Most smartphones do have "real" GPS receivers in addition to Assisted GPS. How long it takes to get an initial GPS fix depends, in part, on how well the device can predict your location, as well as up-to-date knowledge of the satellite orbits; A-GPS takes advantage of cell tower data to provide an approximate starting point for the GPS and a faster way to download the orbital information and thus get a quicker fix. A GPS receiver is still necessary for a precise location, and my Nexus 5, to pick one example, can be set to enable A-GPS or to rely exclusively on the phone's internal GPS.

They need a warrant to perform any search or seizure—the warrant is the authorization to perform the search or seizure; you can't have one without the other. It isn't "either the search is 'reasonable' or you have a warrant", applying for a warrant is how you document that the search was reasonable in the first place, by providing probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. A blanket authorization for so-called 'reasonable' searches and/or seizures is just another way of issuing an unconstitutionally broad warrant which fails to document the probable cause or to particularly describe the place to be searched or the persons or things to be seized.

However, you are correct that they probably wouldn't have any trouble getting a warrant after his comments. If you make a credible threat, even if your intent was humorous or sarcastic, you shouldn't act surprised when people take you seriously.

Why even restrict the choice of representative to someone in your state? I'd just let anyone interest in the job apply to serve as a representative, provided they could meet some minimum number of votes nation-wide—perhaps 0.1% of the eligible voting population, so there could be at most 1,000 representatives. In practice it would probably be much less than 1,000, with a few individuals representing the major factions but plenty of room for minority positions. Each eligible voter gets three votes, and thus up to three representatives, which they are given the opportunity to change at regular intervals (e.g. quarterly, or when one of their representatives steps down). The votes are persistent until changed, and can be concentrated or spread out according to the voter's preference. A representative's influence in the House is determined by how many votes he or she currently holds.

This would, of course, be separate from the states' representatives in the Senate, to be appointed by the state legislatures. Popular representation is all well and good, but someone has to look out for the long term. Under my system the House would be able to approve any short-term (discretionary) expenditures unilaterally out of existing savings, but a 2/3 super-majority in the Senate would be required for anything requiring new debt (to include any increase in the money supply), speculation on future revenues, or a commitment of more than a few years. Finally, all laws would be required to maintain the approval of a simple majority in both the House and the Senate or face immediate repeal following a call for a vote.

Several problem with this. First, the claim to communal ownership of the entire country is extremely suspect. Was it homesteaded from unowned land or purchased? If purchased, did the seller have the right to it? Governments generally move in to a country by conquest, i.e. theft on a grand scale. They don't homestead the land they rule, or purchase it from the rightful owners (though sometimes they do purchase territory from another government). Second, unlike shareholders in a company, citizens can't cash out if they happen to disagree with the direction taken by the board of directors. Citizenship is non-transferable, and even abandoning it is very heavily penalized. Citizens are opted-in involuntarily at birth and aren't allowed to opt out in any practical sense—being forced to give up everything you've earned, move to another country, and never see your family again doesn't count. (And even then the U.S. will try to keep claiming you owe taxes.)

Right. You don't have to be a charity to be a non-profit. Anyone can form a non-profit so long as the organization itself isn't intended to make a profit (i.e. to enrich the owners/shareholders or pay dividends—paying employees is fine, but they do get charged income tax on that pay). You do need to be a charity to allow your donors to write off their donations as charitable expenses on their taxes, but that's all that's really at stake here.

That's not entirely correct. While there are some minor differences between non-profit charities and other non-profit organizations, the real point of having tax-exempt non-profit organizations is to avoid double-taxing the income of organizations which aren't structured as profit centers—in other words, those which don't accumulate market value for their owners or shareholders, and don't pay dividends. There are plenty of non-profits which have nothing to do with charity and are only intended to benefit their members, e.g. industry organizations like the RIAA or MPAA. This is not a loophole; the system is working as intended. It's all a matter of simplifying the paperwork, really: if the associations were forced to file as for-profit organizations they would still pay little or no income taxes, because—by design—they have no net profit. They may keep some savings on hand to facilitate cash flow, but everything else they receive is channeled directly into expenses related to their charter.

The significant advantage charitable non-profits have is that their donations can be written off on their donor's taxes as charitable expenses. If you donate or pay dues to a non-charitable organization you're still on the hook for income taxes on that money, unless you can classify it as a business expense.

Any particular reason you couldn't do the same thing in a microkernel? I'm envisioning some form of IPC primitive that automatically spawns a lightweight thread to handle each incoming message, which isn't too different from the monolithic kernel approach apart from not having a fixed 1:1 correspondence between the client and server contexts. You would be able to use your shared data structures and locks just as you would in a monolithic kernel, at least within the filesystem code. For anything else, of course, you'd need to use IPC.

That's just false. The screen power drain is mostly due to the backlight which is no more brighter than any other screen so that won't draw more power. As for the GPU it doesn't have to render the image fully in situations where 1080p suffices .. it can just render at 1080p and then upscale the image to 4k.

Actually the Oculus requires nothing less than a 10K display (5K per eye according to my calculation) .. so they need to get to around 2000 ppi ... Honestly I am not sure if that is even possible within 20 years.

How many calls do you fools get that you need to screen calls? "Ring Ring .. let me check my douchewatch .. hmm .. not answering!"
Answer all your calls. I can see the need for a smartwatch to answer texts though. When someone texts you, respond on your douchewatch with "call me" and then don't answer the phone.

What about the millions of people who want other people to think they are douches? They need a douchewatch.

I'm buying the cheaper one so I can gold plate it myself to upgrade it to $17K version so I can show it off to people who would then believe me to be a vastly superior human being than them. That can be my legacy. Here lies a dude who owned a $17K watch. He is so F'ing cool.

How could they release this thing without a technology like Witricity or whole room charging?? It should be able to charge in a room or when you are sitting on the couch and also in the car without having to deliberately place your hand/watch in a specific location.

I mean we have the technology for whole room charging, so why not use it? They have like 100 billion dollars in cash couldn't they have spent a few million and figured out how to put Witricity into the watch? Now even Samsung won't do it until they have Apple does it .. so we have to wait for Apple to get this idea.

Well I know they are reading slashdot cause thats where they got the downfacing IR sensor and vibration messaging idea .. http://ask.slashdot.org/commen... so maybe they will grab this one too.

You could use Shamir's Algorithm, but the recommended way to create a multi-signature Bitcoin address is to use a transaction script which separately checks each of the desired keys. That way each key holder can sign the transaction independently of the others, and—more importantly—there is no need to get all the key fragments together in one place to reconstruct a master key.

That last point, incidently, happens to be one of the problems with this proposal; once the master key has been reconstructed, anyone with access to it would have unrestricted access to every backdoored device. Key-splitting is really only intended for cases where the master key need only be used once, not on a routine basis as can be expected in this scenario. Rather than splitting a master key, a better approach would be to have a number of separate keys and require a certain number of signatures on a digital "warrant" which specifically identifies the device to be decrypted. (It wouldn't hurt to include the other Constitutionally-mandated warrant information, either, just for future reference.) The device would then need to validate the device ID in the warrant and check the signatures against a list of known public keys before decrypting itself.

Somehow you managed to say exactly what I said while pretending to disagree and maintaining a needlessly condescending tone. I'm impressed.

Of course, this sort of absolute monopoly we're discussing only comes about when exclusivity is guaranteed by law, or otherwise backed by force. In very rare cases it can happen if someone legitimately owns the entire supply of some rare good, a.k.a. a natural monopoly. A mere de facto monopoly which results from favorable economies of scale and/or network effects always has to worry about the next up-and-coming competitor; if they abuse their position or become complacent there is always someone else waiting to move in with lower prices and better quality and undermine their market share. The incumbent enjoys a natural advantage over the challengers, but not an unlimited one.