Setting aside the idea that it doesn't matter whether there are decoys in the payload of an ICBM if you shoot it down during boost phase for the moment, effective decoys aren't trivial for a country like North Korea to add to their vehicles due to weight.

Good analysis of this issue is at Arms Control Wonk (there is a particularly good discussion in the comments section).

On the other hand, Google IPO'd at $85 in 2004 and is at just under $600 now.

On the other hand, non-ionizing radiation is also used in microwave ovens. (And radars, which is why large radars have hazard zones.)

Traditional wifi uses omni-directional antennas that propagate in spheres (roughly). If you want to see a good example, turn on a few light bulbs, and notice how they all overlap in coverage. Fifteen light bulbs will have a *lot* of overlap, and you'll start stepping on each other. 2.4GHz wifi is particularly bad this way, due to neighboring channels overlapping.

Directional antennas propagate in cones (roughly, again). A good example of this is a flashlight. You can turn on a whole lot of flashlights before you start seeing the same amount of overlapping. The downside is that it's hard to light up a room with a flashlight, so you have to start doing a lot of tricks to move a portable device around but maintain a connection.

I can't really explain RF propagation with a car analogy, so you'll have to settle for flashlights and light bulbs.

I know it's traditional to skip reading the article, but the summary points out that this will be a directional-only signal. Directional signals generally don't have saturation problems, because they propagate (to simplify) in cones rather than spheres.

I hear C-17s are also pressurized. In fact, pretty much every plane that regularly flies far enough to be of use in any rescue would be pressurized. It's not the 1940s any more.

That's not 100% true. It would be in a flat world, or a world where all trade was between two parties, but the international system is much more complicated than that.

Oh, don't worry. Nobody clicks through to the articles anyway.

You can blame this on Sprint's roll-out of the iPhone 5, coming next month.

Yes. According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law ) this is indeed a criminal offense (at least some of the time) in England.

Wow, 1978? That's only ten years after the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming.

Works of the US government are public domain, and thus can't be released under the GPL. That's the copyright issue mentioned in the summary.

(I know people here don't read the articles, but don't they at least read the summaries?)

As an American soldier, I'll come out and say that I'd rather the Taliban shot the robot than the real medic. View these like bomb-disposal robots: they're not intended to be better at the actual task (inspecting a bomb or dragging a casualty) than a human, they're intended to do these tasks in situations where you'd hesitate to risk a human. Or, given that most medics I've known will take the risk anyway, at least give the human another option.

Battery life.

16.5GB ought to be enough for anyone.