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you mean something like this?

Speaking of ehow (Demand Media), here's a great article about how they're junking up the SERPs. It's not just small time link farms, it's industrial strength pollution backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/

Google is going to need to take a firm stand. And they most likely want to do it desperately now that there's some real competition. But it's a tough nut to crack and they certainly don't want to upset their applecart (i.e. ad revenues).

DMCA:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/

Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson-Moss_Warranty_Act

specifically:
The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance.

Actually according to Wired, a jet plane from an unusual angle is the most likely explanation : http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/mystery-missile-is-probably-a-jet/ It also explains why happening near a crowded area, we only have two videos.

Google forced Popcorn Hour to remove their youtube movie viewing capability because it hadn't been sanctioned by google.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/youtube-blocks-non-partner-device-syabas-as-allegations-fly/

Publishing photos in a commercial context, for instance, advertising, requires the consent of everyone in the picture.

They must have got through a stack of model release forms for this one

What about this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/images/2005/12/22/football_crowd_203_203x152.jpg Or this: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42722000/jpg/_42722459_live_aid_pa_416.jpg

Look around a tad bit more.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/britain-to-put-cctv-cameras-inside-private-homes/

HOwever, you would need to fit some criteria before they are in your home specifically.

Toyota found to be playing cost analysis games when their products are defective? Hmmm, last I heard, the unintended acceleration cases were primarily overblown: see here. Also, I am not entirely sure what your point is with regards to the FAA and NTSB. Both agencies are setup to help regulate both the logistics and safety concerns regarding modern transportation, which, incidentally, also includes regulating space tourism: see here. The reason some regulation is needed is not because every company that has access to a particular technology will abuse it at the expense of its customers. The reason regulation is needed is because in any industry there will be a lot of quackery products right alongside viable products. So, while Virgin or SpaceX might establish a safe and healthy space tourism industry because they need continued revenue from customers, another company might come along, make some, "too good to be true," claims about cheap access to space, charge it's first set of customers for a ride, kill them, and run off with their money. Regulation helps establish a barrier of entry at a particular point that balances the need to prevent a monopoly with the need to prevent fraud. This is a good and necessary thing.

If you are under the impression that any and all companies will hurt their customers simply to make a buck, you are quite mistaken. While there is no shortage of examples of this happening, there are also quite a few companies that genuinely do attempt to provide good, safe products. Some that come to mind are Trader Joe's groceries, Maytag appliances, Cessna, and Bobrick. It's easy to think that companies and corporations are out to do nothing more than screw their customers because that's all we see in the news about companies and corporations. But what a lot of us fail to realize is that for every scandal story involving a single company, there are probably a dozen other small, medium, and even large companies that don't make the nightly report because they don't screw their customers. Thus, we get inundated with a very single-sided view of business.

So I guess what I am getting at is that, while there are companies that have killed people in the past (due, more often, to accident rather than negligence), there are also a lot of companies that haven't. Thus, immediately jumping to the conclusion that a new industry, filled with new players, is going to skimp on safety in order to save a buck is nothing more than bias. As it stands now, we don't have enough data to determine whether or not Virgin, SpaceX, Bigelow, Masten, or anyone else is going to kill their customers. My default assumption as an engineer is that they won't because, well, their engineers get paid not to. Supposing someone does die in a crash eventually (and eventually someone will, I have no doubt about that), I will wager that occurs due to some unforeseeable accident (which does happen because even the most intelligent engineers and scientists are not precognitive) rather than some terrible negligence or intentional flaunting of safety regulations on a company's part. As the space tourism industry stands right now, it is employing some of the most talented engineers in the field, and it is under extreme scrutiny by existing players (NASA and the FAA, not to mention various congressional financing committees), thus, I think jumping to the conclusion that any players in the industry will skimp on safety is fairly unfounded cynicism.

Democrats may have greater support among the Hollywood celebrities that are visible to the public, but I don't think there is much evidence that they have closer ties to the megacorps that actually own the studios, who are who the MPAA represents.

Let me enlighten you...

• Gershengorn, a partner with RIAA-firm Jenner & Block, represented the labels against Grokster (.pdf) and will be in charge of the DOJ Federal Programs Branch. That’s the unit that just told a federal judge the Obama administration supports monetary damages as high as $150,000 per purloined music track on a peer-to-peer file sharing program.
• Donald Verrilli, associate deputy attorney general — the No. 3 in the DOJ, who unsuccessfully urged a federal judge to uphold the $222,000 file sharing verdict against Jammie Thomas.
• Tom Perrilli, as Verrilli’s former boss, the Justice Department’s No. 2 argued in 2002 that internet service providers should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena.
• Brian Hauck, counsel to associate attorney general, worked on the Grokster case on behalf of the record labels.
• Ginger Anders, assistant to the solicitor general, litigated on the Cablevision case.

Source Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept

Wired posted an article about this same subject, but they weren't as nice. They made it clear that the W3C tests catered specifically to the parts of the HTML5 standard that IE9 actually got right(and was coincidentally all part of Silverlight). Now those parts were the most used(video tags & what not), but in the other areas IE9 sucks just as bad as IE6 did at whatever standard was out when it was released. It appears M$ has the W3C in their pocket from the results posted.

...according to the test developers.

According to wired:

Run IE9 against other aspects of HTML5 and the browser would be decidedly behind its competitors. IE9 lacks support for Web Workers, drag-and-drop features, SVG animations and the File API, all of which are vital components for building useful web applications, and all of which enjoy considerable support in other browsers.

Here's a Wired article talking about the mistake. That said, suggesting that a government with an (apparently) moderately effective web filter "isn't too web savy" on the basis of a newspaper's screw up 8 years ago might be taking things a little far.

Your post on this is entirely idiotic.

Of course Apple had no idea that they were distributing an App (regardless of which 3rd party submitted it) which contravened the applications original licence GPLv2?

Yet they did/can decide if any App has been developed to use interpreted code? http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357121/apple-bans-flash-from-iphone-and-ipad

They can manage to filter (censor) this award winning political cartoonist, until the world calls their bluff! http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-bans-satire/ how many less connected voices are also quietly sidelined?

And of course they can prevent Apps with explicit content. http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/did-apple-just-ban-sexual-content-from-the-app-store/

Still the approval process could never have known this was an issue.

The final piece of idiocy in the post is to blame gpl zealots for the fact that a free (in many more ways than you seem to understand) media player won't stay on iOS. One for that matter that enables users to sidestep the frankly idiotic patent/license/drm/locked in nonsense around video, that Apple (and several other corporate interest groups) uses for self serving, anti competitive practices. Not to mention their practices simply disadvantages users. Open formats are better for end users - end of, some things are infrastructure even in capitalism, language for example, why we should even allow formats for video etc to be tied up in IP hell I really don't know.

Frankly VLC doesn't have a proprietary, Apple approved equivalent for a simple reason - such organisations/developers have no interest in empowering you, it is the GPL zealots you complain about that take the risks to challenge these practices.

Still what do I know, why not watch your media on Apples quality media player software, while you're at it, manage your media using the excellent iTunes. I know when I want to move my data from one device I OWN, to another that I OWN, I like to actually "think different"!

>But may I ask: What does your "corporate-phobia" post have to do with the previous posts?

I have no beef with your post. Nokia is indeed a KDE patron.

I was just using corporate-phobia to describe the feeling that inspires "Qt (Nokia) doesn't care about KDE".

Which, IMHO, is just FOSS community whining that they don't really love us. I mean, do we need corps to rock RMS to sleep, and then we'll be satisfied?

Corporations use opensource for their own advantages, but that doesn't mean we have to constantly fear what they're going to do before they've actually done it (or said they won't):

The more KDE is used, the more Qt apps there are. And the more Qt devs. And Nokia wants Qt devs to create apps to counter iPhone and Android app stores.

The more OpenOffice is used, the less MS can lock down businesses, and the less of a premium it can charge for its cash cow when there's an alternative. Larry E spent $175 million on the Network Computer just to make Microsoft work sweat. And MS fears OpenOffice.

So, let's all learned relax a little.

Wired: Wingdings of Disease

Washington Times (reprint): U.S. secrets aboard latest Chinese sub
http://www.taiwandc.org/washt9908.htm

Popular Mechanics: How China Steals U.S. Military Secrets
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/3319656

San Francisco Chronicle: China's war on the U.S. economy
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-01-15/opinion/17828392_1_security-review-commission-china-s-internet-currency-manipulation

Wired: Good Old Fashioned Espionage
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/07/good-old-fashioned-industrial-espionage/

This was on boing boing a couple days ago. Probably digg, reddit, and who knows where else too

I first read about this in Wired back in June or July. I'm sure it was in some photog publication a while before that, and folks at the George Eastman House have probably been publicizing by word-of-mouth in their circle since they first laid eyes on the plates.

There in a link in the comments section to a much better article that explains why even though these fossils are from Africa they are being linked to primate origins in Asia.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/where-did-all-these-primates-come-from-fossil-teeth-may-hint-at-an-asian-origin-for-anthropoid-primates/

Consider http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/count-ipads-as-pcs-and-apple-is-number-one-in-us/ and the fact that corporate US has barely deployed Windows 7 at all. It's my belief that Windows 7 is the best that Microsoft's put out in decades, but that's damning with faint praise.

The number you cite is nothing to sneeze at, and its source is Microsoft themselves. You won't hear the billions that were sold by Canonical for Ubuntu. You won't hear the billions sold by Apple because their OS is bundled.

You won't find how many are in actual use, because of bundle deals with OEMs; how many of those OEM machines were retrofit to XP?

It's my belief that Microsoft jumped the shark several years ago, and as big as they are, you're only now seeing the real fall-out. There's more to come. The Windows oil well in the basement is running out of oil.

Not lying dude, just being sloppy and lazy, as in, my goal was not to deceive, it was to point out that balking at $1 for a favorite game when you are implicitly willing to spend hundreds (is that better?) just to carry the thing is ridiculous.

(and I wasn't trying to paint the iPhone as being expensive, Wired says it isn't particularly so:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/the-real-cost-of-iphone-4-vs-android-rivals/

I was setting a benchmark of comparison for the $1, which isn't really a relevant amount for a person that can afford an iPhone. So the $1 is effectively $0, and the OP was using that $0 to make a statement about not liking Apple's management of their platform. Which was ridiculous.)

Except in Korea you must register for all accounts using your Resident registration number. I mean everything: ISPs, bank sites, WoW, blog comments, etc. As such it's fairly easy to track people down since there is no concept of anonymity on the South Korean Internet. As such all they need to do to block you is put your RRN on the black list and you won't be able to get access again.

The Korean authorities also been known to track people down who say critical things about them using this ID as well and make things difficult.

That means they could sue Google under the provisions of DMCA.

No they couldn't.

Since when has anyone ever NOT been able to sue someone over just about anything?

IETF and the W3C say that they're purely advisory

And you're relying on a judge understanding that.

Not to mention, it's probably against their terms of service, probably a line in there about "automated scripts/scraping utilities".
And thanks to the recent problems, it's now apparently a federal case to violate a site's terms of service.

Now, the above case was a "won't sumbuddy think of tha childrin?!!!" case, but you're just as likely to get a court which is "favorable" to big media (*cough*Texas*cough*).

Probably because they don't have any documents pertaining to Russian actions in Chechnya. This is a group that leaked a list of their own contributors so it's not as though they're opposed to releasing the information for some reason. I imagine if they had something that they felt was reliable they'd release it.

The "It takes $1 billion and 5 years to launch a new vehicle" is simply bullshit. It make take that long if you do it the way Detroit does it, but history has shown that Detroit is doing it wrong! Modern businesses are no longer the huge vertically integrated monopolies of the early industrial age; it is now possible to buy everything from out of house. "Wrong kind of engineers" is also bullshit -- create a demand for automotive engineers and Stanford and Berkly will train them! Granted, there is a 4-year lag, but the reason there is a Silicon Valley in the first place is because the world-class universities in the area created a pool of world-class engineers. Again, having engineers that are trained to do things "the GM way" is a disadvantage, not an advantage.

Spoken like a true armchair CEO. Just so you know, the auto industry is already one of the most horizontally stratified industries out there. If you think they're vertically integrated, you're entirely wrong. Why do you think every auto maker nearly had a heart attack when GM/Chrysler were in dire straights. They all used the same suppliers. If one major supplier collapsed, the entire industry would take a hit. Don't believe me? Do some research.

Tesla is trying to change that. They're trying a more vertically integrated strategy. But everyone in the auto industry that actually understands how things work is laughing at them. Remember when they took hundreds of millions in government loans? Don't expect to ever see that back.

Oh, and you say that engineers will come... well Tesla tried that too. HQ based in California and tried to do R&D there. Only they realized the talent wasn't around... so they moved everything to Detroit.

Everyone thinks they know how to run an industry. Until you're actually put in charge or look into the details does one actually realize the difficulty of the task.

Encryption is worthless when the government twists the arms of encryption providers to cough up a master encryption key.

The FBI now wants to require all encrypted communications systems to have back doors for surveillance, according to a New York Times report, and to the nation’s top crypto experts it sounds like a battle they’ve fought before.

FBI Drive for Encryption Backdoors Is Déjà Vu for Security Experts

I think Apple did try to go after the iPhone-dev team. However, it was found in a court of law that jailbreaking is legal. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/

Sharpie markers can be used to "enable piracy".
Should we ban Sharpies? Sony has been freaking out over ridiculous stuff for years, and it's high time they get punched in the mouth for it (figuratively speaking, of course).

As for "OtherOS" enabling piracy, it wasn't until after it was removed that the various hacker groups really started trying to crack the PS3.

I blame Sony for everything they have done, whether it was "in reaction to those hackers", or just their own dim-witted execs trying to come up with ways to steal more money from their customers.

When are consumers going to learn? Sony has a long track record of screwing their customers... When Amazon ganked books from the Kindle, there was a public outcry. When Blizzard starts banning people from single-player mode for using cheats in single-player mode, there is an outcry. When Sony fucks their customer base over and over again, some stupid Sony apologist comes out and says "What did you expect?" I agree; What did we expect? Sony has proven over and over again that they cannot be trusted, that they cannot be ethical, and that they do not deserve our money.

And yet morons like you continue to hand it to them. I hope you like how far they're bending you over, and I hope you like the treatment you receive for trying to use one of their products (regardless of whether it's the "intended use").
(Side note: The warranty disclaims that there even is an "intended use".)

For myself, I just refuse to knowingly give them any money. I don't buy DVD movies anymore, in case Sony has their fingers in the producing company. I don't buy CD audio anymore, because I don't want to wonder if I'm going to be infected by the "DRM" on the disk. I don't buy Sony electronics products, because I can't trust them to perform as advertised - and even if they do what they're supposed to today, Sony has proven that their products may not operate that way tomorrow.

I would cheerfully watch Sony go down in flames. I hope their executives starve.

Disclaimer: I am not advocating violence against anyone, merely enraged that Sony still exists, after all the legal shenanigans they have pulled. I might actually be persuaded to knowingly piss on a Sony executive, were he or she actually and visibly on fire.

Isn't this what Dean Kamen made back in 1993, and has been trying to lower the production cost of ever since? (first demonstrated publicly in 2008 on Colbert) http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/colbert-and-kam/

He had little to do with Azure, didn't talk much at company meetings, didn't inspire, didn't do anything.

You sure about that? According to Wired , Ozzie had everything to do with Azure, and spent his first two years on the job reorganizing the company to produce a services platform for the Web. He's quite clear about his intentions and the direction he was pushing the company in his original memo to Microsoft senior management, which was sent out under Bill Gates's email address. And longtime Microsoft observer Mary-Jo Foley says:

As I discovered during the course of my Red Dog meetings, Ozzie was anything but uninvolved in Red Dog and Azure. In fact, I heard from team members time and time again, without Ozzie’s oversight and direct intervention, Red Dog and the broader Azure platform wouldn’t have come together as quickly or comprehensively as they did.

China has indeed made strides, but competitiveness as a global leader in innovation will hinge as much on patent quality as on rate of patent issuance.

I have great hope in Telsa, again, despite the fact that perhaps many will grow up believing "Tesla" makes cars that run on laptop batteries instead of essentially inventing radio, electricity..., but if you read more on their history, it seems to be quite difficult for Tesla to be profitable.

I quite liked this Wired article,

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/ff_tesla/

In the search for that article, this one also jumped off the page, "Elon Musk: I ran out of money"

A cool company, I *LOVE* showing photos of electric vehicles to "petrol heads" who despise anything less than rusty old crap powered by a V8, I use the Telsa Roadster as an example, also my countryman's X1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qDZOBQs60w , what an amazing PROTOTYPE car that thing is!

From the first Wired article, and others, it seems like Tesla (the car company) has always had money problems, much like their namesake.

I have great hope in Telsa, again, despite the fact that perhaps many will grow up believing "Tesla" makes cars that run on laptop batteries instead of essentially inventing radio, electricity..., but if you read more on their history, it seems to be quite difficult for Tesla to be profitable.

I quite liked this Wired article,

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/ff_tesla/

In the search for that article, this one also jumped off the page, "Elon Musk: I ran out of money"

A cool company, I *LOVE* showing photos of electric vehicles to "petrol heads" who despise anything less than rusty old crap powered by a V8, I use the Telsa Roadster as an example, also my countryman's X1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qDZOBQs60w , what an amazing PROTOTYPE car that thing is!

From the first Wired article, and others, it seems like Tesla (the car company) has always had money problems, much like their namesake.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/weird/Las-Vegas-Vdara-Hotel-Death-Ray-104041383.html http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/can-a-building-be-a-sun-death-ray/

What about blanketing large tracts of land in solar-cells? Is that still okay?

Well... there is a critical shortage of raw materials. You see, we are not just reaching peak oil, but peak everything.

Mind you, I am not a pessimist about the energy situation. There is a lot of investment in finding alternatives, and this type of thing looks really good (energy producing roads), not least because the engineers are thinking about the materials to build the roads with.

However, one sad fact remains. Exponential growth cannot continue forever -- at some point something will break. It is just a question of what or when.

Jaguar is building another jet powered car, except this time the jet engine is used to charge a battery that will power an electric motor similar to what the Chevy Volt does. Volvo tried the same thing in the 90s with a jet powered hybrid.

And thats a great solution, especially if you're in a Major Metro area with lots of Over-The-Air signals.

I reached the same conclusion when TimeWarnerCable could not keep me from losing a signal every few days for three-four months (with a few service calls checking the equipment).

I'd suggest using the money you're saving to spring for a high-end DVR.

If going the prebuilt route, I've found TiVos to be decent, include a dual tuner (to record to shows simultaneously), and also include clients for Netflix/Blockbuster streaming and AmazonVideo downloads. I'd also suggest springing for the Lifetime service on the box. The cost of lifetime service hits a break even point after ~2-3 years compared with the cost of a monthly subscription, turning the whole box into a sunk expense, instead of a recurring monthly cost.

I'd say if when the rumored Hulu+ module comes out it'd be great, but between lots of Hulu shows not yet available on Hulu+, and the stupidity of the current article Re: Hulu, I"m not sure if that is a + or a -.

A really good summary article about all the alternatives to Cable is here:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_howto_watchtv/, a Wired article from about a month ago.

I'm sure there are bits that are not completely "up to date" (Hulu+ site now lists both TiVo and Roku box as "Coming soon" interfaces), but its still a pretty good read for anyone thinking about "cutting the cable". I've copied the article (in dead tree form before I found the on-line version), and have been handing out copies to friends thinking about taking the plunge.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/09/paris-auto-show-jaguar-cx75/ :)

Jaguar recently built a turbine-electric prototype hybrid:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/09/paris-auto-show-jaguar-cx75/

Here in Sweden a lot of mining is done in Kiruna:
City(?):
http://www.strangeharvest.com/mt/archive/kiruna3.jpg
http://www.mynewsdesk.com/files/e1ec5f78a79c345d4a3fcf3c86177f0f/resources/ResourceWebImage/thumbnails/flygbild_kiruna_november_2007_large.jpg?1238409989

They are even moving the whole city afaik because they have mined so much underneath it or if it's that they want to mine underneath it so it has to be moved.

The ice hotel (Jukkasjärvi):
http://www.qedata.se/bilder/gallerier/ishotellet/ishotell-ingang-natt.jpg
http://www.qedata.se/bilder/gallerier/ishotellet/ishotell-rum-japan.jpg
http://www.qedata.se/bilder/gallerier/ishotellet/ishotell-ingang2-natt.jpg
http://www.qedata.se/bilder/gallerier/ishotellet/ishotell-ute-hjerta.jpg
http://www.kirunabuss.se/taxibestallning-ishotellet/282FCFC53F4D46B483E98F34D627F045
http://fjellfotografen.se/albums/uta/sverige/lappland/Miniatyr_Iskyrka%20och%20Ishotell,%20Jukkasj%E4rvi%20%A9%20uta-bg1044.jpg
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/1323606-A_reindeer_fur_covered_bed_in_the_Ice_Hotel-Kiruna.jpg

Aurora:
http://www.ltu.se/polopoly_fs/1.36982!terassen_kiruna_aurora.jpg
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/images/2008/04/24/kiruna.jpg

http://www.wintercities.kiruna.se/nytt/kiruna6.gif

Kiruna on a map: http://homepage.swissonline.ch/Christener/Kiruna/Bilder/Kiruna.jpg

Esrange space center is close by to.

Kiruna location: 675118N, 201331O
Alaska: 5440'N - 7150'N, 130W - 173E

I don't know how much the gulf stream (eventually quite a bit?) help but if people can mine there I assume they can mine in Alaska to, why shouldn't they be able to? Heck I live in Örebro at around the same latitude as Stockholm and the location of this city is 5916N 1513O, so even that is more north than the southern parts of Alaska.

Arctic circle:
World: http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
Alaska: http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/sites/country/img/15000_AlaskaMap.jpg

As reported by Wired on 2009-09-23 in the story 1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth. Fascinating read, especially if you're like me and wholly entranced by the concept of a super-fiber like spider silk.

Some of it is stronger that other. As far as I know there are only a few examples of spider textiles -- http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/.

They claim to be able to encode over 10 billion unique values, so I doubt they plan ever to reuse codes -- they'll improve the product or go out of business long before they get 10 billion sales. The fee is probably to pay for using their lab to check for matches (also, it's far more lucrative than a one-time fee). So... I'm also curious what they do if they find a match that's not being paid for. Ethically, it would be nice if they told the police. From a business perspective, they don't want customers to know they'll still tell police even if you don't pay anymore, so they should keep it quiet. My guess is they remove the code from their database when you stop paying, so they honestly don't know one way or the other.

Actually... Cockpit doors are now better reinforced because of how easy it was to access the cockpit. That wasn't a bad idea.

Everything else? Crap, and theater.

The men in their scary black vans will totally park outside my house and steal my wifi!

Oh wait, that's not scary at all because people don't do that. And in real life, I type all my passwords only into sites secured with ssl, which is way better than crappy wifi encryption anyways. So I guess that the neighbor kids might get some free wifi (don't care, not a big deal to block them, mac whitelist, upside-down-ternet etc). If there are people parked outside my house gathering my non-secret data (since my secret data is encrypted regardless of wifi), I either
a) Don't care (google, engineering students, etc
b) Have bigger things to worry about (the FBI, and since I don't have brown skin or read a Koran, I probably won't ever fall into their highly sophisticated detection network)

See also: http://xkcd.com/341/
and furthermore: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/01/securitymatters_0110

They are. They have been waiting for a case like this to come across their desks.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/all/1

Wired magazine, August 2001.

If you google the names in the article you can see what happened to the folks mentioned in the last nine years. I wish there was a clickable "request followup" button on articles.

Drinky,
Were you drunk? Normally, you make sense. A serial hybrid HAS range. You are obviously thinking that I said electric. Hummers, trucks and semis, need a serial hybrid with multiple small engine/generators and a small amount of batteries. Why Multiple Generators? For the semi's, they do a lot of cruising. THe ability to shut down one motor/generator is useful. In addition, if a semi/truck/Hummer loses one, they are still able to go (slow acceleration, but still going). Also, serial hybrid trucks/hummers/semis are JUST NOW BEING DONE. So, no, these have not been rejected.

Finally, you only need a small amount of batteries with what I spoke of. And that is exactly what Peterbilt is now doing (though peterbilt does a parallel system so that they make fewer manufacturing changes). And hummer was investigating. Even though production just stopped 6 months ago, it is possible for them to restart. And likewise, the DOD is switching to serial hybrids. Why? for two reasons: To use less fuel since fuel costs run as high as $400/gal 3 years ago, and to generate electricity for electric weapons.

Basically, with Walmart, foreign companies, and the feds saying that semi's are to hybrids, I think that it is a forgone conclusion that it will happen.

The problems with your theory:

#1 - Nuclear reactor production is put under more government scrutiny than any other energy production method. Not that it isn't justifiable in large degree, just that it increases the costs of running the reactor.

#2 - The US has no fuel recycling program. If we DID have a responsible fuel recycling program, we wouldn't have to worry about the whiny idiots going "but it produces nuclear waste", nor would we be having to dig up ore for fuel - reprocessed, recycled fuel can be extracted from "spent waste" over and over again, which would take care of 95% or greater of our current "nuclear waste" in storage.

#3 - Energy still isn't deregulated on the east coast. The government controls the pricing, therefore it makes sense that the people sticking their money out to build the reactor would want to have some guarantee in writing that the government isn't going to try to force them to operate at a loss.

The larger problem is that the idiot fringe currently in control of the Democrat Party - as evidenced by the current administration's reaction to basically everything energy-related - are a bunch of total morons who are so kooky that even the co-founder of Greenpeace recognized them for the wack-jobs that they are.

Of course, there are a number of other things that "could" be done on the energy conservation front. The US could outlaw residential air-conditioning/heating systems that don't incorporate a closed-loop ground heat pump, and require any legacy systems to be switched over at time of replacement. They could pass a national law protecting the right of all homeowners to implement "greywater" systems, rain cisterns, and solar collectors. They could focus in on outdated, inefficient "freeway flyer" bus routes and replace them all with electric train systems.

But then again, we live in a time when municipalities claim they are working for "safety" and put up red-light cameras and then shorten the yellow timing to get more tickets, despite every study out there showing that if you want to reduce accidents, lengthening the yellow time does much, much more than putting up a fucking camera. So I doubt the people would have any trust in their government that any of the other things I suggested earlier were done with the right motives...

Though I haven't yet read the patent, it sounds like precisely the kind of "business method" patent that the Bilski patent litigation case was supposed to eliminate. "Abstract ideas" and "methods of organizing human behavior" are not supposed to be eligible for patent protection. This product sounds to me like an idea, not an invention. Though, of course, clever patent claim drafting can blur this distinction enough to let some bad patents through the system.

You take it too seriously... I'm talking about the "perfect compression" that is up there with the "perpetuum mobile"... Every once in a while there is someone that absolutely believes they've found it (like this hit from Google) even though it's proven to be impossible.