This reminds me of a cruise ship running aground because a GPS antenna came unhooked. The crew was supposed to use LORAN to verify the GPS every hour, but they didn't.

In some ways, the US may have learned just as much from this as the Iranians. Losing one unmanned aircraft to learn of a serious exploit that has implications far beyond drones might not be such a bad result.

When a bothersome neighbor refuses to stop being a nuisance, what happens next? We've evolved beyond the Hatfields and McCoys.

That's what I believe it is in California. Does a higher fine work? Do you still see people on phones while driving?

Yeah, that's what I meant. But how many of those calls were because of an accident that was caused by someone on the phone?

The argument is that public safety trumps nonexclusive access to the medium. That's what the NTSB and other state laws intend by outlawing phone use. However, just making handhelds illegal isn't doing the job. Either the fines aren't high enough, drivers don't understand the risks, or both. Legalizing jammers on highways probably isn't a good idea either since people who live nearby or have to make emergency calls will be affected.

Interestingly, if you do operate such a jammer and are caught by the FCC, I believe they can impose up to a $10,000 fine. If the fine for using your phone while driving was this expensive, it might cause drivers to think twice. Or, at least someone could compute an estimated cost in terms of life and property loss caused by phone-related crashes and set a fine accordingly. I'm sure it would be higher than the $20-50 in most states.

When you're a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. SWAT teams and now drones are sitting idle, all brought in under the guise of terrorism. If they aren't used, the budget will be cut and they'll soon be gone. Better put them to use, somehow.

Every ad-tolerant person I've ever met uses this argument: "they need to make money." Webmasters aren't entitled to revenue only because of the desire to keep their sites running. People are only willing to pay what they believe something is worth. To me, flash ads are a high price to pay to view webpages which are mostly an unproductive time sink. However, I will pay cash for content that I think is interesting enough -- I have an online subscription to the local newspaper, for example.

Lastly, I run my own website at my expense. Granted, the traffic is low, but if that were to change, I would never force flash ads on anyone to pay for the hosting.

Sovereign Immunity is all the rage these days.

In the mid 1990s, when I was in middle school, we also had tons of books. We would all coax our parents to buy the biggest backpack available to carry them. It was almost to the point where you were shunned if you didn't have a bag that made you look like you were about to tip over. Somehow, I don't remember books being a problem in high school even though I rarely used my locker. I guess I grew enough so that books weren't a problem. I can't say for sure that ebooks are the right solution, but they would certainly lighten the load.

This. If you have to constantly resort to the book, the professor isn't doing his or her job. For most of my college courses, books were more of a "second opinion" that I could reference when I had trouble understanding something.

I think this boils down to different people's viewpoints on the purpose of higher education. The European model is much different than the American one. The focus truly is on education and the education you receive is also much more narrowly focused on your field of study.

In the US, however, it gets blurry. Most of the liberal arts and social sciences faculty like to argue that the purpose of college is more intrinsic than just academics; that you are gaining life skills and experience not found elsewhere. At the same institution, the faculty in the engineering department will tell you flat out that they are preparing you for employment. In its current state, American higher education means different things to different people. Many students, both athletes and non-athletes, go to school for reasons other than education and it really shows when employers and the media cite statistics about how college grads can write or perform simple arithmetic.

I don't think any one US college student even scratches the surface of what's available to them during four years of school. Is a formal academic education the main benefit? I don't know. I think it depends on who you are.

I'm with the OP: a few choice questions will quickly identify the people that are about to cause harm. Guns are just one of the many modalities available to someone with an ax to grind. Taking them away is no different than banning liquids on airline flights.

I'm curious as to what your beef is. Work hard to solve your own problems and you won't have to complain about what anyone else does or how they got there.

You're going to have to demonstrate that significantly more athletes require curriculum adjustment than the average non-athlete. Just saying this is true based on a few anecdotal examples isn't good enough. Moreover, I'm wagering a guess that you've never attended an American university. Professors don't care whether you're an athlete or not; you're still expected to complete the same course material as everyone else. Occasionally, you may be given a few extra days to finish an assignment or take a test because you were traveling, but this isn't anything significant since plenty of "adjustments" like this are made for students with other obligations.

This may be true for some sports, but not for all.

On my D1 track team, there were seven of us who graduated the same year I did. I don't remember all of our undergrad majors, but 3 of us are now PhD students, 1 is a medical doctor (orthopedist), 1 is a dentist, and two more are economic policy analysts in Washington. Previous and successive graduating classes also have similar outcomes. The women's track team also had similar postgrad activities, as did most other teams at my school. It's mostly the big name football and basketball schools that have the problems.