The standard is 1064 nm infrared and 532 nm green (actually 1064nm doubled).
The IR is absorbed by water, hence the inclusion of a 532nm wavelength laser.

With a high enough pulse rate, you can penetrate multiple layers of canopy and get excellent resolution.

Fixed wing solutions are neither better nor worse than any other solution.
Planes need a plane, an airfield, a mechanic, fuel, a pilot, and an operator for the LIDAR system.

The benefit of using an octo-copter is that all you need is electricity to charge it.

Past performance is not an indication of future returns.
China is embarrassed by the choking pollution from its coal plants and is either replacing them with cleaner energy or moving them to the middle of no where.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/05/us-china-parliament-ndrc-idUSKBN0M108V20150305
Mar 5, 2015

Which is interesting that China is still pursuing the Nicaraguan canal so it can more easily access South America's resources.
Before the canal, China was considering building a railway across Columbia as an alternative to the Panama Canal choke point.

This and this alone invalidates the death penalty in all circumstances, according to Blackstone's Formulation.

But it goes much deeper. Statistics prove the death penalty does not deter crime. Many have been executed, yet we still have murders and violent crime. Those who commit murder do not care about life, and thus the threat of a death penalty will not deter them from their committed acts.

Due to appeals, lawyers fees, court costs, the death penalty is far more expensive than keeping a convict in prison for life.

And the coup de gras, the death penalty is overwhelmingly biased towards killing black men, many whom have been shown to be innocent after it was carried out... the stats don't lie, the death penalty is racist.

If only those voting for the political Right would put their economic interests first, there would be no GOP, no nanny/police state, no unregulated out-of-control capitalist interests destroying our planet, and no inneffective, expensive, and racist death penalty.

This.

Apple competitors have had an actual watch that is a phone, no tethering to any other device necessary, on the market already for a year or two, at least. Apple is obviously going that direction, but can't quite get it to be the size they want yet... so they left the obvious killer function out for now, and are misdirecting the expected criticism of the absence of this function with all this haptic feedback stuff, a flashy interface and oooo checks my pulse wow. When Apple finally does release an actual watch phone, everyone will act like Apple invented it or at least perfected it... five years after you could have had that function (but not slick Apple design) from another tech company.

IMO, the entire idea is flawed if Apple expects it to carry the company's success through another decade. Apple is a hardware company, not a jewelry company. Apple is completely ignoring its actual customers (education and home computing markets) to go after the high hanging fruit. I think Apple needs a product to compete here, but I don't think they should expect great things at the expense of their bread and butter products. Those that buy expensive watches know a thing or two that Apple apparently does not: a good watch is a good investment. There are no good digital watches that appreciate. They're not going to get the high hanging fruit, i.e. new customers that were former Breitling customers. They're going to get the same customers they've always had, their loyal customers Apple keeps ignoring. I know this because I have been a loyal Apple customer for more than 20 years, and I have salivated over each new product... brainwashed maybe... but this... idk what this thing is... I am so stunned by it, it has deprogrammed me. Its having the same effect on me as if Apple was releasing a rectal thermometer as their new flagship product, a beautifully designed thermometer that doesn't yet give you a temperature and only works in conjuction with your iPhone.

Depending on when the last periodical mass extinction was, Nemesis is.

They have been investing a lot, because laying fiber is very expensive.
But U-Verse is not in a lot of places.

If you look at where fiber has been brought to market (not just by AT&T), it's almost exclusively in cherry picked areas that can afford high prices.

Then you have to worry about the down vote brigade. /.'s solution is many eyes and meta-moderation
Reddit's solution is to complain to the moderators. /.'s system is more open to injustice by dedicated trolls
Reddit's system, can have better outcomes, but requires manpower and trusted individuals.
Wikipedia's system requires politics and the ability to grind down the opposition.

There's no easy answer.

From The Fine Article:

Do you have any thoughts to propose that move the conversation from "here's a problem" to "here's a solution"?

Even better, the speculation is that Apple's gold watch is only technically 18-karat.
Why technically? Because the definition for 18-karat is that gold must make up 75% of the alloy's mass.

Apple patented a... not-alloy... that uses ceramic instead of metal. (PDF)
Since ceramic is significantly lighter by volume, Apple can use less gold and still meet the 75% gold-by-mass standard.

TLDR: Not all gold is created equal.

Don't use your fucking Point of Sale systems to browse the internet. Or check your E-mail. Or for anything other than inventory & payment.

This goes double for any computer that is used to access customer or patient records.

I see this all the time and it makes me cringe.
If you can't afford separate systems for you or your employees to dick around on,
then you sure as hell can't afford the fallout from getting pwned.

And most importantly, instead of paying its employees more for their 23% improvement in productivity, the company pockets the savings and gives executives bigger bonuses for making the company more profitable.

That's basically everything wrong with Corporate America for the last ~40 years.

Entergy's Pilgrim plant has been consistently ranked by the NRC as one of the worst in the country.

It's much more likely that Entergy took advantage of the shutdown to fix things they should have taken care of a long time ago, but refused to deal with, because the plant could be unprofitable in the near future and they're trying to milk as much profit out of it as possible. It'll all show up in some NRC filing(s) sooner or later.

Lol @ reliable. Pilgrim has been on the NRC's worst-ten shit list for a few years now.

The same day the storm hit, the NRC sent Pilgrim a letter.
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1502/ML15026A069.pdf

Reliable != multiple unplanned SCRAMs per year.

Anyways, on January 27, while the reactor was SCRAMing, these three things happened:

Those safety relief valves are the ones that get used to vent pressure after the coolant injection system fails.

Pilgrim has problems. On top of all those problems, locals are spitting mad because the disaster plans fail to include scenarios like "giant blizzard shuts down all the roads and nobody can evacuate."

Actually, people are doing it at home.

It's a SFW thing to search for, as long as you get your search terms right.
"diy" or "home" and "fecal transplant"

There's really no difference between what you can do at home and what a doctor can do for you, other than ordering up disease and parasite screening tests for your donor.

Lobbyists and spin doctors?
Any media who reports "Verizon blames net neutrality" is basically falling down on the job.
Journalists and editors are supposed to have some minimal obligation towards reporting the truth.

Those should not be paragraphs 5 and 6.
Heck, "in the works for several years," should have been the headline.