And when the museums feel this has gotten out of control, they can address it. Complain to the museum so they know it's a growing problem. Otherwise, yeah, deal with it.

We banned tripods at our exhibit a few years ago as they cluttered the aisles, and we offered the photographers the chance to arrive before hours to take their shots. If selfie sticks become a problem, we'll ban them, too.

Too many jerks who froth at the mouth when they read a headline like this instead of reading the summary, or, god-forbid, the article itself. They remember being told something about 1984 being a totalitarian dystopia, and confusing it with their lives.

Yes, we live in a camera state, and there are now even more hidden cameras than Orwell could have imagined would be possible. But no, not every camera is watched 24x7 by the Ministry of Truth. Not every camera's footage is available to the authorities on a whim.

If you're the curator of a museum, and if you think they are causing a problem for your exhibits, put up a sign and ban them. If you aren't, let the professional curators deal with them, and you can learn to not mind other people's business.

I agree completely with everything you said, and on my last vacation we took less than a dozen photos in total. And yet none of how you or I enjoy our trips should ever be applied to anyone else. If someone else wants to spend their vacation running around with a selfie stick, why should you or I care? I certainly won't dread encountering them.

I'm glad you're the final arbiter of what is right and wrong in the field of taking pictures and vacations; that people must only enjoy themselves in a manner of which you approve. You're obviously intent on curing the technological ills that plague our modern world, and for that we should all be grateful. I'd vote for you because you clearly won't allow those pretentious people to be pretentious on your watch.

In other words, "Lighten up, Francis."

Who the hell "dreads" a pole with a camera on it? You are seriously deranged if that's a clinical phobia you suffer from.

Your average home user doesn't reinstall anything, and for many reasons.

Even if he or she wanted to, they won't have a viable consumer OS installation disk anymore. They get the "System Recovery Disk" with their new purchase, and it's likely filled with the same Lenovo image that was used to bundle the malware in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that the people who've already been impacted are enough to bring a class action suit; eliminating a few more plaintiffs won't change much.

Cameras and license plate readers, and Bluetooth readers, have already automated the data capture of your travels and no longer require you to voluntarily participate by running a state-provided transponder.

You're in a public place, in a publicly licensed vehicle, on a public road, and technology means that data is now a matter of public record. Welcome home, Winston Smith.

"In Soviet Russia, 3D printers print you!"
Turns out that's the headline, not the punchline.

Nobody took computer security seriously back in 2001. Things have changed a lot since then. For example, if you were to contact that same bank with the same information today, they would likely know better and would now contact the FBI and have you arrested on charges of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Actually, contacting the FBI might not be a bad choice for the story submitter. They would probably be very interested in working with that bank to shut this problem down quickly.

OH MY GOD, THE HYPERBOLIC FUEL IS SO UNSTABLE! It will lead to the explosions of every satellite in orbit! And it's so acidic it will eat through the fuel tanks, dripping killer toxic acid rain onto every surface on earth!! The world will end!

Or, perhaps, your device auto-corrected hypergolic, which is to say a chemical combination that self-ignites when the two substances are brought into contact with each other?

That's the change: they've come to the realization that they can't lock developers down to anything, at least not like they used to. I think it's long past due, but that's from an outsider's perspective where it's easier to see the whole landscape, not just focus what goes on in Redmond.

Microsoft is a very different company than they were under Gates or the Sweat-hog. They long ago figured out that their cash cows were kind of fragile, and they more recently figured out that they alienated a lot of developers. They are now trying to find ways to woo developers to any of their product families, not just to Windows. And they've done some great work on a lot of software engineering fronts, including secure development, powerful tools, integrations, and are even dabbling in open source,

My point was that DDT was the first large scale agricultural pesticide that was engineered specifically to be less toxic to humans. You could use cyanide gas on a field, but your farm hands or animals would die if they wandered into the cloud. That meant a farmer wouldn't apply those kinds of poisons except in severe infestations.

DDT made the application and use of pesticides measurably safer, and led the way to routine applications of pesticides on all kinds of crops. Today's pesticides can be deployed on a schedule as a preventative measure to ensure reliable crop yields, and not just applied on an as-needed basis. For that matter, GMO crops are now engineered to express all kinds of toxins throughout the plants, with the plants' own cells serving as microscopic pesticide factories from germination through harvest.