Per Article III Secton 3 of the United States Constitution (emphasis mine):

As Snowden has taken care to NOT release material that would put people in harm's way, he has done nothing to levy war against the United States, nor has he adhered to their enemies or given aid and comfort. What he's done is illegal under current laws, but it is NOT treason. He acted upon a moral duty to the ideals of the Constitution to expose government wrongs, and in so doing, pissed off a lot of powerful people. THAT is why they want to crucify him - because he DARED believe that the Holy Administration of Purchased Officials should be held accountable for their actions.

If Snowden committed treason, then what does that say about Bradley Manning, who threw a temper tantrum and gave a cache of whatever classified material he could get his hands of (damn the safety reprecussions) to an asshole with an ax to grind? If you believe Snowden a traitor, then Manning is one as well.

So basically the same thing those ass-clowns at Westboro try to do.

The initial response from the online advertising industry is unsurprisingly hostile and blustering, calling the move 'a nuclear first strike.'

Translation: Boo-fucking-hoo. Online marketing scum have been abusing users for years, making this a retaliatory measure. Let them cry all they want, because nobody gives a shit.

Avoid places where this kind of garbage is known to be in use. Turning off the wifi means you have to sacrifice some of the functionality of your phone just to not be tracked. Similarly, the op-out is crap as well. Why should I have to opt out? And what's wrong with the door sensors that have been in use for years to figure out conversion ratios?

Not that I've gone into a mall recently, but seeing any of the stores using this system would be the best way to make sure I never come back.

...but is this a step towards a working Thermal Discouragement Beam?

Which is the reason we had a pace-count course setup during land navigation exercices in ROTC. We'd follow a 100m course, count our paces, go back the other direction, count again, then average the two numbers. That was supposed to be able to allow us to convert our map distances into an easy to remember number when looking for waypoints. For the most part, it worked okay, since the pace course was a good average of the terrain. However, you'd still have to fudge a bit due to fatigue when your stride got shorter.

But in the end, it was still a LOT easier to use metric than imperial, simply because the course was probably 8-10 square miles. Imperial would have worked for road distances, but not when you're going through the brush trying to find specific points and cut-ins from the trails.

And in my experience, it's HORRIBLY slow. Last time I went to Texas, I noticed the return AUS->BNA flight had it and figured "why not?" Web pages took forever to load and would frequently time out, the onboard hosted content wasn't exactly snappy, and even AIM and IRC had trouble keeping a connection.

I think you'll find that most reasonable Christians DON'T want anything to do with these clowns. A lot of people in my church are VERY conservative, and even they are appalled anytime one of the WBC crazies opens their mouth. Small sample size, yes. But I've found it to be true in other locations as well.

Too bad they can't say the same thing about their earnings forecasts. =P

You go ahead and sign that online petition to "force" a Chinese company to play fair. Hope you have better success than the hundreds of other companies from whom Chinese businesses have taken what they liked and given nothing back...

I'm not worried about some virus spontaneously escaping into the wild. What I'm concerned about is a bunch of militant "animal rights" nitwits getting in and "liberating" diseased animals, causing all kinds of hell.

"Free the animals, man!"

"That's probably not a good idea given their condition."

"Screw you, OPPRESSOR!"

*frees diseased animals anyway*

Yes, that's the exact thing that happened in 28 Days Later. Yes, I can see that actually happening. All it takes is a bunch of ill-informed, militant, bongo-beating idiots to cause problems. So security in this place should be "No badge, or it doesn't match the access list? Escorted away at gunpoint. ANY resistance? Bullet to the head."

Once again, the clueless people in high places prove they don't understand. Attaching "cyber", "e", "online" or even "with a computer" to something does NOT make it a new threat. And "Cyber Pearl Harbor"? Gimme a damn break. There is no need to try and compare unlawful access to a computer system by a foreign entity to an attack that killed thousands of people and drew the US into one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

Espionage is espionage, regardless of wether it's someone sneaking documents out of a building or tapping into someone's computer system. Just because something happens on a computer does not automatically make it a new class of crime for which there must be an immediate expenditure of untold sums of taxpayer money.

So please, governments....stop with the crap already...

The software may be free. Enough computing power for the software to handle a slashdotting, however, is NOT free...

It's simple. If Apple were to use a standard NFC sytem, they would have to admit that the iPhone 5 actually isn't the be all and end all of smartphones. And even if they did, using a standard implementation would mean they couldn't act like they invented something entirely new that nobody had ever had or been using for one or two years prior....