Mirrored surface. The visibility tradeoff is on the defender's side, because you're going to see them anyway: they'll be radiating heat. So the lasers would likely be terribly ineffective. You need some kind of kinetic weapon, or maybe radiation from a sufficiently close range.

The first thing to do is constrain the question. "What would naval combat look like" would have a very different answer in 500BC than it does today. So let's assume that you mean, in the next few years.

The battlefield has the characteristics that movement is free, but acceleration is generally not; there is a complex set of small accelerations constantly acting on the combatants, and those forces are constantly varying with time; the environmental accelerations get substantially larger as the combatant's proximity to a large body increases, and also substantially larger as the combatant enters any atmosphere (and the closer in, the denser the atmosphere so the larger the acceleration); vision is essentially unimpeded except in the vicinity of relatively large bits of debris (somewhat larger than the combatant vessels); detection is simple because all manned or powered objects will radiate heat, and that cannot be particularly well masked within the laws of thermodynamics and both human and machine endurance. In the near future, we will not have the ability to accelerate for long periods of time or at high rates, except downwards (towards a reasonably close planet or star), because chemical and nuclear rockets have to carry fuel, and other known methods of propulsion (such as solar sails or electric propulsion like ion engines) generate low levels of thrust.

These characteristics favor a few combat methods. Long-range rockets, probably with warheads of some combination of boulders (resistant to weapons trying to destroy them) and pebbles (also resistant to being destroyed, and capable of doing damage over a broader area, but potentially could be armored against), would be the major weapons systems. Most likely, these would involve a short, fast boost followed by a long coast with the booster discarded, followed by last-minute maneuvering to hit the target - all of these characteristics intended to make the weapon less visible, and thus the reaction too late. There are some circumstances where rail guns or even low-recoil gatling-type cannon might be handy, such as in close-in combat around asteroids/planetary rings.

Because ships can be detected a long way off, but maneuver takes a lot of time (because acceleration costs heavily), it's likely that most of the combat will be very slow by modern standards. It might take days for two ships to fight a battle, with long range shots starting the action, followed by closing slowly once the long range ammo was gone, followed by either boarding (think like the boarding pods on B5 that attached to the hull and then burned through) or the aforementioned rail guns or other kinds of small, fast ballistic projectiles. Mines would be immensely popular, because they use almost no power and thus generate almost no heat. If they only transmit, and do not receive, their radio signature would also be quite small, so they would be very difficult to detect, but could still be command as well as proximity detonated. They would probably be nuclear, because that would increase the destructive radius substantially (especially from radiation and EMP effects; blast would be a minor issue unless the mine was right on top of a combatant, because there's no fluid medium to transmit the pressure).

So basically, in the near future, it would likely look a lot like Napoleonic naval combat.

If only there were some mechanism to ensure those who need the energy most would be guaranteed to get it, while those who need it less would be encouraged to consume less. We could call it a market, and combined with a ready mechanism for the exchange of value, it would make us all better off. Alternately, of course, we can simply assume that people capable of and willing to grasp and maintain the power of the state not only do so with only our best interests at heart, but that they are so wise and knowledgeable as to know the right course of action in every case, so that they can mandate it, as the people directly involved in the situation clearly cannot be wise enough to know their own interests.

I used to really respect your opinion, but the reason now escapes me. I suppose, though, that it may do some good to mention that the Supreme Court's current interpretation of the interstate commerce clause is such that if they were in fact to manufacture incandescent bulbs, in their own house for their own use, the government could still come take them. Well, no, it probably won't do any good. People, it seems, are fine to tolerate creeping totalitarianism forever, so long as it creeps at a rate that doesn't inconvenience them personally.

I realize that. I was just thinking of something recent and technical enough that /. readers would get the analogy. The whole point was that the precautionary principle inherently favors overreaction and hysteria, rather than thinking. The OP was an example of that: having conceived of a truly aweful worst case scenario, without regard to whether or not it is reasonable that it could happen, let's overthrow the world order just in case. It's an example of the point of "economics in one lesson," as well, since the OP completely fails to take into account that the remedies proposed may themselves impose catastrophic outcomes.

The best research indicates that public keys can be trivially broken. Therefore if you don't make me CEO of your ecommerce company and pay me a hundred million dollars a year in salary, your customers will all be hacked and you will be bankrupt. This is in essence the analog of the precautionary principle argument that you are making, and it's bunk.

But so far as I know, soldiers haven't been quartered on civilians. It would take that to violate the 3rd amendment.

Long before the PATRIOT Act. Actually, the 3rd may be the only amendment in the Bill of Rights that hasn't been essentially abrogated.

Actually, I didn't. I had an Xserve with 10.5 and later 10.6 server on it, but it's really not a fantastic server OS. Or at least it wasn't. Again, though, it doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me if they put a big push behind it, either.

So not in OCIO, then?