The scanners are riskier than the terrorists

Check out the math in the article linked below, the quote coming from dosimetry expert Peter Rez.

Protests Mount Over Safety And Privacy Of Airport Scanners : Shots - Health News Blog : NPR:

"Rez agrees the individual risk is still negligible. 'It's a 1-in-20-million chance of dying from radiation for each scan,' he says. 'Your chances of being struck by lightning in the US in any year is 1 in 500,000. But the probability of being blown up in an airplane by a terrorist is around 1 in 30 million. So the risk from the scan is about the same as the thing you're trying to prevent.'"

Enable ping in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008

Working on a network with Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 is a pain when you just want to ping.  I'm sure there are swell reasons these operating systems have ping turned off, but I'm on a protected domain at work, and I'm not worried about a DOS attack or whatever MS is worried about.

Here is how you enable these operating systems to respond to a ping...

1. Open a command prompt as an administrator.  Go to Start/Accessories/Command Prompt and right-click, selecting "run as administrator".
2. At the command prompt, type (or paste) "netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8". 
3. Hit enter.
4. Read the bit scolding you about using a deprecatedcommand, then promptly ignore all that if the command returned "Ok."
5. Enjoy pinging your machine.