In other news, a majority of those polled responded that the barn door should be closed, despite the horses running free in the pasture.

Prosecution takes time and is costly. Worse, you might lose the case. It's much easier to put a site on the double-secret block list and not have to fool around with all that pesky "due process" stuff.

We only put bad guys on the block list. Therefore, if you're on the block list you must be a bad guy. Transparency and due process hurt the community by letting bad guys slip off the lists on technicalities.

I'm waiting for Bruce Schneier to weigh in on this. If he confirms it, it must be true. He's worked with the spooks before. On the other hand, if he denies it it must be true. He's worked with the spooks before.

Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

That's why most modern Linux distributions have deprecated it. A murder here, a murder there, and suddenly Linux doesn't look so good anymore.

First, I'm entirely unclear about how Hitchhiker's Guide could be considered "science related". It's a great story, and it has all the trappings of science fiction, but it's almost (but not quite) exactly unlike science.

Second, though, I highly highly recommend Cory Doctorow's young adult novels, especially Little Brother. Good writing, good story, and the (computer) science is generally accurate. Plus it was actually written in the past decade so it doesn't seem like ancient history or retro "what we used to think the future would be like".

So to develop this further, we could create reusable OS-less (or minimal-OS VMs, if you prefer) instances to save the boot time. Oh, wait, I guess we just reinvented the process...

Hey, I know! I bet we could speed things up even more if each one of these reusable minimal-OS VM "processes" could do several things at once. We could call it, I don't know, maybe "threads" of execution.

Ethel! Call the patent office!

Well, yes and no. Mostly no, actually. In the early days the Internet wasn't anarchy. Remember, it was quite literally a network of networks. The organizations (mostly universities) running the individual networks had rules for those networks. The apparent lack of rules comes from the fact that all the involved organizations had very similar rules, not no rules. And, all the involved organizations had very similar goals. That's part of the reason we're where we are today. Basic protocols (DNS, SMTP, etc.) weren't designed with authentication in mind, because who would abuse them? It wasn't anarchy, it was community. Everyone's in this together, we all help each other, we're good neighbors. Hell, back in the day it was considered neighborly to run an open mail relay.

Then the net got bigger and harder for the community to self-police. People came in from outside the tiny group of technologists and academics. People saw money to be made at the expense of others. All the "good neighbor" policies became liabilities as scumbags moved in. Tragedy of the commons and all that.

To repeat: The early Internet was not an anarchy. The rules may have been implicit, but they were there.

If someone can come up with a disparaging name to call a female that is not sexist, please suggest one,

I find "asshole" a good all-gender term of disparagement. Everyone has one, so your target can't claim discrimination based on gender, race, orientation, or anything else. It's commonly understood to mean someone who's willfully loutish or stupid, which is usually the meaning you're going for when you use a disparaging term. It's a "naughty bit" in both the sexual and unclean senses, thus far more insulting than a less vulgar alternative.

Asshole! Get yours today!

The problem is that there's no way to get 100% of the userbase to either upgrade to 0.8 or downgrade to 0.7 instantly.

Wait, so Bitcoin is decentralized and distributed but requires all clients to remain in lockstep with each other? Nope, can't foresee any problems with that model...

"could replace the smartphone bump for mobile content sharing"

Does anyone actually do that? I mean, other than in a couple of crappy TV ads? For that matter, has anyone ever used device-to-device file sharing more than once to see that it works? Outside of a couple novelty applications I never actually saw the Palm Pilot's beaming used for anything, or (god help us) Zune's squirting.

I guess if Bezos wants to patent an existing technology in a "novel" new application that nobody wants to use anyway, it's his money to throw away...

Right on. Someone's just going to send up a quad-copter with a wifi camera and claim the prize.

I am less forgiving - because people like you are responsible for the rise of Sirius Cybernetics, the robotics company behind some of the galaxy's most aggravating robots. "Share and enjoy!"

Go stick your head in a pig!

"Coffee with milk and no sugar"
"That will be three dollars"
"thanks"

"Coffee with milk and no sugar"
"You said you wanted 'coffee'. If that is correct, say yes."
"Yes."
"Would you like milk with that?"
"I just said, 'milk and no sugar'!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand your response. Please answer 'yes' or 'no'."
"Yes."
"Would you like sugar with that?"
"What? No, dammit!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand your response. Please answer 'yes' or 'no'."
"No!"
"What size would you like?"
"Large."
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand your response. Please answer 'grande', 'venti', or 'tall'.
"Um, which is the big one?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand your response. Please answer 'grande', 'venti', or 'tall'.
"Whichever is biggest."
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand your response. Please answer 'grande', 'venti', or 'tall'.
"Tall! Give me a tall!"
"I'm sorry, we're sold out of the beverage you ordered, or one or more of the add-ins. Please make another selection and start again."

That red light (or stop sign) at the bottom of the hill is only for cars... I don't need to stop or even slow down

So what should a cyclist do facing a red light at the bottom of a hill that has stayed red for several minutes because the bicycle doesn't have enough metal surface to trip the induction sensor that it has remained stopped over?

The cyclist should go back and re-read the GP's complaint. See where it says, "don't need to stop or even slow down"? That part is key. So what should the cyclist do? STOP at the damned red light, make sure there's no cross-traffic, and then proceed. Through the red light if it really doesn't change for you. Just stop and look. That's all we automobilists ask of you in that situation.