"Planes Can Be Hacked" really means "Planes' Satellite Communication System Can be Hacked." That's a huge distinction. A malicious hacker still can't control the plane or it's radio communications, which are the important things. There are good reasons why the FAA is strict rules about airplanes not relying on satellites.

To give you an idea of the technical prowess of the article: "he discovered the vulnerabilities by "reverse engineering" - or decoding - highly specialized software known as firmware." But it seems the "researcher" is trying to sensationalize things:
"In theory, a hacker could use a plane's onboard WiFi signal or inflight entertainment system to hack into its avionics equipment, potentially disrupting or modifying satellite communications, which could interfere with the aircraft's navigation and safety systems, Santamarta said."
Now let's read between the lines. Avionics is any kind of electronics, even the entertainment system, so really no big deal, they can't hack anything important. For the "navigation" systems, he's not talking about GPS (even if he were it wouldn't be a big deal, airplanes can navigate just fine without GPS), but the communication system does send the GPS location, altitude, and speed back home. If that goes down, not a big deal because that's not what air traffic control relies on.

The worst that could happen is causing a panic by putting porn up on a flight to Disneyland and reporting back an altitude and speed of zero, which I'm sure would prompt a quick call to someone with air traffic control info who would say everything is fine. It would also prompt a lawsuit from the parents of small children for subjecting them to porn, but that would be made up for by ticket sales from college students wanting to fly that airline for their spring break vacation.

All of those scenarios just go to show that, contrary to what Google has claimed in the past, their employees can and do view emails even without a court order.

Of course. As we have seen here in the US, heads of intelligence organizations never lie. Even more so, heads of a corporation with a financial interest in conflict. Nope, they would never lie in a case like that to justify to a country's citizens a government giving it tons of money. Nope, it's totally 100% reliable.

Wrong companies. You'll notice his pet companies Verizon, Comcast and Time Werner aren't helped by this. It's more complicated than pushing things in favor of big business, it's pushing things in favor of the biggest businesses. Sprint and T-mobile combined have less market share than either Verizon or AT&T individually, and I'm sure Verizon and AT&T want to keep it that way.

So, what will happen is a smaller company or combined small companies will buy the spectrum, and then get bought out by Verizon or AT&T.

So, the US government has pretty much taken the worst parts of the original idea of Fascism as described in the original Fascist Manifesto (corporatism) along with the worst parts of what Italian Fascism actually tried to be (totalitarianism, rule by elites).

Right, I'm sure the CDC never thought of that. I'm sure their isolation unit it just a regular hospital but with some plastic sheeting draped across the door. NOT. What makes you think they don't have the same safeguards in place there as any other BSL4 lab? It's not like they're transporting them (yes, there's two, what a horrible summary) on some random airplane to some random hospital. It's a plane specifically outfitted for this purpose, being transported to a hospital with a unit specifically built for this purpose.

But I'm sure you have more expertise than the folks at the CDC because you read Outbreak and The Hot Zone.

There's some good info here that's worth a read:
http://www.iflscience.com/heal...

I don't think that's what this ruling is saying. They're saying that you're obligated to produce the evidence. I don't know the details of how (the only thing that's certain is the articles lack of details), maybe give them remote access. Either way, there are ways to do this without stepping foot in Ireland or requiring the Irish police to do anything...the key here being that they're requiring somebody who his physically in the US to do something, and they can be in contempt if they don't. Otherwise, if they were trying to get the Irish police to do something, they'd have to request (not require, and maybe through the Department of State) that Ireland obtain the evidence and send it to them, which most countries are likely to do as long as it's a crime in both countries and they think it's important enough to spend their time on.

Isn't that pretty much how extradition normally works? Yes, I realize this doesn't apply to this case, just academically interesting. CountryA will only send you back to requesting CountryB if the crime you're accused of is also a crime in CountryA, or it falls under a list of specific types of crimes.
For example, the extradition treaty between the US and Netherlands specifies:

However, it's also listed under the specific types of crimes:

Not the same thing as your analogy, but it's interesting that if you're accused of possessing weed in the US and flee to the Netherlands, the Netherlands is obligated to send you back to the US to face prosecution.

Oh, and there's also a kicker that could apply to somebody like Snowden:

So what? Publishers have a similar role to record companies. Somebody else creates the product, they edit the product, but mostly they are just the marketing firm. Why should they be getting a bulk of the profits? When people suggest this sort of thing with music, you hear chants of hell ya, stick it to the record companies who are getting a lot more money than they deserve for what they do. Yet when it comes to book publishers, you're saying the opposite. Times, they are a changin'. No longer must an author rely solely on a publisher to create physical copies of their books and get them into book stores. E-Books can be sold on Amazon in a similar manner to how music can be sold on iTunes, at which point publishers are just the marketers. Obviously book publishers are going to fight to keep their massive piece of the pie, just as record companies do.

Did online music purchasing destroy music? Did they destroy record companies? Hell no, record company profits are up because people purchase more music. They have had a pretty big impact on physical retailers though.

Will selling e-books at an appropriate price on Amazon (and B&N etc) destroy book publishers? Why would it be any different from the record companies? They are already having an impact on physical retailers though, and that impact will likely only increase.

That beats the US congress, which has only 2 muslims and 3 buddhists.

What they should be doing is being honest and not calling it unlimited, and charging a reasonable amount for overage (not $10/gb!).

Solution: Don't lie and call it unlimited. The point is that customers are paying for something Verizon calls "unlimited" which is not actually unlimited. The customers contracts are up so they can put those customers on other plans, the problem is when they still call the altered plan "unlimited."

They're not. Verizon's customers are paying them to provide a service. Just because a bulk of the traffic is coming from a particular source doesn't mean it's okay for them to charge their customers for a service that they're not providing. It all comes down to Verizon trying to double-dip.

The barrier to entry is significant. Not necessarily on the logistics/shipping side, but most certainly on the marketing side. In Q2 of 2014, Amazon spent $943 million on marketing. In 2013, they spent $3.1 Billion (yes, with a "B") on marketing. How money potential online retail start-ups have even a fraction of that amount? The online retail market isn't a "if you build it they will come" thing, hasn't been for awhile. You either need a really innovative and unique product to sell to carve out a yet-to-exist niche, or marketing to drive customers to you instead of the other guys.

People buy super cars because they consider them to be cool (and they have nothing better to spend their money on). New technology is cool. If this is cool new tech, a super car seems like a logical place to start. Also note that efficiency isn't necessarily solely fuel economy, but can also affect top speed.

As far as making it's way into the mass market...it seems like the "morphing" would be the expensive part. Why not just have it be a fixed dimple on a mass-production car? Perhaps it wouldn't be quite as efficient as one that optimized the dimple depth for the speed of the car, but ought to be a helluva lot cheaper. A disadvantage is that the dimples are going to fill up with grime and will be a PITA to clean.

FTA: