8?! Holy cow, I only pay like .1!

I believe his actual stance on gay marriage is that it should be up to the states to decide. Thus, it doesn't really matter if he's for or against it.

SOPA / PIPA go far beyond just being a geek issue. Breaking DNSSEC isn't good by any means, but the biggest problem they present is the trampling of freedom of speech and the automatic assumption of guilt. Your average American won't care or even know about DNSSEC not working, but they'll be rather upset when they suddenly can't post comments because sites can't afford to risk users creating a SOPA violation that will take them down without warning or input.

You brought up constitution shredding and forgot to mention NDAA and SOPA / PIPA. The latter two of course aren't law yet, but there's a good chance they will be and if nothing else their broad support demonstrates that something is seriously wrong.

Why would executioners wield socks stuffed with axes?

It isn't really hard to download keepass, and if you use keepass portable it doesn't even need to install and can just run in place. If you don't want to download it you can keep it on a flash drive and run it right off of it. Or (on Android) put it on your phone's SD card and plug it in and run it right off of it.

I guess it depends on how often you end up needing to do it, but for me the occasions in which I need to manually type out passwords is so rare that it's worth the bother. Also, you might find that there are just certain sites that you would tend to do this with so those sites could use a shorter password or a custom made one that you've memorized.

Everyone in Michigan enters the intersection and waits to turn until it's clear. If that means that it is after the light changes then it's after the light changes. It works fine and it isn't dangerous at all. You're not completing a turn ACROSS moving traffic after the light changes. And no one is jumping right into the intersection to block your way somehow either. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation you're describing, but I can't see how this would be dangerous. And under Michigan law, if you've entered the intersection during a green light, you have the right to complete your turn when traffic clears regardless of the color of the light.

At some intersections (with no dedicated left turn light) it's the only way traffic is able to turn at times when it is busy. The one or two or three cars that can fit into the intersection just sit there until the light changes and then they're finally able to complete the turn. It doesn't make traffic worse, it actually makes it better. I think the throughput of intersections would be degraded if no one went into the intersection to prepare for a left turn. I really hate it when I'm behind someone who won't venture into the intersection. There's no telling how many cycles of the light I might have to sit there through if they won't venture out to ensure they can make their turn that cycle.

I can't stand it when people back up when they were already in the intersection. They have the right to complete their turn and by moving back it just makes anyone who comes in behind them have to wait longer to make their turn.

Decide for yourself.

From http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-index/B6F3F4DF3150F5B585257434004C177D
(Pick Homosexuality from the sidebar)

Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage.

Likewise, there is no scriptural support for demeaning or mistreating anyone for reason of his or her sexual orientation. The Salvation Army opposes any such abuse.

To me, the expectation for a group of people to remain celibate is demeaning and a way of mistreating them. Sex is a very basic human function. It is unrealistic to expect a group to be able to do so even if they say that they choose to. And for the vast majority that don't choose to, expecting that is flat out demeaning. So to me, this an anti-gay position that they attempt to mask quite poorly.

"Rolf Olsen, an 'amateur' astronomer in 'New' Zealand, took an amazing 'photo' of a 'disk' of material around the 'star' Beta Pictoris, the first time this has been seen outside of 'professional' observatories. Incredibly, he snagged it with just a 25 'cm' (10") telescope! A comparison with an earlier 'pic' from a much larger 'observatory' indicates he nailed it, making this a 'milestone' for 'amateur' astronomy."

This probably would have been more informative yesterday when amazon was selling them for $111.11.

I'd estimate that there's a 10% chance RSA will be useless within 20 years. Whatever the odds, some of the data we send over ssh and ssl today should remain private for a century, and we simply can't guarantee secrecy anymore using the algorithms with which we have become complacent.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I pretty much assume that every algorithm that we have now could well be effectively useless in 20 years. And I would never presume to think any of them even has a chance of lasting 100 years, or even close to that.

Computers will get faster. Weakness will be found in algorithms. Any other number of things that no can predict might happen. It would be silly to assume things encrypted today, left untouched, would be safe in 20 years and completely naive to have even a sliver of hope they'd be safe in 100, quantum computers or not.

On the rare occasion that I need to input a phone number onto a phone keypad I use my thumb. I either use a cell phone or a landline phone that has the keys on the phone itself, like on a portable (landline) phone.

It's interesting to note the difference, but speaking for myself at least, I can't imagine being: 1) Using a phone of a type where I wouldn't just use my thumb frequently enough to notice, and 2) Inputing phone numbers manually often enough to notice. Also, I would think that I'd be more likely to want a phone with reversed digits than a calculator and keyboard with reversed digits.

I also enjoy using google voice. And of course when I need to input a number manually there, I use my keyboard's number pad.

What a difference a few days makes. The Dow is down over 800 points this week so far, and there's still Friday to go. It lost 500 just yesterday alone. The "some kind of crash" is here.

Er, I should have said a max of 63 chars.

Unfortunately, the ony way I can see securing wireless right now is to replace it with a wire.

Use WPA2 with a strong password and you're pretty much bulletproof. There are no known shortcuts to cracking it and it's extremely slow. Even cracking a minimum length (8 char) random password is pretty much infeasible for a single computer.

The strong password is the key point. If you use a regular word or something easy like a couple of words or a word followed by a number then it becomes easy to crack fairly quickly. But if you choose something longer ( 20 or 30 chars....you can go up to 64) and at least partially random then there's no way anyone without serious resources are going to crack it.