Boston PD, continually proving how batshit wacko a police department can be. They've caused a terrorist scare over a bunch of light-bright advertising signs, blown up their own "Department of Transportations" traffic monitors & have a well documented history of arresting/attacking people who legally videotape them.
Police routinely destroy, delete, edit and/or obfuscate footage when it shows them in an "unflattering" light, why do you expect everyday citizens to turn over evidence against themselves when the police fail to do the same?
I'm having trouble remembering any former dirigible hangers dressed up as shuttle ports, gas-fired power plants dressed up as starfleet recruit embarkation facilities, or breweries dressed up as communications rooms and engineering sections from any of the previous series/movies. The most egregious example (that wasn't intentional of course) that I can think of from any of the previous shows would be some of the "alien world" scenes from "Time and Time Again" (VOY) that look like northern California. While I am sure several sets were from other series were modified commercial facilities, there was enough work done to them to make most of them virtually impossible recognize. And "Star Trek (2009)" probably had 4 times the budget of most star trek films and over 100 times the budget of any episode which makes the lack of effort to develop decent sets all the more annoying.
The Only interest I have in seeing this movie is when it comes out on one of the Satellite TV channels so I can DVR it and skip through it to watch the space scenes. The acting, script & sets are literally painful to me. Its like watching a two year old play with matchbox cars, flying them through the air like their jet fighters. Sure it may have moments of interest, but they are few and far between. For goodness sakes half of the sets were commercial/utility sites with a few computer consoles added (brewery, electrical substation).
While this guy should be punished, those government officials who arranged for these purchases also deserve some punishment for their gross negligence. That there were no tests or apparent attempts at verification before purchasing such expensive pieces of equipment and sending them into a warzone is unconscionable.
I believe the article covered this issue, the land being used is poor for most crops (salty and arid). It sounds like the only crop that can be economically grown is cotton, and the fields are suffering decreased yields from lack of crop rotation. So it sounds like this is not displacing any food crops at all, and over the long term it may even increase the yields of the crop it is displacing. While this is not a situation that is going to be repeatable in many areas, IMHO this isn't such a bad thing. One of our biggest problems has been focusing on one source for some of our energy needs (Petroleum at the moment for vehicles), having a variety of sources (corn/sugar-beat ethanol, biomass, biodiesel, electric) will help insure that if one source encounters issues (strike, pest problem, drought, shortages) the others can pick up the slack.
"There are four incorporated municipalities in my county,"
Don't forget the difficulty in determining what municipality any particular address is in to even apply the rate. A lot of people are under the misconception that zip-codes could be used.... Buwahahahaha. In our county there is I think maybe two out of over a dozen (both incorporated & unincorporated) cities & villages where the zip-code area is limited to their municipal boundaries, and both of those are tiny little villages of less than 200 people. The only reason zip-codes exist are to determine the most efficient post office to send the particular letter/package to for delivery, they generally don't care about political boundaries. And not many counties have a comprehensive database that could certifiably do an "address to municipality" conversion. Sure it could be done, but it would be a significant undertaking costing likely a hundred million dollars plus to do on a national level.
You'll never make a computer system completely idiot proof, a more impressive idiot will ALWAYS come along. "Security Awareness training", or at least some pamphlet or something handed out to the departments is only going to help. While it is very true that the primary focus should be on securing the system as much as possible, letting the users know some of the simple rules to follow to help keep it secure is always a plus.
Somehow I doubt that the issue in this case is with phone GPS receivers, which at best are usually only 15-25' accurate and can be blocked or rendered less accurate by almost anything (hand over the receiver, cloudcover, buildings, car roofs, etc). It sounds like the issue is with "survey grade" GPS units, they are often backpack or vehicle based and can resolve coordinates to centimeter accuracy. Such coordinates, captured throughout the country, could be used as a ground control to take semi-accurate aerial photography and "rectify" it so it is much more accurate. Though from a military perspective its probably not an issue since satellites can probably already georeference the imagery to less than 20' based on their own sensors, more than accurate enough for bombs & missiles.
I can only see one issue with high accuracy mapping of roads, it could be used as "ground control" for aerial photography. When you're flying aerial photography it is often highly desirable to have a number of "aerial visible" locations (often large white painted arrows) with high accuracy GPS coordinates distributed through the capture area. That way the images can be rubber sheeted using some pretty fancy algorithms to these points so you take an image with OK accuracy and turn it into one with high accuracy. But with modern tech this is probably not an issue at least from a military perspective, I don't know about satellites but at least with aircraft captures they can usually achieve 3' accuracy for 90% of surveyed points with no ground control. Even assuming for the sake of argument that satellite captures are less accurate (lets say 10') I highly doubt that is going to matter when your sending a several hundred lb warhead to a target, or guiding troops to a facility. Mostly this level of accuracy only comes into play when you're trying to locate underground pipelines/wiring, or mapping property lines in urban or suburban areas.
Ever tried switching on a TV to a program you've seen a hundred times, or a movie/show that you find extremely uninteresting? I generally have trouble going to sleep in a quite house because I find myself wondering about every creak so I usually set a sleep timer on a TV for about 90 minutes and turn the volume down to just the point where it washes out any background noise. It gives you something to focus your attention on but still allows you to be bored enough to conk out.
Depends, If they're just censors with no tie-in to the aircraft's operation then there shouldn't be any issue. But that needs to be in the form of hardware or air-gap, not some software setting that can likely be overridden remotely. The only way I would see this kind of functionality being safe is if the aircraft basically has two health monitoring systems, one used by the cockpit which has NO communications ability. And the other which can communicate and does have passive only access to the aircraft's censors, but is otherwise is physically disconnected from any of the aircraft's control systems.
" could build a shuttle that didn't cost $600 million per flight. "
To be fair the shuttle program was intended to be deployed on a much larger scale (dozen(s) of them with over 60 flights per year), which would have brought down the cost per flight significantly. Also the "shuttle program" was not limited to launches & shuttle refurb like it should have been, everything was thrown in with it, grounds maintenance, R&D, security, training, etc. I've heard that the costs to actually take a flown shuttle and put it back on the pad, in fuel, refurb, ET, SRBs & labor only ran around $138 Million. The other $1.36 Billion per flight (yes, including all that it did put the total program cost at $1.5 BILLION per flight), was all "associated costs" that at best were far more expensive than they should have been, an at worst were completely unnecessary pork.
"'Commercial space' has been with us for 70 years."
Calling those endeavors "commercial" is kind of a misnomer. Next to all of them quote one cost during the initial rounds of selection, and then completely ignore those quotes after their design is chosen often exceeding their original price estimate by 2 or more TIMES. And they can legally do it because they all require "cost +" contracts that say they get what it cost them to build + a profit margin. The "Ares I" program is a pretty good example, costs were originally estimated to be around $28 Billion. Costs quickly rose to $40 billion after the project was chosen and even before an real hardware had been built, undoubtedly those costs would have risen even further if the project had not been scrapped. From what I understand COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) and its associated programs seek to end this scheme for LEO launches, setting an "in stone" price for launch services. NASA pays in installments as the program meets its contracted goals & if the company doesn't meet its obligations they get no further payments and NASA can go after them for breach of contract and recoup some of the payment(s) if they really need to. Unlike previous programs in these the companies are encouraged to keep costs low, so their profit margin is as high as possible, BUT ALSO complete the contract requirements, or they don't get paid at all.
Warrant-less spying has surged under the Obama administration. From what I understand he has maintained every domestic spying program created under the Bush administration, and even expanded some of them and created new ones. Not that I think a republican would do any better mind you. Both parties have little interest in protecting any of our rights, they are far too interested in pandering to corporate lobbyists and expanding their own powers beyond all reason.
"None of them are even close to the scale of hydrocarbon energy as we use it now, nor will they ever be."
Running the entire country on renewable's isn't as audacious as you might think. To cover the entire US's electrical power (40%) usage would only require a 100 mile by 100 mile area in the area of Utah (1/15th of the state). That ignores wind, tidal, biomass & geothermal which could conceivably take up the slack for other energy usage Transportation (29%), Industrial (21%) & Other sources (10%). That being said while it is likely possible it would be idiotic to focus on using ONLY using renewable's, it would require a massive undertaking, likely need an extensive control system with current technology (uber "smart" grid) and be susceptible to disasters due to its nationwide interconnection. However using renewable's to handle our increasing peak power usage, cover some of the base load and replace petroleum & natural gas as that fuel source becomes more scarce (ie expensive) is very reasonable. Our major problem is we need to return to a variety of energy sources, becoming dependent on a single source of energy for several areas of our lives (Petroleum for cars, Natural gas for Heating, etc) has dug us into a huge hole.
This seems like a perfect use for Ultra-capacitors. While they do not have anywhere neat the energy density of modern batteries they do have several other advantages. They can be charged quickly, put high rate recharge stations under a majority of bus stations and they could top off their capacitors in the time it takes for one passenger to get on. They last VERY long with no maintenance and very little degradation of performance, some are rated to over a million charge/discharge cycles. They can operate in extreme temperatures, some from -40c to +65c. They are made out of far less toxic materials. While a bus running on ultra-capacitors would not be able to go very far, buses in urban environments don't usually go very far between stops. Combined with regenerative braking, which ultra-capacitors are very well suited for, they would likely have more than enough range for most urban bus transit.
All of these "vaccines" to cure addictions concern me. Thankfully I don't think any of them have been massively effective & I can see the benefits for a small portion of the population....... But. I can just kind of thing going downhill REAL fast. What would have happened if these kinds of things had been available during the "Temperance Movement" (the people who brought us prohibition). I imagine many temperance organizations (Churches, Woman's Groups, etc) would have held "vaccination drives" where they would have mutilated a significant portion of a generation of Americans. The same goes for the current attempts at Marijuana, Cocaine, and other "vaccines" currently being tested, if they attain significant effectiveness I have little doubt that there will be a push by some groups to have children & repeat offenders coerced into being "treated". Its a sad state in our society that we all to often attack the symptoms of problems (crime, drug use, violence, etc) instead of their causes (poverty, lack of opportunities, desperation, mental illness).
I hope you're right, but there is a cautionary note in history here. Iran was also on its way towards a more scientific, reason based society. If my understanding of the history is correct, after years of living under a repressive government (installed & supported by the US & British govs) a revolution ousted that government. Shortly after the Islamic segment of the revolution turned on the other groups who has assisted in the overthrow and seized power, the resulting country is well known.
" Why don't you scan the bar code of every item in your kitchen"
That's probably where the "checkout of the future" comes in. I've seen a demo of it somewhere, bar codes are supposed to go the way of the dodo, eventually RFID tags are supposed to take over for them. You simply fill up your cart, walk through an arch with a high speed RFID scanner in it and either hand over your money or your RFID credit/debit card is automatically scanned. If that comes to pass the "fridge of the future" would then have an RFID scanner in it, and when it noticed a code that was usually in your fridge was no longer there, it would notify you. While some of the features sound interesting, personally I don't intend to EVER hook up an important household appliance to a global network. I don't care how secure they say it is it WILL have flaws. I don't need some virus playing with my houses heat settings or playing porno/Viagra advertisements on my TV. In any case these "improvements" should be physically isolated from the base functions of the appliance, and if they aren't purchasers should at least be able to hardware disable them (by simply not plugging them in to the network or physically cutting the wi-fi)
And we may not be too far from that point where we are no longer able to produce more food. According to estimates there are about 14 million square Kilometers of agricultural land currently on earth. That is roughly the total surface area United States and Canada combined. While there are probably a few more places where farmland could probably be opened up, our current usage area probably represents at least 80% of the possible arable land using current farming practices. While things like urban agriculture, GM crops, and lab grown proteins can probably get us a bit further, it is unlikely that the planet can sustain much over 15 billion people (9-10 billion under current agriculture).
A jury the prosecutor arguably has an upper hand in choosing, and a judge that, in most jurisdictions, is predisposed to side with the prosecution to keep the police unions & politicians happy. Grand Juries are a pretty good example of how lopsided the justice system has become, at least in federal cases around 98% of grand juries side with the prosecution. While the grand jury system is intended to only prove "reasonable cause", even most prosecutors laud them as being a "rubber stamp". One NY judge suggested that "any prosecutor worth her salt can indict a ham sandwich".
" Kerr says that, as the law stands, the charges against Swartz were "pretty much legit," and that the law itself should be the target of the internet community's angst,"
No, BOTH should be the target of the "internet community's angst" and societies in general. One can't happen without the other, prosecutors continually demand more harsh and less restrictive laws "to catch the bad people". And when it is proven beyond all doubt that they targeted the wrong people with their near unlimited "proprietorial discretion" they demand complete indemnification from criminal/civil responsibility because prosecution of the "bad guys" would be imperiled if they had to worry about their freedom & livelihood. They can't have it both ways, at least not in a free & just society. They can either have extensive powers with severe penalties if they mess up, or they can have very limited powers with limited liability. To do otherwise breeds nothing but corruption & imprisonment of the innocent.
They're not breaking any records or anything but not bad. The MerlinC engine is around 300 Isp (specific impulse, the engine efficiency for those who don't know). That's not blowing away the Space shuttles specs (~400 Isp) but it also doesn't cost $40 Million per engine or use Liquid Hydrogen.
Slashdot Mirror
Boston PD, continually proving how batshit wacko a police department can be. They've caused a terrorist scare over a bunch of light-bright advertising signs, blown up their own "Department of Transportations" traffic monitors & have a well documented history of arresting/attacking people who legally videotape them.
Police routinely destroy, delete, edit and/or obfuscate footage when it shows them in an "unflattering" light, why do you expect everyday citizens to turn over evidence against themselves when the police fail to do the same?
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=708&sid=1938732
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=12951588
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=428&sid=1116072
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/05/birmingham_police_beating_vide_3.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmXTFr5hoOo
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/03/fort-worth-justice-says-traffic-stop.html
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hollywood/sfl-hollywood-cops-fake-report-b072809,0,350771.story
I'm having trouble remembering any former dirigible hangers dressed up as shuttle ports, gas-fired power plants dressed up as starfleet recruit embarkation facilities, or breweries dressed up as communications rooms and engineering sections from any of the previous series/movies. The most egregious example (that wasn't intentional of course) that I can think of from any of the previous shows would be some of the "alien world" scenes from "Time and Time Again" (VOY) that look like northern California. While I am sure several sets were from other series were modified commercial facilities, there was enough work done to them to make most of them virtually impossible recognize. And "Star Trek (2009)" probably had 4 times the budget of most star trek films and over 100 times the budget of any episode which makes the lack of effort to develop decent sets all the more annoying.
The Only interest I have in seeing this movie is when it comes out on one of the Satellite TV channels so I can DVR it and skip through it to watch the space scenes. The acting, script & sets are literally painful to me. Its like watching a two year old play with matchbox cars, flying them through the air like their jet fighters. Sure it may have moments of interest, but they are few and far between. For goodness sakes half of the sets were commercial/utility sites with a few computer consoles added (brewery, electrical substation).
While this guy should be punished, those government officials who arranged for these purchases also deserve some punishment for their gross negligence. That there were no tests or apparent attempts at verification before purchasing such expensive pieces of equipment and sending them into a warzone is unconscionable.
I believe the article covered this issue, the land being used is poor for most crops (salty and arid). It sounds like the only crop that can be economically grown is cotton, and the fields are suffering decreased yields from lack of crop rotation. So it sounds like this is not displacing any food crops at all, and over the long term it may even increase the yields of the crop it is displacing. While this is not a situation that is going to be repeatable in many areas, IMHO this isn't such a bad thing. One of our biggest problems has been focusing on one source for some of our energy needs (Petroleum at the moment for vehicles), having a variety of sources (corn/sugar-beat ethanol, biomass, biodiesel, electric) will help insure that if one source encounters issues (strike, pest problem, drought, shortages) the others can pick up the slack.
"There are four incorporated municipalities in my county,"
Don't forget the difficulty in determining what municipality any particular address is in to even apply the rate. A lot of people are under the misconception that zip-codes could be used.... Buwahahahaha. In our county there is I think maybe two out of over a dozen (both incorporated & unincorporated) cities & villages where the zip-code area is limited to their municipal boundaries, and both of those are tiny little villages of less than 200 people. The only reason zip-codes exist are to determine the most efficient post office to send the particular letter/package to for delivery, they generally don't care about political boundaries. And not many counties have a comprehensive database that could certifiably do an "address to municipality" conversion. Sure it could be done, but it would be a significant undertaking costing likely a hundred million dollars plus to do on a national level.
You'll never make a computer system completely idiot proof, a more impressive idiot will ALWAYS come along. "Security Awareness training", or at least some pamphlet or something handed out to the departments is only going to help. While it is very true that the primary focus should be on securing the system as much as possible, letting the users know some of the simple rules to follow to help keep it secure is always a plus.
Somehow I doubt that the issue in this case is with phone GPS receivers, which at best are usually only 15-25' accurate and can be blocked or rendered less accurate by almost anything (hand over the receiver, cloudcover, buildings, car roofs, etc). It sounds like the issue is with "survey grade" GPS units, they are often backpack or vehicle based and can resolve coordinates to centimeter accuracy. Such coordinates, captured throughout the country, could be used as a ground control to take semi-accurate aerial photography and "rectify" it so it is much more accurate. Though from a military perspective its probably not an issue since satellites can probably already georeference the imagery to less than 20' based on their own sensors, more than accurate enough for bombs & missiles.
I can only see one issue with high accuracy mapping of roads, it could be used as "ground control" for aerial photography. When you're flying aerial photography it is often highly desirable to have a number of "aerial visible" locations (often large white painted arrows) with high accuracy GPS coordinates distributed through the capture area. That way the images can be rubber sheeted using some pretty fancy algorithms to these points so you take an image with OK accuracy and turn it into one with high accuracy. But with modern tech this is probably not an issue at least from a military perspective, I don't know about satellites but at least with aircraft captures they can usually achieve 3' accuracy for 90% of surveyed points with no ground control. Even assuming for the sake of argument that satellite captures are less accurate (lets say 10') I highly doubt that is going to matter when your sending a several hundred lb warhead to a target, or guiding troops to a facility. Mostly this level of accuracy only comes into play when you're trying to locate underground pipelines/wiring, or mapping property lines in urban or suburban areas.
Ever tried switching on a TV to a program you've seen a hundred times, or a movie/show that you find extremely uninteresting? I generally have trouble going to sleep in a quite house because I find myself wondering about every creak so I usually set a sleep timer on a TV for about 90 minutes and turn the volume down to just the point where it washes out any background noise. It gives you something to focus your attention on but still allows you to be bored enough to conk out.
Depends, If they're just censors with no tie-in to the aircraft's operation then there shouldn't be any issue. But that needs to be in the form of hardware or air-gap, not some software setting that can likely be overridden remotely. The only way I would see this kind of functionality being safe is if the aircraft basically has two health monitoring systems, one used by the cockpit which has NO communications ability. And the other which can communicate and does have passive only access to the aircraft's censors, but is otherwise is physically disconnected from any of the aircraft's control systems.
" could build a shuttle that didn't cost $600 million per flight. "
To be fair the shuttle program was intended to be deployed on a much larger scale (dozen(s) of them with over 60 flights per year), which would have brought down the cost per flight significantly. Also the "shuttle program" was not limited to launches & shuttle refurb like it should have been, everything was thrown in with it, grounds maintenance, R&D, security, training, etc. I've heard that the costs to actually take a flown shuttle and put it back on the pad, in fuel, refurb, ET, SRBs & labor only ran around $138 Million. The other $1.36 Billion per flight (yes, including all that it did put the total program cost at $1.5 BILLION per flight), was all "associated costs" that at best were far more expensive than they should have been, an at worst were completely unnecessary pork.
"'Commercial space' has been with us for 70 years."
Calling those endeavors "commercial" is kind of a misnomer. Next to all of them quote one cost during the initial rounds of selection, and then completely ignore those quotes after their design is chosen often exceeding their original price estimate by 2 or more TIMES. And they can legally do it because they all require "cost +" contracts that say they get what it cost them to build + a profit margin. The "Ares I" program is a pretty good example, costs were originally estimated to be around $28 Billion. Costs quickly rose to $40 billion after the project was chosen and even before an real hardware had been built, undoubtedly those costs would have risen even further if the project had not been scrapped. From what I understand COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) and its associated programs seek to end this scheme for LEO launches, setting an "in stone" price for launch services. NASA pays in installments as the program meets its contracted goals & if the company doesn't meet its obligations they get no further payments and NASA can go after them for breach of contract and recoup some of the payment(s) if they really need to. Unlike previous programs in these the companies are encouraged to keep costs low, so their profit margin is as high as possible, BUT ALSO complete the contract requirements, or they don't get paid at all.
One of these days I'll learn to read through the sentience/article to the very end before I start spouting off.
You forgot your sarcasm tag. Just in case you were actually serious.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/07/tapp-j10.html
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Obama+Administration+to+Spy+on+Citizens+Online+to+Fight+Terror/article19734.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/28/warrantless-electronic-surveillance-obama_n_1924508.html
http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/03/warrantless-spying-skyrockets-under-obam
Warrant-less spying has surged under the Obama administration. From what I understand he has maintained every domestic spying program created under the Bush administration, and even expanded some of them and created new ones. Not that I think a republican would do any better mind you. Both parties have little interest in protecting any of our rights, they are far too interested in pandering to corporate lobbyists and expanding their own powers beyond all reason.
"None of them are even close to the scale of hydrocarbon energy as we use it now, nor will they ever be."
Running the entire country on renewable's isn't as audacious as you might think. To cover the entire US's electrical power (40%) usage would only require a 100 mile by 100 mile area in the area of Utah (1/15th of the state). That ignores wind, tidal, biomass & geothermal which could conceivably take up the slack for other energy usage Transportation (29%), Industrial (21%) & Other sources (10%). That being said while it is likely possible it would be idiotic to focus on using ONLY using renewable's, it would require a massive undertaking, likely need an extensive control system with current technology (uber "smart" grid) and be susceptible to disasters due to its nationwide interconnection. However using renewable's to handle our increasing peak power usage, cover some of the base load and replace petroleum & natural gas as that fuel source becomes more scarce (ie expensive) is very reasonable. Our major problem is we need to return to a variety of energy sources, becoming dependent on a single source of energy for several areas of our lives (Petroleum for cars, Natural gas for Heating, etc) has dug us into a huge hole.
This seems like a perfect use for Ultra-capacitors. While they do not have anywhere neat the energy density of modern batteries they do have several other advantages. They can be charged quickly, put high rate recharge stations under a majority of bus stations and they could top off their capacitors in the time it takes for one passenger to get on. They last VERY long with no maintenance and very little degradation of performance, some are rated to over a million charge/discharge cycles. They can operate in extreme temperatures, some from -40c to +65c. They are made out of far less toxic materials. While a bus running on ultra-capacitors would not be able to go very far, buses in urban environments don't usually go very far between stops. Combined with regenerative braking, which ultra-capacitors are very well suited for, they would likely have more than enough range for most urban bus transit.
All of these "vaccines" to cure addictions concern me. Thankfully I don't think any of them have been massively effective & I can see the benefits for a small portion of the population....... But. I can just kind of thing going downhill REAL fast. What would have happened if these kinds of things had been available during the "Temperance Movement" (the people who brought us prohibition). I imagine many temperance organizations (Churches, Woman's Groups, etc) would have held "vaccination drives" where they would have mutilated a significant portion of a generation of Americans. The same goes for the current attempts at Marijuana, Cocaine, and other "vaccines" currently being tested, if they attain significant effectiveness I have little doubt that there will be a push by some groups to have children & repeat offenders coerced into being "treated". Its a sad state in our society that we all to often attack the symptoms of problems (crime, drug use, violence, etc) instead of their causes (poverty, lack of opportunities, desperation, mental illness).
I hope you're right, but there is a cautionary note in history here. Iran was also on its way towards a more scientific, reason based society. If my understanding of the history is correct, after years of living under a repressive government (installed & supported by the US & British govs) a revolution ousted that government. Shortly after the Islamic segment of the revolution turned on the other groups who has assisted in the overthrow and seized power, the resulting country is well known.
http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/iran-in-1970s-before-islamic-revolution.html
" Why don't you scan the bar code of every item in your kitchen"
That's probably where the "checkout of the future" comes in. I've seen a demo of it somewhere, bar codes are supposed to go the way of the dodo, eventually RFID tags are supposed to take over for them. You simply fill up your cart, walk through an arch with a high speed RFID scanner in it and either hand over your money or your RFID credit/debit card is automatically scanned. If that comes to pass the "fridge of the future" would then have an RFID scanner in it, and when it noticed a code that was usually in your fridge was no longer there, it would notify you. While some of the features sound interesting, personally I don't intend to EVER hook up an important household appliance to a global network. I don't care how secure they say it is it WILL have flaws. I don't need some virus playing with my houses heat settings or playing porno/Viagra advertisements on my TV. In any case these "improvements" should be physically isolated from the base functions of the appliance, and if they aren't purchasers should at least be able to hardware disable them (by simply not plugging them in to the network or physically cutting the wi-fi)
And we may not be too far from that point where we are no longer able to produce more food. According to estimates there are about 14 million square Kilometers of agricultural land currently on earth. That is roughly the total surface area United States and Canada combined. While there are probably a few more places where farmland could probably be opened up, our current usage area probably represents at least 80% of the possible arable land using current farming practices. While things like urban agriculture, GM crops, and lab grown proteins can probably get us a bit further, it is unlikely that the planet can sustain much over 15 billion people (9-10 billion under current agriculture).
A jury the prosecutor arguably has an upper hand in choosing, and a judge that, in most jurisdictions, is predisposed to side with the prosecution to keep the police unions & politicians happy. Grand Juries are a pretty good example of how lopsided the justice system has become, at least in federal cases around 98% of grand juries side with the prosecution. While the grand jury system is intended to only prove "reasonable cause", even most prosecutors laud them as being a "rubber stamp". One NY judge suggested that "any prosecutor worth her salt can indict a ham sandwich".
" Kerr says that, as the law stands, the charges against Swartz were "pretty much legit," and that the law itself should be the target of the internet community's angst,"
No, BOTH should be the target of the "internet community's angst" and societies in general. One can't happen without the other, prosecutors continually demand more harsh and less restrictive laws "to catch the bad people". And when it is proven beyond all doubt that they targeted the wrong people with their near unlimited "proprietorial discretion" they demand complete indemnification from criminal/civil responsibility because prosecution of the "bad guys" would be imperiled if they had to worry about their freedom & livelihood. They can't have it both ways, at least not in a free & just society. They can either have extensive powers with severe penalties if they mess up, or they can have very limited powers with limited liability. To do otherwise breeds nothing but corruption & imprisonment of the innocent.
They're not breaking any records or anything but not bad. The MerlinC engine is around 300 Isp (specific impulse, the engine efficiency for those who don't know). That's not blowing away the Space shuttles specs (~400 Isp) but it also doesn't cost $40 Million per engine or use Liquid Hydrogen.