The actual use shown is with a balloon, so they got the altitude limit raise or removed. It's not clear about the speed limit. Also I don't know about other countries, but I asked some high power rocketry guys in the US about adding active stabilization and was informed that anything along those lines is considered a missile and would not be legal (in the US). Never mind what slashdot chose for a headline then.

Those "features" are nothing more than visual bling. This suggests Apple is running out of great ideas and resorting to fancy instead of functional? I can name a whole list of UI features that would be awesome and seem innovative, while actually doing useful stuff easier.

Parallax? That's so Angry Biirds.

Someone once suggested to me that so long as these activities remain illegal, they are less likely to be abused. Think about that. If it's illegal you're going to think about every line you cross and try to justify it against your goals. Abuse would not only be a problem, it would be a problem caused by illegal activity. Once you legalize these activities I think they are more likely to be abused.

only about 1 trillion tons of carbon can be burned and the resulting gas spewed into the atmosphere. Just over half that amount has already been emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and at current rates of energy consumption, the trillionth ton will be released around 2040

Do they honestly believe there is some total quantity of emissions that can be tolerated? I mean as opposed to a rate of emissions - like annually. We know that the system recycles carbon taking it out of the atmosphere, and we know that the rate it's removed increases as the concentration increases. So if we assume there is a limit, it should be on the rate of carbon emissions and not the total emitted over time.

These guys are looking dumber all the time.

Yes, but I was thinking "edge detection" which is something different. Conceptually I meant Hough Transform.

How does this compare to using regular edge detection to find faint streaks in a time lapse image? How about after detecting bright spots and deleting them followed by edge detection?

But we're keeping tons of spent nuclear fuel in swimming pools and occasionally encasing it in giant blocks of cement and arguing about where to put it. Instead we could just put all that "waste" in a different kind of reactor and use it as fuel while also creating a chain of material that can have some plutonium pulled out for the occasional space probe or whatever. Problem is people are too scared of the "whatever" part to even allow this to happen - they'd rather pretend the spent fuel isn't an even bigger problem.

It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

My stance on this issue has been vindicated - for today and until some other poor research indicates something different. May be a month, perhaps a year, but they will eventually change their mind again. That's the one thing for certain in "climate science".

This should still be detectable. It just requires more time. One could also reduce the time by looking at the combined output of an entire batch of chips. If they all have the same mask, they will all produce the same reduced set of random numbers. So one additional meta-test of data from a lot could show they have been compromised.

I work with guys who did yaw-stability-control calibration. Apparently it's quite satisfying to get it dialled-in just right. It's also not so much a high-end feature any more.

That takes money and balls, two (three?) things you obviously lack.

Ouch. Living up to the stereotype I see!

http://it.slashdot.org/story/07/11/15/184204/new-nsa-approved-encryption-standard-may-contain-backdoor I remember at the time it seemed to be confirmed that there IS a backdoor. The question of weather anyone knew the magic numbers to open that door seemed obvious at the time as well - the NSA chose the numbers. It would go against everything they stand for NOT to have the keys.

Side note: Contrary to what some folks claim, this does not make the system weak against any foreign enemy, criminals, or hackers. It makes it weak only to the NSA so long as no one else discovers the master key. Not that this makes it ok, just not as bad as some claim.

You're silly if you think the government doesn't already have your fingerprint.

How so? I know there have been efforts to fingerprint children with some lame claims about being useful to "save the children" but it's not mandatory. Or do they print them at birth these days?

Others may have a successful life already but they don't think in terms of "me" and "my" but in terms of humanity and its long-term goals over several generations.

While I agree with some of your statements, this one seems false. If someone was truly concerned about the long-term prospects of humanity I doubt they would conclude the best thing for them to do is die in one of the first colonies on mars. Realizing their rarity, I should thing they'd wait until a functional colony is established and only THEN try to have some kind of influence on its development.

Unless Google is going to devise a crypto system they don't have any access to the keys, this is meaningless. Because when those government agencies can walk in the door with a secret warrant and demand the keys, there is nothing Google can do. The US lawmakers have essentially made crypto in America irrelevant when any party knows the keys.

You mean "any third party". For peoples communication to be "secure" they need to keep a private key and others need to use their public key to send data. This of course blocks Google from reading it as well. This is a problem for Google because they like to have the machines read your email to build a profile for targeted advertising. Using secure crypto not only blocks governments, it blocks Google. Unless their plan is as you suggest where Google has the keys, in which case you are correct that it does nothing to prevent spying.