Certainly. What line do I take to go from the east coast of the US to the EU? How do I get home from Calgary, AB? How many transfers are needed between Japan and the east coast?
Cell phones are becoming less about communications and more about tracking and identification. Pretty soon big brother isn't going to let you leave home without it.
1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.
I travel a fair bit for work. Not nearly as much as I used to as I've been trying to travel less. I'm probably a little older than the average/. reader too. But every now an then I end up at the airport and am not in a totally self absorbed rush and it really scares the shit out of me what we have allowed our government to take away from us.
Air travel has truly made me think that many of the nightmarish versions of the future that were envisioned decades ago are, at least in part, coming true. Anywhere you stand in an airport you hear a repeated announcement every two minutes. Basically an authoritative voice telling you what you can carry on the plane. Or that your bag will be taken and destroyed if you leave it unattended. Or not to trust anyone and report suspicious behavior. It's a far cry from the first time I flew when you were more likely to hear jingles about flying the friendly skies
Now you get herded through scanners and treated like a criminal. Particularly if you forgot that bottle of water in your carry-on. And the way I have seen people treated who choose to not go through the (non-monitored by sane practices) radiation emitting scanners is terrifying. On multiple occasions I've seen several TSA employees loudly make fun of these people. It's a far cry from the days when you were treated like a valued customer and respected as a person by the people at the airport.
When I stop to take the time to actually watch and listen to what is happening at airport today; and try to remember my mindset of how things once were I find it's a shame how our way of life has been altered by those in power. I don't know if the cause was Bin Laden and his cowardly attacks on this country. Or if our leaders chose to use it as an excuse to do this themselves. Either way, it saddens me to think that we have lost our way.
I just think it's bullshit to complain about Apple's abuse of patents because they seek to ban SOME devices from ONE manufacturer, while Google seeks to prevent the sale of EVERY Apple computer and iOS device.
If you're going to be mad about patent abuse be mad consistently, is all I ask.
It seems to me that Google/Motorola are looking to ban some devices from one manufacturer too. I don't think all iPods fall under this. They also have iTunes, mice, power adapters and plenty of other things. After the pissing match with Samsung, I'm having a hard time feeling bad for Apple. Obviously they have more cash than any single company on the planet. But I wonder how affordable it will become if multiple companies, including Samsung, Google, etc. start looking to knock them down a peg or two.
They are too expensive and that will be the weapon that will take them down. Not missiles, not submarines - money.
One tangential "money" issue is 1000 suicide boaters in a simultaneous attack is cheaper than one carrier. Carriers are really freaking expensive. That doesn't work well in the middle of an ocean, but near the shore of the Persian gulf, maybe...
You'd have better luck with a single boat. 1000 would be torn to shreds before they ever got within visual range of a carrier.
And when you find them, which isn't really that hard with technology, you encounter a fleet of ships. Not just an aircraft carrier. A carrier, by itself, is VERY vulnerable. But its shortcomings are made up for with the countless destroyers, cruisers, submarines, and other ships accompanying it.
The only way you can attack the aircraft carrier is to surprise all of those ships. A supersonic missle would work on an aircraft carrier for the same reason it would work just about anywhere else. If you can't recognize it and react in time with a missle that can intercept a supersonic missle, then you can't stop it.
That's why anti-missile systems are mostly automated. And even if the missiles do get there, they still have to get through CIWS. I'm not sure why everyone in this thread seems to think the navy never thought about missile attacks. There are multiple layers of defenses against this
And why does everyone feel the need to state that a "supersonic" missile would do the trick? Are there any that would be used that aren't these days? Hypersonic might be a different story. Suicide bombers in speed boats are a bigger threat to naval ships at the moment as it's generally frowned upon when you sink every ship that gets close to you.
The four C's. Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat Weight. Cut is an artificial item, so let's focus on Color, Clarity and Carat. Of all the diamonds found in nature, what percentage of them are valuable to the consumer market? Low grade yellows and industrial diamonds are in fact dirt cheap by comparison.
BTW, I'm married. I don't discount the fact there is pricing fixing going on, I just questions the natural ratio of quality diamonds that we all know and love (or she does anyways)
There's not much to question. It's pretty well known that De Beers had kept prices artificially high. And if that wasn't enough, now you see retailers charging premiums for shitty brown diamonds because they are now calling them "chocolate". Or yellow ones "canary yellow". They're made from carbon. I'd say that carbon heat and pressure are pretty plentiful on earth. I never thought about it, but I was pretty pissed off when I learned that diamonds will burn just like coal would in a fire.
This could probably be channelled in to the bubble through some fancy rotating warp bubble mechanism.
Then this could be converted to energy and mass storage for use in some possible future matter collider + replicator-like device.
With a small powerful matter smasher and fusor we could create any matter we needed as long as we have enough base materials.
This could create a ship that is almost entirely self-sufficient.
Of course, this is given that such a thing could be done, this is still all early work.
Certainly not. Everyone knows you just need to reverse the polarity and channel it through the deflector dish.
Come to think about it, screw warp drive. All it does is move you around and on the odd occasion get ejected to close space time disturbances. We must put all of our science behind inventing deflector dish technology. We can use it to protect the planet, channel excess heat from AGW, and solve global hunger and crime. And if we operate it in reverse I'm pretty confident it can even take us to warp. Now if we can just stop those bastards at CERN from tearing apart the space/time continuum we won't need a warp core to eject.
Roomba is, performance-wise, a joke. If you want to know how bad it is, if you're cleaning your carpets using one, borrow a Dyson and see how much crap it'll pick up.
I guess it depends on the model. It's certainly not the case for the one I bought for my wife. She has a Dyson too. In all honesty I think the compliment each other more so than compete. The Roomba runs on our first floor every night at 3 am. My wife usually gets out the Dyson and carpet shampooer once every month or two. Regardless, the Roomba still finds plenty to clean up afterward. I think part of it is that it can get into places easier than a big ass Dyson, plus it has a little spinning brush that can get under baseboard and other things better. The Roomba also doesn't need as much suction as a Dyson as the impeller blades are much closer to the floor than they are on the Dyson. If I had to make a choice between the two, Roomba would win without a second thought.
As far as maintenance, I'm truly impressed with how the Roomba is designed. It's pretty modular and very easy to take apart. Most of the modules are also held together with actual screws instead of glue or rivets. So it's actually possible to fix a lot of things yourself if you feel like it, rather than buy a new module. The version I bought for my wife six years ago was one a step down from their commercial one. When they came out with a newly designed vacuum bin, they made it fit older models. So we were able to upgrade it for $35 +/- instead of buying a new one.
Hindsight is great! The consequences of American actions in Iraq, Pakistan and support for Israel were quite predictable. I don't think we can compare the two.
The old Empires laid the groundwork for some of this, but the Americans poked the nest(s)!
The old empires laid the ground work for ALL of this. Most of this fighting would not even be occurring had former countries not been divided up in no meaningful way to their inhabitants. Or people who no longer had a country to call their own at all for that matter.
The Shah of Iran was put back into power by the Eisenhower administration at the request of the British for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which is now BP.
No, people died because of religious fanaticism coupled with decades of American Imperialism.
FTFY; let's call a duck a duck, shall we?
Since we're quaking about the middle east, let's not leave the British & French out. Their decisions about how to divide the Ottoman empire has not helped. Nor the decision to create Israel.
It raises some very interesting points and why Google's self-driving cars would be bad. Just imagine if someone hacked your car and it ran over someone.
Depending on who it runs over, this could be a feature rather than a bad thing.
I bought one of those firesale HP touchpads. They have wireless charging with a special stand and it is the single best feature of the device. Plugging in to charge sucks - there is wear-and-tear on the mini-usb port, the fiddling to get everything lined up requires good lighting and too much time. With the wireless charging stand, it is dead simple - just put it on the stand, listen for the "bonk" sound the OS makes when charging starts and everything just works. It is so much more convenient that wireless charging is now mandatory for any of my future phone and tablet purchases.
I'll agree with you on the wear and tear. I've had that issue with several devices. But either the touchpad is piss poorly designed, or you must be extremely blind and clumsy. It's a micro USB connector. What is there to "line up"? It goes in one way, and one way only (without a hammer). I have the same connector on my phone. It takes me all of one second to plug it in, if that. I can't say I've tried to plug it in in total darkness, but where I generally charge it, there is nowhere near what I would consider good lighting. Certainly not enough to read by. I'd probably use wireless charging if my phone came with it, but I'm not interested in paying extra for something that a cable I already have does just fine.
Seriously, a 7-year-old has too much to learn about almost everything.
This. I predict 99% of the people who are going to reply below this line will have no idea what a 7-year-old is like.
Expose him to computers, sure, but don't try to make them a central focus in his life.
Give him his own PC, and he's likely to still want to use the same one as dad or mom.
This as well...
Wow. I have to totally disagree with you. At least in the case of my daughter. She's had her own computer since she was 2 years old. She's now 9 and is on her second.
I work from home. She was curious about what I was doing at my desk one day so I installed a "edutainment" game that I picked up on sale several months earlier on clearance. I figured math and the alphabet wouldn't change much by the time she was ready for it. She thought it was great and wanted to be on my computer constantly. So I pulled an old computer out and set it up for her. By the time she entered kindergarten she could read, add, subtract and do some simple multiplication. Not that this was totally due to the computer. My wife and I read to her and always explained things when she would ask. At one point she asked for a game that I misread to be for 6-7 year olds that was actually for 6 to 7th graders. She was playing games that taught her about dominant and recessive genes. A while back she wanted some programs that needed a little more power than her computer had. That was the only time she wanted to use my computer since getting her own. So I got her a better system.
When she was 6 the only thing she wanted for Christmas was for me to put her computer on the internet. After some worry I finally did. But I don't allow her to get on chat rooms and Facebook etc.
I agree, it should not be a central focus. But it's an important tool to understand how to use. Frankly writing is started to be dropped in favor of typing in some schools. So I'm not sure way a keyboard an mouse shouldn't be of similar importance to crayons these days.
According to this link, about $800 billion, which is by far more than any other country on the planet. Or $7700 per student. Which is over 30% more per student than the number two spot.
The education budget is cut every year,
That's bullshit perpetuated by which ever political party that is not in power at the time. The amount of planned increase to the education budget may get lowered, but it still gets increased. This is often times reported as a savings when it comes to other spending. The budget for project X was supposed to go up by $200 million, but we only increased it by $150 million. Look at how much we cut. The spending still increased, just not as much.
to make room for more war and keep the tax breaks for the rich.
Or hand outs to the poor. Blah, blah partisan bullshit.
And the higher education is just vastly overpriced.
I couldn't agree more.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the USA is waaay down on the list of how much education you actually get and on the price/performance ratio.
Indeed. Scroll down on that link I provided above.
Now I feel like I should say something good about US education, and how you can easily turn it around since you have the abilities... But I honestly can't think how... I just hope it gets better for you guys. I really do.
Agreed. It's pretty scary that our future leaders will be dumber than ever and still have command of one of the largest nuclear arsenals and well equipped militaries on the planet.
I'm sorry, but as an American this is embarrassing. With the amount of money we spend on education this is one of many things that we should have done a long time ago.
None talked about nuclear energy when asked about their energy plans.
From the third from last sentence in Romney's answer: "I will pursue a course that designs regulation not to stifle energy production but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources — from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and solar.
I do find President Obama's stance on ethanol annoying though. From his response to question 6 : "We are boosting our use of cleaner fuels, including increasing the level of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline"
People of Amercia, I regret that you have such a poor choice,
One of the biggest problems with building a race car/truck is often the cost of the materials. The stiffer frames built from carbon fiber are insanely expensive. Imagine if we could build a frame out of this for around the cost of steel --the technology could then be used in ordinary cars, with a huge weight savings, and a safer, stronger frame. It could revolutionize the automotive design industry.
But how much of that insane cost is due to the materials? A large amount of it is due to the labor that is needed to coat and lay the different layers of material and vacuum bag it. There aren't a lot of automated systems for doing this. I'm sure there could be, but I would guess that larger manufacturers would not want this either. It becomes a lot harder to sell new vehicles when the structural components no longer rust or the body doesn't get dings like steel.
Still, the manufacturing aspect becomes quite different than steel body cars. With steel you run a conveyer through a series of automatic presses to stamp out components that you can stack instantaneously. With composites you need space for molds that need to sit an cure. Then removed from the molds and trimmed. It becomes a much more complex process.
As someone who assisted in making a mod that took 7 years to release for Deus Ex, just because it's taken time doesn't mean the work is done. Volunteer projects have people coming and going, changes in art decisions, changes in tools, etc.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention! Deus Ex was one of my favorite games. I saw the ReTex project fall apart and thought that was the end of it and haven't looked into it since. .
I'm guessing that was an unintended consequence of those malware programs. Unless there's an advantage I don't see with Iran and North Korea strengthening ties.
I was told once by the cable crew who came to fix my cable, that because of squirrels eating at the cable, water had leaked in. As it was a 3 pole run,, some stupid amount of *gallons* of water poured out of the cable.
I had a cable guy try to tell me that the plasma in a plasma TV was the same as the plasma in human blood. I gave up trying to explain it to him as he was pretty adamant about it. I can only imagine how he thought the manufacturers got it.
It is a surveillance plane, not a bomber and not a fighter.
It takes pictures and goes fast and there is no room for carrying ordnance. It can't even take off with it's fuel tanks full.
The SR-71's predecessor was the YF-12A which was armed. It was an interceptor. Without all of that bulky 1960's era camera shit, you can arm it with 3 AIM-47 missiles (which evolved into the AIM 54 Phoenix that F-14's were armed with). I've seen claims that it could carry four AIM-47's, but who knows. So, yes the airframe can carry some ordnance, but it wouldn't make for much of a bomber.
I always thought the Soviet Lunokhod moon rovers were pretty impressive achievements. I believe that Lunokhod 2 still holds the record for the longest distance traveled by any non terrestrial rover. Both were launched in the early 1970's. Of course such technological achievements were over shadowed by the US astronaut missions.
Slashdot Mirror
Or Eurail?
I suggest you try a train next time.
Certainly. What line do I take to go from the east coast of the US to the EU? How do I get home from Calgary, AB? How many transfers are needed between Japan and the east coast?
Cell phones are becoming less about communications and more about tracking and identification. Pretty soon big brother isn't going to let you leave home without it.
1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.
I travel a fair bit for work. Not nearly as much as I used to as I've been trying to travel less. I'm probably a little older than the average /. reader too. But every now an then I end up at the airport and am not in a totally self absorbed rush and it really scares the shit out of me what we have allowed our government to take away from us.
Air travel has truly made me think that many of the nightmarish versions of the future that were envisioned decades ago are, at least in part, coming true. Anywhere you stand in an airport you hear a repeated announcement every two minutes. Basically an authoritative voice telling you what you can carry on the plane. Or that your bag will be taken and destroyed if you leave it unattended. Or not to trust anyone and report suspicious behavior. It's a far cry from the first time I flew when you were more likely to hear jingles about flying the friendly skies
Now you get herded through scanners and treated like a criminal. Particularly if you forgot that bottle of water in your carry-on. And the way I have seen people treated who choose to not go through the (non-monitored by sane practices) radiation emitting scanners is terrifying. On multiple occasions I've seen several TSA employees loudly make fun of these people. It's a far cry from the days when you were treated like a valued customer and respected as a person by the people at the airport.
When I stop to take the time to actually watch and listen to what is happening at airport today; and try to remember my mindset of how things once were I find it's a shame how our way of life has been altered by those in power. I don't know if the cause was Bin Laden and his cowardly attacks on this country. Or if our leaders chose to use it as an excuse to do this themselves. Either way, it saddens me to think that we have lost our way.
I totally agree Google should fight back.
I just think it's bullshit to complain about Apple's abuse of patents because they seek to ban SOME devices from ONE manufacturer, while Google seeks to prevent the sale of EVERY Apple computer and iOS device.
If you're going to be mad about patent abuse be mad consistently, is all I ask.
It seems to me that Google/Motorola are looking to ban some devices from one manufacturer too. I don't think all iPods fall under this. They also have iTunes, mice, power adapters and plenty of other things. After the pissing match with Samsung, I'm having a hard time feeling bad for Apple. Obviously they have more cash than any single company on the planet. But I wonder how affordable it will become if multiple companies, including Samsung, Google, etc. start looking to knock them down a peg or two.
They are too expensive and that will be the weapon that will take them down. Not missiles, not submarines - money.
One tangential "money" issue is 1000 suicide boaters in a simultaneous attack is cheaper than one carrier. Carriers are really freaking expensive. That doesn't work well in the middle of an ocean, but near the shore of the Persian gulf, maybe...
You'd have better luck with a single boat. 1000 would be torn to shreds before they ever got within visual range of a carrier.
And when you find them, which isn't really that hard with technology, you encounter a fleet of ships. Not just an aircraft carrier. A carrier, by itself, is VERY vulnerable. But its shortcomings are made up for with the countless destroyers, cruisers, submarines, and other ships accompanying it.
The only way you can attack the aircraft carrier is to surprise all of those ships. A supersonic missle would work on an aircraft carrier for the same reason it would work just about anywhere else. If you can't recognize it and react in time with a missle that can intercept a supersonic missle, then you can't stop it.
That's why anti-missile systems are mostly automated. And even if the missiles do get there, they still have to get through CIWS. I'm not sure why everyone in this thread seems to think the navy never thought about missile attacks. There are multiple layers of defenses against this
And why does everyone feel the need to state that a "supersonic" missile would do the trick? Are there any that would be used that aren't these days? Hypersonic might be a different story. Suicide bombers in speed boats are a bigger threat to naval ships at the moment as it's generally frowned upon when you sink every ship that gets close to you.
The four C's. Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat Weight. Cut is an artificial item, so let's focus on Color, Clarity and Carat. Of all the diamonds found in nature, what percentage of them are valuable to the consumer market? Low grade yellows and industrial diamonds are in fact dirt cheap by comparison.
BTW, I'm married. I don't discount the fact there is pricing fixing going on, I just questions the natural ratio of quality diamonds that we all know and love (or she does anyways)
There's not much to question. It's pretty well known that De Beers had kept prices artificially high. And if that wasn't enough, now you see retailers charging premiums for shitty brown diamonds because they are now calling them "chocolate". Or yellow ones "canary yellow". They're made from carbon. I'd say that carbon heat and pressure are pretty plentiful on earth. I never thought about it, but I was pretty pissed off when I learned that diamonds will burn just like coal would in a fire.
This could probably be channelled in to the bubble through some fancy rotating warp bubble mechanism.
Then this could be converted to energy and mass storage for use in some possible future matter collider + replicator-like device. With a small powerful matter smasher and fusor we could create any matter we needed as long as we have enough base materials. This could create a ship that is almost entirely self-sufficient.
Of course, this is given that such a thing could be done, this is still all early work.
Certainly not. Everyone knows you just need to reverse the polarity and channel it through the deflector dish.
Come to think about it, screw warp drive. All it does is move you around and on the odd occasion get ejected to close space time disturbances. We must put all of our science behind inventing deflector dish technology. We can use it to protect the planet, channel excess heat from AGW, and solve global hunger and crime. And if we operate it in reverse I'm pretty confident it can even take us to warp. Now if we can just stop those bastards at CERN from tearing apart the space/time continuum we won't need a warp core to eject.
Roomba is, performance-wise, a joke. If you want to know how bad it is, if you're cleaning your carpets using one, borrow a Dyson and see how much crap it'll pick up.
I guess it depends on the model. It's certainly not the case for the one I bought for my wife. She has a Dyson too. In all honesty I think the compliment each other more so than compete. The Roomba runs on our first floor every night at 3 am. My wife usually gets out the Dyson and carpet shampooer once every month or two. Regardless, the Roomba still finds plenty to clean up afterward. I think part of it is that it can get into places easier than a big ass Dyson, plus it has a little spinning brush that can get under baseboard and other things better. The Roomba also doesn't need as much suction as a Dyson as the impeller blades are much closer to the floor than they are on the Dyson. If I had to make a choice between the two, Roomba would win without a second thought.
As far as maintenance, I'm truly impressed with how the Roomba is designed. It's pretty modular and very easy to take apart. Most of the modules are also held together with actual screws instead of glue or rivets. So it's actually possible to fix a lot of things yourself if you feel like it, rather than buy a new module. The version I bought for my wife six years ago was one a step down from their commercial one. When they came out with a newly designed vacuum bin, they made it fit older models. So we were able to upgrade it for $35 +/- instead of buying a new one.
Hindsight is great! The consequences of American actions in Iraq, Pakistan and support for Israel were quite predictable. I don't think we can compare the two.
The old Empires laid the groundwork for some of this, but the Americans poked the nest(s)!
The old empires laid the ground work for ALL of this. Most of this fighting would not even be occurring had former countries not been divided up in no meaningful way to their inhabitants. Or people who no longer had a country to call their own at all for that matter.
The Shah of Iran was put back into power by the Eisenhower administration at the request of the British for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which is now BP.
No, people died because of religious fanaticism coupled with decades of American Imperialism.
FTFY; let's call a duck a duck, shall we?
Since we're quaking about the middle east, let's not leave the British & French out. Their decisions about how to divide the Ottoman empire has not helped. Nor the decision to create Israel.
It raises some very interesting points and why Google's self-driving cars would be bad. Just imagine if someone hacked your car and it ran over someone.
Depending on who it runs over, this could be a feature rather than a bad thing.
I bought one of those firesale HP touchpads. They have wireless charging with a special stand and it is the single best feature of the device. Plugging in to charge sucks - there is wear-and-tear on the mini-usb port, the fiddling to get everything lined up requires good lighting and too much time. With the wireless charging stand, it is dead simple - just put it on the stand, listen for the "bonk" sound the OS makes when charging starts and everything just works. It is so much more convenient that wireless charging is now mandatory for any of my future phone and tablet purchases.
I'll agree with you on the wear and tear. I've had that issue with several devices. But either the touchpad is piss poorly designed, or you must be extremely blind and clumsy. It's a micro USB connector. What is there to "line up"? It goes in one way, and one way only (without a hammer). I have the same connector on my phone. It takes me all of one second to plug it in, if that. I can't say I've tried to plug it in in total darkness, but where I generally charge it, there is nowhere near what I would consider good lighting. Certainly not enough to read by. I'd probably use wireless charging if my phone came with it, but I'm not interested in paying extra for something that a cable I already have does just fine.
They can still be liable for treble damages.
It's better than the liability for bass damages I suppose.
I have the patent upon threatening people with lawsuits
I have a feeling you're going to go broke trying to defend that one.
Seriously, a 7-year-old has too much to learn about almost everything.
This. I predict 99% of the people who are going to reply below this line will have no idea what a 7-year-old is like.
Expose him to computers, sure, but don't try to make them a central focus in his life.
Give him his own PC, and he's likely to still want to use the same one as dad or mom.
This as well...
Wow. I have to totally disagree with you. At least in the case of my daughter. She's had her own computer since she was 2 years old. She's now 9 and is on her second.
I work from home. She was curious about what I was doing at my desk one day so I installed a "edutainment" game that I picked up on sale several months earlier on clearance. I figured math and the alphabet wouldn't change much by the time she was ready for it. She thought it was great and wanted to be on my computer constantly. So I pulled an old computer out and set it up for her. By the time she entered kindergarten she could read, add, subtract and do some simple multiplication. Not that this was totally due to the computer. My wife and I read to her and always explained things when she would ask. At one point she asked for a game that I misread to be for 6-7 year olds that was actually for 6 to 7th graders. She was playing games that taught her about dominant and recessive genes. A while back she wanted some programs that needed a little more power than her computer had. That was the only time she wanted to use my computer since getting her own. So I got her a better system.
When she was 6 the only thing she wanted for Christmas was for me to put her computer on the internet. After some worry I finally did. But I don't allow her to get on chat rooms and Facebook etc.
I agree, it should not be a central focus. But it's an important tool to understand how to use. Frankly writing is started to be dropped in favor of typing in some schools. So I'm not sure way a keyboard an mouse shouldn't be of similar importance to crayons these days.
What amount of money you spend on education??
According to this link, about $800 billion, which is by far more than any other country on the planet. Or $7700 per student. Which is over 30% more per student than the number two spot.
The education budget is cut every year,
That's bullshit perpetuated by which ever political party that is not in power at the time. The amount of planned increase to the education budget may get lowered, but it still gets increased. This is often times reported as a savings when it comes to other spending. The budget for project X was supposed to go up by $200 million, but we only increased it by $150 million. Look at how much we cut. The spending still increased, just not as much.
to make room for more war and keep the tax breaks for the rich.
Or hand outs to the poor. Blah, blah partisan bullshit.
And the higher education is just vastly overpriced.
I couldn't agree more.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the USA is waaay down on the list of how much education you actually get and on the price/performance ratio.
Indeed. Scroll down on that link I provided above.
Now I feel like I should say something good about US education, and how you can easily turn it around since you have the abilities... But I honestly can't think how... I just hope it gets better for you guys. I really do.
Agreed. It's pretty scary that our future leaders will be dumber than ever and still have command of one of the largest nuclear arsenals and well equipped militaries on the planet.
I'm sorry, but as an American this is embarrassing. With the amount of money we spend on education this is one of many things that we should have done a long time ago.
Good for you Estonia!
None talked about nuclear energy when asked about their energy plans.
From the third from last sentence in Romney's answer: "I will pursue a course that designs regulation not to stifle energy production but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources — from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and solar.
I do find President Obama's stance on ethanol annoying though. From his response to question 6 : "We are boosting our use of cleaner fuels, including increasing the level of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline"
People of Amercia, I regret that you have such a poor choice,
Me too.
One of the biggest problems with building a race car/truck is often the cost of the materials. The stiffer frames built from carbon fiber are insanely expensive. Imagine if we could build a frame out of this for around the cost of steel --the technology could then be used in ordinary cars, with a huge weight savings, and a safer, stronger frame. It could revolutionize the automotive design industry.
But how much of that insane cost is due to the materials? A large amount of it is due to the labor that is needed to coat and lay the different layers of material and vacuum bag it. There aren't a lot of automated systems for doing this. I'm sure there could be, but I would guess that larger manufacturers would not want this either. It becomes a lot harder to sell new vehicles when the structural components no longer rust or the body doesn't get dings like steel.
Still, the manufacturing aspect becomes quite different than steel body cars. With steel you run a conveyer through a series of automatic presses to stamp out components that you can stack instantaneously. With composites you need space for molds that need to sit an cure. Then removed from the molds and trimmed. It becomes a much more complex process.
As someone who assisted in making a mod that took 7 years to release for Deus Ex, just because it's taken time doesn't mean the work is done. Volunteer projects have people coming and going, changes in art decisions, changes in tools, etc.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention! Deus Ex was one of my favorite games. I saw the ReTex project fall apart and thought that was the end of it and haven't looked into it since. .
I'm guessing that was an unintended consequence of those malware programs. Unless there's an advantage I don't see with Iran and North Korea strengthening ties.
Don't trust the clowd clowns with your data!
I certainly won't. Thanks for the tip. One other thing, how do I distinguish clowd clowns from regular clowns?
Can you really think of a situation that would require you to trust any kind of clown?
I was told once by the cable crew who came to fix my cable, that because of squirrels eating at the cable, water had leaked in. As it was a 3 pole run,, some stupid amount of *gallons* of water poured out of the cable.
I had a cable guy try to tell me that the plasma in a plasma TV was the same as the plasma in human blood. I gave up trying to explain it to him as he was pretty adamant about it. I can only imagine how he thought the manufacturers got it.
Except for being the wrong plane for the job.
It is a surveillance plane, not a bomber and not a fighter.
It takes pictures and goes fast and there is no room for carrying ordnance. It can't even take off with it's fuel tanks full.
The SR-71's predecessor was the YF-12A which was armed. It was an interceptor. Without all of that bulky 1960's era camera shit, you can arm it with 3 AIM-47 missiles (which evolved into the AIM 54 Phoenix that F-14's were armed with). I've seen claims that it could carry four AIM-47's, but who knows. So, yes the airframe can carry some ordnance, but it wouldn't make for much of a bomber.
I always thought the Soviet Lunokhod moon rovers were pretty impressive achievements. I believe that Lunokhod 2 still holds the record for the longest distance traveled by any non terrestrial rover. Both were launched in the early 1970's. Of course such technological achievements were over shadowed by the US astronaut missions.