Larger chains in California can spend the time and money to research and test deployments of these kiosks. But what about smaller restaurants? Do they just go under?

It's probably more in line with people moving to, and building in, areas prone to specific disasters. We keep building things that can be damaged in places susceptible to specific types of damage.

Given that more police are being equipped with military gear, they should also adhere to the military rules of engagement.

Especially when there are cases of innocent people pleading "guilty" to some lessor charge, so as to not risk a jury convicting them on the trumped up charge.

From the article, it looks like it didn't have any impact on the cameras or inauguration security. It was just infected with a mail-bot that sent ransomware spam, much like thousands of other computers. Although, even the article is written poorly. One part says it's "computers linked to surveillance cameras" and another part says "accessed 123 outdoor surveillance cameras". The first one is probably correct - they got their ransomware mailbot installed on some Windows computers used to access the cameras, and it was sending out ransomware. The fact that they were used to access cameras isn't relevant. However, I think the fact that these are police computers, and police were likely doing other things on them (browsing, email) that got them infected, probably is relevant.

"Mark Zuckerberg admits in a New Yorker profile that he mocked early Facebook users for trusting him with their personal information. A youthful indiscretion, the Facebook founder says he's much more mature now, at the ripe age of 26." http://gawker.com/5636765/face...

It's not going to be some massive switch in some year. It's going to be a slow adoption over time. Linux was my preferred desktop over 10+ years ago, but I've never been a big Windows user. But it's not like someone is going to go into BestBuy and say "Hey, that's a nice Linux system there!" and walk out with it. It's going to happen because users like us are going to promote it. One user at a time.

Spain almost did this. Any linking to a news article required a payment - and unlike Germany, the news agency COULDN'T grant Google a free waiver for their news. So Google just completely dropped Google Spain News. Does Spain have any news anymore?

Free wire? They pay plenty for access to the network backbones. You think someone will just let you connect up Peta-bytes of data for free? If so, then maybe we don't need net neutrality.

It also states that sponsored links shown in search results are dependent on the amount of advertising funds Google receives from its clients." Isn't that what the sponsors are paying for?

We've seen flame wars and trolling since the original Usenet days. Also, spam is one of the problems in running a comments section. While you may not want to silence thoughtful dialog, sometimes it really is more trouble than it's worth due to spammers and trolls. For sites that have a local user base, like Slashdot, this is a little easier to manage. Others, not so much.

Digg?

The only way we are safe from the Cylons is to not network all the systems in the ship together.

Dealing with media (always getting Content ID'd for media we have licensed, often by someone else than who we licensed it from), this will eventually kill anything except Creative Commons. When you have the same song licensed by multiple sources, and you start getting lawsuits or threats of them for content you've actually licensed by a different entity, it's going to fall apart.

I think it's been like that for quite a while. Beer and cigarettes (although cigs are likely in decline) are where the cash is. And probably lottery tickets.