It's not like getting a loan is a right, and that's what this essentially is. The US and EU have decided they won't lend money to build new coal power plants. Seems like a reasonable enough policy, and one that's fully within their rights as the people lending the money in the first place.

With a beam of light? A lot. Check out the latest demos of ground-based missile defense lasers. The power sources (and related cooling) for those are in trailers hauled around by 18-wheelers. Doesn't sound like something you'll be able to fit on a drone any time soon.

Like any "futurist," fortune teller or psychic, the accuracy of his predictions is based on having even the slightest clue, making vague or broad enough predictions that they're almost universally applicable, and relying on selective memory to erase all the predictions you made that didn't pan out. (Like some war with China that was mentioned in TFA.)

Which isn't to say that a think tank devoted to thinking about future wars and military tactics or strategies is a bad idea, or charlatanism, just to say that his ability to predict the future is being wildly overstated. I'm sure he has a sharp military mind, and good analytical skills to make the correct predictions he did, but that's a far cry from predicting the future.

I mean, I knew Google was going to be huge before their IPO... now that their stock's over $1,00 per share, does that qualify me as a technology or stock market futurist?

Yeah, being funny. Although, at the same time, it's true for the city I live in.

The only major metropolitan area in central Ohio (where my employer and I are located) hasn't had a serious natural disaster in a century - the only thing I could turn up from a quick Google search was some flood in 1913. The only thing I can remember that might qualify as a natural disaster was some big hail storm in the mid 00's that did some property damage. I'm kind of hard-pressed to call it a natural disaster when the primary impact was car dealers having to discount a bunch of new, hail-damaged cars, though.

Well, yeah, except that Dell was right, in 1997, about what to do with Apple as a company that made computers.

Of course, it turned out that shifting their core business model from making computers to making gadgets was an even better idea.

No tornadoes here either. (Ohio Valley, Central Ohio). We don't get any natural disasters... I guess God figures that living in Ohio is punishment enough.

My employer and I are still located in the Midwest, and still do nothing to prepare for hurricanes.

Limited resources. They spend more resources on crimes that are more damaging than simply having a game account stolen (which sucks, but is hardly life-altering) or crimes they can make money off of (speeding, asset forfeiture, etc.).

And, except for that last part where they play the role of modern-day highway robbers (literally, even), that's as it should be. There are enough *real* crimes that cause victims serious harm, so having your video gaming account stolen should never be a top priority for police, IMO.

You don't have that quite right.

Microsoft's licensing model is such that they make vastly more from OEM and corporate sales than from end-consumer OS purchases. It's not that they don't care about piracy, (remember all that shit around activating Vista and 7, and WGA causing problems for legit users?) it's more that the sliver of income they get from consumer OS purchases isn't worth devoting resources to protect from piracy.

In the first place, do you actually think that people selected to be on a firing squad haven't used the gun and ammo type they'll be using? That seems pretty haphazard and ill-thought out, even for government work. (And for the record, the selectees are typically current or former military or law-enforcement.)

In the second place, that's really not true anyway. I'd assert that anyone with a decent amount of experience firing guns would be able to accurately assess whether he fired a blank or a live round, even on an unknown gun/caliber combination, especially with rifles - they generally have more recoil than handguns. I might have trouble telling if I fired a blank from a .22 handgun, but I don't have that problem with an M-16/AR-15 that uses .223 ammo. Like I said above, given that executioners typically come from law enforcement or the military, it seems exceedingly unlikely to me that they wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

A little off topic, but the reality is probably the exact opposite of that perception. If anything, 9/11 massively harmed "terrorists" (Al-Qaeda and Islamofacists in particular), rather than benefiting them.

http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/

For the bullet points - 9/11 destroyed Al-Qaeda by basically causing the US (and most of the international community) to take notice and bomb them out of existence. Similarly, future terrorist plots now have a much higher barrier to success as a result of the increased security measures (even if most of it is security-theater). Contrast with a successful terrorist organization (the IRA) that effectively "won" and achieved their goals in part because a concerted effort to avoid mass deaths and the bad press of a 9/11-type event.

The fact that 9/11 also turned us into a society scared of its own shadow is really collateral. That doesn't get Al-Qaeda what it wants, as much as makes our society more totalitarian and fascistic.

What "good" do you see that patriotism causes?

As far as I can tell, patriotism does about as much good as cancer. And causes more harm. At least cancer only kills people who get cancer.