The one that you (or someone you trust) can effectively manage.

Not to say that DIY'ers can't get around this, but all them fancy guns need fancy bullets. Home made guns will also need decent bullets. So, why not tighten up bullet control:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZrFVtmRXrw

(It's Chris Rock)

I realize lots of hunters, etc reload their own, but I'm not aware of too many DIY'ers who are able to make reliable primers (might be wrong) - so maybe just control the sale and distribution of primers?

Like ice sculptures, live performances, draft deals, verbal negotiations - there are things that need to be done that lead to better things, but in themselves have no value if kept and (sometimes) can only do harm.

These things would benefit from DRM that render them useless at the will & command of the creator.

The Machine Stops

Getting OSHA / union / bubblewrap parents involved means that those who are capable of helping are not allowed to because of the risk that some idiot gets hurt or damages something.

They have their place and time when things are normal to try and minimize the impact of a disaster, but once that disaster is in full swing, they need to sit down, shut up and let people self-mobilize to get the job done.

In the spring of '97 guys were working heavy equipment for days straight, often by the light of military flares, to build a dike that saved Winnipeg from one of the biggest spring floods in our history (often "stealing" clay/dirt from nearby farms to get the dike to the heights needed, dragging and dumping scrap cars, buses, anything they could find to shore up the water front side from erosion, etc.). Ignoring the union rules, safety rules, land procurement rules, etc. they got it done in time.

After the flood waters receded, then all the compensating processes kicked in to address the shortcomings.

In security circles, doesn't physical access = assumed compromise? Game consoles & "locked" phones, e-Readers, etc. are all compromised within hours of being released to the masses. I think one should be very careful before placing trust in physical access security.

There's a stretch of highway by my place that has these really cool LED lights countersunk into the centre line that I'm sure were marketed as a great way to increase safety. The stretch of highway is a narrow 2 lane non-divided temporary by pass around a construction zone (major interchange being built to no where).

The problem with these fancy LEDs is they are so dim that I actually find myself quite distracted trying to determine if they are in fact glowing. Had they gone with a much lower tech solution of putting countersunk reflectors, my headlights would have gladly lit up the centre line.

Glow in the dark stickers, etc. only work when the surrounding area is really dark, otherwise there just isn't enough contrast.

I hope this tech provides a significant visual contrast or else it will just be a distracting and annoying waste of money.

Owned a 1989 Eagle Vista GT - no power steering, 1989 Honda Civic LX with power steering, and a 1996 Geo Metro with no power steering and now a 2009 Toyota Yaris with power steering. All manual Tx btw. Not sure if the Yaris can come w/out power steering, so not much opinion there, but based on the other 3 - I was safer without power steering.

When the Honda was getting old and would stall (often as I was slowing to a stop at intersections) the sudden loss of power assist in the steering was disconcerting at best, and certainly added effort and therefore time to react as I tried to limp to the side of the road. Neither Metro nor Eagle had that problem.

Looking at failure modes of the smaller cars I've owned - I'll stand by my statement that power steering was a safety hazard.

Funny, it seems the NHTSA actually agrees with me. Allow me to quote:

When specifically answering the "Do cars with ABS stop more quickly than cars without?" question they have this to say:

They then do some hand waving saying some systems may stop a car faster, (BTW, they don't mention "skilled drivers").

The reality is, the difference in stopping distances are minor nits compared to the benefit of steering while breaking - and ABS needs to be advertised as such.

Just to be pedantic - in most situations, ABS will NOT decrease your stopping distance, in fact, by definition not locking your tires reduces friction and actually increases stopping distances. What ABS does do, is enable you to stear around objects, etc while slowing down - which you cannot do if your tires are locked.

Power steering is actually a safety hazard - if you engine fails you will quickly lose the ability to safely steer the vehicle - especially if you are applying the brakes.

For large airlines, that 35lb argument is such a red herring. $1.2 million in fuel savings when spread out per flight has to be so far below the noise floor as to be completely meaningless. Any change in fuel consumption over the year that small can be contributed to so many other factors.

I know I can sometimes flip through a large book that I am very familiar with to find what I'm looking for faster than I can type the words into a search engine - especially when I'm not 100% sure on what word I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I see it. How much fuel does a 747 burn idling while a pilot tries typing in different key words looking for that section he knows deals with the quirk at hand?

On a typical jet carrying 200+ passengers, there is going to be more than 35lbs of weight fluctuation in the level of water retention among the passengers.

Fuel burn is also related to temperature, humidity and wind speed. Will they see the fuel savings when factoring in all that entropy?

Maybe the weight makes a difference on a small 206 Caravan, but for these big birds, call a spade a spade - the pilots want their toys.

Does your right-handed friend also open the cover of books across his body with his right hand?

Actually - he probably does. I observe that people hold books with their left hand and then lift the cover/turn pages with their right. It works because the book cover isn't clipped to the body/pages to limit accidental opening.

I'm not 100% left handed, and have a lot of right handed tendencies (all sports are rh) - I dexterously open books, but sinistrously open CD cases.

Other than smudging the ink from those awful erasable pens, I never payed much attention to products working or not working for us lefties, until CD's came along. Actually, it wasn't until I watched my right handed friend struggle to open a CD case. Somehow he was awkwardly trying to pry the front open with his right hand, which between the case swinging open against the natural movement of the right arm, and somehow gripping the edges of the lid with his left hand as he held the back, was quite entertaining.

For me it was natural to hold the back with my right hand (hinge side on my middle fingers, other side on my thumb) and then grab the front with my left hand (fingers/thumb along top and bottom). The case just opened beautifully.

It is the only tech device I can think of that worked better for us lefties from day one.

If the government is giving pubic $ to companies for research, then the results of the research should be public. Anything else is corporate welfare. Plain and simple.

There are many large organizations in Canada that utilize the SR&ED http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html that offsets various project costs, but I don't see any publication of what knowledge was gained or discoveries were made.