But! But! But! "It's people!"

Ditto. I cut the cord in late 1999 and don't see any reason to go back. I mainly like movies (all kinds: old/new, blockbuster/indie, etc.) and NetFlix (discs) fill that void better and cheaper than cable can.

NetFlix instant (streaming) is also nice, but the selection is much, much less interesting. Very few titles on NetFlix streaming aren't available on disc, but most of those on disc are not available streaming. Streaming is great, however, for watching a TV series (when available) because you don't have to wait for discs in the mail. It's also nice to get HD on some content that's only available on DVD (not Blu-ray), but NetFlix streaming (at least these days) is a single audio track and non-optional subsititles only if the audio is not English. DVDs and Blu-ray often provide options for audio and subtitles that are very nice to have, especially for foreign films.

I don't want or need a game console (Isn't that what a PC is for? ;) and the Roku box seems perfect for a "set-top" box. I have 2 (living room & bedroom) and am thinking about getting a 3rd for the TV in another bedroom. The Roku box works great with NetFlix streaming (which makes sense because Roku was spun off from NetFlix when they decided they weren't interested in selling hardware) but it's also great for Amazon Video-On-Demand (including free titles for Amazon Prime members), Pandora (free with no ads!) and various other channels. The high end (still less than $100!) Roku boxes even have USB ports to connect external storage for viewing local content (home movies, downloaded stuff, MP3s, etc.) but they aren't what I would call highly compatible with lots of media formats.

For all my home theater needs, a nice 1080P TV plus quality surround/amplifier/speakers plus Blu-ray player (backward compatible with DVD and CD, of course) plus a Roku connected to the Internet via WiFi meets my needs very, very well. Oh... and we occasionally watch OTA (over the air) broadcast TV for local news, NFL games or the rare sitcom that's interesting and not available via NetFlix.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcl/ says: "Tool Command Language (Tcl) is an interpreted language and very portable interpreter for that language. Tcl is embeddable and extensible, and has been widely used since its creation in 1988 by John Ousterhout. See http://www.tcl.tk/ for more info." Another good source of information on Tcl is http://wiki.tcl.tk/

Tcl functions well as glue between applications. Some folks know Tcl but call it "Expect" and may not realize Expect is simply Tcl plus an extension. Another extension, Tk, provides GUI features and is so powerful and popular that it's commonly used from other languages. Bindings exist for several other languages, including Ada (called TASH), Perl, Python (called Tkinter), Ruby, and Common Lisp.

Tcl is used by many people and companies (large and small). Cisco network gear uses embedded Tcl for automating tasks. Oracle uses Tcl for automating testing. The Fortune100 company where I work (but I am not a spokesman, so I won't name them) pays me to write and maintain an application written in Tcl to process payments for many thousands of customers totaling millions of dollars every day for payment through banks and the Federal Reserve.

Tcl is FOSS, but a very popular build is ActiveTcl from ActiveState. http://www.activestate.com/activetcl/

The current state of the art in maximum bandwidth might be an ultra large container vessle (ULCV) filled with containers all filled with 32GB micro-SDHC (uSDHC) cards. For example, the Emma Maersk could carry ~15,000 TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) containers each containing 39 cubic meters (M3) of storage for a total of 585,000 M3 or 585,000,000,000 cubic cm (CM3). I haven't seen any hard statistics on maximum storage density of uSDHC cards per unit of volume, but a rough estimate of 10-15 uSDHC per CM3 seems likely. Picking 12 uSDHC/CM3 as a rough guess would allow something on the order of 200 zettabytes. But the latency would be rather high. :) And of course, one might want to provide some redundancy for bit-rot and other forms of data loss.

Read "Reflections on Trusting Trust"--Ken Thompson (found at http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html ) to learn how recompiling code does NOT validate security. Then read the earlier Air Force article in the link at the end of Thompson's article. Then consider how BIOS and other firmware, and even CPU microcode patches might contain malicious vulnerabilities. You want certain security? Then don't even think about it, much less record it anywhere. ;)

Differences from one website to another make it very hard to automate username & password login. Some web sites (especially some that are nuts about Flash and Web2.0) make it hard just to type them in. However, for 90+% of websites and applications, drag&drop works great; for copy/paste works too. You don't have to select the text and then copy it, just select the entry you want and click a button to copy username to the clipboard (then paste it with keyboard or mouse clicks) then click another button to copy the password to the clipboard and then paste that into the other field. It even supports remembering a login URL for each entry with one button to open the URL and another to drag&drop it onto a browser. Nothing is perfect, but PasswordSafe continues to evolve and improve user interface.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer:

Biometrics might (or might not, depending on accuracy) uniquely identify you, but it neither proves that you were present (your fingerprint or retina might have been stolen, either as a copy or more directly!) nor that you authorize access to whatever resource a password might secure (e.g. you might be dead or otherwise impaired and someone else slides your fingerprint or retina or DNA over the scanner).

Biometrics are convenient and still feel cool, but for really important resources, they increase danger rather than decrease it. For example, imagine that a billion USD is protected by your retina scan; I expect some folks would consider it reasonable to relieve you of your eyes (or even your whole head) for access to that much money.

On the other hand, using them as a username replacement (which still requires some other authentication like a password, and perhaps some two-factor mechanism like an RSA token) makes all kinds of sense. Just don't confuse "identity" with "authentication".

See also http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html and many other pertinent comments by Bruce and others.

That's why PasswordSafe [ http://pwsafe.org/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/passwordsafe/ originally written by Bruce Schneier http://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html ] is what people need.

It doesn't solve every problem (e.g. key loggers and such things as might be on an untrusted system) but nothing does. It's a very simple, flexible, convenient piece of software that not only securely stores usernames and passwords, but URLs, email address, notes and more with the ability to copy/paste and/or drag/drop and/or autofill forms. Although it is mainly a Windows application, it's FOSS portable installs (e.g. U3) available. There is also a recent Linux port.

At the moment, I have 87 passwords in my primary passwordsafe file with related usernames, URLs, email, notes, password generation parameters, password expirations and more, all stored in a convenient hierarchy where work, banking, retail, hardware and other types of passwords are grouped in a tree that makes sense to me. For folks with simple needs, the hierarchy is optional and the entries can all be a flat list.

Sony's latest debacle has prompted me to wade through all my "important" entries (banks and such) and generate unique, random, secure passwords with expiration dates recommended by my PWsafe settings. Sadly, many of the accounts I created before I started using PWsafe used the same username and password combination for similar sites (e.g. retailers with CC info); I have now made my data much more secure with passwords I could never remember, except that PWsafe now remembers them all for me.

For additional doses of that particular pleasure, try the rich and growing collection of learning available at the Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/

Only IE can download (patches, drivers, etc.) via WindowsUpdate and MicrosoftUpdate.

And mine, except four score later. :)

IMO, familial DNA searches are a violation of privacy.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling#Familial_searching
http://www.denverda.org/dna/Familial_DNA_Database_Searches.htm

Indeed. Where to begin...

Do cores inside a package count multiple times? Do GPUs count? And everything from cell phones to microwaves, TVs, remote controls, digital thermostats, watches, cars and bathroom scales have microprocessors these days.

I can easily count more than 20 within 20 feet of my dining room where I'm sitting.