Although 12 million is certainly a large number, the US has many more travelers than that. In 2009, Atlanta's airport had something like 90M travelers use the airport. That means that one airport has more traffic than all of the airports combined in Israel.

I agree that their airport security model is superior, and maybe it can scale to large airports in the USA, but if we have dozens of airports with more traffic than their busiest airport, scaling is very far from a simple task.

Source

Awesome, thanks! I just looked a bit on their website and didn't see that page where they say it's bistable. That definitely makes it harder for e-ink to compare with this.

What does the article mean by e-ink like power consumption? I can't tell if this technology requires power to remain in a given state, or whether it can be static like e-ink. Although the low power consumption of e-ink displays is largely due to their lack of a backlight, being able to display static content with 0 power consumption is really one of the coolest parts about e-ink tech.

I read the article but it didn't seem to answer this, do any readers know? If it could display static content for free then that would be incredibly awesome.

I don't see too many details in this article, but there was something that sounds awful similar from Carnegie Mellon University a little while back called MULE (Mobile User Location-specific Encryption). http://sparrow.ece.cmu.edu/group/pub/studer_wisec10.pdf [pdf warning]

ZigBee generally operates at 250mW/24dBm max power. Obviously some devices can be made to broadcast higher energy levels, but a quarter watt tends to be used.

I suppose a citation would be nice, but if you google it, you will find most chipsets have that as their maximum power rating. (And as the signal only needs to reach the home, there is no reason for a stronger signal to be used.)

One step at a time. If it exists, then we can try to understand it more deeply.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this sort of invisibility cloak would not be perfect as described.

As light is initially slowed down to make "room" for the invisible event to take place, there is going to be a red-shift in the light because the waves must start arriving more slowly. While this change can be made subtle, that means that an "attacker" needs to either spend a long time slowing down the light, or the "attacker" would only create a small gap in time in which to work.

Still very cool though!

I'm all for more privacy, but all this means is the NSA and those other three letter agencies have decided it's easier to snoop on us without asking Facebook and others simply hand over the data they need.

Great. Now where did I put that tinfoil hat...

I think it's pretty clear that is not what I am saying.

Yes. If their motivation for signing up is to "protect us", then I have a great deal of respect for them. My respect for people willing to give their lives to serve others is not dependent on whether or not the services they provide do us good.

Consider the following scenario. Alice is crossing the street right as an oncoming bus approaches. Bob sees this, jumps in the middle of the road, and pushes Alice out of the way.
Whether or not the bus stops (meaning whether or not Alice was in any real danger). If Bob's intention was to give up his life to save Alice's, then I would have respect for him.

The troops can choose to participate as the "sword" of you will, hoping that they can have a positive effect on their country. While someone who signs up for the military now is most likely going to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, it doesn't change the fact that our armed forces are there to protect us, even if that isn't what our leaders task them to do.

I have a lot of respect for anyone willing to risk their life to try to make our country safer, and whether or not they actually make us safer is irrelevant, so long as their intention is to protect us.

One could fairly easily sell these sorts of bugs for much more than a "modest sum." I believe the common counter argument is that those finding these bugs should be given something closer to the "market price" (for bugs in something as wide-spread as IE, this can be on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars).

I don't really agree with this argument, just thought I'd fill you in on why some people would be complaining. The fact that these bugs were found and patched means that it can't be a horrible arrangement though.

(Note: IANARFE)
There is a difference between prioritizing antenna performance over physical design, and maximizing antenna performance. Maximizing antenna performance isn't really necessary if the signal is "good enough", meaning you wouldn't drop calls when you hold the phone, for example. Prioritizing would mean "this adjustment would look nicer, but we would start to drop calls if we did it", and they are suggesting those adjustments would not be made.

Also, I believe the older rod antennas would be for the 900MHz spectrum, rather than the more modern 2.4GHz spectrum. You can fit an entire quarter-wave antenna inside of the case of a cell phone easily now (although of course having an antenna that extends above the head to get a clearer signal would still be beneficial)

Finally! Then this will certainly be the Year of the Linux Desktop!

Sure, but a thick cloud with high density can also cover up a lot of important things, like roadways and utility poles.

I don't know what is wrong with his statement. Last time I checked, power plants produce more electricity than they use without violating any thermodynamic principles...
Presumably they are converting the stored energy in the waste into electricity, much as a coal fired plant might convert the chemical energy in the coal into electricity.