Actually, and technically, that's not correct. That is harassment, attempted coercion, interference with a legal contract, and a groundless, malicious suit, which are illegal in many if not most states. (It is even possible it falls under the category of a SLAPP suit, but that might be reaching a bit.)
I'm not saying that they don't sometimes get away with it, but what they are actually doing in those situations is ILLEGAL.
Who says "you are liable"??? IANAL, but it's pretty obvious you aren't, either.
The idea that the owner of a piece of equipment is liable for someone else's unauthorized use of it, simply won't fly. Some states have done that exclusively in the case of automobiles, but their legal authority to do even that is on pretty thin grounds.
If somebody, without my permission, uses my internet connection to do something illegitimate, there is no law making me liable or responsible for their actions.
This is precisely what has most often happened when politicians promise "a decrease in spending": their projected budget already contains a substantial planned increase. They chop some of that out. But all they have accomplished is actually making the increase smaller than previously planned... and they call that a "decrease".
This same trick is what was just pulled in the latest budget agreement between Rebuplicans and Democrats. Their vaunted "decrease in spending" is actually an overall increase: the budget for the next several years is actually higher than ever before. It's just not as much increase as they were originally planning.
I hit Enter too soon. I was going to add that the Army did not have authority to give the orders the soldiers said they were following at My Lai, and nobody has the kind of authority to issue the kind of orders that were given at places like Auschwitz. But more to the point: the United States government does not have the legal or Constitutional authority to order people to sexually assault citizens. Anybody who works for an agency like TSA should be smart enough to realize that... or they shouldn't be doing that job in the first place.
The "reasonable man" principle applies. A reasonable person would not truly believe that they had legal authority to do that. And they would be right.
"Except the Nuremberg Defense is actually valid, as was demonstrated by Stanley Milgram's famous experiment. It is human nature to follow orders."
If there is a level of hogwash that can be said to be absolute, you just wrote it.
I am very familiar with the Milgram's experiment and similar experiments since, and I am well aware that there is a certain amount of "human nature" to following orders. But the fact that most people have a tendency to obey authority is NOT a valid excuse to commit atrocities. That, in fact, was precisely what the Nuremburg trials determined: that just being a sheep and following along is NOT an adequate excuse, and that the worse the crime, the less adequate it is.
Human beings have an obligation to exercise judgment. It's one thing to say "I was following orders" if you work on a farm and what you did was not adequately wash the lettuce before packing it up to ship. It's quite another when what you did was participate in mass torture, starvation and murder... or sexual assault. In situations like that, it just doesn't fly.
I do not for a minute dispute that people tend to obey orders. The question -- which was settled pretty definitively at the Nuremburg trials and over the My Lai incident in Vietnam -- is when that no longer becomes an excuse. And the answer is: at a quite low level of judgment.
The Heathkit oscilloscopes were of very good quality. These days you can spend a fortune on a digital scope, but many of them are only good for digital signals, and many don't go over a few Mhz.
The accepted -- and in fact only reasonable and workable -- answer to that, is that the transaction takes place at the location of the business. There is a bit of gray area there: is it the location of the site owner, or the location of the server? But in either case, it is definitely not the location of the purchaser that makes the determination of where the transaction is "taking place". It is the location of the business, however that location is eventually defined.
Trying to do it any other way results in logical absurdities that would make internet trade impossible: should a company in Ireland be expected to know and obey the laws of Mozambique if someone from there makes a purchase? Should a company based in Florida be expected to know the current percentage of sales tax imposed by the city of Tacoma?
On the other hand, someone in Mozambique can reasonably be expected to learn the applicable laws for a transaction in Ireland, if they choose to do business with a company in Ireland. Buyer beware.
Actually, it wasn't Congress but the courts that determined that a company could collect sales tax if it had a physical presence in the buyer's state. But I agree, if Amazon does indeed have a physical presence there, then it was probably trying to get away with something.
"While thats true in theory, in actual practice the onus is on the retailer to collect sales taxes."
No, it's not. In fact, if the retailer is in a different state, with no "physical presence" in the purchaser's state, then it is highly illegal -- unconstitutional in fact -- for the retailer to collect sales tax.
To get around this, states have enacted what they call "use taxes". But it is up to the individual -- very definitely NOT the retailer -- to report on, and pay, use taxes.
As another poster here has stated, there are high-court rulings from the past that clearly state several things about this, among them that a state has no power to tax a transaction that takes place in some other state. Thus the eventual creation of "use taxes", that tax residents of a state for goods that were purchased in that other state,, without actually taxing the transaction.
The problem is actually one of enforcement, since it is up to the individual resident to report on and pay their "use taxes". Which almost nobody does.
However, again as courts have repeatedly ruled, at all levels: difficulty of enforcing a law is not justification for infringing on rights.
Constitutionally, while Congress can "regulate" interstate commerce, it has no power to force any state to enforce (or even recognize) the laws of some other state, whether they be tax laws or any other kind.
Actually most modern night vision is sensitive to both visible light and IR. And so is your digital camcorder, most likely, if it has an option to bypass the infrared filter. Mine does.
Um, no. Even solid state heat pumps are nowhere near 100% efficient. The potential energy gained by increasing the heat gradient accounts for only a fraction of the electricity consumed. The rest is converted into heat. In other words, they generate considerable heat themselves.
Further clarification: yes, even those chips put out heat, but on the opposite side, which is dissipated by a fan. So I see what you are saying. They are "heat pumps", in a real sense. So pardon my earlier reply.
But the point remains that they still generate more heat than they soak up.
"Stirling engine to turn the heat differential from the exhaust back into electricity (at a loss, of course, but really you're just trying to dump the heat)."
You're just generating more heat. A Stirling engine is nowhere near 100% efficient, so it contributes to the heat load, too.
"Um, no. Even solid state heat pumps are nowhere near 100% efficient. The potential energy gained by increasing the heat gradient accounts for only a fraction of the electricity consumed. The rest is converted into heat. In other words, they generate considerable heat themselves."
Go back and read again. That's what I said. Basically, but not exactly. I was not talking about "heat pumps", but solid-state "direct cooling" units, which do indeed cool their immediate surroundings. Geez, guy, they've been around for years. If they actually generated heat in their own immediate area, they would be completely useless in those cheap "plug in to the cigarette lighter" coolers you can get at discount stores. But in fact they don't, and they cool just fine.
BUT... my original point: they still end up creating a net increase in heat, because of the amount of electricity they use. However, most of the heat is released elsewhere, at the power source, which is why they can be used to cool things.
"While a tank produces more heat than a cow, the thermal shape and distance above the ground is very similar to an Abrams which is why cows are hit every year with TOW missiles at Ft. Hood. The crew that hits a cow and anyone else that pisses someone off higher in the chain of command has the privilege of working cow cleanup detail. The government apparently compensates ranchers very well for any cattle killed. As for cattle being there in the first place, that has to do with agreements made decades ago with the neighboring ranchers. The presence of cattle is also why the TOW missile fiber optic has to be cleaned up when finished."
The shape and elevation may be similar to a cow, but the intensity ("brightness") is not. That was my point. An old-school TOW missile is not very "smart", by today's standards. But I can see how such a system could fool exactly such relatively low-tech devices.
To clarify: today's solid-state cooling units run off of electricity. So unlike mechanical coolers they do not generate heat themselves... but creating the electricity to drive them creates more heat that what they remove from their immediate environment.
There is no way around that unless you can manage to violate at least a couple of the laws of thermodynamics.
Precisely. Heat doesn't just disappear, and the electricity needed to drive these panels would create even more heat than a tank without them. So... the ONLY way these could actually work, without breaking the laws of physics as we know them, would be for the tank to store waste heat somewhere that was very well insulated. And that has to be limited in capacity.
Yes, there are such things as electric and solid-state cooling units, but those only work by creating even more heat somewhere else... much like a refrigerator. There is no way around it.
So either this story is complete BS, or they aren't describing some very important parts of it.
If you want a good match for ME today, I would go with courses in digital electronics, rather than CS. The reasons are pretty simple: it seems to me that you are kind of aiming at control systems for your improved automobiles; digital electronics provide those control systems.
Yes, today most control systems are ultimately governed by software; but you can pick up sufficient programming skills as you go. On the other hand, all the programming in the world will not help you build a machine if there are no control systems properly designed to interface the machine and the computer.
Today, the Chinese economy is faltering, at the same time that there is a great deal of pressure on politicians to stop allowing so much outsourcing.
I would not bet on China so much to still be a "leading economy" in another 5 years, if the US government can manage to pull its head out, unless the Chinese government in turn pulls ITS head out. Which very much remains to be seen.
And by the way, citing Naomi Oreskes, who embarrassed the entire scientific community with her easily-and-widely-invalidated, non-peer-reviewed paper on "consensus" that appeared in Science magazine... is not exactly adding to your credibility.
Since 2005, I have followed a number of papers that have claimed evidence that the troposphere is either warming or cooling at various levels, always "more than was previously thought", or "contrary to what was formerly thought". One of them was a paper by NASA and NOAA researchers who claimed that satellite data shows one level of the troposphere is not warming to the level that would be necessary if current global warming models were true.
The fact is that there is no current agreement on what the troposphere is doing, at high, middle, or low altitudes. This is hardly much of a criticism.
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Actually, and technically, that's not correct. That is harassment, attempted coercion, interference with a legal contract, and a groundless, malicious suit, which are illegal in many if not most states. (It is even possible it falls under the category of a SLAPP suit, but that might be reaching a bit.)
I'm not saying that they don't sometimes get away with it, but what they are actually doing in those situations is ILLEGAL.
Who says "you are liable"??? IANAL, but it's pretty obvious you aren't, either.
The idea that the owner of a piece of equipment is liable for someone else's unauthorized use of it, simply won't fly. Some states have done that exclusively in the case of automobiles, but their legal authority to do even that is on pretty thin grounds.
If somebody, without my permission, uses my internet connection to do something illegitimate, there is no law making me liable or responsible for their actions.
This is precisely what has most often happened when politicians promise "a decrease in spending": their projected budget already contains a substantial planned increase. They chop some of that out. But all they have accomplished is actually making the increase smaller than previously planned... and they call that a "decrease".
This same trick is what was just pulled in the latest budget agreement between Rebuplicans and Democrats. Their vaunted "decrease in spending" is actually an overall increase: the budget for the next several years is actually higher than ever before. It's just not as much increase as they were originally planning.
I hit Enter too soon. I was going to add that the Army did not have authority to give the orders the soldiers said they were following at My Lai, and nobody has the kind of authority to issue the kind of orders that were given at places like Auschwitz. But more to the point: the United States government does not have the legal or Constitutional authority to order people to sexually assault citizens. Anybody who works for an agency like TSA should be smart enough to realize that... or they shouldn't be doing that job in the first place.
The "reasonable man" principle applies. A reasonable person would not truly believe that they had legal authority to do that. And they would be right.
"Except the Nuremberg Defense is actually valid, as was demonstrated by Stanley Milgram's famous experiment. It is human nature to follow orders."
If there is a level of hogwash that can be said to be absolute, you just wrote it.
I am very familiar with the Milgram's experiment and similar experiments since, and I am well aware that there is a certain amount of "human nature" to following orders. But the fact that most people have a tendency to obey authority is NOT a valid excuse to commit atrocities. That, in fact, was precisely what the Nuremburg trials determined: that just being a sheep and following along is NOT an adequate excuse, and that the worse the crime, the less adequate it is.
Human beings have an obligation to exercise judgment. It's one thing to say "I was following orders" if you work on a farm and what you did was not adequately wash the lettuce before packing it up to ship. It's quite another when what you did was participate in mass torture, starvation and murder... or sexual assault. In situations like that, it just doesn't fly.
I do not for a minute dispute that people tend to obey orders. The question -- which was settled pretty definitively at the Nuremburg trials and over the My Lai incident in Vietnam -- is when that no longer becomes an excuse. And the answer is: at a quite low level of judgment.
The Heathkit oscilloscopes were of very good quality. These days you can spend a fortune on a digital scope, but many of them are only good for digital signals, and many don't go over a few Mhz.
The accepted -- and in fact only reasonable and workable -- answer to that, is that the transaction takes place at the location of the business. There is a bit of gray area there: is it the location of the site owner, or the location of the server? But in either case, it is definitely not the location of the purchaser that makes the determination of where the transaction is "taking place". It is the location of the business, however that location is eventually defined.
Trying to do it any other way results in logical absurdities that would make internet trade impossible: should a company in Ireland be expected to know and obey the laws of Mozambique if someone from there makes a purchase? Should a company based in Florida be expected to know the current percentage of sales tax imposed by the city of Tacoma?
On the other hand, someone in Mozambique can reasonably be expected to learn the applicable laws for a transaction in Ireland, if they choose to do business with a company in Ireland. Buyer beware.
Actually, it wasn't Congress but the courts that determined that a company could collect sales tax if it had a physical presence in the buyer's state. But I agree, if Amazon does indeed have a physical presence there, then it was probably trying to get away with something.
"While thats true in theory, in actual practice the onus is on the retailer to collect sales taxes."
No, it's not. In fact, if the retailer is in a different state, with no "physical presence" in the purchaser's state, then it is highly illegal -- unconstitutional in fact -- for the retailer to collect sales tax.
To get around this, states have enacted what they call "use taxes". But it is up to the individual -- very definitely NOT the retailer -- to report on, and pay, use taxes.
As another poster here has stated, there are high-court rulings from the past that clearly state several things about this, among them that a state has no power to tax a transaction that takes place in some other state. Thus the eventual creation of "use taxes", that tax residents of a state for goods that were purchased in that other state,, without actually taxing the transaction.
The problem is actually one of enforcement, since it is up to the individual resident to report on and pay their "use taxes". Which almost nobody does.
However, again as courts have repeatedly ruled, at all levels: difficulty of enforcing a law is not justification for infringing on rights.
Constitutionally, while Congress can "regulate" interstate commerce, it has no power to force any state to enforce (or even recognize) the laws of some other state, whether they be tax laws or any other kind.
But presumably the soldier is aiming it through a system that uses a camera and electronic display.
Yes, I already replied to someone else correcting myself on this point. But you still end up with more heat than you started with.
Actually most modern night vision is sensitive to both visible light and IR. And so is your digital camcorder, most likely, if it has an option to bypass the infrared filter. Mine does.
Um, no. Even solid state heat pumps are nowhere near 100% efficient. The potential energy gained by increasing the heat gradient accounts for only a fraction of the electricity consumed. The rest is converted into heat. In other words, they generate considerable heat themselves.
Further clarification: yes, even those chips put out heat, but on the opposite side, which is dissipated by a fan. So I see what you are saying. They are "heat pumps", in a real sense. So pardon my earlier reply.
But the point remains that they still generate more heat than they soak up.
"Stirling engine to turn the heat differential from the exhaust back into electricity (at a loss, of course, but really you're just trying to dump the heat)."
You're just generating more heat. A Stirling engine is nowhere near 100% efficient, so it contributes to the heat load, too.
"Um, no. Even solid state heat pumps are nowhere near 100% efficient. The potential energy gained by increasing the heat gradient accounts for only a fraction of the electricity consumed. The rest is converted into heat. In other words, they generate considerable heat themselves."
Go back and read again. That's what I said. Basically, but not exactly. I was not talking about "heat pumps", but solid-state "direct cooling" units, which do indeed cool their immediate surroundings. Geez, guy, they've been around for years. If they actually generated heat in their own immediate area, they would be completely useless in those cheap "plug in to the cigarette lighter" coolers you can get at discount stores. But in fact they don't, and they cool just fine.
BUT... my original point: they still end up creating a net increase in heat, because of the amount of electricity they use. However, most of the heat is released elsewhere, at the power source, which is why they can be used to cool things.
"While a tank produces more heat than a cow, the thermal shape and distance above the ground is very similar to an Abrams which is why cows are hit every year with TOW missiles at Ft. Hood. The crew that hits a cow and anyone else that pisses someone off higher in the chain of command has the privilege of working cow cleanup detail. The government apparently compensates ranchers very well for any cattle killed. As for cattle being there in the first place, that has to do with agreements made decades ago with the neighboring ranchers. The presence of cattle is also why the TOW missile fiber optic has to be cleaned up when finished."
The shape and elevation may be similar to a cow, but the intensity ("brightness") is not. That was my point. An old-school TOW missile is not very "smart", by today's standards. But I can see how such a system could fool exactly such relatively low-tech devices.
To clarify: today's solid-state cooling units run off of electricity. So unlike mechanical coolers they do not generate heat themselves... but creating the electricity to drive them creates more heat that what they remove from their immediate environment.
There is no way around that unless you can manage to violate at least a couple of the laws of thermodynamics.
Precisely. Heat doesn't just disappear, and the electricity needed to drive these panels would create even more heat than a tank without them. So... the ONLY way these could actually work, without breaking the laws of physics as we know them, would be for the tank to store waste heat somewhere that was very well insulated. And that has to be limited in capacity.
Yes, there are such things as electric and solid-state cooling units, but those only work by creating even more heat somewhere else... much like a refrigerator. There is no way around it.
So either this story is complete BS, or they aren't describing some very important parts of it.
It isn't exactly being widely reported in the news. But it's true.
If you want a good match for ME today, I would go with courses in digital electronics, rather than CS. The reasons are pretty simple: it seems to me that you are kind of aiming at control systems for your improved automobiles; digital electronics provide those control systems.
Yes, today most control systems are ultimately governed by software; but you can pick up sufficient programming skills as you go. On the other hand, all the programming in the world will not help you build a machine if there are no control systems properly designed to interface the machine and the computer.
That was 5 years ago.
Today, the Chinese economy is faltering, at the same time that there is a great deal of pressure on politicians to stop allowing so much outsourcing.
I would not bet on China so much to still be a "leading economy" in another 5 years, if the US government can manage to pull its head out, unless the Chinese government in turn pulls ITS head out. Which very much remains to be seen.
It was a joke. Lighten up.
And by the way, citing Naomi Oreskes, who embarrassed the entire scientific community with her easily-and-widely-invalidated, non-peer-reviewed paper on "consensus" that appeared in Science magazine ... is not exactly adding to your credibility.
Way to cherry-pick your sources.
Since 2005, I have followed a number of papers that have claimed evidence that the troposphere is either warming or cooling at various levels, always "more than was previously thought", or "contrary to what was formerly thought". One of them was a paper by NASA and NOAA researchers who claimed that satellite data shows one level of the troposphere is not warming to the level that would be necessary if current global warming models were true.
The fact is that there is no current agreement on what the troposphere is doing, at high, middle, or low altitudes. This is hardly much of a criticism.
Wow. That was one of the best defenses of ad hominem arguments I have ever seen.
But it still doesn't fly.