Exactly what I was thinking. My parents have a facebook account, and they play Farmville all the time. It cracks me up every time I walk by the computer and see my dad talking in a chat room about his farm. I had to give him a lecture the other day about the security issues related to linking an account with that much of his personal information on it to an online game like Farmville. It's interesting how he originally saw nothing wrong with this, especially knowing how skeptical I know he would be if facebook weren't the intermediary. Anyway, the only reason I heard about it was because my mom complained that some random guy (who I guess my dad added through Farmville) was sending her messages.

There are already several barcode scanners on the Android marketplace. There are also apps that let you scan the cover of DVD's or other small items to retrieve pricing and other information in a hurry -- these work pretty well. At the very least, it would be cool to have the ability to take a picture of some blob of text and receive an OCR conversion on the phone. Though the 3.2MP camera on my G1 may struggle a bit with shooting some text clearly, I would think more powerful cameras (like the 5MP one equipped with the Motorola Droid) wouldn't have much of a problem.

Bah... Flamebait... I know... But I can't resist... You ordered a MS Excel video professor CD and you have a 6-digit slashdot ID?

Ahhh, I believe you're referring to the Ballmer Peak...

This reminded me of some of the more bizarre German aircraft's of the period (see the vertically launched Bachem Ba 349 Natter). Some of the proposed methods of aircraft/pilot recovery were pretty interesting (from using the plane as a suicide bomber, to breaking off the wings and opening a rear-mounted parachute when fuel runs out). It's also interesting to point out that many of the Japanese submarines were intended for suicide missions themselves.

Come on! It's not thaaat offtopic

Well the biggest "what the fuck" moment for me was on page 8/8: "There is only one possible criticism of the UK plug and socket system, and that's that it doesn't really look like a happy, smiling face -- the Americans can hold that over us." I was initially shocked at the possibility of nationalism reaching this point... But then again, I am an American... so whoosh!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the difference between a virus and a worm? i.e. virus requires user interactions to spread, while worms do not as they exploit a weakness in the system.

In Brietech's defense, he did have a functioning internal speaker. His desktop environment of choice uses the mobo speaker to paint a picture of the desktop-- all you need is a keyboard ;-)

http://xkcd.com/652/

Well, last time I checked, Wowsers has not been trying to pass laws or regulations on grammatical issues which he may or may not understand... So your point is kind of moot.

The cat and mouse game, between those who wish to control the flow of information and those who wish to attain it, has existed since the birth of civilization. It is unfortunate that the battle must persist, despite the the inevitable outcome-- from the printing industry to the Internet and its many applications (see Napster, and the evolution of P2P file sharing). Any attempt to control the flow and dispersion of "IP" has shown to indeed be futile as time (and with it, technology) progresses. In the modern world, it is especially damaging because of the effect it has on the underlying infrastructure (I won't go into details, and the real blame here is debatable).

Absolutely. And you must realize that any packet of data you send out will inevitably be passed on by several privately owned nodes on route... This differs from the physical analogy of a postal service because there is more transparency in the data being handed off. This will occur whether the user realizes it or not; ignorance is no excuse. I posted this earlier, so I apologize for being redundant. I have, of course, left out any thought of encryption- but lets face it, if a user doesn't understand the underlying principles of the internet, they probably don't understand the difference between these (or lack there of) security measures.

While I don't think the need for dedicated GPS units will disappear anytime soon, it is obviously troublesome for both companies. With that said, it does appear that Garmin is at least attempting to transition more into the cell phone market.

"Some have said the clouds look like Armageddon has arrived." ... Others have said, that once you enter the cloud, things get really foggy and damp... What's the point of this again?