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"In Germany, the minimum time to be served for a sentence of life imprisonment is 15 years after which the prisoner can apply for parole. If the verdict in the original trial includes an explicite finding of "exceptional gravity of guilt" (in German: "Besondere Schwere der Schuld") then the possibility of parole after 15 years is excluded and the prisoner can apply for the first time after 18 years. After about 10 years of imprisonment, a specialised chamber (technical term in German: "Strafvollstreckungskammer") of the criminal court which is responsible for the case sets a recommended minimum term to be served depending on the individual characteristics of the crime, in other words, a minimum time which is deemed just and appropriate for the gravity of the crime. Release of a prisoner on parole requires (1) that this minimum time is served and (2) that a psychological expert opinion finds no further dangerousness for this prisoner and a positive social prognosis. In reality, a finding of "exceptional gravity of guilt" drastically increases the time before parole is granted. The average time served for a life sentence in Germany is around 20 years. Around 20% of all people serving life imprisonment stay in prison until their natural death."

http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Life:imprisonment.html

So did Walt Disney. The original plans for EPCOT in Disney World included a massive translucent dome covering the "community" and its twenty thousand residents.

EPCOT "would be a testbed for city planning and organization. A giant dome was to have covered the community, so as to regulate its climate (this idea was later seen in the 1998 movie The Truman Show). The community was to have been built in the shape of a circle, with businesses and commercial areas at its center, community buildings and schools and recreational complexes around it, and residential neighborhoods along the perimeter. Transportation would have been provided by monorails and People Movers (like the one in the Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland). Automobile traffic would be kept underground, leaving pedestrians safe above-ground."

We totally shouldn't have government regulation. Except for the fact that pure capitalism tends to exploit children, exploit workers or both.

I'm all for free trade and as little government intervention as possible, too. But capitalism is all about short term gain regardless of the impact on the people or the environment. It's human nature that's got us screwed.

It's the main reason the ideas of The Long Now Foundation are so interesting.

Do *you* know the actual physical volume of "60,000 metric tons" of nuclear waste, offhand?

Plutonium: 19816 kg/m^3 http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Plutonium.htm
Uranium: density = 19.05 grams per cubic centimetre = 19,050 kg/m^3 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_Weight_of_1_cubic_meter_of_uranium

60000 tons / 19 tons per cubic meter = ~ 3158 cubic meters, or approximately 1 to 3 olympic swimming pools, depending on depth. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/JeffreyGilbert.shtml

This nuclear waste stuff redefines the meaning of the term "heavy" in heavy waste.

You're one to talk when you don't even know the different between the metric system and the imperial system.

The term "English System" is commonly used to refer to the Imperial System.

So, try again, bureaucrat.

Bullshit.

Courts have repeatedly ruled time and again that if the transaction takes the form of a sale (see: Softman V Adobe for one example) then it is governed by the legal rights of a SALE, and any restrictions of those are unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.

Those rights include, among other things, the right to modify what you have purchased and the right of first sale.

Where it gets fucking stupid is that the software companies - and even some companies selling plastic bits these days - want to try to classify everything as a "license" rather than admit it's a sale. All we really need to do to fix the system is to abolish the "license" crap in the legal code.

The memory capacity of an isolinear optical chip is 2.15 kiloquads, which is about 2.15 exabytes. I don't know how much they weigh, but they're about the size of a stick of gum... I'd guess they weigh about the same... say... 20g... so that'd be about .002g/petabyte.

Who really cares about a fictional piece of technology with made up capacity and weight? It's much more interesting and relevant to discuss the capacity and weight of the books in the library of congress or microsd cards.

The memory capacity of an isolinear optical chip is 2.15 kiloquads, which is about 2.15 exabytes. I don't know how much they weigh, but they're about the size of a stick of gum... I'd guess they weigh about the same... say... 20g... so that'd be about .002g/petabyte.

"I know by your handle this is going to fall on deaf ears but:"

You can tell by his handle that his CB radio won't pick up your Slashdot post? I can make that determination with zero knowledge of his handle. You aren't one of these guys who elicits someones IP address by asking "What's your 20" are you?

It is called a SlashID. Learn the terminology. Then learn to tolerate the terminology. Eventually you will love the terminology (OK ... I concede that I may have gotten carried away just a bit with that last one). ;-)

"And when the production isn't an assembly line anymore and becomes this complex web of people who do jobs which effects are near impossible to quantify , well I would say hugely differing salaries are not as defensible." [Emphasis added]

You say that like it is a foregone conclusion that you cannot quantify effort unless goods are produced. Compare and contrast my contributions the the Linux Kernel with Linus Torvalds' to see the folly in this assumption ;-)

You don't need sonar. You need VLW radio receivers on the subs, and you need transmitter stations to send the date, which the French don't have, but that the British do: http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Longwave.htm. They already use this technology to transmit information updtates to subs, even when they are running dark.

For detection, you just need overflights by satellites or aircraft equipped with SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_aperture_radar. The Soviets used a satellite based system for submarine detection since the 1980s http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/bg466.cfm, and most western governments followed suit. Even the Canadians have flown SAR satellite constellations. The submarines, if they move, show up as surface lumps, and if don't mode, then your position is known (approximately) from where the lump last was.

So it's likely that at least a number of countries knew where both subs were, and at least the Brits could have sent a message to their sub indicating an impending close call -- which for this type of submarine, given that they don't play cat and mouse games with it, probably counts in nautical miles.

-- Terry

At least, communists stopped called cybernetics a "burgeois pseudoscience" http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Bourgeois:pseudoscience.html

Okay, I can't direct you to personal evidence -- I don't know your life, and it would have to be your own personal evidence for you to reasonably be able to evaluate it. On the other hand, there probably are some deeply serious Christians around you, and they may have personal evidence that is still close enough for you to evaluate.

Now, that aside... let's try some public evidence.

For starters, let us consider public evidence of prophecy. One that I think is reasonably ancient, yet points to modern times, is Rev. 8:10-11. Compare that to the meaning of Chernobyl/Wormwood:

http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Chernobyl.htm

I might note that for a culture that had no concept of nuclear reactors, as "star cast to earth" is a pretty good description of a nuclear explosion.

Now, this is not complete and total "wow, now let me believe everything that the Bible ever said." But it is one piece of evidence.

Or, let's try an historical piece of evidence of the basic accuracy of some of the wilder claims of the Bible. If you look in the story of Noah, and compare it to the Epic of Gilgamesh's story of Noah, it appears that there was an asteroid strike. Now, interestingly, in the area of the Persian Gulf, there is about 8' of river clay that all dates to the same year. That year matches the asteroid strike SE of Madagascar, that formed the cheveron shaped hills on the SW beaches of Madagascar (600' high, with asteroid metals bonded to sea life shells, all dating to about 3500 BC, if I remember correctly). This also dates to the era that -- worldwide -- people started building large structures that would be immune from tidal waves.

Now, that doesn't say that the earth was covered in water, but it implies that the earth that was known to the Babylonians *was*, and that the total event was to some extent worldwide cataclysmic.

More importantly than that to the basic truth of the Bible, is that one man was warned ahead of time, with enough time to build a box (ark archive, a storage unit) and caulk it up with tar and animal fur, and stock it. So there was someone who warned him.

The Cogwheel Brain by Doran Swade. Quite a hefty tome to prove my point, but a decent read anyway. There's also this article, which doesn't really do a lot to back up the argument.

Swade actually talks considerably about Ada Lovelace and the argument is pretty compelling.