Just as the PhD Comics comic referred to in another posting says.

Neither is the International Business Times, whence this article refers.

The web site for Nature magazine, however, is a science web site, and there's a much better story there on the same topic.

Yes, I'd be inclined to pay attention to only the claims in the Nature news article on the same topic.

If I, as a third party, want to offer telephone services that use broadband internet (VoIP), Comcast will be able to make my access to their consumers so crap

Well it's a shame then the FCC rules under discussion would have nothing whatsoever to do with that,.

Gosh, I wonder what you are getting if it's not at all what you thought. I wonder what you are getting from an agency intertwined with the cable companies, when you ask them to provide regulation from same companies... Perhaps utterly the opposite of what you wanted?

A better source is the article in Nature .

No, it's not just you, and, yes, that sentence is completely devoid if any scientific sense. Better sentences can be found in the news article from Nature .

Well, there's "magnet therapy" as in "wear a magnet on your body", and there's "magnet therapy" as in "coat extremely small magnetic particles with a protein that binds to bacteria, viruses, and bacterial toxins, run your blood through a machine where the particles bind to the bacteria/viruses/toxins and get magnetically removed from the blood, and pump the blood back in".

It's quite possible for the first form of "magnet therapy" to be bullshit and the second form of "magnet therapy" to work.

When people read the summary of this story, I'm sure a lot will be like "blah blah blah blah MAGNETS GOOD FOR HEALTH AND CURE EBOLA blah blah blah.

Makes me not want to read the International Business Times, but to, instead, read the news article from Nature , as suggested in another post.

This problem could have been easily avoided. Send iTunes users an announcement that they can go to the store and get the U2 album for free, if they want to.

That's how it worked for everyone that didn't enable auto-downloads of purchases (which is not enabled by default).

I *wanted* the album, and it took me two days to figure out how to get it. It did not appear for me anywhere automatically...

I can't believe people get worked up over being given music for free. Hey guess what, all sorts of free crappy music is in whatever music streaming service you favor also. Why not complain about that?

They're both still vulnerable to supernovae. You should have at least one backup in another galaxy.

Fun fact, the real reason for the Voyager mission was someone wanted a permanent backup of William Shatner singing "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". You didn't ever see the back of that record they included with Voyager, did you... now you know why.

I've not over years of use, I guess it's that weak-ass Gorilla Glass 2 the original post was wishing for. Hopefully Apple ditched them if you can simply scratch it with keys.

I've kept a number of different iPhones in pockets with keys for years, zero scratches. I've not seen an iPhone screen witch scratches (cracks if it's dropped, yes, but not scratches).

Also, they HAVE used Gorilla Glass. In fact I'd imagine the newer ones ALSO use Gorilla Glass, they just aren't saying that (which they did not in the past also).

It should be the car that is disabled (or your license taken away)

Exactly - as they do already in the UK: get caught driving while using a mobile phone, you get 3 penalty points. That puts your insurance premiums up in itself, and if you reach a total of 12 points, no more driving for a few years. The penalty may be increased to 6 - in which case, get caught driving on the phone twice, you're in the passenger seat for several years. If someone's been caught driving on the phone (whether texting, talking or reading Slashdot), why let them continue driving at all? Will disabling the phone stop them driving while fiddling with the radio, eating, shaving etc? Of course not - so get them away from the wheel and let them text all they like as passengers.

It is against the law pretty much everywhere. However that law is enforced pretty much nowhere. It is just simply too difficult to enforce it, as a police officer has to catch the person in the act to even write a ticket. And then the ticket is so laughably small in terms of the monetary penalty as to be pointless to even write.

Here in the UK, the penalty is that you get one-quarter of the way to no longer driving (3 penalty points, where 12 means a driving ban); the government announced earlier this year they were considering doubling that to halfway, i.e. get caught doing it twice (within 3 years) and you won't be driving again. However small the risk, I suspect that's a big enough deterrent to scare many - particularly since it would often mean losing their job too. You don't have to be caught red-handed, either, just suspected enough for the police to investigate, then they check the network usage logs and confirm you were using the handset at the time in question. (Or get seen on a traffic camera, of which there are many.)

The idea in the article is just silly, though.