It'll be interesting to watch the dip in Google's search traffic as half the web searches instantly move over to this site.

Similarly, is there any statistically significant weight difference between people who drink beer from cans vs. glass bottles?

That sounds frighteningly accurate.
From a different Wired article: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/nsa-whistleblower/

So, the short, accurate answer to Wyden's question would be "We're spying on everyone. Literally. It would take too much work to even calculate the number of people we're spying on. Go away."

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/best-of-2600-emmanuel-goldstein/1102658944?ean=9780470294192
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/2600-magazine-2600-magazine/1104039139?ean=2940014186568

Guess I can't tell that joke about a solar-powered flashlight anymore.

Right. Because historically, the kids buying video games are the ones out there beating up other kids and stealing their lunch money. Why don't we leverage a 1% tax on footballs and jerseys as well, or maybe weight-lifting equipment?

What a great message. "If you buy this video game, someone may come along and kick your ass, so we're going to charge you extra so the government can try to prevent that."

Right. Giving Verizon incentive to slow down your traffic in the middle of your Skype call so you'll pay them more money? Doesn't sound like a good idea. I'm pretty sure that would be a deal-breaker for me.

Kevin,

Every time I see your name mentioned in an article written by Kevin Poulsen, I wonder how many people reading it know the connection. Do you have any interesting stories of crossing paths with someone your knew from your "ghost in the wire" days, or unexpected relationships you've developed or continued with people who either impacted your life, or were impacted by your actions back then?

The more amusing footnotes to this story are the #kennethcoletweets tweets that everyone is making up now:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23kennethcoletweets

@KennethColePR: "People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!" #KennethColeTweets
@KennethColePR: Jeffrey Dahmer would have eaten up our spring collection! #KennethColeTweets
And many more...

I had the OSX version of surveillancesaver installed on my mac, but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it quit working. Found out it was written in Quartz, so I re-compiled it with the new version, and got it working again.

Then I found out that the guys who wrote the original went on to found the Public Viewpoint Project, which searches for publicly available webcams and creates an RSS feed. I can't find their web site anymore, but the RSS feed is still up. I added to the screen saver the ability to connect to their RSS feed, d/l camera URLs and test them out before showing them.

I recently created a Google Code space for it, it's available here: http://code.google.com/p/surveillancesaverosx [google.com]

It still has some bugs, if there are any "expert" Quartz developers out there, I'd love to get some pointers.

A while back I ran across the SurveillanceSaver project - a simple screen saver which contained a small list of webcams it would cycle through. I had the OSX version installed on my mac, but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it quit working. Found out it was written in Quartz, so I re-compiled it with the new version, and got it working again.

Then I found out that the guys who wrote it went on to found the Public Viewpoint Project, which searches for publicly available webcams and creates an RSS feed. I can't find their web site anymore, but the RSS feed is still up. I added to their screen saver the ability to connect to their RSS feed, d/l camera URLs and test them out before showing them.

I recently created a Google Code space for it, it's available here: http://code.google.com/p/surveillancesaverosx

It still has some bugs, if there are any "expert" Quartz developers out there, I'd love to get some pointers.

While I understand your point, there are two current news items that I could see as possibly generating some desire to search Americans before letting them on a plane.

First, the attempted bombing of the Christmas tree lighting here in Portland, OR. (Although you could argue he wasn't born in America)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5heQPp2NpOwvN6VdSOuy2LexQ4vXg?docId=fe013ab41f744f9899844b7e3164e48b

Second, the discovery of a house in California so laden with explosives that they have to try and burn it in place:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iz-NoJ-t4_P-of2SabmaoRq0tD-w?docId=fd581bf34cf841e5a767fddc4a11993e

That being said, I think the only security changes that have done any real good since 9/11 are:
1. Strengthening cockpit doors.
2. Scanning checked baggage.
3. The fact that passengers on a plane don't take for granted anymore that people just want to hijack a plane and land it somewhere safely, and will likely tear anyone limb from limb who tries to take one over, or die trying.

When I was in college, having heard about the Dvorak layout, I decided to give it a shot. I switched my keyboard layout, applied some new letter stickers, and spent a couple weeks re-training myself to the new format. After about three months, I gave up and switched back, primarily for two reasons:

First, shortcut keys. The letter layout itself may be (arguably) more efficient, but the placement of shortcut keys is an overlay on top of that which has its own efficiently. Take Copy (Ctrl-C), Paste (Ctrl-V). They're right next to each other, and use the left hand so you can copy/paste while using the mouse with your right hand. If you use Dvorak, Ctrl-V is on the right-hand side of the keyboard, so you have to choose between moving your hand off the mouse, or using your left hand on the right side of the keyboard. I suppose you could re-map all your shortcut keys too, but that becomes an even more involved process with a higher learning curve.

Secondly, it became a struggle to use other computers. Although I'd retrained myself on my keyboard easily enough, it became more difficult to use other computers, and remember to switch back and forth. Hitting the wrong shortcut-key combination can have disastrous results in different applications, and it just became too difficult to deal with.

So, while the QWERTY layout may not be the most optimally efficient, in my opinion the overhead in switching it to anything else is simply too great.

    It's still a great case study in how engineering decisions are made though, and I highly recommend giving it a try. Perhaps forcing a classroom of engineering students to do it for a quarter would prevent costly project overruns years down the road...