You could drop Oracle on a thousand carrot diamond and they'd still turn it into a steaming pile of shit. It's Oracle, it's what they do best.

I sure hope they're not stupid enough to remove those copper restraints. They were put there for a reason...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...

The end result of this will be: The state decides it's too expensive to track and just disables text messaging on all their service plans.

He has a valid point. Tesla only has one product. If they fail, the owners of those wild no longer have service plans or warranties. As much as Mercedes may or may not suck, they are definitely not going out of business any time soon. If you're spending $70k on a car and your options are between the two companies I could definitely see the appeal in sticking with a tried and true brand.

Actually, at 1g acceleration it would take about 11 years to reach the mid-point and another 11 to decelerate back to a resting frame rate. So 22 years to the traveler which is certainly doable. Of course to us on earth this would be over 500 years into the future due to time dilation. Also, I'm assuming we'd solve the problem of finding the enormous amounts of energy required for 22years of uninterrupted thrust, the spacecraft could operate flawlessly for that amount of time, and that the planet isn't moving at some ungodly speed in relation to us. I assumed it and earth are in the same reference frame which is clearly not the case.

You know, when I first saw this I though "Oh God..." but after I had a few minutes to think about it, I came to the conclusion: I, nor anyone else here on slashdot, will ever do anything in our lifetimes as significant as what Edward Snowden did last year. And now he's in a very precarious situation. I suspect he could be used as a bargaining chip by Russia. So whatever he has to say to stay alive in the near future is ok with me. I'll not fault the guy. He already did his good deed for this lifetime.

The problem with the NSA is we have no idea what their capabilities are, technologically or legally. They are clearly violating the constitution already and there seems to be no one willing or capable of stopping them. So if they did come to you with a NSL, no matter how ridiculous or unconstitutional it was, what choice would you have? You could go to the media, but how embedded in the media are they? Do they have standing NSLs with all the media organizations out there? You could go outside the country, but those newspapers are government by their own countries version of the NSA who's working in close relationship with ours. This really is a Global totalitarian secret police state. They haven't started herding people into camps or anything, but really... what's to stop them?

Not if the flight mode is totally autonomous. Lets say you don't need interstates anymore. If you want to travel a large distance you drive to a platform somewhere and set your destination. The computer takes over and off you go. Once it lands a few hundred miles away you take over again.

You would not believe what VP's will force you to do to get their $20 million flagship project out the door and then quickly forgotten about after the guy that was forced to do it quits in disgust. There was a time when I'd be surprised by insanely stupid security vulnerabilities but after a few years in the trade I've learned never to be surprised by anything.

You mean like a finished product?

No, the NSAs (as well as all government agencies) job is to defend the constitution and protect the citizens of the United States of America. The NSA has abandon the former goal in favor of the latter. They are not mutually exclusive. This country was founded on the principle that we as a people value freedom and liberty over life itself. The NSA, and apparently the president have forgotten this.

Here's a better (and cheaper) game:
Banished
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As long as you're only targeting republicans for this kind of scrutiny your righteous indignation rings hollow to me. Most democrats supported the war at the time, and our current democrat president continues those same policies, still has troops in those same countries and has, in fact, escalated hostilities in numerous other countries as well. You don't give a shit about the poor souls slain in war unless it furthers your political agenda. It's sad.

Ok, that thing is lame. It looks like someone built it in their garage (they probably did.) And Monster truck? What? They have it next to a stock F150 and it has less ground clearance, smaller tires and I see no front axle shafts (so no 4x4) and in fact, it's hard to see but I don't think there are rear drive shafts either. All this is, is a giant quadracopter with landing gear off a Honda Civic. They should just do away with the tires to save weight and be done with it.

Ok, so this entire premise is refuted by this one statement.
This statement assumes there was "Space" prior to the big bang. There was neither time or space prior to the big bang... in fact, there WAS NO PRIOR TO THE BIG BANG. It would be like arguing that "This triangle rolled across the floor while it was a circle"

Secondly, it also assumes that the universes physical laws like quantum mechanics still applied prior to the big bang. There were no universal laws, and once again there is no "Prior to the big bang"

The only way this would work is if the Big Bang were not the beginning of all time and space, and we have mountains of observational evidence that already proves this.