Which website will you pick to clone you?

Hmm, probably Hustler.

If someone needs to be trained to use Windows 7 then there is something wrong with them.

Well, yeah. Some people just aren't smart period. In the immortal words of Judge Smails: "Well, the world needs ditch diggers too."

yes, you're correct. Although if he did hack local government servers the same statement should apply.

I argued this point the last time it came up and was modded down due to the excuses that were readily available:

"He has Aspergers"

"He wasn't trying to do anything criminal"
etc, etc.

I agree with you 100%. It doesn't matter what medical conditions he has, it doesn't matter WHY he was doing it, he hacked government servers.

That's the bottom line.

Actually, in a tie-in to the Dr Demento going off the air story, I recommend this instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjI0o3VS3CM

I am waiting to find out what the upgrade policy is going to be.

I've had my regular 3G iPhone for a couple years now (company phone) and it's about time for an upgrade. Hoping it'll be at a drastically reduced price or free w/2 yr deal.

We'll see.

My guess, without looking it up...Texas.

Me personally, I don't mind the potential increase in cost. Granted, if it were across the board, I'd take issue with it (meaning across all areas of commerce) but for a specific gadget? I wouldn't mind. Would I complain? Maybe, but that's my right as a citizen of the US, right? To complain and not do anything about it? ;-)

Since I live here in the US, I'd really like to see a return to the US for manufacturing. We're still teetering on the brink, don't let day to day market-droid speak fool you.

The US is not anywhere near out of the woods yet.

So...I'd like to see my next gadget have "Assembled/Made in the USA" on it.

Just as I'd suspect anyone from another country would prefer their country to be the country of assembly for their next gadget.

Wright's Law: If something can go right, it will, for someone else.

Em's corrallary:

Usually, the bastard doesn't deserve it either.

How is not securing your wireless indicative of not being able to "operate" machinery properly?

If I leave my front door open and you steal from me, that doesn't mean you're not a thief does it?

If you don't know how to operate your equipment properly, maybe you shouldn't be using it. If you do, don't be surprised when it doesn't behave as you expect.

I personally DO know how to operate my equipment properly. I am not up in arms over this because it affects me personally, but because people who don't know any better.

As I said in an earlier post, my wifi is secured and hidden. Does that mean someone couldn't sniff the traffic coming from it and decrypt it? Of course not. Would it make it harder to do? Sure.

In your analogy, you're saying that if you connect to a web server and get a response, it's reasonable to assume you have permission to use that web server. Sure. But what if you do port scans and find an obscure port "reserved" for something other than http or https traffic and connect that way? Are you headed down a slippery slope there or is it just fine, even if the owner of the web server didn't intend for you to connect to that port?

(I'm just asking, I really don't have a horse in this race.)

Than you are a fool who doesn't know how these things work and why anyone would do anything.

It's THEN, not than. Be careful when calling someone a fool when your spelling is inaccurate.

Also, your analogy towards the end of your post is flawed and since you have the internet manners of a raving asshole, I won't bother to refute your asinine argument. Enjoy your weekend.

I have no idea what use snippets of unencrypted data from unsecured networks would be. There just isn't much there that isn't either blatantly illegal and/or terrible PR that you can't learn just by having one of the world's larger Ad networks.

I agree with you, I would imagine most of the data they picked up was of the syn/ack variety. But..with the technology that is available now, Open Source most of it even, you can get the SSIDs and mac addresses WITHOUT snooping any data at all.

I don't get the reasons for the software they used.

Also, for the record, this doesn't affect me personally, as when they mapped my street I didn't live there and I secure my wireless :-) But thanks for the response.

Thanks for the information. I didn't realize they were tying that into google maps. It does make sense from that approach.

Interesting that they ask you for your permission to send your location data to them....but I don't remember reading anything where they said they were going to harvest SSIDs and mac addresses during the initial street mapping.

(I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just not something that people were made aware of...to my knowledge. Not that the people who have unsecured wireless routers probably would have changed anything)