His rant against water-saving toilets was pretty cringe-worthy as well.

"The ECPA was written in 1986 and its provisions have been used by law enforcement to claim the right to access emails older than 180 days without a probable cause warrant." With that kind of logic, wouldn't they have the right to search, without a warrant, anything that you've owned for more than 180 days? Since when has there been an expiration date on the expectation of privacy?

"Consumers today also rely more heavily on big-box chains" Aren't Staples and Office Depot included in the definition "big-box chains"?

Isn't that how Transcendance started? Do we have to worry about a computer-translated Steve Jobs healing the sick, reversing pollution, and turning people into his little tools?

> So you would rather have a few incidents like what happened in France? How much planning did they need to do online for two brothers to walk into an office with a couple rifles? Just what online snooping could have prevented that? If they had been dumb enough to send messages online regarding their plans, it wouldn't look like "Terrorist Leader sends you Allah's greetings! You Terrorist Brothers are to meet Lefty at corner of Trois and Main at 1:30PM Wednesday for purchase of Terrorist Rifles. Then, on Thursday at 10:30AM take them to the Target Infidel Newspaper Office at 123 Napoleon Blvd and perform Terrorist Attack on the Infidels." so much as it would look like: "Meeting with Charlie at 10:30, Thursday. Don't be late, and bring snacks." No amount of online surveillance will make that look like something they need to take action on.

Yikes, who knows what kind of things would happen if the Russians ever get their hands on a nuke! We've got to stop them from developing nucular weapons at all costs, or they'll corrupt our precious bodily fluids!

The military gets dozens of satellite launches a year for surveillance crap that isn't needed. If THOSE satellites were of any real use, we really wouldn't need to be spending more on defense than the next 7 largest military spending nations *combined* to keep ourselves safe.

He has already published at least one article decrying the poor state of technology and performance of electric cars - why would he write an article that contradicts his already published opinion with pesky real facts? He's got a point to make, dammit!

The incubation period for the flu is two days - just not physically possible for you to get the flu from the vaccination in that period of time. I noted that you said sick and not "with the flu"... so you are most likely sensitive or allergic to something in that vaccination, and you just haven't found out what you're allergic to yet.

DI did an article on this about 5 years back: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/?action=print

All their ads that I've seen for the surface just show people making a single swipe or the yellow pages walk on the screen to move some generic-looking boxes around. They haven't really shown what would set it apart from the less-expensive iPad, aside from it's irritating ability to attract hordes of annoying dancing teens and young adults (okay, that's not a difference at all) and the detachable keyboard.

I'm not going to be inclined to want to buy something if I don't see something about it that makes it better in SOME way than the less expensive competition (besides trying to outdo Apple in the insult-my-intelligence-through-advertising department). From the commercials I have no idea what the freaking thing does or is good for, besides switching keyboards (and STDs?) with strangers and making clicking sounds.

> (ex-patriot)

An ex-patriot is someone who no longer feels a strong support for his or her country.

An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing.

Spelling does matter.

You just need enough people to send several of their friends a text message of six random words picked from the dictionary every few hours. This will turn anything but plain admissions of guilt into meaningless drivel as far as law enforcement goes, and de-automates the codebreaking measures needed to make certain that some kind of code system isn't being used - since computers aren't good for extracting semantic information out of conversations. On top of that, it would cause a large increase in the amount of data that would need to be stored, making it an unjustifiable financial burden (as well as a nightmare for wholesale data mining).

That doesn't make you an asshole, it makes you my hero. Along with everyone else who rightly resists encroaching authoritarianism. We really need to teach people better about not making decisions based on fear - it tends to disable the critical thinking mechanisms.

try to live up to your expectations. Seriously, are they doing this because they think the kids are stupid, or because the adults running their programs ARE stupid?