At 3 per gallon, that only saved me $750 dollars. How much of my tax money did the government spend on it though? Oops.

Fortunately for supporters of the program, the goal wasn't just to save you money on gas. That new car also resulted in a bunch of taxes for the government, in that auto workers were employed and getting taxed on their income. And still buying stuff, resulting in more taxes and employment, and then those people bought stuff (and so on, and so on)

Too many economic arguments are overly-simplified for ideological purposes.

If you look at the statistics of who's rating they list Alaska as a country separate from the US!

Not true, there is very little torque required. A small DC motor is more than sufficient.

Breaking news! Hacking tools called "physical access," "time" and "effort" can be used together to bypass ALL forms of security on EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE, leaving you vulnerable not only to cyber-criminals, but terrorists and pedophiles as well! WIll no-one close this gaping security hole!?!? Does the car industry have no regard for our safety!?!?

I mean seriously, a car's ECU is airgapped from the outside world and has decent physical security. This is not news, and the automotive industry should ignore it for the stupid fluff that it is.

I don't see any hacker's solution a la GPL to get out of this situation (GPLv3 tries a bit but doesn't get the momentum needed. Maybe an LGPL version forbidding patents ?). So the only solution that I see is to do some politics. In US support Lawrence Lessig's efforts against lobbying (Fix Congress First) anywhere else, get involved in your local pirate party (International Pirate Party)

I like the recent Portland meters. I've only once or twice had to wait behind someone who had trouble operating the meter, and I love that they take debit cards, since I usually don't keep a bunch of change on me.

Looks like only documents from 2005 can be requested since the law has a six year clock. Sounds like prosecutorial misconduct that he is demanding documents on every grant. Hope he is penalized for that.

    You should try to live in some of the harsh weather states, like Florida.

    When I was a kid, we'd experience up to 12 hours of power outages about once a month. If it was night time, the most chaos was to look to see if the neighbors lights were on.

    During (and after) hurricanes, it's a given that you will probably expect a prolonged power outage. People get along fine without the need of electricity. You'll find both LEOs and civilians directing traffic at busy intersections. You'll even find people helping out with anything they can. I've helped move large trees out of the road and off of houses with little more than a pickup truck, chains, a few helpful people, and a little effort.

    I think the major parts of that are,

    1) It wasn't high tech. This is primarily a tech site.

    2) It didn't work, unless you count some smoke and getting the attention of the police.

    3) It barely involved tech, unless you consider M80's and a child's clock to be high tech. If so, you don't belong here.

    I could build a better bomb in my garage, but I have no reason to, and I don't really like jail. :)

Mods turned me into a newt!

(I got better...)

Really, though...

The device manufacturer is the one that has to worry about licensing patents in order to build a photocopier. All that the end-user has to worry about is potential copyrights on what they copy.

Actually, you pretty-much HAVE to have a tracking sensor on the missile itself if you want to hit anything.

However, if you fire off a missile in a random direction you're going to blow up some ship at random at best - most likely a tanker. Also, radar is subject to jamming, and you bet that if somebody spots a radar emitter travelling at mach 3 they're going to jam it! IR or visual is only useful if you have a very good idea of where the target is - it can't search a large area. Even radar on a missile will only spot something in a cone maybe a few miles across, which isn't much even in the Persian Gulf.

Keep in mind that a cruise missile is exactly the kind of threat that US naval defenses were designed to counter. The only twist here is sneaking one onto a merchant ship.

The core difference here is that you are talking about availability and affordability together and I am not.

There are medical professionals present and willing to deliver a very high standard of care in the United States. Not everyone can afford to use their services.

I suppose it is fair to talk about affordability as a component of availability, but the context in my first post makes it pretty clear that I am not.

Suicide of a person of a mainstream western culture is the ultimate act of selfishness.

That doesn't mean that it may not be appropriate in some instances. It means that in western cultures the decision to suicide is usually made at a time when the person is seriously under estimating his value to his circle of family, friends, and acquaintances.

Other cultures value things differently. Suicide in some eastern cultures is apparently sometimes regarded as a way of protecting the person's social circle from the burden of shame that his dishonorable actions would otherwise tar them with. Suicide in some warrior cultures is apparently sometimes a self-sacrifice for the benefit of the warrior's brethren or for those he has been fighting for. Suicide bombers appear to be a special case where brainwashing techniques have been used to artificially impose portions of the warrior ethic on the suggestible. There are definitely crimes involved with that last, but it would seem that in almost all cases the suicide bomber is another victim and not one of the perps.

Should any of these be legalized? With our current modes of handling estates and insurances policies, etc, probably not. We would end up in a hellacious mess. Can you imagine the circus lawyers would make over the insurance policy of the ex soldier who wrapped himself around a live grenade in the crowded subway? Lawyers, actuaries, and writers of insurance policies already have too much space for erecting their circus tents. Should the crimes of suicide or attempted suicide be prosecuted? In general, no. There might be specific instances where this should be done: I think someone who straps on a dynamite vest should have all his insurance policies summarily cancelled. But these situations are rare in western societies; most of the time prosecution would just visit more hardship on the survivors with no particular benefit to anyone.

Is there a legal concept of "speech intended to create immediate, injurious actions, bypassing people's rational cognitive function." ?