Nevermind. I just became aware of the distinction. This is all about collection of a tax, not the existence of it.

The state can impose whatever tax they feel like, but if there's no way to enforce/collect it, it's basically useless. This is a way to drop the "use" tax and replace it with one that can be enforced.

Except the "use tax" is completely unconstitutional; it has to be done at the Federal level or it's illegal. Still, the concept of taxing my personal property because the location I originally obtained isn't my current location is very underhanded. What happens when I move twice in one tax year? Two states expect to collect an additional tax on what I already own (& was taxed on)?

Taxes should be assessed based on the location of the merchant. End of story. This whole "tax based on the assumed final destination" has some interesting corner-cases. Think about the possibilities with phone-in orders over state-lines (delivery vs pickup).

Sorry, but Android has been doing that already for a while now. Isn't there anything better that Siri can do? So far, it sounds exactly like what I've had on my G2 for about a year now (press the Search button, start talking...). For example, I'd expect you can finally "text" by talking on your iPhone, now. Now, if it didn't require a data connection, *that* would be awesome. It feels like a let-down to have a feature that requires a data connection.

Sounds like someone ought to patent that! ...um, whatever that non-obvious thing is.

I just want the ability to drill down. Sometimes I just want to see how people may have responded to a particular comment. Having a "simple" link in opposition to the existing "Parent" link would be incredibly useful. All it needs to do is load the current immediate children of the comment, if there are any. If I want to see descendents, I can drill down from there if I care.

Instead of that (for reasons enumerated elsewhere), just get the lens dirty. A "well-placed" smudge makes the image all but useless for enforcement. Consider a "back-up camera" on a car after a good rain; same idea, different source of dirt. I bet if they implement a camera on the device, the lens will get dirty all the time, and rarely on purpose.

a) No antivirus software was present on Diginotar's servers;

This shouldn't have been listed; it should be considered a good thing. However, considering the rest of the things they did, I doubt they actually knew it was a good idea.

Antivirus software on a production server should be the exception, not the norm; it's just one more attack vector. In the end, it's just a blacklist pattern matcher. If the exploit isn't on the list, it goes right in the front door---and it can't watch all the "doors" either. The AV companies have some really good marketing going on if the FUD has the security experts this paranoid.

If this is true, then why aren't cell phones AND cell towers banned in a 2 mile radius from all airports? You've got loads of working cell phones inside the buildings (and likely on at least a few workers outside where the planes are). There's enough "signal" to get to and from the cell towers in both directions, and all of it's going through the planes.

So what's so special about the signal coming from a cell phone until it gets outside the plane as compared to the signal coming from the cell tower to your phone (also inside the plane)? That doesn't change if your cell phone is on or off.

Your house "value" is there because it's public information. Go to your county web site; they list the amount on your mortgage and a bunch of other stuff that gets the hapless person to believe that they have some sort of special, inside-track to sensitive information. They don't.

The Nobel Peace prize has been a sad joke for a long time. Obama wasn't the first epic fail (e.g. Gore, Carter, Kissinger, etc.). They've got a long standing tradition over there with the Peace prize.

What I want is a "snap-to/focus-on what I'm looking at" button on the mouse. I don't want focus following my eyes by default, but I do want to have a dedicated hardware button that makes it jump to what I'm looking at.

If you allow 443 outbound, you *are* wide open. The idea that blocking outbound connections somehow solves security issues is very naive.

I have an Optoma HD20 pointed at a 120" screen and we sit ~13' away. My wife and I came to the conclusion that if you already have the DVD, don't bother "upgrading" to the Blu-Ray. While the difference is noticeable, it's not enough to justify the expense. However, if it's a newer release, we lean towards the Blu-Ray; it's all about whether the original footage is high-def. Every Blu-Ray we have spits out 1080/24p, but not all we've watched were actually filmed in that high a resolution (or the transfer sucked).

In general, what HD (1080) gets you at 120" is that your picture looks "normal". You lose the "wow, that's sharp" feeling pretty quick. You just notice "hey, that's pretty fuzzy" on the standard-def stuff, and "that's not as clear as it could be sometimes" on 720p stuff. I've heard in many places that if you're going to sit further back than 5', you'd better have a screen larger than 50" or HD won't matter. I've personally witnessed that effect on my old 32" Trinitron and the DVD of Planet Earth; seemed to look as good at 10' as the Blu-Ray did on a 50" LCD at 10'.

So Dark Matter was a theory invented to explain why stars orbit a galaxy's core like they were on spokes around the hub of a wheel ...instead of how we observe the motion of object orbiting our sun. So if Dark Matter exerts such a huge force to keep huge objects (stars) moving in such a manner, how come that same force doesn't affect the objects going around the star? Or, in other words, if it's powerful enough to keep the outer-most stars in a galaxy moving in the same period as inner stars, how come we can't detect it here? Or have we detected such tidal forces already?

No. SFTP isn't really "true" FTP at all---it's the SSH File Transfer Protocol. FTPS and FTPES, however are the encrypted forms of FTP; they're FTP over SSL.