No. Both of these are registered as ultralight aircraft, which are prohibited from flying over populated areas. In other words, ultralight aircraft are the airborne equivalent of an ATV or a snowmobile, only really useful for recreational purposes.

You have to watch out for "Lifetime Warranties," however. The definition of "lifetime warranty" is typically the "lifetime of the product on shelves," and many tech manufacturers switch SKUs every two years or so. That's still better than the one-year warranty you'll get with a laptop you buy at Best Buy, but not nearly as good as the term "lifetime warranty" would imply.

The US has had ASAT capability for a while now, and has "shot down" way more than a single satellite. Our earliest ASAT systems actually detonated nukes in or near space. The first US hit-to-kill interceptor was in 1985, and was launched from a fighter jet. I think that test still holds the record for the only fighter jet to have shot down a satellite. In my opinion, the recent test was there to show that our standard weapons are capable of intercepting ICBM warheads. That test was strange, in that it took place at a relatively low altitude as far as satellites are concerned. The SM-3 missile can't reach a high enough altitude to knock down orbiting satellites, but it's good enough to nail vehicles reentering the atmosphere, and the test demonstrated that it can handle orbital velocities. So, basically, it wasn't an effective test of an anti-satellite weapon, but it was an effective test of an anti-ICBM weapon.

Not really; thanks to RADAR, modern anti-aircraft weapons are just as effective at night as they are during the day. The only aircraft that benefit from a night attack would be stealth craft, and only if they're flying low enough to be spotted visually.

You claim that's "Moral Relativism?" That statement was made from a Utilitarian standpoint, which states that the "action that would result in the greatest good" is the best action to take. The embryos being used for stem-cell research are mostly leftovers from IVF, so when it comes to choosing between simply discarding the embryo or using it for medicine, the better choice is obvious.

Interesting... You're suggesting arguing that there is an implied-in-fact patent license. I could certainly see how that could be the case.

There would also be the inevitable backups, caches, and the like that contain your personal data. It would be completely unreasonable to require Facebook to hunt through their daily/monthly/yearly backups (many of which would be off-site,) and delete the data of every user that decides to remove their account. In that context, the TOS change was merely a protective measure.

People that do their own mixing are a very small percentage of total computer users. If it means getting a larger slice of the digital media pie, I'm sure Microsoft would gladly give up that market.

Besides, if big-name movies and music were only available through Microsoft's media distribution software, which is only available on Windows Seven, most people would have at least one Windows Seven computer. Even the people that do their own mixing; they'd probably have an audio workstation running Linux (because Mac OS seems to be cramming DRM in as well,) and a media-center running Windows.

And before people start arguing that it would be hard for Microsoft to compete with iTunes: Remember that the record labels want Apple to increase the DRM restrictions. I'm sure they'd jump ship fast if another company offered a product with the same capabilities and market penetration (a player that comes pre-installed on Windows computers would meet this part,) and more of the DRM that they want so badly.

Here's my analysis of the situation: Microsoft isn't putting these features in at the demand of the RIAA/MPAA. They're putting them in to try to get a leg up on the competition. Media is increasingly becoming digital; music/movie download sites, streaming content, etc. Microsoft realizes this. So they decided to build the most appealing (to the RIAA/MPAA) content distribution platorm. This meant locking everything down at the OS level, so that users "cannot under any circumstances" copy the content. Of course, this isn't going to stop the hard-core pirates, who will always find a way around it. The only way to stop the copying of music and movies is to fully plug the analog hole, which is absolutely impossible without some sort of brain-computer interface that streams the content directly into the viewer's skull.

I'd assume that both of the subs were using passive sonar, probably towed-arrays. You typically don't go active unless you're already in a shooting fight and need the best possible firing solution against a threat that's running silent. I don't know if Boomers have passive sonar as good as that of an attack submarine, but it's probably pretty close. All this incident proves is that the engineers did their jobs well and made the sub nearly undetectable by passive means.

Actually, we were working on reduced-RCS designs earlier than that. The Lockheed A-12 OXCART and it's successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, were both reduced-RCS aircraft designs. Petr Ufimtsev, the Russian scientist you were talking about, developed a mathematical framework to predict the reflections of lasers. The Soviets informed him that it was useless, and allowed his work to be published internationally because they were deemed to be of no economic or military value. It was the engineers at Lockheed's Skunk Works, who were already working on reduced-RCS designs, that realized Ufimtsev's work could assist in the design of stealth aircraft.

IIRC, current nuke development is going towards shrinking the devices and minimizing fallout.

Same here! I'm naming boxes after the Greek pantheon at the moment.

You're not in control of the actual network infrastructure, which is what Net Neutrality is all about. The whole point of the Net Neutrality debate is that the companies that are in control of the wires are starting to discriminate against companies that aren't. Remember the the ISP (I think it was comcast,) that was filtering VoIP providers that competed with their own offerings? Without net neutrality, that kind of thing will only become more common place. As it is now, there are very few incentives for an ISP to not filter low to no cost options that compete with their own offerings, and many incentives for them to do just that.

Whatcha talkin 'bout Willis?