So when do we get the pneumatic people movers, a la Futurama?

I'm also wondering if the guys who came up with this got the idea from the show.

None of the above

Facebook slurps up all your personal information and sells it to advertisers. It also slurps up all your friends' and family members' information - even if they aren't on Facebook themselves - keeps it in so-called "shadow profiles", and sells that to advertisers as well. Facebook also routinely changes its privacy controls without notice, and the new versions of the controls default to the most permissive settings - so you have to continually monitor them to "minimize" (in quotes because it's still a lot) how much of your personally identifiable information leaks out to the world at large. And they occasionally make policy changes that force you to share stuff that you'd previously tried to keep confined to within a small group.

And what you're worried about is they might use more of your data plan?

The article implies this incident was already known to some people for quite some time, but had been kept from higher ups in the government. It recently came out because a newspaper did some digging (the timing of which isn't too surprising).

Maybe the victim is a cat.

Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.

And yet, somehow, the city still stands...

Make damn sure your clients are aware of exactly what you're doing. They probably don't care about the specifics (e.g. openvpn, reverse ssh); but they need to know you can remotely access the boxes.

It's probably a good idea to have some sort of document to give them that does spell out all the specifics - something they need to acknowledge/sign, with both of you keeping copies.

It'd be faster for the NSA too - it's a win-win!

Everybody needs a hobby...

When This American Life did its expose on Intellectual Ventures' activities a few years ago, IV talked about their labs and made many claims that the money was being used to fund innovation and create new products - a claim that did not stand up to even a modicum of scrutiny.

Basically IV is just trying to find a new patsy to listen to its same old song. Welcome to the show, Business Week!

I didn't know the Iron Lady was a hacker! Just kidding, just kidding, I know she used nuclear blackmail to accomplish this.

Boy, just imagine what the Russian Mob could do with a nuke to back them up... oh, wait, Putin seems to already be doing this as we speak.

Do these pants make me look fat?

When i was a kid, I broke a few car windows playing baseball in the street - is that "mischief"? What about stealing a map from a gas station, or short-sheeting beds at camp? None of those involved technology.

I'm older than a lot of guys here; but I imagine it's still true that some people occasionally leave the computer behind to interact with the real world first-hand.

Some things are worth the risk.