Not necessarily. The same could be said for the power of experience, leadership, morale, training or logistical support. The US military is neither Jedi nor Sith but they are pretty well led, trained and supported. Having the biggest guns does nothing to help you when you pull the trigger and it goes 'click' because you're out of bullets, didn't maintain it or forgot to flip the safety.

Here they come. Order in Colorado, delivery in Florida.

"Now we sue Bitcoin and shut them down. (whispers) They don't have lawyers? Excellent! (whispers) What do you mean they don't exist as an entity?(whispers) Distributed what?! (whispers) Damn those techies. They can't do that. Don't they understand real business?"

Is there any bottom to this at all? Seriously, I expected them to be nasty, bureaucratic and invasive but it sounds like they were taking policy guidelines from conspiracy websites.

How about the Superconducting Supercollider.. [pause]...[begins crying]

So this was the main feature in a recently published book. It's making the rounds because it is part of the press blurb. Indirectly Slashdot is being used to push the guy's book. Well done viral marketing dude.

We did not have to storm into the NY Stock Exchange. We can use the internet now: http://i.imgur.com/SOkmiks.jpg We also type faster than you.

In the US the laws are so screwed up, reworded, artistically intepreted, overlaid with regulation and in some cases even secret that you probably can't even figure out if your employer is breaking the law without seeing a lawyer and even then it's going to be argued over long after you are broke, homeless and unemployable. We need a dramatic reworking of the ridiculously complex legal system that is supporting a sort of fear and confusion based collection of legal priests and the political patrons that can deploy them en masse to crush their opponents. Unless a common person can understand the laws they aren't likely to be able to completely follow them. Unfortunately change is not something likely to happen.

Not sure I qualify but I think you would think I do so here goes:

Cannon were not mentioned in the 2nd Amendment. Rockets were not mentioned and they were around (if relatively ineffective) when it was drafted as well. That would mean a rocket launcher would not be considered a firearm. As for a laser, the only ones that actually work as weapons are of cannon size so I would put it in that category. We have also decided that fully automatic weapons fit into the 'bigger than a firearm' category and their ownership should be restricted though they are a grey area so ownership restrictions are likewise grey. Calibers above a certain size also fit into the 'cannon' category.

Call it an IED, claymore mine or hand grenade. The comparison is obvious. The EU (and even UK) has had more problems with such weapons than the US and it only stopped when attitudes changed. If we ban such a thing and it is widely desired I expect we will be about as successful at preventing it from being sold as we are at stopping illegal drugs unless we too manage attitudes and expectations around it.

I too would love that but the problem is it would require a terrific amount of data entry and modeling for a small return. At best we'll end up with Ikea instructions and most stuff will still include poorly translated Chinese.

Next up: an app which automatically turns the pages and shares highlighting. (If this is used for grading or implicitly incorporated into paper/project grading).

It's useful to remember that missiles are the fast showy way to get warheads to targets. Smuggling is a much lower tech and more realistic (for them) threat. As for introducing the new leader to all the goods of the west, he apparently went to school in Switzerland from 1993 - 2000 so it's doubtful he hasn't seen such. He was 16-17 so I don't know about the strippers. He probably has all those he wants though.

>If the US decided right now to nuke NK the bombs would be falling within the hour. Everybody knows that. And NK surely knows that if they somehow lobbed one of their weapons at us the response would be, well...excessive. Yes, millions of NK people the leaders don't give a crap about would undoubtedly be killed. Given the time required to find Osama and Saddam the bunker the leadership was in would probably be missed. China might well suffer extensive fallout issues. The US would suffer a catastrophe thousands or tens of thousands of times greater than the 9-11 attacks. This does not work out well for us. This skips the possibility they will launch at a US carrier group, barren island or other non-continental target to induce terror but not civilian damage. We don't want them to have nukes for lots of reasons.

People trust robots around their kids all the time. It just depends on having the robot not look scary and to act in predictable ways. Don't believe me? Here are a jillion photos: http://www.proboticsamerica.com/photos.html