I thought that US government activities have been exempt from state taxation for quite a long time, starting with McCulloch v. Maryland way back in 1819 and affirmed and expanded down to the present day. I can see so many bases on which the NSA, for Jebus' sake, could argue that they live above mere state taxation laws. Any genuine attorneys want to comment?

I had started to babysit a wonderful dog for a friend. The dog liked to sit under my desk when I was working. One day, my Mini wouldn't boot. Dog toothmarks were evident on the low voltage (thank heavens) side of the power block, making it pretty easy to troubleshoot. As he got used to his new surroundings, no further wire chewing, but it could have been a disaster for all concerned. My animal house friends tell me rabbits are the worst, like frustrated EEs with buck teeth...

Anyway, think about animals, little kids, etc. when you're electrifying your furniture.

Thanks, your comment is interesting. True, the spacecraft rotational inertia is put on the momentum wheel bearings when they're used to reorient the spacecraft. The force exerted on the bearings should be proportional to the slew rate - faster slew, more force. You'd think a mission like Kepler would have mainly very small slew rates (high pointing accuracy = low angular excursion rates). Vacuum effects on lubricants, for sure. Does anybody use magnetic bearings on spacecraft momentum wheels? Particularly for high pointing accuracies on celestial 'fixed' targets that don't need high slew rates, these would seem to be the ticket. No wear because no physical contact.

These seem to be a relatively common source of woe for spacecraft that use them. I understand it's moving parts and all that, but surely in 0-G there can't be *that* much wear on bearings. Anyway, there seems to be plenty of work on magnetic bearings for momentum wheels, which would eliminate mechanical wear. Or is it not the bearings that fail? Can any /. readers shed some light on why these things seem to pack it in so frequently?

I watched when a vehicle he built launched launched on a successful ISS resupply mission. I've driven one of his Tesla S cars. Don't know if he's the next Steve Jobs, but gotta say, he's actually making things happen. Beats posting as AC on /., don't you think?

Thanks for describing a genuinely constructive action many of us could emulate. I would much rather contribute propellant to an American student's life launch than pour more fiscal gasoline on the political bonfire by contributing to lobbying groups, even those whose values I endorse.

And anyway, 3,120,000cm = 31,200m = 31.2km

of Ray Harryhausen, I watched Jason and the Argonauts again this evening. I first saw it when I was about 20, and I've never been able to look at a skeleton quite the same way since. What a talent he had!

This is exactly right. Show them the before/after videos, tell them how proprietary your algorithms are, and give them a market analysis that shows why somebody will buy your tech/company, etc. The VCs want to invest and then transfer the risk asap to an acquiring entity or to the public sector (IPO). They don't care about the technology beyond its ability to get to that outcome.

The inverse correlation between incubation period and symptom severity is what one would expect from successful in-the-wild pathogens. I get that evolutionary processes have given us the pathogen behavior you describe.

However, I don't think what we currently know is that's all that's possible. I suspect the set of potential (engineerable) pathogenic behavior is broader than what we observe in the wild, and broader than what we currently think probable.

Your statement "Engineered bioweapons cannot propagate" seems (to me, anyway) unlikely to be valid given the complexity of the systems involved and human creativity. I regard it as only a matter of time, just as the transition from chemical to nuclear explosives was only a matter of the time needed to understand new physics and do the engineering, once the motivation was there. "Cannot" isn't the bet I'd place.

That said, it's silly to think that intrusively monitoring bioresearchers will help anyone but the security theater types. It will only add friction that will delay beneficial applications of the research.

because nobody could distribute the daily HF etchant load so as to kill very many people. Contrast that with the Black Death, which killed 1/3 of Europe through the movement of fleas on rats on ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

Chemweapons have to be distributed and don't extend their effects very far beyond their delivery locus. Bioweapons can propagate. Engineer a latency between infection and onset of symptoms of say, 100 days into an airborne pathogen with high clinical mortality and watch it spread far and wide before it surfaces.

I understand that such bioengineering may be nontrivial, but to say that "no biological weapon could ever be as effective as a chemical one" is, I believe, incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shoot-down

it's *when*!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura

I do think we're talking about the same thing.

There's been a lot of opportunity for space technology to have developed from everyday advancements, rather than the reverse. That hasn't been the course of events.

When a development modality that would *seem* feasible doesn't happen despite long opportunity to do so, I start thinking maybe it really isn't as feasible - or as efficient - as what actually does occur.

I think reality disagrees with you. The tech you listed was pushed into being by military, cost-is-no-object requirements. GPS happened because the US military needed a precision location system, and a space-based system was the only way to make it happen. Integrated circuits, which led to microprocessors and all the rest, happened because the US military had to miniaturize guidance and control electronics for ballistic missile systems. All of the decades of aerospace R&D which SpaceX is building upon to such good effect in reducing launch costs were undertaken by noncommercial, mostly cost-insensitive nation/state participants.

Basically, the $0.75 GPS chip in your iPhone happened in response to the prior existence of the GPS system. I doubt that Steve Jobs at his best would have been successful in persuading the US DoD to put up GPS. But with GPS already in the sky, he had a firm base on which to monetize the mass-market potential of the system (as did others - just using Jobs/iPhone as one example).

This is how it's worked over the centuries: human conflict drives development of "stuff" that ordinary consumers/businesses could never get funded through their own economic models. Then people think of wider uses for the "stuff", and (manufacturing volume + tech advance) make the capabilities cheap.

So while you may think it more efficient to have space technology develop as a consequence of everyday advancements, it seems that in fact, everyday advancements more often proceed from the incredibly expensive cutting-edge wacko development work undertaken for reasons completely outside the purview of everyday economics. I think efficiency is a complicated and subtle thing.