It IS public property. Just like the National Parks, or mineral rights under public land. Public property does not mean free. The government has a responsibility to manage public property in the way that best represents the interests of the owners of that property.

Licensing technology developed on the public dime seems like a rather responsible thing to do, just like negotiating for maximum compensation for oil on public land is the smart thing to do.

Sounds like you were engaged in some sort of seditious activity.

No. He isn't a writer, so obviously he can't write regardless of authority. Come to think of it, given that statement how can any of this be true at all? Though I suppose this is all type and not really written at all. Or... is it even type? Oh god, everything I know is based on a lie.

I have a home that has light switches in bad locations. The construction does not make it easy to rewire, so I'm using the home automation equipment to create 'virtual' light switches in the locations where I want them without having to have the 'switch' on the same circuit as the light.

As one example, the previous owner split one bedroom into two, but left the single switch (which now controls both rooms). I can install the HA outlets in the rooms, and thus achieve independent outlet switching without having to run new wire.

Not me. I've just started wiring my house using the Z-wave tech. I've got an old heavy plasma television, and that's about it as far as easily fungible assets are concerned. Anyone talented enough to start hacking the home automation stuff is clever enough to go after things which are less likely to get you caught with a truck full of stolen goods.

Imagine that some odd radiation caused all the seatbelts in cars to deteriorate and become weak. For most of us this wouldn't actually be a problem. A good percentage of us will not be in an accident that requires them.

You can see where this is headed. The reason we aren't dropping dead in the street is because we DO have effective antibiotics for when those antibiotics will help. Prior to the discovery of antibiotics a great number of people were dying due to infections. I don't remember the exact source, but in 1910, I recall that infections were the leading cause of death, beating out heart disease.

What happens when those "criminal gangs" are just fronts for government espionage and/or attacks to slowly undermine your own country's industry?

That's the problem they are faced with right now, the same way some corporations get away with abuses through 'shell companies', governments are using these 'shell criminal gangs' as a means to unofficially sanction behavior which the government uses to maintain plausible deniability. The challenge is deciding on a point where overlooking 'criminal' activity reaches 'warfare' levels.

FIFO. First In, First Out. No need to even waste time with a random choice.

Which is great if you only visit the same sites. I try to do something similar to what you request, but if you don't have a regular set of websites you visit, you are going to be constantly twiddling permissions.

It's annoying enough when it's just me, but my parents/wife/family respond, "This website is broken, your setup drives me nuts, I just want things to work."

Honestly we should really pass a law prohibiting the insane amount of license subdivision that goes on in the IP world. Yes, that would mean that the content can't be monitized in a manner to maximize the dollar output, but maximizing revenue isn't the point of copyright in the first place. The point of copyright is to maximize CONTENT not profit.

So much content is encumbered by innumerable licensing agreements that a good portion of it might as well be radioactive. You can't even know if a company is in the equivalent of a polygamous marriage and has sold of the right to the same market to three different parties until one of those parties takes the other to court.

You might also want to take a walk down the block or toss a rock to make sure it wasn't just a painted backdrop.

I'd bet good money that it was Peter Jackson himself. In the LOTR his makeup guys knew he wanted that one 'John Wayne' Orc to be gruesome, and they actually tried to overshoot what Peter Jackson expected. Little did they know that Peter Jackson of "Dead Alive (Braindead)" fame was still alive inside Big Budget PJ. He approved it. Since then, you have seen the costumes for the grotesques go beyond the realms of good taste and into comically aweful. Just look at how the orc costumes changed from Fellowship to The Hobbit (before they went CGI), the Hobbit 'main-bad' orc costumes were so far over the top that they had to ditch them for CGI because they looked horrible with the higher framerate/quality cameras BBPJ was using. Personally I think the only reason people think the costumes were awesome was because the CGI was so bad.

Seriously, take a side by side look at LOTR-Lurtz and the Hobbit-Orc costumes and it's night and day.

Suspension of disbelief is a challenge and probably more important to maintain in a fantasy than general fiction. A story must maintain internal consistency with it's own tone and rules. If you tell me that a dragon can fly and breath fire, well then I'll believe you, say Elves exist and can make pineapple smoothies by snapping their fingers, and as long as you don't have one of your Elves die of starvation because he didn't remember about the smoothie trick, it will work. The magic wasn't a problem in the Hobbit, it was the tone. The movie constantly shifted between extreme slapstick humor, to somber memorials of beauty forever lost, back to grossout gags, sudden videogame action, and into gritty graphic violence. You can't do that and expect to keep the audience. You have to pick something and stick with it, otherwise we don't know what movie we are watching.

I have been experimenting with this technique since the early 80s. It is possible to stimulate the claustrum via pressure along the sternocleidomastoid. By pinching this area it causes sympathetic nerve activity that can effective render someone unconscious. My colleague has perfected the technique to the point that he uses it at parties. Quite eerie, actually.

Peace. Stay healthy and have a long life..

So let's say I'm working on something as an amateur hobby. How much of my own personal money will such a lawsuit cost? Just give me a ballpark estimate and let me know if it is less than the cost of a small single family home.