Switzerland though, the only country in Europe where they are legal to own
Is wrong, because the Czech Republic has relatively lax gun laws, and is part of Europe.
It's hard to get a permit to carry a gun for protection, generally very hard.
And that is the difference. Gun ownership is quite possible in most of Europe and Canada. However, you guys cannot carry them around and shoot criminals you threaten you like I can in the USA (it is not that simple: I would face intense scrutiny by police and prosecutors if I fired in self defense, to ensure that my self-defense claim is valid).
Our Second Amendment is not just about firearm ownership, it is about bearing arms, that is, actually carrying them as we go about our daily business. Whether one agrees that it is a good idea to enshrine in the U.S. Constitution or not is a different matter: our Supreme Court has backed up our right to own and carry handguns for self defense. source.
If you want to shoot firearms for sport in most of the Western World, that is relatively easy. Even in "gun-free" nations you can likely either own a firearm under restriction, or go to a firing range and use one of theirs for target practice without much hassle as long as you aren't a criminal. That covers 99% of the cases where a firearm is discharged by a civilian in the West. Despite being American and supporting the right to self-defense, I have been to gun ranges enough times and read the news often enough to know that while firearms are used in self-defense, most of the time we shoot them for sport.
The saying "one bad apple..." is a bit of an overstatement
Finish the quote:
One bad apple spoils the bunch
Suppose we have a "good cop" who refuses to cross the blue line and stop a fellow officer from abusing a suspect in custody, for example, beating a person in handcuffs laying on the floor who offers no resistance. Clearly the officer abusing authority by beating a prone suspect is a bad cop. However, the good cop is now bad too, for failing to stand up for basic human rights. The bad apple spoiled at least one other.
That is the problem we, in the USA (and elsewhere but I live in the USA) have: our government and its agents have little to no accountability when they do wrong. Yes, some bad cops get convicted of felonies and go to jail. Others get fired and have their names dragged through the mud. Meanwhile, alleged "good cops" watch the bad cops do bad things, complicit in their crimes.
It's illegal to take money for flights in private planes.
I think you are confusing license/certification types with aircraft types. Taking money or other payment for providing the service of flying requires a commercial pilot or airline transport pilot license. There are multiple types of licenses from sport pilot, recreational pilot, private pilot, to airline transport pilot and a couple obscure ones in-between.
It is possible to accept payment for transporting a passenger in a Cessna single-prop aircraft. However, the licensing and certification requirements (commercial pilot) would be excessive for the type of person who would own and fly such an airplane. That is why it is rarely ever done in practice.
We were shooting in Tunisia, and the script had a scene in which I fight a swordsman, an expert swordsman, it was meant to be the ultimate duel between sword and whip. And I was suffering from dysentery, really, found it inconvenient to be out of my trailer for more than 10 minutes at a time. We'd done a brief rehearsal of the scene the night before we were meant to shoot it, and both Steve and I realized it would take 2 or 3 days to shoot this. And it was the last thing we were meant to shoot in Tunisia before we left to shoot in England. And the scene before this in the film included a whip fight against 5 bad guys that were trying to kidnap Marian, so I thought it was a bit redundant. I was puzzling how to get out of this 3 days of shooting, so when I got to set I proposed to Steven that we just shoot the son a bitch and Steve said "I was thinking that as well." So he drew his sword, the poor guy was a wonderful British stuntman who had practiced his sword skills for months in order to do this job, and was quite surprised by the idea that we would dispatch him in 5 minutes. But he flourished his sword, I pulled out my gun and shot him, and then we went back to England.
DMCA most certainly does prohibit writing code of certain functionality.
DMCA prohibits circumventing copy protection, which is an end-around the fair use law. Since a browser plugin runs in the browser, the endpoint that must decrypt and display any encrypted content such as ads, how is the DMCA relevant even if web sites start delivering encrypted content?
(BTW, fellow Americans, I just wanna remind you that this is another election year. Last one, almost nobody took seriously. If you also don't take this election seriously too, then that's another 2 years with no chance of repealing DMCA, instead of a terribly slim chance.)
Please tell me which candidates that have an actual chance at being elected to office want to repeal the DMCA? Which Presidential candidate who actually won at least one electoral vote last election would have signed such a repeal bill had Congress passed it? Considering that the past few decades have given us nothing but a more restrictive IP regime and no serious debate on the topic occurring where it actually matters (Congress), I believe there is approximately a 0% chance of any meaningful copyright reform for the foreseeable future.
Congress is the board of directors, and they need to be taken out of the day to day decision system.
This is by design. The Constitution even limits the military budget process to no more than two years, with no similar limit on any other cabinet department. Back in 1789 when the Constitution was drafted, military coups were more common than they are today. Even outside of coups, military leaders were far more influential in governments. Our founders wanted to prevent that and put the military firmly under the control of civilians, to mitigate the risk of a powerful military controlling or even taking over the government.
After WW2, with the Cold War in full swing, the military became a favorite vehicle for delivering pork, as well. That, to me, is the real problem here. Our military is no longer about defense (sorry, "invading Iraq" which is 7,000 miles away is not "defending our country"). It is designed to evoke patriotism and support in the people so the wealthy can funnel lucrative contracts to favored military-industrial complex contractors. Essentially, stealing from the poor (taxpayers) to give to the rich (CEOs of companies like Boeing). Yes, those companies provide some value. However, they do so with gross inefficiency and well beyond the level required to defend U.S. soil. That is the problem that needs solving.
You realize that this is actually a valid technique that has been used for many years, right?
Valid technique, yes. Science does back up the fact that this is a valid technique. However...
It does work if done properly because the female body does give signs when fertile.
...its efficacy is terrible. Yes, the female body does give signs when fertile, or more accurately, when preparing to ovulate. The problem is that said signs are like pissing in the ocean compared to the hundreds of other signs the body gives off on a regular basis. This makes it nearly impossible to use this technique. Even more so if the woman has any health problems. Thyroid slightly out of whack? Oh well, enjoy the next nine months. Sick? Too bad.
The problem is that it should be done with a lot of coaching from someone who knows what they are doing, which tends to be a failure of most apps.
The problem is that this technique works in theory, but fails miserably in practice even with "coaching," whatever that means. I am not inviting a coach into my bedroom to tell me when it is safe to fuck my wife and not get her pregnant.
Word of advice, if you care to listen. You need something else other than "Trump Bad, we oppose" and this.
1994 and the Contract with America Republicans beg to differ. They basically ran on a platform of "Bill Clinton sucks, vote for us" and it mostly worked. They formed a large enough voting bloc in the House to control not only the legislation that their own party could pass, but the entire House. It made a lot of career politicians really nervous until they figured out how to marginalize and control them.
Per the U.S. Constitution 10th Amendment, any power not granted to the federal government is reserved to the states and the people.
Article I, Section 8 explicitly authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce:
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Since these are online games and the location of the servers and clients do not matter, it is reasonable to assume that buying loot boxes falls under interstate commerce. Courts in the U.S. have consistently agreed with this view in the past.
What is reality is that all statistics say that one of the best ways to increase your risk of getting killed is to carry a gun.
I wonder what the statistics look like when you break this down farther. There are subgroups. For example, some people own firearms who have little to no training. Not just in the mechanics of how to use them, but tactical training. Others have varying levels of training. I would expect the first group to meet a bloody end more often than the second group. Furthermore, how often does someone wield a firearm defensively and end up dead, vs. the experienced user who wisely chooses to leave his concealed firearm holstered because brandishing his firearm would be a tactical failure?
The statistic you mention is true, but it is a very broad brush. The real world is far more nuanced. I would be very curious to see it broken out in more detail, but I have so far not seen anything.
20 countries, ha ha, try keeping track of 50 states and 8 territories like in the US
That is not even the worst part. Sales tax in the USA can be owed to states, counties, municipalities, and other vaguely-defined-but-real government entities. This means that even in the same state, or same county, sales tax may vary. You could walk across the street and pay different sales tax on the exact same item because that street is a boundary between tax jurisdictions.
There are companies that do nothing except keep track of the constantly-changing tax rates all over the country and make that data available to merchants. This includes not just rates by location, but by item - luxury goods may be taxed at a higher rate, staple food items taxed lower. In some locations, tax rates go up the more you spend, a progressive sales tax. There may be "tax holidays" certain days of the year where no tax is charged - but that may be only at one level of government, for example, you may pay state sales tax but no local taxes.
I thought this was going to be about the constant disruptions I receive on my mobile device, because Direct Marketers' Association members refuse to respect the Do Not Call List and Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.
I suspect Blu-ray playback quality is higher than HD streaming.
Blu-ray is much better quality than HD streaming. In order to fit all those bits in the internet pipes, they need to be highly compressed. Blu-ray is (supposed to be) compressed losslessly, and the HDMI interface has plenty of bandwidth for all those ones and zeros.
I have streamed many movies from different services, and watched plenty of movies on Blu-ray. Streaming is great because it is convenient, but ranges from acceptable to "blurrier than DVD" with HD content. I still buy or rent Blu-rays and actually use them because the quality is significantly better.
Not necessarily true: if you want the system to be able to mount a volume without user intervention (or boot from it), it must know the whole password, a hasj is not enough for decryption.
Why would you password-protect a file or volume to begin with if you want the system to be able to decrypt it without user intervention? The purpose of encryption is to prevent unauthorized access, not allow it.
I'm sure this is meant half jokingly, but American football as a whole is in trouble. Schools are starting to shut down their programs due to lack of interest. Parents, worried about their kids' brain health, are pushing them to play other sports. In time, the talent dropoff will be dramatic enough to significantly affect big college and pro football.
This is a legitimate concern (for the NFL). Fewer children playing will dry up the talent pool in another decade when those children would be at the age for the NCAA and (eventually) NFL. Sure, plenty of children will play, but consider how few of them have the necessary talent to succeed in the NCAA, and how few of those have the talent for the NFL. I did the math once and it is a small fraction of one percent of high school football players actually make it to the NFL, and most of them suck at the sport anyway. At any given time there are only enough good players to make three or four teams in the NFL.
The NFL itself is also really unpopular, with Roger Goodell pissing off the NFL's fans at least once every season and getting booed any time he shows up on TV in front of a live audience (e.g. Super Bowl, NFL draft). I think the only reasons the NFL is still popular are: fantasy football is still a huge thing, even drawing people in that hate the sport (I know people who hate the game but still play fantasy); and some vestigial attachment to one's home team, essentially pride in one's city to include its sports teams.
The decline for the NFL has accelerated much faster than expected. The league's necessary adjustments for safety has made the game less interesting to watch and the recent anthem "controversies" are not helping. Attendance and viewership is down. The decline has already started and doesn't look like it will abate soon. Think that football is too big to fail? 80 years ago Boxing was the #1 sport in America. Look at the state of boxing today.
I keep hearing these arguments, but have not seen any evidence to back them up. Ratings fluctuate, and are on a general down trend, but nothing massive - it is not like the sport is unpopular, it is just not quite as popular as it was previously. It does seem, however, that ratings have followed the general trend of everythingreceiving lower ratings.
This makes sense, as sports in general (in the USA) seem to have declining ratings. Cord cutting? Younger generation caring less? Who knows? It is a complex issue and there is likely not one cause, e.g. "the NFL is killing itself with how it changes the game."
After all, if the military could make its own decisions about how to spend money, it'd be "wasted", so it "needs" Congressional "oversight". That's the root of the problem.
Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution has not one but three clauses that enumerate Congress's authority over the military, including this one:
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
Back in the 18th century, military coups were more common than they are today. In fact the Articles of Confederation that predate the Constitution were even more restrictive than the Constitution: we barely had any military for the first decade. The compromise was to have a stronger military, but have a bit more oversight, especially with the budget. The goal was to have a military where commanders could focus on doing what they do well, killing shit, while Congress could regulate them (e.g. UCMJ) and pull the plug on relatively short notice and dry up funding if required.
Of course, ever since the end of WW2 and the start of the Cold War, the military budget is just a pork buffet. I seriously doubt there is any risk of a military coup in the USA, or any other concerns that prompted the budget micromanagement that we have today.
I also blame Bush 2 for a lot of the military problems we have, including the one called out in the article. Back in the mid-2000s, he insisted we needed more "boots on the ground" (i.e. Army and Marines) without increasing the overall military size. He gutted the Air Force and Navy. Probably half of those cuts were necessary regardless, the other half hurt. The lack of training called out in the article is a symptom of the larger issue of "doing more with less" - not necessarily a bad idea, but it has to be implemented correctly. Skimping on core training such as "navigating and piloting naval vessels" and "working 100 hour weeks and getting insufficient sleep" is not doing more with less: it is doing less with less. Source: I was active duty in the mid-2000s while Bush 2 was President.
Well then I guess they need to upgrade the encryption used because it's clearly and objectively inadequate, seeing as it's being overridden by hostile signals.
I think you have your news stories mixed up. US Navy ships have had several mishaps the past year due to incompetence of the personnel piloting their ships. Several civilian ships in a very specific part of the sea near Russia have had GPS tell them they are some place they are not (e.g. floating in the water in the middle of an airport, on land) due to Russian interference.
Military GPS is more accurate and secure than civilian GPS. That still appears to be true.
I agree. Why should Oracle (or Sun, previously) be on the hook for providing security updates to five year old versions of Java? That is a logistical nightmare - multiple branches, multiple test configurations for each, and a ton of time and effort. Java updates very rarely break backwards compatibility anymore, so users should update.
To bleed altitude. Commercial airliners make terrible gliders, but still, they technically are gliders when the engines are no longer operational. In this case, the airplane glided to the Azores but had too much altitude and needed to stay in the air a little bit longer while not moving too far away: a perfect use case for flying in a circle.
Captain Piche had to execute one 360 degree turn, and then a series of "S" turns, to dissipate excess altitude.
The US government has a law that says that businesses must accept US dollars.
What law? I do not believe there is a US federal law that requires private businesses or individuals to accept currency from the Federal Reserve Bank. We all choose to do so because it is incredibly convenient and there are many laws and statues that encourage it.
You are correct. While it is legal tender for all debts, it is not a requirement to accept it. Furthermore, the word "debt" implies repayment. There is a difference between a straight-up trade (buying something at a register), receiving goods in advance (eating dinner, then paying the bill), and financing a debt (buying a car using a loan). There are nuances between those scenarios that affect legal requirements for payment, and furthermore, an additional consideration is payment in dollar equivalents such as using a credit card to purchase something using dollars, but not physical currency.
The long and short of it is you are correct, most transactions have no requirement to use U.S. dollars, but everyone does so anyway because nobody barters in livestock anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
From GP:
Is wrong, because the Czech Republic has relatively lax gun laws, and is part of Europe.
And that is the difference. Gun ownership is quite possible in most of Europe and Canada. However, you guys cannot carry them around and shoot criminals you threaten you like I can in the USA (it is not that simple: I would face intense scrutiny by police and prosecutors if I fired in self defense, to ensure that my self-defense claim is valid).
Our Second Amendment is not just about firearm ownership, it is about bearing arms, that is, actually carrying them as we go about our daily business. Whether one agrees that it is a good idea to enshrine in the U.S. Constitution or not is a different matter: our Supreme Court has backed up our right to own and carry handguns for self defense. source.
If you want to shoot firearms for sport in most of the Western World, that is relatively easy. Even in "gun-free" nations you can likely either own a firearm under restriction, or go to a firing range and use one of theirs for target practice without much hassle as long as you aren't a criminal. That covers 99% of the cases where a firearm is discharged by a civilian in the West. Despite being American and supporting the right to self-defense, I have been to gun ranges enough times and read the news often enough to know that while firearms are used in self-defense, most of the time we shoot them for sport.
Finish the quote:
Suppose we have a "good cop" who refuses to cross the blue line and stop a fellow officer from abusing a suspect in custody, for example, beating a person in handcuffs laying on the floor who offers no resistance. Clearly the officer abusing authority by beating a prone suspect is a bad cop. However, the good cop is now bad too, for failing to stand up for basic human rights. The bad apple spoiled at least one other.
That is the problem we, in the USA (and elsewhere but I live in the USA) have: our government and its agents have little to no accountability when they do wrong. Yes, some bad cops get convicted of felonies and go to jail. Others get fired and have their names dragged through the mud. Meanwhile, alleged "good cops" watch the bad cops do bad things, complicit in their crimes.
I think you are confusing license/certification types with aircraft types. Taking money or other payment for providing the service of flying requires a commercial pilot or airline transport pilot license. There are multiple types of licenses from sport pilot, recreational pilot, private pilot, to airline transport pilot and a couple obscure ones in-between.
It is possible to accept payment for transporting a passenger in a Cessna single-prop aircraft. However, the licensing and certification requirements (commercial pilot) would be excessive for the type of person who would own and fly such an airplane. That is why it is rarely ever done in practice.
source source.
Source
DMCA prohibits circumventing copy protection, which is an end-around the fair use law. Since a browser plugin runs in the browser, the endpoint that must decrypt and display any encrypted content such as ads, how is the DMCA relevant even if web sites start delivering encrypted content?
Please tell me which candidates that have an actual chance at being elected to office want to repeal the DMCA? Which Presidential candidate who actually won at least one electoral vote last election would have signed such a repeal bill had Congress passed it? Considering that the past few decades have given us nothing but a more restrictive IP regime and no serious debate on the topic occurring where it actually matters (Congress), I believe there is approximately a 0% chance of any meaningful copyright reform for the foreseeable future.
This is by design. The Constitution even limits the military budget process to no more than two years, with no similar limit on any other cabinet department. Back in 1789 when the Constitution was drafted, military coups were more common than they are today. Even outside of coups, military leaders were far more influential in governments. Our founders wanted to prevent that and put the military firmly under the control of civilians, to mitigate the risk of a powerful military controlling or even taking over the government.
After WW2, with the Cold War in full swing, the military became a favorite vehicle for delivering pork, as well. That, to me, is the real problem here. Our military is no longer about defense (sorry, "invading Iraq" which is 7,000 miles away is not "defending our country"). It is designed to evoke patriotism and support in the people so the wealthy can funnel lucrative contracts to favored military-industrial complex contractors. Essentially, stealing from the poor (taxpayers) to give to the rich (CEOs of companies like Boeing). Yes, those companies provide some value. However, they do so with gross inefficiency and well beyond the level required to defend U.S. soil. That is the problem that needs solving.
Valid technique, yes. Science does back up the fact that this is a valid technique. However...
...its efficacy is terrible. Yes, the female body does give signs when fertile, or more accurately, when preparing to ovulate. The problem is that said signs are like pissing in the ocean compared to the hundreds of other signs the body gives off on a regular basis. This makes it nearly impossible to use this technique. Even more so if the woman has any health problems. Thyroid slightly out of whack? Oh well, enjoy the next nine months. Sick? Too bad.
The problem is that this technique works in theory, but fails miserably in practice even with "coaching," whatever that means. I am not inviting a coach into my bedroom to tell me when it is safe to fuck my wife and not get her pregnant.
1994 and the Contract with America Republicans beg to differ. They basically ran on a platform of "Bill Clinton sucks, vote for us" and it mostly worked. They formed a large enough voting bloc in the House to control not only the legislation that their own party could pass, but the entire House. It made a lot of career politicians really nervous until they figured out how to marginalize and control them.
"My life sucks, I'm so emooooooo-ah!"
Wait, were you talking about before or after that bus crashed?
Article I, Section 8 explicitly authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce:
Since these are online games and the location of the servers and clients do not matter, it is reasonable to assume that buying loot boxes falls under interstate commerce. Courts in the U.S. have consistently agreed with this view in the past.
Bison is a bit more nutritious than turkey, both in the good stuff it contains more of and the bad stuff it contains less of (this source is a bit more neutral in their comparison). If you like beef, bison tastes really good, and is much healthier than beef as well.
I wonder what the statistics look like when you break this down farther. There are subgroups. For example, some people own firearms who have little to no training. Not just in the mechanics of how to use them, but tactical training. Others have varying levels of training. I would expect the first group to meet a bloody end more often than the second group. Furthermore, how often does someone wield a firearm defensively and end up dead, vs. the experienced user who wisely chooses to leave his concealed firearm holstered because brandishing his firearm would be a tactical failure?
The statistic you mention is true, but it is a very broad brush. The real world is far more nuanced. I would be very curious to see it broken out in more detail, but I have so far not seen anything.
That is not even the worst part. Sales tax in the USA can be owed to states, counties, municipalities, and other vaguely-defined-but-real government entities. This means that even in the same state, or same county, sales tax may vary. You could walk across the street and pay different sales tax on the exact same item because that street is a boundary between tax jurisdictions.
There are companies that do nothing except keep track of the constantly-changing tax rates all over the country and make that data available to merchants. This includes not just rates by location, but by item - luxury goods may be taxed at a higher rate, staple food items taxed lower. In some locations, tax rates go up the more you spend, a progressive sales tax. There may be "tax holidays" certain days of the year where no tax is charged - but that may be only at one level of government, for example, you may pay state sales tax but no local taxes.
Taxes suck.
M$, lol.
I thought this was going to be about the constant disruptions I receive on my mobile device, because Direct Marketers' Association members refuse to respect the Do Not Call List and Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.
Blu-ray is much better quality than HD streaming. In order to fit all those bits in the internet pipes, they need to be highly compressed. Blu-ray is (supposed to be) compressed losslessly, and the HDMI interface has plenty of bandwidth for all those ones and zeros.
I have streamed many movies from different services, and watched plenty of movies on Blu-ray. Streaming is great because it is convenient, but ranges from acceptable to "blurrier than DVD" with HD content. I still buy or rent Blu-rays and actually use them because the quality is significantly better.
Why would you password-protect a file or volume to begin with if you want the system to be able to decrypt it without user intervention? The purpose of encryption is to prevent unauthorized access, not allow it.
This is a legitimate concern (for the NFL). Fewer children playing will dry up the talent pool in another decade when those children would be at the age for the NCAA and (eventually) NFL. Sure, plenty of children will play, but consider how few of them have the necessary talent to succeed in the NCAA, and how few of those have the talent for the NFL. I did the math once and it is a small fraction of one percent of high school football players actually make it to the NFL, and most of them suck at the sport anyway. At any given time there are only enough good players to make three or four teams in the NFL.
The NFL itself is also really unpopular, with Roger Goodell pissing off the NFL's fans at least once every season and getting booed any time he shows up on TV in front of a live audience (e.g. Super Bowl, NFL draft). I think the only reasons the NFL is still popular are: fantasy football is still a huge thing, even drawing people in that hate the sport (I know people who hate the game but still play fantasy); and some vestigial attachment to one's home team, essentially pride in one's city to include its sports teams.
I keep hearing these arguments, but have not seen any evidence to back them up. Ratings fluctuate, and are on a general down trend, but nothing massive - it is not like the sport is unpopular, it is just not quite as popular as it was previously. It does seem, however, that ratings have followed the general trend of everything receiving lower ratings.
This makes sense, as sports in general (in the USA) seem to have declining ratings. Cord cutting? Younger generation caring less? Who knows? It is a complex issue and there is likely not one cause, e.g. "the NFL is killing itself with how it changes the game."
Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution has not one but three clauses that enumerate Congress's authority over the military, including this one:
Back in the 18th century, military coups were more common than they are today. In fact the Articles of Confederation that predate the Constitution were even more restrictive than the Constitution: we barely had any military for the first decade. The compromise was to have a stronger military, but have a bit more oversight, especially with the budget. The goal was to have a military where commanders could focus on doing what they do well, killing shit, while Congress could regulate them (e.g. UCMJ) and pull the plug on relatively short notice and dry up funding if required.
Of course, ever since the end of WW2 and the start of the Cold War, the military budget is just a pork buffet. I seriously doubt there is any risk of a military coup in the USA, or any other concerns that prompted the budget micromanagement that we have today.
I also blame Bush 2 for a lot of the military problems we have, including the one called out in the article. Back in the mid-2000s, he insisted we needed more "boots on the ground" (i.e. Army and Marines) without increasing the overall military size. He gutted the Air Force and Navy. Probably half of those cuts were necessary regardless, the other half hurt. The lack of training called out in the article is a symptom of the larger issue of "doing more with less" - not necessarily a bad idea, but it has to be implemented correctly. Skimping on core training such as "navigating and piloting naval vessels" and "working 100 hour weeks and getting insufficient sleep" is not doing more with less: it is doing less with less. Source: I was active duty in the mid-2000s while Bush 2 was President.
I think you have your news stories mixed up. US Navy ships have had several mishaps the past year due to incompetence of the personnel piloting their ships. Several civilian ships in a very specific part of the sea near Russia have had GPS tell them they are some place they are not (e.g. floating in the water in the middle of an airport, on land) due to Russian interference.
Military GPS is more accurate and secure than civilian GPS. That still appears to be true.
I agree. Why should Oracle (or Sun, previously) be on the hook for providing security updates to five year old versions of Java? That is a logistical nightmare - multiple branches, multiple test configurations for each, and a ton of time and effort. Java updates very rarely break backwards compatibility anymore, so users should update.
To bleed altitude. Commercial airliners make terrible gliders, but still, they technically are gliders when the engines are no longer operational. In this case, the airplane glided to the Azores but had too much altitude and needed to stay in the air a little bit longer while not moving too far away: a perfect use case for flying in a circle.
Obligatory xkcd
You are correct. While it is legal tender for all debts, it is not a requirement to accept it. Furthermore, the word "debt" implies repayment. There is a difference between a straight-up trade (buying something at a register), receiving goods in advance (eating dinner, then paying the bill), and financing a debt (buying a car using a loan). There are nuances between those scenarios that affect legal requirements for payment, and furthermore, an additional consideration is payment in dollar equivalents such as using a credit card to purchase something using dollars, but not physical currency.
The long and short of it is you are correct, most transactions have no requirement to use U.S. dollars, but everyone does so anyway because nobody barters in livestock anymore.
You mean the war where the South fired first?