OMG, I actually saw a police car that had done this (drive up a guy wire for a telephone pole) in real life in Tucson. I had no idea that another police car had ever done it.

Truecrypt has a feature where you can create a second encrypted volume within an encrypted volume that is impossible to even detect. Google Truecrypt hidden volume. I think it is a terrible feature because it means you can never prove that you handed over all of the contents of your encrypted volume, which means you…

You are right that a person can only be jailed for contempt if that person has a possible way to comply with the court's order and thereby free themselves. However, how does a defendant prove that she destroyed all the copies of the encryption key to her encrypted volume? How does she even prove that an encryption…

Judges can and will jail someone who defies their orders for as long as it takes to get them to see the error of their ways. So, unless that encrypted volume has evidence that would result in a life sentence with no possibility of parole it doesn't make sense for the defendant to sit on her hands. The judge will jail…

I think the hidden second volume capability of Truecrypt is a problem for users who actually have something worth hiding. Law enforcement (or bad guys) will not be satisfied with the user turning over the password to the main encrypted volume; they will continue to use measures to compel the user to produce the…

Probably not a great idea. If you refuse to comply with a judge's order she can order you jailed until you decide to comply, and there are no limits on how long you can be held. You could try to convince the judge that you can't possibly comply because you destroyed the key files, but if she doesn't believe you…

Back in 2002 the Pentagon did a war game where the "Iranian" side was able to sink 16 US warships using a combo of cruise missiles and swarms of speed boats.

According to Mr. Wikipedia they have been planning to replace the U2 with drones for a while now, but the drones still can't do all the same stuff.

Yep. I only activate my iPad data plan when I am traveling, and I never come close to going over 2 GB (but 300 MB is not enough), so this is a price hike for me.

But what about the shockwave from the center of the galaxy exploding reaching us in 2012?

I haven't researched this ship's situation, but if it got beached during a storm the water level could have been a lot higher than the normal high tide because of the storm surge, so it may be way above the high tide mark. Not sure what can be done in a situation like that. Wait for another storm?

A standard technique for getting ungrounded is to take your anchor out to sea and then try to pull yourself off the beach using it. However, I don't think it is going to work in this case!

That looks fun to sail, but I wouldn't want to be responsible for maintaining it. I also wonder how challenging it is to navigate all those big open spaces when it's really heeled over.

That would explain how they got it intact. If GPS signals can be spoofed, how exactly can the military use GPS at all?

"The JSF's problems are exacerbated by a production plan that Vice Adm. David Venlet, the government program manager, admitted two weeks ago represents 'a miscalculation.' Known as 'concurrency,' the plan allows Lockheed to mass-produce jets - potentially hundreds of them - while testing is still underway."

I did try the coffeemaker search, and noticed exactly what you described, and that sorting feature is definitely broken. But as a practical matter this flaw doesn't slow me down because I never sort by price anyways.

At least in Europe the adulterants are generally not poisonous!

There is a huge trade in fake olive oil, and after reading this New Yorker article about it a few years ago I just assume that all olive oil is adulterated. [www.newyorker.com]

I have no problems navigating Amazon, but that is probably because my standard shopping strategy is pretty simple: Search for an item, click on its main category to enable sorting, and then sort by Popularity and select Prime eligible. If it's not popular and it's not Prime it's probably not for me.

If you put the wrong substance near a plutonium core, or put two pieces of plutonium too close to each other, you can start a fission reaction that could give everyone nearby a lethal dose of radiation within seconds. Twenty one people have died from "criticality accidents" over the years (see the wikipedia article).…