How many have considered purposefully interfering with surveillance drones?

Since Britain is considering turning off active airport radar, and using TV signals, one would think that hobbyists could do similar things to track surveillance drones.

And then actively interfering with their ability to surveil by using maybe high powered IR lasers, carefully aimed microwave transmitters, or similar aimed at them.

Top Gear had the same issue with the sports car (drive it "fun" and the range is nearly nothing)

They have similar issues with all cars. They did a nice test of five supercars. The results:

#5: Ferrari 599 - 1.7 MPG, rated at 11/15; and as James May pointed out, that works out to GBP 3.20/mile.
#4: Aston Martin DB9, rated at 11/17
#3: Mercedes McLaren SLR, rated at 12/16
#2: Lamborghini Murcielago - 4.1 MPG, rated at 8/13
#1: Audi R8 - 5 MPG, rated at 12/19.

And in the same segment they compared a Toyota Prius to a BMW M3, with the Prius hitting 17.2 MPG (rated at 48/45) and the M3 getting 19.4 MPG (rated at 14/20).

Amazingly Clarkson actually has sound advice in the end. It's now what you drive, it's how you drive it.

So ... in your fantasy country of the United States of No Taxes at All, your politicians get no salary at all?

All news organizations repeat filtered facts

But the offending part of that particular bit wasn't fact. It was fiction and nothing more. Presented by a supposed expert. THAT is the problem.

I don't find it troublesome that they argue against solar energy (or at least subsidies for it) - as you said, all news organizations present their own views. But presenting a guest as an expert on a subject matter, and then having that expert say something that is factually incorrect - and not even a little bit, mind you - THAT should be completely unacceptable, no matter what your political opinions are.

And while Fox News Channel has laid the ground work in getting the courts to declare that the media can lie, it is still really, REALLY bad form to present something like this as "facts".

But here's a tricky question - why are the media allowed to lie, when movies and tv shows have to go out of their way to emphasise that they are fiction? Seriously - there's a disclaimer at the end of Lord of the Fucking Rings!

Did we watch the same video?

She specifically claims that Germany "gets more sun than us" then goes on and seemingly clarifies a bit, that "us" means east coast.

So let's stick with that for a moment. Let's pick New York state, because in all likelihood that's where the studio is, and compare climate to Germany.

It's a bit tricker than I'd like, because New York is listed in days and %sunshine, and Germany is listed in hours, but in the state overview for the US, Syracuse is listed at 2,120 hours.

So, Syracuse has the third lowest number of sunshine days, and the lowest percentage of sunshine of the listed cities in New York, but it still has 14% more sunshine hours than Zugspitze, which is the one with the highest number of sunshine hours in Germany.

Remind me again, how she's right about Germany being sunnier?

And let's not forget that one of the northernmost towns in New York is Champlain, located at 44;57N, whereas one of the southernmost towns in Germany is Oberstdorf, located at 47;25N. Or for the layman amongst us, Oberstdorf is located 274 km further North than Champlain.

This will obviously have an impact on the amount of energy you can extract from the sun, and wouldn't you know it - that's exactly what the lovely chart from the NREL shows as well.

But maybe I misunderstood her completely. Maybe she was referring to some other east cost - the east cost of Alaska doesn't exactly seem to be a sunshine state.

As someone else said earlier, for an expert she certainly seems ignorant. I'm not whoring myself out as an expert on the subject, and I could tear her argument to shreds with less than five minutes of fact checking. The only thing she seems to be an expert on, is telling the hosts what they want to hear.

Whether or not you like the idea of subsidising solar energy, I'd think you'd like to have the facts straight. Facts aren't political, unless you believe that reality has a liberal bias.

This is the problem in general. Not that it's on Fox News Channel, but that the hosts aren't interested in presenting the truth, but simply what supports their (or their employer's) views. This happens all the time, but we pick on Fox News a lot more, because they are so horribly bad at lying.

Call up the IRS and tell them that you aren't going to pay a proportionate amount of your taxes because of Solyndra.

Let's see. 500 million dollars, divide by 300 million people - so less than two bucks.

Call me a big old softy if you will, but I doubt they'll be sending a SWAT team to your door.

It's tempting to think they tested it in Bergen

Why is it called Frodo? Has XBMC had it's red ring destroyed?

Well, I used avalanche as a metaphor - not a simile. The snow flakes on the mountain side does not have the ability to decide if they wish to participate in an avalanche - physics decides that for it.

The press, on the other hand, DOES have the ability to decide, and yes, that does include the hosts.

But consider this - what if no other media had picked up the story and run with it? Would she still have committed suicide? Unfortunately we won't know.

But here's a thought. For all the blame throwing that has happened in that particular case, I find it interesting that I haven't stumbled across a single article with introspection into news organizations' own roles in her suicide. Case in point - it was a rather lame joke, and the Mail Online/Daily Mail turned it into a 3,000 word article the next day, saying in nice big fat letters: "How could they fall for this hoax?"

Nah - that kind of massively overblown reaction and witch hunt couldn't possibly add to the stress she was already under.

That same paper has an article: Being stressed is as damaging for your heart as smoking five cigarettes a day

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2250106/Stress-bad-heart-smoking-cigarettes-day.html 18 December 2012.

Be honest with me here - would this discussion be interesting in those newspapers? The more I read about the nurse, I'm thinking I should sit down and do some journalistic work into the media's role in the situation.

I'm on sick leave and have lots of time on my hands, and I suspect that I would quite love to ream "da man" and society at large.

Good idea or dead at conception?

Those radio personalities were, in some part, responsible for the actions of the nurse for it was they who made the final push.

I don't think they made the final push. One of the nurses three suicide letters criticized senior hospital staff - while I haven't read any of the letters (I don't think they've been made public), I read that as her being violently reamed by administration for what is really a tiny issue.

That being said, according to MailOnline she did blame them for it.

Personally, I don't think the radio hosts were responsible for the final push - what they did was to set off an avalanche of undue criticism, particularly undue, as she didn't do anything other than patch the hosts through to another nurse.

And really, if you read the news after the prank call on December 4th but before the suicide on December 7th, you'd have read about it. Google gives 400+ hits on that search.

ABC News. The Mirror. The Telegraph. The Star. USA Today. Fox News. The list goes on. That's not just a silly joke playing out on some radio show with a limited audience - that's world wide. For fuck's sake, it was covered as basically breaking news that the world HAD to know and be outraged about.

Personally, I can't say if it something that'd make me try suicide again, but I highly doubt I would lay all the blame at the pranksters' feet. Being the victim of a joke isn't always funny even afterwards - but then being subjected to that amount of quite frankly ludicrous public scrutiny of an honest mistake, I wouldn't put it past me to break at that.

So no - even if the nurse laid the blame squarely at the hosts' feet, I will go on record as saying that that is a very unfair and unreasonable claim to make.

People do not commit suicide because of a single thing. It's not the rape alone that makes rape victims suicidal, it's the associated shame, social isolation, finger pointing and blame (it's never the victim's fault) as well, and those come from society - not the rapist, no matter how despicable the crime is.

So what are you saying here - if someone is raped, were previously fine, but then kill themselves because of shame that it is not the rapists fault?

As you quoted, I said "It's not the rape alone". I didn't say "It's not the rape[period]". And as you also quoted I said "it's [society] as well".

Why should a rape victim be ashamed? If you get robbed and stabbed, are you ashamed? Did you somehow ask to be assaulted? No - you didn't, and society at large doesn't blame you for it. But society does blame rape victims, and that adds to the pain that they suffer.

In both cases they started a course of events that lead to someone committing suicide.

I never said they didn't, and I never said they don't carry responsibility. I said you can't pin it on them. It's a subtle difference, I know.

I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but it helps when they actually read and understand what I plainly wrote.

He had a choice - fight and go bankrupt, then to jail. Plead guilty and goto jail, Or take his own life.

That is a really, REALLY unfair claim to make.

And I say that as someone with multiple suicide attempts behind me (yes, I'm a failure, I know), so allow me to rephrase that.

That is a really, REALLY stupid and ignorant claim to make. There - much better.

People do not commit suicide because of a single thing. It's not the rape alone that makes rape victims suicidal, it's the associated shame, social isolation, finger pointing and blame (it's never the victim's fault) as well, and those come from society - not the rapist, no matter how despicable the crime is.

Pinning Swartz' suicide on overzealous prosecutors is as fair as pinning Jacintha Saldanha's suicide on the radio hosts. It may be a contributing factor, but not the only one.

People are WAY too keen to blame a single thing (person or otherwise) as the cause for whatever evil they see, and are WAY too scared of thinking let alone saying that people may have a mental illness. Just look at how quick people are to blame video games for the acts of murderers these days.

You don't attempt suicide (successfully or otherwise) if you're not mentally ill, be it temporary, short term, long term or chronic.

Yes, he made the choice to take his own life. He also made the choice of knowingly breaking the law (unreasonable or not). Rosa Parks made a similar decision as did Nelson Mandela and many others around the world. But unlike Swartz, they didn't choose to take their own life.

And you can say a lot of things about the US prison system, but I'm pretty sure it is a LOT more comfortable than what Mandela went through.

The single worst offender I can remember, was a mouse with an LED behind the company nameplate so intense, that you could read the name (mirrored) on the ceiling in daylight.

I couldn't sleep with the camera's red light blinking at me regardless of whether or not it was connected to the router at the time.

Easily fixed with tape or a pen.

It's how I fix the issue I have with 99% of all electronic equipment these days, as they seem to insist on being able to illuminate a room with their "LOOK AT ME!!!" lights. And I think that's the first time in pretty much forever, I've ever wanted to use the blink-tag.

This issue is not restricted to DVRs, China doesn't give a fuck, and people in general only care about the price tag.

You mean in the same way that the US doesn't give a fuck? Or the EU. Or any other nation or continent you care to name.

No-one gives a fuck - that's the problem. If the collective we cared, security would be much higher, simply because insecure technology wouldn't sell.

Don't blame China - blame the retailers. Security costs money, and if retailers can save a thousand dollars on a million sales, they'll go with the cheaper alternative if they think it'll sell.

Race to the bottom and all that.