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Katana Space.

He owned the building complex, and you are only required to have a legally mandated number of handicapped spots. Steve insured that there were more than the legally mandated number of spots available so that he was never in technical violation of the rules.

Here's the ADA requirements for parking spaces:

                http://www.ada.gov/adata1.htm [ada.gov]

Here's a more accessible interpretation, with a table indicating the number of spots required per number of total parking spaces:

                http://en.allexperts.com/q/Disability-Law-917/Handicapped-Parking.htm [allexperts.com]

He was perfectly within his rights, so long as there was not a sufficient number of other people gaming the system at the same time. I suggest you avoid trying to do the same thing, unless you are the property owner and the single largest tax payer in a given municipality, however.

You'll likely eventually win, unless you are a total dick, but the lawyer costs will exceed just paying the fine, since it isn't a moving violation and therefore will only cost you the fine.

He owned the building complex, and you are only required to have a legally mandated number of handicapped spots. Steve insured that there were more than the legally mandated number of spots available so that he was never in technical violation of the rules.

Here's the ADA requirements for parking spaces:

        http://www.ada.gov/adata1.htm

Here's a more accessible interpretation, with a table indicating the number of spots required per number of total parking spaces:

        http://en.allexperts.com/q/Disability-Law-917/Handicapped-Parking.htm

He was perfectly within his rights, so long as there was not a sufficient number of other people gaming the system at the same time. I suggest you avoid trying to do the same thing, unless you are the property owner and the single largest tax payer in a given municipality, however.

You'll likely eventually win, unless you are a total dick, but the lawyer costs will exceed just paying the fine, since it isn't a moving violation and therefore will only cost you the fine.

-- Terry

LOL! Yes, in my 1999.5 model the shifter linkage is made of plastic. http://en.allexperts.com/q/Volkswagen-Repair-833/2008/10/95-passat-shift-linkage.htm The bottom one is the stock part, the top is an aftermarket replacement.

You're confusing instantaneous efficiency with lifetime efficiency, and confusing infrared emissions with envelope temperature. Not all infrared emissions from an incandescent bulb are turned into surface heat on the bulb's envelope.

First, it's important to understand that a halogen bulb is more efficient over its life because filament redeposition ensures that the filament does not get thinner (and thus less effective at producing light) and that the inside of the bulb remains clear of deposits from the filament (which reduces light output). So although a brand new halogen bulb is more efficient than a brand new standard incandescent bulb, the difference for new bulbs isn't nearly as high as the difference over the lifetime of the bulb.

Second, in order for that redeposition to occur, the envelope must remain extremely hot (250 C/482 deg. F), regardless of the wattage of the bulb. (Source: The Great Internet Light Bulb Book, Part I) If a bulb is running cooler than that, it isn't getting any real gain from being a halogen bulb. To put that in perspective, a 100 watt incandescent bulb, according to safety standards, is not allowed to get over 247C/477 deg. F. (Source: allexperts) So the absolute minimum effective envelope temperature for a halogen bulb is roughly the same as the absolute maximum allowed for a 100 watt bulb.

Therefore, fixtures that are only rated for 40 watt incandescent bulbs cannot safely support a halogen bulb. This effectively rules out the safe use of halogen bulbs in the majority of table lamps and many floor lamps.

Laugh all you want: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece

Thanks, I will: http://en.allexperts.com/q/UFOs-Aliens-2138/IRAQ-WAR.htm

It was about oil. It's still about oil. It's going to be exiting, about oil.

It was about sugar plums and unicorn farts. And sand supplies for Big Glass. It's going to be exiting, about sand.

Why can't I just have boiled green beans in a can?

On the off-chance that you decide to can your own, be aware that incorrect canning of low acid foods like beans can fail in a major way:
    http://www.botulismblog.com/botulism-watch/ohio-family-gets-botulism-from-home-canned-beans/ “Botulism is a type of food poisoning and is the most dangerous,” she said. “Six organisms is the infectious dose,..."
More detail here: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Food-Safety-Issues-767/2008/11/Botulism-home-canned-green.htm

Out here in California, we like our possum curry.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Cooking-Meat-750/Exotic-dish-question.htm

If 10,000 cows can produce 1 megawatt of power, which is 1,314 horsepower, surely it would be more efficient to use the output of 1,314 horses running on treadmills instead? That's about 1 horse to 7.5 cows, meaning big savings on space which is great for a data-centre. Even greater efficiencies could be had if the waste from the horses was used in the manner intended for the cow waste.

Don't even think about using hamsters in wheels though, because they'll only generate a useful 1/2072 horsepower each, which means you need about 2.7 million hamsters to generate 1 MW. I think the overhead of cage and wheel cleaning would become prohibitive at that point.

The possibility that transatlantic flights between the USA and Europe will be grounded for months leads to the possible reinstatement of making the trip by luxury steamer. Are any of the Titanic's sister ships still afloat?

No, but there are some other possibilities

Actually in practice you do have to prove your innocence or at least afford a good lawyer to find a loophole.
This is one of the reasons that the American prison system is full of poor people who co

No, the reason the American prison system has the highest incarceration rate in the world is because of the stupid War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing guidelines. "We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses". Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety [pdf] by the Justice Policy Institute says:
"U.S. prisons or jails have been convicted of a drug offense. The United States incarcerates more people for drug offenses than any other country. With an estimated 6.8 million Americans struggling with drug abuse or dependence,4 the growth of the prison population continues to be driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses."

Others in gael or prison though not convicted of drug offenses are there because they committed another crime such as theft to support their dru8g habit. Re-legalization and taxing drugs would do a lot to reduce the prison population in the US. With drugs being legal the prices will be lower thus reducing crimes such as the above theft, or more importantly murder. It seems that almost daily the news talks about murder Mexico, especially Ciudad Jaurez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. Almost all of these murders have something to do with drugs. Legal drugs being legal to import, as well as legal to grow your own, would significantly reduce violent crimes.

If drugs were taxed then the money collected used for treatment of those who asked for it then drugs abuse and addiction would decline. There are no drugs that are so addictive that people can not be "cured" of their addiction. The Rat Park study showed that in enriched living conditions rats were not addicted to drugs, when given a choice between water with and without the drug they avoided the water laced with the drug. The hypothesis of the test was that living conditions and not drugs cause addiction.

Of course so called Drug Warriors and the prison-industrial complex don't want to hear that.

Falcon

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/2008/7/Using-expansion-ice-generate.htm
this model: ICE 0 WATER

if i understood the above explanation:
model using Lithium Tantalate: ICE -17 WATER -7 ICE 0 WATER

Well, your stereotype of basic training, like all your stereotypes is flat out wrong. The point of basic is to instill discipline and modify behavior.

Attitude, n. "the way a person views something or tends to behave towards it, often in an evaluative way."

The military doesn't give a rat fuck about your attitude...

I would gather that you have not been in the military. In my experience, they're confident enough of their service and their statements about it to not resort to terms like "rat fuck". As well, if they honestly do have a problem with someone, it's solved quickly and quietly so they can go back to their drinks.

(And you also seem to be ignorant of the fact that the military does hire civilians in special cases, and even assigns them to operational and deployed units.)

I didn't mention any of that in my original post, nor do I see it's relevance. You are attempting to muddy the waters with irrelevant commentary to detract from the fact that you don't like me personally and are throwing irrational argument after irrational argument.

And even so, you're still wrong. The military has long waived the age requirements for narrow and specialized fields where civilian experience is desirable and not available among younger people.

Citation aaaand... citation. Care to revise your statement, sir?

"Many residential homes in the US have 100 amp service.

Most have 200. 400 is usually available at extra cost.*"

*citation need

Got it right here, says you're wrong

New construction homes get 200 amp, but even as recent as 2006 builders were providing 100 amp and 200 amp as an upgrade. This electrician in Wisconsin recommends 100 amps for house under 2,000 sq/ft. I don't exactly know date when 200 amp became the standard for new construction but it's clear 100 amp is the norm for your average pre-owned home. 400 amp service for a residence basically doesn't exist unless you have extreme circumstances, like you were dumb enough to buy a 15kW tankless electric water heater (idiot should have bought gas) that's sucking down 130 amps when in use.

The Rickets versus Skin cancer theory for the distribution of skin shades is just one theory.

from http://www.wonderquest.com/evolution-skin-color.htm:

'
Jared Diamond (1999 winner of the Medal of Science award and UCLA evolutionary biologist) points out flaws in these theories.

"Among tropical peoples," he writes "anthropologists love to stress the dark skins of African blacks, people of the southern Indian peninsula, and New Guineans and love to forget the pale skins of Amazonian Indians and Southeast Asians living at the same latitudes." [Emphasis mine.]

He notes that dark peoples of equatorial West Africa and the New Guinea mountains get no more UV radiation than the light-skinned folk in Switzerland, if you take cloud cover into account. ...
Charles E. Taylor, UCLA evolutionary biologist, thinks so, too. "Diamond argues for sexual selection because nothing else seems to fit," Taylor says. "This is a cop-out, of course, but it makes sense to me." ...
"It is not impossible that white skin color originated in Northern Africa," says Taylor.
'

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327222.500-where-does-white-skin-come-from.html

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Evolution-3839/white-skin.htm

Are you saying that someone was prevented from getting chemotherapy because they had cancer? That makes no sense, given that chemotherapy is worse than useless to people that don't have cancer.

Oh. Wait. You are upset that someone else won't pay for it. Not the same thing at all.

No, if you could read you would see that I was saying that someone was denied chemo because it was a pre-existing condition.

I think you need to get your eyes tested. For your sake I hope it's not a pre-existing condition.

Not enough processing power on Earth?!?

Goodyear Aerospace Corp. in the early 1980's built a 16,384 node parallel computer system that was used in modeling laminar airflow and thermal expansion over the space shuttle air frame by NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. The division was later acquired by Loral Space & Communications Ltd. in the 1980's, which was then acquired (piecemeal) by Lockheed Martin.

Here is a reference on the computer: http://en.allexperts.com/e/g/go/goodyear_mpp.htm

If you can model that 25 years ago, you can model a composite aircraft with modern computers today.

-- Terry

Many CPU's in the past had Halt and Catch Fire instructions.

Oop, there's no consensus about "MSX-DOS" and MSX in general. Officially, Microsoft denies any involvement. MSX's dad came with some different meanings himself (see "The exact meaning of the 'MSX' abbreviation remains a matter of debate", also here). Special notes to "starting from zero" in http://www.faq.msxnet.org/kay-nishi.html

Other than that, thanks for the interesting history lesson!

Congratulations, you've invented an even dumber form of voting than the IETF hum-poll.

http://en.allexperts.com/e/h/hu/hum_poll.htm

andy zebrowitz

Wow, yeah, I'll go out and buy myself a motorcycle just to prove some person wrong on the internet. (No, not going to include the obligatory XKCD.)

This google search is packed with pages saying bikes are more maneuverable, but one does point out that they can't corner as well, so maybe that's what you meant. (When avoiding an accident, you're not going to perform a full turn anyway; you probably need to stop and/or swerve.)

As far as stopping, this page purports that with an expert driver on both vehicles, it'd be damn close, since bike and car braking systems have both been much improved in recent times.

Here is a comment that maybe explains better:

"Copywriting the game rules, the board design, the card designs, the packaging, maybe a design patent on the board, possibly a utility patent on the game, perhaps a trademark. (Monopoly was an example of a successful game patent)."

I'd assume the game patent expires after 20 years, but can be green-fielded by making changes ever decade or so.

Well, cooling is "easy". Just run heat pipes deep(not that deep!) into the ground. Which I believe is a cool 55(12c?) degrees or so?

I remember seeing a documentary called "First Flight" which detailed how they went about designing and building the 777. They were interviewing a Boeing engineer, ISTR, to talk about the whole number-of-engines versus ETOPS (Extended Twin Engine Ops) time, which had to be increased for the 777 to allow a greater 'envelope' of airports to divert to.) According to this source, the 777 is now at ETOPS-207, a very enviable range.

One of the (imperfectly remembered) memorable quotes from this engineer was in a response to an interviewer's question: "Why do we [sometimes] have four engines on the wing of a plane? Because there's no room to fit 5." The rationale being that more engines raise a comfort level for a pilot, but they also of course raise complexity and maintenance concerns.

For a commercial airliner, ETOPS-207 or even ETOPS-240 is satisfactory. For the plane carrying the President, it is probably not.

So, if the force of gravity is acting on you, and nothing else is, then you have no force applied to you? You expand my view of the ridiculous....

Yes from the point of view of an outside observer there is a force on you, but the point about gravity is that it applies equally to every part of your body at once. So, if you are in free fall and you raise your arm, there is no resistance to that motion (other than internal friction in your joints) and no force that would push against your arm that would tend to lower it again. From your point of view, you have no forces acting upon you. But this really means that there are not differences in the force between different parts of your body.

This is in contrast to the situation when you are standing on the surface of the Earth, or being accelerated in a car. In the case of standing on the surface of the earth, you feel a force on your body because, while the overall forces cancel out (so you have no overall motion), the forces are applied in different places. The gravitational force is being applied to every atom in your body equally, but the restoring force that is stopping you from falling into the center of the Earth is being applied at the point where your feet make contact with the ground. The restoring force that is stopping some other part of your body (your hand, for example) from falling into the center of the Earth is being transmitted through your feet and body to your hand. That is why it takes some effort to raise your hand - the gravity is acting directly on your hand, but the restoring force to hold your hand in the air needs to be transmitted through your arm.

If you are in free fall, then there is no difference in the force being applied to different parts of your body, and you cannot even tell that there is any force acting upon you! There is no difference between the situation where (1) you are falling under gravity towards the Earth, with no other forces acting upon you, and (2) you are in empty space with no massive objects anywhere near you. These two situations are completely equivalent, for the effects on your body.

Similarly, there is no difference, as far as the forces on your body are concerned, between standing on the surface of the earth and experiencing your weight of W=M*9.81m/s^2 and being accelerated in a rocket ship at 9.81m/s^2 and experiencing a force holding you to the floor of the spacecraft. The Equivalence Principle of relativity says that the forces on you are exactly the same in both cases.

Note that the wikipedia article has, at best, a limited understanding of the difference between weightlessness and freefall. Which are not, contrary to their assertion, synonyms.

They are not synonyms, because they are two words that have different meanings. Wikipedia does not claim that they are synonyms, by the way. But it is true that if you are in freefall then you are weightless. And the only way that is known to physics for an object with non-zero mass to become weightless is to let it free-fall.

If you refuse to believe Wikipedia, there are plenty of other references you could look at:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/free-fall-weightless-ness.htm
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/teacher_resources/weightlessness_edu.html
http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/services/demos/demosc4/c4-54.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/shuttlestation/station/microgex.html
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4026/noord27.html

This explains what I was referring to earlier better than I can.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/PC-hardware-CPU-1023/Windows-XP-memory-limit.htm

I'm only bringing it up having run into it earlier this year while building a PC for a friend.

Have you ever heard the expression a little knowlege is a dangerous thing? Your clue should have been the definition of the word duplex.

COBOL is not hot at all. Also its not like other languages. Firstly it has cumbersome syntax and learning a construct in COBOL cannot be ported (knowledge transfer) to another language. Also there are no jobs in the language. And apparently ii is a dead language with many drawback and loads of false truths. Check this out http://en.allexperts.com/q/Cobol-1443/f_3628806.htm its really good. I hope it will stop you going down the wrong route.

Just in case you haven't seen it, do a Google for J. Michael Straczynski & Bryce Zabel, Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe.

It's a proposal, in .PDF form, to create a new Star Trek series based, loosely, on the Original Series, but with a new mystery added to it.

And this sort of thing happens all the time with house sales. One big example? HOAs, and you tend to agree to their rules when you buy the house. If you don't, you can't buy the house. (HOAs are evil, yes, but they are real too.)

Let's not forget that HOA contracts often (particularly in Florida, Texas) in fact give them the ability to foreclose on your house if you owe them fees. Remember, you can run up credit card debt in the tens of thousands and your card company can't do that, but if you didn't pay your HOA fees... Actually, some of the acts undertaken in the name of HOAs transcend evil, and are illegal too: towing vehicles that are guests of a property owner, illegal fines levied, as well as good old huge contract violations .