Can you say "lag frag"?

That kinda looks like where we are today.

Artificial ethnic tensions: Sotomayor is what might be termed a reverse racist, thinking (and saying) that her experiences as a "wise latina" will make her a better judge, while passing judgment that white firefighters can't be discriminated against.

Suppression of free enterprise: government takeovers of banking and auto industries, telling Chrysler they need to be bought by a foreign company, socializing the medical industry (they say they are not but look at the direction they are heading).

Rampant corruption: How many politicians are under investigation for how many different forms of corruption, from failing to pay taxes to taking bribes to misuse of government funds/equipment?

I'd say we are just about where th former Soviet Union was just before it collapsed, and I don't like it much. Just my .02 and, of course, YMMV.

The problem with this theory is that the genie is out of the bottle. The technology exists to create the weapons, therefore someone will build them. The only difficult part may be the fissionable material, but it is merely a matter of building the enrichment facility as the technology is out there (and readily available). It is the same with gun control, with a modest machine shop I can build fairly sophisticated firearms, the (not unsolvable) problem becomes the primer and powder.

For this to work you would also have to change your wireless interface's Ethernet MAC (hardware) address. By default this is a vendor-specific code that is probably unique enough that it could be used to link you to the upload.

Actually, this is not as true as it should be. I worked for a PC company which supplied name brand hardware to a major corporation. One problem we repeatedly ran into was having to swap NICs to different subnets because of MAC conflicts. The first 3 octets do represent the manufacturer, the last 3 should make a unique ID. In reality there are 16777216 possible combinations (255^3) not all of which get used for various reasons. Also 16 million unique IDs are not that many for a major name brand as we found out, selling several thousand units annually.

They fixed that in Win7, finally.

I have had to give up the stuff for health reasons, like lack of sleep.

Like any technology, once the ability to produce nukes is available it will not go away. Trying to make this happen will succeed about as well as prohibition did or banning firearms would. It is obviously a larger project than a still or a machine shop but not beyond the realm of possibility for any nation to try.

In the US at least Bose has stores in some malls so you can try them, at least for a short time (if the idea of using a headset countless strangers has worn doesn't scare you silly)

In the book Sam Gunn, Unlimited by Ben Bova the title character devised a system to do this. Actually he devised a system to push debris from the path of a satellite. Everything in orbit should pick up the same electrical charge from passing through the Earths magnetic field. By mounting a (insert large device here) on the leading edge/face of a satellite with the same charge, objects will be pushed out of the path of the satellite. To collect the garbage you need only reverse the charge, and use some type of foam to capture the debris, then deorbit when full or, as previously mentioned, recycle in orbit.

Yes, more expensive alternatives are available. Some companies are also offering VOIP (like Comcast). But for a home phone line, particularly in my situation Vonage is the best option. Comcast keeps trying to get me to use their VOIP but it is 60% more expensive without some features that I require. For instance, Vonage has what they call Virtual numbers, an incoming line that can be almost anywhere. This is convenient as most of my family, as well as my wifes, are located in one geographic area which is a long distance call. So for $4.95US we get a number which is a local call for them and it rings our regular line. This is not offered by Comcast. Also, with Comcast, your VOIP interface is integrated with your cable modem, with Vonage it is seperate. This way if we go on vacation, all we need to do is take the Vonage box and a cheap phone and we can call anywhere we have high speed internet access, like a hotel room. Vonage is not perfect for everyone, even me, but it is more useful than the alternatives at this point.

David Tupper