" Then look in amazement as your 120 foot property line is actually 118.5 feet on the map"

Even surveyors can be off by that much, I've seen surveys in the 80s that when resurveyed with modern equipment the surveyor has to note on his map something to the effect of "Measured: 121.51' Recorded as: 119.2'". That said you are very right using electronic parcel maps for "definitive property boundaries" is completely idiotic. They can be a good reference depending on how they were built but it will be a LONG time (think a century or so) before there is any chance of them being used for property boundary determination.

"Google Earth Pro includes parcel data that definitively defines property boundaries."

No, Just no.... I work in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and I can GUARANTEE that a vast majority of the property lines displayed in the program do not "definitively defines property boundaries". Some may not be far off, some may not be too bad, most will only be in the ball park and some will be horribly off, the only way to be sure one way or another would be a title search and a survey and even then once in a while things can go wrong. Property description is insanely complicated, in my area the property records go back into the 1840s and technically to be sure someone has to trace and map every sale from now back to then. Since that is extremely time consuming most title companies these days only trace it back 40-60 years and then rely on insurance to pick up the tab if the issue exists further back. Most GIS maps don't try to do ANY of that, they grab the tax records or maps if they exist and digitize (scan them, electronically rubber sheet them to a rough geographic base and then draw some digital lines on top of the scans hand drawn ones) them making your average digital property line map at best 5-50' accurate. Even with organizations that go the extra distance and rebuild the parcel layer off of certified orthophotos (3' accuracy for 90% of surveyed points) you're only improving to about 5-10' accuracy. In a very few rare circumstances you may get some parcels where employees actually went out to properties that happened to be surveyed and then you're probably getting sub-centimeter accuracy for about 0.00000000002% of the parcels.

According to the Wiki at least the last 25 launches have been successful (last one in mid 2013), the first dozen or so launches though were pretty hit and miss. Pegasus though is a far different beast, it is launched on a modified commercial aircraft whereas this one appears to be intended for a military fighter jet. Pegasus launches payloads of around 1000 lbs whereas this one is only intended for 100 lb "satellites".

There are at least 3 current companies working on a similar concept (air launched small to medium rocket), why are they inventing another when they could buy one of theirs for much cheaper? I can only see two reasons, they want it as a quick response orbital weapons platform and the "small satellite launcher" concept is just an excuse. Number two they're hoping to extract some good old fashioned blank check defense contractor money from the DOD. If its the latter they could have at least put a little more effort into the animation, it looks like one of those bad Sy-Fi channel movie special effects and even the flight profile looks totally unrealistic.

A small permanently implanted device wirelessly broadcasting (Yes I know passively) its unchangeable code? Isn't that completely the opposite of "security"? I think a lot of people in the corporate culture mistake "security" with "convenience" and assume everyone else on planet earth is as inept as them when it comes to technology.

I chose fear, but I think "stupidity" would have been a more accurate descriptor for how humanity as a whole would respond. The military could very well initiate some kind of conflict via some misunderstanding despite the fact that they would likely not be able to defend the planet even if they were hostile (Earth/Minbari war for anyone who watches Babylon 5). Various cults would sprout up worshiping the aliens much like the WWII "cargo cults", who worshiped the giant metal birds that dropped wondrous items on them (Canned food, candy, clothing, etc) and tried for years after the end of WWII to call back these gods by dressing in military uniforms, building signaling fires on disused runways & constructing large aircraft mockups using foliage. Finally there would probably be a measure of a "give me" attitude, a feeling that the aliens should help out humanity with advanced technology, despite the fact that the introduction of a significant amount of any such technology would probably result in major disruptions to society and probably do far more harm than good ("Friendship One" for anyone who watches Star Trek: Voyager). I'd love it if we met (friendly) alien life, and eventually it could help us mature as a species, but it would probably need to be done slowly over decades or even generations or happen centuries in the future when (hopefully) we've matured a bit more on our own.

I can understand trying to get companies to stop gaming the system by shuffling their US profits to overseas holding companies to avoid taxes, but is this what this proposal is actually doing? If it is I'm all for it, but somehow I wonder if this is trying to tax overseas profits from overseas sales simply because the company is US owned. There was a raft of articles a few years back about US citizens having to renounce their citizenship because they were being taxed at obscene rates despite the fact that they didn't live, work, vote or even visit the US. Maybe its my latent paranoia but I wonder if this is the corporate version of this.

How is this Ubers fault? This is like suing a newspaper for not doing background checks on people sending/calling in classified adds when something bad happens in regards to them. Uber is just creating the meeting place for people to exchange a service, not providing the service themselves. People who use it have to recognize that fact and take proper precautions, as you would with any classified/craigslist/etc add.

While such an elevator system would use more power one of the inherent abilities of any electric motor system is the ability to use regenerative braking. You'd probably have a bank of super-capacitors in a utility room, when the elevator was going up it would use the capacitor bank and some power from the mains, when it was going down it would refill the capacitors. Even if you had to put the motors on the elevator car itself this shouldn't be an issue as we have centuries of technology (subways, trains, trolly cars, bumper cars, etc) proving that you can provide power to a moving transportation system and electric motors are quite small (the ones powering electric cars are about the size of a watermelon).

Rope and cable for elevators is a century old technology, I'm surprised they aren't using linear motors, standard electric motors or something else for record breaking skyscrapers. I can understand continuing to use cable for normal skyscrapers as it is a tested, widely available and is cheaper due to current production. But when dealing with such immense heights (1km) you would think someone would have the sense to develop something better suited rather then putting a small metal box on the end of a giant spool of rope/cable.

I've received all kinds of mail from them and DirectTV, but I've never got a call from them or Dish Network and I've never heard any complaints of people receiving calls from either. On the other hand I get all kinds of calls from car warranty and home security companies.

The grid fins may have contributed to the booster being off course from the pad but I have a hard time believing that they would have caused such an (apparently) abrupt change of orientation. Such control surfaces usually only function significantly at high speed, not at the slow speeds at landing. Think about it like putting your hand out of a car window, at 25 mph nothing happens, when you get up to 45 you get a little bit of push, but its only at 55+ when you can really have an effect.

Wow, when Musk said that it was a "hard landing" I thought he may have been exaggerating, he wasn't. Though it was VERY close. If I'm not mistaken the rocket is oriented pretty well (though is off the landing pad) just before it suddenly goes 45 degrees (presumably in an attempt to get to the barge) and slams into the deck. A larger pad would definitely help, but they may be able to tweak the navigation software to make it work.

Isn't this the same department that has been caught actively destroying their cruiser recording equipment, installed specifically because of abuse concerns? Unless the video is instantly uploaded to remote, third party servers and there are SEVERE penalties for damaged equipment or "malfunctions" then its not going to really mean anything. If officers think they're in the right they'll keep the footage, if they thing they did something wrong there will be an "accident" with it resulting in loss of the video/audio.

You can't change rough seas but you can get a ship that is equipped to handle them better (semi-submersible oil platforms for example) or make sea roughness at the landing platform part of the launch criteria much like the launch site wind/rain/electrical launch criteria.