Wasn't there a news story some time ago that said research was done that shows that children a certain age or younger should not play 3D games because it screws up the development of their brain? Also mod Oculus Rift CEO down for being as biased as they come.

That is not how this would fail. How it will fail is a very simple principle:

Granted, it'll be like having an alarm on your home or car: It'll cause the casual criminal to move on to an easier target, but the skilled and/or determined criminal will not be deterred by it at all.

If you combine the populations of India and China, isn't it something like seven times the population of the United States? Yet, we're having more of an effect on their culture than they are having on us. What does that tell you, friend?

I'm no astrophysicist or aeronautical engineer, but it seems to me that at least 99.9% of any space vehicle's journey to any other planet in our star system is going to be uneventful and easy to manage; it's the end of the journey that's going to pose possible difficulties. The paper ball you toss at the trash can flies through the air uneventfully -- but whether or not you get it in the can, have it bounce off the rim, or miss the can entirely at the end of it's flight is something else entirely.

Not that I'm trash-talking Indian engineering or scientific ability. I work with enough Indian engineers to know better than that. Now if they could just learn to solder worth a damn. XD

How the hell should I know? There's a reason it's called science fantasy after all. How do you generate a coherent graviton beam? What's the operating principles of a Heisenberg Compensator?

Because their xenophobic policies prohibit 'contamination' of their citizens wherever they can manage to avoid it, and besides which they're probably afraid that the crew they send to the ISS would have a perfect opportunity to defect to the West, seeing as how they'd be outside of any countrys' borders while in orbit.

Except that in NextGen Star Trek (24th century and later), the holodeck uses photons restrained by force fields, totally different technology than what they're experimenting with here (I think).

I think that personally you (and everyone else) would be shocked and angered by how much that would end up costing you in taxes. Prisons are overcrowded enough as it is, and that just makes everything worse, and the problem isn't being made any better by 'operated for profit' privately-owned prisons that contract themselves out to state governments.

Do you own pets? Ever notice that they learn to not do things you get mad at them for doing (jump on the kitchen counter or on tables, etc) when you're watching, but will do it when (they think) you're not watching? It boggles my mind to think that anyone believes humans to be any different. You watch a parolee 24/7/365, of course they're going to behave, they have no choice. Is that going to really change their character? Maybe not. Hardened criminals are going to wait out their parole so the monitoring device comes off, then go back to their tried-and-true criminal ways. Non-hardened criminals who really want to just do their time and never commit crimes again, live a normal life, may as well have 'CONVICT' tattooed across their foreheads. If you're not going to trust them at all then you may as well just not let them out of prison in the first place. While there needs to be the punishment aspect of the criminal justice system and the prison system, if you're not making an effort to rehabilitate offenders, then what's the point? Some can't be rehabilitated, true, but that's another discussion. For the ones who can and want to be rehabilitated, there needs to be some level of trust or there's not much point in letting them out in the first place.

Oh, I doubt he'll be killed for his actions.
What'll more likely happen, is he'll have 'a mental breakdown' as a result of the stress of the proceedings, and have to be institutionalized 'for his own health and safety', where he'll be drugged to the gills -- until one day months or years later he'll 'recover' and recant his actions against the State 'because he was obviously having mental/emotional problems that were affecting his judgement' or somesuch. Naturally his family will foot the bill for his 'hospitalization' and 'rehabilitation/treatment', which will bankrupt them, but since family is so important in China, they'll be more than happy to reimburse the State.

Is that the new version of 'in five years'?

I predict that 'in two years' they'll announce that they 'still have a few details to work out' and that it will be released 'in (the) next year's model'.. and so on..

MATERIAL quality of the 1-hour tapes, not RECORDING quality, goddamnit..

You're reading WAY too much into two words here ('broadcast quality'). They were 'broadcast quality' because they were 1-hour tapes, not the typical garden-variety 2-hour tapes, the tape itself was thicker and overall higher quality than consumer-grade VHS tapes, and they weren't cheap when I bought them; the 'broadcast quality', if you're not getting it still, referred to the material quality of the tapes (better quality tape itself, better quality shell, better quality tape-path components within the shell, etc), not in any way, shape, or form referring to improvement of recording quality (which is impossible, VHS is VHS.

If the overall quality is a high priority to you then why not get a decent video capture device and do it yourself? By the way, if it's all on analog video tape like VHS, isn't it going to have degraded somewhat all by itself over time anyway? I've still got some VHS tapes I recorded myself that are at least 10 years old, and a high-end Sony VCR I kept (used to have two) and even though they were brand-new 'broadcast quality' tapes recorded at 2-hour speed, they really don't look all that great now. Honestly if it were I, and it was that important, I'd get a good video capture device, capture it all to the most uncompressed format I could, and do the editing myself.

First of all I'm not 'terrified' of anything at the moment because there is so far as I know no imminent threat, I'm pissed off at these people who act worse than wild animals. I'm also pissed off at people with their heads in the sand/wearing rose-colored glasses who think we should just stay in our little corner of the world and let every group of assholes out there do whatever they want so long as it's not on U.S. soil. As much as I wish we lived in a world where that could be the way of things, the fact of the matter is the world is too small for that sort of thinking anymore, and as I keep on saying: It's WAY too late to just pull in and ignore things.

Also you people who keep criticizing me and keep putting words in my mouth and assuming what I'm thinking can go fuck yourselves. I'm sick and bloody well tired of clueless people who refuse to see beyond the end of their own nose telling me I'm suffering from any number of neuroses when the fact of the matter is I am paying attention to what the fuck is going on when apparently the rest of you are off in your own little make-believe worlds full of nothing but roses and hearts and butterflies. Seriously, try UNDERSTANDING the news before you try to lecture ME on it, you assholes.

What you are is an idiot for not seeing the necessity of spinning a 'what if' scenario for short-sighted people who think we (the U.S.) should just 'mind our own business' and ignore what's going on in the rest of the world, and apparently your eyesight is at least a myopic considering your 'it couldn't happen here!' attitude. Do I really have to go through old news stories and find all the instances since 9/11 of domestic terrorism in 1st-world countries including right here in the U.S.? In any case please shut the fuck up you're annoying.