Political Action Committee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
You don't have to care; I wouldn't, if I lived outside the US.

I'm being very specific here - I'm referring to internet controlled home lighting. If all I care about is switching on/off lights, it is overkill.

I can't say I'm too hot ('scuse the pun) on remote controlled heating either; I'd need to see significant savings before I was tempted to invest in that.

Of course, if this is all about having fun while engaging in a home project, that's another story altogether.

I get that large industrial/office complexes might want to automate/regulate lighting, but why would you want to do this for your home?

Looks like overkill to me.

I wonder if the directorate gave the drivers enough of a heads up before the crackdown; if not, that would seem a rather harsh move.

Looks like Google wants to get children used to the idea of using Google Docs when they're young so that they keep on using it as they get older.

If it was easy, we wouldn't have so many viruses.

Even better would be if they could engineer mosquitoes whose *grandchildren* (or great grandchildren) would be sterile, further maximising the damage.

I don't understand this. Did you mean to say that the Fed is trying a new trick to force the banks to release their reserves and spur a little inflation?

I know that it's said that ignorance of a contract is no excuse for breaching it.

But I sometimes feel that there should not be a requirement that the issuer of the contract should make it so obvious and public that there could not possibly any chance that the breacher could have acted out of ignorance.

Say what you like about software EULAs, at least in many cases, you have to have seen the dialog box with the text before going ahead to install the software - much better than having to search for some microscopic print.

I do recognise the difficulty of ensuring that parties in a contract know what they're getting into - that's why lawyers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Whatever they do, I hope they make the disablement reversible, for those who think they've had their phone stolen, only to find that it was just misplaced - or if the phone is later recovered from the thief.

But what really is reading without comprehension? That's just like moving my eyeballs across a page and having my brain register black glyphs on a white background.

Too bad I don't have points to mod this up. Love the way you send up the hype.

The article isn't really about making biofuel from self-destructing trees. It's about introducing the mechanism through which the lignin (in the trees) destructs to other crops that grow much faster and leave a lot of waste, like corn.

Personally, I think that sourcing energy from biofuel will never really scale, anyway...

"Everyone should..."

Ah, but that's the problem.

"Should", while pointing to the ideal, does not reflect what works in the real world.

I don't think that Mr. Eich will change his opinions as a result of this, but I'm damn sure he'll be much more careful how he airs and acts upon them in the future.

I'll leave it to others to decide whether that's a good thing.

...Keep your political views well hidden if you plan to head up an organisation that is sensitive as to how it is perceived by a cross-section of society.