That's kind of depressing. I remember using one as part of a proprietary HIS system, back in the day. It had an cool scripting system (if it was scriptable in something that wasn't a cut-down version of VB, it would have been awesome) that could wait for output (like "expect"). I always hoped something like that would come out for general use, even if it was pay. Putty's minimalism is perfect 90% of the time, but it took the other 10% with it.

The statement is largely true but the libertarian in me wishes to suggest that stopping the mob was the WRONG priority. The mob was doing plenty of things they could have been prosecuted for besides tax evasion, etc. The actual crimes like assaulting people should have put them away. Society would have been better served then as now, had 'we' gone after those corrupt officials protecting the criminals at all levels.

I'd feel safer having got one crooked cop off the street than I would removing 10 guys who sell a little weed and untaxed liquor now and then.

Finally private property, emphasis private is the very corner stone of all other freedoms. Interfering and spying on with reporting requirements with the exchange of money between individuals threatens that most basic freedom. Is a tool that can be used to detect crimes sure, but there are other ways to do that, and much like mass phone record collection I don't believe its one that is justified.

The most common complaint I heard was that, despite sharing some common proper nouns, it wasn't Star Trek. After seeing it, I see the point. It was like Galaxy Quest Jr, but without the self-awareness that it was a low-content parody.

I think its an interesting idea but as you say congress would be almost entirely bogged down in re-upping existing /good/ laws. Even if a vote to 're-approve the federal statute against murder' takes only 60 seconds to execute you still won't get much done in a congressional session.

What I think might be more interesting is to require every legislative act to have preamble like the Constitution does. It should be required to be written in plain language at a 4th grade reading level, stating the acts broad objectives and intent. After say a period of 5 years anyone who is subject to the law should be permitted to challenge it in federal court for 'performance'. If the court finds the Act:

does not materially satisfy the objectives in its preamble
OR
has material unintended consequences (positive or negative the court should not be permitted to make a value judgement)
OR
has been materially used be the Executive for purposes not covered by the preamble

the law should be vacated.

And I might add: easier for such (relatively) smaller islands like Hawaii which can't afford lots hydroelectric dam due to limited amount of mountains (compared to the Alps here around, or compared to Japan)

I think you may have misunderstood my bracketed remark.

What I was trying to say is that, since Windows 8 is universally despised, it can't be people defending Windows 8 who are thumbs-downing this video. There are too few to defend 8, and too many (who can't stand it) who would want to thumbs-up this video (if anything).

So, what is left is that people don't like the aspects of this presentation not related to a Microsoft operating system. This reflects badly on either the presenter (I've not watched the video), or the software/style of presentation, or both.

The net result is the same -- there is nothing here to recommend this style of presentation.

I'll group the answers.

Well, you need to stick needles into the body quite big and deep to have a good contact (the probes mentioned in this Darwin award). And apply a sufficient voltage to them, for a long enough time. That's quite a convoluted way that doesn't happen in every day life.
(I hardly see example how it could happen, except deliberately as in the example).

Generally speaking, yes, I agree. A healthy heart should restart.
That's in fact the principle which is used by defibrillators:
- a firbillation: is a big electrical mess where the cells a completely desynchronised and are firing mostly at random each triggered by the mostly random fires of their neighbours. Electrically, the heart gives a signal that looks like white noise. Mecanically, the heart isn't beating in a coordinated manner, but instead its surface is more or less kind of "vibrating" making tons of small uncoordinated local micro-contraction (that's what fibrillation means).
- fire a charge a the heart
- the charge cause all the muscle cells (and the specialized muscle cells that serve as the heart's equivalent of nerves) to contract at the same time and stay contracted for the short duration of the charge.
- after the shock, most of the cell are more or less at the same position in the cycle. (and thus none will start miss firing due to other nearby miss-fires). They are more or less in "waiting state".
- natural rhythm generator generates impulse as usual, and now all the cell should follow the same impulse travelling along the heart (and its nerve-like specialised fibers).
- heart should contract in a coordinated manner and beat as it should.

BUT....
In the Darwin awards example, the current is constant. Which doesn't cause a "resync" as the single pulse that a defibrillator's shock is. Also, given the low resistance of the salty water medium, the current is probably quite high which is dangerous. (I mean relatively speaking).
There's a much higher risk of the heart going into fibrillation in this case.

Of course adding some heart disease could increase the likely hood of dying.
But the absence of disease isn't a definite guarantee to die from such shocks.

Basically: you got lucky.

Probably the shocks where short. Or by luck the travel path of the current didn't happen to reach the heart (I've once had a thunder struck patient that survived exactly because of that: the heart wasn't touched).
The fact that you survived previous shock and the fact that you don't have a heart disease doesn't necessarily make you immortal and doesn't guarantee that you won't die next time.

That could very well happen.

The reason why low voltage isn't dangerous usually, is because the skin is a damn good insulator requiring voltage above 100v to break (one of the argument invoked by countries using 100volts, whereas the rest is 220v).

The Darwin Award example did stick needle-like pointy ends of the probe *through* the skin. The skin's high insulation/resistance wasn't there any more to shield against "insignificant voltage". The serum of the blood isn't distilled water but is filled with electrolyte. Quite conducting mix. It also runs through the hearth. The rest of the fuilds inside a body are all rich with electrolytes too. That means that the *inside* of a body can conduct electricity quite well, and the hearth can easily get in its path (specially if you put each electrode pole at opposite side).
(one of the reason why it's not a bright idea to swim during a storm. the inside of your body is a *better* conductor that the water around you in the swimming pool, the skin is the only thing in the way blocking the electricity).

The actual delta-V needed for a muscle cell or a nerve to react is quite low (a few dozens of mili-volts are needed to rise above the threshold and cause contraction or impulse propagation). So with the skin barrier removed, it's quite likely that the remaining salty fuilds (mostly blood, but also extra-cellular fluids) can carry enough to cause a jolt to the hearth, enough to disrupt the normal rhythm.

You can google around and find several tutorial explaining how to compile chromium with support for Widevine turned on (That's the DRM module used by Google Chrome to play the HTML5 EME/VIDEO streams of netflix).

Now the question is:
- are there Widevine binaries available for ARM ? (Not sure. I might remember having read somewhere about such)
- or, alternatively, can similar JIT emulator as TFA's one run the x86 plugin at a sufficient speed, while leaving enough processing power to handle the remaining of the video playing ? (Luckily, there's some hardware acceleration on the Pi, so maybe it's possible to achieve).

You could do the same using a Firefox compile with support for CDM plugins, and using the Adobe CDM plugin for Firefox.
(With the same limitation, either wait until Adobe does an ARM version for all the various mobile incarnation of Firefox, or hope that the plugins can be emulated fast enough).

Oh, is it so ? *My* electrons are pushed around by water falling down and funny glow-in-the-dark rocks.
Yep, it's all about rocks again...

Next to the guy with the "Naked-girls" shirt, let the second interviewee be one of the female scientist wearing a shirt with "masochistic men in bondage" printed picture on it.