if they want a shallow gravity well, the moons of mars would make a good target. http://xkcd.com/681_large/

one of my neighbors turned his 10' mesh dish into a sunshade over his outdoor fire pit.

1. you said apartment so a guard dog is probably not practical. more to the point, the insurance liability for a guard dog is way more expensive than any discount for having an alarm. but, if you're on the ground floor, you might get a leash, water and food bowls, half-empty kibble bag, pooper scooper, some (visibly used) chew toys, and a muzzle, then scatter them around the patio. extra points for getting some fake poop.

2. to be effective, an alarm needs to be monitored by a "central station". two or three false alarms and the neighbors will call 9-1-1 to report you for your noisy alarm instead of reporting a possible burglary; you might be asked to disconnect it. central stations probably won't let you connect your own jury-rigged solution.

3. just get proper insurance. for an apartment this is actually not very expensive, cheaper than basic cable in most cases.

4. don't advertise that you have anything nice. don't poke any antennas out through the apartment windows. if you have a window facing the street or common area, don't put your art collection, 50" plasma, and multiple equipment racks in plain view. if you have assigned parking, don't park your BMW in a spot that is labeled with your apartment number.

5. your car (if you have one) is more likely to be broken into than your apartment. get a top notch alarm for it, and never ever leave anything (valuable or not) visible. some people will break a window to steal $10 sunglasses. a stack of quarters in the coin holder and a GPS mount on the windshield is nearly irrestistable.

6. rather than make a DIY alarm, I'd suggest buying a commercially available alarm product and installing it yourself. you're more likely to end up with a working system and will have the option of connecting to a central station.

7. upgrade the physical security. get the add-on locks for patio doors and slider windows. deadbolts on all doors. double cylinder on doors with or near windows. have the locks rekeyed so prior tenants' copies won't work. get in the habit of closing the windows when you leave, no matter how hot it is. (in fact, it's my opinion that most of the value of the alarm is the feature where it reminds you that you left a window or door open.)

8. consider more mundane measures like an inventory of your stuff, off-site backups of your computers, recording the serial numbers of everything (not just the expensive stuff)

9. take a moment to consider on-line security. you will be way more upset at someone taking over your email account, sending your bank a password reset request, then transferring ALL of your money out of your account. protect your email accounts and all devices including phone with as much password security as they allow.

10. move to a lower-crime area for some peace of mind. taking the attitude that you can solve a deep social problem with improvised technology is naive.

pls take a moment to fully evaluate your own signature's potential to offend.

Don't think of it as $360/GB per year, think of it as $360,000/TB per year.

>> sometimes even their own currency internally

which is an interesting point, if only because the more typical forms of internal corporate currency, barter and favors, are not taxed.

there is a network effect: a larger company has more services in-house and more opportunity to trade or barter them in furtherance of corporate goals. a smaller company has to rely on outside vendors and contractors, at which point the transaction is out in the open to be taxed. i suspect this untaxed internal corporate barter may have a bigger economic impact than economy of scale or access to capital.

it would be an interesting experiment to see if corporate largess and management inertia would survive being taxed at the same real rate as small businesses.

One has a primary focus of MAKING MONEY and a secondary focus on OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY SUITES.
One has a primary focus of MAKING MONEY and a secondary focus on TELEPHONES.

Given how you and perhaps your organization seems to work, you should just look for developers who are good at going to forums and asking other people for advice on how to do their job.

commercial airlines fly at 500mph, so a bunch of cameras interfering with aerodynamics is kind of a deal breaker.

you might be interested in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Observatory_for_Infrared_Astronomy

microsoft has coding tools?

it wasn't in the linked article, but in addition to the batteries storing energy for night flight, the craft will use elevation to store energy. it will operate partially as a glider at night and climb back up during the day. the reduces the number and/or size of batteries that would be required relative to what would be required to maintain level flight at night.

yo dawg, heard you like space elevators so i put a space elevator in your space elevator and elevated it into space.

CA calls it a vehicle license fee but it's basically a property tax on vehicles.

For instance, hooking up an RFID scanner to a WinMo phone or PDA, and automagically putting your data into a (desktop) Office-compatible spreadsheet, running totals, adding input, etc. as you go is dead simple (particularly if you've got an older, better non-capacitive screen). You can then just copy the file back over to your desktop, macros and all, and work on it there unchanged.

You might be a happier person if you just used your phone to play angry birds or koi pond instead of whatever it was that you just said.

The sentiment is basically correct, but you may have the wrong target. Commercial and industrial use of electricity is staggering and it's not about convenience or comfort its about producing widgets and selling widgets.

Home electrical use has actally been pretty flat, slightly declining in many areas. some thanks go to the energy star program, some to the replacement of CRT and plasma televisions with LCD panels. CFLs are gaining wider adoption. People are choosing more laptops instead of giant desktop computers.

Your clock example is kind of interesting. I only have one plug-in alarm clock in the whole house. The rest are battery powered (one AA battery lasts a year or more) and NIST time signal controlled. We went with these because we got tired of resetting every clock in the house twice a year for daylight savings time. So a convenience feature (not having to set the clock) can lead to energy savings. They aren't incompatible, you just have to make good choices.