Expect to see these drones in Ukraine soon, then. Not that the change in the policy was needed, since US is providing to the ally Israel, but it does seem as a message to Russians that they will see drones soon in the war zones of Donbas and Crimea.

Had Ukraine had drones six month ago, or better a year ago, their situation would have been much different and they would not need to go through shameful and humiliating "decisions to withdraw" time after time. Sort of a disgrace for a 5th largest weapons exporter in the world, industrial powerhouse, rocket builder and a formerly nuclear country , but we digress here.

Yes, we know that the war is a significant contributor to the scientific research, however expect these UAV to be battle tested in Ukraine against most modern Russian radio-electronic warfare methods.

Then how about the taxes? People should not be mandated to pay taxes.

If you disagree, that what it appears to be the case, then how do you call the system where you have obligations but have no rights? Is it serfdom or slavery?

$45 Billion? True, this is the amount raised. All of it has been paid to Uncle Sam.

The same amount of $45 Billion is also telecomunication companies' best estimate, a modelled amount, equal to the net present value of all their clients' prospective fees, less their expenses, to be collected in the future.

If a customer would ever ask a question, why his wireless service bill is so high, he would be given an answer that the bill includes amortization of $45 Billion of previously capitalized expenses, which companies had to pay.

The GDP increase by $1.7 B is merely an additional tax, that the parties will need to pay, and represents increase in prices that the customers will sooner or later pay.

One could understand and expect that intellectually stimulating discussions among 18 Noble prize laureates will yield to unspecified doomsday due to the climate change. Or, in reality, this became a free networking event with good food and interesting contacts, all under the guise of saving the humanity.

Meanwhile, this year alone in violent death there were approx 2 thousands of casualties in Nigeria, approx 1 thousand of casualties in Ukraine and Iraq. There are real wars that are being waged at this time.

In United States from cancer and cardiovascular diseases almost 4 thousands of Americans are dying every day. Not that the death is avoidable, but proper nutrition, exercise and lifestyle can prolong life by a decade for many.

So what exactly is the purpose of ever-frozen clock showing the risk of super-fast destruction combined with super-slow climate change risk for some reason commingled and culminating to decision to keep 5 minutes to the noon.. So why exactly 18 Nobel prize laureates are gathering to decide if it is 6 minutes or 4 minutes to the end of the world.

How about using talents and energies on real problems, identified using old fashioned scientific method called prioritization, in IT world knowing as function "sort".

That would be a waste of taxpayers money. Multiple jobs would need to be created to open the mail and to manually download the data.

NSA and others do it and will do it no matter what the law says, while their dime eyed lawyers continue telling that they are defending our liberties. FBI was also doing it, but now that the discussion is public, there are same voices, probably in-house lawyers, who foresee a case in the future where the litigation is lost if FBI will continue lying using the paralel construction, like they (and all others) always did.

So now they want to legitimize something that is not legitimizable.

Little cup is not a Burger King punishment. It is their management decision to limit the water cup size to make attempts to have soda in water cups impractical.

While stealing soda in Burger King sounds like a ridiculous idea, this option has been considered and addressed by reducing paper cup for water size.

Addresses will be collected. In fact a lot of addresses were available albeit not in an organized manner. The next thing could be the open list of identities and professions, .... well to reduce the marketing costs, of course and target ads better. However officers in law enforecement and spy agencies will not like that and will either force to unlist some of the addresses, or will take fake names and identities.

Somewhat similiar to google earth, where some areas are artificially blurred by the company which pledged not to make no evil.

Ok, Can you calculate the slow down, if ajdustments were done as follows: one in 2012 next one in 2015, basically every three years.

At some point the earth will stop spinning.

The one who will build a forecast model will know which side of the earth will be .... "sunny way up".

Appropriate investment decisions can be made to purchase a land in the twilight zone, where is not too hot and not too cold.

Some sources say, that earth is slowing down 1.7 milliseconds every 100 years. However the last leap second adjustment took place in 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Anybody know a quick and dirty way, a good formula, that would tell us when the earth will really stop rotating?

I am economist by trade and by education. There is an entire schoold of econmics, called Austrian economics (one of the bright scholars was , which is standing behind. The caveat, is that Austrian economics thinks that informed individual will make a better choice than somebody else.

If you have no chance to hear about it, I am recommeding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

People in UK and anywhere else where something is socialized, for example medicine, have an illusion, a false sense of security that they "got covered".

In reality, if something is provided free, or low cost, demand will be very high. Thus it is rationed. I have a friend in EU, who needs heart valve transplant and was told that the wait is 4 month. He will pay the money that he does not have to get "expedited"service. Government does have a role to play and that role is to help innovation, efficiency, transparency, simplicity, absence of the middlemen to be a driving force.

It is not the labor costs that have skyrocketed. It is the taxes that are being collected and they creeped in and their effect has a ripple inflationary impact where due to the taxation and regulation certain things just do not make sense anymore. I know it is not a popular speech, and I always wondered why nobody wants to talk it.

And i am not talking abou the taxes that are taken from my paycheck directly, which is 43%, in my case (fed, state, city). There are less direct taxes on the property and capital gains, which I also pay.

Now there are true indirect taxes which represent the taxes which you are paying when you get services and goods from others, that are raising the prices of services of the people who are providing them, for they also need to pay taxes on the services provided or value created, or buy services that are mandated and recognized as taxes for they are unavoidable (aka Obamacare). This price inflation has a ripple effect and is further passed through economy.

In my situation (and I do realize that there are individuals who are different), Simple mathematical calculation, Lim f (individual tax rate) = overal taxation burden, shows that, again this is my case, approximately 85% of my income is given back as taxes, which is overall taxation burden. This trend can be repeated for the rest of the economy which is driven and fueled by governmental taxation, waste and spending, and government will never be as efficient as private individual, not even close.

That is the reason why it is cheaper to have to buy something manufactured by robots and bio-robots, rather than pay someone a salary and 80% taxes on top of it.

Have you noticed that in less taxed communities (some erroneously call them less developed societies), where taxation is virtualy non-existent, people do take care of their things and do fix them.

So, if on my Ipod i will set the living place by choosing the first country on the list, Afghanistan, and will pay with Paypal or Bitcoin, will the tax be collected? How will the living place will be determined? Complexities are staggering.

On the other hand, there are approx 500 million people living in EU, which gives an average $2 revenue per person per year, or less than approx 1.5 EUR per year. Let's make a non-scientific assumption that 10% of the population are actually using the services, which gives $20 per user per year. It looks like active audience with the age of 16-45 is being targeted.

It is not a lot to the governments, but it could be a lot, a huge difference, for the new companies new businesses who will be offering the service. The compliance aspect itself will be a costly component of doing business. For those who do not think it is a big deal, tax non-compliance or even allegation can completely freeze the business.

All things added together only one conclusion comes to my mind. Taxes will be collected, but In the long term, the pirates will win and information WANTS to be free. We had Hollywood whining, and soon we will have tax authorities whining about "lost revenues".