And if the voting age had been lowered to 4... everyone would have cookies.
Yeah, but the FACT is that voting age was risen from 16 to 18.
So your theory is that Cameron is incredibly reckless in a way that would likely lead to his need to resign?
No. He was incredibly reckless in a way that he thought would give him and his country an advantage over the EU, and at the same time help calming down internal unrest.
...the very small number of people genuinely unable to vote (despite their best efforts...
Not so small! British expats -e.g. those living in other EU countries- weren't allowed to vote, nor people aged between 16 and eighteen, even when they were allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum.
By sheer coincidence, these two groups would have voted for the Remain option.
My pet theory is that Cameron et al wanted the Remain camp to succeed, though by a thin margin, so they could use the results to put pressure on the EU.
Sadly, only the bones have been recovered. The coroner is performing a forensic examination of the remains and a report will be made public soon, but confidential sources tell us that the bones bear tooth marks. The horror!
Hence, it's totally legit that the police uses a Stingray to catch this bloody cannibal! If he does this with chickens and doesn't get stopped, he'll soon be eating people! Yikes!
"And even if we build a particle accelerator to the fullest capacity of our technology around the equator of the Earth, we still couldn’t reach those energies."
There are far bigger accelerators 'out there', and they're called quasars, pulsars and black holes. Even if the claims in the article apply, the study of high energy cosmic rays could help us to discover and study new particles, In a similar way to what is being done with neutrinos.
Wrong, now that we have DNA sequencing techniques which are applied normally, we can be sure of guilt
That's true only for those cases where DNA evidence is relevant or even exists, and in those cases where irrelevant DNA evidence is not abused by the DA to fool the jurors. Perhaps now it's not a 20%, just a 17 % or even a 15%. My point stands, though.
If the fed, state or local government wants you dead they will kill you and don't need a trial
... seem to have forgotten about that study in the nineties that applied the then recently developed DNA sequencing techniques to old cases. Said study proved conclusively that about a 20% of the executed were innocent. It can be logically inferred that nowadays the % of false convictions is close to that, excluding (most) cases where DNA evidence is used.
And the problem with the appeals is that every official involved in the case has an interest, a set of perverse incentives, in upholding the death sentences. No policeman, attorney or judge wants the public to know that they helped to sentence an innocent to death. The result: the appeals process is an uphill battle against the establishment, and most people lack the resources (money) to carry out a successful appeal.
Other studies prove that witnesses are far less reliable than generally assumed, that often the cops and district attorneys put too much pressure on witnesses and suspects, or directly manipulate or hide evidence that could set the suspect free.
Is the American legal system perfect and free of errors and corruption? Can you resurrect a wrongly executed person? If you can't answer affirmatively to at least one of these questions, death penalty is just another crime.
To further clarify my point, most of the convicts in the death row probably deserve to be executed, but the rest of the population doesn't deserve to live in a country that has that kind of power over its citizens, because that power will be -and has been- abused.
Let the downvotes begin... . Anyway this needed to be said.
... and you end up with taxes on drugs to pay for some of the likely increase in health problems
If you remove the war on drugs, you also remove contamination -poisonings-, variations in drug's concentration -overdoses-, needle sharing - AIDS, hepatitis- and most of the reasons for violent drug related crimes.
Your "likely increase in health problems" is quite unlikely, indeed.
You can build your own steam machine for peanuts, if you are technically inclined. If you aren't, you can request the help from a friend, and if you can't/don't want to do that, you can still buy a suitable PC an add SteamOS on top. If you're too lazy even for that and have money to expend, you can purchase one of these pretty Steam machines. At the very least you'll be free from the Windows tax and still you'll end up with a full fledged PC with a serious OS (Linux) that can run lots and lots of 'serious apps' + a growing number of games. I think Valve has hit the nail in the head with this one. Kudos to them.
You don't need receivers and metallic mechanical parts if you use electric ignition, just an electric trigger, a battery and some circuitry.
You don't need proper barrels if you can use thin standard tubing encased in a 3d printed plastic sleeve, both for reinforcing the barrel and for safety.
You don't need magazines if you can store several bullets in the barrel and make the barrels single use and swappable. Due to their flimsy construction, the barrels should be strictly one use only, having to swap barrels for a new burst.
A company called Metal Storm is already applying some of these concepts in the real world.
As for lack of precision due to the lack of rifling in the barrel... they'd still be great for urban guerrilla scenarios, and probably far more precise than UZI style weapons.
I don't think the ATF guys have thought this one thoroughly enough.
Reality states that at least it would make weapons more expensive for the criminals. Nowadays thousands of weapons are stolen from their rightful owners, or illegally sold by their rightful owners to criminals every year. As smuggling operations have to compete against these sources of weapons, they have to keep prices low. If you close the former sources, smuggled weapon prices will soar, just like with any other monopoly.
What is more, with the actual status quo, for many crims not having a weapon would be suicidal, as many of their prospective victims are probably armed and willing to shoot at them. It's like an arms race, with the added factor that most of these weapons are sold to both sides by the same companies.
"do you think you can bring Harry Potter onto the big screen without the resources of big budget movie studio?"
Give it ten or twenty years and technology will make expensive films and film studios follow the path of dinosaurs. In that timeframe and thanks to Moore's Law the average user will have enough power at his fingertips to make CGI films indistinguishable from reality, including tricks like motion capture. A group of friends could do a film for peanuts, and if the film is good enough it could make tons of money for its makers. Of course, there would be lots of crappy films, but without the help of some humongous promotion campaign, they would be winnowed out really fast.
In that moment, with good quality films costing less than, say, 50000 $, it suddenly would make sense to obtain revenues by alternative means, i.e. publicity and product placement, and what we call 'piracy' would be the best way of promoting a film.
I think that movie studios are aware of this, and are just desperate to milk the cow as much as possible, before she falls dead.
The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.
Yep! You're totally right! If we trigger a mass extinction, in a few millions of years everything will go back to normal, and our descendants -if they miraculously manage to survive - will thank us for our hindsight in causing said extinction.
Slashdot Mirror
^^^ Or any kind of mass driver, even the ones designed for civilian use.
^^^^This!!! (From another Spaniard)
And if the voting age had been lowered to 4... everyone would have cookies.
Yeah, but the FACT is that voting age was risen from 16 to 18.
So your theory is that Cameron is incredibly reckless in a way that would likely lead to his need to resign?
No. He was incredibly reckless in a way that he thought would give him and his country an advantage over the EU, and at the same time help calming down internal unrest.
...the very small number of people genuinely unable to vote (despite their best efforts...
Not so small! British expats -e.g. those living in other EU countries- weren't allowed to vote, nor people aged between 16 and eighteen, even when they were allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum.
By sheer coincidence, these two groups would have voted for the Remain option.
My pet theory is that Cameron et al wanted the Remain camp to succeed, though by a thin margin, so they could use the results to put pressure on the EU.
"Hoisted by his own petard", indeed!
I wonder what they were REALLY looking for ....
An excuse for slurping everybody's data, that's what they were looking for!
Sadly, only the bones have been recovered. The coroner is performing a forensic examination of the remains and a report will be made public soon, but confidential sources tell us that the bones bear tooth marks. The horror!
Hence, it's totally legit that the police uses a Stingray to catch this bloody cannibal! If he does this with chickens and doesn't get stopped, he'll soon be eating people! Yikes!
"Won't someone think of the chickens?"
"And even if we build a particle accelerator to the fullest capacity of our technology around the equator of the Earth, we still couldn’t reach those energies."
There are far bigger accelerators 'out there', and they're called quasars, pulsars and black holes. Even if the claims in the article apply, the study of high energy cosmic rays could help us to discover and study new particles, In a similar way to what is being done with neutrinos.
Disclaimer: IANAPP :-)
Wrong, now that we have DNA sequencing techniques which are applied normally, we can be sure of guilt
That's true only for those cases where DNA evidence is relevant or even exists, and in those cases where irrelevant DNA evidence is not abused by the DA to fool the jurors. Perhaps now it's not a 20%, just a 17 % or even a 15%. My point stands, though.
If the fed, state or local government wants you dead they will kill you and don't need a trial
Sad, but probably true.
And the problem with the appeals is that every official involved in the case has an interest, a set of perverse incentives, in upholding the death sentences. No policeman, attorney or judge wants the public to know that they helped to sentence an innocent to death. The result: the appeals process is an uphill battle against the establishment, and most people lack the resources (money) to carry out a successful appeal.
Other studies prove that witnesses are far less reliable than generally assumed, that often the cops and district attorneys put too much pressure on witnesses and suspects, or directly manipulate or hide evidence that could set the suspect free.
Is the American legal system perfect and free of errors and corruption? Can you resurrect a wrongly executed person? If you can't answer affirmatively to at least one of these questions, death penalty is just another crime.
To further clarify my point, most of the convicts in the death row probably deserve to be executed, but the rest of the population doesn't deserve to live in a country that has that kind of power over its citizens, because that power will be -and has been- abused.
Let the downvotes begin... . Anyway this needed to be said.
... its just another piece of closed source...
Chromium (on which Maelstrom is based) is open source. Regarding the "non-free pay-here" part... "citation needed".
Nice to hear from you, Mr. Haselton! ;-)
when they needed to clean oil spills off penguins.
That can be done in a fast and efficient way using flamethrowers
Except for the fact that people consume hundreds of times more water than tuna.
A gallon or two of methylmercury would probably kill thousands of people, and make many thousands more very, very sick.
... and you end up with taxes on drugs to pay for some of the likely increase in health problems
If you remove the war on drugs, you also remove contamination -poisonings-, variations in drug's concentration -overdoses-, needle sharing - AIDS, hepatitis- and most of the reasons for violent drug related crimes. Your "likely increase in health problems" is quite unlikely, indeed.
The problem is I don't know how to bring up the console.
You can build your own steam machine for peanuts, if you are technically inclined. If you aren't, you can request the help from a friend, and if you can't/don't want to do that, you can still buy a suitable PC an add SteamOS on top. If you're too lazy even for that and have money to expend, you can purchase one of these pretty Steam machines. At the very least you'll be free from the Windows tax and still you'll end up with a full fledged PC with a serious OS (Linux) that can run lots and lots of 'serious apps' + a growing number of games. I think Valve has hit the nail in the head with this one. Kudos to them.
You don't need receivers and metallic mechanical parts if you use electric ignition, just an electric trigger, a battery and some circuitry.
You don't need proper barrels if you can use thin standard tubing encased in a 3d printed plastic sleeve, both for reinforcing the barrel and for safety.
You don't need magazines if you can store several bullets in the barrel and make the barrels single use and swappable. Due to their flimsy construction, the barrels should be strictly one use only, having to swap barrels for a new burst.
A company called Metal Storm is already applying some of these concepts in the real world.
As for lack of precision due to the lack of rifling in the barrel... they'd still be great for urban guerrilla scenarios, and probably far more precise than UZI style weapons.
I don't think the ATF guys have thought this one thoroughly enough.
What is more, with the actual status quo, for many crims not having a weapon would be suicidal, as many of their prospective victims are probably armed and willing to shoot at them. It's like an arms race, with the added factor that most of these weapons are sold to both sides by the same companies.
Most people have heard of the first woman to solo the Atlantic
Well, I have heard a lot about that girl who soloed Dallas, but THE WHOLE ATLANTIC? What else?
PD: ;-)
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur."
I also like "Pay peanuts, hire monkeys"
And they can print more $s when needed!
Give it ten or twenty years and technology will make expensive films and film studios follow the path of dinosaurs. In that timeframe and thanks to Moore's Law the average user will have enough power at his fingertips to make CGI films indistinguishable from reality, including tricks like motion capture. A group of friends could do a film for peanuts, and if the film is good enough it could make tons of money for its makers. Of course, there would be lots of crappy films, but without the help of some humongous promotion campaign, they would be winnowed out really fast.
In that moment, with good quality films costing less than, say, 50000 $, it suddenly would make sense to obtain revenues by alternative means, i.e. publicity and product placement, and what we call 'piracy' would be the best way of promoting a film.
I think that movie studios are aware of this, and are just desperate to milk the cow as much as possible, before she falls dead.
The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.
Yep! You're totally right! If we trigger a mass extinction, in a few millions of years everything will go back to normal, and our descendants -if they miraculously manage to survive - will thank us for our hindsight in causing said extinction.
Nah.
This thing would be assembled in orbit and would never land on a planet.
How would you send the radioactive fuel to orbit? By FedEx?