According to this article it has a range of 3 km.

Here's a better article on it with some pictures that show scale (in case you're not on board with the video craze): http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/aeryon-scout-quadrotor-spies-on-bad-guys-from-above
It can easily fit in a small suitcase, so no, you're not going to be mounting firearms on it.

Oops, that should have been "whomever" in my last sentence. May the grammar nazis forgive me...

It's very easy to see how this is a bad thing: look at Social Security Numbers. They were originally voluntary, opt-in, and only for specific purposes. Now, you receive one at birth, everybody you bump into wants it, and they are controlled exclusively by the government.

If a similar "internet security number" existed (even as multi-factor tokens), you can bet that the government would soon require to you get one for official online transactions, say, e-filing your taxes. It would be voluntary, because you could still mail them. (By the way, you'll probably need a computer with a Trusted Computing (TM) capable hardware platform and OS (ie. non-free).) Soon the Post Office would want it for your USPS account, banks would be all over it, facebook might offer it as an optional feature, and in time, little by little, online anonymity dies. Eventually it would reach the point where it's required for air travel, passports, cell phone and internet service, etc.

If it's revamped in a few decades for convenience, it could be easy enough to require it for credit card transactions (to combat identity theft, you know), and eventually could be merged with the RealID system (which is law, btw. It's just being effectively nullified by some state governments who missed the memo on libertarianism being outmoded). It would then be required for motor vehicle registration and similar systems.

However, woe are you if you do something to displease the issuers of such a critical token! It would be like not having a Social Security Number, or like having one tied to an E credit score or a sex offender list. Life could be made very hard on certain authors, people who condemn homosexuality (or other up-and-coming sins), journalists who are a little too critical of authority, libertarians, people who use "criminal" tools like BitTorrent or decentralized encryption, etc.

Despite all this doom and gloom, I don't think it will happen. Hyperinflation is a far more realistic fear. By the way, you'll notice I called homosexuality a sin. Imagine what could happen to me if I had posted this using a Trusted Internet ID that someone could report to whoever is in charge of hate crime prosecution!

Uh, this article is by an Australian author. http://asiancorrespondent.com/author/gavinatkins/
As a side note, here's a direct link to the map: http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/11kap9climat.png

The FCC's version of Net Neutrality is not what you think it is. Slashdotters should be rejoicing that Congress is putting the kibosh on this. We want a law, not an FCC regulatory regime. Why? Because the FCC can change whenever it gets a new chairman. Changing a law requires a vote. Unfortunately, it's also notoriously difficult to get legislation as tricky as Net Neutrality initially passed into law without having it mangled beyond recognition on the way there.

No, no, no. This is not the way to do it. The "American way" is not to control people directly, but economically.

Instead of giving poor people checks (and I say this as a current college student who earned $12k last year), give them government credit cards that cannot be used to purchase junk food of any sort. No freezer meals, no chips, no candy, no boxed foods, no white bread, and especially no soda pop. Of course, people will then simply rearrange their spending to to cover the junk they want, but we can at least make it more difficult to use tax dollars on that stuff.

My last shopping trip, I purchased 3 bags (1 lb each) of pretzels for studying, a can of peas, a can of corn, 2 cans of potato soup, a half gallon of milk, 4 packets of Ramen, 2 cans of peaches, and a pack of black dress socks. The total was $19.33, and $5.50 of that was the socks. Now, I know that pretzels and Ramen are not particularly healthy, but it could be much worse. I eat in the dining hall on weekdays - I feed myself on the weekends. I made the potato soup with the milk and added a serving of tuna fish and a pack of crushed saltines to make two servings (lunch and dinner).

While that's not the healthiest of menus, it's very cheap and at least marginally nutritious. However, when I visit my friend's place who's single mom is on welfare, they eat all sorts of nasty brand-name stuff. My family collects food for a food bank, and we tried to give them a box of food every week. However, they didn't want it! Why? Well, it's not the ready-to-eat stuff they are used to. Why does the government give them cash? If they're going to get aid from my tax dollars, it ought to come with some serious strings attached. As it is, it's just a vote-buying system, and everyone knows it.

In my irrelevant opinion, a true fiscal conservative is someone with a steel backbone who will veto spending projects (that's a cool term I made up) until they die, regardless of the political consequences. Such a person must be a principle fanatic who realizes that he probably won't be re-elected, because the financial systems move slowly enough that his term will be over before the gains are realized. He must also be heartless enough to ditch the special concerns of everyone who helped him get to the top, simply telling them, "Sorry, I'm doing what's Constitutional and best for the country."

In short, he's either a myth or something resembling Ron Paul. Regan a good start, but a) his priority was dealing with the Soviets, and b) he had too many political connections and favors to pay.

http://www.networknotary.org/
Perspectives is a wonderful little Firefox extension (with Chome beta) that does exactly as you suggest - uses a web of trust to automatically bypass errors for self-signed certificates, while also detecting stuff like these fraudulent Comodo certs.

I highly recommend the Perspectives Firefox extension. It basically compares the cert you are handed to the one everyone else received (including in the past), which would have detected the fraudulent Comodo certs. Much easier than running around to multiple connections.

I highly recommend the Perspectives Firefox extension. It basically compares the cert you are handed to the one everyone else received (including in the past), which would have detected the fraudulent Comodo certs.

Wine does not necessarily equal alcohol in the Bible. ;) It was not possible to get drunk on normal Jewish wine. What we consider wine today was called "strong drink."

The castle is advertising, not search. Correcting that fixes your tunnel.

Yes, I've been making real, 100% VOIP calls on my Android device over WiFi with my GV for a while. There's a whole project dedicated to it: http://code.google.com/p/google-voice-sipsorcery-dialplans/
Personally, I use the IPKall + Sipsorcery method, but I hear signups at Sipsorcery are currently closed. I'm not sure what's available in the meantime.

I do! Via Perspectives. I've very, very rarely had it alert me to anything, but it could be extremely useful the one time it does.