Wait... Someone is turning to Google for privacy. What the heck has this world come to?

Certainly mixed feelings here. India's far from the poorest country out there and they deserve their accomplishments, but they also have many other areas they could be spending this money on. City renovation, more widespread education (including, maybe, some birth control), better infrastructure so as to facilitate more jobs, agricultural education to provide more sustainable food... Then again, perhaps this is just the sort of thing they need. Something inspiring and amazing to get the youth to aim higher, just like we did when we went to the moon. I'll certainly be paying attention to this, but beyond that I'm not sure I can pass any definitive judgement on this.

If you're going to pirate, download everything you can within two months, then wait until next year?

How will we ever face the plague? It's not like we have some sort of chemical that can kill the very cause of it this time around! ... ... ... *koff*

One the one hand, this is now a thing, and that sucks, hard. On the other, now it's patented, which means that, hopefully, only a handful of books will have this.

I've got an HP DV6t sitting in front of me right now with a full keyboard and plenty of power and all. It cost me just a bit over a thousand for my quad-core model and the site lists them down to 630 USD for a dual-core model. It's 15.6 inches so it's smaller than your standard 17-inch but it's still got a full keypad and numpad. I'd certainly recommend it.

Agreed. From what the article said this would have been a very real and very serious threat had it gone through. There wasn't any sort of egging on, as was the case with the FBI that made everyone so unsure about the deal. To top it all off, in addition to saving the day they got the bomb to see just how it worked. I'd say the CIA are some big damn heroes in this situation.

Did you read the source article? There certainly wouldn't have been zero terrorist plots without them. If anything, without them the plots that they "created" may have blossomed into actual threats. Here, let me quote the section you seemed to miss: "Another New York City subway plot, which recently went to trial, needed no help from government. Nor did a bombing attempt in Times Square, the abortive underwear bombing in a jetliner over Detroit, a planned attack on Fort Dix, N.J., and several smaller efforts. Some threats are real, others less so. In terrorism, it's not easy to tell the difference."

Reading the linked article, I have to say that the case mentioned sounds like it's more at the fault of the informant than the FBI, leading the person in like that, but I still think I'd rather have the guy off the streets. I've always seen preventative measures to be preferable, and the general idea the FBI is going with honestly sounds pretty good with me. Seems like there are likely to be a few cases where things get a bit overly-pushy, but bear in mind that some of them are informants that are doing this to have a reduced sentence. They're probably going to try to speed up the process... might be a bit of a bad idea there on the FBI's part. Either way, I can't imagine these people being any more encouraging than, say, actual extremists, so I'd generally say the idea of entrapment is rather debunked... The idea of the FBI claiming that they just randomly caught the guy before he did it though? That's a bit silly. Then again, if they say what actually happened, then every other extremist will be more careful and avoid all this. Then again, isn't that a good thing?

Calls self "Family Research Council." Doesn't actually pay attention to any research on homosexuals and related families.

Yea, living up here in Minnesota I can tell you all about this one. About 2-3 weeks ago we got a huge blizzard that forced me to head home from college early. Cost me 8 extra credit points for bio the damn thing... Then about a week ago it just... turned to spring. Hell, it feels like summer to be honest. The only real hint that it's still actually spring is that most of the flowers haven't yet bloomed. This is not normal weather. I'm used to there being around a month of mushy slush being on the ground and, while I welcome the skipping of that phase, it is a tad concerning. Having taken an Environmental Bio course I know well enough that it's not like global warming is solely at fault here but I still can't really put the thought out of my mind. Ah well, here's hoping it's just a pleasant fast-forward past the two worst months of the year!