Same here- It wasn't until my junior year in HS (the year I quit, btw) that the debate team and knowledge bowl were even recognized by the school. They cleared out an old trophy case in an unused hallway that had served as the lost and found for many years. The day we moved our trophies in was the day we ran out of space, as we had (as a team) accumulated several boxes of awards from local to national.
>>I've always thought the next world war would be fought with I.T. tools, acquiring data, corrupting data, putting economies into turmoil.
I hope you're right. I'd rather have my flights redirected and my credit cards canceled then be gut-shot by a 17-year-old conscript.
After all, I'm a 2 hour drive from Canada as it is... I can just see the Tim Horton's signs going up as they politely herd us into 're-education' camps to watch hour after hour of the Red Green show.
>>In all honesty, can someone please explain how this could even remotely be true?
As an aircraft mechanic I can honestly tell you that this story (or Qantas's excuse, rather) is pure BS. A wireless mouse will NOT bring down an aircraft. I say again, small wireless devices will NOT bring down a passenger aircraft.
The southern approach to my airport flies low (~3000' agl) and directly above an antenna farm on top of a hill that collectively emits at least 200,000kW. There is no way that a tiny.1W device broadcasting in the low gH range will affect redundant WIRED systems.
If aircraft were truly sensitive to small (.1W) RF devices in the cabin, then the ground within 20 miles of every radio and TV broadcast antenna (5-25kW) would be littered with crashed airliners. Jeez people are clueless when it comes to RF.
On a chartered military flight (omni air, I think) from CONUS to Qatar, we had this preflight brief:
You know where the seatbelts are and how to use them. If we lose cabin pressure we're all going to die anyways. Hell no you don't want no coffee. Hell no you don't want no snacks. (whispered): Shhhhhh.... go to sleep.... Shhhh...... Sleeeeeep.....
I am not kidding; that was what the flight attendant (civilian, omni employee) said. Short and sweet and they didn't care if we had electronic devices on. The only part that sucked was that the inflight film was some kid's movie about a little girl racing a zebra instead of a horse or something. And it played twice.
1- The photographer who included you in a photo did not caption the photo, "this is Electrictoy that day we went to Mardi Gras and got wasted/ an abortion/ picked his brother up from jail/ interviewed at Lehman Bros/ etc! Woo!"
2- A problem I have is that since everyone I know uses cell phones only, I cannot get a hold of them unless they call me first. The only people who are in the phone book are my ex-girlfriend's mom and my parents. In the 7 years I've had this cell phone number, I haven't once received a call from someone I didn't supply with my number in the first place.
I guess I'm just saying that it is possible to be quite private these days, as long as you keep track of your data. I keep a certain controlled amount of data about me available on the web so that people can get a hold of me, and that's worked well so far.
OK, I'm going to play the part of a party-neutral observer, since I hate all politicians. Here is what you need to do to get a clean election.
-Republicans: Alright, you need to let minorities and homeless people votes. I know, it sucks. And you can't vote for dead people. And you can't arrange for campaign contributors to provide the electronic voting machines. Etc. I know you guys are aware on some level of the crap you've done.
-Democrats: You need to get rid of winner-take-all voting systems. California, I'm looking at you.
Of course this won't happen because the margins will always be close enough to make voting machine scams worth it. And truly representative voting would be a disaster for the dems, since taking the winner take all states gives them equal footing against all the representative states that are taken by republicans. Funny how that works.
This sentiment has been posted a few times already, but I'll reply to your post.
Kids will probably cut themselves on their first pocketknife. They'll probably screw up their first few relationships. They'll probably screw up during their first semester in college until they get a grip on the new freedom and responsibility. The list of things that teenagers are good at screwing up is a long one.
OK, take all that away. Home school so the teen cannot make those bad decisions in school. Nothing sharp around the house. No girlfriends or boyfriends. Actually, no friends. Military academy instead of college, so they don't have to make potentially bad choices.
You've just neutered their life of any meaning or value. If they don't drink in college it's not because they are capable of being a responsible drinker, it's that they weren't given a chance. If they don't wreck the car or speed, it's not because they are a good driver, it's because you didn't let them drive.
Practically (teens need to go places, like jobs) and academically (teens will be driving for the rest of their lives), we need teens to be out driving and be able to limit the damage that they can do. Have you EVER run into a teen who complained that his/her parents wouldn't let them practice enough? No, it's always, "hey mom can I drive to the store since I'm coming with anyways?" And more often than not getting shot down.
We should have driving simulators, defensive driving classes, and very limited driving licenses until 19 or 21. But then this is slashdot, where elderly drivers cause more traffic deaths than alcohol and road head combined.
I think you're describing a form of proprioception.
I wouldn't call it 'seeing', though, since the object you were holding behind your back could change color or brightness without you knowing about it.
-b
Re:Can we mark this "Sudden Outbreak of Common Sen
on
Seeing With Your Skin?
·
· Score: 1
I'll add to the other poster who replied.
1- You need to know how the ear works and how the eye works. Completely different mechanisms for sensing.
2- If you need more proof of the difference between EM waves (like light) and sound, consider their speeds. All EM radiation travels at C (basically). Sound travels at, well, the speed of sound. And that speed changes drastically depending on the transmitting medium.
3- Also: I think it's clear that when people can 'see' light with their skin (as in the example of the sunburned person), the skin is really sensing heat caused by the light. As in, the skin could also sense the same 'light' through a very thin but opaque layer. Even our best heat-sensing cameras suck right now and give very little detail; I'm not sure how well our skin would do.
4- Also: most skin has very low nerve ending density relative to sensing organs.
5- I think a more promising route would be a form of echolocation, since we already know that it works for many other creatures.
No, but my point was that if the vehicle has an onboard ICE and a generator, then it should be called a gas-electric. I can coast downhill at 55 mph almost 15 miles from my house into town but that doesn't make my car anything but a ICE that happens to be coasting. Using a G-E car under battery power for 20 miles doesn't obviate the need for an ICE or else it wouldn't have one, right?
This is just a matter of semantics. You can call the iPhone a phone or a PDA; or even calling a windmill eco-friendly vs. renewable changes the connotations.
I'm just saying that in order to call something an electric vehicle, it can't have a gas tank.
Locomotives have used this drivetrain (ICE-generator-batteries/motors) for a long time. They're simply called diesel-electric locomotives. Why can't we just call this car a gas-electric or petrolectric or something less ambiguous?
>>But forgetting to charge your car means you will be late for work
The same applies to setting your alarm clock, putting gas into regular cars' fuel tanks, making sure you have enough clothes to wear for the week...
I'm pretty sure there will be a dashboard gauge that cheerfully informs you of the remaining charge in your batteries, and even a sad chime when you open the door and the charge is 10% (similar to the 'you left the keys in the ignition' chime).
I'm sorry but if you can't get your shit together enough to fuel or charge your car, then tough titty.
>>at least it's guaranteed to give honest results.
Unless a party sabotaged the ballot urns in districts that favor the party's opponents (evidence of stealing, tampering, etc.). Wouldn't that invalidate the votes and thus give the edge to the dishonest party?
Yes it is. And so we have to ask, why the hell does the average AMERICAN* know enough about a freakin' particle accelerator to be scared of it even though they can't tell you the difference between a photon and a diode?
Ratings. This is all a bunch of BS put out there by the news agencies to rope readers in. I happen to know a thing or two about physics and I can call bs on this whole story. But it leaves me with a sour taste knowing that the other subjects that I know less about are being treated by the news with the same reckless mistreatment of facts that I see here. So when I hear a story about economic problems I ask myself, "Do I know more about econ than the average human-interest/sports/politics newspaper reporter?" I would say that I do with 50% certainty. So I ignore at least half of it.
>>Magnetic fields of precisely tuned strengths (not particularly strong fields)
I'm just curious- If the effect relies on the strength of the field, doesn't that mean that any magnetic field stronger than the mean strength required to cause the effect will cause the effect at some point in the field? I mean, If X gauss are required to cause this effect, and your incidental field was X+3 gauss at some point, wouldn't the field strength be exactly X gauss at some distance away from the origination point of the field?
1- The bosenova cannot occur with helium. It's a moot point.
2- You do not get more energy out of it than you put in. The problem is that you are not including all the potential energy that is put into the system during manufacture and cooling. The example I used elsewhere on this thread was that of a firecracker: you put in a tiny amount of energy as heat into the fuse, and then you get a huge release of energy during the detonation. This would seem like 'free energy' only if you ignored the potential energy created at the time of manufacture. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
>>the energy in would be that of the magnetic field.
You are forgetting about the massive amount of energy it takes to cool helium to those temperatures. What you are claiming would be like saying, "well, you can light the fuse to the dynamite, but there is NO WAY that you'll get more energy out of it than you put in with the lighter flame."
Take a few CC's of liquid helium and pour it into an empty plastic soda bottle. Cap it and run. Whoa! Where did all that energy come from??!! Magnetic fields? Nope, phase change.
What I mean is that many of the bases that the Coalition forces are using were previously Iraqi military bases. For example, Balad air base was an active Iraqi air force base before our invasion- sat pictures taken near the beginning of this war show a fully intact but mysteriously empty base. So although the infrastructure of the base was there in the picture, it doesn't mean that Coalition forces had taken up full residence there.
My shop in Iraq was a Yugo-made steel shed that had bullet holes from Gulf War 1. Kind of interesting, at least from a historical perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
Same here- It wasn't until my junior year in HS (the year I quit, btw) that the debate team and knowledge bowl were even recognized by the school. They cleared out an old trophy case in an unused hallway that had served as the lost and found for many years. The day we moved our trophies in was the day we ran out of space, as we had (as a team) accumulated several boxes of awards from local to national.
Still gets me riled up.
-b
>>I've always thought the next world war would be fought with I.T. tools, acquiring data, corrupting data, putting economies into turmoil.
I hope you're right. I'd rather have my flights redirected and my credit cards canceled then be gut-shot by a 17-year-old conscript.
After all, I'm a 2 hour drive from Canada as it is... I can just see the Tim Horton's signs going up as they politely herd us into 're-education' camps to watch hour after hour of the Red Green show.
Yes, I've thought about this a lot.
-b
>>In all honesty, can someone please explain how this could even remotely be true?
As an aircraft mechanic I can honestly tell you that this story (or Qantas's excuse, rather) is pure BS. A wireless mouse will NOT bring down an aircraft. I say again, small wireless devices will NOT bring down a passenger aircraft.
The southern approach to my airport flies low (~3000' agl) and directly above an antenna farm on top of a hill that collectively emits at least 200,000kW. There is no way that a tiny .1W device broadcasting in the low gH range will affect redundant WIRED systems.
OK.
-b
If aircraft were truly sensitive to small (.1W) RF devices in the cabin, then the ground within 20 miles of every radio and TV broadcast antenna (5-25kW) would be littered with crashed airliners. Jeez people are clueless when it comes to RF.
-b
On a chartered military flight (omni air, I think) from CONUS to Qatar, we had this preflight brief:
You know where the seatbelts are and how to use them. If we lose cabin pressure we're all going to die anyways. Hell no you don't want no coffee. Hell no you don't want no snacks. (whispered): Shhhhhh.... go to sleep.... Shhhh...... Sleeeeeep.....
I am not kidding; that was what the flight attendant (civilian, omni employee) said. Short and sweet and they didn't care if we had electronic devices on. The only part that sucked was that the inflight film was some kid's movie about a little girl racing a zebra instead of a horse or something. And it played twice.
-b
The question of whether a computer can think is as relevant as asking if a submarine can swim.
-b
just my two cents-
1- The photographer who included you in a photo did not caption the photo, "this is Electrictoy that day we went to Mardi Gras and got wasted/ an abortion/ picked his brother up from jail/ interviewed at Lehman Bros/ etc! Woo!"
2- A problem I have is that since everyone I know uses cell phones only, I cannot get a hold of them unless they call me first. The only people who are in the phone book are my ex-girlfriend's mom and my parents. In the 7 years I've had this cell phone number, I haven't once received a call from someone I didn't supply with my number in the first place.
I guess I'm just saying that it is possible to be quite private these days, as long as you keep track of your data. I keep a certain controlled amount of data about me available on the web so that people can get a hold of me, and that's worked well so far.
-b
OK, I'm going to play the part of a party-neutral observer, since I hate all politicians. Here is what you need to do to get a clean election.
-Republicans: Alright, you need to let minorities and homeless people votes. I know, it sucks. And you can't vote for dead people. And you can't arrange for campaign contributors to provide the electronic voting machines. Etc. I know you guys are aware on some level of the crap you've done.
-Democrats: You need to get rid of winner-take-all voting systems. California, I'm looking at you.
Of course this won't happen because the margins will always be close enough to make voting machine scams worth it. And truly representative voting would be a disaster for the dems, since taking the winner take all states gives them equal footing against all the representative states that are taken by republicans. Funny how that works.
OK, go ahead and rip my plan apart.
-b
That GPS tracker is going to cost us all a lot more than your speeding ticket would. Skip the tracker and send me the bill.
-b
This sentiment has been posted a few times already, but I'll reply to your post.
Kids will probably cut themselves on their first pocketknife. They'll probably screw up their first few relationships. They'll probably screw up during their first semester in college until they get a grip on the new freedom and responsibility. The list of things that teenagers are good at screwing up is a long one.
OK, take all that away. Home school so the teen cannot make those bad decisions in school. Nothing sharp around the house. No girlfriends or boyfriends. Actually, no friends. Military academy instead of college, so they don't have to make potentially bad choices.
You've just neutered their life of any meaning or value. If they don't drink in college it's not because they are capable of being a responsible drinker, it's that they weren't given a chance. If they don't wreck the car or speed, it's not because they are a good driver, it's because you didn't let them drive.
Practically (teens need to go places, like jobs) and academically (teens will be driving for the rest of their lives), we need teens to be out driving and be able to limit the damage that they can do. Have you EVER run into a teen who complained that his/her parents wouldn't let them practice enough? No, it's always, "hey mom can I drive to the store since I'm coming with anyways?" And more often than not getting shot down.
We should have driving simulators, defensive driving classes, and very limited driving licenses until 19 or 21. But then this is slashdot, where elderly drivers cause more traffic deaths than alcohol and road head combined.
-b
Here are just two examples of people in the past trying this; to be fair, the first one isn't technically a flying submarine.
Submersible aircraft- http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/ModernMechanix/9-1930/submarine_plane/submarine_plane_1.jpg
Submarine aircraft carrier- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_aircraft_carrier
So an asteroid that interacts with our atmosphere would be an aster, and if it hit the earth it'd be an asterite? Firefox's spell check disagrees ;)
-b
I think you're describing a form of proprioception.
I wouldn't call it 'seeing', though, since the object you were holding behind your back could change color or brightness without you knowing about it.
-b
I'll add to the other poster who replied.
1- You need to know how the ear works and how the eye works. Completely different mechanisms for sensing.
2- If you need more proof of the difference between EM waves (like light) and sound, consider their speeds. All EM radiation travels at C (basically). Sound travels at, well, the speed of sound. And that speed changes drastically depending on the transmitting medium.
3- Also: I think it's clear that when people can 'see' light with their skin (as in the example of the sunburned person), the skin is really sensing heat caused by the light. As in, the skin could also sense the same 'light' through a very thin but opaque layer. Even our best heat-sensing cameras suck right now and give very little detail; I'm not sure how well our skin would do.
4- Also: most skin has very low nerve ending density relative to sensing organs.
5- I think a more promising route would be a form of echolocation, since we already know that it works for many other creatures.
best,
-b
No, but my point was that if the vehicle has an onboard ICE and a generator, then it should be called a gas-electric. I can coast downhill at 55 mph almost 15 miles from my house into town but that doesn't make my car anything but a ICE that happens to be coasting. Using a G-E car under battery power for 20 miles doesn't obviate the need for an ICE or else it wouldn't have one, right?
This is just a matter of semantics. You can call the iPhone a phone or a PDA; or even calling a windmill eco-friendly vs. renewable changes the connotations.
I'm just saying that in order to call something an electric vehicle, it can't have a gas tank.
-b
>>So I think it's fair to call it an EV
Locomotives have used this drivetrain (ICE-generator-batteries/motors) for a long time. They're simply called diesel-electric locomotives. Why can't we just call this car a gas-electric or petrolectric or something less ambiguous?
-b
>>But forgetting to charge your car means you will be late for work
The same applies to setting your alarm clock, putting gas into regular cars' fuel tanks, making sure you have enough clothes to wear for the week...
I'm pretty sure there will be a dashboard gauge that cheerfully informs you of the remaining charge in your batteries, and even a sad chime when you open the door and the charge is 10% (similar to the 'you left the keys in the ignition' chime).
I'm sorry but if you can't get your shit together enough to fuel or charge your car, then tough titty.
-b
>>at least it's guaranteed to give honest results.
Unless a party sabotaged the ballot urns in districts that favor the party's opponents (evidence of stealing, tampering, etc.). Wouldn't that invalidate the votes and thus give the edge to the dishonest party?
-b
>>gPimp is actually google's pimping product, which I prefer since it is far more open.
I'd use it, but it's still in beta.
-b
>>This can of course degenerate into a whole ethics and morality debate on the value of human life
You call a debate on the value of human life a degeneration?
Slashdot truly has become more cynical than I had imagined.
-b
>>Particle physics is tough to understand.
Yes it is. And so we have to ask, why the hell does the average AMERICAN* know enough about a freakin' particle accelerator to be scared of it even though they can't tell you the difference between a photon and a diode?
Ratings. This is all a bunch of BS put out there by the news agencies to rope readers in. I happen to know a thing or two about physics and I can call bs on this whole story. But it leaves me with a sour taste knowing that the other subjects that I know less about are being treated by the news with the same reckless mistreatment of facts that I see here. So when I hear a story about economic problems I ask myself, "Do I know more about econ than the average human-interest/sports/politics newspaper reporter?" I would say that I do with 50% certainty. So I ignore at least half of it.
-b
>>Magnetic fields of precisely tuned strengths (not particularly strong fields)
I'm just curious- If the effect relies on the strength of the field, doesn't that mean that any magnetic field stronger than the mean strength required to cause the effect will cause the effect at some point in the field? I mean, If X gauss are required to cause this effect, and your incidental field was X+3 gauss at some point, wouldn't the field strength be exactly X gauss at some distance away from the origination point of the field?
Sorry if my wording is confusing.
-b
1- The bosenova cannot occur with helium. It's a moot point.
2- You do not get more energy out of it than you put in. The problem is that you are not including all the potential energy that is put into the system during manufacture and cooling. The example I used elsewhere on this thread was that of a firecracker: you put in a tiny amount of energy as heat into the fuse, and then you get a huge release of energy during the detonation. This would seem like 'free energy' only if you ignored the potential energy created at the time of manufacture. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
-b
>>the energy in would be that of the magnetic field.
You are forgetting about the massive amount of energy it takes to cool helium to those temperatures. What you are claiming would be like saying, "well, you can light the fuse to the dynamite, but there is NO WAY that you'll get more energy out of it than you put in with the lighter flame."
Take a few CC's of liquid helium and pour it into an empty plastic soda bottle. Cap it and run. Whoa! Where did all that energy come from??!! Magnetic fields? Nope, phase change.
-b
What I mean is that many of the bases that the Coalition forces are using were previously Iraqi military bases. For example, Balad air base was an active Iraqi air force base before our invasion- sat pictures taken near the beginning of this war show a fully intact but mysteriously empty base. So although the infrastructure of the base was there in the picture, it doesn't mean that Coalition forces had taken up full residence there.
My shop in Iraq was a Yugo-made steel shed that had bullet holes from Gulf War 1. Kind of interesting, at least from a historical perspective.
-b