I love Robert Heinlein, but that quote makes it look like he either doesn't understand the concept of human rights, or he's deliberately obfuscating the topic. I'll have to assume the latter.

Although the current regulations allow Formula 1 engines to rev up to 15,000 RPM, they don't because that would exceed the maximum fuel flow requirements. I believe the practical limit is around 11,000. F1 introduced a new hybrid powertrain this year that ironically has caused some uproar because it's perceived as too quiet, compared to the screaming V8s and V10s that ran at 18-19,000 RPM. Audi's diesel LMP cars are also quiet compared to other ICE race cars - you don't need earplugs around them - but they're not silent.

I'd love to check out a Formula E race if I have a chance, and I hope the series does well. I think there's the potential for an all-electric racing series to contribute toward the technological development of powertrains in electric road-going cars, just as traditional gas-powered auto racing has with ICE road cars.

It's ludicrously more difficult.

The legal philosophy in the USA is laid out in the Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable human rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This isn't a statement about religious faith; rather that rights are inherent in the human person and not granted by any civil authority (it is a statement of belief, since you can't prove it). It's the duty of society to recognize the rights of all men and the job of government to protect them. Obviously they wouldn't matter much to one living in total isolation who never encounters another person, but that's not really a common scenario.

The downside to this model is that it doesn't create an easy way to resolve what is or is not a right, which has been the cause of much strife since the founding. Like Sentrion says, anyone can claim a right, but you have to fight for recognition. And not all claims are necessarily valid.

In practical terms, the government effectively grants rights, since we've conceptually moved from the attitude "the Constitution doesn't say the government can do that" to "the Constitution doesn't say you can do that", thus effectively limiting our freedoms to those spelled out in the Bill of Rights.

As for criminals, we curtail their freedom because they've violated the social contract by not respecting the rights of others or as a form of group self-defense, but we do still acknowledge that they have rights. For example, prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment are based on the concept of their right to justice.

Sure they can. What is murder but an infringement of one's right to life by a private individual?

GP is misunderstood, and is mostly correct. He's not saying the Constitution is meaningless; he's saying it can't in and of itself restrict the power of government. TFS lays it out: unconstitutional surveillance has been approved by all branches of government. So was slavery. Condemning a government action as "unconstitutional" doesn't have any direct effect unless someone enforces it. The one method of enforcement he doesn't cover is the ballot box. If the voters of the country cared about the government being restricted by the Constitution, we could choose representatives that made that a priority.

Yeah, I did too :)

Slashdot cracks me up
"Beware the surveillance state!"
"Give all cops cameras!"

As for the poll topic, I voted "It's not needed" because it was the closest to "It's not always needed all the time". Specifically, it's generally only needed when officers are interacting with the public (which is a lot of the time, but not 100%). Supposedly the Ferguson police chief had ordered body cameras, but they hadn't been deployed yet (that article cites unnamed sources, so the info is questionable).

But there are many times when cameras can help, both in protecting citizens from abuse, and protecting cops from false claims of abuse, and this is more important in some areas than others.

Dammit, clicked the wrong mod. +1 Funny.

These comments reminded me of this story, where even sending exceptionally creepy stuff to the guy's house, and making specific threats against his family weren't actually indicative of genuine intent to do harm. This is what I think of when I see stuff like this. Not that there couldn't be some genuinely disturbed person who would cause harm; but I suspect that in all or nearly all cases of sick trolling like this, it's just "a game thing."

Not just any soundboard, a George Noory soundboard!

Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Pay me $10,000 to stop hitting yourself.

I just checked, and the laptop battery I bought last December for our Toshiba is an Anker, with a higher mAh rating than the OEM battery. It's still working great with a decently long battery life, so consider that yet another recommendation. I didn't know anything about the brand at the time - I bought it because it offered longer life than OEM, and it was highly rated on Amazon.

As for cell phones, I bought a couple EC Technologies batteries for our Samsung cell phones one year ago that are still going strong. I get two full days of life from a charge with moderate usage on my Exhibit 4G.

I'm imagining a scene where a typical 16-year old boy, having written an obviously nonsensical, nonthreatening comment, is corralled in the principal's office. There are a couple of stern, serious police officers staring him straight in the face, asking in all seriousness about shooting his neighbor's dinosaur. How could he possibly react EXCEPT for an irate "are you f-ing kidding me?!?" I'm not sure that I, with 20 years of life experience on this kid, could react very differently.

Do it - imaging yourself, sitting in a chair surrounded by a bunch of stern authority figures, some in uniform, asking you: "why did you want to shoot your neighbor's dinosaur?"

Sure, maybe he was unruly towards the officers, which is never a good strategy, but some people are provoked to anger by (accurately) perceived lunacy on the part of people who should know better, which would include teachers, principals, and officers of the law.

Of course, I wasn't there - perhaps he actually did something criminal, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

Reminds me of the time when that list of crosswalk-button hacks was published - it created quite a stir.

FWIW, I originally had a regular expression to try to extract the video id parameter (something like v=([\w\d-]{11})), but it didn't properly preserve other parameters. Yours is better! I was going to say you needed to change the first & to a ?, but apparently youtube doesn't care. Also the last ampersand doesn't matter, but in case someone is as needlessly pedantic as I am, here's the version that makes them all pretty, which passed all my test cases:

javascript:window.location=String(window.location).replace(/\/watch\?(.*)v=(.*)/,"/v/$2&$1").replace(/&$/,"").replace(/&/,"?");

The way these can all fail is if youtube introduces a different URL parameter that ends in the letter "v".