There's a period of time between when you click "Submit" and when the order goes through. It's like a few minutes or and hour... anyways, until that happens, either end of the transaction can easily cancel it. In fact, until it's shipped I believe you can as well. Once I had an order that got screwed up horribly bad... I got into an argument with the owner in the comments section to the point that he got so mad, he stopped shipment on my order and refunded my money (which was what I wanted anyway) So yea, until the package arrives on your doorstep and you accept it, you can still cancel. But I'd not recommend it after it ships. If you reject it when the UPS man walks up and it gets lost on the way back you're on the hook for the full payment I bet.

Wait... you're a real live British person? While we have your attention... please explain Jaffa Cakes to us. They're about the most disgusting things I've ever tasted, and trust me, that's a high bar. Why would you intentionally make something taste stale?!? And orange jelly? With chocolate?

Yes, but you're neglecting to explain why they want/need them.

Prior to IP phones, the feds would get their court order, go directly to the targets residence, and put their recording device on the pedestal outside to record their analog call directly. They didn't even need to contact the phone company.

Then, along came digital. Now the traffic at the pedestal is white noise. They go to the phone company to ask them to record the call... the phone company would look in the documentation for their Softswitch and say "FBI phone tap isn't a checkbox we have..."

So what are the feds to do? Well, they just stick your typical Packet Analyzer on the network (thats what that blackbox is) and then somehow flag the traffic they want to get. I'm not sure how they flag it... I suspect they do something to the targets phone. About 5yrs ago I handled the CALEA requests for a telco and I never saw anything relating to those boxes, so whatever it is they do, it doesn't have anything to do with the phone company.

The one thing I do know is that those boxes (carnivore) cannot be recording all calls. There's just too much traffic for a rack-mount box to be able to gather all of it, or even decode a good portion of it to find interesting bits.

I think that what the telcos are saying here is "Don't make us do anymore of this carnivore stuff... the softswitch stuff is improving and in the near future it'll be just as easy to record as the old analog lines were. Maybe even easier!"

I'm not arguing for or against it... I'm a pretty big privacy advocate... but it's not nearly as black and white as you're making it seem.

3/16" ?
Wood and acrylic?
I'm sure it was a lot of work. I'm not dissing what you've accomplished. I'm questioning its usefulness. I don't want it, even if it's free.

If a tool doesn't solve a problem it's not a tool at all.
This does everything yours does but better:
http://www.instructables.com/i...

But you know... without starting fires. ...and that's just the first one I found on google.
There's no reason to use a laser at all. I've been using CNC mills since the early 80s. I've used "real" laser mills, and even one that used a high power water jet once (that was a neat device!) they are all handy in specific use cases. But, in general, lasers are not the best way to cut things and you need a very high-power and therefore dangerous, laser to do it.

Ah yes, another "Laser cutter" that can only cut paper and leaves burned edges? No thanks.

As someone that gets pretty much all of my media from peering... they didn't "Quash" anything. They (or someone) used to upload all kinds of fake files to try and disrupt the community a few years back. They even got clever and would intentionally fake seeders so it'd look very popular.

That's why the aggregate sites have a comments and up-vote section. There are usually dozens of versions of any particular movie and you can sort by vote. That effectively killed the attack. They don't really try this anymore because their fake will get down voted almost instantly. You can even preview what you're downloading in most clients.

To be honest, I think they should be happy with the system they have now. It's pretty hard to get something before it hits DVD in a quality that's worth watching. If you want to see what's new and hot, you need to go to the theater. Getting a DVD or better quality version of a film is difficult enough that I bet most people just buy it. Their real problem is their continued fight against modernizing with some sort of streaming service. For example, imagine if you had a "Pandora" television station... TV shows were sent to you, you upvoted/downvoted them, etc... I'd pay for that. Keeping track of thousands of files for my kids TV shows is a PITA.

...and the net affect of your assertion would be that anyone... in any video... could demand take down of any video they were in and claim there was no release. Then Google would have to track down the person that posted it, and then the person that recorded it, ask for their "releases" and judge if it covered what was in the video?

Rulings like this are what will kill the internet. If they rule in the way you suggest, no videos will be on the internet at all. No-one will want the hassle.

Which is still wrong.
This right here is a perfect example of what's wrong with government regulation. If you regulate an industry, that industry will, understandably, use that regulation to their advantage. They get the government to institute regulation that prevents anyone from competing and the industry becomes a closed system with no outside competition and new ideas die before they even have a chance. There's arguably benefits to this as well, you know exactly what to expect when you get in a cab... there are never any surprises.

But in reality, the regulation is there to prevent the unsuspecting of getting ripped off. In the case of Uber and services like it, the people using that service know exactly what they are getting into. Grandma isn't going to fire up uber and get ripped off. If she wants to get from point A to point B she's going to do it the only fashion way and not worry about it. If some 20-something wants to try it out and accept the risk that the driver might suck and not have insurance, he can do that. It's not like the app puts an artificial Taxi sign on your car.

If the Taxi drivers think the Uber drivers have too much of an unfair advantage, I recommend that they to take off their Taxi signs and sign up for an account.

Right... Digital is superior in every measurable way to vinyl.
The "lossyness" of vinyl does, however, have the effect of putting a filter on the audio output. It rolls off the highs and lows, leaving you with a warm, low-mids heavy mix. Some people like that sound... great! But you can get that same effect with an EQ and still enjoy all of the benefits of digital.

That said... Digital can suck if the wrong person rips the song or over compresses it. Also, Vinyl is fun. I have a small vinyl collection myself. There's no way I'd listen to my old Eddy Murphy, Richard Pryor, or Steve Martin recordings. Led Zeppelin is fun to. But that has nothing to do with sound quality. Anyone that suggests otherwise has no idea what they're talking about.

I'm sure they fought tooth and nail to try and give their competition a fair chance to compete. Those evil record companies, forcing Apple to be anti-competitive when, before this, Apple was a model for fair business practices right? lol

Green peace, Peta, and other "Groups" like them stopped being about the "issues" a long time ago and have since turned into ego trips for its members. It seems like a game for them to pull off the biggest stunt. Do they seriously think world leaders are "unaware" of renewable energy? Seriously?

That message wasn't for world leaders, it was a dick measuring contest with other activists.

Yes, but Variable c would open up many, far far more dire problems than Dark Matter.

Scientists aren't suggesting that dark matter is definitely a particle. That's one guess, but it could very well be some artifact of some underlying physical reality that we just don't understand yet just like you suggest. But the speed of light isn't variable.

That's pretty clever. I'd get one for my kid... but then again... no thanks...

No, and No.

I don't care what stereo you put in the car. The fact of the matter is, cars last 10 to 20 years. Stereo/entertainment technology lasts less than 5. There was likely a 5yr development cycle for the car so the stereos going to be out of date before it even hits the lot. For example, my 2009 ford escape has the "MS Sync!" system and it had your typical black and white LCD numerical display similar to a 1980s calculator.

So, at some point, I'm going to want to ditch your crappy stereo and install something modern. At that point I'll pull the plug on your stereo and what will happen to my car? In fords (and most modern cars) it kills the entire dash!!! I pulled the stereo out of that 2009 escape and the entire dash died. I doubt it was even drivable. I had to order a computer, to plug into the ford plug to do what the old stereo had been doing on the bus system, just to install a standard Dinn stereo. It cost me $200 just for the stupid translation computer!

I do not want this nonsense. Fault in the radio in my car should not disable the friggen car. That's just stupid. Unfortunately, I keep seeing cars headed down this path, and there's absolutely no reason for it. There's an industry wide DINN standard they could follow. Even with Double and Quadruple DINN specs for huge touch screens, etc... industry standard plugs so you could swap stereos in and out. There's absolutely nothing stopping them from making car electronics as simple to replace as batteries in your TV remote. But they WANT the radio to be out of date so idiots will come into to buy a new car just to get a new radio. GAHHHH!!!

You're seriously a moron if you think Keurig has coffee worth pirating.