As if the high intensity LEDs and Laser that can blind the approaching drivers is not enough, now you are providing many brazen bicyclists a fake lane to think they are safe? There is a reason for bike lanes in high traffic zones, to keep them safe because they never win a battle with a car. Wait for the lanes!

NSA has the computing power to monitor all incoming threats to the US that deals with anything electronic or electrical signal and other techniques used. They can not legally use these techniques looking into the US, if you believe the television and news papers. Now, I can see how many /.'s will have their panties riding their ass when a new agency can legally look at what happens on the wires inside the US. They will probably find that many of the robots that are hitting US public IP space everyday from overseas locations are being developed and controlled (and even sold) by people here in the US. The US is almost completely dependent on the internet in one way or another and I can fully understand the need for a new command to monitor and react to these increasing threats to it's traffic on the inside of the US borders. For those that think it would be a wonderful day when the internet shuts down and they can walk down the street to buy a pizza, this would last about a day, then all the stores and restaurants would shut down because they could not resupply, get trucks on the road if they could get their orders in, or even pay their people so they keep showing up for work. What a wonderful world that would be...

When I was in college in the early 80s we built inductive loops to draw power from the local radio station. We drew enough power to light an incandescent bulb. The only problem was the radio station had remote power meters across their broadcast footprint, and we dropped their power levels significantly for the station to call the college. The funny thing was the college knew exactly what professor to call for this was done repeatedly through the semesters, and the radio station could get a pretty good reading on where the actual drop was coming from per their power readings.

The major research being conducted into advancing technology is not to better humanity but to make better the people investing in said advances to get richer. Yes, there is trickle down benefits to all people as this happens, but if a company like IBM did not research/develop adding machines so they could make more money to sell them, one could ague that the modern computer would never have been developed. This can be traced back to the invention of the abacus. There have only been a few discoveries that are the core of modern technologies. Someone invented a way to domesticate animals for the better of people. Someone discovered electricity, and it was only the research into using electricity that has lead to the modern day computer. The computer can be seen as entertaining, but the real use of computers is for the research/application of creating more wealth, if you break it down into where most of the computer cycles go to, I think the majority is for making more wealth. This is not a bad thing, for it does trickle down, but when you have companies using computer programs to figure out how to increase profits with the leaders of these companies blindly following the computers output. Look at the Wall Street variables that went into affect that has changed the world forever, just because a computer program said it would be better. Ask the people who lost their lifetime investments, do you think the computer program even cared about being wrong? Look at the steam engine. This brought great improvements to modern people. The steam engine lead to the internal combustion engine which provided even more improvements to modern people. But, if these inventions did not offer the wealthy to get wealthier, they would never have been applied. For an example, look at the nuclear age many visionaries thought we would be living today. Yes, a couple of A bombs did unimaginable destruction, but what happened to all the low cost power we were supposed to have. Splitting the atom was and still is a great invention/discovery, but, it has been held back mainly from the wealthy energy companies mass marketing/political investing to keep mass acceptance from ever happening. It is amazing that last year when the cost of oil was north of $100 per barrel, there was more talk of nuclear energy, and now the cost of oil has dropped to where the nuclear energy does not even make a minor post, even though the new nuclear plants are almost impossible to melt down. Look at the fall of the rail shipping system. If the railroads where not allowed to be bought out by the larger trucking companies, you would have only regional trucking from the nearest railhead to customer, versus cross country truck shipping. How much oil, pollution and road accidents/wear and tear could we eliminate by using rail lines again for what there were originally designed for? All of this leads to where our futures lead. For the residents of this earth to fully realize discoveries/inventions, the people of this earth need to demand accountability of the uses of said advances. This will never happen with the rich getting richer. I don't care about who has what toys, but if these companies use these advances to make me work harder or lay me off when the computer model says the time is right,even when these companies are making more profit than ever imagined even 100 years ago, where are we as a civilization?

Having lived through the early Apple, Atari, Amiga, TRS80 and various other early Personal Computer formats, only MS was able to get the combination correct to be in the leader spot now. I am not saying anything about the methods for getting there, but MS made the right decisions to get there. The Atari and Amiga and TRS80s all fell down either trying to be the leader or doing a bad job of following. At least Apple has been able to come back from some bad decisions in their past to garnish the market share they currently have.

I am more than willing to support smarter teachers in the classroom, including paying higher taxes for higher pay for these teachers. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?! Maybe if the MPAA had smarter teachers in the classroom when they were in school they would never try to pull fast ones like this to the Copyright office in the first place!

MAC users should be rejoicing around the world! What this actually means is that hackers are noticing MACs are gaining in population and and they see profit in targeting them. What's going to fall next, Rome?

Please Linux and MAC fanboys take a hike! I challenge every one of you to put yourself in the market when Microsoft was becoming a prominent player in the OS field and not compete to win. Microsoft competed to win where as everyone now is just competing for a piece of the market. I have seen many people confuse the components of a Windows PC and Microsoft loves this, why should they complain if the users think Office is the OS. I would love to see real competition in the OS/Apps market, but I don't think it is going to come from disorientated and/or disgruntled Linux developers. If you want to move off of servers, put your money where your mouth is and form a worldwide For Profit company. But herein lies the problem, Linux at its root is based on rebelling from main stream. There are too many people out there that think their version of Linux OS/Apps is better and will fight to the death protecting them. And the analogy to cars is way off course. At least I can go to 20 different dealerships to buy a car and I will know how to drive each one of those cars without retraining. Yeah, they may look different, sound different and drive differently, but I can 'operate' any of them. I can not say the same for Linux.

Get yourself a submarine, anchor it underwater in a location with good underwater current flows, connect the propeller to an electric generator (think wind generator but using water instead of wind to rotate the generator) to power your air and water generation units, buy lots of books and live your life the way you want to. The combination of submarine, anchor chain and water make an excellent faraday cage, you won't get many people inside to take your pictures, you can fish for all the food you need so you do not have to use your shopping advantage cards or credit cards that sell your information. Every once in a while have your friends sink a newspaper or two to keep up on current events. You can even create some floppy disks with your Apple II and float them up for your friends to copy and paste (provided they kept their Apple II) your work or ideas so that your privacy can be maintained without a telephone line. Or, just join the rest of the world "no pain no gain" or "if you want to play you need to pay". Just keep a few torpedoes in case someone finds you...