There hasn't been a Presidential alert, but it's part of the EBS system for cases like World War III or Alien invasions.

Suicide isn't a subset of Homicide, but even if HALF of those were suicides, there would still be more gun homicides than everything else combined.

According to the CDC there were 19,392 gun related suicides, so over twice as many as homicides.

Sometimes the NRA column in the TeaParty newsletter isn't the most reliable source of facts.

I take it you've never visited the FBI's website.

The statistics conservatives were excited about a few months ago was that Rifles (not handguns, shotguns, or other) were responsible for fewer deaths than "blunt objects" (which includes clubs, hammers, etc). Of course this morphed into "Hammers kill more people than guns", but according to the statistics, guns make up over two thirds of all homicides.

And yet Israel was still using regular cheap metal detectors and let me keep my shoes on....

But do people other than computer professionals actually disable javascript? Since firefox receives statistics on every button clicked, I'm guessing the usage is so low that accidental clicks make up a good percentage. At that point it's a failure of a user interface to provide extra options that are never used.

Presumably they'd play soccer on whatever field you put them on as long as it's flat enough.

So a battle field would probably be too rough and they'd fall over.

Exactly - I doubt he'd get such fun reactions if he sat in the corner of a room and aimed his camera at people (say like the surveillance he's trying to bring attention to), but his videos show that he's clearly trying to violate peoples' personal space by getting in their face. He's probably get the same reactions if he shoved his shoe at them.

That's one way to put it - the other way would be to actually listen to what he said which was that he supported giving weapons to rebels, but we need to be careful who we give them to. Since Al-Queda is against most governments, you could say any rebel group is "Al-Queda associated".

It's also not "the DEFINITION of treason" since "Al-Queda associated rebels" are not the enemy of the US. Supporting them could be a problem (probably end up with genocide either way), but it could also make them friendly to the US

The prototype also stayed within a foot of the ground which makes me wonder if it can even fly or was just able to hover. Most toy electric helicopters flying around in the mall are more impressive than this demo.

Sure, Plug in the bulb, connect through adhoc network with the bulb, enter SSID and WPA key.

Who says the switch on the wall has to control power to the bulb? Seems kind of silly to be routing power through all the walls anyways.

It seems you've already found similar technology useful! You find that 5 minutes is a good amount of time after you've parked your car to have lights - now how about expanding that thinking. Maybe the bedroom light could turn on at night after you shut off the TV in the living room.

The advantage to these are they use already common and existing technology. Most places already have a wifi network setup - no need to set up a redundant one for the lighting. WiFi is an established standard with plenty of devices.

No one's suggesting the only way to turn on the lights should be to use the smart phone - it's just one option that can be made available. You can bump the switch with your elbow when your arms are full OR you can have the lights turn on when your phone is in range after you come home OR automatically turn on when your garage opens and it's dark at the end of the day OR you can turn them on from a button in your car OR wire them up to a motion sensor somewhere completely different.

There are endless possibilities once you have the technology in place, but you're limited to very few options if you're required to flip a switch on a wall to control your lights. But I get it - smart phones are complicated and those damn kids use them too much already so no one should have more technology - especially not nerds on a tech news site.

The main difference is the LIFX ones are direct wifi whereas others on the market typically require a base station of some sort that controls the bulbs and acts as a bridge.

LED bulbs (even with extra electronics) are already much more power efficient than other bulbs. They also have some definite advantages such as changing colors and lifespan. Controlling the lighting can do a lot to improve the atmosphere of a space. It's easy to change intensity and color of LEDs, so pretty much anything is possible. You can have a rave in your apartment or a flickering fire in your den or just a low blue nightlight in your hallway.

Honestly I'm amazed at the resentment of so many /. users to being able to control their environments electronically. Nerds are the ones that embrace technology and push the cool ways to automate simple tasks like switching light switches BEFORE it gets to the mainstream. Guess people are getting old and starting to fear change and these new fangled smart phone connected devices.

The LIFX ones haven't been available that long (except for the kickstarters). It's a more complete solution than others that have been available.

Why bother to have switches at all when you can have lights controlled by your smart phone? Could even do some cool hacks so the lights come on automatically when your phone is in range and it's during hours that would be dark.