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You know you can buy these lasers on ThinkGeek, don't you?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a47/

this isn't even the best/most expensive one, but this is enough proof.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a47/

And yes, I would tell anyone not to look into even a $1 cheapy red laser.

But theres a world of difference between shining a laser at effectively point blank range, and getting a glancing flash from somebody thousands of feet away moving at hundreds of miles an hour.

I've said this already, but if ANYONE had intent to damage or injure or cause any sort of problem, they would be shining lasers whilst stood at the end of the runway, or pointing at trucks on the motorway.
Not from your own backyard, and certainly not from thousands of feet.

The REAL issue here is that very powerful green lasers have gotten extremely cheap ($59.00 to $99.00) so they need to throw the book at this guy to prevent the rest of us citizens from playing possibly dangerous games.

A more realistic thing to do is come up with a technological solution to prevent an airplane from being downed by a $100.00 device. A self-darkening wind screen, some sort of polarized surface, a one way mirror coating?

The use of the Patriot Act is a travesty. The guy is pointing out stars to his daughter and obviously Mr. Clueful was not exactly trying to hide the fact from the police helicoptor.

Linky Dinky Stink Stink

No, a $100 green laser is an above average laser pointer. But it's still just a laser pointer, it's not a weapons-grade "pilot blinder" like the Soviets developed and deployed in their "fishing trawlers" during the cold war.

It's the beam, dude. While a standard cheapo red beam laser pointer does not usually have a beam visible unless there's enough fog to prevent seeing stars, the higher-end pricey green lasers have a beam that can be seen with just the normal trace of dust in the air, since it's about 50 times brighter than the usual red ones. Perfectly good for a pointer for astronomy lessons.

I have one of those cool ThinkGeek green laser pointers and it was kind of fun (and amusing for the kids) to take it out on a cloudy or foggy day and look at the neat laser beam. Even the ThinkGeek description advertises its use for skypointing while stargazing, which works even in the clear in very dark conditions. Now I'm scared to do either. God I love these times we live in.

Like the console that fits in a joystick or these oldish-looking cell phones... what's next in this trend?

Unfortunately, we have decided to STOP selling these lasers to the general public. Too many people have been doing stupid things with lasers recently, and this product is misunderstood. This laser DOES NOT pose a threat to airplanes or pilots

#3 teflon, plastics

#1 the computer you're using now -- space exploration pushed the microelectoronics revolution

That sure makes this guy look real smart :)

Yes, they are, thank you for asking.

Most FOSS programs are the result of someone who really wants to write something good. Rarely have I seen someone being forced to write FOSS code to meet a release date schedule or to remain competitive. It's about It'll be done when it's done, sort of Code Poetry. Most of the code was written to run in a hostile environment where black hats can read the code (like the above peice) and screw everyone who runs bad code. The term security in obscurity as far as coding style does not even enter your mind.

Also vulnerabilities are easier to find when you have the source - like that professor who set his students to find vulnerabilities in FOSS. Unlike a corporate setup - you have a practically unlimited number of reviewers if your program is popular (and if it is not, a vulnerability is no big deal anyway, right). Also everyone runs a different binary, slightly different from what everyone else runs (security often needs you to recompile stuff with stack canaries)

So FOSS software evolves (yes, Natural Selection) to avoid these vulnerabilities by dying out or it "adapts" - Someone adds more good ideas and makes it better like.. (s/ideas/genes == Sexual reproduction) . Also the good ones read Wietse's papers.

Just keep hitting F5 when you next visit thinkgeek.com.

ThinkGeek has the same idea.

how about ice cold caffeinated beer? [not yet in self-cooling containers, c'mon thinkgeek!]

With glow in the dark goodness!

how about solid wood and stone peripherals?

There is also the backlit keyboard, both handy and stylish.

All of my friends have always told me that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an awesome book, but I've always had other things on my reading list already. I'm finally done reading the Wheel of Time series and everything by Raymond E. Feist, so I asked for The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide for Christmas. I wonder now, if after hearing "The meaning of life is 42." a million times I'll think it's still funny when reading the books.

And, according to all this data, which NASA stores in a MySQL database, species that are "trapped" on a single planet, as it were, are simply more likely to be destroyed in a planet-destroying accident, just as a people, like, say, the Italians, are more likely to go extinct if their entire country just suddenly sinks into a giant sinkhole and crumbles into the ocean...

Yes, the proof is all there, and there is a lot of evidence to compare against. Or, rather, that's my way of saying that a troll has been posted on /.'s main page. What happened to all the SCO stories? At least those made me laugh.

Whenever I investigate buying a new electronic device from the U.S., I cannot complete the transaction because the vendor will not ship to Canada. I've seen this on thinkgeek and amazon. I wonder if this is (one) bottleneck and the removal of the levy will allow cross-border shopping?

Glad to see someone mentioned Chaos, I was going to myself.

All, over at Thinkgeek you can find Rollerscape, which looks like a smaller version of Spacewarp with no ball return.

When I saw the phrase "coaster set", I thought the original poster meant coasters like these and I wondered what kind of sad kid would get so excited about protecting the furniture.

Well there appears to be some value in the idea because, at least for a while, thinkgeek.com was selling them. They're just not as cheap as you might want, but they are certainly cheaper than $6000.

You think they have one of these in his size? Might clear up a few things... Either that, or he might have trouble with another exploit...

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5a68/ is all you need...

If they already have Wristwatch Televisions, putting a TV on cell phone shouldn't be that hard.

I'm really starting to reconsider buying a PSP now with the support for MP3/MP4 playback as the previous article (there's a link on the website) suggests. Although I don't know much about Sony's Memory stick format, how much data can be held on one stick? I'm guessing there are sizes such as flash drives right?

I'm also considering buying one of these to charge the thing if it'll work properly. Will need to look into this.

How about a casemod that includes some bawls?

They're really good, you should try some... come on, you know you want to...

Wow. They actually make Caffeinated Soap.

Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap

Perhaps this new screenless iPod will use their old software patent on color-morphing cases to give visual feedback on a user's current position in the playlist; e.g. the first song would be bright red, the last song would be bright blue. With the growing popularity of information devices like the Ambient Orb Device that use color for data feedback, this seems natural for Apple to get into.

1. Liars! Every last one of you!

Unintentional when I posted it, but...hmmmm.... >01001001001000000111001101110000011 00101011011100111010000100000001001 00001100010011000000110000001000000 11000010111010000100000010101000110 10000110100101101110011010110100011 10110010101100101011010110010000001 10000101101110011001000010000001100 00101101100011011000010000001001001 00100000011001110110111101110100001 00000011101110110000101110011001000 00011101000110100001101001011100110 01000000110110001101111011101010111 00110111100100100000011011000110100 10110110101101001011101000110010101 10010000100000011001010110010001101 00101110100011010010110111101101110 00100000011101000010110101110011011 0100001101001011100100111010000101110

And if you want to get technical, shouldn't the "agreement" be that the user will click on ads? Simply looking at them does not help the provider one bit.

You're assuming the point of advertising is to make you click. Strangely, many "new economy" ad execs sold their wares the same way. "Yeah, the users will CLICK and GO to your WEBSITE and BUY THINGS!!!11 ON THE SPOT!!!!111"

Bzzzt! Wrong, Slick.

The point of advertising is (say it with me) brand recognition. You aren't going to buy a Coke* on line when you get thirsty, but if all the sites you visit regularly have a Coke banner, the next time you're in the MiniMart, you might just say, "Hmmm, if I get a Coke then some hottie will hang off me, and there will be dancing and music and lots of sweat!" Then you fork over your dollars for one.

Why do you think there are billboards, and they are successful (in terms of getting companies to pay Viacomm and ClearChannel)? Because they build that brand recognition, not because you are going to run out that minute and buy a Hummer. Why are there ads in magazines? You gonna "click" on one of those, hah? Why does your 1 hour TeeVee show have 40 minutes of "content" (to be very generous) and 20 minutes of ads? You can't buy anything on the spot, so why are they trying to hawk "Hot Pockets"?

Now, it is possible for advertising to adapt to the web, but that won't happen until the ad execs actually figure out why and how the web works. I've sat in enough advert planning meetings (the "token" tech guy) to permanently lose all feeling below my neck due to lack of oxygen, and I can tell you that they don't get it yet. Maybe the current generation needs to die. I dunno.

*Yes, we're all aware that you can buy your dork-related goods on-line by clicking on the ads. We're talking about the average person here, who isn't interested in a new case, binary clock, or t-shirt that says, "Got Root? [please get me a girlfriend]".

Hold on, let me check.
Nope, still not there.
Maybe now? I'll check again. BRB
No, I still can't find any IBM stickers like this one.

We have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart?

Anyway, my wife is getting me this T-shirt for christmas. We'll see who's cleaning up the spyware after dinner then... :-)

He's Wil Wheaton, so obviously his only choice would be his own OS.

Yeah they do.

I got it from ThinkGeek... it was reasonably priced (Only $25). It's very well designed, and it's pretty compact.

While it wasn't the #1 in the comparison, i'd recommend it to anyone.

The site claims they'll be available next month (minimum order 100,000 units)

This the level that many retailers buy at. You're looking at Walmart, Target, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc., numbers.

And as the production lines just keep running, every first-world sale at $150 could subsidize a $50 half-price unit for countries that could otherwise hardly afford one even at $100.

I don't use a mouse pad because none of them provide a large enough mousing surface.

You obviously haven't seen this.

And for the computer crack team

I TCP/IP but mostly IP

In case you were looking, here's the device.

Have fun with your self-styled "security experts" at work!

Perhaps Gordon should visit ThinkGeek...?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a9f/

Ask and ye shall receive.

It would be trivial to solder a tap to the data leads of the CMOS or across any data recording device/chip. I think a 1 farad filter should do nicely.

a button from radio shack (or thinkgeek even) with the above capactior would prove quite fatal to the data.

Thats what this stuph is for... http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/whereisit.cgi?t=fix +computer&x=0&y=0/

We are indeed the techsupport generation, but it doesn't have to be that way. We recently got "No I will not fix your computer" T-shirts ( http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/388b / ) at work as a fun gift. It has proved really useful. You don't have to say no, pople just stops asking you. Works great. The only tech support I've had to do after getting (and wearing) this T-shirt, was for a really desperate aquaintaince with a wifi setup problem. I got two full-size fresh lobsters for fixing that, and I didn't even ask for anything. I do make an exception for my own folks though, but now they are the only ones.

Being a geek should be a badge of honor.

Hopefully I can mod my duct-tape wallet to support that. Or maybe ThinkGeek will start offering RFID-blocking wallet/bag/clothing? Hint hint if you're reading this ThinkGeek admins!

Like this?

Also, if you can take a picture with one of these things while "pretending to talk on it" you have more skill, or perhaps hands, than I.