The use of the term "Bricking" is misleading in this context. What they're actually talking about is IMSI blacklisting. Every cell phone has a unique hardware ID much like a MAC address that can be blacklisted by the carriers.

Is this really a fucking serious question? I have to wonder whether a submitted trolled the editors, or the editors are trolling the users.

Seriously, you simply cannot browse the internet? Will you go into diabetic shock without it? Your employer won't let you read an e-book or watch a movie waiting in the airport? If your work machine is so locked down or corporate use policies so strict that you can't use it for any personal use while traveling, why don't you BUY YOUR OWN FUCKING LAPTOP AND TAKE THAT WITH YOU TWO? Or are you too frail to carry an extra 5 lbs of laptop?

Seriously, WTF Slashdot? I figured everything would go to shit when Malda left, but I didn't think it would happen this fast.

I'm not wholly against federal safety mandates, but in this case they're looking in all the wrong places for things to mandate. If we're going to be mandating safety equipment, why don't we start with anti-lock braking systems? It's standard equipment on many vehicles these days, so many people don't realize it, but ABS is NOT a federally mandated requirement. Yet electronic stability control (which is of limited benefit on the low-powered, front wheel drive vehicles most americans drive) is mandated for 2012 and beyond, and now they want to mandate backup cameras? If you've got ESC hardware anyway, ABS is trivial to implement, yet we still lack a federal mandate to do so.

This is just a bunch of "think of the children!" overreaction, in my opinion. Most people backing over a kid probably would ignore a back-up camera anyway. There's a selection bias in the statistics, I suspect, as buyers voluntary choosing back up camera-equipped vehicles are likely more risk averse and more responsible drivers to begin with.

I'm not familiar with the airframe load limitations, but what's to stop them from pitching down sharply and banking back and forth to control airspeed?

I have to wonder what meta-analyses you have been reading. Aside from the fact that meta-analysis is highly susceptible to agenda biases, there is also this meta-analysis. It concluded that SSRI's like Prozac, at least in the case of severe depression, were not only statistically significant, but reached the more stringent standard of clinical significance.

Hmm, I just wanted to say I found your point and the GP's point to be particularly interesting. I consider myself to be on the upper end of the intellectual bell curve, though far from a genius or savant. I read the point about books and thought, "Wow, I grew up in a home full of technical books. Computers, programming, science, mathematics, engineering, I found them all to be utterly fascinating, even when I was too young to understand 90% of their contents. That really did help me develop an appreciation for learning and knowledge."

I then read your post, and I realized that my father is extremely intelligent, I was breast fed, and I was a huge, fat 9 lb baby carried to full term (Sorry, Mom). I wonder if you still get the full benefits of "good pedigree," even if the culture of learning isn't facilitated or cultivated.

You've got your technologies confused. The back-scatter-type body scanners utilize x-ray back scatter, and I think we can all agree that x-rays are ionizing radiation with known biological effects. Sure, they levels may be very low, but repeated low-level exposure to ionizing radiation can be dangerous, and it's not so simple as just dismissing it as non-ionizing radiation.

The other type of scanner are terahertz millimeter-wave scanners. While not technically ionizing, terahertz radiation is much more energetic than UHF microwaves, and the jury is still out on their exact biological effects.

Note that I said AT LEAST once a year. Obviously there is a wide range of service intervals, as there is a wide range of types of race engines. On one end, midget cars may go multiple seasons without requiring a rebuild. At the other extreme, top fuel dragster engines are rebuilt literally every single time they are run. They could end up being rebuilt several times in a single day.

This is the case for ANY motor not specifically designed to run on high-ethanol-content fuels. Ethanol is a strong solvent and strips oil films, breaks down hoses and seals, oxidizes ferrous metals, and generally tears apart gasoline motors. E85 "flex-fuel" motors are designed with ethanol's nastiness in mind, using different materials and lubricants, but even then, running E85 is harder on the engine and usually calls for more frequent service intervals.

Running E85 in ANY engine that does not explicitly state that it is designed to run on E85 will cause permanent and rapid damage. It'll probably completely destroy the engine before your next oil change.

Ethanol is complete crap as an engine fuel, with the lone exception being purpose built race engines that can utilize the higher detonation resistance for more horsepower per unit displacement. And those race motors tend to get rebuilt at least once a year, mitigating the wear factors.

I know, right? I mean it's not like thousands of Iranian-American immigrants and their US-Born children enter Iran every year to visit their extended family members. That's almost as absurd as those people returning safely to American soil and making the trip multiple times! I mean, if my 80 year old grandmother doesn't want to emigrate to the US, well then, fuck her terrorist ass, right? Next thing you know, people will be claiming that Iranian law allows the US-born children of Iranian citizens to freely enter the country! LOL!

Dad? Is that you?

It's the complete reverse in the rest of America, too. Everyone else is pushing for online payment and electronic billing because it saves on paper and postage costs.

Verizon is the first company I've seen try to pull an asshat move like this. I think why Verizon is trying it now involves a couple things. For one, large telecoms like Verizon and AT&T have for years felt entitled to licenses to print money hand over fist, and whenever revenue drops due to market changes or technological development, their biggest priority is to find somewhere else to recoup that lost revenue. My guess here is that Verizon noticed that a majority of their customers were already paying their bills online, so they decided to start charging a fee to do it, knowing that their customer base already appreciates the convenience of online bill payment and inertia would prevent them from paying by mail. Other service providers, public utilities for example, likely have much older, entrenched, and less 'tech-savvy' customers so they need to provide incentives to move towards online billing and its associated cost savings.

Doesn't make much business sense, but at least the community can actually benefit from HP's blunders this time.

I wasn't looking for pity, I was just trying to provide a dose of perspective. Supporting or taking part of the OWS protests does not automatically make you a whining leftist, nor even significantly increase the probability that you ARE a whining leftist. There are plenty of productive, hard-working people that are pissed off too.

Sorry, that was a typo. It should read "6 months of them"

I relocated when I received a job offer, which happened to be only a few hours away. My job search was nationwide, and relocation was pretty much inevitable as I attended a rural and remote campus.
And I used the term "DC Metro area" which would imply, yes, I did mean "Arlington, etc." The DC-MD-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area has an unemployment rate of 6.1, well below the national average.

My whole point was the fact that the economy is totally different, I'm not interested in pity. I'm thankful to have a job that affords me a comfortable standard of living. But that doesn't diminish the fact that over the last 5 years, wages have shrunk while inflation has barely slowed. Look back further, and real wages have been dropping for decades.

It's not about "protesting Wall Street." Protesting on Wall Street is a symbolic gesture, but the anger is directed at politicians more concerned about campaign donations and lobbyist bribes from the financial sector than the interest of the American middle class. The wolves were able to eat the sheep because the shepherd was more interested in the stripper that the wolves hired than watching his flock.