I agree, there are either a lot of normal people getting screwed over (pardon the pun) thinking "honestly, I thought she was 18 your honour", or there are a lot of dumb people who don't realise how little privacy they have left on the internets when they go hunting for the blatantly underage stuff.

The company I work for had hundreds of the affected GX270's deployed at remote sites, and they were all supplied from Japan. This meant you couldn't get any support at all until you had the service tag transferred to the new country you were in. At the peak of the bad cap problem with the GX270's Dell would really drag their feet transferring the tag so they didn't have to deal with supplying the motherboard. I must have spoken to several Dell engineers who didn't get the memo about keeping their mouths shut about the bad caps because most I spoke to knew full well what what going on.

Whoop Whoop! Its the FUN POLICE!

Isn't that standard ops already? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories#Flight_93

Sorry, I disagree. FFS, if you have an open network you deserve to get owned by whichever network snooping person is driving past.

If you choose to broadcast unencrypted in range of a public road that google are driving along, IMHO stiff, you are broadcasting into the public domain. Anyone reading /. should know better and I cant believe all the Holier than Thou attitudes to this. Google are slimy suit wearing advertising types, but hell, these fools were asking for it.

Would there be all this uproar if Google collected data on people which didn't have a front door (or any form of physical entrance security) to their house?

ENDRANT

Nice to meet you. I stopped using stopped using BT because I was afraid of getting sued. Now I use encrypted usenet.

Bingo, I paid to see it at the cinema, why cant I keep a divx copy? What's next, will I be punished to recall scenes in my mind without paying?

Ring ring... "Ticking? No its not the ticking type... No, it doesn't have a timer... No! FFS it doesn't tick... No its not one with a countdown... For crying out loud it blows up when I ring ring you! we went through this... Ok.... No you hang up... No YOU hang up...."

I wish my wife was that flexible

I went down this path too. Started with an old P4 then bought a mini itx mobo (fanless) for around $100AUS, 1Gb RAM for $20, 2x1TB drive for around 200 and stuck them in an old case. loaded freenas, configured software raid1 . One thing I overlooked in all the excitement was I planned to run the linux distro off an CF card reader, but turned out there wasnt a IDE slot on my mini itx board. It all worked pretty well, and was fun to tinker with but I found file transfers were slow with my main windows boxes, and being fairly stuck in my windows mindset I was always a bit nervous about how easy it might be to recover data of a broken linux install/software raid array/drive. In the end I lost interest in the linux stuff trying to get it to do things which were just easier when it was a windows based solution and decided it was a waste of power having this second box running when I could just as easily throw those 1TB drives in my main box which runs 24/7 anyway. I just share my nas type data from my main box now. You probably want more storage space than 2TB though I am guessing.

This actually sounds plausible, I did some "ball lightening" earlier today, and I was sort of hallucinating at one point.

That will be fun for those of us in airgap environments with no connection to the internets.

Not sure which state you are from, but here are the QLD rules online http://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/LEGISLTN/CURRENT/T/TrantOpRURR09.pdf Section 60 says its ok to get stuck mid intersection but you need to exit asap safely. At least in QLD there is no mention of the 2 second rule you mentioned, but it may vary from state to state. I understand QLD red light cameras only take a photograph of a target if it crosses the line when it is solid red, and a second shot to confirm. Still, for 3 points and $300, I don't push it.

Better still, some Australian states also have speed cameras in addition to the red light cameras on some intersections. Just in case they don't quite get you for running a *very* amber light - they still get a crack at you for speeding! Queensland road rules say if you entered on the green and get stuck halfway due to congestion, you can legally exit the intersection asap after the light turns red. I don't rate people who run red lights. So often it ends in awful injuries or worse for the t-bonee.