On the contrary: Equally large amounts of false negatives and false positives is exactly the same as random guessing. [Shannon, 1948]

Not true in general. For example, a system that yields 1% false negatives and 1% false positives is still 98% reliable, and much better than random guessing.

I see you have a fine intuitive understanding of the American political system.

That law, as questionable as it is, doesn't criminalize anything retroactively. It just imposes certain registration requirements on certain individuals, that must be carried out after the law was passed. As such, it would probably pass constitution muster, at least as far as the clause you quoted was concerned. (But then again, I'm not a lawyer, so this is just a personal opinion and not a legal one.)

It is the retailer's choice to offer a "no questions asked" return policy. It is irrelevant that many customers abuse such a policy. When the store offers such a policy, it assumes the all risks involved because of "no questions asked". It is unethical (and also illegal) for them to pawn off that risk on unsuspecting customers who are paying full retail price and expecting new products.

What they should have done is to refurbish the goods (add new shrink-wrap, reformat memory sticks and hard drives, reset phones to factory defaults, etc.) and offer them for sale as-is at a discount. That they didn't even try to refurbish media before re-selling it as new shows that not only are they unscrupulous, they're also stupid.

More importantly, it would mean the defendant wouldn't have to pay those obscene legal fees

No. It only means that they don't have to pay the RIAA's obscene legal fees. They will still have to pay any legal fees to their own lawyers. And since the case is dismissed without prejudice, the RIAA is free to bring it again, costing even MORE legal fees.

Yes but they still suck with visualization however well the card is supported. You can play graphics intensive games if you're willing to drop the resolution. Personally I don't mind going to bootcamp for playing games - its a 10-20 second reboot.

It is correct that using a purely Thorium fuel cycle is hard, and requires alot more research. Closer to actually being implemented on a commercial scale is the closed fuel cycle, where spent fuel currently considered "waste" is used in fast breeder reactors.

Actually, there are nut-cases who have risen to lead nations. Hitler was one. There were a number of them in the Eastern European countries during the cold war. The theocracy running Iran is another.

This looks like an application specific front end (with compass) like APRS works for ham radio.

See aprs.fi and enter the call sign of a ham radio equipped with a GPS (like the Yaesu VX-8R).

It just opens the door to anyone and maybe adds a friends list.

This isn't about making English prose that humans are expected to read and make sense of. Rather, it's about making English prose that anti-spam and anti-virus filters won't automatically flag and delete. If somebody has a web page or an email that exploits a vulnerablity, a good anti-spam or anti-virus filter could prevent it from loading based on the payload alone, without even having to know about the vulnerability itself (While vulnerabilities constantly change, the rules governing what is valid x86 code do not). Now, however, this is no longer the case.

You are welcome to make your private key the product of two large Mersenne primes.

Since all Mersenne primes are of the form 2^p-1, one only need to search p possibilities. Since the largest currently known Mersenne prime is 2^43112609, this is equivalent to 26-bit encryption. Also, since only 47 Mersenne primes are actually known, one could use a simple table search, reducing this to 6-bit encryption. Breaking 6-bit encryption is left as an exercise for the reader.

Just make the button detect authorized fingerprints only and require a heartbeat in the finger and also scan the operator's retina and alter lighting to make sure that the iris responds "correctly" to random changes in light level.

Bet you can't circumvent that with just duct tape. Now, with an Arduino, some peripheral hardware and a few spare evenings....

Require a retinal scan to operate the safety button, and somebody's going to lose an eye...

Kind of like vampires, doesn't matter what the holy symbol is as long as it does the job. I guess you've never seen Love at First Bite.

I have. And unlike drugs, you can replace a game with pretty much any other form of entertainment. That's the difference.

Who NEEDS 16+ hours of entertainment a day? There's not that much difference between replacing one game with another, or one entertainment time-sink for another - and replacing one drug with another. If (say) someone plays WoW 16 hours a day until his internet connection goes down - and then switches to 16 hours of Wii a day, that would indicate an addiction.

Except that MMO is not an 'addiction' . . . it is a 'habit.' His friend will go through no withdrawal if his account expired tomorrow.

I see that you've obviously never been really into a game...