HONEST Illegal wars, mass surveillance and destruction of the world economy? Come on. Have another hit, and actually think about what you are saying while holding it. Both are unacceptable.

Don't worry, your brand of incompetent boobs will be back in power someday (not like there's any real difference anyway), so until then, relax your sphincter and give it a rest.

Yeah, and that person and the other two are trying their best to ignore the idiots.

Did you say something?

I didn't say that. Frankly I am very dismayed at many of Obama's failings, including carrying over or not stopping many of the regular things they do to rape the constitution in the name of security. However, I think any GOP candidates would have continued things exactly the same, only without the promises to change. I think we'd do well to push them all over a cliff and start over.

But all that doesn't absolve criminal gang A from having started most of this bullshit, and having gone above and beyond the call toward making it "acceptable" (possible) for later administrations to continue the activities.

Him and his cronies' subsequent crimes against our democracy were so egregious, we rapidly had many other things to complain about.

Somewhere, Fox News is missing a viewer...

Give it a rest, already. He won, get over it.

George Carlin said it best, "Think of how stupid your average person is, and remember that half of them are stupider than that."

This DRM technology is already present in U2's music, it sends me diving for the fucking volume control every time...

(Somewhat related: according to a Reuters poll, one in four Americans want their state to secede from the union.)

Didn't South Park point out that 1 in 4 Americans are idiots?

A "Carrington-level" event nowadays would most likely be much less disruptive, as back then all the early radio and spark gap stuff was well under 50 MHz, which is where almost all of the natural noise winds up in the spectrum. Ever notice, for example you can hear your shaver motor on an AM radio but not an FM one. This is not due to AM vs. FM, (well, it is a little) but mostly due to the fact that AM is about 1 MHz and FM is about 100 MHz, well above the "static line" around 50 MHz.

It would take a much stronger signal than back then to cause the same level of disruption. Not saying that can't happen, but modern radio communications are quite a bit more robust than they were back over 100 years ago.

Normal people don't speak hex. User number A00 would be too confusing in most cases.

Remember stuff like this needs to be cop-proof. I used to design software for their dispatchers to use, and they aren't super intuitive with computers for the most part, like most of the other cops unless it's specifically part of their job. A lot of things had to be dumbed down so they could use and understand it easily.

No insult is meant here, it's just they are very busy with their jobs and having to be familiar with many different tools and systems; radio, weapon(s), forensic stuff, etc. so the amount of time they have to invest in training and learning about new tools has to be balanced among many competitive things they need to be current on. Plus, in an emergency situation, they want tools they don't have to expend a lot of extra thought on how to use.

Hence, anything designed for them to use has to be reasonably fail-safe, intuitive to use, bulletproof and easy to understand to be successful. My software was used for over 10 years by several local departments, so I'd consider that a success.

All good points - yet another point of failure, as others have pointed out.

Plus, there is the more tinfoil hatty aspect of this too - How nice and easy to use a directed EMP to disable any such weapons (presumably of the bad guy only). Nice to be able to mass disarm a whole crowd of them if "necessary"...

I have a huge cornal mass ejection after eating too much creamed corn and prunes...

+1 Beat me To It Award... :D

No Anonymous Cowards? Any??

I sometimes dream of a 0 AC Slashdot...

That is a newer generation of the same thing, but if you notice they decode DVB-T2, which is High-Definition. The cheap RTL dongles decode about 3 MHz of spectrum space which is enough for a Standard-Definition DVB signal, but not enough for HD. The newer ones that do DVB-T2 have a wider chunk of spectrum space they translate, wide enough for an HD signal. In the US, an ATSC or "digital TV" High-Definition signal is about 6 MHz wide, for reference.

These newer generation dongles must have internal improvements that allows them to grab a bigger hunk of RF spectrum. The professional SDR devices that cost upward of $1000 can grab much larger chunks of spectrum, some can do 20 MHz wide swaths of RF.