The key thing is if you're arrested, right or wrong, it's public record. Published in newspapers, etc - so why is publishing it on Facebook any worse? Because it's 'more' public? Currently the laws don't split that hair, so bottom line is - it's public record and can be made public as the police see fit. As for my name, address, etc - again, if I was that worried about it I'd take steps to try and conceal it. But I'm not. The point is - the statement made by that professor was silly. It's a public record, and until laws are enacted which differentiate manners in which such information is publicized, hard to see how anyone would have recourse for it.

You're joking right? There are hundreds of sites that let you do reverse phone to name lookups. If it's not unlisted (ie its in the phone book) you can reverse it.

Bernard Bell, Rutgers University law professor and Herbert Hannoch scholar, said it could be argued the Facebook posting of photos and arrest details is a privacy violation, even though such information is part of the public record.

How can you say that with a straight face? If the mug shots are part of the public record - that's that. How they're made public is irrelevant. If you don't liek it - get the law changed to make arrests NOT part of the public recored - but nobody will want that will they?

DSC alarms are fantastic. Many places online sell them at good prices and while the manuals can be intimidating at first, they are VERY detailed and VERY informative. They have a wide range of modules for access (X-10, ethernet, Digital I/O, etc) and use a simple 4 wire communications bus. That said - if you install your own system - DO RESEARCH. Simple mistakes can render a system useless and in some cases dangerous. If you install smoke detectors - READ the whole manual - something as simple as looping wire around the screws without cutting it can result in a potentially fatal malfunction. Also - many dealers have their own monitoring services. You don't have to pay $40/month. You can often find UL listed and certified monitoring companies for $10/mon.

Have to agree. I bought an X1800 the day they came out, violating my never by v0 rule, to get Win 7 and a Quad. Has been a great machine. Think I've got 7 Acer displays in my shop. And the AMD Nero nettops they were selling with nice 20" flat screens for $300 this Xmas - bought two and they've been great for bench PCs and systems for customers to use in the shop. They run circles around the supposedly 'equivalent' Atom based Nettop (I picked up up on sale for a bench PC) That said, I've often worked in Dell shops and found the support and overall experience worth it. Everyone knew Dell and Intel were in bed and I hated it. But when Dell stuff broke, they had parts in your hands the next day or a tech out to fix it. Sure, this may have been special consideration for working for a huge company (at the time - RIP Nortel) Everything worked well from end to end. But that's for a huge enterprise. Once that one year warranty runs out - where are most consumers taking their PCs to get fixed? Best Buy - so the manufacturer support becomes less of an issue. I've recommended Acer's often to friends and clients, and, yes, also eMachines which are just rebranded Acers now. Not talking gamers - just your run of the mill computer user.

This is not news. The government already has the power to shutdown telecommunications in times of a national emergency. The argument is, does that include the Internet - and most believed it did - especially the main links. The proposal being talked about now, based on initial assessment actually curtails the existing law more than it expands it. But overall a good discussion to have. If someone managed to exploit a long standing bug that allowed for country wide damage - would a shutdown be warranted? Not an easy answer

A lot of people, rightly so, hate what Jim Davis has done or allowed to happen to Garfield. But it too was once a great comic strip - if you were 10. Those of us who grew up in the 70's were lucky as we had two new comic strips that fit our age perfectly. We got Garfield before we were teens and C&H when we were teens, old enough to look back on our recent childhood and see parallels as well as possibly learn some life lessons to us in upcoming adulthood. C&H is the best strip IMHO - hands down. It appealed to me as a teenager and also an adult. But the early Garfield strips are also timeless. When I was growing up, I loved Garfield - read it religiously in the paper. Every Christmas my mom had a standing present - whatever Garfield collections that had been published that year. I think I have 1-30. A while back while sorting through my old things, I found them and put them where my kids could read them. They read them cover to cover, multiple times. My eldest, now barely a teenager has moved on, and checks out C&H books from the library (since I can't find my entire collection - it's in my old stuff somewhere) But the youngest, just learning to read, is having fun reading about the big 'fat cat' and lasagna. Those old books are worn, in cases shredded held together with tape, but adored by my four kids. I'm sure C&H will be too. So while I agree that Garfield today is a mere shell of it's old self. There was a time it was worth reading as a kid and even an adult.

250 comments later and all we get is arguments about what Facebook 'should' have done to resolve specific architectural problems none of us really know. Facebook is growing like wildfire. It has it's issue, some big. Many features are 'bad' (ever tried to run pop out chat? Jeebus my CPU cried for mercy) But it's quickly becoming THE go to site for millions of people. So Facebook has growth beyond their current ability to scale and they decide that rewriting PHP is a possible answer. The agree to open source it. Isn't this *exactly* what makes FOSS so great? Everyone benefits from the efforts of those using the code for their needs. Will this rewrite mean a global replacement to PHP's current implementation? I doubt it. But it may be just what is needed for many other sites with growing user bases and less $$$ for HW. Again, this is a bad thing because... If some random guy in a basement had done this, he'd be a borderline hero. But because a large corporate entity did, it's suspect and bad. I for one look forward to seeing what they really did and hearing from the PHP developers who attended the meetings as to what they are really doing, what types of bottlenecks they found, and what ideas they had to resolve them. Will they be 100% right? Doubt it. But in the end a large corporation is contributing back to the community, and potentially in a big way if their rewrite is widely usable. This. Is. A. Good. Thing.