I worked in a legal firm which specialized in e-discovery and forensics, they weren't data-recovery specialists, but they were able to pull data from slack space and previously rewritten areas. But that is besides the point. For client-privacy reasons, legal reasons, and corporate policy, they ended up with hundreds of hard drives per month that needed to be destroyed with no possible way to recover the data. A $24 sledgehammer is certainly a cheap and fun sounding answer. But after smashing five hard drives, this stops being fun, you're making a lot of noise, and someone would need to clean up the mess. I'm sure OSHA wouldn't approve of that either. We were in a corporate office in the middle of New York City, so smart-ass solutions like thermite; sodium hydroxide; shooting them with a .45, a shotgun, or a bazooka aren't going to fly. Because of chain of custody, you couldn't even take the hard disks into an empty field to do this. The guy responsible for destruction started unscrewing everything, taking out the platters, then punching a hole in the platters with a screw-press. But like the sledgehammer solution, this was slow labor-intensive. I believe they ended up using a qualified HD destruction service, who would come to your office once a month, and give you metal confetti back. This of course isn't cheap. Eventually, purchasing one of these Garner devices would make economic sense. My point is, sure, given our own devices, we can think of quick and fun ways to destroy a hard disk. But when you are limited by government and corporate rules, companies like Garner aren't just greedy, but filling a real need.

Even though my family owned a full set of Encyclopedia Brittanica and Comptons, I don't feel too bad for them. EB later turned out to be a Patent Troll. I used to work for one of the Defendants in their bizzare lawsuits on GPS manufacturers. http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/11/encyclopaedia-britannica-patent-lawsuit.html Apparently, if you search a CD you are stealing their IP or something.

....oh there it is.

So she has a new pancreas, kidney, and now voicebox and windpipe! "Gentlemen, we can rebuild her. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic woman. Brenda Jensen will be that woman. Better than she was before. Better...stronger...faster."

I am glad that there are no cellphone rules on airplanes. Someone sitting next to me gabbing all the way through the flight is just as irritating to me as a crying baby, a toddler kicking the back of my seat, or people who insist on bringing their yipping toy poodle on board in a pet carrier. The last three things are allowed on board planes, and it's something I must tolerate. Air travel experience is already getting crappier and crappier everyday with the no more free in-flight meals, the enhanced pat downs, and even making a bomb jokes in an airport is a federal crime! But, please, let's not allow more irritations! I don't want to hear some self-absorbed executive discuss his business deals or some twenty-something hipster updating their FP profile with "taking off now!". Ug. Just put everything away for a couple of hours and let me go to sleep, will ya?

With a European Ariane 5 rocket. http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/launch.html

I think the American Association of Cocaine Dealers would object to arbitrarily getting rid of the kilogram!

in about a year that it's full of lead, heavy metals, and other chemicals that are bad for babies and pregnant mothers.

The MB 2010 E Class cars already have this. But I don't think it's calibrated for Asians. The thing won't shut off!