Josh Fruhlinger

Source: flickr/Dallas Krentzel

You might think that flat files, VAXen, and punch card readers are things of the past -- and you're right, for the most part. But here and there, these fossilized technologies have found places where they can survive in production use.

It's sort of gone beyond cliche at this point to say that Congress is utterly gridlocked by partisan bickering, to the extent that the Senate can barely come up with a filibuster-proof majority for a Secret Santa exchange. That's why it's kind of interesting that the battle lines over the anti-piracy (or is it pro-censorship?) SOPA bill, the biggest bit of political news in tech circles, are drawn in ways that don't match up with the traditional left-right distinction.

An early glimpse of how this issue could unite ideologically diverse politicians came when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and Representative Ron Paul (R) both indicated their opposition to the bill. But in some ways Paul's opposition is easy to dismiss as an outlier within his party -- yes, the presidential candidate/gadfly wants to slash taxes and dismantle half the Federal government, but he also wants to legalize heroin and let Iran get nukes, so he's not exactly an orthodox Republican.

A few months ago, I brought you a round up of ill-conceived criminality with a Facebook twist: people who advertised their illegal misdeeds on the popular social networking site. Most of these miscreants eventually felt the long arm of the law. But not everything that goes wrong in this life is a criminal case; sometimes we manage to wreck our lives without getting the courts involved.

Thus, submitted for your approval, are a list of ways you can screw up your life via social networking sites, while still walking the streets a free man or woman. Many of these problems wouldn't have arisen if the Tweeters or Facebookers had taken a moment to think about how many people were reading their posts. Let them be an example, and steer clear!

Apple's iPad has been generating plenty of chatter since it was previewed late last month. Much of the tech press was already in love with it before Apple even confirmed that it existed, and despite a certain amount of backlash , that love affair has continued, if only from afar.

But other tech players aren't so besotted, and the iPad might end up a poisoned love letter to the rest of the industry. For much of the life of the iPhone -- the iPad's grandparent, if you will -- every time a new smartphone comes out, it's been dubbed an "iPhone killer." Nobody's succeeded yet, but maybe someday, right? And since the iPad is the new kid on the block, let's imagine it as the hunter. What will the iPad kill? Well, potentially, quite a few things.