iPad that have made Apple the behemoth it is today. Microsoft would love to make money in these markets as well, but they already ARE raking in tons of cash from MS office, and Exchange servers and other software for businesses. That is where Google (and not Apple) can really hurt them, and with the shift toward cloud services, MS is right to fear Google, and they have some decent points to be made about consistency and long-term reliability that you can reasonably expect from Microsoft.

Clue was actually pretty good. It was very loosely based on the game, and turned out to be very funny. Battleship, however. Let's just say I won't be standing in line for that one.