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Sci-Fi Tech We Could Have Right Now (For a Price)
PlainBlack writes "Possibility isn't limited by technology. And it's certainly not limited by human imagination. What makes something impossible is the lack of cold, hard, cash. Wired blog takes a look at 10 science fiction technologies we could build, if they weren't so expensive. 'New York-L.A. Maglev Express - Cost: $70bn (Based on established construction costs). At $70bn, it's tantalizingly affordable by the standards of this roundup: a train that could beat airliners from one side of the country to the other. Many agree that Maglev has enormous potential. Bite-sized examples are in operation all over the world. Birmingham, England, had the first in the 1980s, though the promise of airliner-like speeds on land is still unrealized. The British system sped along at a pathetic 26MPH and was designed to get air travelers to the planes, not to outrun them.'"
for a sci-fi device which installed in Richard Stallman a sense of shame.
OMG my eyes, teh goggles do NOTHING!!
a train that could beat airliners from one side of the country to the other
You'd still have to arrive at the train station three hours early and take your shoes off for the TSA goons.
But maybe that'd be a bit too much of a disruptive technology.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Only $1.2 billion for a space hotel? Heck, Microsoft should take that $44.6 billion and invest it into a Death Star! I'm sure Ballmer would like his new Vader costume. :)
Honestly.. why would you want a million distracted soccer moms and stressed out sales reps take to the skies?
We like to imagine the flying car scenario like in the fifth element, but in reality it would look more like a WW2 bombing campaign.
I'm totally on board for the mech, it's time to make these military conflicts entertaining enough for pay per view to help off set the costs of war.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
* Flying car
* Cheap Nuclear Power
* Safe, Effective Diet Pill
* Cheap TV Phone (nevermind, I don't look so hot in the morning)
* Space Travel for the Mass
* Cure for Cancer
* Cure for the Common Cold
* Artificial Intelligence approaching at least Dog Level
* Appliances that Accept Voice Commands
* Independence from Oil
* 3D User Interface
* Cybernetic Implants
* Energy-beam Weapons
* Easy-to-Maintain Personal Computers
* Car Key Alternative - I hate looking for lost keys.
* Non-Lethal Weaponry for Cops
* Reliable Tires (or that fail gradually) - Tires are still based on air-filled balloon technology, making them problematic.
* Reliable Car Battery
* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death
(Yes, I stole some from a wiki, but then again I added most of them to begin with)
Table-ized A.I.
wrong. They have this kind of wealth. If they build things that few others CAN do and create companies that can do high-speed maglev across the country, it would lower the transportation costs, energy usage, and build monster jobs. In fact, I would rather see a maglev be built from D.C. to NYC to Milwaukee. That would make that a true money maker. It would create a large number of jobs in there. From that point, they can shoot for Seattle and then down to LA, flowing all the way into Mexico. In addition, another branch from seattle up to alaska to the bering strait. This is doable for somebody with the kind of money that only a few have. Oh well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No mention of Arthur C. Clarke's data cube, as posited in 3001! Imagine the entirety of a person's biological makeup, memories, and experiences over a lifetime, all captured in a portable storage device. If I remember correctly, this was sort of Clarke's concept of potential immortality. But perhaps the technology required is not quite within reach, at any cost.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
seeing it recognized as a "Gundam" just made this nerd's day
I thought of it right away before I clicked the link, and it came true!
All the big engineering projects of the last 20-30 years have been in either Europe or Asia (such as the Chunnel, Millau Viaduct, Kansai International Airport, etc.). All the US gets is the Shuttle and the ISS, which have both become a big turkey. Bugger the cost, I want to see a maglev from NY to LA with stops in Chicago and Denver.
Not a typewriter
Consider, we could have built seven of those NY to LA maglev trains for what Bush has spent so far blowing stuff up in Iraq. Put another way, we could have built a national long-haul maglev infrastructure and had enough left over to roll out fibre to the curb nationwide.
Nahhh, let's just kill people!
Whoever wrote this obviously didn't do too much research for the article. They managed to get through an entire section on the feasibility and cost of a space hotel without stumbling across Bigelow Aerospace, who actually has a test bed in orbit right now.
While the floating city mentioned in the article is nice, it's interesting to contemplate the more general class of which it is an example of: Arcologies. Huge megastructures that are cities unto themselves. Arcologies are a common thing in sci-fi, but how cool of one could we build if we were limited only by technology and engineering, and money was not the limiting factor?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2004131851_brodeur18m.html/
There is no way in hell any public project could get across a state, let alone the entire country, for 70 billion. Sad hunh?
It's not really that disruptive. Rapid prototype parts take a long time to make and don't have the mechnical properties of parts made by other means. They're almost always made of plastics, and relatively weak ones at that...no fiber glass reinforced nylon or anything cool like that. They're awesome for fit or basic function checking in a hurry and for cheap, but if you want performance or durability, and especially if you want high volume production, you need to look at another avenue.
Also, you need to be able to do CAD, unless making models you find for free online is enough for you.
Anyway, here's one that costs $5000...a little more than a good laser printer.
http://www.desktopfactory.com/our_product/
How about silly things like real working public transportation?
Passenger trains between cities, silly crap like that.
For some reason here in the USA public transportation is considered evil.
Great example? Detroit, why there are no elevated trains for transportation is insane. and Most cities in the USA has far to little public transportation.
Also why a maglev from ny to LA? There are supertrains that haul ass pretty damn good. 24-36 hours from NY to LA is something that people would certianly pay for, and that's only a average of 90mph.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
C'mon...In today's political climate, you know spending taxes on anything other than war makes you a Commie! That's what the free market is for.
But I wonder what the carbon footprint looks like? A plane at 35000 feet is in much thinner air and would not be able to fly LA to NY at a much lower altitude. The train will have to work in that thick air but will be a lot longer with presumably many more passengers and is not using aerodynamic lift. The propulsion system is also more energy efficient.
So I have no idea which works out better. Anybody have numbers? One can of course argue that the maglev can use renewable energy, but that's a crock unless you have surplusses of renewable energy, which we don't.
Squirrel!
We could have had the Maglev Train (several), National FTTH and poured money into researching real alternative energy policy (including paying for the American automakers to design and deploy all electric and hybrid cars by this year). Just shows how we've wasted our money...
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
The current projected price for an LA to SF conventional high-speed train is on the order of $30billion. That's for 500 miles and only going through the fairly small mountains around San Francisco.
NY-LA is 5x as long, and has the freaking Rocky Mountains in the way. How exactly do they figure the $70bil price, even if it was a conventional high speed and not an exotic maglev?
...a dog reads YOUR list and says, He could have written 'Artificial intelligence approaching at most Dog Level. Hmph!'
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Build a vacuum tube from NY to LA. Then maximum speed is limited by, well... not much, actually. Accelerate to orbital velocity, go weightless for a few minutes while still on the ground, arrive. The technology exists; the cost is even more ludicrous, but while we're dreaming, eh?
In fact, hell, it's a vacuum tube. Damn thing's buoyant. Build it from London to LA.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It actually really surprises me that we haven't seen more public anger about the financial cost of the Iraq war. The relative drawbacks of the previous regime in Iraq against the situation that exists now, and from that the moral justification for invading, are debatable issues and it's somewhat understandable that there are people all along the spectrum from for to against.
I would have thought, however, that if you asked most Americans whether they would've preferred to invade Iraq or to have free petrol for a year with enough left over for a modestly sized fleet of building-crushing robots to placate any who still held fears about security I think I could guess what most people would choose.
The 700 mile SF to LA high speed rail route (conventional rail, not maglev) is estimated at $37B. LA to NY is about 4 times the distance, so figure around $150B to do the whole thing.
Oh, but that doesn't take into account the inevitable cost overruns. I think SF's BART runs around 50% overrun on their big projects, so figure around $225B minimum. Cost overruns on Boston's Big Dig project run up to 500% depending on what numbers you look at, so the final price tag could be around $750B.
And I still don't see how maglev can compete with airlines for speed on a cross country trip, it would have to average 500mph including stops to beat a 5 hour flight. And the article even says that maglev systems current average around 260MPH, so that's over a 9 hour trip.
If they are counting on time savings since the train can go direct to city centers and not to outlying airports, then build high speed rail to link airports to city centers. Though you're not going to run at 500MPH above ground in any city...or even in suburbs -- no one will put up with the noise from a 500mph train 20 feet from their house (even if the propulsion is completely silent with maglev, displacing air at 500mph will make a huge amount of noise).
Weren't we supposed to be able to build giant domes by now, large enough to enclose entire cities?
But wait! you might say. What practical purpose could this possibly serve? Do we have any cities that really need to be protected under huge domes? To which I would reply, yes. Yes, we do.
For example, New Orleans.
You might think I joke here, and maybe it is funny on one level. But think about it for a few moments more. If we make such an investment in the future of New Orleans, we could not build a flimsy dome that only keeps out mild rain showers. We must master the construction technology to withstand the biggest hurricanes the Gulf of Mexico can whip up. Beyond that, we would have to remember New Orleans is gradually sinking. Over the long term, that dome has to survive the pressure of being completely submerged under seawater.
And once we develop that set of technologies, entirely new cities can be built on the ocean floor.
GE could basically build a thing like this itself. Run it 4 tracks wide from LA to Denver to Chicago to NYC, have the operating costs basically covered by package and other commercial shipping companies. There are a lot of profitable applications to a system like this I'd imagine. What would stop private industry from doing it?
Sure, BillG and Warren have this kind of money, but how are they going to procure the land to build this train track? The government can come in and take land via eminent domain, but BillG and Warren Buffet cannot. So if I am the property owner of a parcel of land and I know that they need to buy my plot to complete the track, and without my land it will cost $200 million to work around it, then I'm going to make them pay me $199 million for a piece of ground that might otherwise be worth only several thousand dollars per acre.
Now, a maglev train that stretches across the West might be more feasible b/c there are large stretches of land that are still gov't owned that the gov't might sell or lease to such an enterprise.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
That cross-country maglev "cost" doesn't include obtaining the land to run it across - the killer in new rail projects. That's why trains don't go all the way through Boston, for example; it would cost fifty gazillion-billion-fagillion* dollars to get the rights to connect South Station and North Station. *rounded to nearest -illion
> That's what the free market is for.
I suspect that if one were to run the numbers and adjust for inflation and size of the GDP, the Transcontinental Railroad was probably a project on the same scale as a Transcontinental Maglev. The government helped the railroads along with some prize money, loans, right of ways, etc. but it was not a government project to the extent the Interstate Highway system was. So yes it could be done as a mostly private sector project. And if it ever happens it will almost certainly be a private project that gets the deed done.
The problem is fighting the entrenched interests who would use the government to obstruct it. Don't ya think the railroads would like to come roaring back to the forefront of passenger transport instead of the pathetic government boondoggle called Amtrack? Coast to coast in times that compare with air for a fraction of the fuel cost would be mighty darned compelling. And very profitable. But the airlines would obviously HATE the idea just for starters.
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up? Put bluntly, either the GWOT is justified on its own merits or it isn't. Silly comarisons to what else could be done instead with the cash is retarded. If you believe we are in a war for survival against an implacable foe out to destroy Western Civilization and replace it with a Caliphate then price isn't an object, only Victory will suffice; and if you don't believe we are at war then we never should have spent the first dollar.
Democrat delenda est
Conversely, for no more than the price of that maglev and a few thousand lives, we could buy 2 or 3 months of a preemptive war against Iran. We're going to make our kids pay for it anyway, so why not go a little nuts?
Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead? That's easy. You still live. Now if someone made a copy of you and then you died, then the question becomes murky.
Who are you? Are you an immortal spirit enshrouded the flesh by God's will? Are you merely a collection of ever-replaced tissues? Are you a nothing but a collection of memories on a replaceable meat substrate?
If you develop Alzheimer's, are you still you? If you suffer brain damage that makes you mistake your wife for a hat, are you still you? If you take an antipsychotic to fight schizophrenia, are you still you? If you are captured by the military and broken under torture, are you still you? If a hypnotist attempting to bring up suppressed memories instead creates new ones for you, are you still you? If you get amnesia and have to relearn your former life through the testimony of those who knew you and your personal writings, are you still you?
Can anyone else be you? Is a copy you? Are you still you if you're the copy? Are you the person you were copied from? Are you really the same person as the child you were many years ago?
I don't present any answers. These questions are as deep as any religious question ever asked. You may find your answers to them come immediately and without need for consideration. You may find that they trouble you for years to come. You may find that it's a bunch of sophistry and blow it all off without an answer or any desire for one.
But ultimately, people who believe in digital immortality have found their answer. It's probably different from yours and probably different from mine, but it's not really that hard to imagine their answers once you start pondering the essential question of who exactly *you* are.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If we weren't already subsidizing interstates and cars to the exclusion of other forms of transportation, shallow and wrong-headed articles like this one wouldn't be pontificating about what we can't or won't do. Quoth the wiki:
"China aims to limit the cost of future construction extending the maglev line to approximately 200 million yuan (US$24.6 million) per kilometer.[3] These costs compare competitively with airport construction (e.g., Hong Kong Airport cost US$20 billion to build in 1998) and eight-lane Interstate highway systems that cost around US$50 million per mile (US$31 million per kilometer) in the US."
Translation: maglev can beat the costs of our fuel-guzzling, CO2-belching, traffic-jamming highways by a significant margin, but since GM and friends make so much money convincing Americans that cars and interstates are the way to go, whatever the hidden costs of roads and corporate welfare and military policing of oil-producing states, we won't consider shifting that investment into in anything else even though it's cheaper and better. We'll just keep paying in taxes and blood for the status quo. USA! USA! USA!
How much would it cost to build a death star?
Most people who are bright enough to see how much money is being wasted, aren't US Citizens so they don't mind at all.
Although I have thought about why the war is so expensive in the first place.
How many million a day is it? I cant figure out where the money is going.
A maglev would be nice, but the kind of big money projects that intrigue me are semi-public works projects to make the country more disaster proof and help it adapt to global warming.
Like:
Water pipelines and catch basins to help the West deal with mountain snowpack that is starting to melt too early. Part of the deal: Subsidize cisterns for new homes.
A survivable, redundant national energy grid.
Equip cities with a hardened emergency energy and communication infrastructure to keep traffic signals, police stations, hospitals, and the like going during a crisis.
If you are so worried about being blown up, go live in a cave!
Besides, by not waging war all over the world, the chance of being blown up, is reduced drastically. It's a win-win IMNSHO!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
I think this is kinda applicable here... and kinda funny:
Have a read of some Peter Hamilton books... they're pretty awesome and occaisionally have some nice glimpses into what some technological advances will mean for us
I find it an interesting read however I think that some techs mentionned arent achieved yet, not because of the cost but mainly because we are far from having the technology. The title of the article is a bit misleading. Interstellar travel, android armies? Being a student in computer engineering I see how hard it is to make simple robots work so I can hardly imagine how overly complex (aka impossible) those currently are.
I think that some technologies mentionned were interesting, like the maglev which did not "take off" as one might have expected, considering how advanced it is. That being said, the cat was cute.
Wow, we could have seven coast-to-coast rail routes that are almost as fast as airplanes (if you live close enough to one of the routes, but require a huge investment in infrastructure.
That might be a better use of the federal budget than the Iraq occupation, but that doesn't make it a good use of our money. Remember what happened to North Haverbrook after they built a monorail.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I'm afraid you're the retarded one. By invading Iraq, we did not save Western civilization, since it was never in jeopardy. Your radical exaggeration is pure hysteria; there is no evidence that western civilization faced any threat from Saddam's Iraq whatsoever. At this point, even the Republicans are reduced to justifying it on humanitarian grounds (laughable as that is on its own terms).
And yes, it is not only non-retarded but necessaryto evaluate an investment by considering what else could be done with the cash instead. This is the economic concept of opportunity cost, which is one of the core concepts of basic microeconomics.
It continues astonishes me just how many people confuse Islamic fundamentalist terrorism with the war in Iraq. It just goes to prove how successfully Bush's government has managed to brainwash such a large portion of the american populace. Saddam's government was in no way connected to Al Qaeda or any similar terrorist organization. Bush declared war based on his accusations that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain, or already had Weapons of Mass destruction. Obviously, Bush was either misled, or was lying because they have found nothing to prove his accusations. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Pakistan has significantly more Islamic fundamentalism than Iraq does, it is also run by a dictator and was infact one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan. It is also a declared Nuclear power. If this was a war against Islamic fundamentalism, or to prevent WMDs from getting into the hands of Islamic terrorist organizations, we'd be at war with Iran and Pakistan instead.
No. I think it is a very valid comparison to make. The fact that Bush has led the US into a $2 trillion war ( *sarcasm* Who cares about lives right? Its the money we've lost that we REALLY care about *sarcasm*) with a country that didn't have WMDs, puts him on the list of either one of the most evil men on this planet, or one of the biggest morons. Either he knew he was lying and did it anyway, or he wasted away thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on his idiotic false accusations.
You cant blame anyone, when s/he wonders what all could have been possible with $2 trillion had we instead decided we wanted to spend it constructively. Had the American people elected someone with atleast average intelligence into the office of President, what could s/he have done with those $2 trillion? Built a transcontinental mag-lev perhaps? Lowered Taxes maybe? Paid off a good chunk of the national debt? Paid for the research of alternative energy? we'll never know. Because we've made a $2 trillion bonfire , and thrown a few thousand people in it for good measure... just to spice it up.
- Tempestdata
Wrong Wrong Wrong.
/km is the cost to build in China. Labor and materials are much much much cheaper there, not to mention overhead costs like safety inspections and engineering are substantially cheaper as well.
$24.6 million
The cost of light rail systems in the US is around $35 million/ mile or $29 million/ km. Mag-lev will be substantially more expensive. You can't take the estimated Chinese cost for a new high tech solution, compare it to the real cost of a low-tech American solution and say that the new high-tech solution would be cheaper.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Put bluntly, it isn't (justified solely on the basis of it's own merits).
You're not making a lot of sense but you seem to be claiming that either the GWOT, as you call it, is so important that it supersedes absolutely everything else or it isn't important at all. This is a false dichotomy. There is no inherent reason why the GWOT can't be of middling importance. Factual observation actually suggests that the GWOT should be of low importance (i.e. a tally of actual fatalities caused by terrorism) but emotional arguments bump it up a bit more.
Anyway, the GWOT is one of many things that the US government could spend money on and it is entirely appropriate to analyze the costs and benefits relative to other possible expenditures.
$70 billion to let New Yorkers visit Los Angeles in less time than it takes now. Great.
If you start throwing in stops, and the security checks,resulting offloads, onloads, time to speed up and time to slow down. You'd end up with a slightly better Amtrak.
> By invading Iraq, we did not save Western civilization, since it was never in jeopardy.
Sigh, I know lefties prefer emotion over reason but try to work a little harder on the reading comprehension.... Reading really is Fundamental, K?
You don't believe we are at war, ok. And if you read what I wrote you will see that I acknowledge that if one doesn't believe we are at war then spending ANY blood or treasure is a bad idea. It isn't a position I agree with, but if one starts from the position that we aren't in fact in a clash of civilizations, that spending anything on a 'false war' is a bad idea is a quite logical conclusion based on it.
However you can assert we aren't at war until the stars go cold but it isn't likely to change my position anymore than I'm likely to change yours.
Democrat delenda est
So, how much would it cost to make a permanent hotel in space? If we don't allow ourselves the luxury of appending it to the ISS, it's going to cost tens of billions of dollars.
Not sure where they get this figure from... Bigelow Aerospace is spending far less than $1 billion dollars total on his private space station, and it isn't going to be attached to the ISS. For those of you unfamiliar with the company, they already have a couple of prototype habitats up in orbit now (launched in 2006 and 2007) sending back data, and will be launching the modules for their commercial space station in the next few years.
Of course, a "hotel" is only one of the marketed uses for it; the impression I get is that Bigelow is much more interested in renting modules for research purposes to interested nations and companies.
I'm sure China would love to keep the cost of it's maglev down, but they can't. That's why they've already cancelled future extensions in favor of conventional high-speed rail. Apparently they couldn't get the cost below $70m/km. Not only that, but roads allow you to skip that extra step of changing modes of transportatino to get to and from the train station.
The maglev near Shanghai goes from the airport to the outskirts of the city. For a fraction of the cost, both in terms of money and time, you can take a taxi directly from the airport to the city center. And that's with the government heavily subsidizing the train. It's not practical mass transportation - it's a ride. A vanity project.
I agree trains can be more efficient than road traffic in certain situations, but we're not starting with empty land. Building out a high-speed rail system only makes sense if you're looking out generations into the future, because the building costs for the road network are sunk already.
IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11
You can't take the sky from me...
Some of these are bargains, seriously.
Considering the big lies Bush and his cronies used to sell the war, I would like to see the costs of the war declared an odious debt and taken out of their personal accounts (along with the 'lucky' hand picked recipiants of no bid contracts in Iraq). I'm only half kidding here.
If anything, the war in Iraq has been against the interests of the U.S. citizens. We have a big bill, more Arabs than ever hate us (for even better reasons than ever), no end in sight. DHS informs us that we must be more vigillent than ever against terrorism, so we certainly didn't gain safety. The oil isn't flowing, so we didn't even get (however unethical it would be) cheap fuel.
- Concorde was profitable right up to the end, even including the massive overhaul costs; in its final year, 7 relatively low-capacity aircraft made £90m, whilst BA as a whole was making a loss.
- The only reason BA stopped flying them was that the French wouldn't let them - the agreement under which they were originally built stated that both countries had to to keep flying their concordes and the French didn't want to keep flying theirs because THEIRS were unprofitable (because they operated them badly)
- Also, the French hold the type certificate on the plane, so BA couldn't go even build new ones.
- The original agreement also stated that BOAC, later BA, had to operate the British concordes; so even if Beardy Branson had purchased them, they'd still have been operated by BA staff, and if BA were going to be operating them, they'd damn well still be doing it with the planes in their own colours. Except they couldn't - see above. It was a publicity stunt and Branson knew it.
So, to conclude, the reason that the only supersonic airliner is sitting rotting on the tarmac is because the French killed it, not BA. Also, the Paris crash was caused by Air France putting too much luggage on board and then overfilling the fuel tanks to give it enough to get across the Atlantic. (The tanks were supposed to be 97% full, the French filled them to 100%.)FGD 135
This is an enlightening article about his donations to the Discovery Institute:
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/08/26/gatesfoundation/
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up?
You could always build it underground like the UK-France channel tunnel. Avoid the problems associated with bad weather, storms, snow, the wrong kind of leaves on the tracks, people following sat-nav systems and driving onto the tracks.
Unfortunately, you would still have the same "no-land-access-unless-we-are-put-on-the-map" politices from small towns that affected California. They wanted to build a high-speed train from San-Francisco to Los-Angeles through San Jose. They got state permission to start the project, but it was the getting land access rights from every small-town city mayor that killed the project. They would only grant permission if the trains would stop at a station in their city. For every city, this would involve an extra ten minute delay added onto the journey, which would defeat the purpose of being faster than air travel.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
* Flying car - Santa says "NO" you don't have a pilots license
* Cheap Nuclear Power - Santa says "NO" have you seen The Simpsons?
* Safe, Effective Diet Pill - Santa says "OKAY" I've seen Rosie ODonnell
* Cheap TV Phone (nevermind, I don't look so hot in the morning) - Santa agrees with you
* Space Travel for the Mass - Santa says "NO" have you seen Futurama?
* Cure for Cancer - Santa says "YES" because he hates Denis Leary
* Cure for the Common Cold - Santa says "NO" because that's his BioWeapon
* Artificial Intelligence approaching at least Dog Level - Santa says "OKAY" and designs an adroid dog that can hump your leg
* Appliances that Accept Voice Commands - Santa says "DONE" and hands your girl friend a new vibrator
* Independence from Oil - Santa says "FINE" and drops a log down your fireplace instead of taking a pee
* 3D User Interface - Santa says "NO" because you'd just use it for pr0n
* Cybernetic Implants - Santa says "NO" because you have self-esteem issues that won't be solved by such trivial augmentations...and your small wii..besides I just gave your voice activated appliance
* Energy-beam Weapons - Santa says "NO" because you're just angry about the "NO" to cybernetic implants.
* Easy-to-Maintain Personal Computers - Santa says "NO" because you already have a Mac which was designed for idiots.
* Car Key Alternative - I hate looking for lost keys. - Santa says "WTF?" because you don't own a car that has a key fob.
* Non-Lethal Weaponry for Cops - Santa says "HELL NO" because if cops had non-lethal weapons it means more work for santa.
* Reliable Tires (or that fail gradually) - Tires are still based on air-filled balloon technology, making them problematic. - Santa agrees with you but is under contract to Firestone
* Reliable Car Battery - Santa says "WHATEVER" because he uses reindeer.
* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death - Santa says "STRAP-IN" and says sit in that chair with the metal skull cap.
Most people who are bright enough to see how much money is being wasted, aren't US Citizens so they don't mind at all.
Oh we see it and we mind, but you seem to think that we are actually in a position to do anything about it. Protests don't do anything when they are made from a First Amendment Zone. We voted our sorry excuse for an opposition party into power and they didn't stop the war. We have attempted to legally address the the deception that paved the way for this war in the first place (see my sig) but that hasn't even appeared in our evening news on a slow news day. None of our viable candidates for the next presidency are willing to pull the troops out. You seem to suffer from the misconception that Americans actually have any control or accountability from our government.
How many million a day is it? I cant figure out where the money is going.
It's going to interests owned by the like of The Carlyle Group and Halliburton
We are all just people.
Yeah, monorails suck. What we really need is an escalator to nowhere.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Don't forget the 2-3 hours spent in the initial airport for security screening and all, and the time spent in the destination airport at the baggage claim.
That is a ridiculously low figure for a transcontinental maglev train. I doubt they'd get as far as New York to Jersey for that amount.
How much did Boston's big dig cost?
* Two chicks at the same time.
Thats crazy. Highways and railways here in Australia are all on state land. The state Governments have the power to aquire land in strategic locations. I am just sorry we don't have the vision to do large scale projects like this.
You don't need maglev speeds to comete with air travel over distances of 1000km or so because of the delays associated with airports, etc.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Don't forget, most of that $2 trillion is debt. Which means that this point is moot unless there is some great need, don't spend what you don't have. The money isn't there to spend, we (the government of the United States) borrowed it to fund the war. No war means MUCH less borrowed money.
Perhaps this is a pipe dream, but we're talking about sci-fi technology here, so why not? Imagine what would happen if we invest in alternative energy sources on a massive scale - say 500 billion dollars, which could come from the defense budget (still leaving the United States as the top single spender on for defense, spending nearly twice as much as the next largest spender, France, according to wikipedia's figures). If we didn't need fossil fuel, we would most certainly be able to pull out of the middle east, and ignore them just like we ignore Africa (not that this is a good thing, but that's another issue...). There goes the main reason for war cited by those who attacked us on 9/11 - the fact the we are occupying muslim lands. See Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. In fact, we could view investing in alternative energy sources AS defense spending - a solid investment in a crucial strategic interest of the United States, not to mention a great way to attack the current environmental problems we face. This sort of investment would not solve the problem overnight, and undoubtedly it would need to be allocated very carefully, but just look at what we did back during the Cold War era when we seriously invested in education and technology - we reached the moon, something that would have been considered science fiction 30 years previously! Call me naive, but I can hope, right?
Far more money was donated during the 90's because the economy was so good. The difference is that it was SPREAD everywhere. Now, that we have had a so-so economy (and heading downwards), we are going to see far less money for donations. If Gates/Buffet took the same approach as Allen or Musk, they would create a number of new jobs that would then contribute.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"And very profitable. But the airlines would obviously HATE the idea just for starters."
So find a way to give the airlines an inside track on the new deal to negate their opposition if the end result would be better for the country as a whole. If that is the only way to get the thing done.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
All you need to make an automatic translation machine are four pieces of technology, three of which by and large already exist. Speech recognition, OCR (for signs, etc), image editing (add subtitles on the fly), and machine translation software. Image editing already exists, and it's not even that hard to do to get something that can autogenerate subtitles -- if all else fails, shrink the picture and add subtitles in the now-empty space at the bottom.
OCR exists. It would need its accuracy significantly improved, but then, most things you are going to want to use it on will be in one several commonly-used typefaces, especially if you're using it on computer text. Speech recognition exists, but by and large isn't good enough yet. Eventually it will be to the point where it either won't need training, or it will be feasible to precompute a database of hundreds of voices and brute force it.
That leaves machine translation. Unlike Star Trek (where the 'universal translators' can deal with even unknown languages, except when required by the plot), you are pretty much never going to get machine translation to deal with unknown languages. But that's OK, you don't really NEED that. Being able to build a new translator database for new languages as needed is enough. The way I figure, by the time machine translation is good enough, the other three prongs will have advanced far enough that you should be able to make a magic box that takes an AV feed in, and spits a new one out at 60 FPS. There you go, and beam me up Scotty, because I want one of those now!
It would LEVITATE!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
this incident
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
High speed trains don't follow geography, they follow politics - the actual route includes Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, LA, San Diego, among other cities. Regardless of route, it's estimated to cost around $37B for 700 miles, which is what I was referring to.
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/route/default.asp
If a cross country high speed rail route ever reached the planning stage, it would probably be a 5000 mile route that hits every congressman's hometown between LA and NY.
No sig for you!!
sorry, strike indigent, should be indigenous.
can't count on spellcheck for everything.
Actually, the maglev could run along either abandoned railroad tracks or even along the highways. But if I were them, I would insist on owning the land. In particular, they will want to install pipelines, waterlines, communications, power, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What lies roughly between NYC and Milwaukee? There is more money, manufactuering, and goods traveled there than between any other 2 cities on this planet. Not even Japan or china has as much goods as travels in that arena. Read in Chicago, Detroit, buffalo, etc. Most lines would take at least 20 years to be profitable. This would be profitable the first 5 year.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How the hell was this moderated up? Wake up, the US is not any safer now against terrorism than it was before attacking Iraq. As far as I am concerned, this war is little more than a generous gift from a corrupt politician elected in a dubious manner to his friends in the military industrial complex. Besides, I'm sure a very good argument could be made that investing in high speed trains would make the US citizens safer, since there would be less planes around to hijack and throw into skyscrapers. Geez, are you going to stop building anything for fear someone may blow it up?
There's always the possibility that spending money on a Maglev, rather than on killing people, might make it less likely that someone would want to blow it the hell up.
In any case, most of the money being spent in the military has nothing to do with terrorism. In particular, the Iraq war has nothing to do with terrorism, and building up the armed forces has nothing to do with terrorism. Really, about the only thing that would make sense here is spending more money on intelligence.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up? Put bluntly, either the GWOT is justified on its own merits or it isn't. Silly comarisons to what else could be done instead with the cash is retarded. If you believe we are in a war for survival against an implacable foe out to destroy Western Civilization and replace it with a Caliphate then price isn't an object, only Victory will suffice; and if you don't believe we are at war then we never should have spent the first dollar.
That's a fine false dichotomy you've got there. What if I believe that Islamic terrorists are likely to cause trouble but that they lack the ability to even approach destroying western civiliation and that for every X people they might kill, we can save 10X people by spending the money on something besides war?
Of course, as it is, I don't believe Iraq was at all relevant to terrorism. By diverting our resources there we actually reduced our chances of catching a known terrorist. Further, a few simple and inexpensive precautions and procedure changes would have given us just as much (or more) security as the TSA and all the new metal detectors and xray machines have.
The reletively modest expendatures for hunting Osama down were probably justifiable.
Doesn't need to go to Milwaukee, unless it's to help Miller ship out beer, so, be realistic and end it in Chicago.
I reckon the 70bn price tag is for building the tracks only. And that is based on current building cost. Since the only place of a commercial build so far is China they probably grossly underestimated labor cost for the NYC-LA stretch to start with. Never mind that the German test system and Shanghai airport service were built on flat land - not through the Sierra Nevada.
Secondly, they would need to spend money on (rights to) land to build it on - especially in cities this will be hugely expensive.
Then a service that can cary as many passengers between LA and NYC as airlines do with a schedule as flexible means lots of trains need to be built and they don't come cheap either.
Lastly, you probably want a couple of stops as well so that means a fair few stations along the way - all in expensive urban areas. These stations could be on spurs so you can still have your airline-beating non-stop service, but without these spurs the system would never become profitable.
Consider, we could have built seven of those NY to LA maglev trains for what Bush has spent so far blowing stuff up in Iraq. Put another way, we could have built a national long-haul maglev infrastructure and had enough left over to roll out fibre to the curb nationwide.
Nahhh, let's just kill people!
You have no idea how cool a national mag-lev system just on its own would be. Even more so, you have no idea how sad it makes me this country elected a leader TWICE that would do something so STUPID as to blow that much money in a foreign country under false pretenses.The problem with the maglev isn't the up front cost - it's the fact that it's extremely unlikely to pay for itself. Annual maintenance costs alone will be nearly crippling, let alone other operating expenses and repaying the construction loans/bonds.
screw the airlines - if they can't run that why should they be involved in a shiny new train network?
$70 billion for a coast to coast mag lev? No way. The big dig in Boston, which was basically building a few tunnels cost $14.6b and you're telling me you can get a coast to coast mag lev for only 5 times as much? Keep dreaming.
Arent your gun laws there so you can overthrow your government?
Did you want to do it sooner or later?
And I still don't see how maglev can compete with airlines for speed on a cross country trip, it would have to average 500mph including stops to beat a 5 hour flight. And the article even says that maglev systems current average around 260MPH, so that's over a 9 hour trip.
/Not to mention getting to the airport 2 hours early to get stripsearched and have your nail clippers and half empty 3.5 ounce bottle of shampoo thrown away.
That's a 9 hour trip sitting an a roomy train car vs a 5 hours flight crammed in like sardines with everyone afaid to go to the bathroom because they might be mistaken for a terrorist and get beaten down.
Gates would never take away from rich ppl like Ellis, McNealy, Jobs, etc. And Buffet would never open a competing business even if it meant loads of jobs, high profits, and saving American and the planet, though he would help try to find a way to cure aids and save 10% of the population.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up? Put bluntly, either the GWOT is justified on its own merits or it isn't. Silly comarisons to what else could be done instead with the cash is retarded. If you believe we are in a war for survival against an implacable foe out to destroy Western Civilization and replace it with a Caliphate then price isn't an object, only Victory will suffice; and if you don't believe we are at war then we never should have spent the first dollar.
I hate to go off topic like this, but I will...What does spending billions and billions of dollars in Iraq have to do with the war on terror? There were no terrorists there.
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
And no one's confused (except maybe you). Yes, Saddam ran a secular state that was very low on Islamic based terror. But he hasn't run that state for nearly 5 years now. And sadly, Iraq is now pretty well infested with jihadis. It wasn't then, it is now. Get used to it.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
I notice your thought processes (like many others) can't seem to grasp that the middle of the country is just as important as the rest. How about we start the thing in K.C. and branch out to the coasts? Or is that too demeaning for the sophisticates?
Where is this evidence that Iraq was trying to establish a Caliphate and destroy western civilization? Do not switch the point. Weapons of mass destruction was only ONE of the reasons for the invasion? Really? What was the primary reason then? the others? Revenge? Oil? Preventing the establishment of a Caliphate that would destroy Western Civilization?
Many believe WMDs were shipped to Syria on the even of war? That statement is so full of holes it's ridiculous. That is a vague unsubstantiated statement. Many believe that psychics can be clairvoyant. What's your point? If anyone of any significance really BELIEVED that Syria had Iraq's WMDs, we'd fighting with Syria.
Saddam was paying for the families of Suicide Bombers? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm - Please read that. Lets have the Russians invade and over throw the American system of government.
- Tempestdata
Milwaukee/Chicago have loads of traffic that go between them. I grew up mostly in wonder lake( Northern Ill ) and my father was an American Airlines Pilot. When I was talking to him about maglev, he was the one that suggested this route. Pointed out that in the 90's, that route made up roughly half of AA and UAL's revenue and profit. In fact, he pointed out that only the small domestics do not service this entire route. In light of the shipping on the great lake, the trukcing, the rail, and the planes, I think that NOT doing the route to Milwaukee would be a huge mistake.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
New York - LA is not a good idea. The thing is, a Maglev could support a very large number of passengers per year, but its also very expensive, so it needs those passengers. To get so many passengers, you can't cater primarily to travellers, you need to cater to commuters, who will only start appearing if the travel time is less than one hour or something like that.
But a maglev from Washington to New York via Baltimore and Philadelphia would be just over 200 miles, so a maglev going at 300 mph could easily do that in one hour. This would effectively tie these cities together and going between them could become an every day habit for millions. It would make the region the largest metropolitan area in the world and completely transform it.
Hello? What happened to the sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? By comparison these would have to be a bargain...
Well, unlike Santa, I'm not under any contract to Firestone; I'm free to mention Michelin is already working on a solution, as another post pointed out. They call it the Tweel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweel
Well, as a guy who lives in Highlands Ranch CO, I think that I can grasp that. In fact, I am closer to the middle than you are. However, you do not seem to grasp that if you are going to make this expand, then it MUST be profitable from the gitgo. Transportation does not make their money on human travel but on Cargo. So the question is, where in the USA do we have the LARGEST amount of cargo travel? Hummmmm? Lawdy, lawdy, can you believe that it lines up RIGHT WITH THE LINE THAT I WAS SUGGESTING? Imagine that.
Look, the line going from D.C. to Milwaukee is about a 1K miles. From Chicago, they would probably head south and west. I am guessing that they would head south to St. Louis area. Why? Because, it is a lot of traffic with a lot of nothing in between. From St. Louis, they can grab the i-70 corridor to KC, Denver, SLC, etc, or they could go to OK City, following 44 around (via dallas, albaq, pheonix, vegas, LA, SD). But you have to make the company profitable first. And that is NOT la/sd, but NYCMilwaukee.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Every time I read about grand projects like these, I wonder how they come up with these ridiculous numbers for costs. Yeah, so I'm a bit of a socialist, and I don't think large-scale projects that benefit large swaths of the population should come with a price tag. I know we're going to be extinct long before any Star Trek communism ever has a chance, but it's still not a bad thing to shoot for.
Look at it this way: if we had a clear path to cure some horrible disease, be it AIDS, cancer, diabetes... and the only thing standing in our way is a patent-hoarding Megacorp holding the cure hostage for twelve quadrillion dollars... I'd volunteer in a heartbeat to go Robin Hood on those jerks and kill 'em all, to benefit the human race at large.
I personally don't see the great appeal of MagLev trains, but I've only ridden a train twice in my life. There are many "futuristic" things within our reach, held back only by evil, dirty money. Money shouldn't matter after a certain point - money's for little guys like you and me to trade, not to synthetically restrain our evolution.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
But they'd have to buy the land from the railroad companies, or lease it, no? And what about the counties or towns that don't want the maglev running through their land because of noise concerns?
I just think it would be very, very hard, if not impossible, for a non-government agency to procure the continuous stretches of land needed to get this thing built. It's hard enough for a city to build or expand an airport, for example. The city I live in has (San Diego, CA) has been talking about expanding the airport for years, and it keeps coming up every election cycle, but nothing's been done since these discussions started 10+ years ago.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
The MagLev trains should of course run in vacuum tubes. That will make them extremely fast and energy efficient.
A general wrong thinking about maglevs is that it should be built for luxurious transportations for huge prices. That is economical madness. As the track is very expensive, you want to fill to 100% (and then you can charge extra for the peak hours) just like Ryanair and now other companies in different industries do.
Also the concept of "train" is bad. As it's vacuum, there is no reason to send train. You can have one wagon per passenger/group/shipment just like normal cars/trucks. And the "tuberoad" would of course be automatically routed, so when you enter where you're going, the system automatically allocate the way and then sends you off in 100 meter per second in a local transport net, into 1000 meters per second on the intercity tubes and then finally into another local net to your destination.
There should also be a smaller system just like this for packages. That is about a meter in diameter which would make it pretty easy to fill it with cargo. I'm not thinking so much about normal postal shippings, but along the line that these postal system should be competitive with piplines, railroads-transports and even ships for moving huge amounts of cargo very cheaply. One little maglev vacuum tube could transport as much as a couple of highways.
And with cheap transportations comes a huge economical boom.
How about instead of going for maglev gold, we just run rail conveyor belts along the main commuter routes, with flatbed spots and de/accelerator ramps from feeder entrances/exits? Drive on in the suburbs, park, and drive off in a highly predictable 15-20 minutes, into a parking lot building. No congestion or collisions, no gas burned (the central power generation and pollution control is much more efficient, and included in your fare). Fill the rails with cars to use the full capacity of the rails.
If a whole NYC/LA maglev that could accommodate maybe a dozen trains at a time costs only $70B, then a dozen "autoartery" car trains serving NYC or LA should cost at most 10% of that. Hell, Giuliani's lame "Sky Train" that gets a few tourists between JFK airport and Jamaica (filthy and remote) station, instead of just extending existing subways 1/4 mile, cost $8B. If we spent that on these car trains, they'd serve over 1M cars a day, which for $10B would mean $10 round trips would take under 3 years to pay back. $4:gal gas in 20MPG cars in traffic means $10 is about half what most people pay right now, not to mention normal car wear, collisions and just going crazy in traffic.
In the 1920s and 1930s, this kind of car train would have been science fiction. Why don't we catch up with "Golden Age" SF first, and then move on to the SF that came later with what we save?
--
make install -not war
southern cal is a WHOLE different creature than the midwest, east coast. NY would gladly open up towns to get that kind of jobs in to their state. Once you step away from NYC and its suburbs, the area opens WAY up. Not as open as say eastern CA, but up there. It would be easy for the train to avoid small towns if they are unfriendly. The issue will be entry/exits from the cities. If somebody wants to build a high-speed maglev that would make a stop in their area, ALL of these towns will gladly do what it takes.
Now, as to the southern cal, the entire coastline is difficult to move around. I spent some time in SD, La Jolla as a child (during the 60's, 70's, my father would take me on his trips and he had a regularly had a layover in SD for 36 hrs). I was surprised at the change in La Jolla in 1980. I was even more surprised in 1999. I can not imagine what it looks like now. Point is, the density that CA has on the entire coast line will only be found in cities in the midwest, and west of the eastern seaboard.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ahem. Saddam Hussein's government was secular, not an Islamic theocracy. He only started pulling the religion card when Bush launched the second Gulf war. And, in case you weren't aware, the Ba'athists were supported by (possibly bankrolled by), the US, until Hussein started sabre-rattling and threatening to sell oil in Euros instead of USD. Just sayin'.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
As much as I like space travel, most of "NASA's" practical developments are just things they took credit for, or situations where they just added funds to existing research. Research into space tells us a lot about space, and helps with satellite-based developments, but that's about it for widespread, current, practical benefits.
I grew up in the Midwest, including suburbs and very rural small towns, so I am familiar with the vastness and open spaces there. What would be interesting is whether a city or county that wants the tracks to come through their town could force a private individual to sell their land to another private individual (i.e., the company building the tracks). I believe the Supreme Court gave the thumbs up for this a few years back (it happened in San Diego back in 2002 or 2003 when the city claimed land under eminent domain to build a new stadium downtown for the Padres), but it is becoming an increasingly unpopular move.
A private company lacks the clout that the state of Federal government has. So what's to stop all these small towns from getting all high and mighty? Letting them build through their town, then decide to impose a train tax on every train that passes through, once the track is laid? Or what if you get support from a town, but the citizenry opposes it, so six months later they elect someone else who vows to kick you out? Granted, the majority of towns, cities, counties, and states will likely behave, but do you really want to have to respond to every mayor of a town with 500 people who decides to do something annoying that hampers the progress of construction? And you say towns will like the tracks b/c of jobs. What happens if they hire some townspeople, but they can't cut it, so they fire them, and the town raises a stink?
Another challenge, as you noted, is getting the destinations in the city. I assume the cities own their major transportation hubs (i.e., Union Station). Would they let a private company build tracks in there, or would they balk at the idea, worrying that it would detract from their own business?
I dunno, just thinking aloud here, but it seems like the challenges are too vast for a private individual or company to surmount.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
While I think it would be great to invest heavily in alternative energy (Scientific American has a plan for solar energy), I don't necessarily think that it make us ignore the Middle East. (The U.S. military is not ignoring Africa, by the way, since the United States Africa Command was recently established.) The threat of terrorism (real or imagined) will probably keep us in the Middle East for a long time to come.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
--Frederick Douglass
Consider, we could have built seven of those NY to LA maglev trains for what Bush has spent so far blowing stuff up in Iraq. Put another way, we could have built a national long-haul maglev infrastructure and had enough left over to roll out fibre to the curb nationwide.
The war in Iraq is pricey, but look at all the dough we waste on social security and medicare. That's almost a trillion dollars a year and would allow us to have a couple of Iraqs, a moonbase, and maglev trains, but oh no, we have to have entitlements going up at twice the rate of economic growth now for decades on end.
Time to cut the old people off and start spending that money on cool stuff. I'd say, cut medicare spending in half, cap the rate of growth, and let people take a ticket and wait.
This is my sig.
We will get used to the change to the worst when you get used to some fundamental truth as in : your war caused this and was based on fundamentally wrong premise.
But even if we get used to this, this does not change the premise of the op , that jihad terrorist blowing shit in america =3 or maybe 4 incidents. and NONE of them had anything to do with Irak. So showing the terrorist card to say that it would not be useful to have a maglev NY-LA if terrorist blow it up is downright misleading.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
>Saddam's government was in no way connected to Al Qaeda or any similar terrorist organization.
You're flat out wrong on that. Saddam was harboring Abu Nidel until we invaded at which point Saddam's security forces murdered Nidal.
Colin Powell's speech to the UN mentioned camps in the northern part of Iraq that we cleared out within a few weeks after Baghdad fell. And Gee Whiz, they even found traces of chemical weapons at one of the camps.
On 9/12, in his speech before Congress, Bush made it clear he was going after any country that harbored terrorists. Iraq harbored terrorists and Bush followed through. It made no difference whether they were connected to Al Queda and 9/11 - Bush's point was that if we let countries harbor terrorists, we'll eventually end up paying the price for it.
In the Jan. 31, 2008 Democratic debate, Obama said, "So I have said very clearly: I will end this war. We will not have a permanent occupation and we will not have permanent bases in Iraq." He goes on to say that a "strike force" will remain to help deal with any terrorists that pop up, and others will remain to help with the humanitarian effort. Does that count as pulling out all the troops? What if the strike force wasn't there, would it then be pulling out all the troops? What if we put all the troops on a carrier ship near Iraq? Is it ok to leave "soldiers" in our embassy in Iraq, or do they need to be "pulled out" as well?
Again, I'm not trying to get into a he said / she said policy debate or to argue about symantics or the best way to stop the war in Iraq; I'm just trying to point out that it's not a simple issue, and in my opinion, at least one of the candidates is willing to "pull the troops out"... depending on how you define it, lol.
The OP would have been informative if he had provided checkable reference. He did not. And what I find on the web is the contrary to what the OP said (hinting that he was either spitting BS, or that he repeated somebody BS and it was modded informative) : concord crash caused by burst tyre
:
There are also hint that BOTH airline decided at the same time to STOP concorde due to a significant increase onf maintenance cost by airbus : BA and AF decision to stop concorde due to maintenance money increase and downward profit
QUOTE (italic emphasis mine)
Both airlines announced the decision Thursday immediately after Airbus, which makes Concordes, said the planes would need an "enhanced maintenance programme in the coming years."
"British Airways has decided that such an investment cannot be justified in the face of falling revenue caused by a global downturn in demand for all forms of premium travel in the airline industry," the company said.
"This is the end of a fantastic era in the world of aviation but bringing forward Concorde's retirement is a prudent business decision at a time when we are having to make difficult decisions right across the airline," said BA Chief Executive Rod Eddington.
The airline has been forced to cut more than 13,000 jobs since just before the September 11 attacks.
BA has been only flying half the service it used to following the Paris air crash. Concorde was out of service for more than a year after the crash.
Article information
1) BA and AF decided to stop because of increased maintenance cost
2) Premimum travel global downturn made future profit less certain or even downright not happening
3) and if I read some paragraph correctly, BA was flying while AF was not
so apparently it is not "the french killed it" but "money (lack of prospective profit) killed it".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
What are the chances of an undersea cable being cut?
I really doubt the terrorists we're talking about have the ability to make an entire city go FOOM!. The only power that has EVER done that is the U.S. (and we did it TWICE for good measure).
Until the U.S. invaded, there were no terrorists of consequence in Iraq (Saddam didn't like the idea of having people who could depose him around). Terrorists thrive on chaos and anger and we turned Iraq into a fertile field filled with both.
As for terrorists bringing down western civilization, the U.K. survived over a decade of IRA bombs and barely blinked. Israel seems to still be here in spite of the much more serious problems they've had.
You guys better pray to whatever supreme being you worship that you never develop a conscience because all you people will have no honorable option but suicide if you ever develop one; and realize just how much blood (American and Iraqi) is on your hands because you have helped drag this war out for political purposes.
I must have fallen through the looking glass when I got distracted! Had my plan been followed, the war would be over already (by virtue of never getting started). There would have been no bloodshed. The war was never justified. Certainly I'm not the one who fabricated excuse after excuse to invade Iraq (again). Frankly, before Bush was even elected the first time, I predicted that he wouldn't rest until he found some excuse to go to war w/ Iraq if he became president. He performed EXACTLY as I expected/feared.
Perhaps your memory needs a refresher. Bush never said anything about terrorists in Iraq until after the invasion when the WMD rather embarrassingly didn't turn up.
If you find me arguing against a war with a hostile nation that has invaded our allies or bombed our territory, then feel free to trot that out. Until then, I'm not the one who sounds stupid.
I'll support the "Read the Bills Act" if it was renamed to RTFB.
The chinese can solve such problems in a smart and cost effective way, they just move a few million people to a different place if they are in the way. And I'm not being sarcastic now.
Amen.
- Dan
The first British maglev in Birmingham has a track of about 600 metres and passengers stand in it.
Having ridden it a few times, I'm quite happy that it's not reaching speeds in excess of 300 MPH over such a short track.
I can't be bothered to calculate the actual g force involved in going from 0 to 300 mph in 300 metres and then decelerating from 300 mph to 0 on the same distance, but I'm pretty sure I'd need more than a hand rail to hold on to to be able to ride that puppy!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
The funny thing about that-The people who really dislike the war are the same people who really dislike anyone owning guns.
Osama lives in a cave and despite the billions being spent by Bush and co, they haven't managed to blow him up. Guess living in a cave really is a safe place to be.
The Germans (a consortium involving among others Siemens and Thyssen Krupp) have been trying to sell a Maglev train, called the Transrapid for over a decade now. So far, the only customers are the cities of Munich and Shanghai. The thing has a cruise speed of 250mph.
Unfortunately, one big disadvantage of Maglev trains is that they cannot run on standard rail tracks, of course. Rebuilding a whole new track is expensive, especially on long distances. That seems to be the main reason why Germany, France and Japan (the three biggest countries with real "high speed" rail connections) have all opted for traditional trains (the ICE, the TGV and the Shinkansen), which do their high-speed travel on purpose-built tracks but invariably also use older standard rail tracks on parts of their routes.
I'm sure China would love to keep the cost of it's maglev down, but they can't. That's why they've already cancelled future extensions in favor of conventional high-speed rail. Apparently they couldn't get the cost below $70m/km. Not only that, but roads allow you to skip that extra step of changing modes of transportatino to get to and from the train station.
With decent public transport it's easier than using roads: less congestion, no effort.I agree trains can be more efficient than road traffic in certain situations, but we're not starting with empty land. Building out a high-speed rail system only makes sense if you're looking out generations into the future, because the building costs for the road network are sunk already.
So... it makes sense then?(I agree that conventional rail seems better in this case than Maglev because of the costs, flexibility and existing infrastructure)
The belief that Saddam still (remember, he USED them in the past so there is zero doubt he once had WMD) possessed some or all of his WMD stockpiles was universal in the Clinton administration, Congress, the US intelligence community, the French, British and German intelligence communities, etc. both before and during Bush's reign." And here you conveniently completely forget about those UN-weapon inspectors, who were very succesfull at ratting out Saddam's last factories and stashes (despite the American non-cooperation). When these inspectors declared Iraq (almost) clean, they were spot on (it turned out later). And the French, German, and Russian leadership didn't conveniently ignore or ridicule the inspectors, as the Bushies did.
So, was Bush misled? I don't think so, I think it's Bush who misled.
Realpolitic isn't pretty and sometimes it can come back to bite ya on the ass. Aren't you a man of the world? Anyway, so does going to war on lies.
There is also the cost of kicking hundreds of landowners out. American ones have rights and can usualy get a fairly reasonable price for their land, chinese ones can just shut up.
Birmingham, England, had the first in the 1980s, though the promise of airliner-like speeds on land is still unrealized.
The first maglev prototype was built in Sutton Gault, Cambridgeshire, adjacent to the flood plains of the Ouse Washes. These days there is no sign of the maglev tracks, the area is now a microlight airstrip.
This is a google maps image of the area. That large blue strip moving through the picture is the Ouse Washes - the largest wildfowl water area in Europe, currently flooded (as it should be at this time of year). The whole area is very flat, for miles in many directions and most of it would be underwater if not for the work of some Dutch Engineers a few hundred years ago. The flood plain stretches to the North Sea, joining it at The Wash, in Norfolk.
Sorry, it sounds good but I doubt you will find many people who actually pony up. I know people who bitch about the long time it takes to fly to LA from Atlanta, you think they are going to wait longer on a train? Let alone a train that stops for other people? People pay extra already to not have connecting flights
American's are impatient. We want it now.
I really tire of all the people who bitch about the lack of trains. There are many reasons it just doesn't work here.
1. Its on a schedule, which usually isn't the one you want. Unlike most airports where there are many options
2. Its still requires connecting transportation (cars, buses, etc)
3. Its still slow over long distances.
4. It already died because the public didn't want it. (Amtrak - goes where, well hell, who cares)
Elevated trains? Lets see, cost? Lack of use of existing facilities means its get harder to make the case to spend the money. Unlike most countries American's are used to not being near where they work. Its called independance. We are free to live where we want and how we want. We can change jobs frequently as well. People tend to no longer follow jobs. Its no fun uprooting family. Used to be you went where the work was. Now too many people get by living off of government handouts (I have friends in rent controlled apartments who basically don't work - 30% of their income is the max charge the apartment can do... they get their limited disability checks and others each month and do what, play EQ and WOW, why does that work, because some people will accept a lower lifestyle if they don't have to do anything)
back to the point.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Too bad most of the people who own guns in the US don't understand that's the real purpose of the 2nd Amendment. I admit that I didn't even understand that until a few years ago (I'm 24). It's not something they really focus on in school..."
A lot of salesmen gloss over informing consumers of their cooling-off period rights, too. Funny that.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The parent didn't assert that the US is not at war, they merely questioned the justifications and framing for that war in Iraq - the one which is costing billions of dollars. While I'm sure you'd like to frame it as a war of good against evil, civilised world against backwards caliphate(!), life really isn't that simple. Wars since time immemorial have been justified on those grounds, and it's always been a lie. You have presented no evidence of this so called 'clash of civilisations' - the tenuous link you made to Iraq was refuted by the answers given in this thread. The war in Afghanistan is a very different one to the one in Iraq, started for different reasons, and attempting to portray them both (along with a possible attack on Iran) as some kind of never-ending global war on the same enemy is simply a rhetorical trick designed to deflect criticism. It's on the same level as 'You're either with us or against us'.
The best way to install tyranny is to instil widespread fear of an indefinable, ineffable enemy, ideally with a never-ending war to keep the fear real, and that's exactly what's happening in the US right now. It's time it stopped and real discussions started about what the various wars are actually for, and whether they could ever achieve those goals.
PS The silly taunts about 'lefties' and reading comprehension reveal more about you than your adversaries (imagined or real).
Western Civilization, by definition, is open and thus vulnerable to terrorism.
No. A free civilisation may, by its nature, be somewhat vulnerable to physical attacks by terrorists, but that is not the same thing at all. You are only vulnerable to terrorism if those acts of violence can bring the rewards the terrorists seek. It is perhaps the biggest tragedy of our time that the so-called leaders of countries like the US, UK and Australia did not understand this, and allowed the various recent terrorist attacks to push them into sacrificing the very freedoms they claim to defending. Today the terrorists don't need violence to instil fear into the populations of our countries, because the governments are doing just fine by themselves on that count.
I believe sjames made an excellent point about the opportunity cost of this approach in the grandparent post. As I have noted before, leaders often talk of making "difficult decisions" in times like these, yet strangely this usually refers to them taking the easy way out and starting a war that an injured and emotional people will, for a time, support. The difficult choice would have been to do exactly the opposite, refusing to change our way of life and divert disproportionate resources in response to what is basically just murder but on a somewhat larger scale, and keeping the people and the time and the money focussed on places where they will really do good things. By using emotive expressions like "war on terror", government just promotes the attacks to something more than the common murder that they were, and gives a standing and credibility to the terrorists beyond the sad criminals that they are.
Just ending the Taliban was not going to get the job done, a bigger message was needed. Saddam was an ongoing threat anyway so it made sense to pick Iraq for the 'drain the swamp' plan because it wasn't going to be possible to pick anywhere else without first dealing with the likelyhood of Iraq making mischief.
That's two fundamental yet unsupported claims in one paragraph.
Why was "a bigger message" needed? What do you think had to be said, and to whom, and why was retaliating forcefully against those who had wronged the US not an appropriate or sufficient response?
And how was Saddam an "ongoing threat" anyway? The claims about WMDs, 45 minutes, etc. have all long since been debunked. Saddam was a threat to political opponents in his own country and a nasty man, without a doubt, but from the Western perspective his presence actually served to reduce the ability of AQ and their like to establish a base of operations in Iraq. Put another way, removing Saddam was actually damaging to western interests (speaking only of the anti-terrorism effort here) and served to turn Iraq into a recruiting ground for would-be terrorist attackers.
Objecting, opposing or offering alternatives were all honorable and patrotic (nay, it was a DUTY if you believed it unwise) right up until the vote was taken to launch a War. Once that happened it was all moot, Wars don't end they are Won or Lost and rooting for us to lose (you guys call it ending the war) should be punishable by law.
You think that even though someone else decided to make a mistake that I believed would cost tens of thousands of lives directly and do a staggering amount of damage indirectly, I should have a duty to support them once they were committed to making that mistake or I should face legal sanctions? That's a strange idea for the "land of the free, home of the brave".
In any case, your argument is futile. A war against an abstract noun can never be won. What credible, objective, measurable criteria do you propose for determining when victory have been achieved?
Ms. Coulter's "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity." would work though, and the moral objections would disappear pretty quick if a majo
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well, the good news is that at least that most of the people getting paid to run this war are American citizens. It's just a roundabout form of government welfare.
:)
And hey! Most of the contractors working on these jobs are getting healthcare, too! Isn't that what the democrats are all worried about?
People complain about the military industrial complex but tend to forget that it is, at least, a large provider of jobs for Americans.
Personally, I think Iraq was a bad move for us strategically, but I don't have any problem with military investment/expenditure. I keeps me employed
I don't disagree, but the point being made was that you will never get the trains because the airlines will block it.
My point was that, IF that was true, AND the country would be better off with the trains, what I suggested would be one way to get from here to that better place whereas, not doing something like that would result in not getting to that better place.***
*** check that IF again. All bets are off with what I said if that IF isn't.
We have a similar situation in our country with the freight docks causing 40 foot container congestion in the main downtown business areas...
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I want magic !
(In my lifetime)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Umm, until recently The Carlyle Group was heavily invested in by the Saudi bin Laden family, and Halliburton has built an HQ in Dubai. So no, the middle eastern elite are profiting just as much from this war as the US defense and oil elite.
That article was written when oil was a little over $60 a barrel, Today it's $87 a barrel, so I forgot to include one other group that was war profiteering: everyone in the oil business. Which largely comprised of the people in charge on both sides of this war. How can you hope for peace when the leaders of both sides are making huge profits because of the war?
We are all just people.
Sorry, but the best evidence is that he is living in the "tribal" areas of Pakistan (where the government control ends at the range of its guns, and its army doesn't go -- sort of like Bedford-Stuyvestant in NYC, during the 1970s and 80s).
> Guess living in a cave really is a safe place to be.
Well, NORAD certainly thought so (replace NORAD with Stargate Command, for this bunch :-).
The reason north station and south station are not connected through boston (and if you take the T enough, you realize that it isn't even easy by T) is because way back when north station and south station were being built, the taxi lobby successfully blocked the connection.
Read that again. In the 1910's lobbiest twisted arms, and got what they want, and anyone who wants to travel from the north of massachusetts to the south of massachusetts has to get off the commuter rail in boston and hoof it to south station (much faster than the T if you don't have luggage) or vice versa.
Lobbyists for who? Taxi's, who are even slower than the T crossing boston's congested streets and will cost you an arm and leg.
Pay attention to what your politicians do today: Our kids are going to be paying for it.
However, we call them aircraft carriers. Nobody but the military is willing to spend that much money. I personally think that space based solar power is more worthy of a mention in this article than floating cities.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
We are pretty close already with Real-Dolls and such.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
So maybe you could explain what role the last Iraqi government had in promoting terrorism? Sure the war in Afghanistan was justified - it's turning out to be a bit of a mess but at least the original motiviations were understandable. The motivation for the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the war against Al-Qaeda - I really am at a loss to understand what the US and US governments were thinking when we invaded Iraq.
...* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death I can never quite understand how people think that making a copy of themselves means they personally will live forever. The copy is a separate individual from you and when you die, you are dead. Granted there's now a copy of you running around but that's all it is, a copy. It isn't you.Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead? No, it is copy-by-value, not copy-by-reference. When the copied object is garbage-collected (dies) the original object still remains.
http://technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1319
Sarcos is way cool! We could have a tethered mecha in real life with their technology.
Even the most libertarian dream government will have some parenting to do. Mostly because adults, like children, are ignorant, impulsive, greedy, lazy or downright evil. To secure your freedom to live another day there must be a law against killing. You give up your right to kill whomever you please to gain the right to not have whomever kill you. Social contract. Is that a fair exchange? So it seems like we either have anarchy or some degree of authoritarianism. Anarchy sounds great, unless you live near anyone else. Then things get tricky. Why shouldn't i kill you and take you stuff? The only thing stopping me might be that you've got a longer range rifle. Killing you takes very little effort, and the benefit of taking your stuff and having less competition is pretty big. But you don't want me to kill you, and vice versa. So we make laws, and pay people to enforce them.
Your parents act as parents because as a child, you don't understand the world, how dangerous it is. You're driven by your impulses to eat doritos and stay up late to watch cartoons rather than do your homework. Loving, intelligent parents make decisions on your behalf and against your will because they know that while you might enjoy playing Zelda more than doing homework, that grades are far more important than entertainment.
The truth is, adults are just as stupid. Left to their own devices they would drive as fast as their car would carry them, with a cell phone in one hand, big mac in the other and no seat belt. So we have a choice: Restrict people's behavior, or deal with the social cost of tons of dead motorists. The idea that people will do the right thing with no one watching is naive in the extreme. People keep their speed below 80 because they don't want to be arrested for reckless driving, not because it poses a danger to others. When no one is watching, people are at their worst. Note that most crimes are committed with some degree of subterfuge and obfuscation. Bank robbers wear masks because they don't want to be held accountable for their actions. i wouldn't pay my taxes if i could get away with it.
People need parenting, not only for their own good, but for the good of everyone around them. So fine, call it authoritarianism if that makes you feel good. Some degree of it is far better than not enough or too much. Pretending that everyone is smart and responsible is foolish. We've seen how that goes. Every warning label on every product is some paternalistic fascism telling you what to do/not do because some idiot did the very thing they shouldn't.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
The chief obstacle to a nationwide network of high-speed trains isn't technical, it's the capacity of our national rail infrastructure. Most main line intercity rail routes (owned by the six major US freight railroads) are at or near capacity. While you could buy 90 or even 120 mph diesel passenger trains more or less off-the-shelf, you wouldn't have any place to run them. If you try to intermix 90 mph passenger trains with 40-60 mph freight trains, you need a lot more track capacity than you have now. Why is that the case when railroad tracks don't look as busy as interstate highways? Because switches, sidings, and other places where the passenger train can pass freight trains are pretty far apart. One train passing another, even on a two-track main with centralized traffic control, ties up a lot of railroad, forcing traffic coming the other way to stop and wait. One can think of the railroads as a series of one-lane highways linked together. Furthermore, a lot of main lines are single track and not double track: single track has much less than half the capacity of double track. Now the economics are such that the railroads only build and maintain the capacity necessary to handle their primary freight operations. If the railroads had capacity to spare, they'd have to pay taxes and maintenance expenses on it, as well as pay the cost of capital needed to build it (bond interest and/or stock dividends). Stockholders rightly won't stand for their company spending money on assets that aren't earning a competitive return. As long as railroads are built with private capital, taxed on their land value and improvements, and regulated strictly; while highways are built with public capital, tax-exempt, and regulated loosely, the full potential and efficiency of rail transportation will not be realized. Matthew Mitchell Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers Philadelphia www.dvarp.org
I'd be happy if we developed Bussard's Polywell reactor, and turned death valley into a giant desalinization plant.
Essentially free energy and free water. It'd be damn good for the economy, but the powers that be would never let it happen.
Yes, we all know there's a conspiracy against the Bush administration, by that damned liberal media. (So now we're only allowed to consider one Bush speech, eh? We're supposed to forget Cheney and Rice waving spectre's of "mushroom clouds"?).
Incidentally, can you explain what the emergency was about invading before the UN weapon inspection of Iraq was completed? They publicly stated they needed "not weeks or years, but months", but for some reason the Bush regime figured they'd better move before the results were in. Funny, eh?
The connection could have been almost *free* if it had been built as part of the "big dig". There are a lot of questions about why it was not done.
Railroads would be profitable if they got the same government subsidies that air travel and highways got. For some reason, Amtrak is a "boondoggle" but the FAA and FHA are necessary. I don't get it.
"But what about us lazy slobs?"
"You'll be given cushy jobs!"
"The ring came off my pudding can!"
"Use my pen knife, my good man!"
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
http://www.costofwar.com/ and various other sources estimate something like $400 to $700 billion total since the beginning of the war, which is more than all of those things except the tunnel combined. If you factor in some possible indirect costs, maybe we could have built that tunnel.
It costs $300 million PER DAY.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cost+of+iraq+war
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html
* One chick at some time.
I'm rather impartial about the war.
It was a good thing to get rid of Saddam although the US Government sucks when it comes to doing anything properly.
I'm strongly opposed against guns in the hands of civilians however.
Ignore hunting for the moment - its a different case.
People have guns (legal) to shoot other people (illegal). Rather contradictory.
You cannot conceal them, you cannot shoot them in suburbia and you can only use them for self defense which most people will never have to do.
On the flip side, easily accessible guns means that criminals can get them easily.
Yes I know that some of them would get guns illegally anyway, but being able to walk in to a mall and buy a gun is just stupid.
Unless your a hunter, a gun is used for shooting people.
Which makes them completely useless in a civilized society.
Bush's Government didn't brainwash people.
People were brainwashed by DECADES of Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews, Focus on the Family, The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, (etc. ad nauseum).
This is the consequence of living in a Free and Open society - where money talks, and concentrated money talks LOUDLY.
The elimination of the media Fairness Doctrine, and ownership rules, under Ronald Reagan in the 1980's played a big role, but this process was already well under way in this country.
I don't know what the solution is, because the obvious alternatives involve the curtailment of free speech, and free commerce. Maybe there are some un-obvious alternatives out there.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Regardless of whether the war was justified, or whether it was associated with terrorism pre-invasion, today unfortunately Iraq is part of the fight against terrorism.
Unless your a hunter, a gun is used for shooting people. Which makes them completely useless in a civilized society.
The military also only uses their guns to shoot people. The police only use their guns to shoot people. So, the military and the police have no place in civilized society. I hope one day to live in a civilized society.
We are all just people.
Well if no one had guns then the world would be a better place. :)
Civilians have no use for a gun. So why are they legal and so readily available?
I agree that the world could be a much better place without sophisticated tools of violence. I do not agree that the world would be a better place if all of the tools of violence are concentrated into the hands of people who are supposed to be working for us, yet we have none. There is a purpose to civilian gun ownership, it is the distribution of power. People treat other people differently if they have close to equal amounts of power. When I was a sophomore in highschool I started the year at 5'4" 120lbs. by the start of junior year I was 6'0" 185 lbs. I had the same personality and same friends, but for some reason no one who found fun in pushing me or insulting me my sophomore year felt the same way my junior year. Simply having more physical power allowed me to never have to use it. I didn't get in a single fight or aggressive argument my junior year. It is much the same with the government and the police with their casual abuses of power. The current trend is towards the government and police treating us as sheep to be shepherded, not equals to be provided a service. A well armed populace isn't about rising up and overthrowing a bad government, it is about the ability to do so.
We are all just people.
Only in the US do the people have problems with the police.
In Australia if you see a policeman then you feel safe and if you need help they will be eager to help you.
I'm sure Europe is the same.
If you don't use your ability then the government will realize that (which they seem to have done) and the results aren't pretty.
In Australia if you see a policeman then you feel safe and if you need help they will be eager to help you.
I'm sure Europe is the same.
If you don't use your ability then the government will realize that (which they seem to have done) and the results aren't pretty. The simple truth is here that many, (far from all, especially in some small towns) police departments want the people to fear them. The reasons are not very sane (want the criminals to fear them, sure, but want the general population to fear them?), but it is still a common policy. However, from a very brief trip to England, despite not interacting with them at all. I'm quite confident they they would be quite friendly and helpful. Actually, I found that was true of the average citizen, but I would expect it to be even more true of the Police. They understand the "to serve" part of "to serve and protect". I only wish more here in the States would too. (Although I'll admit, I've found a few very helpful and moderately friendly cops in NYC (where I would tend to least expect it), so perhaps things are better than they might seem).
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524