Why would anyone place critical hardware on the internet? I'm going to assume by now that Iran has figured out that the US is trying to sabotage their equipment. You would think that Iran would take any sensitive equipment offline and avoid applying any patches from foreign sources. And why isn't this considered an act of war on the part of the US? Didn't we declare cyber sabotage as such? No wonder why we got so many countries that hate us. Do as we say, not as we do.

I seem to recall that works done by a government entity belong to the public and are not subject to copyright. Even so, this seems like a rather petty move. Of course, they tortured and held Bradly Manning is solitary confinement for a year without any charges so I guess expecting any sort of civility in the matter is unrealistic.

I wondered why the pilots didn't respond to a stall by instinct. The feel of the plane should have been a major clue that something was wrong with their course of action. A lack of feel in the FBW system would certainly be a contributing factor in this kind of situation.

The amendments are an attempt to get the foot in the door with CISPA. It's likely they hope to get the basic framework of CISPA in place and then do incremental revisions to the bill over time when the attention has died down.

The best part of the proposed amendments is the supposed liability for the companies violating privacy and handing over info to the government. How'd that work out with the massive illegal NSA wiretapping? Oh that's right, everyone was granted retroactive immunity and the whistle blower got criminal prosecution for his trouble. Somehow, I seriously doubt that the privacy provisions will carry much weight or have any teeth. This bill needs to die.

Pay TV is not as attractive as it once was. One of the biggest draws was the ability to watch ad-free programming. Now pay tv is absolutely infested with advertisement. I think there's more commercial interruptions on pay tv than broadcast at this point. Why are we paying for this again? Add the fact that most of the pay tv programming is repetitive and pay tv starts to look a lot less attractive. Finally, toss in the high cost and the lack of a-la-cart options and it's no wonder why pay tv's business model is losing its appeal.

This is pretty cool. Waste plastic is a real problem for landfills since it takes up space and doesn't decay well. You could probably fuel the US for a 100 years with all the waste plastic that's floating out in the middle of the pacific ocean right now.

He should be doing the interview from a prison cell, awaiting trial for war crimes.

The leaks are not the problem. The root of the problem is the hypocritical policies and unsavory conduct that the leaks are exposing. The best way to keep your dirty laundry from being aired is to not engage in dirty conduct in the first place.

The math is not too bad, but it does involve propeller theory which is where the magic happens. The goal is to make a propeller and cart that requires less energy than is provided by the wind pushing against the prop thrust. The energy supplied is:

E = (wind speed * prop thrust) - (cart drag * ground speed).

So if the energy required by the prop is less than E, the system works. You use the difference between cart speed - wind speed for the velocity of the air thru the prop.

Not necessary to store energy to go faster than the wind.

The reason this works is that the propeller is able to "push off" against the tail wind. Think of it like sitting on a skateboard and pushing off from a moving wall behind you with your arm. The difficulty in making it work is that you need very little drag and a very efficient propeller. But the energy equations for traveling faster than the wind do balance and there is no violation of energy conservation.

What they've done is poison any reason to have the service and offer incentive to pirate the programming. I watch very little TV now since it's become an ad infested crapfest. Subscription TV is just as bad, if not worse than broadcast TV. I've totally quit listening to the radio for the same reason.

Fascism: When govt and corporations actively work together to the detriment of the general population.

I still have a working Amiga 2000 from the late 80's with a 24bit graphics card. Yes, it has vintage porn on it.