Agree that it would only make sense over large distances. I could see it for a NYC-LAX maglev, maybe with a stop in the midwest somewhere. Maybe have the stops at airports for easy connection.

Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.

Well, for somebody who is part of a wholly-dishonorable species to do something honorable would require them to be the exception in the first place. So, anybody capable of doing what you ask, wouldn't have to. :)

Heck, we can't even agree on that stuff when it comes to human behavior, let alone expressing it in a way such that it can be designed into a machine.

Given a choice between A and B, which is more right? If you could save one life at the cost of crippling (but not killing) a million people, would it be right to do so? Is it ok to torture somebody if you could be certain it would save lives (setting aside the effectiveness of torture, assuming it is effective, is it moral)? If we can't answer questions like these objectively, how are you going to get an AI to be "beneficial?"

If you're putting 80% through tunnels, I'd wonder if it would almost make sense to make it 100% tunnels and have it in a vacuum. You could reach absurd speeds with such a design, though only if your stops are sufficiently distant (you would want a hub/spoke model).

Sure. They can get that witheld from their disability payments, since they'd probably qualify as mentally disabled.

Looking forward to the new generation of Walmart greeters.

The other risk is that nobody would be willing to volunteer for trials, and thus the drug doesn't get researched. That means that a potential treatment doesn't get developed. Even if all the treatment is supposed to do is cure a headache, at some point a certain number of headaches adds up to a single cancer treatment in the whole quality-adjusted years-of-life thing.

The only reason you'd test in a chimp in the first place is because other animals are inadequate. They're expensive, and far more heavily regulated.

Suppose you're testing a medication that could cause cognitive impairment, or which otherwise targets the brain. Just what animal are you going to test it on? The only animals that have brains remotely similar to humans are all animals that have the same ethical issues as chimps, because they ARE so similar to humans.

Drugs aren't tested on higher primates until they're as sure as they can be that they're safe. At that point, it is either test on non-human primates, or just skip that and go straight to humans. How is the latter more ethical than the former?

I suspect telemarketers are already paying something on that order of magnitude already. I doubt anybody gives them "unlimited" phone plans - at least not the $20/month kind. Most of them are probably using VoIP providers. I couldn't tell you how low the rates go in bulk, but most seem to be a few cents per minute for outgoing calls.

Cite? If it is illegal, then you can reference the law.

In any case, making demand-based pricing (or gouging if you prefer) is often counter-productive. If a resource is scarce, you WANT people to change their behavior. If there is a hurricane and gas is scarce, then you want people to stop driving to the movie theater or whatever, and then there is gas available when people need to buy necessities or whatever. If you have to drive to the hospital, you're not going to care if gas is $10/gallon. However, that $10/gallon gas will prevent you from driving to your friend's house to hang out 25 miles away.

The alternative is that everybody runs out of gas, and then people with connections get their cheap gas, or you have wasteful activities like driving 100 miles to buy gas (thus wasting quite a bit of gas vs just tankering it in). During Hurricane Sandy there was quite a bit of scandal where people with connections got cheap gas from FEMA depots, and then everybody else just did without.

The exception should be situations where there isn't much competition, and there should of course not be collusion. That is just antitrust law.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that he's free to use those tools in an operational aircraft.

He can of course mess with an aircraft with the permission of the owner on the ground. Legally he probably can't mess with any aircraft in the air, since that would be a violation of its type certificate (it was certified with one set of software, and he introducing another).

Every other instance before or after 9/11? A lot of attitudes changed after 9/11.

However, this wasn't a commercial flight. In general small aircraft can go from anywhere to anywhere and nobody takes notice. The exception is controlled interface and ADIZs, and the SFRA around DC is even more of an exception. Any aircraft that enters that airspace is subject to interception, or possibly even being shot down.

Google really needs to split Play Services.

I get that they want to make the framework updateable without a full OS update. I think that is a great idea. They should make an "Android Frameworks" app and release it as open source. Mandate that it be pre-installed on any device that passes their QA, and recommend that everybody else use it as well. Why wouldn't they - it is FOSS and just makes the device better.

Then limit Play Services to, well, Play Services. It might handle authentication to your Google Account, verify that paid apps are legit, and so on. If you remove it then you might not be able to use your Google account with the device, or use the Play Store, but otherwise Android works just fine. This can be proprietary.

Honestly, though, I'd actually like the Google Account stuff to be FOSS. I should be able to sign into my own server and have contacts/etc sync and backups and all that. It is great that you don't HAVE to use Google's services, but it would be better if you also had the option of rolling your own.

From my experience with regulators from several countries, they tend to not sweat the small stuff until it is obvious that you aren't paying attention to the big stuff. Then they go through everything with a fine-toothed comb and throw the book at you.

The guy flew into the DC SFRA. If the FAA doesn't ruin his life, then everybody and their uncle will be doing it, and then they don't really have a buffer zone in which to shoot down aircraft that are potentially threatening.

The fuel tank issue is a bit like citing somebody for worn wipers in a vehicular homicide investigation. They're just padding the charges.

Agree. Can you imagine how much noise those addresses get?

This is a bit like explaining to the IRS that it shouldn't have been a problem that you filed your taxes late, because you told the postal delivery agent that you were running a few days behind when he was dropping off a package.

You can't legally fly within 60nm of the center of DC without taking an online training course. If you want to fly to an airport right on the edge of the restricted area it is probably complicated, but for the most part you just need to stay outside of a certain distance and you're fine. If I were operating anywhere near that area i'd probably request flight following as well - then you're broadcasting a transponder code and talking to somebody who can tell you you're wandering towards trouble before they are scrambling jets.

Obviously flying IFR is the simplest solution. ATC tells you where to go and you follow the route and you're fine.

But, if you're just buzzing around sightseeing over the white house, then sure, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. They actually have lasers to illuminate aircraft to try to warn them off, so that shooting them down isn't their only recourse.