It'll be amazing how many people suddenly come down with "disabilities" once insurance companies start paying for fancy PDAs and SmartPhones.
Even if 5x as many people suddenly "need" these devices, since they cost 10-20x less, wouldn't the insurance companies save money?

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent

Competent people turn to violence much sooner.

Ever heard of the Hays Code? It applied to movies, but they didn't have video games back then.

See "The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms" by Connie Barlow. For instance, Osage Oranges were eaten by extinct North American megafauna. In fact, the tree is rather similar to the one in this article, in that it also has sharp spines to defend it.

Iceland has an astounding 46.89% of its population on Facebook (since you have to be over 13 to join FB, that means over 50% of adults in Iceland are on Facebook). Norway and Denmark also beat out Canada on a per-capita, with 40.25% and 38.28%. Canada is #4 with 34.37%.
And for those that care, the USA stands at #14 with 19.55%.
Data taken from http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/04/facebook-usage-statistics-by-population.html

Even if they only published a list of names, and omitted the SSNs, that would be an act of immense evil.

Oh yes, because a publishing a list of names of people in this country would be so evil. You know what would be even eviler than that? A list of names, with phone numbers! And maybe even addresses! They could call it a "phone book".

What the parent said. SSN should only be used as a uniquifier, to distinguish John Smith 123-45-6789 from John Smith 123-99-4321. The government should pick a date, say 5 years from now, and state that on that date they will publish the full list of Name & SSN data. Everyone using SSN as a shared secret must fix their databases.

You could most likely save money by renting your books, and then for the ones you want to keep, purchasing used copies of previous editions for pennies on the dollar.

Rather than an email "recall" or "delete" command, I think an "amend" function could be useful. For instance, if an email was properly signed with the right key, it could amend/update a previously sent (similarly signed) email, while maintaining a revision history.

Need to make a small change (adding a forgotten attachment, for instance): no problem. Need to make a big change (e.g., removing your 2 am drunken rant), and manage to send it before the recipient has read the original? Better hope the recipient doesn't click on the "previous versions" button.

a person could donate money ONLY to a candidate he was eligible to vote for.
I like this idea, but it needs to be stated the other way: a candidate can only accept campaign money from people who are eligible to vote for him/her. No money from corporations. No money from the main branch of a political party. No money from anyone but voters.

The government is going to take heat on the switchover whenever it happens. Better to do it next month, and place the blame on former administrations, than delay 6+ months and have the blame firmly land on this administration.

So the obvious thing to do is to run half the windmills in reverse at off-peak times, and push the wind back so it can be used later!

Within a few more years, people will have 1TB in their pocket, whether on an ipod-like device or flash drives on their keychains. With normal compression, that's about 100,000 songs.

If Governments(/business interests) were to succeed in making stuff unswappable online, sneakernet will return.

It is also the stuff we eat; or do you think that corn meal, corn chips, corn pops cereal, etc are made from sweet corn? (They're not.)