What about an asteroid (a big one) hitting the Earth soon. There is a majority of the sky where we wouldn't see it coming. It could just happen today and nobody would know until it had already happened.
I'm not saying everyone would die, but the world economy would be obliterated and we would return to anarchy. We might, as a species, survive, but it would have nothing to do with being smarter than an asteroid.
Plus, we DO have the ability to setup a defense system right now to see one coming and have some chance of deflecting one. But, it's very expensive.
I cross the US/Canadian border regularly, and use a special "commuter" lane called the nexus lane (both ways - it's a cooperative program between both countries). In that lane, there is an RFID reader and we are all issued plastic cards with RFID chips in them. You just drive up, the RFID reader reads the chip in the card, a camera takes a picture of your license plate and does character recognition on it, then compares it to the database to make sure it matches one of the vehicles assigned to that card, and then a border guard makes sure the picture on the card matches you. I think this program started in 2002 or something.
These would be great for lightsabre battles! Much better than pouring gas inside of one anyway... but you'd need to wear gloves.
Really though, regarding the post, does everything need to be related to terrorism? Isn't that just a marketing ploy? Don't we already have our anti-terrorist duct tape at the ready?:)
Actually, I did this experiment in high school. Distilled water won't work... because you either need to add acid or salt as a catalyst to make the water conduct electricity. Both will create ions in the water which become the positive and negative charges that move from anode to cathode, or vice versa. I remember the residue being very messy.
Water molecules themselves are slightly polarized (that's why a microwave works, actually), but they have a net neutral charge, so pure water doesn't conduct electricity, contrary to popular belief. Most tap water and rain water has enough acid or salt in it to make it a little conductive though.
I don't see how this device could function with distilled water, unless the device adds its own catalyst (which is possible, because only the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen - the catalyst is never used up). As long as you kept remixing the tank of water to keep the salt dissolved, it might work.
I did a co-op there - very good company - QNX that is. Also, a Canadian operation. At the time I believe the QNX kernel was the only piece of software in the world that came with a guarantee, not just a warrantee. It's used a lot in medical devices and avionics.
Then you didn't read that book I mentioned: "the millionaire next door". It absolutely refutes that myth.
Also, there's a difference between rich and wealthy. Rich people spend money... wealthy people accumulate money to become economically independent (i.e. not relying on a job for their income). The wealthy people in the US, for the most part, did NOT inherit their wealth. Also, due to high inheritance taxes, most wealthy people spend or give away most of their wealth before they die.
Fair enough... I was generalizing Ontario to all provinces, as we always do in Ontario.:) Ontario and Alberta have strict caps on athletic scholarships, and apparently there is a ban on first year athletic scholarships in Ontario:
Your assumption of my nationality is incorrect. I am not American. However, to say that the U.S. has a class society would be stretching the definition. In a class society, you are not allowed to move from one class to another. If you read the book, "the millionaire next door", which is all based on studies, you can see that people from all "classes" quite often move up or down in the U.S.
The U.S. attempts to use the free market to establish "classes". Those who create wealth, or are smart enough to acquire something that will be worth more in the future, end up going up in wealth, and those who go to the casino with their $400 a week paycheque don't accumulate any wealth. Do not confuse that with a class system. The fact is, it's difficult to accumulate wealth. It is 50% dependent upon income and 50% upon the ability to live well within your means.
There is a baseball player who retired from a career where he made a total of $26 million. He's broke now. Society didn't do this to him - he was too stupid to not lose all his wealth, so the "system" returned him to where he belonged. Many lifetime poor people don't get a job where they make $26 million, so they just start where they belong and end up there too. Putting them on welfare just keeps them from breaking into my house to steal my $400 TV so they can sell it for $40 on the street. Good enough for me, because it's cheaper than hiring the requisite number of cops to guard everybody's house, and more humane at the same time.
Look, I'm somewhat left-leaning socially, but you give all liberals a bad name.
In no way do I support eugenics... I'm simply an observer. However, I have to note this:
1) In the west we have a "natural" selection of people where less successful people tend to breed more and sooner (they have more kids earlier in life). If there is any genetic component to success, we are effectively breeding it out.
2) In China, they have an artificial selection where parents can only have 1 child. Those that have 2 are fined for the second, so effectively people with money (sometimes equivalent to success) can breed more. Therefore, China is encouraging the breeding of more successful people.
I admit this is a simplification of the matter. However, I think that several generations down the road, this will turn into an advantage for the Chinese nation.
Sadly, now the things valued most highly in American institutions (public and private) are things like 'diversity training,' 'empowering employees,' and 'inclusive respect.'
You forgot the big one: football.
Did you know, in Canada, we don't have ANY sports scholarships at universities? Consider that for a moment.
I am not sure about calling the police but if some random person was hanging out in front of my house for hours for no apparent reason, I'd be a bit peeved and freaked out.
And if I knew he was leeching off my wireless internet and wanted him to go away, I might use WEP and MAC filtering to lock the wireless AP, or just deny his MAC access to the AP. If he continued to use it after I do a little to lock it down, then he's stepping over the line and breaking the law. That's my opinion.
If he had an AP setup that was open to public access, it's like putting a sign up at the end of your driveway that says "free parking", then calling the police when someone parks there and having them charged with trespassing.
The AP automatically accepts incoming requests and gives out network access. That IS the same as a sign saying, "use me".
I live on the border, so all the Canadian radio stations here actually report the weather in fahrenheit because they broadcast to the U.S., and the americans would be like, WTFBBQ?, and over the past 5 years I've been here I'm starting to think in both. Since I was talking to a yank, thought I'd use their terms.
I find that I specify units a lot more living here...
Went there last year as an "outsider". It was nice, and the people were friendly, but on their religious day (can't remember if it was Saturday or Sunday) it was a bit weird, everyone in their crisp pressed white shirts, even little tiny children, all dressed identical. Hard to describe.
My father rarely ever watched anything sci-fi, but he turned to me and said, "remember those old star trek episodes where they would beam down to a planet that was supposed to be this perfect place, and the locals would say, 'Hi Neighbour' (in this really creepy way)? Well, it kinda feels like that." In other words, it's nice, but it gives you the creeps.
If I had to compare it to star trek, it would be more like walking through a borg cube. Interesting, but you're just waiting for them all to "notice" you, and break out the assimilation tubes.
But honestly, we enjoyed our stay and it seemed like a very friendly modern city. Didn't seem very "metropolitain" though, and the religion apparently says something like, God created man, and then somewhere down the line he punished the people who sinned by turning them black.
He seems to be saying that the actual terror events that have happened over the last few years (the ones that Americans actually care about) are being used by people to manipulate Americans into being afraid of more than the "real" threat, whatever that is. Using the label "terror" loosely, you can now subtly compare anything you think threatens the government, even civil disobedience, to al qaeda. It's not that big of a stretch.
That doesn't mean there aren't real terrorist organizations out there - obviously there are. But when's the last time you heard about the hunt for Osama? Did we find him in Iraq yet, with all the other rebels^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terrorists who keep car bombing the U.S. troops?
I see this all the time, only usually like, "there are as many MRI machines in New York State as there are in all of Canada". That's shocking, but have you ever compared the populations?
What a stupid story. You can compare some things based on actual numbers, like military figures, but this kind of stuff has to be per capita.
I was driving down the interstate in Mississippi north of Jackson, and saw a cell tower that didn't look like a cell tower. It kind of looked like the washington monument - a big monolith. It didn't look too bad. Maybe this is what they should do more often - disguise the cell towers as other things, like the big cross on the hill down in Rio. I'm sure they hang some cell nodes off that thing.
How do you deliver grass pellets to my house in pipes like they do with natural gas?
Seems to me that natural gas burns cleaner anyway. I still like the idea of capping off old landfills and collecting/burning the methane for power anyway.
I waited and waited for a computer game to free me from the tedium of doing all that stuff with battletech. Finally! Mechwarrior with EGA graphics!!! Woo hoo!
But you could never really do the mech design as detailed as you could with the pencil and paper.
Still, was fun to pilot a marauder with the dual PPC's.:-) Back before the clans...
I went to a debate one time where a guy tried to prove the existence of God mathematically, but I wrote down his argument while he was giving it, and there was some obvious logical falacy where he went from something like a->b back to b->a, which didn't make any sense when you thought about it. It had something to do with causality.
At any rate, I can't find my notes... maybe god stole them.:^)
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Erm, not to an airline that's running their whole system on a single Mac.
What about an asteroid (a big one) hitting the Earth soon. There is a majority of the sky where we wouldn't see it coming. It could just happen today and nobody would know until it had already happened.
I'm not saying everyone would die, but the world economy would be obliterated and we would return to anarchy. We might, as a species, survive, but it would have nothing to do with being smarter than an asteroid.
Plus, we DO have the ability to setup a defense system right now to see one coming and have some chance of deflecting one. But, it's very expensive.
I cross the US/Canadian border regularly, and use a special "commuter" lane called the nexus lane (both ways - it's a cooperative program between both countries). In that lane, there is an RFID reader and we are all issued plastic cards with RFID chips in them. You just drive up, the RFID reader reads the chip in the card, a camera takes a picture of your license plate and does character recognition on it, then compares it to the database to make sure it matches one of the vehicles assigned to that card, and then a border guard makes sure the picture on the card matches you. I think this program started in 2002 or something.
So, this is not new to me.
These would be great for lightsabre battles! Much better than pouring gas inside of one anyway... but you'd need to wear gloves.
:)
Really though, regarding the post, does everything need to be related to terrorism? Isn't that just a marketing ploy? Don't we already have our anti-terrorist duct tape at the ready?
Actually, I did this experiment in high school. Distilled water won't work... because you either need to add acid or salt as a catalyst to make the water conduct electricity. Both will create ions in the water which become the positive and negative charges that move from anode to cathode, or vice versa. I remember the residue being very messy.
Water molecules themselves are slightly polarized (that's why a microwave works, actually), but they have a net neutral charge, so pure water doesn't conduct electricity, contrary to popular belief. Most tap water and rain water has enough acid or salt in it to make it a little conductive though.
I don't see how this device could function with distilled water, unless the device adds its own catalyst (which is possible, because only the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen - the catalyst is never used up). As long as you kept remixing the tank of water to keep the salt dissolved, it might work.
I did a co-op there - very good company - QNX that is. Also, a Canadian operation. At the time I believe the QNX kernel was the only piece of software in the world that came with a guarantee, not just a warrantee. It's used a lot in medical devices and avionics.
Then you didn't read that book I mentioned: "the millionaire next door". It absolutely refutes that myth.
Also, there's a difference between rich and wealthy. Rich people spend money... wealthy people accumulate money to become economically independent (i.e. not relying on a job for their income). The wealthy people in the US, for the most part, did NOT inherit their wealth. Also, due to high inheritance taxes, most wealthy people spend or give away most of their wealth before they die.
Fair enough... I was generalizing Ontario to all provinces, as we always do in Ontario. :) Ontario and Alberta have strict caps on athletic scholarships, and apparently there is a ban on first year athletic scholarships in Ontario:
See here.
Your assumption of my nationality is incorrect. I am not American. However, to say that the U.S. has a class society would be stretching the definition. In a class society, you are not allowed to move from one class to another. If you read the book, "the millionaire next door", which is all based on studies, you can see that people from all "classes" quite often move up or down in the U.S.
The U.S. attempts to use the free market to establish "classes". Those who create wealth, or are smart enough to acquire something that will be worth more in the future, end up going up in wealth, and those who go to the casino with their $400 a week paycheque don't accumulate any wealth. Do not confuse that with a class system. The fact is, it's difficult to accumulate wealth. It is 50% dependent upon income and 50% upon the ability to live well within your means.
There is a baseball player who retired from a career where he made a total of $26 million. He's broke now. Society didn't do this to him - he was too stupid to not lose all his wealth, so the "system" returned him to where he belonged. Many lifetime poor people don't get a job where they make $26 million, so they just start where they belong and end up there too. Putting them on welfare just keeps them from breaking into my house to steal my $400 TV so they can sell it for $40 on the street. Good enough for me, because it's cheaper than hiring the requisite number of cops to guard everybody's house, and more humane at the same time.
Look, I'm somewhat left-leaning socially, but you give all liberals a bad name.
Interesting... thanks for the info. I have a friend there right now, and will ask him more when he gets back.
In no way do I support eugenics... I'm simply an observer. However, I have to note this:
1) In the west we have a "natural" selection of people where less successful people tend to breed more and sooner (they have more kids earlier in life). If there is any genetic component to success, we are effectively breeding it out.
2) In China, they have an artificial selection where parents can only have 1 child. Those that have 2 are fined for the second, so effectively people with money (sometimes equivalent to success) can breed more. Therefore, China is encouraging the breeding of more successful people.
I admit this is a simplification of the matter. However, I think that several generations down the road, this will turn into an advantage for the Chinese nation.
Sadly, now the things valued most highly in American institutions (public and private) are things like 'diversity training,' 'empowering employees,' and 'inclusive respect.'
You forgot the big one: football.
Did you know, in Canada, we don't have ANY sports scholarships at universities? Consider that for a moment.
Gah! Dammit... I thought that the one week delay was bad enough for season 1... this sucks! BitTorrent -> DVD -> my TV screen.
The damned show is probably filmed in Canada too.
I am not sure about calling the police but if some random person was hanging out in front of my house for hours for no apparent reason, I'd be a bit peeved and freaked out.
And if I knew he was leeching off my wireless internet and wanted him to go away, I might use WEP and MAC filtering to lock the wireless AP, or just deny his MAC access to the AP. If he continued to use it after I do a little to lock it down, then he's stepping over the line and breaking the law. That's my opinion.
If he had an AP setup that was open to public access, it's like putting a sign up at the end of your driveway that says "free parking", then calling the police when someone parks there and having them charged with trespassing.
The AP automatically accepts incoming requests and gives out network access. That IS the same as a sign saying, "use me".
You're being funny...
I live on the border, so all the Canadian radio stations here actually report the weather in fahrenheit because they broadcast to the U.S., and the americans would be like, WTFBBQ?, and over the past 5 years I've been here I'm starting to think in both. Since I was talking to a yank, thought I'd use their terms.
I find that I specify units a lot more living here...
Went there last year as an "outsider". It was nice, and the people were friendly, but on their religious day (can't remember if it was Saturday or Sunday) it was a bit weird, everyone in their crisp pressed white shirts, even little tiny children, all dressed identical. Hard to describe.
My father rarely ever watched anything sci-fi, but he turned to me and said, "remember those old star trek episodes where they would beam down to a planet that was supposed to be this perfect place, and the locals would say, 'Hi Neighbour' (in this really creepy way)? Well, it kinda feels like that." In other words, it's nice, but it gives you the creeps.
If I had to compare it to star trek, it would be more like walking through a borg cube. Interesting, but you're just waiting for them all to "notice" you, and break out the assimilation tubes.
But honestly, we enjoyed our stay and it seemed like a very friendly modern city. Didn't seem very "metropolitain" though, and the religion apparently says something like, God created man, and then somewhere down the line he punished the people who sinned by turning them black.
Wouldn't want to live there.
Dude, I'm in Canada... was 92 fahrenheit here on the weekend. Plus humidex.
You assume there is a god.
That assumption has shaky, if any, decent solid supporting evidence.
Therefore, all arguments you base on that assumption is irrelevant.
So I personally believe...
And who the heck cares what YOU believe? We don't have time for your whims here.
He seems to be saying that the actual terror events that have happened over the last few years (the ones that Americans actually care about) are being used by people to manipulate Americans into being afraid of more than the "real" threat, whatever that is. Using the label "terror" loosely, you can now subtly compare anything you think threatens the government, even civil disobedience, to al qaeda. It's not that big of a stretch.
That doesn't mean there aren't real terrorist organizations out there - obviously there are. But when's the last time you heard about the hunt for Osama? Did we find him in Iraq yet, with all the other rebels^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terrorists who keep car bombing the U.S. troops?
I see this all the time, only usually like, "there are as many MRI machines in New York State as there are in all of Canada". That's shocking, but have you ever compared the populations?
What a stupid story. You can compare some things based on actual numbers, like military figures, but this kind of stuff has to be per capita.
I was driving down the interstate in Mississippi north of Jackson, and saw a cell tower that didn't look like a cell tower. It kind of looked like the washington monument - a big monolith. It didn't look too bad. Maybe this is what they should do more often - disguise the cell towers as other things, like the big cross on the hill down in Rio. I'm sure they hang some cell nodes off that thing.
How do you deliver grass pellets to my house in pipes like they do with natural gas?
Seems to me that natural gas burns cleaner anyway. I still like the idea of capping off old landfills and collecting/burning the methane for power anyway.
I waited and waited for a computer game to free me from the tedium of doing all that stuff with battletech. Finally! Mechwarrior with EGA graphics!!! Woo hoo!
:-) Back before the clans...
But you could never really do the mech design as detailed as you could with the pencil and paper.
Still, was fun to pilot a marauder with the dual PPC's.
Does anyone think that someone is typing the following into google looking for stories to submit to slashdot:
apple ipod linux ibm "failed windows"
?
I went to a debate one time where a guy tried to prove the existence of God mathematically, but I wrote down his argument while he was giving it, and there was some obvious logical falacy where he went from something like a->b back to b->a, which didn't make any sense when you thought about it. It had something to do with causality.
:^)
At any rate, I can't find my notes... maybe god stole them.