It looks like progress. I've seen some of those Philips LED bulbs recently at a trade show here in Hawaii, and they look ready for prime-time. The price tags for LEDs is a bit of an up front deterrent to adoption, though.

Free utilities do tend to be ineffective.
Otherwise we'd all be following in the footsteps of Stallman.
For every Process Explorer and nmap there's the rest of the bell curve.

I've used PayPal in a business capacity for several years now. It helps support me through my company (a sole-proprietorship IT consulting bit) by allowing me to process credit cards. Those things are quickly becoming a fact of life in business...

Anyway what I really mean to get at is that PayPal has treated me better than any of my banks have. When somebody pays me, the transaction takes no more than 5 minutes and then I have money on hand. I can either wire it over if I have a few days, or use their plug-in or my debit card to purchase things directly from my account. While they do not have anything really resembling customer service, they usually don't seem to need it, IMO.

I once had an eBay transaction that went sour. I got all huffy and upset that they reversed the charges. I quickly became an enemy of PayPal, screaming their injustices. What happened was that I had been selling some spare parts and one of them went outside the United States. The Canadian yokel that got them just decided to screw me and I hadn't really created a trail of accountability because I was unprepared for out of country transactions (no tracking, etc). PayPal was in the clear to reverse it because there was really no proof that I ever shipped it to him. That was my fault, but I've learned since then and that company has allowed me to eke a living for myself without having to bow down to the merchant services that involve monthly fees and other stupid crap.

Just felt like sharing that not every story with them is a bad one.

It's a shame that there aren't any controls in place for Western Union or MoneyGram. At least the Credit Card companies leave you some manner of recourse against the dishonest. I understand that criminals will continue to prey on hope, but can't some of these companies assume a bit more responsibility than chiding their customers to be careful?

Helicopter. It may not necessarily see THROUGH your roof, but it still has a good Point of View. I have no problem with a helicopter though, so long as it still uses observation methods that more or less follow the same pattern of human sensory perception.

It's not just your home. The entire idea centers around the 'expectation of privacy'. It appears that the expectation is diminishing NOT because of a sudden desire to share with the world, but because of zealous law enforcement. After all, who doesn't want to succeed at their job AND make it easier at the same time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling#Surreptitious_DNA_collecting That link is an example of how law enforcement gets creative with the assistance of scientific advance. Fifty years ago, the thought of someone identifying you uniquely by digging your coffee cup out of the trash at a crime scene and swabbing it would have been absurd. Now, it's just common practice.

Bad logic. Some of the most heinous crimes are those which are not readily visible. Pedophiles are basically invisible. Stupid drug dealers get caught, but smart ones and distributors farther up the food chain remain free people. I've seen these often enough to understand why law enforcement digs around. Doesn't mean I'm personally willing to trade privacy for a cleaner world, but the 'reasonable person' is.

Good deal, I say. Get your laptop blown up with an offer for compensation and you EVEN get to keep your data. Best Buy would take both and treat you like a terrorist for complaining.