From TFA: "Changing to an LED ball was not only more green, the decrease in electricity costs allows the city to host the ball on top of One Times Square, where 100,000 visitors marvel at the sparkling ball all year. In tune with the changes, the 2011 ball will be lit completely off the grid by bike pedal-generated electricity contributed by those who visited the exhibit and pedaled at the station."

This is a means of detecting criminals, but is it really using DNA to do that? Seems really unlikely...

I was in Paris recently and had to register with their ISP as a free WIFI user prior to being granted access to the Internet.

They claimed it was due to a recently passed law (and provided a link to the law but I chose not to follow up as it was easier to just register and move on rather than argue with anybody during my vacation).

I had no idea who Tesla was until I read the liner notes to this 1989 masterpiece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Radio_Controversy

You can't travel between two gates on the same planet!

Back in the early nineties when Wolfenstein 3D was all the rage, a friend came over with a German exchange student and I fired up the game to show them how cool it was. The German kid freaked out. I assumed at the time it was because it was all about killing Germans... but maybe it was simply due to the existence of swastikas...

Good point, but I think most people on Slashdot think we SHOULD be the majority...

DVRs have a much larger impact than VCRs on the (archaic) ratings system (regardless of your parents viewing habits).

There is a huge difference between people occasionally recording stuff on a VCR when they'll be out to people regularly recording everything they are going to watch and watching it whenever they get around to it.

There's a big difference between the DVR and VCR. Most people used VCRs to rent movies and occasionally record a show they were going to miss.
DVRs are used by a significant amount of people to regularly watch television when it is convenient.

Half the world works for Google now?

And another number for to weight in your list:

Chances your internal IT guys know more about securing your data than Google engineers: 5%

Yes, my number was pulled out of my ass too.

I don't understand what this have to do with World of Warcraft?

While I agree with nearly everything you said about the problems of the App Store, I do want to point out that there is a "Customers also bought" feature in the iTunes App Store already (at least when accessed via the desktop iTunes application)

I agree fully that not everything is worth buying online (even now when it saves us sales/use tax).

That's exactly my point. Online retailers are already saving (many of) us lots of money beyond the sales tax. They won't need to change their business models. They will still be cheaper even if they have to add my local sales tax to my total bill for many products (electronics, camera equipment, computer parts... heck, even books).

Anyway, my point was never that I think an online sales tax is a good idea... I just disagreed with the poster who stated online merchants would need to rethink their business models.

Even if Amazon charges me the same as my local tax (10.5% in Chicago so please don't!), it will still be cheaper in most cases to buy from Amazon as the products are often discounted way more than in local stores. And w/ free shipping on nearly everything over $25.00, the shipping cost to the consumer remains essentially zero. I've always been curious if our insanely high sales tax in Chicago is actually causing less tax revenue to be collected than if it were more sane (like 4%). That is not intended to be a political question, more of a math question.

Your forgot to add content to you robots.txt file, er, poster. This may help: User-agent: * Disallow: /