Yeah, a couple of years. Not decades. By government standards, taking action now is actually pre-emptive!

Wow. Really? Theft is very easy to put a value on. It's a phone worth a few hundred dollars, or a car worth a few thousand/tens of thousands, etc. We're not talking about rape/murder/violence being quantified into a dollar amount here - those are crimes worth going after without regard to cost, and the bulk of society agrees on that.

What we are talking about, however, is wasting huge amounts of money to recover something that isn't worth it, and that is not even standard operating procedure. Do we spend $1000 in overtime (plus the normal usage/regular time of ten cops) every time a phone gets stolen? Hell no! That's the issue here - one kid gets special treatment over a low-value theft. If the crime rate in that town was zero except for this one incident, then by all means spend the time and money to pursue it if the taxpayers will allow it.

Yes, because corporate roads make so much sense. It'd end up like with ISPs - "You can drive 100mph if you like, but only for five miles every month. And there are no exits from this road that don't require you to spend $500 extra."

This is actually something I recently had installed in my house as well once I discovered the low cost of it relative to multiple high-quality surge protectors. $50 + labor (actually had an electrician friend do this for free) beats the heck out of expensive surge protectors for each outlet. It came with a $25k equipment protection guarantee as well, so between that and the standard surge protectors I've been using on critical electronics, I'm not overly worried. Sure, if lightning directly hits the house, something is bound to get fried, but that's true of even the most expensive protection you can buy.

Sorry, but that isn't enough. We need candidates who will actually make this an issue, and actually command enough public interest to bypass the media's refusal acknowledge anyone who isn't mainstream (see: total lack of coverage of Ron Paul).

I can't keep track of all these lawsuits anymore. I just keep picturing an image of the globe with thousands of missile tracks as the world's tech companies try to obliterate each other with patents.

The same can be said of global warming - even if the reports and studies are being reviewed, prudence dictates that we should take every measure we can to ensure that we are not the cause of climate change. Erring on the side of caution is all well and good until someone powerful stands to lose money.

They did that with the first-gen XBOX because, quite frankly, the market share it held was tiny. Most devs were eager to jump to 360, and Microsoft was more than willing to help make that happen. The 360, however, has a significant market share, and if the story on the 360 Lite is accurate, this will encourage continued development of 360 titles for awhile.

Sorry, but you're thinking with a level head here--that's now how these decisions get made. DHS does not exist to solve a problem via positive improvements. It exists to solve a problem via control, invasive action, and denial of freedom. That's much easier to do than to be inclusive, pro-active, and innovative. Unfortunately, it's also not nearly as effective, either. In the long run, it's a losing battle. DHS/TSA function the same way as the RIAA/MPAA - fighting the battle in the wrong way, wasting money and time on controls that are far too easily defeated by cheaper, simpler methods. They will continue to do this until the cost either becomes unbearable (which, given the already insane money being spent, is unlikely), or until the public stops putting up with it and engages in civil disobedience.

DRM is the problem. I have HDCP supporting monitors, HDCP support HDMI cables, HDCP supporting hardware, and yet there are still HDCP handshake issues with purchased media. So tell me, why shouldn't I pirate the content? If the pirated content works perfectly every time, but the legal, purchased content does not, on top of taking more time/effort to acquire because of limited download options, why would I spend the money?