... and no laughing! Not even if the movie is funny! I demand silence!

I too like the permanence of paper magazines, plus if I skip an issue, I don't have to worry about making backups or that it might disappear from somebody's web site. My favorite magazine focusing on IT issues is ;login:, the magazine of the Usenix Association. I find it surprising and hard to explain why it's not more popular among IT professionals.

I've done research in this area (none recently), I believe it, but nobody can *prove* it. Kind of a silly option.

If I have two hooked up to my stereo, is that one or two? If I have 5.1 hooked up to my DVD player, is that six? Does each phone count? I think most people are going to have a lot, and probably a bunch more than they think.

"Real casinos are not required to keep cash on hand for the full value of the chips they give players," It's a little bit complicated, but the short answer is that in almost all jurisdictions in the United States, casinos are absolutely required to keep enough cash on hand to match the value of their outstanding chips. So, with some minor caveats, in the most carefully regulated gambling jurisdictions, this is incorrect.

They do know this group isn't the only group of hackers out there? This payment only "applies" to the one group, right? There's nothing preventing any other hacker from attacking that network, and assuming the "protected from " hacking group actually knows about a vulnerability at the "protectee" site, there's nothing preventing them from selling that information to other hackers. When a business pays "protection" money to a group of gangsters, at the very least they have some expectation that this particular gang will protect its territory and some other group won't come along and extort money from them as well. There's no expectation of this on the Internet. You're going to be asked to pay this periodically. If you really want to be left alone, you'd have to pay off several groups. For this money, you can buy some expertise and protect yourself.

Delete it, but don't mark it as spam. Why? Because it's not actually spam.

My-own-email-server-istan.

I'm thinking shoes in the data center are still a good idea. I'm also thinking that having something between your lower body and that hot laptop would also be a good idea. I'm also not excited about the ripping sound you'll hear after a long coding session in a leather chair. I've also got no interest in seeing the vast majority of my colleagues naked. I'm also wondering what they do for lunch. Does everyone bring one from home?

Betelgeuse is easily above the Chandrasekhar limit. The answer to your question depends on whether and at what energy the LHC is operating. Also, it seems to me that it's possible that there's a black hole closer to us that blew up so long ago that we can't detect the nebula the supernova that it created. However, it would be the closest known celestial black hole by about 1000 light years.

First, I'll be excited when the ads are over. Second, "excited" isn't exactly the word I'd use, "scared shitless the world as we know it will come to a firey end" is more like it.

"virtual currency purchased with real money for use in a gambling context" Isn't this the definition of an online casino chip? Maybe prior art?

Congratulations to Comcast for doing something about this, but it's not enough. If they can detect the malware infected computer, they can quarantine it. ISPs have a RESPONSIBILITY to prevent computers that they KNOW are infected from messing up other computers on the Internet. OS vendors don't do enough to remove vulnerabilities in their products, end-users don't do enough to lock down their machines, and ISPs don't do enough to restrict the damage infected machines do. Step up!

Excuse me while I flip to the sports section and then call my bookie.