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?

Sorry, but slaves also "want" to be enslaved and work their asses off when presented with the alternative of being dead. Choosing between two really horrible things does not automatically mean the one they chose is what they really want.

The instant you let accountants have a say in long-term research projects, you lose the ability to make a really big impact with your research. Long-term research is never about instant or near-term payoffs. Most of the time, it won't even lead to a viable commercial product for a decade or more--sometimes never. But the technologies developed can morph into some very important things in the future. Investors only have a right to say where the money gets spent if they have a controlling share, which, as I understand it, they do not (the founders retained controlling interest). If those who do not have a controlling stake in the company feel that the company is wasting money, they can vote by selling their share and investing elsewhere.

Please tell me what businesses still use and optimize for IE6. Seriously, Microsoft has explicitly begun forcing IE7/8 upgrades down the throats of XP users because IE6 is a massively outdated browser. You are not helping any company by agreeing to make an "IE6 only" site/app. You are hurting them, because your job is to evangelize to them the importance of upgrading. Letting them continue to use IE6 means you are letting them continue to be vulnerable to all kinds of security issues.

Frankly, any customer who refuses to update to at least IE7 is one who I would not do business with. I wouldn't want my name associated with the various security holes that could bring down that company's systems.

The stock-based "value" of a company is not based on earnings in a single year. Most companies trade at anywhere from a 10x-50x Price/Earnings ratio. Stock value is purely perception, not tangible money.

If you really want to "opt out", you need to obfuscate instead. It doesn't matter how careful you are, if someone really wants to track you or learn about you, they will. So make it hard on them by posting random things, changing your habits, making contradictory claims in public forums, and moving around a lot. That can't be any more effort than what it takes to hide, and at least that way you're able to still take advantage of the positive things offered by the Internet, credit/debit cards, bank accounts, electronic communication, etc. Oh, you weren't avoiding using those? Then you didn't actually try to "opt out".

IE6? No. Absolutely not. Any web site that requires IE6 and will not work on something newer is a site that nobody should ever visit, and probably is residing on a server somewhere that somebody left plugged in and didn't realize it.