I don't know when did you learn that, but no physicist worth their salt would say that by mid 1930s at the latest, I'd hope.

These days you buy a radio on a chip, who cares about variable caps? It's digitally tuned. If you really insist, use a varicap.

There's this moment when you're acting out when you cross from plausible belief to total, in-your-face disbelief. Does NSA seriously imply that such an attack would have lasting consequences? Do they really think that there wouldn't be many BIOS recovery solutions popping up left, right and center literally within hours? My bet is that within a week there'd be a thriving BIOS recovery business going on all around us, and the damage would be well contained in spite of whatever bullshit the clueless media would be spewing around.

I'd like some thing tangible to back it up, since I think it's bullshit. There may have been some bioses like that, maybe even popular ones, but this is not the case anymore since at the minimum such a thing would need at least a minimal USB stack with it - it wouldn't be anywhere near "small" anymore.

The real deal is not BIOS or anything, but XP going out of support, and plenty of XP-running hardware simply has no driver support for Windows 7. At work we still have a bunch of XP-running machines that we will replace simply because it's cheaper to replace them than have me and/or another IT guy here spend time doing driver testing on obsolete hardware.

Same applies to a gun. You can take someone down with a gun if you don't care much for your life, same as if that person was good with a knife. Arguably close-quarters gun use requires less training to be lethal, but man, I've seen rather low-key (not para/military!) people who, with a knife, are pretty much unapproachable without the approacher being dealt serious damage. Arguably, people might be more inclined to run after someone with a knife, but hey, that's only a psychological effect and has no source in reality: they can be taken out by a skilled knife-wielder just as if he/she had a gun.

I've seen a recording of an experiment done with zip ties with real human participants, and that's why I even bother to mention them. I'd say they are a diversion so big that it almost guarantees untouchability. Scenario: you run up to someone and in about 400ms they have a zip tie tightly wrapped around their neck. Then you move on to the next target, as long as they are 20-30ft away. Whoever was next to that first person who is now in the process of collapsing will help them first, they won't he chasing no assailant. In the right hands and circumstances a bunch of zip ties is almost a perfect weapon.

To me that's all within the same order of magnitude, so no real increase. It's all hovering about 0.1 shooters/million.

Are you nuts? How can you, with a straight face, recommend a product that you can't fucking buy? There's no "buy now" link on their site. End of story. It's vaporware as far as individual users are concerned. Their sales people would probably laugh you out of the room if you called them up and said "well, I need it for my old mum".

There are two kinds of software: software that you can individually buy by instantly paying online, and software that you can't. The latter usually is a big fucking mess in some way. That's been my experience. The exceptions are few and far between. Usually the reason it's not available for instant purchase is precisely that it's a mess so bad that making it easily available would expose it for the crap it often is.

Mainly because MS Office by default drags in the entire, unwanted in this case, operating system with it.

Practically speaking, though, MS Office 2010 works great on wine, even on OS X, so I wouldn't worry. And I personally would NOT advise anyone to use MS Office for Mac. It's a disaster - all the purported compatibility benefits simply aren't there, since it's a separate code base. If you really want office on OS X or Linux, use it via wine. Otherwise, use libreoffice and be done with it.

WTF? What are you talking about? You install it and you use it. That's about I've ever done with firefox. What's your problem?

Seriously? I upgraded my laptop from 10.6 to 10.8 to 10.9. The few problems I've had in 10.6 to 10.8 upgrade, were only due to open source software lagging behind and not being Cocoa and 64 bit ready. Everything else worked fine. Once tcl/tk and wxWindows were up to snuff, I could update macports. It was smooth sailing otherwise.

I've upgraded two other machines from 10.6 straight to 10.9. It took way less than a day in spite of it being a major upgrade. I've mostly just let it install, and then let it install all the app store updates necessary. IIRC the Messages needed to have the jabber account removed and re-added, otherwise it couldn't connect. Hardly a major issue, and I can't imagine a minor update, say from 10.9 to 10.9.1 would take much time at all. It never did. The only thing I need to do on my "ancient" laptop is to re-run the TRIM-enabling script for the SSD. That's all. There were some minor glitches in various Apple applications due to Mavericks, but this required no work at all on my end to fix - just wait for Apple to release necessary updates.

Faronics is a place in decline - demonstrably so. They can't fucking manage sell their stuff online! I mean, come the fuck on, it's 2013, not 1993. If a company is irresponsible enough to have their online shopping links simply broken, then they may, from my perspective, go to hell. I don't trust their technical prowess. They are clueless. They just don't get it.

What you say about kids is mostly true, but the blame lies almost always on the parents, sometimes on the school rules as well. Say, those who defend themselves from the bullies are often facing negative repercussions from the fucking school!

They must be idiots, then, since at-home reloading is very common in the U.S., you have many catalogs and sites selling reloading supplies. I've yet to hear that the reloads are somehow fundamentally inferior.

I think this would be news, unless you really talk about "cases" as in "federal court cases" since it's is illegal under federal law to carry a firearm into any establishment that serves alcohol. If you think people would do so openly, think again. They'd be arrested in short order.