Yep, I did. R. Aubry

No, you must be joking. The burden of proof in an argument has to be borne by the one making the claim. If you claim you saw a UFO, the burden of proof is on you. The burden of proof does not fall on everyone else to prove that what you saw could NOT, in any way, shape, or form, possibly be a UFO.

It is established by now that various government agencies all over the world routinely monitor web traffic, tap phones and install trojans on computers. There is no doubt in my mind that an internet connected listening device would be exploited.

So smartphone, tablets, laptops are also exploited? They all have a microphone and they're never off.

I fail to see how this is any more a possible privacy breach than my iPhone that's laying right next to me right now.

The only difference I see is that the battery of a smartphone would drain rapidly if it was constantly recording and uploading the recordings to the cloud. But you are right, a smartphone is a device used to monitor you and people whose freedom depends on that knowledge, like radical political activists are aware of that. And yes laptops are exploited. To give an example: The German government has developed a number of trojans for Windows over the years and the BKA routinely uses them for targeted surveillance.

So what you're saying is that you don't have proof of your claims. Ok, got it.

To my untrained ear, this sounds like an argument over optimal versus satisficing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing). (I'm just tossing that out there: if this is something you already know about, just ignore my comment. I'll let myself out now...)

Absolutely, and given that Gell-Mann was corresponding in 1978 with editors at the OED, it's likely that said English teacher (if she had an ounce of self-respect (I speak as a teacher myself)) would have had at least a relatively recent dictionary in her possession, and would have found quark in it. Still, kudos to her for at least caring enough to ask the science teacher.

Same here, but in our apartment across the river in Cambridge. Magazine, movie, and Ben&Jerry's. And it was freakin' cold out, close to zero!

MIT graduate I met 30 years ago told me he had a professor tell him that there are 3 things in life:

  1. things divisible by 3 
  2. things not divisible by 3
  3. other things

No Dhalgren or Triton, by Samuel R. Delany?

Yeah, seriously. Also, from the Google web site: "Searching without typing Use it in the kitchen, in the garage or anytime your hands might be full."

Oh, really? I want to see you move your mouse pointer into position and click the microphone...anytime your hands might be full. Silly bints.

Damn them - damn them to hell. The thing that Firefox 3 did in Winidows (XP anyway) that was so useful was that when you deleted trash or spam, it automatically put the pointer on the OK button. Not the OS preference, but a Firefox feature. It didn't work in OS X, but it worked in XP. They took that feature away - I saw it in the beta, but was hoping they really hadn't deleted it. Damn them.

OK, other than that, I like FF4! Just had to vent.

Firefox is a browser; how do you delete spam from a browser?