OK, it's rant time. Life imprisonment for hacking? A few keystrokes could bring down the U.S. economy? Who the hell are we fighting? Dr. Evil? Firstly, the U.S. (and global) economy seems to be doing a pretty damn good job on it's own - I doubt that someone DDoS'ing Yahoo could really make things that much worse and secondly, anyone who wants to (and even thinks it's possible to) bring it down over the internet isn't terribly likely to be that worried about life imprisonment in the U.S.

One interesting part of the bill is sure to bring down one of the internet's few success stories, the X10 camera, whose advertising recently outstripped porn for use of internet bandwidth. Apparently the law would:

Specify that an existing ban on the “advertisement” of any device that is used primarily for surreptitious electronic surveillance applies to online ads. The prohibition now covers only a “newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication.”

Oh, and happy birthday air conditioning, 100 years old today. If the heat of global warming is bothering you, just crank it up.