Anything that can be psychologically addictive.. ANY substance. The problem is that the white house was vague about whether they were referring to psychological or _physical_ addiction. The latter meaning that when you quit your body shows sign of extreme withdraw. I guess you could also question the ambiguity of 'extreme' too tho

Do you feel as though law is finally catching up with technology when it comes to computer security or are we pretty far off still? Do you think that current law does a bad job of protecting security researchers and if so why? Which laws make their life living hell and what is the best way to avoid confrontation with the feds?

Don't get yourself in the situation where you have to defend yourself from people that want your info that badly. Disk encryption is fine, sure it drains battery. But i'd say 99% of people that get your laptop from there will give up. If you have to worry about the other 1% your life is pretty whacked. Or you are in the military and they have standards you should be following.

I didn't do it.

Right on the money buddy. If you're trying to attract intelligent and stable partners it should only be obvious you should present yourself like that as well. Common sense right? But some people can't figure out what they want.

when google gives us free high-speed access and tons of other services to which we will all benefit greatly! But the cost will always be our privacy. Understand google's profit comes from advertising and then piece together how they will benefit. I'm not in favor.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/apache/dev/401638 -- someone has got a patch. Keep those fast moving script kittens at bay

When 3d printers are capable of creating 3d printers the first steps of many paths will begin... LOL!

In plain English: google wants to control all your pipes and use information in said pipes to further their ad revenue.

Lets all remember anything Google does "for free" is not "for free" it is for strategic advantage. I just see this being abused for more targeted ads. Akamai is also a partner of Microsoft. I'm not saying this wont be a good service or if there will be privacy issues but lets all remember that a company of any size has no reason to do anything for free, even the most basic of charity is good PR at the very least.

How can this be used for more targeted ads you ask? Quite simple really. If they host the content they have every right to scan the content. Lets take images for example, we know they have the capability of doing a full image search. They scan their hosted images add tags to them then every time a visitor goes to your site Google will record how many page views you get/record the client IP. This IP can be later used to connect to a Google account, thus providing more targeted ads in your subsequent searches. We all have to look at the big picture. I can only see Google's stocks rising.

A side effect of punishing researchers is that there will now be a deficit in that field for the next 10 years. In other words, Japan will be importing talent. Time to start learning Japanese :) Dewa, hajimemashou ka?

Um is it just me or does it seem like they're applying the Starcraft 2 ladder's ranking system? Embarrassing

If I were google sitting on 30+ million usershtey should say to the public we've reached over 10 million in the first week(not untrue)! If they release their numbers like that their competitor(s)(facebook) will be not only shocked but stunned when they go 100% public.

I beg to differ. A lot of these crackers and producers of spam flinging malware live in countries where the median monthly income is lower than what I'd make at McDonalds in a day. Poverty begets crime. Idiots beget spam opening. An initial investment is only time. Skills are free but when all you have is time it becomes your #1 resource even if you cant afford a testing lab, QA team, etc. (Btw the big spam rings no doubt function no different than any other software producing company which is why I used those examples).

That is lovely. You make it sound so simple. Just go in and delete the files and then fix the MBR it's no sweat.. Actually I couldn't disagree more. This assumes you know where the virus is and that it hasn't already corrupted existing windows executables (PE infection isn't hard). Antivirus signatures may catch a couple but it's more than likely that there will be more than one virus on the system that has been reported to be infected. The reason is the viruses get in from the same places and it happens repeatedly. Also even if the antivirus detects it to be one variant of a virus there could be 12 more strains that reside in 12 other places all waiting to restore their functionality upon removal. The shitty thing about money getting into the malware scene is that now a loss of a computer is less of a return on investment, redundancy is almost assumed.

The only way to be sure is a full system restore. Backups are essential but I wouldn't back up any executable or dll files...