It would certainly create an audible boom for miles and miles, but it looks like they're talking about the air blast in terms of actual damage, not in terms of people being aware of it. I suspect that something like that would have to be damn close to being able to shatter windows at ~9,500 feet. (the actual location you input is offset by a km, so it's slightly more than just 9k feet away)

Within the military community, you're absolutely correct, but politicians are rarely held to the same standard. If Joe Biden shot someone without provocation, Obama wouldn't face any problems but pressure to fire Biden and have him stand trial. If Private Joe Snuffy shoots someone for the hell of it, his Platoon Leader's getting fired.

That is incorrect. Shoving is the answer. Shoving will protect you from the terrible secret of space.

Make it compatible with Seattle's light rail and you've got a deal!

Damn dude. Best of wishes.

...the cost of getting your yard mowed in my neighborhood jumped from $50 to $60 the day the X-Box 360 was released.  I guess teenage boys are too single-minded to know about sales tax.

<oldfart>In my day, we had to mow 10 lawns to get an Atari cartidge.</oldfart>

When rolling down a 1/2 mile steep hill, I've managed to get my $250 hybrid bike up to 39MPH. Can't QUITE break 40, but 39 is with the whole frame shuddering and wobbling in a pretty frakkin scary way anyway, so I've never dared push it any further. I'm also carrying about 20 pounds of gear (change of clothes, computer, etc). A "real" $1200 unladen road bike would probably bust 45 fairly easily down the same hill, if you could find a cyclist stupid enough to try it.

If he spent an extra $100 on shoes, he might make 46, possibly even 47 if he dropped an extra $500 shoes made of mousefartium or whatever ultralight material is in vogue right now. (I use jogging sneakers and pedal baskets).

So, "max speed" of my bike (if I were selling it as a concept car) would be "around 50MPH", and the road bike would be "around 55MPH".

Your apparent accuracy obviously shows that your marketing skills need work.

Given that, this device probably really maxes out at about 2MPH, and that's for a Japanese citizen. Not known for excessive height. Put my 6'+ American frame on that bad boy, he's gonna have a more little trouble staying upright. :)

Now, overall, I like this idea if it could get up to about 10MPH, especially with as small as it folds. "But, wait," I hear you saying, "there are folding bicycles, too, and they have larger wheels and no need for a recharge! And they'll probably be 1/10 the cost of this thing!"

Oh, yeah, you're right. Never mind.

The solution is to give in an AI, and give it the personality of a 2 or 3 year old toddler. Every couple blocks it will suddenly stop and scream "No! I don't want to go anymore! Carry me!". That way you'd get a nice mix of convenience and unplanned physical exercise.

Perhaps you should work out the numbers a little more carefully.

They say that you can go to Thailand and have sex in a statistically similar way to this group of people, and "only" have 0.9% chance of getting HIV. I very much doubt the entire study population went out and had frequent sex with random strangers for three years.

No, 68 for IT operations across multiple datacenters sounds about right. 2 shifts during the week, 2 during the weekend (at least), and a minimum of 2 operators per shift makes for 8 operators needed for a 24/7 environment. Looking around online, it looks like they have 4 US datacenters, 1 Latin America datacenter, 1 European datacenter, 1 Korean datacenter, 4 Chinese datacenters, and 1 Taiwanese datacenter. With a support staff of 68 and 12 DCs, they have an average of 5 and 2/3s operators per DC. They actually seem understaffed to me.

It's probably not the whole story, though. Someone else posted in this story that at least some of their DCs are not ran by Blizzard, but rather by local telcos and ISPs, so the number of 68 operators may not actually include all of their support staff. It's also possible that they're running on 1 operator per shift at some or all locations. It's not recommended, but if the DC is small enough and management doesn't care if Server Foo doesn't get looked at for 2 hours because their lone operator is working on Server Bar instead (or sleeping, because it's night shift and he doesn't have anyone to smack him if he falls asleep), then it'll work out just fine for them.

Why in the world would anyone ban hoodies, and how would they stay in business if they actively enforced such a ban? Seriously, that's like banning jeans in your store.

Not quite the same. Most store security cameras are located at head height or higher, making the faces of people wearing hoodies nearly invisible. I don't know about the UK, but in the US, the courts are over-worked enough that the police are likely to drop any shoplifting case unless there is solid evidence that the person they have in custody actually tried to steal something. Anyone caught shoplifting in a store wearing a hoodie is unlikely to be prosecuted, unless they did it right in front of a security guard, so banning them is an understandable move.

That's not entirely true; you can test crowd control powers, damage mitigation powers, and self-buffs, too.

geez, what did people do before facebook to let groups of friends know about important events in their life? i'm stumped...

I forgot about him, you're right. He was in fact not a bad Governor, although he did do a few things I didn't like (closing the beer tents at the State Fair was one).

So it's OK to listen outside your bedroom window and record that, but not use a laser to do so?

The difference between these 12 states and others is that the others allow only one party to know the recording is going on.

I believe in all cases, recording a conversation you are not obviously present at is wiretapping (or some other name thereof)