As you're a big fan of "process", you can always buy stock in the companies involved and get their policy reversed at a shareholder's meeting, assuming you can get enough other shareholders to agree with your position. That's the **process** that exists. As it is, these companies (likely with a view to maximizing shareholder value) are taking the stand that the PR win is worth whatever's the financial loss of taking elsewhere investment that might have optimally gone to NC. Disagree at a shareholders' meeting if you feel so inclined.

I got one two days ago - it had my email but an address that was current as of ten years ago. I googled some of the phrases in the email and got some early reports of others getting it and reporting the same thing -current email and old postal address. I've got a feeling it's a ebay seller that got hacked.

It's not that I have a problem with Anonymous threatening some quite dislikable individuals.

But it's just their threats to person or organization X are starting to sound like North Korea's weekly threat to nuke New York/Washington/Wherever.

And they sound about as credible.

ISIS have problems with foreign fighters getting disillusioned, defecting, going home.

All those contemplating that now know for certain their government knows about them, and that they're likely to face serious jail time on their return. It might encourage them to stay put.

That's a good reason for leaking this deliberately.

I'm guessing that anyone who surprises us with a nuclear detonation, or more probably a radiological attack like a dirty bomb, is going to *tell us that they did it*, because you don't just set off nuclear bombs or dirty bombs and run away and go "tee hee".

Not necessarily. For example, given that ISIS and al-Qaeda hate each other almost as much as they hate the West. It would suit either if the other got the blame, and was promptly wiped off the map.

I agree completely. drones are fairly delicate so even the finest grade of birdshot would do enough damage to bring one down. However gun laws make shotguns an issue in the UK. The police are generally happy to give out licenses to people without criminal records, who can prove a need for one, either for sport or for work.

However, imagine there was a huge A-lister wedding happening at some outdoor location, like a remote Scottish castle. The organizers would be desperate to keep away the public's and the paparazzi's drones (there'll be a buyer for the pictures already lined up, who will want exclusivity).

However, I would suspect there would be liability, police and major PR issues of they ringed the event with shotgun-armed security people. This kit is an alternative that seems just what's needed. Security would quietly bring down the pap's drone and hand it back to its owner, along with their profuse apologies for "accidentally" standing one it when it was being recovered.

I've seen claims, or expressions of suspicion that Chinese-made networking gear may have Chinese government backdoors.

I have no idea of the credibility of such. But it seems now the FCC wants to prevent people from taking steps to reduce that possibility. by using open firmware.

The system is at fault as it is catastrophically intolerant of operator error. Which is all too likely if a person is entering street names in another language. And the operator is at fault for not doing common sense checks on a system that is flawed for the aforementioned reason.

Whose to say this won't make it richer? The shaded areas under the collectors might provide micro-climates well suited to some, shade-preferring desert species that don't generally do well on account of the general lack of shade.

Have they done re-entry? That was a major stumbling block for the US and Soviet ICBM programmes in the mid 50's. Especially as re-entry needs to be accurate. Unlike the idiotic summary, accuracy is vitally important. A five mile error that results in the obliteration of some countryside and suburbs, rather than a city centre is an outcome no lunatic dictator wants.

And can they make their physics package, re-entry system, and guidance system light enough for their booster to lift. That was something the Soviets couldn't do in the early days so they needed to build giant ICMBs to lift their warheads - the availability of these ironically put them ahead in the earliest days of the space race.

You a certainly reducing the land footprint if you build a solar installation as a single tall tower, instead of an array of smaller panels covering a field.

However the pylon is going to create a large shadow. If a company minimizes land costs by buying a small plot of land and building a tall photovoltaic tower on it, then they are capturing sunlight that would otherwise fall on their neighbours' land. If the neighbours needed the sunlight for growing crops or for their own solar power installation, then they might even view this as "theft" of "their" sunlight.

Is it smart enough to automatically call the secret police if it hears the words "Falun Gong".

Does 10 years worth of technology mean we can have actual robots warring? Or will it still be a bunch of pseudo-aggressive, violent affectated radio-controlled cars?

The real reason for more work today is that most of it is non-productive. As automation has replaced much real work, new non-jobs have been created. It is doing stuff like safety inspections, progress chasing, advertising (half the cost of some stuff today goes to its advertising), making financial cases (that can cost more than the work) and so on ad nauseum.

While you have a point about advertising and so on, don't write off safety inspections as "non productive".

Compare the rate of industrial accidents 70 years ago with the current rate, per person-year in a given industry. Calculate the cost of a person who was formerly a productive part of the economy becoming a lifetime drain on it if, through no fault of their own, they're unable to work thanks to a work-related injury.

Even if a particular safety inspection only reduces the chances of an accident by a trivial amount, it still represents an overall economic gain, given the costs of an accident.

From a conversations with a used bookseller I know. for the last 7 or 8 years at least, many used booksellers in the UK have been kept afloat by ABEBooks, to the extent that many have shut their retail shops and gone to 100% online sales, moving their stock in a cheap-to-rent storage unit.