In the age of video on demand, advertisements touting that Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) has rented over two billion movies, the pervasiveness of peer to peer (p2p) networks, and the general drum-beat of the demise of video rental, today's earnings report from Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) is a shocker:"Blockbuster Inc., swung to a first-quarter profit amid prior-year termination fees as domestic same-store sales grew for the first time in five years, though total revenue fell amid a decrease in company-owned stores."(Source: WSJ)

The domestic Blockbuster results -- which have improved for the first time in the last five years -- were driven by a 20% jump in same-store merchandise sales.

Not rentals. Not through-the-mail rentals, even. By in-store merchandise sales.

Which makes sense. Nowadays if you want to buy a DVD and you want to get it now, where do you go? Wal-Mart or Target? Or Blockbuster, where they always seem to have things on sale because they're selling lightly used rental disks for $5-$8/each? (heck, I've bought DVDs at Blockbuster for $1.99, which is cheaper than renting the movie for a week!)

Anyway, fascinating news. Thoughts?

I have watched with growing disappointment as the trolls and jerks who are automatically screened from most blogs through splendid collaborative tools like Akismet have found a new home in the comments section of the local newspaper here in Boulder, the Daily Camera. Far from illuminating the story and adding thoughtful, intelligent commentary, too many comments are like these:

[On a story about a party gone wrong at the University of Colorado] "CU Meat heads. Like trash in the streets, the cretins can always be counted upon to show up and leave their greasy residues."

[On a story about an apartment building burning down] "Wow, a burning bush. If you look closely at the smoke on the wall, you can see a face looking back at you. This whole thing is divine."

"Is it Clinton's fault yet? I just got here."

"Wow, there are a lot of jerks posting tonight."

These are tame. The Daily Camera staff has to be rather vigilant, and it's quite common to see a discussion where 25% or more of the comments are "(This comment was removed by the site staff.)"

Nonetheless, it's a fine line between having coherent editorial control, managing the content of a site and its tone and censorship, and it's darn difficult to impose any sort of discourse quality metrics. Imagine a site that said "Note: sarcasm is not allowed."

That's a cause of frustration and too many people I talk with here in Boulder tell me that they skip the comments attached to articles on the Daily Camera's Web site because of the tone, hostility and generally poor discourse.

And that's too bad - though understandable - because they wouldn't see the great example of participatory citizen media in one of the latest stories on the site, a story about a boy being knocked off his bike by an RV just up the street from my place. A terrible story with a good ending: the boy is actually in good shape and his primary injury appears to be abrasion wounds from being dragged by the vehicle.

Within all the asinine comments about how bikers in Boulder are arrogant and don't follow the rules of the road are two comments worth pulling out, however:"Thanks to those who have showed support. I am the boys father, and I want to report that he is currently in the hospital, and he is going to be okay. He fractured an ankle, has a nice quarter sized chunk missing from his right elbow, and has MASSIVE road rash, mostly on his back and shoulders. Will probably be in there for a couple days. He didn't stop at the stop sign, he looked right, there was a truck with a trailer parked to the left (possibly illegally that close to an intersection) that he pulled past and was hit. Frankly, they thought the helmet saved his life."and then, just a few comments later:"I wish to second the fact that the driver was NOT going 40 mph. I spoke to a witness-I am not sure about a parked truck with trailer. I think that person stopped AFTER the accident to try and help. Thank you, people for all the help received at the time. The boy was at my house when this happened."How often do you get to read a news report and then see additional information from two of the key players in the story? In this case, while we didn't hear from the injured boy or the driver of the RV, we did get candid comments from the boy's father and the mother of the other boy whose house the injured boy had been visiting.

Imagine this ability to reach out to the local community and get candid supplemental information from key players with other stories too. The ability for story subjects to add their own commentary is a terrific feedback mechanism and can not only ensure stories are accurate but also help keep journalists honest too.

It's participatory mainstream media. With all its warts.

Welcome to Journalism 2.0.

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Lasers are like your favorite uncle who can do no wrong. You know, the one who's always hip to the latest technology, does amazing magic tricks at all the family dinners, always photographs well, and has more than once saved baby Med-Tech from a burning house of boring. All the other technologies wish they were he, and Wired.com readers openly admit he's their favorite.

So in celebration of one of our greatest news topics here at Wired.com, we've selected a compilation of the best recent laser appearances on our site. Thanks for the memories, Big L. (Have your own favorite laser news item? Let us know in the comments.)

Left:

Texans Build World's Most Powerful Laser

Scientists have switched on the world's most powerful laser, which for one-trillionth of a second is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the United States. The laser's output tops a petawatt, which is a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) watts of power.

(More in next slide)

Photo: Courtesy Mikael Martinez and Texas Petawatt Project, led by Todd Ditmire

(Continued from previous slide)

The power of a laser, its output in watts, is determined by the energy of the laser pulse, measured in joules, divided by its duration, measured in seconds (tiny fractions of a second in this case). So, to get high power, you can either turn up the energy or cram the same amount of energy into a shorter duration pulse -- or do both. The problem is that turning up the energy makes it more difficult to get short pulses.

The solution to this problem requires an almost Rube Goldberg setup inside a 1,500-square-foot clean room. The most powerful laser in the world starts, poetically enough, with a "seed laser" that puts out a wimpy nanojoule of energy for a couple of hundred femtoseconds (that's 10-15 seconds). It must be run through a series of amplifiers, compressors and stretchers before it can recreate the conditions inside the sun for a trillionth of a second.

Photo: Courtesy Mikael Martinez and Texas Petawatt Project, led by Todd Ditmire

Beamz Music System Lets You Compose a Symphony With the Power of Freaking Lasers

If Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame were more musically minded, he may have demanded something like the beamz -- a musical instrument with "fricking lasers" attached to it. This large USB peripheral includes six laser beams that, when broken, activate elements of 30 songs stored on your computer.

Laser-Etched QR Codes: Digital Graffiti For Gadgets

Forget stickers. Real geeks show their commitment with something more permanent: laser engraving. And Jason Fields takes your etching and raises you one QR code. Sure, it's too big for most little QR readers to handle, and the gray on gray isn't exactly contrasty, but Jason has squeezed in his "e-mail signature file, postal address, with links to my blog and twitter pages as well."

The Geekiest Van Conversion Ever

This is the Tele Atlas map machine, a Toyota van tricked out with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cameras, laser range detectors and global-positioning hardware. The laser sensors on the back (the devices labeled SICK) are used to determine the height of overpasses and buildings to help delivery vehicles find the route with the most overhead clearance.

Photo: Michael Calore/Wired.com

The Ultrashort Pulse Laser in Action

Raydiance, a startup company in Petaluma, California, has developed a laser it says can cleanly cut just about any material you can think of -- from human skin to glass -- without throwing off heat or damaging the surface.

This glass slide is seconds away from being ablated by the Raydiance USP laser.

Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

Laser Death Star

A new patent granted to Lockheed Martin seeks to combine multiple lasers into a single, higher-power beam, which would, in theory, help achieve the power output needed for laser weapons. The patent outlines a method to "combine multiple laser beams into a single coherent beam without requiring insertion of optical elements into the laser beam."

This Laser Trick's a Quantum Leap

Ph.D. student Elliot Fraval (left) and Dr. Jevon Longdel perform scientific measurements on light in the lab at Laser Physics Centre at Australian National University.

Photo: Tim Wetherell

Navy Pushing Laser 'Holy Grail' to Weapons Grade

For decades, scientists have been slowly working on a laser that never runs out of shots -- and can be "tuned" to blast through the air, at just the right wavelength. For most of that time, all they could get was a laser at light-bulb strength. But researchers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility finally managed in 2004 to assemble a "Free Electron Laser," or FEL, that could generate 10,000 watts of power.

Now the Navy has started an effort to design and build a new FEL, 10 times as strong. That would bring the laser up to 100 kilowatts -- what's considered the minimum threshold for weapons grade. But it would also be just a steppingstone on the way to an energy weapon as powerful as any produced. If ray gun researchers can get the thing to work, that is.

Stupid Laser Tricks: Make Your Own Piece of Jesus-Miracle Toast

They can do everything from nuclear fusion to vaginal rejuvenation, so you know it's a mathematical certainty that lasers = awesome. Plus, your right to tinker with dirt-cheap lasers in your basement is all but guaranteed in the Constitution! With that in mind, here are a few of our favorite DIY laser hacks. (Disclaimer: If you are foolhardy enough to try any of these and end up maiming yourself or getting sucked into the Tron game grid, something else was probably going to remove you from the gene pool soon anyway.)

Photo: Gene Lee

Laser-Guided Saw: Cool Tool or Novelty Toy?

It might not cut as effectively as a lightsaber, or even a real laser cutter, but at least your lines will be (theoretically) straight.

At $20, though, it's probably too cheap to actually do its job. If you've ever used a cheap saw you know that the blade will flex and buck, leaving your supposedly neat cut looking about as straight as Earring Magic Ken. And the laser doesn't even come with a battery. We say: Avoid. You'll get a better result with an old popsicle stick.

DIY Laser Lightshow for $80: Useless but Awesome

What's cooler than a green laser? A green laser that paints semirandom moving spirograph patterns on your wall. Toronto-based hardware hacker Artur Petrovskyy shows you how to make one of your own from about $80 in parts in a new how-to on Instructables.com: Laser show for poor man.

Image: Instructables.com