The word "car" really just means a "wheeled vehicle". There is no requirement for turning.

So people keep telling me...

How are you so sure of that? He could have just been bought off by Russia, and been paid enough to become a martyr. Are you privy to his inner thoughts?

So he claims... but what actual evidence do we have of this? What was the state of his financial affairs before and after his leak? What about romance? Family politics? There are many reasons why someone will choose to reveal secrets. Of course, they always claim it's for the greater good.

Well, sort of. A fair trial, certainly. However, I don't think it's appropriate to dump everything into the public eye. That's no different from any other trial, where the judge has the power to keep aspects of the proceedings secret. Do note, however, that presenting evidence at a trial must mean including all of the relevant evidence, including anything indicating that he was not acting out of a pure love for American freedom.

Or in short, your damaging activities should be isolated appropriately so that uninvolved bystanders cannot be harmed.

Okay. It should be pretty clear from my sig that I don't think any rights are absolute. Rather, I believe each right can be trumped by others, depending on the situation. Determining the hierarchy of rights for a given situation is a job for judges.

Hello, there. I'm part of that community you deny exists.

I think Snowden did something damned near treason. It's obvious that he broke the law and jeopardized aspects of national security, but the issue of mens rea is still in question. No evidence has been presented (other than his word and the government's assertions) that he was or was not acting for the benefit of society. Resolving that question is one of the primary functions of a trial, which is why I think a trial should be held. As it stands now, the victim of a crime has been denied due process, and the Slashdot hivemind is happy about it.

I also think smoking is a right, in the more general case that I believe people should be permitted to mutilate their bodies however they wish, at whatever personal expense they wish. That might mean using alcohol or other drugs, or engaging in risky behaviors like skydiving, automobile racing, or bacon eating. However, I also believe their costs to society should be suitably offset so that their choices do not cause harm to society as a whole, and their damaging activities should be isolated appropriately so that uninvolved bystanders cannot be harmed.

I'm not a paid shill. I just think a little bit before jumping on board with everything the dear hivemind thinks.

...So a nutcase decides to start the new revolution by blowing up a park, or an incompetent building contractor builds an apartment complex that collapses... but the victims do not get the precious artificial blood, because their disaster was unnatural.

Engineers do not play well with appeals to emotion.

And if you're getting paid for something, you'll probably do it more often, simply tempting probability more that you'll have a serious problem.

...which certainly improves financial security.

There's also the detail that to get commercial insurance, the insurer can impose further restrictions to improve their own assumed risk. A price break for having regular maintenance, good record, or practicing safe driving habits, for example, can all reduce specific risks to the driver, passengers, and bystanders.

Because this is a concern for a sports car, when most parking places are designed for vans.

Gull-wing doors require less side clearance than standard doors.

So do gull-wing doors, if closed with a proper path. This is the hard part, because the door system can't interfere with other systems, like the roof's roll supports. It's not an intractable problem, but it makes the overall engineering more difficult.

Also a big problem for sports cars, I'm sure.

...And gull-wing doors have been around for half a century.

This is where knowing your parameters is important.

If you want to protect against a government, assume they have a large number of powerful computers. If you want to protect against a large corporation, assume they have a small number of very powerful computers. If you want to protect against a local power, assume a small number of fairly weak computers. If you want to decode the data easily at a given time, consider how much power you will have available by then. Maybe your project is pressworthy enough to get 20,000 distributed nodes, or maybe it's enough to get a few universities to contribute, or as mentioned before, perhaps just a benevolent corporate donation.

Ultimately, anything encrypted today has a built-in expiration date, after which it will be worthwhile for a given party to break the encryption to access whatever's inside.

Most modern cryptography works because it's difficult to solve certain math problems, but the limits of "difficult" keep getting bigger. It should be possible to make a rough estimate of how much processing power will be available to break your encryption by what date, to the parties of interest. Make your keys that strong, and hope you're close.

To build off of the Belfast Project example from TFS, a 50-year timespan might be reasonable. What kind of decryption ability might we have in 50 years? I'm no expert in cryptography, but an elliptic curve algorithm with a fairly-strong key seems reasonable to me. Encrypt it, destroy the plaintext, and forget about it. Forty-five years from now, a government might have the ability to decrypt the material, but they'd have to care, first. It might take sixty years for a data-crunching powerhouse like Google to decrypt it, and perhaps in sixty-five years, they'll see fit to run a PR stunt by unlocking the time capsule.

There's a lot of guesswork and estimation involved, but such is the nature of all time capsules. You're assuming that the capsule will be intact and unlockable at a future time, which necessarily involves predicting future capabilities.

So who gets to keep the half that goes on the website? What's to stop them from getting subpoenaed, hacked, or otherwise compromised?

The F-22s, since they're not planned for replacement.

No, it's not, and that's the whole point of "air superiority". An F-22-escorted bombing run can take out the airstrips and air capabilities of the enemy, then the F-35s can run missions to disrupt repairs. Those "state-of-the-art interceptors" won't be able to get off the ground. Even if they did, they wouldn't be able to dogfight, since they'd be shot down long before getting the F-35's into weapons range.

That's assuming, of course, that we're fighting in a place that even has state-of-the-art interceptors. At the moment, that's just the United States, since the F-22 isn't being exported and Russian and Chinese programs are still catching up to that.

Dogfighting is obsolete. Modern air warfare is now a dance of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures, until one aircraft can get a missile locked on the other. That's the part that the older aircraft can't really do. Sure, F-18s are versatile, but they can't carry much payload. The A-10 is great for air support, but it flies like a brick. The Harriers are great for working on short and damaged runways, as long as you don't need to get anywhere else quickly.

Maybe if you took all of the good parts from older aircraft, mixed them together, and threw in modern stealth, missile, and countermeasure technology, then you'd have a good plane. Let's also not forget that by having only a single airframe design, it's easier to move parts and technicians around for maintenance. After all that... hey, look! It's the F-35!

The F-35 is designed to be a single replacement for all of the single-role craft that are becoming obsolete, with the latest stealth and warfare equipment added. It is not replacing the F-22, so it doesn't have to be a fantastic dogfighter. It's meant to deal with long-range threats are either too far away to hit it, or sitting on the ground. It's perfectly capable for that.

A B-52 also lights up a radar like a Christmas tree.

Alright, let's run with this.

A cricket bat is an option, but much like the fighters from WWI, it's really only good with repeated blows against an unarmored target in a particular small area.

Unfortunately, if the rapist has planned this attack, he probably knows you have a cricket bat, and knows its weaknesses. He comes wearing a helmet and a thick shirt, so your bat will hurt, but it won't be too serious of a threat. Similarly, by WWII fighters had progressed to having better maneuverability, so earlier aircraft would be unable to hit them.

Naturally, you must improve your own weaponry to compensate, moving up to a bladed weapon, like the aforementioned axe or a knife. For fighters, that means jet engines and more guns, so the enemy can't just absorb all the damage.

The attacker evolves again. Knowing that you carry a blade, the rapist arms himself with a bicycle. It sounds ridiculous, but if he can evade your defense long enough to get up to speed, the rapist can escape without harm. Your axe, knife, sword, or ridiculously overelaborate ninja weapon are all useless because he's just too fast. Your old weapons, if you'll pardon the pun, just won't cut it any more... and neither will machine guns in the age of supersonic jet fighters.

Now you have to change your tactics. The rapist can come and go so quickly that landing blows just isn't going to be an effective countermeasure. You move up to protecting yourself with firearms. Now his bicycle is meaningless, because his speed isn't an issue any more, until he can outrun bullets. For aircraft, the parallel is the shift to missile combat.

Now, though, armor matters again. The rapist can drive a car, so you'll switch to a higher-powered weapon. Then he can add light armor to the vehicle, and you'll need armor-piercing rounds. Then he can add heavy armor, and you'll need a rocket-propelled grenade. If he gets his hands on an armored personnel carrier, he can plow into your living room, grab your wife, and drive off, and unless you have some anti-tank weaponry handy, you'll be unable to protect your wife. That $20 cricket bat won't even scratch the paint.

That's the modern state of air warfare. Long before the fighters are within visual range of each other, the pilots deploy countermeasures and break through their enemy's countermeasures, until one of them can get its missile to hit the other. Then the battle's over. None of the earlier fighter planes will be effective against such a long-range and powerful modern fighter. They wouldn't even get the chance to scratch the stealth-supporting paint.

...so in other words, it's perfect for Slashdot.