True. And I also thought that half of the RIAA's arguments were that when you bought a CD, you were buying a "license" to use that CD and that you didn't actually own the music on it anyway... or was that what Microsoft was saying about software? Something like that, anyway.

So do we own it, or do we not?

Back in my day we used LEGOs. And we liked it!

...although I suppose that's also only "assembling"...

So you're saying that you prefer the government keep naked pictures of you in that database that you don't want, as long as they don't tell you about it?

Ok, so you've listed about 100-ish (I didn't count) flights that have been hijacked in the past 60 years. The majority of those sixty ended up with either no one hurt or only a few people injured or killed. Contrast that with the thought that about 385 flights per day cross the Atlantic ocean in each direction. Over the last 60 years, that comes to a few million flights - seven million actually, but cut that in half because air traffic was not as dense fifty years ago. And that's just TransAtlantic. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of flights are ever attacked - and only a small number of those attacks are terrorism-related. Only a small number of attacked flights end catastrophically. Airplanes do not attract more than their fair share of terrorism; airplane-centric attacks attract more than their fair share of attention.

Which goes back to the identity idea: If the terrorist is just impersonating a pilot, he'd have to fool the other pilot, which would be fairly difficult, considering that the pilots are likely to have met and worked together before. How many times have you seen just one member of the flight crew walking out to the plane? Almost never. Usually, they walk out together, so a terrorist trying to impersonate a pilot faces a very, very high chance of detection without any security screening at all!

The United States Army teaches that you need three to one odds to attempt an offensive maneuver....

The interesting axons are oddly interesting due to interestingly odd effects.

...welcome our new levitating mouse overlords.

I'm surprised by how much of a stir this story is creating. I've used USAA for almost 5 years now and the whole time they've had a "Deposit@Home" javascript that allowed you to scan your check and deposit it immediately the same way. It's the quickest and most convenient way to do it, considering that USAA is an internet-only bank. They're also pretty much the best bank in the world...ATM fee rebates, a decent web interface, and scanning (or sending them in snail-mail in postage paid free deposit envelopes) deposits? What more could you ask for?

As a hermit crab owner (whose crabs are a completely irrational joy in my life...and may be for a long time as they can live 30+ years in captivity) I have in fact seen that crabs remember pleasant and painful experiences. I have three crabs which I try to handle regularly. One of them took a rather nasty fall onto carpet during the first handling session and he has never since gotten over that fear of handling. When I handle him, he dump his shell water all over me and is frantic to escape. Two other crabs, who have had small falls from one hand into the other but nothing as high as the first one, have learned that no harm comes from being handled and have no similar responses when being handled. Their only response is to explore whatever I let them, be it my hands, arms, legs, room, etc. So it doesn't surprise me that scientists have found that crabs can make connections between certain experiences or circumstances and unpleasantness. People who have owned these creatures have known it for years.

This somehow reminds me of that proverb about frogs and boiling water - frog story. You can't throw an animal (i.e. lobster or crab) that regulates its body temperature by moving through different 'microclimates' in its environment into a pot of boiling water and expect it not to try to find a cooler place to go.

Don't get me wrong, I've used SuSE 8.0/8.1/9.0, Slackware 10, Fedora 4/6/8/9 and now Fedora 10 and I have no designs of creating a "Windows" box. But there is functionality that I'm denied because of that choice, and I wish there wasn't. Yes, it's the hardware companies' fault, but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. And it doesn't mean that Windows doesn't do it better (in general).

I only wish Linux had numbers like this. For all the hours I've spent building ndiswrapper or ATI display drivers on any number of boxes... I don't even have that much weird hardware, but Linux printing support is way behind, 3D display is way behind, sound support is sometimes flawless and sometimes nonexistent.

Not that I'm about to use Windows, but it would be nice.

If we're to expect a degree of research and professionalism from newspapers and magazines, then I need a dueling sword... bring on the journalists!

"the point of the entire exercise of voting: make the people feel like their voice counts in their government"

I thought it was so that their voice actually DID count in their government?