Straightforward is not the same as obvious. Plenty of patentable ideas are easy to implement once you hear the idea from someone else. I haven't read this particular patent history, so I am only addressing your apparent assertion that anything easy to do should not be patentable. I think the appropriate standard is not how easy it is to do something, rather how easy it is to invent something.

You are voting with your wallet, but did you make your reasons known? It may seem idiotic, but I'm sure someone at an airline is looking at the numbers and saying "people aren't flying anymore, it must be because they DON'T FEEL SAFE... we must make them feel safer by launching operation anal cavity probe!"

The boa then proceeded to test the fences, systematically looking for weaknesses.

The boa then proceeded to test the fences, looking for weak spots.

This is huge. If we can't trust the government not to leak classified data over P2P, what makes anyone think they will successfully keep our records private?

I hate to have to explain the joke, but since I don't have any mod points available... that's why he said branch office.

It is completely irresponsible for you to post this information on the public interwebs. I demand that you delete your post at once, or I will be forced to back trace your IP and report you to the cyber police. Don't try to raise any kind of First Amendment defense, because as we all know, national security trumps freedom of speech, and due to your carelessness a terrerist may learn how to make bubbles of doom.

Are you for real? Don't you know bubbles are a detergent? A DETERGENT for God's sake! The situation was on the precipice of doom. DOOOM!

My understanding is that the gate makes it illegal without a warrant.

But by your logic, I only had to do $100 of work to earn the $142.85 (you say the plumber does $70 of work for the $100). So there's no double dipping.

Citibank does this also (for credit cards.. not sure about check cards)

Troll? I guess it depends on how you define "serious" learning, but when I seriously needed to replace the headlight on my car, I seriously found a how-to online and seriously gained the knowledge of how to do it. Gaining knowledge that you did not have before is learning, in my book. Sorry if you don't think practical learning is "serious".

Negative, red leader!

I don't really use twitter, but doesn't the format itself make conversations that are "more than three levels deep" almost impossible because you can't preserve the context? Twitter itself knows how many times each tweet was accessed for display, which is probably proportional to the number of times it's been read. Those statistics would be more informative.

Ironically, however, by passing a progressive income tax, this guy might have ended up getting fire services subsidized by the more affluent folk in the neighboring city.

I assume that samzenpus is a pedophile and can attest that neither he or his sexually deviant buddies use pedobear except as an internet joke.