One of the religious prohibitions in Islam is making war with fire.

If this is used it will be interesting to see the effects on recruiting by the Islamic State and other anti-US organizations among those Muslims who are currently either opposed to them or unaligned.

Also: How do you keep a 30 kW laser, at any frequency, from blinding everybody in the general direction of the target? The last I heard, weapons that blind are banned by the current "laws of war" as recognized by the western powers - and that's been the major impeidment so far to deploying laser (and other directed energy) weapons. Has something changed? Or did the current administration just decide to play with the new toy despite past promises to the other kids?

How the fuck did it stand for freedom?

How is this "directly connected to the internet" when it is using a router to access the net.

By that definition, NOTHING connects directly to the internet.

Anyone with a better understanding care to explain ?

The proper definition of a host running an internet-facing application being "directly connecting to the internet" is using IP for the first hop, with the packets having a route from there to and from the rest of the Connected (capital-I) Internet.

Bluetooth 4.2 added support for IPv6 to/from bluetooth devices. This means IP packets formed on, or directed to, the Bluetooth 4.2 hosts, for delivery to/from other Internet-connected devices, do not require a protocol-translation gateway to select and translate some subset of the packet types, services, and features, modifying the transport semantics to support some tiny subset of functionality that the gateway explicitly understands. An IP packet formed on the bluetooth device goes all the way to its destination semantically unmodified, and ditto packets going from some other device to the bluetooth device. The full feature set of IP (or as much of it as the stack implementer choses to support) is available, while the routers can be "as dumb as rocks" and totally ignorant of what the application on the Bluetooth device is up to, in classic Internet style.

A Bluetooth 4.2 device, using IPv6 and with a route, IS on the Internet, and is a peer to all other internet-connected hosts.

Courts should punish intentional facilitation.
If you can't be bothered to sell a $1 security dongle with the software as other software companies do, then you must be intentionally facilitating piracy.
The courts are not there to be abused in the face of intentional facilitation, especially as best practice is already known.

Or you could use software activation, as other software companies do? As Microsoft does? Because Windows 7 and Office 2010 activation were certainly put there to intentionally facilitate copying.

As for your comment that hardware dongles are a "best practice," pull the other one, mate. Nevermind that the $1 dongles don't work.

This is relevant to nerds and technology how?

Some of us are eco-nerds.

Seriously. Planets and space habitats will need ecological engineering - the real stuff, not the eco-wacko knee-jerks.

Examinations of how this horrendously complex system works when tweaked are definitely "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters".

There are lots of different sorts of nerds, and lots of nerds geek out on many different technologies each. If you sometimes see nerd-fodder that isn't on one of YOUR subjects on Slashdot, suck it up and shut up, while the nerds of THAT topic finally get to have THEIR conversation.

We get enough of that disruptive raining-on-our-parade from the jocks.

A non-political body called the Judicial Appointments Commission, the 15 members of which include barristers, judges, normal everyday people and legal professionals. The government have no say in appointments, and have no power over the commission - its completely independent.

Except that in the UK, Judges have the ability to nullify a law if they consider it onerous or wrong, without being specifically asked to look at the law itself.

One of the many reasons I trust the UK judicial system - its very independent of the current Government.

That's because it is a minor version bump - the main difference is in how projects consume it.

Not even that, its a Delta V Heavy which has been flying for a while now.

Assistance dogs do not "understand" those things, they are trained to react in a certain way to a certain set of stimuli, but that's not the same as understanding the link between the stimuli and the reaction. Put an assistance dog in a similar situation, but change some of the stimuli, and their reaction will not be the same. They cannot adapt training to new circumstances on their own, they have to be led.

That the list contains people without convictions means that you can be added, and your sentence affected, by things you haven't been proven guilty of: Due Process Fail.

That stuck out like a big sore thumb to me. It's police and prosecutorial misconduct, pure and simple. (I'm appalled that this wasn't brought up until this far down in the discussion.)

Other items, just from the little bit quoted here:
  - 'people whom the D.A. considers "uncooperative witnesses,"'

One of the big differences between the US and English systems is that in the US you are NOT REQUIRED to risk your own life to do the police department's work by testifying about what you've seen. (You aren't allowed to lie, but you are allowed to be silent.) The police often can't, or won't, provide you with protection against criminal retaliation for your testimony, at the same time that they block you from obtaining or using the means to protect yourself. Don't want to be a martyr? Just say nothing.

But these guys are turning that principle on its head: If they decide you're an "uncooperative witness", into the database you go, to be harassed and minutely scrutinized from then on, threatened with arrest at any slip-up, treated differently, and far worse, than other citizens. That's selective enforcement at its worst, and denial of civil rights under cover of law.

Then there's "gang members". If some policeman don't happen to like you and the friends you hang out with, they he can define your group as a "gang", regardless of whether you've committed any crime, and treat you and your group as they would big-time repeat offenders. Any bets on whether this gets used against political opponents of the prosecutors' party?

We already do, I can't torture my pet dog to death without facing jail time for example.

Interesting, been using this since WP8 was released, and its literally called "battery saver" - the blurb on the settings page says "When Battery Saver is on, all non-essential features and background tasks are truned off and push notifications are sent less often". So it looks like Windows Phone features are making the cut back into Windows.

You know what also happens a heck of a lot up there? Storms. And you know what storms can do? Degrade radio transmissions significantly.

And why would submarines be colliding with cables laid on the sea bed? That would require submarines to be dragging themselves across the sea bed - which they don't normally do...

No, its not - simply not competing is not enough to violate anti-trust laws, there has to be an active component of cooperation between the two (or more) companies involved for it to violate anti-trust laws - each company simply deciding not to enter their competitors market is not illegal, no anti-trust law requires a company to always compete, it simply stops companies from agreeing not to compete.

If you can show a component of mutual, explicit agreement between the parties here, then anti-trust comes into play - but simply not competing based on each company deciding not to compete with the other, but not agreeing that with the other, does not violate anything.