It's not a "lucky coincidence". I'm Canadian and I buy some stuff online. Here's why they tend to open packages:

1. Canadian Border Services gets $5 for every package they open. (I call this the "putting their dick in it" fee.) You can not appeal this fee.
2. As you have more stuff sent to you, they tend to open more of your packages. My ex-wife ordered lots of stuff online (mostly knitting supplies) and towards the end of her interest in her hobby, they were opening 90% of her packages. Mine were rarely opened.
3. They get a little more openy when you're doing your own brokerage. FedEx and UPS charge about $40 for brokerage, so some people do it themselves for $10. This requires you to go down to the border (or quasi-border), which in my city is the airport.

So it wasn't a tip-off, it was just CBS looking for extra cash.

This, plus get rid of the pictures. They add nothing but a waste of bandwidth. /. looks like it's work related. Don't make it obvious that we're fucking around.

Yeah, I really dowhat the fuck is up with thatn't know

Back in 2000, it was an incredible idea to get your phones to connect to servers or desktops. One of my first co-op jobs used a pile o' kludges to connect to Outlook (including a hilarious GUI hack), and we used some preset commands to get a pseudo-CLI on a Nokia.

The phones we have today are significantly more powerful than the desktops we had back when RIM was at the top of their game. Connectivity is remarkable -- I can connect my phone to my thermostat and stream music to my bicycle.

Blackberry was killed by their failure to upgrade their infrastructure.

Do you guys remember when they lost all emails, not once but TWICE in a matter of a week? That was what got businesses to say "oh shit, this isn't something we can depend on" and get other phones working. I'll bet that they're still running all their services through that same fucked up server in Ontario, despite the failure they've had on the unit.

Once that seed of doubt got planted, compounded by the fact that people could start using their personal phones (i.e. free to corporate) for business, that was it. Stick a fork in them, they're done. The one thing they said they were good for they couldn't do anymore.

Of course, given that they were hilariously spied-on and infiltrated (not as much, but almost as badly as Nortel), who's to say if those failures were accidents or if they were pushed?

I've had great link with Swype.

Sometimes you get the wiring wood but it works out in the end if your friends know you'd on your pigging.

This might as well be how Blackberry, Nokia, and Palm blew it. And I'm probably leaving off a few companies.

IMO it all comes down to arrogance about your own platform. In Nokia's case that was Symbian.

Ooh, we're on to something. Cohesive Beam Carbine -- how about CHarbine? Carbeam?

Indeed, my friends and I have wondered what the term for rifle-sized lasers will be, since they don't actually have any rifling.

Probably rifle, the same way we still use a 3.5" disk for the save icon and the rotary handset icon for "make a call".

Jarvis and the reactor were the two most under-rated bits of tech Tony put together.

The reactor would have ended war.

But Jarvis... a real AI? That's far beyond anything else we've ever built.

I preordered Iron Man 3 on BR. It wasn't shipping yet, so I downloaded a copy.

What the fuck was their problem with making me wait to watch a movie I enjoyed with my kids?

They could just as easily sell the movies at the theatre. But they don't. It's still all about the buggy whips.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE RECIPE

It was a nice break from the usual trolling. The recipe was legit, too.

I've wanted to ask you where that sig comes from. Is it a comic?

I enjoyed the hell out of Myst, and even found all three ways to die.

It was a great game, it was fun, but it sure as hell wasn't open-ended exploration.