Stick to the liberal arts paths, kids...
You can't get arrested or expelled for writing a pretty poem or sticking a cross in a jar with pee, after all. Just don't draw a picture of a gun.

We can't imagine being 2-10 times as smart as we are now, but then they go on to speculate why a civilization 100-1000 times as smart would or would not do ANYthing?

I think you mean IR. They leak craploads of infrared if the filters aren't just right.

What you said/did was right on.

You're not going to blind your dog. Not unless you can convince it to stare into the beam for a while, and good luck with that. I've heard of a study being done with "pointers" (and that term is very specifically directed at what you can buy in wal-mart/Staples/etc) on cow eyes and even eyes of people that were about to have them removed due to disease... Pointing into their eyes caused no detectable damage. Sorry, i can't cite the source.
As for the LPF guys being rude, keep in mind they daily deal with questions like yours (and they thought you were arguing with them) but more importantly, they deal daily with or even build their own handheld lasers (NOT POINTERS) that have safety switches and are capable of MULTI-WATT output. We're talking, "see that WALL? bang. just shot my laser at it. now you're blind (or permanently vision-damaged) from the reflection from 2 feet away"

pretty funny but if you pay attention to the HUD or the other stuff on the screen, it all changes when they go to night vision. I think this was just edited from other footage about a guy painting planes/helicopters and some footage from Afghanistan or Iraq.

They're reporting closer to 2000 incidents per year. I saw a youtube video of some guys in a cessna flying over a fireworks display and I kid you not, they got lit up from at least 4 separate green laser pointers at very far apart positions in the crowd.
And to be honest, I don't really want to know that my pilot is blocking out part of the visible light spectrum deliberately when he's making a night landing with me in the plane!

More dangerous, if anything. Fortunately, still relatively rare... You don't see them on sale at Staples or Office Max or the checkout counter of Wal-mart.
You can get them, but the sites that sell them are still somewhat specialized. You can get some cheap ones on amazon, but they're not "true" blue. The diodes come out of blu-ray players and SAY they are legal (5mw) but they're such cheapo chinese crap, I have heard some of them are more like 30mw. Very dangerous to your eyes. Especially since their wavelength (405 nanometers) is just barely within our visible spectrum. Our corneas actually block most of that light so what you "see" is a fraction of the energy coming out of them.
The "real" blue ones are 473nm and cost a minimum of $300 if you're lucky. They use a similar IR source getting adjusted by doped crystals to a visible wavelength as the green ones.

I'm just wondering if we (and they) have so many because they'd want to be sure to punch through any kind of SDI/Star Wars missile defense system?

He got the application that you just sent in...

Since they were waiting deliberately for 6.1 instead of "burning" the exploit they found in 6.01, I would assume it's software.

I just want to take a moment to say thanks to the team that did it.

Also want to shout out to Apple, if you'd open things up a bit more, you'd have a lot less people thinking about switching over to Android. I need "Wifi Analyzer" for work, but Steve or Tim decided it's a "Hacking tool" to see db, channel, and MAC addresses, so it's been locked out of the App store for years... It prevents me from updating my iOS versions.

It's only illegal if it's tied to a contract.

In a nutshell, CNET liked the Dish Networks DVR (digital video recorder) and publicly said so.
CBS (Used to stand for Columbia Broadcasting System) is suing Dish.
CBS owns CNET, and said, you can't say nice things about someone we're suing!
So now CES (Consumer Electronics Show) says CNET can no longer have input to decide the winner of the "Best of Show" award because they have a clear (mandated from their parent company) bias.