I am normally against increasing the number of cameras around and being under surveillance all the time. That said, I think NYC needs this to finnally start putting nails in the coffin of their stop and frisk program. Finally either one of two things HAS to happen: Either they collect massive amounts of evidence about how they have been stopping random people and trumping up charges, or.... the number of incidents must go down. Either way, its progress.

Already done, a quick simulation clearly shows nothing to worry about, even if it hit the atmosphere straight on it would still be decelerated to a safe velocity before hit hit the gorund and would just bounce.

That is a load off my mind.

Interesting idea though could create situations where a potential licensee may come along and be faced with potentially bolstering a patent that could be free for them to use in a few months if they don't. Not sure how big an issue that really is, nor is it clear that it couldn't be trivially bypassed.

Several related companies could easily license each other's patents in exchange for licensing eachother's patents just to keep them current. Even if you tried to proect against that, it would always be a situation where a company with some money and a lack of scruples could make for a very expensive uphill battle to prove....and it would just end up being one more benefit large companies with deep pockets and lack of scruples have over independent inventors.

Of course... a 1% yield of a nuclear weapon is still nothing to sneeze at. Hell, I bet they would make damned impressive dirty bombs.... admittedly its a "horrible waste" of a nuke from the rather twisted point of view required for talking about such things....but if your group didn't actually have to build it... its still a waste of someone else's resources....

Which really is all just a rehashing of the reasons that these systems are used where they are, and not used where they aren't.

The only way I could see this working would be a physical disablement. If you have a weapon, be it a nuke, conventional bomb, or tank, it has all the physical hardware and chemicals it needs to work. Disabling the control equipment is a setback but, will never fully prevent someone from repurposing the core equipment. If you can strip a nuclear bomb down to its core and firing mechanisms, you can make your own driver.... maybe that is a bad example because there is likely a lot of "secret sauce" in the actual sequence of making a plutonium core properly compress but... that is a rather specific issue to the specific type of device.

These sorts of safegaurds are really about defense in depth and decreasing the short term value of a resource to enemies. So even if you manage to get a group together that can infiltrate a launch site, its useless to you in the amount of time you will have while they muster a response and deal with you.

The only real long term solution is physical disablement which presents a whole host of serious issues including the potential of an enemy sending a disablement signal or something triggering such components accidentally through some other interaction or service error.

Such things certainly have their place, but, there are limits to how much of that is really effective before it becomes just a burden and a liability.

The proper term for something that you want to sell at an extraordinary price because it is meant to be used "at sea" is "Marine", it works similarly to the word "Bridal" in that adding it to a product instantly increases its salable value.

You are both right and wrong. The police yes....however the DA and Sheriff are often both elected positions, meaning that they do have certain "requirements" if they want to be re-elected, and often respecting civil rights is unpopular with the populace; and a LOT of people are willing to give them a pass for violating rights if they come up with even a flimsy excuse.

No actually your moralizing is irrelevant, because the reality is the same no matter how you feel about it. Its been shown in the studies I have run into on the subject that piracy rates drop off with income level. Those with money pay for it.

This lines up perfectly with my own experience, the people who pirate the most tend to make the least amount of money and have the most amount of free time to consume huge amounts of media.

I don't see how your feelings on the topic, which seems to be your only point, makes a difference here. Your argument doesn't even make sense. Content easily can cost many times the initial investment, especially an initial investment for a pc or console setup, and many people's finances fluxuate over time.

In any case, I don't see how that is relevant, point is, the loss of money is money that they were never likely going to get the vast majority of, so why is your moral outrage the only effect that matters or is worth talking about? IS it worth more than any potential side benefits?

Actually I had a bad experience with caffiene withdrawl years ago, high school actually. I had managed quite a habbit of hitting the vending machine for iced tea. Two in the morning before class, two at lunch, then of course there was either wrestling practice or the ride home. After doing this a while, I forgot my wallet at home in a rush one day.....ouch.

Ever since, I watched for the morning headaches, if I get them, I immediately detox off caffiene for two weeks, never had such a bad reaction since.

Though, the last time I got caffiene headaches was a few years back, when I was in a cubicle practically next to a break room stocked with decent coffee. Now I work in an office that is a bit of a walk, and well.... I can't drink the stuff they make....I may be an addict but, I have standards. I just can't drink that swill.

They have decent tea though....

While true, I have trouble imagining anyone who can afford games does this. There are so many cheap games out there it seems like a silly bother and... a lot to go through to screw the publisher out of a few bucks.

That said, since the majority of people who do this likely are attemtping to cheat because they couldn't afford many games anyway, the loss of money is likely actually very small since the alternative would be, they don't play the game or download it some other way.

However, they likely tell all their friends about any game so, in a way its free advertising. Hell LL Bean has a return policy that almost screams "come take advantage of us" but, they claim very few people do, and that it works out for them in the long run with loyal customers.

In fact, I bet the people who suffer the most from this sort of trick are the people who make shitty games, because not only will they not get paid by the people who use this trick, they might also lose out on other sales as people warn their friend's away from wasting their money.

lol funny as it is, I heard a great commentary a while back by a woman who went to college and spent years studying feminist theory and all this, who went and interviewed a woman who was a ceo of some decently sized company and came to the realization that it wasn't the academics where were making strides for the acceptance of women in the workforce, it was the ones actually working who were doing it.

I had a forehead smacking moment last year when I mentioned this jokingly last year while camping at a friend's event. I said "They were basically selling dowsing rods for explosives" and one of my friend's pipes in, with all seriousness: "Oh that is fine, dowsing works!".....sigh.....

That is absolutely preposterous. However, if you model the stone blocks as frictionless point masses.....

A while back I tried to turn the tables on a scammer who royally pissed me off.

I posted an ad looking for a roomate and I got interest from someone claiming to be relocating from spain with moving costs paid by her company. Sounded good to me....after a quick exchange I took down my ad and a day later got the bad news "I will be sending a money order, can you cash it and forward on the difference too...."

I immediately recognized the scam and put my ad back up, but I was mad.

So I said "Sure sounds good".... the money order came, I said "never got it, when is it coming?"....got another one.... then I decided to have fun with it.... I sent a url for some pictures on my webserver and asked questions that would requiore looking at them to answer...about the room of course.... soon as I had an IP, I looked it up and told "her"

"I have seen better fakes, you wont fool me" I told "her" and that I knew she was somewhere outside Lagos Nigeria. Suddenly she admitted to being a he, and had a new tune.... he was trying to recruit me. Too easy.

Pretty quickly it shaped up what he wanted...someone with a US addrss to remail packages. I would get a package of papers to send out, all I had to do was put them in envelopes, slap postage on, and that would be $500 for me, each time.

So I figured....no way I am helping this scammer who tried to scam me, but, lets see if I can scam him out of $500 by getting him to pay up front. He mentioned counterfit bills, so I was like yes, cool, I will take counterfit bills, then I can report you directly to the Secret Service oooh fun.....

in the end we could never work out a deal that sounded good to him and I was willing to burn him on so, it never happened. Oh well.....

AND its worth noting.....should anything ever go to court....

NOTHING you said can be used to help you. While anything you say can be considered a confession and used against you, anything you say that is not used against you is hearsay.

So you have nothing to gain by speaking if it ever does go to court.