So, if I'm out at the range doing some target practice and a person does not mysteriously stumble out from behind the target paper with a bullet stuck in them, then I can go and ask for a refund?

I used to do pretty much all of the work on my older cars; replacing fuel lines, struts, ball joints, doing body work etc. It of course saved me some money in mechanic bills, but would take me a whole lot longer to do since I didn't have any of the specialized equipment that they have there. These days though, I have a mechanic do everything, even oil changes. Now, I don't have to spend my weekends fixing vehicles, nor do I need to spend thousands of dollars on tools that are only useful for auto mechanics. Instead, I can use that time on stuff that I want to do, which to me more than balances out the time not wasted in a pool of oil under my car.

Does Australia not have anti-collusion laws? If that (exact) situation happened in the US or Canada, there wouldd be a pretty big kerfluffle about it.

Citizen's arrest, folks. It's legal in most states (and in just about every common law country too) to arrest someone, without warrant, who is in the process of committing an indictable offense. Meaning, if the cops can arrest you for it, you can arrest someone else for the same thing, so long as you immediately bring the offender to the police.

Kind of a gray area, but I guess if you are pursuing someone to do a citizen's arrest, it might be overlooked, though I doubt you'd need to call your boss ahead of time.

Self Defense.

At least when we pay our health care taxes, it means we don't have to pay the hospital too.

In Canada, ambulances for life-threatening emergencies are free (i.e. you have a heart attack and need a hospital NOW). Non life threatening emergencies do cost money, but it's only about $40-50 CAD (including hooking up diagnostic equipment, medications sometimes cost a little extra) and many (if not most) benefits packages cover a significant chunk of that too. If you call in a false alarm, you don't get billed so much as arrested if they believe that you are willfully abusing the service, since they are not so much concerned about the cost of the trip to get you as they are about committing resources that may have been needed in a real emergency. I've even heard of cases where very serious charges have been laid against someone prank calling emergency services where a person died because the ambulance was tied up in responding to the prank call.

Not so much a ban on vehicular transport, but a ban on manually piloting a vehicle. Support research on autonomous vehicles, lobby to make them street-legal. If all you have to do is tell the car where to go, there's no need to worry about how much you've had to drink beforehand. The only thing that might be tricky is motorcycles, since the rider's balance is a significant part of the steering; maybe a separate motorcycle lane would suffice.

Here's the thing that gets me: Why do I see the headlines on Google News, CNet and CNN hours before it's on Slashdot? I remember (not too long ago even) when /. would have articles out far in advance of mainstream media.

maybe not as feasible on back roads as it would be on frequently used city streets/freeways/interstates etc. maybe find a way to create a standing wave of electricity in large cables under each lane. Place an inductive coil under the car in such a way that if the car drives down the road, it will pass through the standing wave and generate electricity(since the car is moving relative to the wave, this would work; instead of the field moving through the coil, the coil is moving through the field). It would just have to be done on a large enough scale that the car would not only be fully powered at whatever speed it's traveling at, but also be able to recharge a battery in the vehicle so that when not on a powered road, it can still drive around. The upshot to this, people could install charging coils in their garage. No plugging in required!

Simply a character reference to the failings of the no child left behind program

I had the same issue with my old AIW 9600xt. The fan bearings went, which was no big deal until it started to slow the fan down. Luckily I was able to find a chipset fan kit that had matched up with the holes on the card (with a little modification, I had to remove a couple fins from the fan to make room for a capacitor on the board). It ran perfectly and I'd say even did a better job cooling than the original fan did. As a bonus, it came with a couple little copper heatsinks, which I stuck on the VRAM chips to keep them cool too. For about $15, I got a few extra years out of the card (which still works, it's just been upgraded).

It's all about who is shouldering the responsibility and the risk in the trade. If a trade goes sour, someone has to foot the bill, in this case it's the trader. The programmer, on the other hand, still gets his(her) paycheque regardless. It's the same deal with CEOs and such. Yes, the CEO makes millions, but they also bear the fiscal (and more importantly criminal) responsibility of the company. So if the company is breaking the law, it's the CEO that takes the shit for it. If the company folds, it's the CEO that has to pay off the investors. So yeah, it seems like these people get paid shitloads for doing nothing, but really they're getting paid to shoulder the risk.
In the case of these programmers, they've decided that they're OK with the risk in the face of being able to make more money. If a trade goes bad, they can be out alot of cash, but if things are good, they make more than they would have.
TL;DR: Nothing to see here, move along.

http://www.geeks.co.uk/9153-top-ten-video-game-flops

The formula for induced voltage in a transformer is Vs = (Ns/Np)*Vp Vs is the voltage in the secondary coil, Vp the primary. Np and Ns are the number of turns of wire in the primary and secondary coils, respectively. The way a transformer works is an AC current is passed through the primary coil, creating constantly expanding and collapsing lines of flux. These lines of flux pass through the secondary coils inducing a current in them. The voltage produced as a result of the induced current is directly proportional to the ratio of the amount of turns of wire in the two coils. Not that it has nothing to do with the size of the wire, just the amount of pieces of copper passing through the flux. Often, transformers use the smallest wire possible that will still support the amount of current needed.

A cell phone with a 1GHz processor has hundreds of thousands, if not millions or more tiny copper conductors. If a line of flux crosses all of them, then they will each induce a potentially damaging current, especially considering that an increase of 1-2V will create sufficient current to severely damage most handheld electronics. A power transmission line is effectively one conductor (it may be a stranded conductor, but that's considered to be connected in parallel, thus the voltage is equal in all conductors, not added together) and is generally in the 3-25kVAC range before the transformer and 120-240VAC after the transformer (these are all RMS values of course, hook an oscilloscope up to a 120VAC power source and you'll see closer to 170Vp, which is 340V from absolute maximum to absolute minimum).

So let's do some math. Let's say an EMP drives a pulse of 1Wb/s, which when passing through a conductor will induce a voltage of 1V. So now the processor in the mobile device, which is used to 1V, is now randomly dealing with voltages anywhere from -1 to 2V. This can either exceed the maximum forward or reverse voltage in the transistors, thus destroying the processor. The change of 1V in the 3.3kVAC transmission line is not even noticeable in the background noise.
Increase that pulse to 100Wb/s, now you're creating 100V in each conductor (note, I'm not considering losses due to distance, let's assume you're the strength is measured at the location not the source). The mobile device, due to the density of the wiring, may start arcing between traces, maybe even give whoever is holding it a bit of a shock. The extra 100V may be enough to pop your household breaker, maybe a couple fuses in your more sensitive electronics but I bet your stove and fridge will still work. The 3.3kV transmission line may see a noticeable blip, but nothing out of the ordinary still.
You would need a pulse in the range of thousands of webers/second to do serious damage to power transmission systems and large household appliances, and by then, your iPhone would become a pretty crispy critter too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer I would like you to quickly read up on how a transformer works. It is basically two inductors with a common iron core. the electromagnetic flux created by the primary coil induces a current in the secondary coil. this is very similar in nature to the way inductive battery chargers and such work (minus the common iron core). Two coils are places relatively close together and one induces a current in the other by creating an electromagnetic field.

Now, to address your comment. An EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) is a very short burst of EM from a source (generally considered very large and energetic). This radiation....radiates from the source and induces an electric current in any material that is susceptible to such. Therefore, the copper traces in circuit boards, wiring in cars, TV and radio antennas and so forth all pick up this pulse and create a current. If the induced current is energetic enough it can cause voltages inside solid state devices exceeding their maximums and destroying the circuitry.

Oddly enough, bigger things like household appliances will be less affected, since a) they are already built to handle high currents b) fairly well shielded since they are often built inside grounded steel cases which will protect the more delicate electronics (think faraday cage) and c) protected from outside overcurrent via the step-down transformer at the telephone pole, the 15A breaker in the house and the built in fuse that just about everything in your house that plugs into the wall has.

So i guess what I'm trying to say is, you have it backwards. mobile devices are likely the most vulnerable, while stuff connected to the power line will be barely affected (aside from blowing every fuse and breaker in your house)