Since we are supposed to report the value of barter transactions to the IRS at tax time, I don't think one (in the US, anyway) can ever argue in court that something used as a proxy for value cannot be treated as "money".

Do you speak from experience of using this technique? Or are you summarizing other online accounts?

As someone who filed personal BK 15 years ago, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am a strong believer of personal responsibility. But on the other hand, I loath the credit and debt collection industry with every fiber of my being, with their many awful tactics.

What you describe sounds like anyone could default on any old legitimate debt and then with some paperwork and brass balls simply get away without paying it back. Why the fuck shouldn't I max out my credit, stop paying the house, car, and credit car bills, and then reap the benefits of getting in the clear? This seems too easy (court/legal legwork aside).

I haven't kept tabs on the Fire line. I did voluntarily buy an ad-driven Kindle 3 (full keypad models) for myself and for my mother. Are the Fire models not similarly divided into ad-free and ad-subsidized lines?

Slashdot became reddit before reddit existed. You can bet your hot grits on it.

Dude, get a few of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-3-5-Inch-Aluminum-Removable-MRK-401ST-BK/dp/B003DVTWQ6/

http://www.amazon.com/KingWin-2-5-Inch-Internal-Tray-Less-KF-251-BK/dp/B00475DQ6Y

The benefits of the external trays with the benefits of direct bus connections. Assuming you have a sane OS to recover with, hot-swapping should be a non-issue.

USENET? Anonymous FTP servers? Gopher/Archie/Veronica? Mail lists?

My first 3 or 4 years on "the internet" didn't even have graphical browsers, and it had a ton of useful information.

> Urbanites need their cell phones

Yeah, like they need a bad rash. Are you fucking kidding me?

I say *nobody* really needs cell phones.

(IANAL)

Boucher not only consented to a search, he unlocked the drive with the the CP on it for the border/customs agent. This is the unique part of this case that makes it pretty much irrelevant for the generic case. The court ruled (as I understand it) that because he gave up the password once, he had to do it again when asked by the court.

If he had never unlocked the drive to begin with, and kept his mouth shut, then the outcome would have been very different.

He thrusts his fists against the post...

For hell's sake, man, this is 2011! Why any compressible data is still released using gzip, when xz (even bzip2) is way better, is totally beyond me.

Squash those bits, man! Squash 'em good!

"Cloak and Dagger" was a bad 80's movie with Dabney Coleman and the kid from ET.

Hulu's increase of commercials has severely turned me off of their offerings. I once watched a ton of stuff on Hulu, but now I stick to NetFlix or just do without.

It's quite jarring to be in the middle of an intense show and then breaking to an HPV commercial.

Yes. The Man's greed knows no bounds.

http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/2010/05/child-pornography-and-criminal.html

Seeing this article made me think of the robotic/cyborg "guardian" animals in the Dark Tower series. I wonder if this cold war stuff inspired that part of King's story?

That is apparently the case. I've been called to jury duty once in my life. I was actually excited about it. All my work peers cynically said some version of this: "Just tell them you've been to college and you'll be tossed from the pool." I was like, WTF?!? During selection, we were all asked our professions, our level of education, what periodicals we subscribed to, and if anyone in our family had been subject to domestic abuse (it was an wife battery case, IIRC). For whatever reason, we were *all* pruned out, and I never did get to sit.

For the life of me, I can't understand why people with *any* familiarity with a topic should be pruned from a jury pool. If I were on trial for some computer/tech crime, I'd rather a bunch of slashdotters or redditors (gods help me) be on the jury than the uninformed Joe Schmoe who rely on left- or right-wing hate media for their news sources.