Sweet deal? You do know that inheritance involves someone dying, often a close family member. Also, do you realize that the deceased person already payed tax on the sum of money, so it not exactly tax free?

Not it doesn't, only certain types of labor become less profitable, others become more profitable. I think this would be a good place for a 'horse and buggy' analogy from an RIAA related story?

What does dignity have to do with anything? There is no economic system that protects dignity, dignity is a personal choice, and only in a economic system that protects personal choice can one choose how to live with dignity (if they even care about it).

Who decides what the upper and lower limits will be? How do they ensure that beneficial activities such at spending $28 billion in charitable contribution is persevered? How do they know that once the current upper limit economic activities have been eliminated there will remain enough economic activity to support those who cannot or choose not to be productive? How do they wade there the infinite number of needs and wants with the unlimited number of outcomes to determine what economic activities people can or cannot undertake?

I agree with you on this statement, but disagree that this applies to military weaponry. I believe 'firearm parity' needs to maintained with local and federal law enforcement only. I don't believe that military hardware is applicable to the 2nd Amendment because 1) it is illegal to use the military for federal/local law enforcement, 2) when the 2nd Amendment was ratified there was no desire for a permanent standing military, proven by the fact the Continental Army was disbanded after the Revolutionary War. That fact that we now have a standing army in a time of 'peace', means we now have to live with the associated risks.

I could however see a case to made for a person being allowed to develop or build any weapon themselves for personal use on private land.

Actually it doesn't help because more often than not it is misquoted. The actual quote is:

The emphasis is mine. Falsely shouting fire in order to create a panic is illegal, or rather the person making the speech is accountable of the resulting harm. However, shouting fire in a crowded movie that is actually on fire is not illegal, as most reasonable people would agree that there is a moral responsibility to letting others know of imminent danger.

Seems appropriate given this is a story about sending something to Mars.

This isn't totally fair. While there are certainly a lot of opportunities for amateur detectives to end up focusing on the wrong people, the reality is that information available online was limited. It was not the same set of data that the government had access to. Unless the actual perpetrators were documented in the online data set, and it doesn't appear they were, the online search was bound to fail.

Had the online community been given the exact same set of information as the FBI, it would have been very interesting to determine what conclusions would have been reached. That would have been a much better test of crowd sourcing.

That is not how it works. You can create mathematical models for analysis, such as a Finite Element model, but that takes time, know-how, and money. As well, analytical approaches help get one closer to the best solution before actually 'cutting metal'. Nevertheless, even with up front analytical work everything needs to be tested to verify the design. All analytical models now matter how complex are still approximations, and there is no substitute for real world testing. For someone with limited resources it may be more practical to simply test.

So now a theoretically declared war against a poorly defined group of individuals is the same as a congressional deceleration of war against a sovereign nation?

In a genuine time of war exceptions to due process are made. We are not at war. We are not at war with Yemen, yet American citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi was killed there by a drone strike because of the memo you support. He was considered to be a high ranking al-Qaeda agent.

Two-weeks later is 16 year old son, Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, was killed in similar air-strike. He too was an American citizen. He was traveling with a high ranking al-Qaeda agent, who was the actual target of the air strike. The strike was 'OKed" because Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi was considered to be a "military-age male."

We are not at war. As a country we have lost our way. A secret memo is released and we justify why it is OK to kill Americans abroad without any due-process. We claim we want transparency, and yet accept secret memos. We accept killing of foreign men, woman, and child in countries in which we are not at war, because 'civilian causalities are low'.

The President says "If We Can Just Save One Child..." we should give up are constitutional rights. According the Bureau of Investigative Journalism some 175 children have been killed by the drone program. What about saving just one of those lives? No, lets all attack the Bill of Rights when American children die, but programs that operate on the fringe of legality are OK because foreign children are not afforded the same protections.

Does our hypocrisy as a country have any limits? Do we ever look around, and say WTF is wrong with us. Do we not believe our rights to be natural, and our government is unique in that it recognizes and protects those natural rights? And if we believe these rights natural are they not natural to all people? If natural to all, then shouldn't our government, a government that respects natural rights, also at a minimum respect the natural rights of people in foreign countries, US citizen or otherwise? Or are the principles upon which the country was founded, tied only to the earth on which it is rooted?

I think the OP was referring to building blue-prints. Where I work all our drawings are in a single unit, inches. Any drawing that might be seen by the customer will have inches and then the millimeter equivalent in brackets for reference, e.g. 1.000 [25.4].

The Soap Opera Effect originated from TV performance not theater performance. Modern LCD TVs have refresh rates between 120-240Hz in addition to built in motion correction hardware. You can take the any source and basically make it look like a Soap Opera, smooth and fluid. For many people, myself included, this is very distracting. Maybe I am just old, and use to seeing certain types of formats, but when I see a smooth and fluid movie it looks odd.

Personally, I turn off all the motion correction hardware on my TV. I choose to watch TV has it was intended by the creator. General Hospital is smooth and fluid while Hawaii Five O not so much. I have a PS3 set to output 24p, so it also will not perform any video processing, and I can watch a movie in it's most raw form.

On a 120Hz LCD TV there are not juddering pans, painful transitions, or any other negatives associated with watching a movie in the theater. If you have never watched a 24 FPS movie on a properly configured modern entertainment system then don't be so quick to judge the desire to retain the ‘film look’.

No problem, as long as they are off because most of the components are going to be designed for much higher temperatures than 60C. The specified operating temperature is based a powered device, likely running at higher than normal power dissipation, and should have some head room for reliability for the weakest link (display, battery, processor, etc). If you turn the device off, than it becomes a matter of hot storage and not hot operating. Typically, in military electronics the hot storage temperature is about 30C higher than the hot operating temperature. You obviously don't have military grade devices, but many of the internal components have similar temperature ranges.

From a storage standpoint it is highly unlikely that you will permanently damage ICs, IMO. I would be more concerned about a device with an LCD display being damaged by temperature before any other component. Typically, the LCD itself is robust but many of the films that are required for LCD performance can be sensitive to high temperature.

Bottom line is storing you devices in the car is fine as long as they are off, and I would keep them out of direct sunlight.

Could be hotter than that depending on color, size, number of windows, and where it is parked. Many military electronics have to be designed for hot storage up to +85C. An example situation is where a plane is parked in the sun, on the tarmac (which reflects more heat), in the desert, on the hottest day ever, in the early afternoon when air temperatures peak.

Well considering 3 frames is about 3 GB of data, I would guess it takes that long to write the data to a harddisk. Accordingly, to the article they are still working on filtering out the data they do/don't want.

I have my PS3 setup to output 24p with a 120 Hz LCD TV. The difference between watching a movie in the theater and at home is night and day. I don't see any of the issues at home that are prevalent in the theater, but I still get that characteristic low fps film look. As well, the brightness of a modern LCD TV allows for significantly more contrast than is possible in the theater. I simply can't enjoy going to the theater anymore, and 48 fps won't change that.

Yes home video is typically 60 fps, and the increased frame rate makes it much smoother and fluid. You can see the effect of this on most modern 120/240Hz LCD TVs. If you turn on the motion correction features it will make any source look smooth and fluid, even film, giving the appearance as though it was shot using a 'handy cam'.

I am for freedom, and if I choose to exercise my freedoms in a legal but socially unacceptable manner, I understand society cannot stop me but nor is society required to embrace my behavior.

Your behavior, dress, and speech means everything in the real world. For people we don't know, just met, or see passing by we judge them based on these characteristics. Welcome to the real world. You are free to dress like a thug, even if you have an 200 IQ and use your genius to clone puppies, but I am also free to look down on you because of how you dress. I don't know you any more than the similarly dressed thug who stole my TV, so why would you expect me to treat you any differently if you choose to dress and act in the same way?

Likewise, if you want to skateboard in public or someones private property it is unrealistic to believe you won't be judged or questioned by the public or property owners over your actions. Don't want to have problems, stay on your own property or go to the skate park where it is socially acceptable to skate. Don't have a skate park or want to skate in public, fine but accept that your actions will draw unwanted attention and assume the responsibility of exercising your freedom.