Indeed. I do architectural work, including taking measurements of existing buildings. If I could use this to get a point cloud of a room it would be amazing. I'd be willing to start programming again if it meant being able to access even rudimentary data. While high accuracy is probably not in this, even +/-3" would be good for small places (up to, say 20-25 feet).

I'm curious how a SWAT team managed to even get a tax exempt status for "Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations," unless they somehow claimed they were addressing child abduction.

The ACLU may not be specifically whining about the 501(c)(3) status, but rather that the corporation is claiming that they don't have to disclose anything about their non-charitable work because of their status. Which is, as you say, bullshit.

I'd say the first stop would to contact the IRS department which oversees the 501 groups, but I understand that their email service is less than reliable, and they're all a bit touchy about in-person interviews lately.

If they're not exceptionally careful there could be a case where the corporate veil is pierced and result in personal liability applied to the corporate officers. That would be far more chilling to this kind of bogus operation than merely ruling that they cannot hide behind corporate law to shield them from public transparency requirements.

Really? The whole point of the GP post was that nearly all of the technological underpinnings of our modern, leisure-infested lifestyle are the result of governmental (and much of it military) research. I hate war as much as the next liberal, but it seems that the efforts of short-sighted humans are focused by the desire to be able to kill as many people as possible as easily as possible. Without it, we'd still be monkeys. Now if we could just quit the actual killing of people we'd be making some progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

(and..."Europe on 5 Quaaludes a Day," forward version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

So if you admitted to killing the president, and that the murder weapon was in a locked safe that would take 1000 years to break into, you could not be compelled to open that safe?

Everybody!!! Isn't the legal system great!?

Yes, the driver, the installer, the manufacturer, the programmer - pretty much anyone who ever touched any part of the project will be named in the suit. It happens in building/architectural lawsuits all the time. The plumbing fails and everyone, including the drywall company, is in the list of defendants. I wouldn't be surprised to see the sidewalk lunch vendor on the list.

It's pretty obvious the method for deciding cases at this point.

I'm not sure, but it may or may not involve monkeys, typewriters, and the works of Shakespeare.

"...without killing their children and dogs."

Well, if you keep putting silly requirements on everything we'll never make any progress!

...this just means it's time for Amazon to laywer-up. Or lobbiest-up. Or both.

*shrug* I don't use Metro 95% of the time - I use the desktop on my W8 laptop and it works pretty much like W7, but with some mice shortcuts. The tiles interface is nice when I switch into tablet mode and am watching a movie or surfing or reading. It's not useful for AutoCAD or Photoshop or Word, where a mouse is far more efficient a tool for navigation. Still, it was pitifully easy to learn.

I meant iOS - the "easy, intuitive" interface from Apple. I've tried OSX and it's every bit as confusing as Linux GUIs and Windows to the first-time user, but that's a desktop OS, and the Metro side of W8 is a tablet GUI.

As if it wasn't hard enough to learn Chinese to talk to your suppliers directly, now you've got to learn to understand people in Alabama? That's fucked up.

Wow, only $1000? That's AWESOME! For a foldable car I'd be willing to pay, like $10,000, but if you're going to do a kickstarter and I can get in at the $1000 level, I'm TOTALLY in!!

And that's probably exactly how these charlatans have managed to get that many supporters.