This is clearly just a ploy to inflate their own stocks before planet X smashes into the earth in 2012. They don't even need to develop anything at all!

Am I the only one here who is aware of how bad of a problem land mines are to civilians in many third world countries? The response here seems generally negative, but if this technology helps to diffuse old land mine fields, it would be wonderful. Just because it was planted in WW2 doesn't guarantee that it's become inactive or that it won't kill you now.

You're right that they need different energies. If you graph the energies of photons emitted due to heat radiation, they'll form your typical bell curve, with the peak of the bell curve representing and energy level corresponding with infra-red radiation. That having been said... a few standard deviations from the center, you'll see the (very rare) photons emitted that have energy levels corrosponding with visible light. This happens when enough energy concentrates (by random, highly unlikely chance) to create a photon with much higher energy than is typical for a radiating body. It's very, very unlikely for ay given photon, but photons are created very, very often, so it happens frequently, though not enough to create intense enough light to see.

This isn't any kind of new or unpredicted phenomenon. Everything that emits heat emits some light. The chances that the wavelength of a photon emitted by a human being (while giving off normal heat) will fall within the visible spectrum is very low, but given that we emit billions and billions of photons on a regular basis, it's sure to happen every now and then. Get sensitive enough cameras, and you'll see that glow from everything that isn't at absolute zero.

Theory: Making diabetics eat candy every day will result in something good. Proposal: Give us funding so we can feed diabetics candy. Every day.

I believe the author of this article misunderstands the motivations of the judge. This case seems to me to have very little to do with Microsoft and their security updates and everything about the judge wanting to set a legal precedent for future, unrelated cases. If he had ruled that an IP address was P.I.I., it would mean that a person could be found guilty of crimes, held civilly responsible for transactions and a whole slew of other things based entirely on the IP address of the computer that had acted online. Although an IP is a very good clue as to who might have been acting online, it is *only* a clue.

This fails to address either the legitimate need for speedy travel (medical emergencies, birth, etc.) and the possibility of error on the part of the system. If the system is taught that a particular road has a speed limit of 10kph when in reality, the limit is 50, it's going to do nothing but inconvenience people.

An ounce of circumvention is worth a pound of countermeasures. Don't store them on the laptop at all. Store the pictures you're taking online and you'll be able to access them from anywhere. Border patrol can't find something on your computer when it's not there. Even if that's not feasible 100% of the time, you could still make a temporary archive online while removing them from your computer. If even that has you feeling paranoid, you could always burn the files to DVD, wipe them from your computer, and stow the DVD.