Who the heck takes the equipment back to them when cancelling?!! I'm not wasting my time with that. Did I have to go pick it up at the office when I signed up for the service? If the answer is no, then you can bet I'm not driving it back and standing in line either.

If they want their equipment back, they can either send me a pre-paid box to load it into and ship back them, or send a technician out to pick it up off my porch.

When I cancelled DirecTV, this is how they got their receiver back, they shipped a prepaid box for the receiver to me when I cancelled over the phone. I got the box from them, and put my receiver in it, and dropped it off (without waiting in line) at the nearest UPS store. If I didn't want to drop it off at the UPS store, I could have called UPS for a pickup at my house.

that's how it should work.

I've read many articles already that suggests that there is a purge that is happening within the ranks of the military already. Over 200 top brass have been forced out over the past 5 years for various reasons. http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Combine that with the rumored questionnaire that surfaced at "29 Palms" training facility around 1995, and has made a comback in headlines, of the military personnel being asking questions like "would you fire on American citizens", and posing circumstances like "if guns were outlawed, and civilians were ordered to turn them in, would you aid in forceful confiscation of [aka shooting at] those who refused to voluntarily turn them in?"

I know many people pass this stuff off as 'tin foil hat' territory, but in today's political climate, with mass surveillance, government lying to us on a daily basis, half of the bill of rights being eroded down to mean nothing... I don't think it's out of the realm of plausible. I might have a 'tin foil' hat on, but if you think this is even remotely possible, then you would have to have your head in the sand.

And it takes 1.21 Gigawatts to push a 1980's stainless steel car past the "time barrier" of 88 mph. "Roads, where we're going, we don't need... Roads!"

Not a big surprise coming from an ignorant anonymous coward such as yourself. At least I had the guts to post using my username knowing I could get down-voted posting something such as this here on Slashdot, instead you name call, and make no rational arguments what so-ever, and do it all behind the veil of anonymity. Congrats, you wouldn't want to make yourself look like a fool using your own username.

Your attack doesn't even make sense, as Hitler didn't study in any science field or advance any of the fields himself, so nice try, trying to compare Hitler to actual scientists that have actually advanced major areas of science and medicine that we still use today as a basis for further research.

If you want to dismiss the information I put forward so easily, then surely you won't mind not using, and tossing out all the breakthroughs, inventions, discoveries, and theories that have been put forth in all of history by these "blinded" scientists who believed in God. You hold the belief these scientists were blinded by their faith, however I don't see AC in the history books, or getting Nobel's or advancing any scientific field. What contributions have you made, since you obviously don't have these "blinders" on to hinder your thoughts? I'm guessing you haven't contributed to anything.

Yeah, and it's impossible to modify the internals, so the laptop is being driven by tiny RasperyPi board running Linux, and a small battery, leaving the laptop with even more room for whatever in it. The laptop would still boot up, and display an OS just fine, and the motherboard would be smaller than the normal one.

Tell this to all the gardeners and landscaping crews in the country, as instead of raking up leaves now, their favorite toy seems to be the leaf blower to scatter all the debris to neighboring yards so they can get paid to do it there next.

In defense of the Original Poster:

I'm tired of people who may believe (or don't dismiss the existence of) in God, getting attacked from others by being called "anti-science". How ignorant are you? Believing in God has nothing to do with being a scientists. I'm assuming that your main argument is that because a lot of Christians don't buy into MACRO evolution doesn't mean they don't buy into "science" in general? You sir, have no concept of history, or science in general if that is what you use to attack with.

Want Proof? Maybe you've heard of some of these people? Guess what, they are all famous scientists, and they also all believed in a God!

Nicholas Copernicus
Sir Francis Bacon
Robert Boyle
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Blaise Pascal
Isaac Newton
Robert Boyle
Michael Faraday
Charles Babbage
William Thomson Kelvin
Wernher von Braun
and the list goes on and on...

Even Albert Einstein admitted that he leaned toward a belief of a Created universe, and wanted to study science so he knew how God thought. He is quoted as also saying "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

So ignorant people such as yourself need to actual study history, and realize that it wasn't long ago when most of the sciences were advanced by people who either partially or fully believed in God. And quit using the ad hominem attack on Christians that if you believe in God, you are "anti-science", because it is BS.

Maybe you would also be surprised to find out that of all Nobel Prizes handed out over the years in science topics, that Christians (specifically) have been honored the most. Of all the Nobel prizes, Christians have received 72.5% in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, and 62% in Medicine. (I could not find Math statistics, but that is also high).

It wasn't long ago, that some our worlds greatest scientists had the same thing as you, except about Athiests. Here are some famous Nobel Physicists own words:

Heisenberg wrote: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Schrödinger wrote: “The grave error in a technically directed cultural drive is that it sees its highest goal in the possibility of achieving an alteration of Nature. It hopes to set itself in the place of God, so that it may force upon the divine will some petty conventions of its dust-born mind.”
Millikan wrote: “To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”
William Phillips wrote: “I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible. I believe in God because of a personal faith, a faith that is consistent with what I know about science.”
Guglielmo Marconi wrote: “The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer; the more I feel that the so-called ‘science’ I am occupied with is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.”

I would challenge you to name one area of science where so called 'religious anti-science' people haven't made MAJOR contributions.

The way I've seen the DEA track down grow-ops, is to use a helicopter outfitted with FLIR and fly over neighborhoods at night. The houses with decent sized grow operations lit up 'like a Christmas tree' compared to other houses around them. The heat from the lights would transfer through the windows, and exhaust vents of the house.

The other method that I've heard is that people with very high power usage or big power fluctuations at set times per day get flagged for further scrutiny. They basically use information about a residence's power usage over the course of a given time to help look for patterns that might indicate a grow operation is occurring (probably based on information they have from known grow locations)

I've always heard the cable company claims of the mystery van that roamed the city streets and could detect whether a house was stealing cable/pay-per-view or not. I find that a little unrealistic as well. Later in life, I heard another explanation that made more sense, which was related to putting advertising out on channels that required subscription (like PPV), and seeing who called in for information/contests/etc. and comparing caller information with their paying subscriber list. This seems way more feasible, possible, cheaper, and realistic than the "mystery vans". This method is similar to how cops get some people in mass to show up to be arrested, they call them all and tell them they won something (cash, TV, or whatever), and to come down to X address to pick it up, and they have police there waiting to arrest. I've seen on TV them able to arrest 25-50 people that they wanted for back-child support without having to locate and apprehend each person individually.

MashUp is a good one if you have XBMC too. XBMC running on RaspberryPi with MashUp app.

Jay-Z and Beyonce also recently traveled there earlier this year or so, and were parading in front of cameras and nothing happened to them. I think when you are rich and famous, rules in general, don't apply.

This case illustrates a couple things for sure:

1. It is important to have Encryption software (like TrueCrypt) available to people, as that is the only way in this day and age, that will actually allow ones papers and effects to be personal. This example shows how lawyers and judges will parse words to make up what ever they want, even when the constitution is clear. Case law has watered down so much of the constitution that it doesn't even resemble the original document anymore.

2. Before handing over the key, like this guy is being forced to do, it is important for the person to balance what the punishment will be if he DOES turn it over (and give them evidence to convict him), to what the punishment will be if he decides to NOT COMPLY with the order. In some cases, it may be better to turn it over, as the crime punishment won't be so bad, in other cases, it would be better to not release the key, even if they held you in jail for years. Depending on what evidence you had on the drive, and what crime your being prosecuted for.

3. This is another example of at least State law enforcement not being able to crack drive encryption software, which means "it does work" to a point. Granted, they aren't the NSA or military trying to get at these files, but there is encryption software available that provides enough protection to cause this case to come out and others like it. Which begs the question: what software did he use? I would bet money it was TrueCrypt that he was using, but even if not, other cases have involved TC, which could be another argument against what TC's website said when they went under (about it not being secure anymore).

This kind of thing is where having 2 different keys for an encrypted volume would be good, like a key for personal usage, and another key for usage when under duress.

The normal key would unencrypt the volume for you to use as normal, and the "duress" key would cause the volume to automatically do a secure data wipe of the volume file. So if you're being forced to hand over the key, whether by force (like torture), or under threat of jail time, you can meet the courts qualifications of surrendering your "passphrase", and when they use it, they destroy the volume that they were forcing you let them have access to.

There even may be arguments to make as to how well this would satisfy some requirements: first, your complying, so your not in contempt of court. Second, the key was a legit key that was for "use" with that particular encrypted volume, so you didn't lie. Third: You didn't destroy the evidence, as I'm sure you're not the one who types the key in when you turn it over... some computer forensic IT guy is the one who actually typed the passphrase that deleted the volume, so you didn't physically do it and can't be prosecuted for destruction of evidence.

If you took this a step further, you could even do this how they do in CIA movies with challenge/response pairs after you give a legitmate key for decryption. In other words, you give them your REAL key, but then before the volume can be decrypted with the key, a set of challenge/response words are given, that have to match, with each challenge word having a normal response and a duress response. If any of the challenges are answered with the duress response, then the volume "self destructs". This would possibly be safer to keep you out of trouble, as you would be handing over your actual decryption key phrase, you would just give them a duress response word for one of the challenges. This would be harder to implement, and wouldn't be any more useful than 2 keys for different purposes, except that it might help you from getting in more trouble in court cases like this by following the technicalities of a court ordered demand.

My car does not have a clock built in. It DID, but doesn't anymore. When I modded my car (WRX) I replaced the clock pod on the dash with a gauge pod that holds 3 engine gauges (Boost, EGT, and Oil Press). All of the guages are more important than the clock was, so now I have no clock. Not because the car is cheap, but because dash space was at a premium, and I opted to replace the clock with something I need more.

Hmm... what does it take to become official law enforcement?

The primary requirement is the ability and will to expend physical force to make you cooperate. All policing and judicial systems and prison systems work on this simple premise... they at one point have been granted enough power to build up their ranks and arsenals and manpower, and now have the threat of more force than you do in order to make you comply with what ever laws they want to enforce.

This is the ONLY thing it takes to become law enforcement on your own. Once a group a people have enough of a force to equal a legitimate police force, they are then not under the authority of that legitimate police force anymore... For example the cartels in Mexico have built up enough people, money and weapons, and have exerted enough force of their own on the people and other police/military personel, that they are now they're own entity and don't answer to anyone but themselves. This is because the legitimate police forces do not have any more threat of force against them than the cartels do to the police.

to illustrate this principle, suppose a lone person meets a lone LEO and wishes to not comply with the LEO's demands. Since it's a 1-on-1 stalemate, the police officer will usually resort to a weapon of some kind. Now suppose the lone civilian also has a similar weapon and is as inclined to use it to get his way as the LEO is. The next step is build-up of manpower to overcome the civilian, the LEO calls for backup, so that his numbers out number the single person to force compliance. Suppose the civilian does the same, and calls in his armed buddy's to equally match the police backup. The police will just call in more people. It's a stalemate until one side builds up more people (ie force) than the other side, this is usually the LEO's as they have an entire police force to call upon and other agencies if needed as well. If a show of force by manpower cannot be made by the LEO's that's greater than the opposing side, then they usually call in other forms of force as required, such as "air superiority" (helicopters), and ground superiority (SWAT tanks/and armored vehicles, and snipers with vantage points). At some point, usually the LEO's will have enough show of force that they have the upper hand against an uncooperative person or group.

Some cases where LEO's had a hard time obtaining the upper hand are shown in recent history, such as Waco, TX stand-off, and more recently the Bundy Ranch, where enough armed people showed up in defense of the person that LEO retreated. This is because they either didn't have the man-power to show dominant force anymore, or they didn't have the will/desire to go "all out" in that show of force by having an all out gun-fight.

Owning one should not be illegal. If the FCC wants to regulate usage, that's fine, unless you actually USE it, it's not transmitting anything, and thus shouldn't be banned.

The same principle goes for amateur Radio equipment (HAM). I own several handheld transceivers, capable of transmitting in VHF/UHF even though I don't have a my HAM license yet (plan on it here one day when I have some free time). The equipment is not illegal for me to purchase or own just because I don't have a valid license. Only transmitting becomes illegal without a license. For instance, I can fire up my VHF/UHF and tune in an receive signals and listen to other 'Elmers' rag-chew all day long without a license. It isn't until the moment I "Press that PTT button" and 'key up' that it becomes illegal without a license.

The FCC has powers to regulate EMF and radio transmissions and by extension, regulate people and electronics that ARE transmitting radio freqs...however, they don't have authority over the actual electronics (or people) that have not transmitted anything over radio freqs.