Yet each time someone has failed at it, it has become a little bit more real.

I now to about 70% of my work through a web browser; the main one that isn't there is development, yet there are quite a number of promising projects making this real.

Actually, when we were recently purchasing VM infrastructure, we were advised it is best practice to virtualise the management console. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding somewhere along the way.

I would be surprised if the googlebot didn't try everything to appear to the server like a normal user browser. Even better would be to crawl a site while in disguise, then again while not disguised. Differences would affect the sites ranking negatively.

They did it for their iPad Star-Trek ads: http://i.imgur.com/huWri.jpg

They probably figure if it's subtle enough, they can get away with it, but most people won't notice.

Indeed; there is some evidence that this co-evolution decreased humans' smelling abilities as the dogs made up for them (not sure what purpose this serves...)

At least for RFID, this would be much more fun:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cyeiz/reddit_i_present_to_you_my_superfun_idea_for_rfid/

Vast indeed. The only problem being they (tar sand oils) require more energy to extract than the recovered oil provides. Which still makes them useful, and may become economically viable when oil prices are comparatively higher than other energy forms.

Oil only contributes a small (I think in the order of 10-20%) of greenhouse emissions. If oil ran out today, there would not be a huge impact on carbon emissions.

For security purposes, perhaps. But for productivity purposes, failing closed causes people not to be able to get anything done. Failing open is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it is noticed before too long.

Certain a feature, if by feature you mean a remotely exploitable root vulnerability. Yes, definitely a feature. For crackers.

For the rest of us it's a pretty critical flaw, namely one that can 0wn yr ph0ne by visiting a malicious website.

Yeah, but it looks as though they're not going fibre, but a USB option instead:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Waubra+Victoria+3352,+Australia&sll=-37.571029,143.851835&sspn=0.013912,0.01929&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FUPuxf0dV8aPCA&split=0&hq=&hnear=Waubra+Victoria,+Australia&t=h&ll=-37.329014,143.611715&spn=0.006979,0.009645&z=17

You might even say backronym

So Google action's here are similar to looking at the receiver and sender addresses, and the postage stamp on the postcard, and reading a few words of the card in the process. Don't tell me that postal workers won't inadvertently catch a word or two of someone's postcard when reading the public information of the addresses?

Well, that and the fact the all passengers flying in or out of Israel have their checked and carry on baggage inspected, right in front of you.

Perhaps you can avoid this if you can pass as a rabbi, but otherwise, all passengers.

Actually, MPEG 21 seems more like what this story is about - MPEG-21 is a license framework for MPEG.