Here is a link for a previous slashdot article on something similar:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/04/0258221/using-classical-music-as-a-form-of-social-control

But maybe it is in fact just driving the youth away and not just criminal types:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/05/11/30/0021211/driving-away-teens-with-high-frequency-noise

"Agricultural robots may have a similar effect. By making labor intensive crops (strawberries, fruit, vegetables, etc.) more profitable, production will shift in that direction instead of crops like grain that require little labor. But since not all tasks can be easily automated, the demand for human farm labor may go up instead of down."

There is also a health benefit of using more robots for harvesting fruits: No E. coli in the harvested crops. Robots don't have to go to the toilet. And sometimes human labour don't wash their hands afterwards. And people actually get very sick and some die from E. coli infections. So I for one welcome our new robotic servants.

"Google's new language landed with a loud thud, causing lots of interesting debates about the best place to stick semicolons..." I did not RTFA but a search on the page for "semi" did not show any hits on semicolons. But then again. I know where they can stick their semicolons. But if I write it my post will be caught by the profanity filter.

Are you saying that a country can only be attacked by a state-actor? Or are you saying that a war can only be waged against a state-actor? Both statements are obviously non-sense.

The argument of the GP is: Invasion of Afghanistan -> no terrorist attacks in the USA

The argument is not that Afghanistan has attacked the USA.

"There is no way that the military is going to permit autonomous combatant units. At least, not without having a stake put through its brain."

You are implicitly assuming that the USA will be fighting inferior enemies in the future and thus will be more concerned about bad PR than coming out on top. A potential future conventional conflict with a heavily armed opponent capable of inflicting millions of casualties will change that (most likely China but there are also other potential candidates). And in such a situation the US military will of course use autonomous combat units - just like the other side will.

I prefer to live on Lunar Standard Time (LST). That way I will only have to work say 9 days a year (there are 12 Lunar days per year).
.
.
.
The only problem is that a Lunar day and night is approximately 30 Earth Days...

"If i look at recent wars the need to disguise a single tank is not there. On the contrary. Usually putting a tank somewhere has been a show of force. The typical IED rigged on the roadside will not be operated by somebody having a infrared optics, sitting 2km away in a cold-war style observation vehicle/plane, but somebody with perfect visible light view on the vehicle."

You are looking at todays asymmetrical conflicts where western powers fight 3rd world armies and guerilla armies. These armies have no real capacity to take on western armies in conventional warfare. And they are not really a military threat against western armies and societies in terms of their capacities for destruction. Let me illustrate this: In Iraq the coalition has had a total of 4800 military fatalities including accidents while there have been 2700 coalition military fatalities in Afghanistan so far. These two wars thus add up to 7500 coalition military fatalities so far.

Compared to major conventional wars the casualty rates in these conflicts are therefore simply insignificant. Your suggestion is to use (most of) the limited military development resources on saving a few hundred or thousand extra soldiers in such conflicts. My view is that the main weight must be on preparing for major conventional (and nuclear) conflicts in the relative near future (~15-40 years). The likelihood of such conflicts is of course much lower than Iraq/Afghanistan type conflicts. But the expected casualties can be many orders of magnitude higher. For example a future conflict between western powers and a modernized Chinese military might only be won (or lost!) at a cost of several or maybe tens (or in worst case hundreds) of millions of fatalities in the west.

Now, I am not a warmonger but I do believe that peace is best kept by a strong military alliance of democracies. Or as an old Roman saying goes: If you wish for peace, prepare for war (Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in De Re Militari).

But why would the British write "USA RULEZ"? You know BAE Systems is not American;-)

But maybe "RULE BRITANNIA". And if they have enough tanks they could add "BRITANNIA RULES THE HILLS" (now that those damned american colonists rule the waves:-)

"We must meet this threat with our courage, our valor, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy *now and always*!"

- Sky Marshal Dienes

But how much extra will you spend for say a 2% points reduction in risk? Let us assume a crew of 5 astronauts. Will you spend 50 million USD extra per launch for that? This means that you are spending 10 million USD to remove a 2% of an astronaut dying. Or on average 500 million USD to save an astronaut.

Of course my numbers are pulled out of my a** and there are also other costs of mission failure. And we don't even know if NASA can provide better safety. But the point is that NASA is spending a disproportionate amount of money on safety. Money that could have saved a very large number of people if invested in improving safety/health in other areas.