Sounds like the DEA's biggest mistake was asking for permission. They should just go ahead and authorize themselves to do the scanning and data retention, and then shove it down our throats for our own good.

Private security companies are unlikely to have the sweeping legal immunity necessary to commit what would otherwise amount to a sexual assault.

I demand they set the default search engine to my new project, ButtSearch, immediately!

Not true. Kexec replaces the whole kernel, which means the system is reset. Ksplice applies and removes patches (security updates mainly) while the kernel is running, which means all the processes keep running as if nothing happened.

I basically agree with your point aside from the fact that you don't have to change your domain name to add a _norobots.com suffix in order to opt out of web crawling.

He's putting the buggy whip manufacturers out of business!

I found out about these keyboards from an old Slashdot post about "Das Keyboard". Das Keyboard was revealed by a commenter to be a KeyTronic keyboard with the key labels removed. Aside from the "blank key" gimmick, there was one thing the Das Keyboard had going for it which it had inherited from the KeyTronic: five different spring weights for the keys, based on which finger is used to engage the key. That way your pinky doesn't have to work as hard hitting tab as your thumb does on space. After switching to KeyTronic keyboards on all my PCs, I never looked back. In fact, traditional everyday USB keyboards hurt my fingers after enough use, but I never have that problem with the KeyTronic.

My old notebook - a Tecra A8 - had a GigE ethernet connection. Many times when I wanted to move a few gig of data, I would skip the Wifi and connect directly to the ethernet. Linux never had a problem reaching high transfer speeds.

It finally came time to upgrade to a new laptop, and to my horror I discovered that many of the manufacturers aren't including GigE any more, because they seem to think Wireless N is enough. Under ideal conditions, I still have to wait a lot longer to transfer large files onto my new laptop than I did with my old.

My whole computing life I've been used to watching things get faster/smaller/cheaper, etc... this is probably the first time I've had to suffer a downgrade because of an upgrade.

You so beat me to it!

Color me surprised!

...is that thanks to the lack of an IOMMU on consumer x86 computers, JavaScript exploits in the browser can now give you access to all the computer's memory, and along with it, ring 0. I can't wait to see the first whitepaper on the subject :)

Excuse me, how does deregulation have anything to do with SEC incompetency? The financial services industry in America is one of the most regulated industries in the world.

I should amend that to refer to the 20th and 19th century. We haven't yet had enough time in the 21st to make it 3.