Where I live things like pagers have gone the way of the Dodo... Everybody uses text messages on cellphones instead.
Now it shouldn't be hard to realize that while emergency calls can be made by the staff from hardline phones if necessary, some people need the ability to *receive* messages while in the theater. They may be on call 24/7 and thus cannot just pick another time to watch a movie - they'll still be on call.
So active or passive shielding isn't the solution - and it would not prevent people from gaming or similar.
What is needed is reaction and punishment. Basically something along the lines of being kicked out immediately, having to refund the tickets of all the people disturbed and have the phone confiscated. That will force the offender to buy a new phone before he or she will be able to bother other people again, and having to pay everybody elses tickets ensures that it will be a lot harder to afford a new phone any time soon.
That was until Thatcher killed off the unions. They had become both too powerful and too much focused on themselves and not the greater picture.
A proper union works with the company to make things work the best for all involved; the UK unions was only working for themselves, not the workers and certainly not the company or the country.
He is being charged with espionage, which is a legitimate charge given his actions.
No it isn't. He didn't turn over state secrets to an enemy which is the definition of espionage. He disclosed the back side to the legislation implemented since 9/11 which is neither a secret nor something an enemy can use to threaten the USA in any way.
One of the fallout issues is the revelation that this legislation uses various forms of secrecy to hide the fact that the government is spying on its citizens based on absolutely not concrete suspicion which is a clear violation of the Constitution. The obvious solution is to adjust this spy program so that mass spying is stopped and spying on specific individuals or organizations is only allowed based on a concrete suspicion and warrant. That would make it comply with the Constitution and make law abiding citizen free of spying.
Arguments that mass spying is necessary to catch 'lone gunmen' and similar are null and void. Absolutely none of those 'lone gunmen' ever revealed by this program was unknown to other law enforcement; the were all on various watchlists and in various crosshairs. This means the spying wasn't relevant and that proper vigilance in these law enforcement units would have solved the issue without the need for massive spying on almost exclusively innocent people. This also means that anyone who ends up on such a list should be investigated properly instead of just being a mostly ignored name on a list. The Boston bombers were on a FBI list and they were questioned (one of them were) but no further action were taken. A bit more investigation would easily have revealed their radicalization (regular journalists were able to do this when their connection to the terror attack became known) and then it would just be a matter of regular warrants, surveillance and so on, and quite possibly prevention of the attack.
..., or use in prisons to reduce privacy without removing all of it (not that they can't just put a mic on one side and a speaker on the other, as is done today).
Is reducing privacy as much as possible part of the punishment?
I thought prisons were about keeping criminals off the street in a manner able to handle all kinds of people, from the quiet types to the ultra violent and/or gangbanger types? - I don't see how removing privacy and making all noises travel easily helps this.
An ideal prison for lifers without parole (and possible also death row) would be small individual cells with a shower and toilet, with or without a windows. The inmate will spend all his/her time there except for visits. All cells would be soundproofed to the extreme and the inmate would only talk to the staff, never other inmates. There would be both a tv and access to cable, DVDs and games. Also a computer with monitored internet access (unless removed by the judge) will be available. No need for any socializing activities as the inmate is never to be released. It's just secure storage with conveniences.
The current efforts to combat tax evasion has created a need for a monetary system out of reach from greedy governments. Sure if everybody paid a small amount in tax and government spending was kept in check there would be no need to hide money. Now, governments wastes money like never before causing a high demand for taxes, and combined with various socialistic tax systems (progressive taxing for instance), create a need for those with larger incomes to hide some of it in order not to be taxed unfairly, and the negative spiral has begun.
The root issue is that we need to reduce government spending - reduce it a lot. That would of course kill off a lot of pet projects for various officials which would make it impossible to realize unless we get rid of them as well. Smaller government reduces the need for taxes which would reduce tax evasion which would increase the tax value which again would reduce the tax level and thus the tax evasion etc.
But until we get this almost utopian society with a truly minimal government, we need to keep as much money from their greedy hands and thus we need a monetary system that can hide all the money we don't want the governments to get their hands on. If they're denied the money they have to reduce spending in order to avoid piling on debt and that is a step in the right direction.
"Driving is a privilege not a right", ring a bell? They will probably revoke your license if you refuse, as various states may do with respect to breath analysis. Asserting your rights is not always without consequence. Keep in mind that you entered into a "contract" with the state to obtain your "driving privilege". That contract obligates you to do certain things upon request.
Reminds me of what happened to Amanda Bynes, the actress. A cop pulled her over on suspicion of being under the influence. She claimed that was trying to escape the paparazzi which was even then clicking away. The cop insisted on a field test and she refused, stating that she would be willing to submit a blood test at the station instead. The cop insisted and she continued to refuse, citing the paparazzi presence and refusing to 'perform' in front of them. The cop didn't care and she got arrested and as the law requires charged with a automatic DUI and stripped her of her license, despite the blood test clearing her of any intoxication. The entire incident was recorded by the paps and can be found on the gossip site tmz.com among others. She later drove without a license and got arrested again, once more in full view of the ever-hunting paps.
Although you may not like the BPI or their motives, nobody can argue that TPB's rasion d'être is anything other than contributory copyright infringement on an industrial scale; not with a straight face, at least.
I'll bite, and do so with a straight face.
I understand if you're unable to access TPB due to government censorship but then let me enlighten you. The founding reason for TPB was to facilitate unlimited and unrestricted file sharing and to use civil disobedience to fight the misuse of copyright for commercial purposes (like using local monopolies to drive up prices). The argument has always been that a copy costs nothing for nobody and nobody loses anything while everybody have the chance to gain something.
The copyright MAFIAA has always presented the argument that each copy is a lost sale (one-to-one) but the few times this argument has passed through court rooms it has always been struck down for two primary reasons:
1) A significant portion of those using the pirated copy cannot afford the genuine article. This is especially true with overpriced software like AutoCAD.
2) An even more significant portion are unable to buy the genuine version of the pirated article because it's not for sale where they are located. This is especially true for movies and tv-shows.
As the rights holders control both pricing and distribution, they're directly responsible for a large amount of the piracy, and have the ability to remove most of the foundation for piracy with a stroke of a pen. They create the demand but are unable to fulfill it so people have to resort to piracy.
Denmark has the same issue. We have a law allowing extradition to foreign countries of danish nationals in case of terrorism, which was enacted post 9/11 (November 2011 if I remember correctly). It has been used exactly once - not to extradite a terrorist but to extradite a woman who used to have a US-national boyfriend who smuggled drugs. She was charged with knowing about his activities and not reporting it - a very minor crime, and yet the danish courts, all the way to the supreme court - allowed the extradition. Fortunately for her, the crime she was charged with fell for the statute of limitation almost before the extradition proceedings began (i.e. a huge waste of time and money) so she could return as a free woman.
But it's a huge problem that a law specifically meant for terrorists were used in a relatively minor criminal case in a crime barely punishable by more than a fine here. So much for the terrorist angle.
I still remember drawing maps and whatever it took to complete Will Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure back in the 1980's. It was Don Woods extended 140 location/350 points version.
Still love it and actually still play it; I've got it on my Android phone and it's the extended 660 points version from 1994 which is still available for download as a source tarball. I also have it on my personal server in case I get into withdrawal... There's still places I haven't been in this extended version. > adventure4 [A-code kernel version 10.05; MLA, 01 Apr 94]
Welcome to Adventure4+ [660 point MLA version 10.06 - 26 Jul 95]
Would you like instructions? no
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully and a wide path leads northwest.
? enter
You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring.
There are some keys on the ground here. There is a shiny brass lamp nearby.
? get all
You get the keys. You get the lamp.
That should stir up a few memories...
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"
Seems like they're building a precrime unit... As any decent terrorist knows, regular communications are intercepted and everything may be bugged, so they communicate in other ways. I mean, the Boston bombers for instance were clearly coordinating their attack and yet law enforcement was not aware of the attack prior to the attack itself, so they successfully hid from the NSA, FBI etc.
So the only way is to analyze communication leading up to the radicalization to predict if and when a terrorist is born. That's precrime with the data mining clusters replacing the oracles.
Perhaps a decade ago, makers of GSM phones here in Europe advertised intensely for the ability to kill stolen phones using the IMEI number. Basically they stated that if your phone got stolen, all you needed to do (besides filing a police report) was to report it to the carrier. They could block the IMEI number in an international database, so when the phone was turned on it would either be rejected from any GSM network or downright be bricked.
But it turned out that not only was the support for the database lacking - most of the East-European countries, as well as the Middle-east and South America - didn't use it at all, allowing stolen phones to be used freely - the supposedly immutable IMEI number could relatively easy be altered as well.
In order not to repeat this, the new system must be carrier-independent as it seems certain regions are so saturated with stolen phones that blocking them would take away maybe 80-90% of these carriers revenue. The new system must use the standard protocols on the mobile networks and be able to disable any phone connected to any carrier without the carrier being able to prevent this. The disabled phone should display a message about the phone being stolen. who the rightful owner is, perhaps offering a reward for the return, and the ability for the owner to unblock the phone using a code shipped with the phone if he/she got it back, something like a PUK code for the phone itself. Perhaps the code also could be used to block the phone in the first place, avoiding the need to involve carriers etc.
Man calls 9-1-1 and reports that burglary is taking place at this neighbors house, requesting police. He gets the response: "Sorry sir, but all cars are busy right now. We cannot help you." Man hangs up, waits a few minutes and calls again. "I was me that called earlier about the burglary next door. Disregard that. I've killed the burglar." Within a minute a dozen police cars arrive at the house. The police enter the house, arrest the burglar and then turn their attention towards our man. "I thought you said you killed the burglar?!" "I thought you said all your cars were busy?"
“XXXXX is a BitTorrent website that – without the permission of the copyright holder – actively provides UK internet users with a bespoke directory and search engine for torrent files. This enables users to find and download copyright content which would otherwise be time consuming or impossible to locate,” the letter notes.
Google? - Search for the name of the show/movie and you'll find the name of the related torrent within the top 10 results. Then search for that specifically and you'll find the direct links to both bitlocker downloads and torrents. Not time consuming. Not impossible. Not at all. Extremely easy actually.
But nuclear power (fission) is the only truly sustainable energy source for the future given the alternatives of today.
Fossil fuels are out due to their CO2 footprint.
Solar and wind are useful supplements but too unreliable to stand alone and still with far too low yield to provide enough power per installation. To supply power to everything world-wide 24/7 with room to grow (triple most likely) would require insane amounts of windmills and square miles of solar arrays which would affect both land for food crops, cause massive noise pollution and seriously damage the recreational value of nature as there would have to be billions of windmills absolutely everywhere. So many mills would most likely also cause massive disruptions in weather patterns. Solar panels also still require rare metals that is in very short supply.
Everything else is not suitable for large scale use.
If fusion ever gets out from the labs and into the commercial market it would be the market changer as it requires basically water to run and has no waste problem. The radioactive He produced can simply be released into the atmosphere where it would rise until cosmic radiation would cause it to decay into harmless isotopes.
Both are 'neutral' and will not in themselves yield any evidence. They can both be obtained without the cooperation of the accused, both directly (using swabs) and indirectly (using prints or hair left during interrogation or similar). A password cannot. It requires the cooperation of the accused as it can only be retrieved from the memory of this person.
Yes and no. If the download records isn't enough to convict - too bad. Encrypted data are private by every standard no matter what they can decode to. This is analogous to copy protection. In most countries where you are allowed to make private copies of copyrighted stuff, you're not allowed to break the copy protection in order to do so. Same thing should apply to private data - if they're encrypted in a non-trivial way, they're off limits to the authorities.
Note that I want kiddie pornographers punished as much as the next guy. It just has to happen without anybody being forced to hand over passwords or similar. Note that most kiddie porn collectors are clueless about encryption (98% store their stash in the open on their harddrives or burned to DVDs usually stacked near the computer) so this isn't a big issue.
PETA: Hiding behind cuddly furry pets and naked celebrities is a militant, self-serving bunch of maniacs that breaks laws and support radical groups on a daily basis. Arson, gross vandalism and homicide are both accepted, supported and used to further their radical agenda.
Their "go veg" campaign is full of serious errors and the website repeats these despite it having killed several babies/children already, sending the parents to jail for a very long time. No, children under approx. 6 years of age CANNOT go fully vegetarian (try it and you'll die from malnutrition) and you have to be at least a teenager to go vegan if you want to develop normally and grow to your designated height for instance. But you'll find nothing of this on their website.
Making an illegal copy cannot be theft by definition. Theft means "illegal transfer of possession" and the original is never 'lost' in any way, only duplicated.
It's copyright infringement, nothing more. But "theft" sounds much more serious so they use that - even if it's completely wrong on every level. Sigh.
Create some kind of Gatling paint gun firing 500-1000 paint balls a minute at very high velocity and use that. Any vandals hit would be knocked down and completely covered in paint. Even if he got up and away, he'll be easy to find due to the extreme amount of paint on him. Use a paint that easily removable from the trains but hard to remove from skin and clothing. Now that's a taste of their own medicine!
The only way to fix the graffiti problem (on trains) is to guard the parked trains using guards, dogs and electric fences with razor wire. If done right the trains can be kept clean except for quick tags done on trains in service. Of course you will see 'artists' (vandals) getting bitten, cut, electrified and arrested but soon even these morons learn and find other things to break.
Slashdot Mirror
Where I live things like pagers have gone the way of the Dodo... Everybody uses text messages on cellphones instead.
Now it shouldn't be hard to realize that while emergency calls can be made by the staff from hardline phones if necessary, some people need the ability to *receive* messages while in the theater. They may be on call 24/7 and thus cannot just pick another time to watch a movie - they'll still be on call.
So active or passive shielding isn't the solution - and it would not prevent people from gaming or similar.
What is needed is reaction and punishment. Basically something along the lines of being kicked out immediately, having to refund the tickets of all the people disturbed and have the phone confiscated. That will force the offender to buy a new phone before he or she will be able to bother other people again, and having to pay everybody elses tickets ensures that it will be a lot harder to afford a new phone any time soon.
That was until Thatcher killed off the unions. They had become both too powerful and too much focused on themselves and not the greater picture.
A proper union works with the company to make things work the best for all involved; the UK unions was only working for themselves, not the workers and certainly not the company or the country.
They don't write "news for nerds" anymore under the logo for a reason.
And "Stuff that matters" is also gone... Explains quite a lot actually...
He is being charged with espionage, which is a legitimate charge given his actions.
No it isn't. He didn't turn over state secrets to an enemy which is the definition of espionage. He disclosed the back side to the legislation implemented since 9/11 which is neither a secret nor something an enemy can use to threaten the USA in any way.
One of the fallout issues is the revelation that this legislation uses various forms of secrecy to hide the fact that the government is spying on its citizens based on absolutely not concrete suspicion which is a clear violation of the Constitution. The obvious solution is to adjust this spy program so that mass spying is stopped and spying on specific individuals or organizations is only allowed based on a concrete suspicion and warrant. That would make it comply with the Constitution and make law abiding citizen free of spying.
Arguments that mass spying is necessary to catch 'lone gunmen' and similar are null and void. Absolutely none of those 'lone gunmen' ever revealed by this program was unknown to other law enforcement; the were all on various watchlists and in various crosshairs. This means the spying wasn't relevant and that proper vigilance in these law enforcement units would have solved the issue without the need for massive spying on almost exclusively innocent people. This also means that anyone who ends up on such a list should be investigated properly instead of just being a mostly ignored name on a list. The Boston bombers were on a FBI list and they were questioned (one of them were) but no further action were taken. A bit more investigation would easily have revealed their radicalization (regular journalists were able to do this when their connection to the terror attack became known) and then it would just be a matter of regular warrants, surveillance and so on, and quite possibly prevention of the attack.
..., or use in prisons to reduce privacy without removing all of it (not that they can't just put a mic on one side and a speaker on the other, as is done today).
Is reducing privacy as much as possible part of the punishment?
I thought prisons were about keeping criminals off the street in a manner able to handle all kinds of people, from the quiet types to the ultra violent and/or gangbanger types? - I don't see how removing privacy and making all noises travel easily helps this.
An ideal prison for lifers without parole (and possible also death row) would be small individual cells with a shower and toilet, with or without a windows. The inmate will spend all his/her time there except for visits. All cells would be soundproofed to the extreme and the inmate would only talk to the staff, never other inmates. There would be both a tv and access to cable, DVDs and games. Also a computer with monitored internet access (unless removed by the judge) will be available. No need for any socializing activities as the inmate is never to be released. It's just secure storage with conveniences.
The current efforts to combat tax evasion has created a need for a monetary system out of reach from greedy governments. Sure if everybody paid a small amount in tax and government spending was kept in check there would be no need to hide money. Now, governments wastes money like never before causing a high demand for taxes, and combined with various socialistic tax systems (progressive taxing for instance), create a need for those with larger incomes to hide some of it in order not to be taxed unfairly, and the negative spiral has begun.
The root issue is that we need to reduce government spending - reduce it a lot. That would of course kill off a lot of pet projects for various officials which would make it impossible to realize unless we get rid of them as well. Smaller government reduces the need for taxes which would reduce tax evasion which would increase the tax value which again would reduce the tax level and thus the tax evasion etc.
But until we get this almost utopian society with a truly minimal government, we need to keep as much money from their greedy hands and thus we need a monetary system that can hide all the money we don't want the governments to get their hands on. If they're denied the money they have to reduce spending in order to avoid piling on debt and that is a step in the right direction.
All the more reason to pirate them. Why pay for something intentionally made defective?
"Driving is a privilege not a right", ring a bell? They will probably revoke your license if you refuse, as various states may do with respect to breath analysis. Asserting your rights is not always without consequence. Keep in mind that you entered into a "contract" with the state to obtain your "driving privilege". That contract obligates you to do certain things upon request.
Reminds me of what happened to Amanda Bynes, the actress. A cop pulled her over on suspicion of being under the influence. She claimed that was trying to escape the paparazzi which was even then clicking away. The cop insisted on a field test and she refused, stating that she would be willing to submit a blood test at the station instead. The cop insisted and she continued to refuse, citing the paparazzi presence and refusing to 'perform' in front of them. The cop didn't care and she got arrested and as the law requires charged with a automatic DUI and stripped her of her license, despite the blood test clearing her of any intoxication. The entire incident was recorded by the paps and can be found on the gossip site tmz.com among others. She later drove without a license and got arrested again, once more in full view of the ever-hunting paps.
Although you may not like the BPI or their motives, nobody can argue that TPB's rasion d'être is anything other than contributory copyright infringement on an industrial scale; not with a straight face, at least.
I'll bite, and do so with a straight face.
I understand if you're unable to access TPB due to government censorship but then let me enlighten you. The founding reason for TPB was to facilitate unlimited and unrestricted file sharing and to use civil disobedience to fight the misuse of copyright for commercial purposes (like using local monopolies to drive up prices). The argument has always been that a copy costs nothing for nobody and nobody loses anything while everybody have the chance to gain something.
The copyright MAFIAA has always presented the argument that each copy is a lost sale (one-to-one) but the few times this argument has passed through court rooms it has always been struck down for two primary reasons:
1) A significant portion of those using the pirated copy cannot afford the genuine article. This is especially true with overpriced software like AutoCAD.
2) An even more significant portion are unable to buy the genuine version of the pirated article because it's not for sale where they are located. This is especially true for movies and tv-shows.
As the rights holders control both pricing and distribution, they're directly responsible for a large amount of the piracy, and have the ability to remove most of the foundation for piracy with a stroke of a pen. They create the demand but are unable to fulfill it so people have to resort to piracy.
Denmark has the same issue. We have a law allowing extradition to foreign countries of danish nationals in case of terrorism, which was enacted post 9/11 (November 2011 if I remember correctly). It has been used exactly once - not to extradite a terrorist but to extradite a woman who used to have a US-national boyfriend who smuggled drugs. She was charged with knowing about his activities and not reporting it - a very minor crime, and yet the danish courts, all the way to the supreme court - allowed the extradition. Fortunately for her, the crime she was charged with fell for the statute of limitation almost before the extradition proceedings began (i.e. a huge waste of time and money) so she could return as a free woman.
But it's a huge problem that a law specifically meant for terrorists were used in a relatively minor criminal case in a crime barely punishable by more than a fine here. So much for the terrorist angle.
I still remember drawing maps and whatever it took to complete Will Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure back in the 1980's. It was Don Woods extended 140 location/350 points version.
Still love it and actually still play it; I've got it on my Android phone and it's the extended 660 points version from 1994 which is still available for download as a source tarball. I also have it on my personal server in case I get into withdrawal... There's still places I haven't been in this extended version.
> adventure4
[A-code kernel version 10.05; MLA, 01 Apr 94]
Welcome to Adventure4+ [660 point MLA version 10.06 - 26 Jul 95]
Would you like instructions? no
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and
down a gully and a wide path leads northwest.
? enter
You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring.
There are some keys on the ground here.
There is a shiny brass lamp nearby.
? get all
You get the keys.
You get the lamp.
That should stir up a few memories...
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"
Seems like they're building a precrime unit... As any decent terrorist knows, regular communications are intercepted and everything may be bugged, so they communicate in other ways. I mean, the Boston bombers for instance were clearly coordinating their attack and yet law enforcement was not aware of the attack prior to the attack itself, so they successfully hid from the NSA, FBI etc.
So the only way is to analyze communication leading up to the radicalization to predict if and when a terrorist is born. That's precrime with the data mining clusters replacing the oracles.
Perhaps a decade ago, makers of GSM phones here in Europe advertised intensely for the ability to kill stolen phones using the IMEI number. Basically they stated that if your phone got stolen, all you needed to do (besides filing a police report) was to report it to the carrier. They could block the IMEI number in an international database, so when the phone was turned on it would either be rejected from any GSM network or downright be bricked.
But it turned out that not only was the support for the database lacking - most of the East-European countries, as well as the Middle-east and South America - didn't use it at all, allowing stolen phones to be used freely - the supposedly immutable IMEI number could relatively easy be altered as well.
In order not to repeat this, the new system must be carrier-independent as it seems certain regions are so saturated with stolen phones that blocking them would take away maybe 80-90% of these carriers revenue. The new system must use the standard protocols on the mobile networks and be able to disable any phone connected to any carrier without the carrier being able to prevent this. The disabled phone should display a message about the phone being stolen. who the rightful owner is, perhaps offering a reward for the return, and the ability for the owner to unblock the phone using a code shipped with the phone if he/she got it back, something like a PUK code for the phone itself. Perhaps the code also could be used to block the phone in the first place, avoiding the need to involve carriers etc.
Everybody needs to be using Tor on their mobile device and running lots of servers to help these people.
If a government has every TCP ACK and window size to analyze at their leisure, how is Tor going to help?
End-to-end encryption?
Reminds me of this oldie...
Man calls 9-1-1 and reports that burglary is taking place at this neighbors house, requesting police.
He gets the response: "Sorry sir, but all cars are busy right now. We cannot help you."
Man hangs up, waits a few minutes and calls again.
"I was me that called earlier about the burglary next door. Disregard that. I've killed the burglar."
Within a minute a dozen police cars arrive at the house. The police enter the house, arrest the burglar and then turn their attention towards our man.
"I thought you said you killed the burglar?!"
"I thought you said all your cars were busy?"
“XXXXX is a BitTorrent website that – without the permission of the copyright holder – actively provides UK internet users with a bespoke directory and search engine for torrent files. This enables users to find and download copyright content which would otherwise be time consuming or impossible to locate,” the letter notes.
Google? - Search for the name of the show/movie and you'll find the name of the related torrent within the top 10 results. Then search for that specifically and you'll find the direct links to both bitlocker downloads and torrents. Not time consuming. Not impossible. Not at all. Extremely easy actually.
Married, twice (1); divorced, twice(2). If online dating results are as stable and satisfying as those IRL, forget it.
Maybe I should try another tack?...
5'8" Male. Geek. Grown children. Looking for a...
In slashdot? Aw shucks! Forget it! Probably I will get a dog posing as girl...
For the curious: married (1) five years and (2) eighteen years
Welcome to the Internet - where men are men, the women are men and the children are FBI agents posing as children...
But nuclear power (fission) is the only truly sustainable energy source for the future given the alternatives of today.
Fossil fuels are out due to their CO2 footprint.
Solar and wind are useful supplements but too unreliable to stand alone and still with far too low yield to provide enough power per installation. To supply power to everything world-wide 24/7 with room to grow (triple most likely) would require insane amounts of windmills and square miles of solar arrays which would affect both land for food crops, cause massive noise pollution and seriously damage the recreational value of nature as there would have to be billions of windmills absolutely everywhere. So many mills would most likely also cause massive disruptions in weather patterns. Solar panels also still require rare metals that is in very short supply.
Everything else is not suitable for large scale use.
If fusion ever gets out from the labs and into the commercial market it would be the market changer as it requires basically water to run and has no waste problem. The radioactive He produced can simply be released into the atmosphere where it would rise until cosmic radiation would cause it to decay into harmless isotopes.
So a warrant for a DNA sample or fingerprint?
Both are 'neutral' and will not in themselves yield any evidence. They can both be obtained without the cooperation of the accused, both directly (using swabs) and indirectly (using prints or hair left during interrogation or similar). A password cannot. It requires the cooperation of the accused as it can only be retrieved from the memory of this person.
Yes and no. If the download records isn't enough to convict - too bad. Encrypted data are private by every standard no matter what they can decode to. This is analogous to copy protection. In most countries where you are allowed to make private copies of copyrighted stuff, you're not allowed to break the copy protection in order to do so. Same thing should apply to private data - if they're encrypted in a non-trivial way, they're off limits to the authorities.
Note that I want kiddie pornographers punished as much as the next guy. It just has to happen without anybody being forced to hand over passwords or similar. Note that most kiddie porn collectors are clueless about encryption (98% store their stash in the open on their harddrives or burned to DVDs usually stacked near the computer) so this isn't a big issue.
PETA: Hiding behind cuddly furry pets and naked celebrities is a militant, self-serving bunch of maniacs that breaks laws and support radical groups on a daily basis. Arson, gross vandalism and homicide are both accepted, supported and used to further their radical agenda.
Their "go veg" campaign is full of serious errors and the website repeats these despite it having killed several babies/children already, sending the parents to jail for a very long time. No, children under approx. 6 years of age CANNOT go fully vegetarian (try it and you'll die from malnutrition) and you have to be at least a teenager to go vegan if you want to develop normally and grow to your designated height for instance. But you'll find nothing of this on their website.
Now sue me for telling the truth.
When do they get it?
Making an illegal copy cannot be theft by definition. Theft means "illegal transfer of possession" and the original is never 'lost' in any way, only duplicated.
It's copyright infringement, nothing more. But "theft" sounds much more serious so they use that - even if it's completely wrong on every level. Sigh.
This is actually a seriously great idea!
Create some kind of Gatling paint gun firing 500-1000 paint balls a minute at very high velocity and use that. Any vandals hit would be knocked down and completely covered in paint. Even if he got up and away, he'll be easy to find due to the extreme amount of paint on him. Use a paint that easily removable from the trains but hard to remove from skin and clothing. Now that's a taste of their own medicine!
The only way to fix the graffiti problem (on trains) is to guard the parked trains using guards, dogs and electric fences with razor wire. If done right the trains can be kept clean except for quick tags done on trains in service. Of course you will see 'artists' (vandals) getting bitten, cut, electrified and arrested but soon even these morons learn and find other things to break.
It should be m/s as that is the SI unit for velocity.
Well, that is actually somewhat usable as X km/h = 3.6 X m/s. For instance: 100 km/h = 62.14 mph = 27.78 m/s