You don't have full control, but you have a very tight control and recourse available should you get stung.

As a designer you shouldn't be pissed about this. As an end user you definitely should.

Also I disagree they should have ignored the issue. Fake parts are the scurvy of the industry and should be eradicated. I'd much rather a part that produces a predictable but bad result when connected to the computer (bricks), than a part that I'm forever debugging because it doesn't seem to work quite right. Bricking may be a bit extreme but the do-nothing approach was no better.

The FBI apparently found that screening out pot users hurt their recruitment, although they backtracked on that statement once they got orders from above that they can't be that honest publicly. It's a competitive disadvantage to needlessly remove a pool of employees.

if you're going to go that route you also have to take aim at the underlining cause of drug abuse (poverty). Let's face it, when we talk about the war on drugs hurting people for whom it's a medical condition we mean poor people. If you're even upper middle class and you're busted for drugs you can get into a treatment program in no time. It's the poors that go to jail for using.

But the thing is, what do you do with the massive underclass we have? They're uneducated and likely to stay that way because their schools are underfunded. If you try to raise taxes to pay for better schools even a .5% sales tax raise gets voted into oblivion. Then there's jobs, or the lack thereof. Without education they only thing they're suited for is factory work, but that's all in China. Then there's fast food, but after 30 years of wage stagnation + inflation it doesn't pay enough to keep one adult alive let alone a family.

So what then? We don't want to pay 'em, we won't give 'em birth control until they die out ( a good 30% of our country is opposed on religious grounds ). We cordon them office and they wallow in their own misery. Every now and then a few spill over and the cops come down on them like a ton of bricks and we all dance around like the church woman from SNL acting like this doesn't happen every day...

It's been a massive success at keeping the lower classes in their place. Here in Arizona we've got multi-million dollar homes right next to slums. You can't do that without a good solid pretext to go in and bust heads whenever the poors spill over. Drugs are great for that. If you're poor chances are good you're taking some form of drugs to cope with the effects of poverty. If nothing else it's the closest to medical care you can get. Now, think about what happens when a few of those poors wander into the wealthy neighborhoods. Maybe they're there to use a park, or take a kid to one of the nicer schools. But odds are good one of 'em has a joint or two. And with our drug laws being what they are you're pretty much guilty by association. If you get a chance look up _why_ marijuana is illegal some time (hint: Migrant farm workers smoked it).

Then there's our whole private prison thing. As always, follow the money.

Not only that, but the Internet doesn't even respect international boundaries, let alone state boundaries. The FCC is absolutely within its rights to play the "interstate commerce" card here. You can argue the merits of the FCC position, but it's disingenuous to argue that this isn't under Federal jurisdiction.

Just on the IED front the ingenuity, sheer amount, and the different types of IEDs that have been found should get any pyro/electronics nerd excited. How the different tribal and religious militias interacted with themselves, the government, and the coalition is interesting as well. Hell, my Master's thesis was on the efficiency of using militia in counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd call that topic pretty nerdy. And don't forget, politics(Especially international politics) affects all of us, from the price of gas to the strength of your economy.

I am jsut stating that it should help. A bit. In fact in a link above it is shown as a counter measure, as well as rotating the balistic projectile. Both combined would make it far far easier to avoid the laser burning thru... For a much cheaper price than such a lser system itself.

If you have a reflectance of X% for the wavelength considered, that means 100-X% is absorbed. Granted I am not sure how the reflectance of materials is at short wavelength but the weapon considered are at long wavelength compared to visible (the weapon considered seems to be around 1 to 2 micrometer in the near infrared https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapon...). Source cite a reflectance of 94% to 98% for that wavelength for some type of mirror (silver mirror among others).

At such a 50kW Laser at 95% reflectance would mean 5% absorbance or only 2.5 kW. That means to give the same amount energy at the same distance for the same surface you need 20 time the same time. Or put in another way if you need to give 10.000 Joule to ablate that surface , you would need 4 seconds exposition rather than 1/4 of a seconds for a non reflective surface.

So where do I make an error ? Where do you see that the mirror would quickly lose the ability to reflect compared to exposure time ? Keep in mind that in the case of a balistic projectile, you only need to make sure the laser do not pierce the skin long enough that targeting would be hard. I do not see why you keep telling reflectance has no impact on such laser. It certainly has an impact on how much kW will the target absorb.

All science does is look backward (gather data points of past experience) then construct a model which enables us to look forward. And that is the problem. If there is no predictability power , then you are not making science, you are reading entrail of fish.

I was thinking more inline with the Reichstag fire. Especially since both events were fabricated by those who sought to gain power (and no, for anyone who is thinking it, 9/11 was not done by the US government). While most of the prequel trilogy is laughable, the one line Natalie Portman says about liberty dying to thunderous applause is probably one of the stronger lines of all 3 movies.

All you need to know about constitutional law is in Episode 3. A henious enough event can be exploited to the point where you can essentially invalidate an entire constitution and, instead of condemnation, you will hear only cheering.

Piracy is less of a problem when the platform is "free" to start with. Most people will accept slightly annoying/intrusive advertising to get their OS for free. A few will jailbreak and clean it, but most won't.

If those ads are for relevant things (like "you have less than a quarter tank of fuel, why not try Chevron with Techron?", "You are nearing 50,000 miles, here's a coupon for a free tire inspection", etc.) they may not even be perceived as intrusive so much as helpful.

This is hardly a new phenomenon. To quote Don Henley:

And this differs from what we have now in what way, exactly?

I am actually hoping to be able to get something like the Elio in about 7 years or so when my current commuter car (a 2014 Focus) gets at or near end of life. I would love having an extremely cheap, efficient car like an Elio for my commute (40 miles each way), which would hopefully get my wife to let me have a jeep or motorcycle for the lifestyle/local driving