By its nature, Ham radio transmissions are even more open the TCP/IP. Anyone can monitor any transmission... if they're tuned to the right frequency and within range of the signal.

Whether or no the NSA bothers to listen to HF/VHF/UHF/etc is another issue. If they wanted to, they could. The only signals they might have trouble with is some of the shorter wavelengths working simplex, where the transmissions don't go far enough to reach a listening station.

Not really. The "fees" for an amateur radio license are trivial... $14 is the going rate to take a license test, and its good for 10 years. The government isn't making money on it. The rules are in place and generally followed by people because everyone who is currently licensed have agreed that is how they want to play.

Again, as the grandparent post pointed out, if you don't want to play the game that is being played, choose another game. There are other radio based services that are different and may allow the type of communications that you want.

I took engineering 25 years ago. As I recall, an engineering student didn't have a lot of spare class slots that can be devoted to extra humanities courses without stretching a BS degree to 4 years. No, the classes aren't necessarily worthless (there are some...), but you have to choose your poison.

I saw this in the news last week... I didn't think at the time to question to weight of the batteries, but it occurs to me that using a catamaran design is suboptimal. You might as well go with a monohull, and design it around the batteries as ballast.

Instead of using Chimps in the drug testing, let's use Politicians. That way we can be sure that no potentially intelligent life forms are being abused.

Really? So are you also calling for the release of the minutes of all meetings in the Oval Office, the IRS, the State Department, and the DOJ?

Yes.

But what kind of armaments is it equipped with?

hasn't quite figure how to implement these features into their software. Otherwise, you can be certain that they would be just as intrusive as they say Chrome is... or worse.

On the other hand, pharma R&D will make its money solely from creating new drugs and licensing fees.

A new drug costs $$$ to bring to market, between all the testing required. For every drug successfully marketed, there are 10 or 100 that never make it. The successful drugs have to bear the cost of the unsuccessful ones, to the tune of Billion$ of dollars per drug. Those costs have to be recaptured somewhere. Currently by selling at a high price. If it is strictly by licensing fees, that those fees will be very high, and the marketing/production companies will have to pay them, and thus have to recapture their costs. Nothing changes.

Is there waste and abuse in the pharma industry? Undoubtedly. Better ask what percentage it is before you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There's been plenty of research done regarding collection of solar via orbiting power stations, and relaying it back to Earth via microwaves. Yes, there probably are some downsides regarding the energy balance of the planet (if you do enough of it), and after a while you'll cover the Earth in receivers or push the power of the microwaves to a level to cook us all, but by that point we'll all be dead anyway from other causes.

With the recent burse of companies pushing into space, this is no longer a fantasy.

I don't even need to RTFA. I've been following this concept for 30 years before these companies finally decided to talk about it. The Trillions of dollars of materials are not worth Trillions of dollars on Earth... this is their value in orbit based on present day LEO launch values, which run upwards of $1K/lb.

While it is possible that there may someday be a market on the Earth from some space produced material... I'll lay odds that it will be in the form of some manufactured good/material produced in Zero G, and impossible to make on Earth. It will not be raw materials.

I still wonder about those graphs that show CO2 lagging temperature by 800 years during past global warming events. Not saying that there isn't a relationship, but I still think that there is something that isn't really understood.

That's an awful lot of sea snails needed to even construct a compact car...

How about publication of information publicly available on computer servers... say a list of registered hand gun owners in a certain region? Or do the laws only work when its convenient for the people with power?