It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of the arabica bean that the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking. The shaking becomes a warning. It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion.

Planes and Ships don't rely on GPS.

If you have a license to pilot any of them, you have learned how to navigate without.

Right you are. My sextant, watch, Nautical Almanac, and H.O. 249 Sight Reduction Tables laugh at these puny exploits. Let me know when researchers have found flaws in the apparent motion of the celestial spheres.

In that case, you could use one of the manual ones at diybookscanner.com and turn the pages yourself, trading speed for safety.

29,025 and presumably climbing. I say, great. Good riddance.

Fifth Amendment, maybe? "Private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation." It's certainly arguable that patent rights, as a form of IP, constitute some form of "private property". If one takes the position that IP does constitute "property", then it's possible that abolishing existing patents (essentially, releasing those ideas to the public domain) would be considered a taking for Fifth Amendment purposes, requiring compensation. It's iffy, but possible.

I thought you'd said "autism is the new red-headed step-child" and was very confused upon reading the article.

Yes, I know it's bad form to reply to yourself, but I neglected to RTFOpinion... had I done so, I'd've seen that this case is a 1983 suit, and we're long past settlin' time. F*ck the Police!

Unless we're living in Bizarro World, the cop's not going to get charged with anything. Why would the DA punish one of his own thugs? A more likely scenario, if the law is eventually held unconstitutional, is that the cop in question might draw a civil suit under 42 USC 1983 (establishes civil liability for those who violate the civil rights of others "under color of law"), but it'd probably settle out for the cost of the phone stolen and Court costs incurred, which can be billed to the taxpayers. Either way, everyone's getting off essentially scot-free.

If you're fraking your significant other, I doubt that'll do any damage to the water table, unless you produce volume like Peter "Two Quarts" North, in which case there's a slight risk of organic contamination.

As for hydraulic fracturing, there is no such thing as "drinking-water-safe", just like there's no such thing as "clean coal". Cracks in the bedrock resulting from the frackage can propagate for thousands of feet above the well pipe, often unpredictably. That's kind of the point; the longer the cracks, the more gas-bearing rock is opened for collection in the well. Even if the well is drilled far below the water table, the cracks can still reach it, thus allowing hydrocarbon gases to enter and poison the water. Then there's the risk that the well casing can fail at the point where it crosses the water table, thus releasing gas and "frack fluid" (which is significantly more toxic than your "frack fluid" referenced above) into the environment.

Take this a step further and run an actual Pringles-can directional. Even if the cantenna doesn't work, the novelty factor of running one, or trying to, in order to overcome the white-noise like interference might draw extra foot traffic. "I see you're rolling bootleg. What else have you got?"

The fact that this was modded "Insightful" adds a sublime ridiculosity to the Slashdot Friday Night.

So basically, IP over something akin to CB or SSB? Sort of like a radio rig for a laptop?

I believe you've just described the derivative function of the waveform ... Slope of a function at a given point, if I remember my high school calc right.

It'd probably take longer for the machine to process it, but assuming you start at zero and go from there, it sounds possible ... I know nothing about codecs, but it's an interesting theory.