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"FBI agents have raided the homes of three alleged members of a hacker gang that harassed a security expert who helped put the group’s leader in jail, according to a recently unsealed search warrant affidavit.

Jesse William McGraw, aka “GhostExodus,” pleaded guilty in May to computer-tampering charges for putting malware on a dozen machines at the Texas hospital where he worked as a security guard. He also installed the remote-access program LogMeIn on the hospital’s Windows-controlled HVAC system.

Last month’s raids were prompted by the aftermath of McGraw’s arrest. McGraw was the leader of an anarchistic hacking group called the Electronik Tribulation Army, and his bust led to a flood of harassment against the Mississippi computer-security researcher who discovered screenshots of the HVAC access online and informed the FBI."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/eta/

Has "security researcher" become the code for for confidential informant? Why else would the "researcher" go out of his way to "inform" the FBI?

Why do articles even call them "security researchers"? Now if this guys job is to investigate hackers, then he should be called a "cyber crime investigator". It's disingenuous to call an a cyber crime investigator/cybercop detective a security researcher.

What is with this trend? And what is the official function of a security researcher? Are they informants? I'd think maybe not if they aren't pretending to be outlaw/blackhats, so I cannot put them in the obvious informant/snitch category that albert gonzalez is in. An informant/snitch generally is someone who is a criminal hacker or member of a crew, who betrays his or her own crew to provide information to another crew (usually the police). Albert Gonzalez fits the definition of a snitch, the worst kind.

The Volt's battery pack takes up the space under the rear seat as well as the "hump" down the middle of the vehicle. If you strip out the ICE and gas tank, and sacrifice what little there is of the cargo space, you might be able to squeeze two more of similar capacity into the vehicle.

Part of the problem is the Volt's battery pack is thermally managed, which adds considerably to the volume. Another part of the problem is the Volt is shitty as an EV to begin with (likely because it was designed to be a series hybrid, not an electric vehicle).

In short, no; a ~250 mile all-electric range is NOT doable with a Volt. It's doable with EVs in general, like with the Tesla Roadster, but not the Volt.
=Smidge=

I've never said this before, but I will now: do NOT view the movie attached to this linkif you're easily upset. Seriously.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104

Article background:
1903: Thomas Edison stages his highly publicized electrocution of an elephant in order to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current, which, if it posed any immediate danger at all, was to Edison's own direct current.

Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties, royalties he was in no mood to lose when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla showed up with alternating current.

Edison's aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting "Westinghoused"). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.

Exactly. People have been arguing for thousands of years that there are too many people - Malthus didn't originate the cry for population control - and yet somehow we as humans always seem to adapt. Yes, there are wars and famines (famines are usually caused by politics more than weather or climate) but people progress and innovate and adapt. China's restrictions on the number of children allowed is going to be a huge problem pretty soon (within the next 50 years). I'm not saying we should have kids without thinking about if we can personally support the children but there are many ways to feed everyone just fine (e.g., http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/is-the-world-re/). Yes, it will have a cost but so does everything.

Not necessarily. Take for example Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace. He did a complete 180 on nuclear power, seeing it now as one of the few vital long-term energy sources.

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/11/moore_qa

I apologize to the little toadies, and hope you save many lives with this.

Please don't apologise to them. "Rescuing people after disasters" is always trotted out as an excuse for developing military technology - but how many drones were deployed in Japan? Zero. How many have been deployed in Afghanistan and Pakistan? More than 7,000. (And that report is two years out of date.)

Incidentally, it's cute of the press release to choose the word 'compound', which suggests a foreign location, rather than the word 'house', which might make the readers reflect on future applications of this technology in their own neighbourhoods.

*snip*

I don't want anyone to forget their illegal warrantless wiretapping and the massive lobbying effort get themselves retroactive immunity for their cooperation over the illegal spying on you.

Thank You for reminding everyone. I was gonna do that till I saw your post.

My one strong caveat (I did say it was worth a SECOND look - which happens here) - once you identify a technology that might be of interest, the question should always be, "Is this worth it (time, money, pedagogy, etc.), and can I do the same thing low-tech?" This is where you cut out the "It's just like real life, but ONLINE!" instinct that sometimes pops up.

Even if the same thing could be done low-tech, it may still be worth adapting into high-tech - but make sure your reasons are good. [...]

That reminds me of http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html:

Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?

That's an article I revisit from time to time, to remind me to cut out the "It's just like real life, but ONLINE!" instinct.

Is that the same Google that censors its Chinese search results to block terms like "democracy"? Guess oppression is okay unless you try to steal their source code or interfere with the quality of their services.

Computers can be used to detect earthquakes:
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/03/quake_network

You can get a free sensor from the Quake Catcher network (or use a laptop).
http://qcn.ucr.edu/

Another subject that might be interesting: Fossils.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinofossils/Fossilhow.html

Bert

GSM is only great when you can buy an unlocked phone, choose a provider and pop in a SIM, then change on a whim while paying lower monthly prices due to the lack of a subsidy.

T-Mobile will give you the code to unlock your phone on request for customers of 3 months or more (I believe).

ATT will not.

I don't want anyone to forget their illegal warrantless wiretapping and the massive lobbying effort get themselves retroactive immunity for their cooperation over the illegal spying on you.

Apple have already been blocking apps based on whether they agree with the 'message' or not (or at least based on what they think their customers will find offensive), so whether you consider maturity rated content fundamentally different is actually a moot point here.

I'm pretty sure that before the iOS App Store launched, Steve Jobs himself said that pornography would not be allowed. Apple guidelines have been less clear on other aspects but they have been clear on pornography. Their reasoning was that the store was supposed to cater to families. While it is possible for them to install all sorts of parental controls to prevent access to pornography for children, it is far easier not to have it in the first place. In this aspect, Steve Jobs openly endorsed Android if you want porn.

“You know, there’s a porn store for Android,” Jobs said. “You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to go there.”

Geologists also believed a 9.0 earthquake virtually impossible from the location where the Japanese earthquake happened: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/japan-earthquake-surpise/

I don't really buy that. It was a subduction zone. All subduction zones are capable of huge quakes. The article seems to imply that because there had been no quake bigger than 7.5-8.0 from the area in recorded history, scientists didn't believe anything bigger was possible. The problem with that is these huge 9+ quakes typically have intervals of centuries or millenia. So unless you have several thousand years of good records, you're on shaky ground (no pun intended) predicting a huge earthquake cannot happen at a portion of a subduction zone.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the moment magnitude scale used to classify earthquakes is a measure of the energy released by the quake. The energy released is roughly the amplitude of movement of the two chunks of land along the fault multiplied by the surface area (m^2, not area at the surface) of the fault which slipped. Slip-strike faults like the San Andreas have two chunks of land moving past each other sideways. They extend only a few tens of km down into the ground because that's how thick the Earth's crust is. Essentially they're long and skinny. So they only way they can generate huge magnitudes is if a very long segment of the fault (several hundred km, probably several thousand for a 9.0) were to slip. This is (1) unlikely to happen - one segment of the fault is likely to slip before the other thus making several smaller quakes instead of one huge one, and (2) would distribute the energy of the earthquake over a much larger land surface area, blunting its impact on any one area.

A subduction zone quake OTOH involves one plate moving underneath the other. This results in a broader contact area, sometimes a hundred km in breadth or more. A shorter length of the fault slipping involves a larger area because the area which slips is shaped more like a square or broad rectangle, rather than a long, thin rectangle. As a result, a shorter segment of the fault slipping has more energy released, that energy is directed at a smaller land surface area, and because of the broader contact area it's easier for a longer segment of the fault to slip. The segment of earth which slipped in the 1960 Chilean quake (9.5) is estimated to be 800 km long. That'd be like a California earthquake stretching from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which is just inconceivable due to the relatively small depth of the San Andreas fault.

People have been predicting a big California earthquake for many years. Yes, it'll happen at some point but if you're really worried about it then don't live in California (or the Pacific Northwest).

The most dangerous area for an earthquake in the continguous U.S. is in the south-central Midwest. That area has produced the largest earthquake in recorded U.S. history (8.0), and because of the infrequency of earthquakes there the building construction codes and preparedness are woefully inadequate. I live in Southern California which has a reputation as a hotspot for earthquakes, but you could not pay me enough to live around St. Louis. Well, maybe if I got to design and build my own house, and it came with its own drinking water well and power generation facilitie

December 12, 2008: Fullest Moon in 15 Years Tonight:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/fullest-moon-in/

Geologists also believed a 9.0 earthquake virtually impossible from the location where the Japanese earthquake happened: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/japan-earthquake-surpise/

People have been predicting a big California earthquake for many years. Yes, it'll happen at some point but if you're really worried about it then don't live in California (or the Pacific Northwest).

Your laptop can be used to detect earthquakes:
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/03/quake_network

Join the Quake Catcher network
http://qcn.ucr.edu/

Bert

How about some mobile nuclear reactors, or as Wired titled an article:

In Soviet Union, nuclear reactors finds you!

  Russian mobile nuclear reactors

There are Power station ships, but given the power requirements of Japan, they would need 30 of these.

Though it looks like the future is going to be Modular nuclear reactors, which are smaller than the conventional 3 GigaWatt reactor, but can be strung together and transported by container.

Even if I was streaming pandara all day, and surfing the internet, and using various network aware apps and youtube (which would conflict with pandora from an audio standpoint), it would still be hard to hit 220 meg between say 930am and 1130am on lines 336 and 337.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but couldn't you be doing something perfectly legitimate like streaming live baseball or even just watching YouTube videos? I imagine that would use a rather large chunk of data rather quickly.

Actually, the Mediterranean Sea completely dried up about five and a half million years ago. The Straights of Gibraltar reopened at that point and reflooded the Mediterranean with a giant waterfall, or a huge river.

At that age no people would be around to watch the show, but some of our hominid ancestors could have taken their honeymoon at the Gibraltar Falls... maybe. Early bipedal hominids date to almost exactly that time period, maybe a little later.

Everything's half-analogue-half-digital at the moment. Europe uses DVB-S(2), the US uses ATSC, and everyone uses weird and wonderful analogue fallbacks and legacy MPEG 2 in odd containers. Used to be you could pull in downlinks from news channels and the like if you had a large enough dish, but now pretty much everything interesting you can pick up with your dish is both digital and non-trivially encrypted. Of course, occasionally it isn't.

Guitar Rising was first to announce a real guitar game back in 2008 but never released, presumably because of problems with the polyphonic pitch detection.

The first real guitar game released was LittleBigStar, back in 2009. LittleBigStar supported a wide range of instruments, including guitar and bass, and loaded mp3s and standard tablatures in different open formats. It had a good momentum and indie developers made different kinds of musicgames, which they called MusicWare, but it was closed down two years ago. By those measures RockSmith is hardly new...

The LittleBigStar team decided to go commercial, presumably because they had success cracking the polyphonic pitch detection nut. They released Offbeat guitarist which is freeware, support open formats and works great.

In 2009 Disney claimed to have found the holy grail of music gaming: Disney Star Guitarist but it was never released.

In 2010 Rise of the SixString was released with a guitar-controller hybrid.

Holiday 2010, Harmonix showed RockBand 3 pro-mode with the Squier Strat Controller. It went for sale in BestBuy stores in March 2011.

Holiday 2011, UbiSoft claim to have found the big new thing...

Look what happened when LifeLock's Todd Davis posted his SSN publicly. Now imagine that everybody's SSN was available publicly. What could possibly go wrong?

bribery, hidden agendas, employee abuse, poor environmental practices

Did you even try googling any of those? Perhaps you've been so poorly bribed that, abused by Microsoft though you may be, your hidden agenda is to astroturf on tech news sites, polluting them?

Bribery:

• 2005-2010 Bing "Loyalty Rewards" program - widely derided as an attempt to grab customers with bribes. If Bing is as good as they want it to be, why do they need to offer cash?
• 2007 OOXML ISO process bribes - you may want to argue about rewarding people for using Microsoft products, by "competitive behavior" maybe you mean offering incentives to a few key people to get things done. But for a standards process, that is bribery. Standards must be evaluated on their technical merit alone. (PDF warning)
• 2006 Bloggers bribed with laptops - when every news site is calling it a bribe, I'd say it's not just "competitive behavior."

Hidden Agendas

• 2010 - Microsoft's shell company, Attachmate, attempted to buy 882 patents from Novell.
• 2007 - Here's the same wired story about OOXML. I'm not going to do your googling for you; this one's obvious.
• 2005 - Microsoft's addition of PDF support. I didn't even know about this one, but it turns up in a google search... Dude, do your own homework next time.

Employee Abuse

• Have you never heard of throwing chairs? Seriously?
• Microsoft's continuing problems with their Chinese workforce - remember, don't hire them directly. Farm it out to a subsidiary to distance yourself from the inevitable PR disaster.

Poor Environmental Practices
Did you mean to suggest Microsoft is a hardware company?

Or can we count all the useless trash they have pushed out the door, forcing users to reformat their machines as soon as they buy them so they can downgrade to a decent OS, Vista ending up straight in the landfill?

bribery, hidden agendas, employee abuse, poor environmental practices

Did you even try googling any of those? Perhaps you've been so poorly bribed that, abused by Microsoft though you may be, your hidden agenda is to astroturf on tech news sites, polluting them?

Bribery:

• 2005-2010 Bing "Loyalty Rewards" program - widely derided as an attempt to grab customers with bribes. If Bing is as good as they want it to be, why do they need to offer cash?
• 2007 OOXML ISO process bribes - you may want to argue about rewarding people for using Microsoft products, by "competitive behavior" maybe you mean offering incentives to a few key people to get things done. But for a standards process, that is bribery. Standards must be evaluated on their technical merit alone. (PDF warning)
• 2006 Bloggers bribed with laptops - when every news site is calling it a bribe, I'd say it's not just "competitive behavior."

Hidden Agendas

• 2010 - Microsoft's shell company, Attachmate, attempted to buy 882 patents from Novell.
• 2007 - Here's the same wired story about OOXML. I'm not going to do your googling for you; this one's obvious.
• 2005 - Microsoft's addition of PDF support. I didn't even know about this one, but it turns up in a google search... Dude, do your own homework next time.

Employee Abuse

• Have you never heard of throwing chairs? Seriously?
• Microsoft's continuing problems with their Chinese workforce - remember, don't hire them directly. Farm it out to a subsidiary to distance yourself from the inevitable PR disaster.

Poor Environmental Practices
Did you mean to suggest Microsoft is a hardware company?

Or can we count all the useless trash they have pushed out the door, forcing users to reformat their machines as soon as they buy them so they can downgrade to a decent OS, Vista ending up straight in the landfill?

Interesting. I'd mod you up if I could. I doubt many people here are actually arguing for the elimination of copyright, but let's consider that a bit more carefully. Software is the easier one to look at, because it's always a work in progress. There are improvements, upgrades, bug fixes, and compatibility updates to make. If Microsoft took my software and started selling it as their own and put me out of business, they'd be stuck with static buggy code and a lot of upset customers. Consumers would have a natural incentive to buy from the true author (me), because I'll keep it running and they'll get their improvements. For songwriters and composers, the absence of copyright would probably break that business model. But it would also open a world of possibilities, where mashups and samples could be freely applied as the artist desires, without having to negotiate or investigate the legality of each piece. It would create a world where we could watch babies dance to Prince songs, or sing "Happy Birthday" to our niece without having to first negotiate performance rights. It would be different than the current market model, but I doubt it would be the catastrophe you envision. It might even be kinda neat.

The Transparent Society from Wired explored an idea like this.

Poison Beer Incorporated will now be concentrating on Thalidomide Cola, where it sees the future of its toxic drink product sales.

Not to take a joke seriously, but Thalidomide isn't very "toxic." That was one of it's selling points in fact. It is a potent teratogen, but those of us who are fully formed, it appears safer than most medicines.

It had been tested extensively on mice and found to be nontoxic. It was so harmless, in fact, that no lethal dose could be established.

Wired

Much of the hacking now is government-sponsored too. China, Israel, the U.S., and Russia have all been allegedly involved in this for some time (probably a lot of others too). Stuxnet, theft of Google source code, you name it. Seems like everyone is in the cybercrime (or cyberwarfare if you want to stick a more polite euphemism on it) business these days.

Mod parent up. Wired had a pretty interesting article about Thorium reactors a while ago:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1

I still don't understand why it isn't more popular...

Recently, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other American Internet giants have participated directly in the social storm that has engulfed the Middle East. They have played a key role in manufacturing social disorder, serving a role entirely inappropriate to their status. Wael Ghonim, Google's chief representative in the Middle Eastern and North African markets even rendered assistance to Mohamed ElBaradei in driving forward the anti-government movement in Egypt, becoming the chief agent behind Egyptian demonstrations. The facts have shown that Google is not purely a company, that it seeks not only to make the money of other nations, but also meddles in the political affairs of other countries. It is not just a search engine tool - it is a tool to extend American hegemony.

In the Internet age, whoever dominates the Internet dominates the world. As the world's leading hegemonic power, America has always prioritized the Internet and sought to use the Internet as a means of promoting America's national interests around the world. Google has been very cooperative with this strategic motive of the United States government, and its cooperation has been active.

The enterprise with the world's highest online traffic, Google monopolizes the online search engine markets for the vast majority of nations and regions in the world, and it has the capacity to dominate online information, widely propagate lies and influence the information climate. When a number of countries in the Middle East experienced signs of instability due to inflation and other problems, Google immediately went on the offensive, even allowing a senior company manager to directly establish the online general headquarters of the anti-government movement, fostering successive protest movements and nakedly interfering with the internal politics of other nations. These actions of Google's are astonishing, and they lead people naturally to recall the British East India Company.

In the colonial era, the British East India Company used the monopolization of trade in the colonies to traffic opium and assist Britain in building its hegemony. In the Internet era, Google uses its monopoly of Internet information search to promote American values and assist America in building its hegemony.

At its heart, Google is quite similar to the British East India Company. But in managing its outward appearance it is far more skillful than the British East India Company ever was. Google does not burn, kill and pillage, but rather is a master of disguises. Against the modus operandi of the British East India Company, which was to "carry out trade when necessary and plunder when possible," Google's slogan is far more bewitching: "Do no evil." The problem is that no company on earth "does evil" as a matter of creed, and it is a bit hypocritical for Google to say it "does no evil." The facts show that this "Do no evil" is actually an admission of guilt through a protestation of innocence.

This company that claims to "do no evil" has cooperated with America's National Security Agency to monitor the private information of American citizens. It has been taken to court by publishing companies in France, Germany, Belgium and many countries for violations of copyright. It has been compelled by China and other countries to clean up its act because it disseminates pornographic content. And most recently it has also openly released subversive information, fomenting unrest in other countries. Before the facts, Google's creed of "Do no evil" is like a joke. Is it any wonder that Apple CEO Steve Jobs once said that Google's "Do no evil" creed was complete nonsense?

and you don't expect the lawyers to start asking for personal data because of trolling. (I'm going to shoot that president, and the vice-president of the United States with my ak47.)

The idea that a single off-the-cuff comment is hardly going to lead to all sorts of trouble coming down on you is an interesting view to take, however ITYF it's not shared by the majority of those in positions of authority.

I swear I saw a story the other night that they printed out a heart. I was only half paying attention and had a few drinks so I just kind of shook it off like I must have missed something. Turns out they didn't just print them out but the thing beats.... eeerry
OB " ITS ALIVE!!!!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHA"

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/printed-heart-c/

"Organ ‘Printing’ Creates Beating Heart Cells"
"A Missouri professor took several types of chicken heart cells and 3D printed them into large sheets with cell-friendly gel. The cells took over from there, sorting themselves into working order. Then they began beating, just as a heart would."

Really mankind? After http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html are we really in the position to waste our helium on a freaking flying house? I weep for humanity.

So you're comparing the ability to opt out via settings which rarely anyone will look into, and a vague catch all GPS icon with an itemized list of activities an app performs before installation. Sorry but regardless of how you defend this one Apple sucks at this compared to Android.

Considering that on an iOS device also informs the user and asks for permission the first an app uses GPS - how does Apple suck compared to Android? Because it actually gives more information about apps using GPS to the user than Android? Too confusing for you?

Heck, Something as simple as changing your Android phone’s wallpaper or downloading a ringtone could transmit personal data about you, including your location, without your knowledge. . Android, not iPhone.

'Of course, that may just be the plateau before it falls off the next cliff.'

The next cliff is already emerging through the mist, e.g.:

http://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/life-tech-outlines-single-molecule-sequencing-long-pieces-dna

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/guest-post-introduction-to-nanopore-sequencing/

It's not clear which 'single-molecule' technology will eventually win out, but it will almost certainly have the word 'nano' in it somewhere.

Here you go: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/motorola-apple-1984-superbowl/

You can make an aerogel suitable for home insulation purposes yourself. Just requires some practice, a 10 year old kid did it back in 2002.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/03/ten-year-old-ma/

Also, there are several companies producing aerogel insulation sheets for the few places regular insulation doesn't make sense. e.g. really thin walls or shims between framing. Anywhere you aren't space constrained, you're probably better off just adding more conventional insulation.

Except that, in most deletion debates, 'meatpuppet' means 'domain expert who created a Wikipedia account to give a professional opinion after an article in their field was marked for deletion'.

Didn't you hear? Experts are scum.

Oh, wait, I need a citation, right? One of the most accurate articles about Wikipedia.

You can buy a third party adaptor That lets you read SD cards on an iPad or iPhone.

Once again, the DoJ is found to be involved in shady dealings involving software to track and correlate people.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw.html

Based upon other articles HBGary Federal was floated by HBGary and that HBGary Federal never landed the big contracts it needed to survive, thus the implosion. I'd say it was a public implosion, but it was only public thanks to Anonymous. The were trying to sell "0-day kits" and other services, but no one bought them. Check http://www.wired.com/topics/HBGary_Inc. There is no way to know what they sold in reality, our only knowledge comes from the fact they were going broke fast. Had they provided real kits to the government, the funding would have kept them in business and they would never have needed to prove their creds by going after Anonymous, Wikileaks and pull the other crap that might land them in jail.

Dams do this do, e.g. the Hoover Dam and the recent quake in China. Read more at "Top 5 Ways to Cause a Man-Made Earthquake": http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/top-5-ways-that/

"They of course could recoup those costs with a paywall, but people like you wouldn't pay it because of your entitlement." - by Merk42 (1906718) on Monday February 28, @10:07AM (#35337862)

Seems to ME that both advertisers AND WEBMASTERS have the sense of "entitlement" here, not users... after all - you're the one making it sound as if adbanners are "mandatory" & they are CLEARLY not...

Lastly/Once more - People already PAY ENOUGH ALREADY just to be online, but they do NOT PAY TO KEEP SOME WEBMASTER or ADVERTISER there! )

(OR, is the list in my p.s. below not worth avoiding for the end-user??)

BOTTOM-LINE HERE, is THIS, for the "end-user", by blocking out adbanners:

More speed, more security, & a less annoying web-surfing experience (just by blocking-out adbanners alone!)... AND, getting ALL OF WHAT YOU PAY FOR, speed-wise too!

"Beat that with a stick"

---

"Yes let's ban all ads, then a lot of people won't be able to put anything up because they can't afford the bandwidth costs." - by Merk42 (1906718) on Monday February 28, @10:07AM (#35337862)

Then, as I said above? ONLY THE STRONG (or determined & passionate/sincere about their love of a particular topic they start a website on) WILL SURVIVE... period!

("Welcome to the Jungle", in other words, & "The Times they are a changin'"!)

APK

P.S.=> Again, for your reference (w/ a NEW one I just added, showing the London Stock Exchange serving up malware via adbanners, today, "hot off the presses"):

---

Ad networks owned by Google, Microsoft serve malware:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/13/doubleclick_msn_malware_attacks/

---

Attacks Targeting Classified Ad Sites Surge:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/02/02/1433210/Attacks-Targeting-Classified-Ad-Sites-Surge

---

Hackers Respond To Help Wanted Ads With Malware:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/01/20/0228258/Hackers-Respond-To-Help-Wanted-Ads-With-Malware

---

Hackers Use Banner Ads on Major Sites to Hijack Your PC:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/11/doubleclick

---

Ruskie gang hijacks Microsoft network to push penis pills:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/12/microsoft_ips_hijacked/

---

Major ISPs Injecting Ads, Vulnerabilities Into Web:

http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/04/19/2148215.shtml

---

Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/04/02/0058247.shtml

---

Two Major Ad Networks Found Serving Malware:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/13/0128249/Two-Major-Ad-Networks-Found-Serving-Malware

---

ADBANNERS SLOW DOWN THE WEB:

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/11/30/166218

---

THE NEXT AD YOU CLICK MAY BE A VIRUS:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/2056219/The-Next-Ad-You-Click-May-Be-a-Virus

---

NY TIMES INFECTED WITH MALWARE ADBANNER:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/security-snow-leopard/

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hack-windows-security-snow-leopard,8704.html

Honestly your list seems long but if you factor it down you have a simple list:
People who run credit checks on you...
Doctors
College
Work

The credit check people (verizon, cable companies, etc) will need it to credit check you so they assure to themselves that you are a good paying customer. The doctor would use it most likely as a unique ID and proof of a unique record or even to file your health insurance claims. College... same and work... well work is probably the most obvious... they pay you and would need it to do their paperwork. I am sure there are times where it isn't necessary, but I think you blew it out of proportion.

I think people have put this whole Social Security number thing on some pedestal. The life lock guy put his social security number on TV and got his identity stolen 13 times? http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/lifelock-identity-theft/

That alone proves to me that the social security numbers are pretty secure the way they are. If you put your social on public television and you have "some" problems... you're doing pretty good. Everyone I know who has had there identity stolen was not because their social was easily accessible. Just my two cents.

Firstly, lack of a registration system is ridiculously onerous to the public at large, which is a far larger and more important group than mere authors or rightsholders.

We are all authors and rightsholders. See the Cooksource.com controversy for instance. Or any of the many stories about peoples personal photos being taken from the net and used for advertising, sometimes even in ways that were offensive to the rights-holder.

Secondly, persons doing business internationally already have to deal with a myriad of forms. ... In practice, few authors will care about a lot of these countries, and so can ignore the burden that may come with obtaining rights; others will care, and to them it will be nothing more than the cost of doing business. Indeed, if it costs more to get rights than the rights are worth, they won't even bother, since copyright is, after all, a purely economic matter.

Just because an independent author is not currently selling his book in Burkina Faso doesn't mean that someone else should be able to do it for free. If I'm publishing on Lulu.com or whatever, I'm small-fry. I can't afford to register my book everywhere in one go. Maybe I want to release worldwide eventually, but under your system I either have to be able to do that from day one, or I forego the ability to ever do it. Who does this benefit? Not the independent author -- it only benefits big business.

And if an author doesn't care enough about how his work will be protected in every corner of the world to take at least some modest action, why should the natives of those corners care either?

Are you saying I have to register my Facebook profile pic in every country in the world to avoid it being used by someone else for whatever they want?

HAL.

In the U.S., DSL and cable Internet access were formerly regulated by the FCC according to different rules, but in 2005 the FCC re-classified DSL according to the more permissive cable rules -- Wikipedia

So I apologize, it was only DSL and other phone-line based internet that was regulated under common carrier laws under the telecommunications act. However, it still stands that these are not new regulations. The desire of proponents of Net Neutrality is to reclassify all internet access under the telecommunications rules for Common Carriers and unbundling etc.

I've seen the fake picture you mention. However, I've also seen this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/carriers-net-neutrality-tiers/ which is not fake at all. In fact, it looks remarkably similar to the satirical image you were referring to.

Not only that, but the UK is starting to warm up to tiered internet like this http://www.telecoms.com/23428/uk-warms-to-tiered-internet/ so of course we'll start seeing ISPs in the US clambering to do the same thing.

Let Corporation A and Corporation B fight it out

You're under the mistaken impression that there is competition in the ISP industry. Corporation A and Corporation B aren't going to fight at all. They are going to agree not to poach each other's customers by being in different areas and do the exact same thing, allow companies to pay for priority service. This is a horrible thing for consumers and once we let the ISPs follow through and get entrenched doing this, not only would we have to fight the ISPs to implement Net Neutrality, but we'd have to fight all the companies paying for priority service so they don't lose the advantage they gain by paying exorbitant sums of money to ISPs.

I'm also sure that when the ISPs follow through with what they want to do, everyone who said that Net Neutrality should wait until they actually do something, will come up with some other reason why not to implement Net Neutrality.

Based on the current crop of micro RC helicopters, I'd be surprised if this gizmo has enough battery life for more than 10-15 minutes of flight.

According to a Wired article, the flight time has, indeed, only reached about 10 minutes.

Err, link should be this.