Up until a month ago, I had a Blockbuster 3 at a time with in store exchange at the same time I carried a 3 at a time by mail with Netflix. Even though I turned discs around on the same day of receipt. I ended up getting more discs per month from Netflix. I'd say the amount of unusable discs I got from Blockbuster was about 1 in 3 where Netflix was 1 in 20. That cuts down the value a lot. Add to that, Blockbuster intentionally staggers disc receipt and shipments. In store returns do not clear immediately even though they no longer show in your queue. They have to be received by mail. This is the theory at least because the actual receipt date for 3 discs returned to store always stagger over 3 days. Then, they do the same with the new shipments. It seems they want to supply no more than 3 by mail and 3 by store every seven days. With Netflix, I get two shipments a week during a non-holiday week. When you factor in the broken discs, Blockbuster by mail can't compare to Netflix at all.

Fee the effects ? Here's a choice quotefrom Ms. Baker:

I hope there's lube with that meaningfully impact

You keep bills from the past so that when something changes unexpectedly in the future, you have them for reference. Granted they need not be paper, an electronic copy will suffice, but invariably you will find yourself getting cheated unless you compare your statements month to month. Every utility I ever had for more than a year has made at least one mistake, but there are some that seem to do it routinely as an extra source of income from the "trash everything that comes in crowd".

Also, periodically there are notices bills which declare terms you need to know and may need to remind your bill collector of because they seem to have forgotten. It rarely works to tell them "I saw such and such" but having the document always works. You can order a copy but in most cases that will take more time and cost more money than it's worth. While I am at it, always check your receipt at the grocery store. I have found that greater than half the time I go, there's at least one mistake. Most stores have scan guarantees. I've had 25 bucks knocked of a $100 grocery bill due to their blunders before.

And to make matters worse, if everyone used their own certs, average user would get in the habit of clicking straight through the browser warnings, making it easier to slip bad ones by for "commercial" sites too. I don't see why CA's can't offer a free, non-commercial version for just this reason. It's to their benefit to keep self-signed certs off the web and it's not like they don't know who's getting their certs and that they can't easily audit them to make sure they are being used non-commercially, at least for the ones actually used on the Internet.

Ever heard of Voice of America ? Same thing, different media. These aren't subliminal messages, it's propaganda created to directly counter propaganda of those who would seek to continue doing harm in any form, not necessarily just against the United States but also against the interest of humanity - think Gadhaffi for a current example. Having a problem with this is just Naiveté on your part.

Aside from being Microsoft CTO, from the article:

Myhrvold's academic tech credentials are supreme. He's earned degrees in mathematics, geophysics, and space physics from UCLA, and PhDs in mathematical economics and theoretical physics from Princeton University. In his post-doctoral work at Cambridge University, Myhrvold worked on quantum theories of gravity with cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

Myhrvold worked for two years as a stagier at Rover's, a top French restaurant in Seattle, and he trained at the Ecole De La Varenne. Myhrvold's culinary adventures also include a stint as Chief Gastronomic Officer for Zagat Survey, which publishes the Zagat restaurant guides.

After leaving Microsoft in 1999, Myhrvold went on to become CEO of Intellectual Ventures, a patent company he founded (along with three others) to shepherd inventions and commercialize intellectual property.

First off, how the hell does one do all this ? Second, with all his knowledge, why become a patent troll ?

I disagree. It does belong on Slashdot and your post clearly points out why. When I was 13 many years ago and well before ready access to the Internet, we would not have ever thought to call our teachers bipolar, rapist pedophiles. At that age and time, few would have been familiar with the terms let alone think to use them as a way to slander a teacher at whom we were mad. We did stupid things like put dissected frogs in their desk or glue on their chair. These were as or more wrong in one sense, but at least they didn't carry the permanence and destructibility of being called a pedophile by children on the Internet.

As it is today, children do have access to more information than they are mature enough to handle. Combined with ready access to social media and the general irresponsibility of their age, things like this will continue to happen. That begs the question what if anything should be done to address it ? Most of us are free speech advocates here and we also tend to agree the advent of the Internet has been a great boon to mankind, something we talk a lot about here, but events like this point out some the sticky issues on both counts.

As for me, I think what the kids did was terribly bad, but expelling them at this point is unfair. Such things might be covered in the school rules to which they are required to adhere, but I doubt any of them have been educated about the dangers of these sorts of comments nor understood the real consequences of their actions. Until they are given that, expulsion is plain wrong.

If ever a shop could get by without giving regular users admin privileges. Because they can't, just reset the admin password, take away all domain admin rights, especially on the registry or use perl to overwrite those pesky forced GPO's. Set up an ssh server at home on port 443 running squid to bypass their firewall and you're in business. Of course, I never ask the helpdesk to fix my machine, or at least if I do, I conveniently wipe the hard drive and say "I dunna know - it wouldn't turn on".

Legal or not, they are only civil violations and not something he's likely to go to jail for unless he ignores a court order to stop. Unfortunately this guy is no different than so many people today who are willing to stoop to any level to make a buck so long as they can avoid prison. This guy just came up with a way that doesn't require an Ivy League MBA to perpetrate.

I doubt we have enough knowledge of human physiology to start doing ad hoc implants where not medically necessary. We still don't know why some people reject implants and others don't or even what causes rejection completely. This guy may be in for a lifetime of horrible medical consequences for what he did. Taking the camera out may only partially mitigate it. Even for common implants today like lap bands or pacemakers, the complications are numerous. To consider an implant simply to enhance your abilities is akin to taking steroids and hoping you balls don't fall off or you don't grow man boobs.