Did you know if the holes were made before leaving the foreign port, or during the trip? If not, you're just like the knee-jerk agents in this article. Did you check with the owner of the vehicle? If not, why not? That's kind of the point to this article: some faceless bureaucrat, who will never be held responsible, just decided to trash someone's property. Couldn't they have asked the guy about it before assuming the worst and destroying something priceless? Don't you see a problem with that?

What's the likelihood that something like this will happen? Are we to fear China sending a crack team of commandos to disable our power grid? Someone could knock down high-tension power lines, too. Do we fence off every last one of those?

Wouldn't it have been better for him to show up, presumably on whatever topic he originally planned, and then give a presentation on why RSA was wrong to capitulate to the NSA? Sure, a number of us have seen this on /., but I think way more people would've come across this if the other major news outlets picked it up when he was escorted out of the building. Of course, there's the possibility that he would've been held up trying to get home.

If you write an iOS apps for yourself, you don't need to pay the annual developer's fee. Only if you want to publish to iTunes.

I'm curious what you would suggest for my wife, then. She's 47 and within the last 18 months somehow damaged her C4-C5 vertebrae and needed surgical fusion to minimize the pain from a pinched nerve. However, the surgery has also limited her mobility: she can walk, up to a point, but running is out of the question. Cycling for more than a few minutes leaves her leg numb. We haven't tried swimming; she gets debilitating ear infections unbelievably easy. The end result is that she's gained some weight - maybe 20 pounds - and I can attest that she really doesn't eat much: typically toast & tea in the morning; a sandwich for lunch, if we eat lunch, and then a reasonable dinner; almost never any snacks or candy; she drinks tea or water, typically, with a Pepsi once or twice a week. I was going to bring these pills up with our doctor, but if you think they're only a short-term fix, what would you suggest?

Cochlear brand cochlear implants do have on/off switches. My early model, the one I got in 1997 and still use because the later models suck ass in terms of sound quality - sounds like they're not sampling fast enough; it's robotic, even after lots of tweaking - has a mode that attenuates constant noises such as road noise, loud conversations in crowded rooms, etc, but it's not that good. In those cases, I plug in an external mic that I give to the person to whom I want to listen, often my wife, so the sound is picked up mostly from a discrete point. It helps greatly.

On the other hand, and this will address MikeBabcock, below, as well, there are times when I take off my CI - like when exercising, where sweat might short things out, or sleeping, where it gets in the way - but I'm at the mercy of whatever I can see or feel, which is risky. In the event of a fire, I'd be toasted, if my wife was out of town and I was by myself. Sure, there are alarms that flash brightly, but I don't have those; I kind-of depend on my wife for that. I probably should get some. My alarm watch buzzes, which is great to tell me when it's time to get up, but not useful in terms of fire protection or intruder detection. When riding my bike, I don't hear cars coming from behind. I've had a few close calls, but have never been hit, fortunately. I have lost my grown son off the back and had to turn around to find him with a flat about a quarter mile back, which sucked. So, in general, unless I have to take it off, I wear it. Sometimes, like on an airplane, I'll just turn it down, or plug in my iPod, which cuts out everything else but my music. In department meetings, I'd plug in and no one would know I wasn't paying attention to the PHB, unless I was obviously jammin' away. That was an enjoyable bonus. Except for those times when people would talk to me, and I didn't even know it until they tapped me. Oops.

I faked it through some early interviews like that. However, some people are easier to read than others. For example, my son and I can carry on a conversation, while running, with me not wearing my cochlear implant. He grew up having to speak so I could understand him, so even if I'm not wearing my CI, I get about 95% of what he says. In some cases, he'll speak without making noise so I can understand him without having other people in the room any the wiser. On the other hand, my wife is way more difficult to read. It's frustrating. Guys with beards? Forget it. Thankfully, I get pretty good coverage with my CI, so I don't have to depend so much on lip reading. With some people, I'll use both, just to be sure. And then, with a rare few, there's the classic, "I'm deaf, but I'm ignoring you, anyway."

Nice idea and I'd fully consider it. Heck, nowadays, I'd be able to hack my own system to flash LEDs, or similar. But this was nearly 30 years ago. Fortunately, in spite of my difficulties, he grew up without too many issues. I have a cochlear implant, now, and can hear him quite well.

It depends on how bad the tinnitus is. In my case, when I take off my cochlear implant, it's low-grade. It's not that bad. It almost disappears completely when I attach and turn on my cochlear implant, except in cases when I'm really tired. Then, I notice it a little more, but it's still not debilitating, or even overwhelming.

When I lost my hearing at 17 from spinal meningitis, I was out for a week - lost consciousness from the pain and nearly died - and when I woke up, it was just tinnitus. I saw people moving their lips, so I knew they were talking, but no sound. It was weird, but I got used to it quickly enough. What took longer to get used to was the social isolation. Though not intentional, I basically lost my friends. Only one person in my group of school friends bothered to learn sign language to communicate with me. Only one family member out of seven bothered to learn sign language. Two others tried, but butchered any attempt at it. Really, it's not that hard to learn or use. Lack of sound - not a big deal. Lack of communication? Much bigger deal.

When I got my cochlear implant, we worked on improving the sound quality for a period of about six weeks, and at the end of the sessions, my hearing was about as good as I remembered, except in noisy situations, where comprehension drops greatly because I don't have the filtering ability anymore: it all comes as one block of sound and the CI can't adapt like our brain does, automatically. Other than that, I had no problem adjusting to hearing again. In fact, it was like a new lease on life. But, I know of congenitally deaf people, as you describe, that reject CIs because they don't know what to do with the new sensory input. That, plus growing up deaf, learning things through sign language instead of speech, it makes it a bizzaro world transition: they don't know how to handle our "normal." I feel bad for those folks.

Love to experience it? Just no. Imagine going to an interview for a job you really, really need - young family depends on you for food and shelter - and you can't even understand the small chat from the interviewer - "How was the trip here?" "Um, I... I... didn't understand the question, sir." "Oh, uh, never mind. Wasn't important." - let alone the substantive parts. People constantly think you're "stupid" because you're missing a source of input. You're never a part of a conversation; if you're lucky, someone will give you bits and pieces afterwards. You see everyone laughing, and maybe the joke wasn't that funny, but you never get to be a part of it, and if someone does bother to sign it to you, after the fact, it loses a lot in the retelling. Holiday get-togethers become the most dreaded occasions of the year: the isolation effect is amplified, and you end up playing with the dog, instead. You put your child down for a nap, and he ends up crying for 45 minutes, right in the next room, because you're busy working on something, and don't hear him. And on and on. Again, just no.

I might be out of my mind, but not from deafness. With my cochlear implant, I hear pretty much what I used to hear before I went deaf from spinal meningitis at age 17. Without my CI, it's just mild tinnitus. Either way, having been deaf for 30 years, I'm used to it. Aside from the boredom, this room would pose no problem for me at all.

Most of New York does, but be extra careful when you get to New York City. They have their own level of stupid out there. Even having CCP from another county within NY is not enough. You have to get it from NYC, and good luck with that.

-- green led

That's a hell of an air gap to cross.

Under Harper, isn't Canada actually "America Lite"? So it would, in essence, still be only America, right?