Yes they do. Probably not very intensely but I don't have any doubt that the NSA handles some amount of SigInt that comes from Canada. We're not very worried about Canada attacking the US. Mostly folks in the US are worried about individuals with ill intent and drug traffickers transiting into the US through Canada.

There is that too... Sigh...

The problem is it depends if you are kind of idiot who buys the cheapest, lowest quality bulbs they can find or if you get reasonable quality ones. Most of the people moaning about bulb lifetime seem to have bought cheap rubbish, and probably never spent a penny on their home electrics either.

Let me preface what I'm about to say by stating that the NSA has shown itself to be clumsy and irresponsible in their surveillance tactics especially towards our allies. I seriously doubt that much of their actions in cases like spying on Angela Merkel etc have any tangible value to our nation. That said:

You think that there is no one in any of those countries that wishes to do the US harm? Remember that prior to 9/11 the biggest terrorist incident on US soil was planned and executed by a US citizen. You do have a valid point to some extent but pretending that just because someone is a citizen of those counties that they are friendly to us is very naive. Ostensibly we are allies with Saudi Arabia and yet all of the hijackers on 9/11 were from that country. Just because the citizens are decent people doesn't mean the government is trustworthy and vice-versa. Nation states don't ever completely trust other nation states or their citizens and given human nature they would be foolish to do so. I don't think our intelligence services worry much about Great Britain causing problems but that doesn't mean they trust them or everyone that lives there completely either.

Furthermore sometimes those you think are your friends turn out not to be as close as you thought. The US and Canada have the largest (mostly) unguarded border in the world but I guarantee you that both countries have military plans for invasion/defense just in case. I also guarantee you that both countries have intelligence services that keep at least a casual eye out for worrisome activity.

Do you have Lidl or Aldi in your country? I bought some 820lm/60W equivalent (more like 80W incandescent really) bulbs for £5 each there, so that's maybe $10 USD. They are dimmable and rated for 20k hours, and put out nice light with no flicker.

They do that all the time. Some of it isn't even a secret. It's not just the NSA either. We have a huge intelligence system with many players and our foreign policy depends heavily on what it reports.

Here we agree though I think that most other countries would do the same if given the opportunity. Power corrupts and all that.

Only because they can not, not because they would not. I have no faith that most of the 95% of the world's population outside the US is really any different when handed such powerful tools. I would find it very surprising if other major economic powers were not heavily investing in activities similar to what the NSA does. Not saying I think that is a good or right thing, just that I think it is inevitable.

Japan does have a military and a rather capable one at that. They just pretend that they can't/won't attack anyone due to the constitution they put in place after WWII.

There are a few insignificant countries that don't have armed forces but every country with a substantial population has one.

So it is OK for Iraqi members of terrorist groups to kill US soldiers because we invaded Iraq? Just want to be sure you aren't being a hypocrite here.

> The court should consider the validity of the arguments against them and the facts of the case.

I've won two default judgements and that's precisely what happens. Of course, judges are not investigators. They consider the facts _as_presented_by_the_parties_. If one party doesn't show up, the judge doesn't hear their side of the story. The party who does show up still has to make a "prima facie" case, meaning that they briefly explain why they should win. The judge then considers the facts they present and their arguments and makes a decision. It's not too unusual the only party who shows up doesn't get EVERYTHING they want. They'll probably "win", meaning get most of what they want, though not always.

In one of my two cases, I showed the judge that what I was asking for was completely fair to the other party, that they would probably agree to it (which in fact they had, but we needed the court to make it official). The judge was interested in seeing that it was fair - he wasn't going to give me a default judgement that was clearly unfair to the party who didn't show up.

The losing party who didn't show up can then appeal. I had that happen with an insurance company. Their insured hit my car and it was his fault. When they didn't answer phone calls or letters, I sued. They didn't show up, allowing me to get a default judgement. I guess they were hoping I wouldn't show up either, because the very next day they filed an appeal - meaning they WERE paying close attention to the case. It's entirely possible they even had someone in the courtroom to see me win the default judgement, choosing to see if I would blow my own case in the default hearing before they paid their attorney to show up.

If I set up malware on my home PC and use DynDNS then DynDNS domains are used 100% of the time to serve my malware.

So maybe Microsoft are saying that 93% of infections come via No-IP domains. That might be a tiny fraction of the overall No-IP domains.

Or for Microsoft?

Gambling is illegal in Japan but also extremely popular and a mainstream pass-time for many people. They get around the law in various ways. For example many machines let you win non-monetary prizes (which are legal) that a little shop around the corner from the pachinko parlour conveniently pawns for a fixed amount and sells back to the pachinko operators again.

If "last" means "most recently purchased", how do you answer for a bulb purchased two years ago that's still working? Or, for that matter, a bulb purchased last month?

My answer to this question is rather variable-- I've been changing out pretty much all of my bulbs for LED lamps. And I don't necessarily buy the cheapest ones. However, as it turns out, the ones I bought most recently were a couple of candelabra LED bulbs for the front entry chandelier, and they were pretty cheap. I was, however, also looking at LED strips to replace 4-foot fluorescent tubes-- if that had been my purchase, it would definitely have hit the "over twenty dollar" mark. (EarthLED has these. Some of these require rewiring to remove the ballast, although the Philips ones apparently are drop-in replacements)

Excellent application for LEDs-- omni bulbs are far less efficient in that application than LED spots. (Any place where the required light is not omnidirectional is a good application for LEDs.)

...over many decades. Cars are driven on billions of trips-- trillions of miles-- per year. Really, truly, there are differences of many orders of magnitude here.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...