It is quite possible to demand keys that someone *thinks* might be there. More is the pity if there never was any encrypted data on the device to begin with.

A lot of misbehavior from law enforcement seems to stem from them being "sure" of what is going on, despite a lack of evidence to support the surety.

Sure. But if a higher percentage of customers are using solar, then the utility is selling less power so there is less money available to support the infrastructure. They can either increase prices on the non-solar customers, or decrease the amount of money they pay when solar is put back on the grid.

If you do the former, at some point the price gets high enough that everyone is forced into local power generation - a sort of asymptomatic run-away. That may be OK, but once its done, no one is paying for infrastructure.

There are a number of ways the utilities could handle this, but they cost money. Someone has to cover the cost of the new equipment.

The risk of large scale surveillance is that it can generate data sets that can be mined for information. Tracking can show networks of friends, attendance at political rallies, books read, movies watched, foods and alcohol consumed. Does this pattern match for a potential terrorist - can't prove anything, but maybe you shouldn't keep your job at Lockheed, or should get extra screening at the airport? Did you watch "little miss sunshine" too many times for your demographic - could mean you are a pedophile - maybe you shouldn't have a job as a school teacher - think of the children.

Which political information should you see? Candidates can target their adds to YOU specifically. Same for news, and advertising.

Maybe you don't get enough sleep, or are found to meet women ( or other men) at bars and take them home. Sounds like "statistically" you might be a health risk and your insurance rates will go up.

Large scale tracking, data collection and analysis allow for statistical pattern matches. The public might be happy that a new system has a only 1% failure rate, and only a 10% false positive rate for recognizing people who are a danger to children - unless you are in that 10%

Mars one claims $6B to put 4 people on mars.
On one side -how do they plan to raise that amount of money? They use the Olympics as an example,but that is an event with an enormous viewership. Are they claiming they can get anything like a similar number of viewers for a bunch of guys living (or slowly dying) on mars?

On the other side, what technology do they have that makes a mars mission cost $6B, not the hundreds of billions that NASA estimates? Sure they may be able to do for somewhat less money, but a factor of 100??? Where is their demonstration of technical expertise to support such a claim?

Its just a scam.

I use them regularly. They are usually only good to 20-30dB. You can make the transmit and receive antennas *mostly* not couple to each other, but it will be very difficult to get the isolation you need .

I'm a career physicist, and I regularly take college interns. She can use whatever she is comfortable with. I I need my interns to have some particular computer or software I will get it for them.

Personal computers in physics are mostly for writing reports and quick calculations. High power computation and data analysis is done on dedicated server farms.The personal computer is just used as a terminal.

the pump is probably 3.2MW for a long pulse (100s of microseconds), and the output is petawatts for a short time (femtoseconds).Diodes are often used to pump solid state laser materials that store energy for many microseconds, then release it much more quickly. (along with chirp pulse amplification to get even larger power compression).

Another major difference between colleges is the interaction with other students. For example at Caltech you are in an environment where it is normal to study for a few hours every night, and where scientific discussions are common, you will get more mental exercise and learn more. An elite liberal arts school will likely provide equivalent benefits.

Then, while less "pure", the contact you make at an elite school are very valuable in your future career .

And this is why its so sad that the NSA did this. The US could have grabbed a lot of the market if we could have assured users that our equipment was trustworthy. It would have taken some time, but eventually we would have grabbed market share from China. Now that everyone assumes both countries are spying on their hardware, we no longer have that competitive advantage.

Once trust is lost, you can't get it back. There is no way to trust the people who are telling you to trust the audit. NSA *could* be anywhere. That doesn't mean that they ARE anywhere, but I can't see any way to trust any software or audit process. (unless you are one of the extremely rare people who can personally audit the code).

If you had a piece of code that *you* knew was completely secure, how could you convince me of that?

I don't think that they do. Universal surveillance can be valuable for all sorts of things. Used correctly it can almost eliminate crime (except of course crimes committed by the entity that controls the surveillance).

So far it seems that the public is willing to accept almost unlimited surveillance. They may know that its a deal with the devil,but many people are willing to make those deals.

I think Slashdot is not a representative sample - the posters here tend to think more deeply about issues than does the general public, and I think we are more aware of just how badly a surveillance society could go.

I wasn't suggesting a mission just to measure this (which of course can be simulated), but rather that it would be something that could easily be recorded form one of the many existing missions(or maybe tourist hotels) that would be distributed throughout the solar system.

I would much prefer that we record, rather than have to simulate effects like this.

Its been long enough after Apollo that I'm happy with anyone who wants to go to the moon doing any damn thing they want with it

In the end, I'm on the side of the guys with space travel.