So would a mechanism that splattered everyone with banana cream pie be considered a "dirty bomb"?

What about the hard UVs given off by CFL backlights? They have the same exact problem with CRTs once the phosphor layer starts to break down.

Actually, an electronic hammer/pin is what I meant. I misspoke. Although as someone else mentioned, a solenoid could work just as well.

There was a similar scene in one of the Timothy Dalton Bond movies back in the late 80s, except his gun was a sniper rifle packaged to look like a camera.

It's not tough to protect electronics from external radio interference, especially interference from something expected to be portable.

I really do appreciate it when I see TV shows actually get this one right.

A defective gun can be very dangerous. Only a disassembled gun is not dangerous.

Huh? An "absolutist" position on gun control would either be to have absolutely no gun control at all, or to completely outlaw all guns. Just about the only people in the first category are revolutionary nuts in Idaho or Montana who really don't care what the government does anyway, because they don't want to be a part of it. So that leaves the second category, which while just as nuts, actually seem to get some positive time in the press. Are you suggesting those who want to outlaw all guns are the same who want to outlaw abortion?

Just how do you propose you do that. The trouble isn't about false positives or negatives in the mechanism. The trouble is that there is any mechanism at all. As the article mentioned, any "smart" weapon requires a processor, memory, and a battery to power it. Chances are you're also going to be replacing a mechanical trigger with an electronic one, so all your existing ammunition is useless. You're disconnecting the trigger from a spring-loaded hammer, and thus introducing a new failure point in a previously robust, mechanical system.

This is surprising because the federal government is not supposed to be taxed. Utah has enacted a piece of discriminatory legislature that allows the selective taxation of power being supplied to government and military installations such as this NSA one.

The issue is that this is only going to be replacing a single fiber. You never run a single fiber except short loops to your endpoint customers. This could potentially replace the point-to-point links for the "last mile", until such time as you get enough subscribers to make it worth your time to trench the land and run a bundle of fiber.

Huh? I have a 15" laptop with a quad-core CPU, 12GB of memory, and a 2GB Quadro chip, and I can easily run 7 hours before having to plug in.

Batteries are not supposed to discharge at speed anywhere near that of supercapacitors. The trouble is that batteries are basically just a way to control and limit a ton of stored chemical energy. They're just a catalyst to a reaction to occur at a low temperature, and capture the energy released from that reaction. Many battery chemistries have a tendency to go into thermal runaway once they hit a certain temperature, as the catalyst is no longer necessary to allow the reaction. Now granted, it's not going to be the single, high speed short of a capacitor, but it's also going to release a whole lot more energy in a relatively short time.

Are you suggesting any company that brings a viable solution to market is basically going to be printing money?

You're already running 2kW into that room to power various bits of electronics, and you still need the space heater? Is this room uninsulated or something?