Here's the promotional video from Rafael, the system's maker. If the Iron Dome launchers are in a position to hit incoming rockets when they're still in boost phase, they're clearly effective. When they hit, the ascending rocket's flare disappears. Israel has Iron Dome launchers both forward postioned near Gaza, for boost phase defense, and near cities, for terminal defense. For terminal defense, it's harder to tell if they worked. The incoming rockets are just falling at that point, and success requires blowing up their warhead, not their rocket engine.

Videos show the missile's warhead exploding. That's triggered by a proximity fuse. There's a spray of shrapnel from the warhead; it doesn't have to be a direct hit. Whether that sets off the incoming rocket's warhead isn't visible from the videos of terminal defense.The Patriot missiles used in the Gulf war were able to hit incoming Scud missiles, but often didn't detonate the warhead.

Nadella used to run Bing. Did anything change there while he was in charge?

You didn't read to the end of my post, did you?

Don't claim copyright on every video, this will make you guilty of perjury under the DMCA. Claim copyright on one video and then claim that every other video appears to be a derived work of that video. This is exactly the mechanism that the big studios use.

The perjury clause doesn't say what you think it says. If I own the rights on work A, to file a notice on work B, I claim that work B infringes work A. The perjury clause kicks in only if I do not own the rights to work A (or represent the person who does). If work B doesn't infringe, then that's a matter for the courts. This is quite annoying, but it does make sense. It's clear cut if works A and B are the same, but not in the case that B is a derived work of A. A court has to decide whether the use of A in B counts under fair use or not.

The counterbalance for this is that the DMCA does indemnify YouTube if they respond to a counternotice and reinstate the work. If you, the owner of work B, think it does not infringe then you send such a notice to YouTube. I then have no further recourse against YouTube and must take you to court directly.

The problem here is that it's very easy to automate sending takedown notices, but very hard to automate sending counter-notices. Mass-sending of automated takedown notices was something that the authors of the DMCA didn't foresee and the act probably needs amending to require the notice to explicitly state (under penalty of perjury) the person who has compared the works and their reason for believing that they are infringing.

While true it doesn't change the fact that we know for sure that the NSA and GCHQ are extremely bad offenders. Maybe others are at it too, but all we can do is act on the information we have and that information says that American and British products are routinely bugged.

80% of the world's phone calls certainly don't run through the US. A call placed locally in France stays in France. Why would they route it over the Atlantic and back, adding noticeable delay?

Can you link to some of your old pre-Snowden posts where you made those claims? As far as I am aware very few people were claiming that 4 in 5 phone calls were being recorded in the US, and they certainly had no evidence to back up their claims.

Each bullet creates two more "terrorists", or "freedom fighters" as they were known back in the 80s when they were our friends.

The best thing to do is provide aid from a distance, but otherwise don't get involved. No troops, no arming one side or the other, just food and medicine. The Islamists were losing until we destabilized those countries to the point where they could start winning.

This is a common misunderstanding of how solar fits into the current grid. Demand is highest during peak solar hours. Even if you don't use the power in your own home it gets exported to the grid and runs the air-con and PCs where you work, or some industrial process.

Since the daytime peak consumption is supplied by sources that can ramp up and down, including coal, solar has a huge positive environmental impact.

Why not?

Because the FCC hasn't been completely bought by the industry... yet.

APC used to be good, but these days most of their range is crap. They went the same route as DeWalt and many other once good brands, relying on their name to sell rather than continued quality.

Also, they are a US company making things that connect to your network/computer, so you have to worry about the NSA. A surge protector filtering your entire internet connection as it comes into your house would be a fantastic place for a bug.

Oscilloscopes are not very good for testing audio equipment. Most only have 8 bit ADCs, or 12 bit at best. There is plenty of good test equipment out there, like spectrum analyzers and THD analyzers, but oscilloscopes only reveal the most glaring of problems I'm afraid.

Sounds a lot like what they are doing in the UK at the moment with paedophilia. They are actually talking about making it a law not to report suspicions now.

In the UK, university research departments are assessed base on the Research Excellence Framework (REF, formerly the Research Assessment Exercise [RAE]). Each faculty member is required to submit 4 things demonstrating impact. These are typically top-tier conference or journal papers, but can also be artefacts or examples of successful technology transfer. The exercise happens every four years, so to get the top ranking you need to write one good paper a year. The only incentive for publishing in second-tier venues is meeting other people who might lead to interesting collaborations.