They did it for their iPad Star-Trek ads: http://i.imgur.com/huWri.jpg

They probably figure if it's subtle enough, they can get away with it, but most people won't notice.

Indeed; there is some evidence that this co-evolution decreased humans' smelling abilities as the dogs made up for them (not sure what purpose this serves...)

At least for RFID, this would be much more fun:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cyeiz/reddit_i_present_to_you_my_superfun_idea_for_rfid/

Vast indeed. The only problem being they (tar sand oils) require more energy to extract than the recovered oil provides. Which still makes them useful, and may become economically viable when oil prices are comparatively higher than other energy forms.

Oil only contributes a small (I think in the order of 10-20%) of greenhouse emissions. If oil ran out today, there would not be a huge impact on carbon emissions.

For security purposes, perhaps. But for productivity purposes, failing closed causes people not to be able to get anything done. Failing open is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it is noticed before too long.

Certain a feature, if by feature you mean a remotely exploitable root vulnerability. Yes, definitely a feature. For crackers.

For the rest of us it's a pretty critical flaw, namely one that can 0wn yr ph0ne by visiting a malicious website.

Yeah, but it looks as though they're not going fibre, but a USB option instead:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Waubra+Victoria+3352,+Australia&sll=-37.571029,143.851835&sspn=0.013912,0.01929&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FUPuxf0dV8aPCA&split=0&hq=&hnear=Waubra+Victoria,+Australia&t=h&ll=-37.329014,143.611715&spn=0.006979,0.009645&z=17

You might even say backronym

So Google action's here are similar to looking at the receiver and sender addresses, and the postage stamp on the postcard, and reading a few words of the card in the process. Don't tell me that postal workers won't inadvertently catch a word or two of someone's postcard when reading the public information of the addresses?

Well, that and the fact the all passengers flying in or out of Israel have their checked and carry on baggage inspected, right in front of you.

Perhaps you can avoid this if you can pass as a rabbi, but otherwise, all passengers.

Actually, MPEG 21 seems more like what this story is about - MPEG-21 is a license framework for MPEG.

MPEG-7 is a metadata standard for multimedia. It is not involved in the actual encoding of the content (like mpeg 1, 2 and 4 are). Basically it attaches a chunk of xml to a timecode. Look up wikipedia if you want to know more.

There also exists an MPEG-21, for those interested.

There is already a similar system in place in Australia, which has been running for at least a decade. It is used to monitor truck speeds over large distances - cameras mounted on highway overpasses snap trucks' number plates as they pass, and calculate the speed between cities. This makes the CB radio reporting of radar traps less useful, and log book falsification difficult. Don't know whether it uses satellites, and really, who cares if it does?

Yeah, well, firefox (actually, phoenix or firebird or somethings) was mozilla with all the crap stripped out of it. Now it's evolved back to square one. ChromeOS is just the same principle on the OS level. Wait 5 years and it'll be bloated like the rest of them