Seems like those are applications that scream, "CHEAPER TO DO WITH DRONES!" to me. :)

Ummm, ok?

I never really followed politics much when I was younger, but has it always been like this?

You will occasionally find people who get very, very offended when you point out that Democrats and Republicans differ only in name. These people, sadly, really do believe that the next Obama will change things, and then grow all the more bitter when he ends up just like the rest of the worthless fucks in DC.

But yes, it has pretty much always gone like this. Every charismatic young buck looks like the next Prez Rickard, right up until he turns into the next Tricky Dick.

Townshend was wrong. It's seems like you can just keep fooling us over and over again.

Meet the new boss - Same as the old boss.

They call it a "lock and key". Totally uncrackable over the internet or via USB, and although exploits do exist, for higher quality setups they take considerable time with physical access to the device.

The "IoT" is not our friend, folks - It turns solid, reliable old-school products into yet another vector for malware in your house. And if you think reinstalling Windows sucks, how about having your oven go into self-cleaning mode during your vacation without the safety latch closed? How about having your blender "playfully" get your cat's attention with brief pulses before going full puree? How about overriding your on-demand hot water heater to its "steam clean" setting with you in the shower?

I love toys, including electronics. But the fewer things in my house vulnerable to remote exploits, the better. My toaster should have one dial and one lever and zero computers, period.

How many true enemies did the US have in Iraq? Not everybody who dies because of US military action is an enemy.

I don't think you like going to war, but I do think you overestimate its effectiveness.

What did the Iraq war actually accomplish? Vietnam? Bosnia probably helped, though that combined with the NATO expansion inspired Russian aggression and Georgia and Ukraine are paying the price now.

Much of Afghanistan is better but in total war is incredibly destructive, it's very rare circumstances that it actually helps.

I don't disagree that the US is generally a positive influence but I don't think you really understand how much hostility that aggressive attitude incurs.

Remember Americans aren't the only ones proud of their country or who think they should have influence, imagine you're not an American but you're an Iranian or Russian cheering for your side. You might hate your government, be all about free speech, democracy, and everything else you associate with the US. But when you see the arrogance that the US acts with on the international state you're going to find it very difficult to cheer for the US.

With your patriotism if you weren't an American I'd very much expect you'd hate the US.

It's a radio transmitter feeding a closed waveguide. One has to ask: why haven't we seen evidence of radio transmission providing thrust before, when it's been feeding an open waveguide?

Extreme claims require extreme evidence. People who have made extreme claims before without much evidence at all are rightly categorized with the boy who cried wolf.

So the soldier who no longer needs to go into battle is better off.

What about the civilians in the country you just invaded because politicians are no longer worried about getting blamed for dead soldiers?

The US already has a big problem with wars, almost all the costs are externalized.

From the Iraq war slightly less than 10,000 non-Iraqi coalition forces died.

But over 100,000 Iraqis died, perhaps over 500,000 or even 1,000,000 and their country is shattered.

These are costs that are barely registered in the US other than the fact that they create entities such as ISIS, and even they barely warrant notice except when they're threatening Americans.

If you're going to start a war you need some skin in the game, soldiers dying is a horrible tragedy but it that restrains the US from perpetrating far grander tragedies on a whim.

In the alternative universe where you have effective killbots they're now roaming the landscape over Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. But they're also probably in Libya, Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza (Israel gets them too). It probably saves a few Americans (minor a handful from escalated terrorist attacks), but at the cost of many times that.

My Western Electric Model 1500 begs to differ.

There's an easier way. Just put the phone in airplane mode. Problem solved.

(Some minor loss in functionality may occur, but you can never be too safe....)

You can get all of that stuff from alt.binaries.erotica.* without needing a YouTube account. ;)

On the other hand a single nuke is very powerful and easy to conceal, which is why nuclear proliferation treaties are very tough to enforce.

But no one really cares if you have a dozen autonomous weaponized drones, that's not going to give you a decisive military edge and any more than that you won't be able to conceal.

Make it against international law, people will occasionally violate the law but they'll be only small instances. The real cause for concern is a large scale deployment and arms race which a law can stop.

Their permit said that they would not have this wanted fugitive perform. They violated the terms of their permit, so were shut down. This is pretty straightforward and they had to know this would happen - they probably wanted the publicity.

Would the police also have shut them down if they started playing clips of Roman Polanski (wanted in the US for raping a 13 year old girl) movies?

Sure, they can ban him from appearing. But "straightfoward", for effectively playing a movie by someone with an opinion they don't want heard? Yeah, I would call that straightforward - A straightforward violation of the first amendment.

I'm guessing the vast majority of ad benefits come from impressions rather than clicks.

I don't think I've ever clicked on a movie ad, but I'm sure a lot of my movie choices come from movie ads.

Same thing for other products, the ads annoy you, but when you go to buy something the one you've seen the ad for suddenly looks a whole lot more credible and familiar.

I think you've got it backwards.

In Canada the parties are far stronger than they are in the US and the individual MPs are almost irrelevant as they're simply expected to vote with their party, yet we seem to have a lot less of this kind of corruption and I don't think it's a coincidence.

Look at the emails, the guy was so compliant partly because he was relying on the MPAA for fund-raising, he's a state level politician dealing with the representative of the US media industry, of course he was playing ball. Just like if he was some individual legislator with a big group threatening to flood his district with money for his opponent, it's really easy for powerful interests to manipulate the government by picking off individual legislators.

If you make the parties stronger then the interests have to deal with the party instead of the legislator, and the parties are strong enough (and often incentivized) to tell the powerful interests to screw off.