You are the one who keeps complaining about me addressing them. If you disagree with them then you should not have posted them.
Not that readers need it pointed out, but Mars has mysteriously entered the discussion.
There is no "mysteriously" about it. The distance you started quoting is less than the distance from the Earth to Mars.
In other words, interplanetary.
Interplanetary != Interstellar
Argh. You're comparing an exhaust, which rapidly cools off in space and generally acts very differently to a laser, to a laser.
No. I'm comparing the dispersal. You are arguing that the exhaust would not disperse.
In other words, you are arguing that the exhaust is focused BETTER than a laser.
And the heat has to go somewhere. It's one of the laws of physics.
You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.
Yes it does. The heat of the exhaust does not vanish. Reaction mass does not vanish. Ships need a force to move them.
Physics.
I seriously have no idea where you're getting this stuff.
That you do not understand the distances involved.
In order for the ship to be hidden, it cannot be silhouetted against its own exhaust. Which means that the exhaust cannot cross the edge of the shield before it has cooled to background radiation. But the ship has to travel (at best) 100's of millions of kilometers (Earth to Mars) while the exhaust only has to travel 10 kilometers (at most) laterally before cooling.
In other words, your example ship would be a dark, shielded spot in the middle of a glowing cloud of its own exhaust. It would look like a bullseye.
If you're going to bring that up, please remember that the above observation is completely irrelevant...
You were the one who brought up the Voyager craft as an example.
If you want to make the ships that difficult to detect then you are going to be travelling that slow. 300 years to reach the Oort cloud. It's the laws of physics.
"Probably very hot" is considerable fail right there.
In your opinion. The point being that it is hot enough to be detected. Now you can argue whether it is or is not but I'd once again refer you to physics.
Further, the "shielding" that everyone talks about just isn't that heavy.
So far I haven't seen anyone posting what that "shielding" is made of.
But it does not matter except that more shielding requires bigger engines.
The reason it does not matter is that the exhaust will, eventually, travel further to the side than the shielding can shield. Then it will be seen as a glowing cloud behind the shielded ship.
The whole concept of shielding for stealth revolves around the exhaust NOT being able to travel X distance to the side before cooling to background temps BEFORE the ship travels Y distance forward.
Given that X is usually measured in, at most, 10's of kilometers while Y is measured in THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS of kilometers I think that the math should be self explanatory.
But, just in case, it means that the exhaust would have to travel laterally at a rate that is less than 1/100,000,000,000 the speed of the ship.
There were two sentences out of dozens in that post that I actually wrote.
They are a direct quote from you. If you disagree with them then you should not have posted them.
It's like the terracotta army, except straw men.
You are disagreeing that a ship needs reaction mass? So you are postulating a reactionless drive.
So what you're saying is that from a million plus kilometers away, a ship with a forward profile of maybe a few score meters...
The distance from the Earth to Mars is about 200 million kilometers.
Your example ship would be closer than Mars is. A lot closer.
... with a several kilometer wide umbrella to disguise the exhaust bits that weren't sufficiently collimated before they cool off and become indistinguishable from the background noise, especially at those distances, this ship will stand out like a sore thumb?
There is a reflector on the Moon. People aim lasers at that reflector. Those lasers diffuse over distance. "At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (four miles) wide..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment That's from the Earth to the Moon. So even if you could focus the reaction mass a tightly as a laser it would spread out over a lot more than "a several kilometer wide umbrella" would cover even if you were only as far away as Mars.
Your example ship would be a dark shielded spot in a glowing cloud of its own exhaust.
It would look like a bullseye.
Our equipment can't even pick up large asteroids before they're a few days away.
Yes it can. It does that all the time. You are confusing spotting them with projecting their course over time.
No, as another poster memorably put it...
Quoting someone else who is not disproving it is not the same as disproving it.
It is physics. Unless you want to argue that the laws of physics do not apply...
It doesn't magically shine through the ship like a lighthouse.
No one said it did. I've been saying that it forms a cloud behind the ship. And that cloud glows.
Nope. I'm claiming it can be hidden across much shorter distances under circumstances which are broad enough to be tactically useful.
Unless you're talking about being closer than Mars... how did it get closer to Mars without being detected?
Yes, that heat the article that you steadfastly refuse to address, addresses.
Saying that the answer is somewhere else is not addressing my point. Quote it. Like I quoted the Wikipedia article on how much the lasers diffuse between the Earth and the Moon.
You're not a humanities guy by any chance?
Just someone with a background in physics.
I mean do you have any clue how small of a profile we're talking about here at these kinds of distances?
You are now talking about a distance less than the distance between the Earth and Mars. So something blocking out part of Mars would be very noticeable. Not to mention the Sun would be reflecting off of it. And that's not even addressing the interplanetary material that you had previously discounted.
Interplanetary != interstellar.
kilometers 350,000 is about Earth to the Moon kilometers 200,000,000 is about Earth to Mars kilometers 39,900,000,000,000 is about Earth to Alpha Centauri
No, you're deliberately and obviously ignoring the article.
That was a direct quote from your post. You posted it.
Actually the problem is you putting words in my mouth and then arguing with those words.
Are you going to stick to the facts as they are understood today? In order for a ship to move it needs reaction mass.
The vast majority of the exhaust will be hidden by the ship only as long as it approaches a lone target dead on. The umbrella just gives a few degrees more leeway which decreases the closer you get to your target.
And "vast majority" does not equal "stealth". You'd still show up as a glowing cloud of exhaust. That's the point.
You are aware that insulators and light blockers don't need to increase in mass proportional to the source being blocked right?
You were arguing about making them bigger. They DO increase in mass proportional to their size being increased. Make it twice as big and it weighs at least twice as much.
Not to mention that it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough to beat the enemy's likewise imperfect sensors long enough to get close enough to strike.
Again, you'd show up as a glowing cloud of your own exhaust with a dark spot in the middle. To the defender it would look like a bullseye.
Dull radiation is as good as no radiation if the enemy can't tell the difference, and don't forget about the distances under discussion here.
That's a pretty huge caveat there. Why would the hypothetical defenders be LESS capable than we are today? Our equipment has (possibly) detected background radiation from The Big Bang.
So a new source would have to be less visible than that.
And off we wander down the garden path again.
Reaction mass goes out the back of the ship so that the ship can move forward. That's a fairly fundamental concept. And it is what you are arguing for hiding. Unless you are postulating a reactionless drive. Which is, again, its own error.
Just don't end up like a creationist or a feminist clinging fiercely to disproven articles of faith.
It is physics.
Reaction mass comes out the back of the ship. You claim that it can be hidden across interstellar distances using a shield. Along with all the other heat produced by the ship.
I say that you are wrong and that, in your example, the ship would be appear as a shielded dark spot in a glowing cloud of its own exhaust and that it would eclipse other objects behind it. Making it very easy to track.
That latter bit wasn't part of the article, it was just my own addition.
I'm replying to your post.
Even without shielding you can't see the exhaust through the rest of the ship.
And that is the problem. You take that and assume that: a. the exhaust will always be hidden by the ship b. shields can be put on the ship to hide the exhaust
The umbrella could be many kilometers across and of a lightweight material.
Lightweight is not the same as no-weight. Which gets back to the increase engines to support shields requiring more engines requiring more shields repeat.
Space is notoriously empty of those, hence the name.
While space is mostly empty space your reaction mass is not. Otherwise it would not be reaction mass. And you'd have postulated a reactionless drive. Which is a completely different error.
What heat beam, you've lost me. I'm talking about the ship's exhaust.
Ships have heat. Life support and engines if nothing else. This is NOT the same as reaction mass. You have to get rid of that heat AND the exhaust AND the heat of the exhaust.
With your proposal you'd show up as a glow of your own expanding exhaust cloud with a large dark shield in the center that eclipsed the stars/galaxies/nebula behind you.
And the linked article you refer to doesn't understand the idea of directed power.
That would be the part where they discussed whether shielding your engines would be possible. So, yeah, they do.
When engines aren't pointed at you, they have a much lower energy signature and aren't detectable all the way out to Alpha Centauri (though obviously a torchship is going to be pretty easy to detect just the same).
I think that you are incorrectly conflating those two statements. The engines give off reaction mass to move the ship forward. That reaction mass is probably very hot. Which means that it will radiate heat which will be seen.
Unless you are proposing some kind of reactionless drive. Which would probably violate Newton's Third Law of Motion.
And if you are going to use the Voyager craft as examples, please remember that it took 12 years to reach Neptune and will take THREE HUNDRED YEARS to reach the Oort cloud.
And of course the engines can only be noticed if they're pointed vaguely in the direction of observers, otherwise the whole exterior hull would be the same temperature as the exhaust. It could be shielded reasonably well, even if you're stuck with elderly chemical engines.
The first problem with that is that it means you have to increase your engines to support the mass of the additional shielding.
Which means more engine heat that needs to be shielded.
Which means more heat shields.
Repeat.
The second problem with that is that the beam of heat "behind" you will still radiate in all directions if it comes in contact with any object behind you. And the beam will lose focus over distance. Which means that it will have more area in which to hit objects. While the energy will be weaker it should still allow your ship to be seen in profile.
And the most common object for the heat beam to hit would be your engine's reaction mass. That is, the stuff that your ship shoots out the back in order for it to go forward.
If the government develops X then X belongs to the people and should be released to them.
Unless X is vital to security/war/whatever. Then X should not be released to ANYONE outside of government.
The NSA is developing X and licensing it to selected corporations. So, 100% wrong to be licensing it and 100% wrong to be doing so to non-government entities and 100% to be doing so selectively.
And even then there will be times when something breaks on that $5K car. Then you have to choose between making the payment to keep a broken car from not being shut down or missing the payment to fix the car so that it runs while risking it being shut down.
You're fucked either way.
And if you're late/miss your low end job too often then you're fired.
Here's the full quote from that partial in the summary:
This is how you get the phenomenon of philistines like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne thinking science has made God irrelevant, even though, by definition, religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them.
He's wrong. The problem is that the concept of "God" is un-falsifiable. So you can always tack "because God wanted it that way" onto anything.
And then it gets worse:
You might think of science advocate, cultural illiterate, mendacious anti-Catholic propagandist, and possible serial fabulist Neil DeGrasse Tyson and anti-vaccine looney-toon Jenny McCarthy as polar opposites on a pro-science/anti-science spectrum, but in reality they are the two sides of the same coin.
Normally I'd say that that was trolling. Why toss irrelevant insults into a discussion? But I think it is an attempt to bolster an argument that he knows cannot stand on its own.
Both of them think science is like magic, except one of them is part of the religion and the other isn't.
And then he COMPLETELY skips over how Tyson believes that science is "like magic". He makes that insulting statement and then fails to support it.
This bizarre misunderstanding of science yields the paradox that even as we expect the impossible from science ("Please, Mr Economist, peer into your crystal ball and tell us what will happen if Obama raises/cuts taxes"), we also have a very anti-scientific mindset in many areas.
He thinks that Economics is a science. That's how wrong he is.
Not because science is "expensive" but because it requires a fundamental epistemic humility, and humility is the hardest thing to wring out of the bombastic animals we are.
Please look up the definition of "bombastic".
TFA could be a great example of trolling or Poe's Law or such. But I think it is just crap writing from someone who does not understand the subject.
I don't expect to be a Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I'd love to have enough knowledge in these subjects to research and experiment to the point where I could possibly start contributing back to the field.
Look up "Galaxy Zoo". You can start contributing today.
As for classes, start reading. Find out which books are used for the courses and buy the books and read them even if you cannot take the courses.
That's TWENTY YEARS where they would be using their old communication methods while we were hunting them. There should not be a terrorist left alive.
The PROBLEM is that we collect too much data. It is impossible to process into useful information. It is a mass of "dots" for 300,000,000 people that increases every single day.
And terrorists are so rare that they (and their communications) vanish into the mass of regular people. If you live in the USofA you are more likely to be killed by someone in your own family than by a terrorist.
That's wouldn't be "looking for people with liberal arts degrees", that's "looking for people with demonstrable technical experience" and finding that they just happen to have a liberal arts degree.
Yep.
As an analogy I'd point to pedigree and breed in a dog show. Your FORMAL education also has a breed (your major/minor) and a pedigree (which schools you attended).
But when it comes to hiring, I'd be looking for the "big dogs". And while breed and pedigree can be a factor (Chihuahua compared to Sheep Dog) I won't exclude the mutts.
If you have the drive and dedication to complete a formal major in one field while spending your free time becoming competitive in a different field then you are someone I should be interviewing.
While I'd tend toward Computer Science (since that is what my degree is in) I'd FIRST want to see what they've done already.
Is there anything the Lit major can show that demonstrates his programming skills? Like patches submitted to a FLOSS project? Or a mobile app? Or even a personal website?
It's not that you cannot get a programming job with a Lit degree. It is that the other candidates will probably have more DEMONSTRATED skills in the programming field.
Show me that you CAN program (sufficient to the basic requirements of the project) AND that your Lit degree gives you a different perspective AND how you implement that perspective.
But I think he's wrong on some many issues. From the summary:
... he imagined laser-scanning every object in the Smithsonian for students to explore...
Why? That's like looking at a single car from one country and claiming an "education". Think REALITY. The students could see HOW the objects were created. What tools were used. Who crafted the item. What the society was like that required it.
... and collaborating in shared virtual spaces rather than campuses.
They're called "chat rooms". Wanna "cyber"? Porn is NOT the same as education.
Looking at other students would be a distraction.
The next step past that is when you have shared space, and not only do you believe that this object is right there in front of me, but I look around and I see other people just like we see each other now, and I really, truly believe that youâ(TM)re right in front of me.
Why does it matter that you see avatars looking at the same point that you are looking at?
And he keeps going on about that. For him it is all about "seeing" other "people" (really just avatars) so it can be the same "experience" as real life.
That's stupid. They are not people. They are avatars. And knowing how people are, their avatars would be designed to be as distracting as possible.
A word doesn't automatically take its worst possible meaning.
Here is the quote from TFA. It provides the context.
Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters.
No. That is not referring to an IDE drive.
Or, more completely:
Humans have rights, under which they retain some measure of dominion over their bodies. Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters. Our laws may, directly and indirectly, protect peopleâ(TM)s right to use certain machines - freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms. But our laws do not recognize the rights of machines themselves.
So no. They are not talking about an IDE "master/slave" situation. They are talking about humans using machines (with examples provided) and equating that to "slavery".
That would be nice. But in the meantime... it's about property. From TFA:
But our laws do not recognize the rights of machines themselves.
Because they are non-sentient property. Ask again once AI is achieved.
But what is the difference between that and having a phone with you - sorry, a computer with you - all the time that is tracking where you are, which you're using for storing all of your personal information, your memories, your friends, your communications, that knows where you are and does all kinds of powerful things and speaks different languages?
And the difference between a stored text communication and a written letter? Learn the 4th Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters.
Really? "Slaves"? Maybe you should look into actual slavery.
As to "uncertain" just look for the sales receipt or lease agreement. My car is a machine and there is no uncertainty as to who owns it.
... understanding that we are - if not yet Terminators - at least a little more integrated...
Fuck you.
Learn what technology really is before you go off on movie tangents.
a. Being offensive is not the same as being offended.
b. Rights are not the sole consideration. There is also politeness.
The first question would be whether the person being offensive would say the same things on a public street corner. People who are offensive tend to be a lot more insistent upon their claimed "Rights" when they have anonimity.
The next question would be whether they'd say it alone on a public street corner. The people from Westboro Baptist Church seem to be focused on being offensive. Which is why they "protest" in groups.
If you cannot pass both those tests then you are being "offensive" and your goal is to offend someone else. So do not try the "no freedom of speech" argument.
The guy standing on the street corner telling the world about how the government is tracking him through his dental fillings is doing more for "freedom of speech" than the guy screaming "fucking jew whore" when his character is shot in a video game.
But taking my phone on the raft wasn't the stupid part; I had it sealed in a zippable plastic bag.
There needs to be a law to make those plastic bags really, REALLY watertight so people who are NOT being stupid by putting their phone in one and then going on a raft...
Were you really going to answer the phone while you were on the raft? No that's not stupid. (sarcasm)
But on the way back through the locks, some jerks in a rental yacht pulled up to the raft, started chatting, and then suddenly urged us to get on board and get our raft into the yacht very urgently, making me think it was an emergency and causing me to lose track of my phone.
And you did not ask "why" because... ?
... we later determined that the "emergency" was that the jerks were trying to get the three women in bikinis on board their boat.
Is there some reason/. keeps posting bullshit like this?
He made a series of stupid decisions about his 1st-world-toy and now he wants the government to make it better for him.
It troubles me that you were without your phone for a few days. Really... well... NOT.
I'm old. I remember the times before cell phones. Sometimes, when you moved, you were without phone service for a whole week or more. And you had to tell everyone who mattered what your new phone number was.
And still society managed to survive.
Somehow, without constant phone reception, the country put men on the moon.
But let's make a law now so companies will be forced to stock replacement phones because OVERNIGHT is too slow.
It reminds me of a two-year-old crying over spilt milk.
Worse. It's that child whinging because he cannot have the toy he really really wants RIGHT NOW! Tomorrow is too late!
Slashdot Mirror
You are the one who keeps complaining about me addressing them. If you disagree with them then you should not have posted them.
There is no "mysteriously" about it. The distance you started quoting is less than the distance from the Earth to Mars.
In other words, interplanetary.
Interplanetary != Interstellar
No. I'm comparing the dispersal. You are arguing that the exhaust would not disperse.
In other words, you are arguing that the exhaust is focused BETTER than a laser.
And the heat has to go somewhere. It's one of the laws of physics.
Yes it does. The heat of the exhaust does not vanish. Reaction mass does not vanish. Ships need a force to move them.
Physics.
That you do not understand the distances involved.
In order for the ship to be hidden, it cannot be silhouetted against its own exhaust. Which means that the exhaust cannot cross the edge of the shield before it has cooled to background radiation. But the ship has to travel (at best) 100's of millions of kilometers (Earth to Mars) while the exhaust only has to travel 10 kilometers (at most) laterally before cooling.
In other words, your example ship would be a dark, shielded spot in the middle of a glowing cloud of its own exhaust. It would look like a bullseye.
It's the laws of physics.
You were the one who brought up the Voyager craft as an example.
If you want to make the ships that difficult to detect then you are going to be travelling that slow. 300 years to reach the Oort cloud. It's the laws of physics.
In your opinion. The point being that it is hot enough to be detected. Now you can argue whether it is or is not but I'd once again refer you to physics.
So far I haven't seen anyone posting what that "shielding" is made of.
But it does not matter except that more shielding requires bigger engines.
The reason it does not matter is that the exhaust will, eventually, travel further to the side than the shielding can shield. Then it will be seen as a glowing cloud behind the shielded ship.
The whole concept of shielding for stealth revolves around the exhaust NOT being able to travel X distance to the side before cooling to background temps BEFORE the ship travels Y distance forward.
Given that X is usually measured in, at most, 10's of kilometers while Y is measured in THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS of kilometers I think that the math should be self explanatory.
But, just in case, it means that the exhaust would have to travel laterally at a rate that is less than 1/100,000,000,000 the speed of the ship.
They are a direct quote from you. If you disagree with them then you should not have posted them.
You are disagreeing that a ship needs reaction mass? So you are postulating a reactionless drive.
The distance from the Earth to Mars is about 200 million kilometers.
Your example ship would be closer than Mars is. A lot closer.
There is a reflector on the Moon. People aim lasers at that reflector. Those lasers diffuse over distance. "At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (four miles) wide ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
That's from the Earth to the Moon. So even if you could focus the reaction mass a tightly as a laser it would spread out over a lot more than "a several kilometer wide umbrella" would cover even if you were only as far away as Mars.
Your example ship would be a dark shielded spot in a glowing cloud of its own exhaust.
It would look like a bullseye.
Yes it can. It does that all the time. You are confusing spotting them with projecting their course over time.
Quoting someone else who is not disproving it is not the same as disproving it.
It is physics. Unless you want to argue that the laws of physics do not apply ...
No one said it did. I've been saying that it forms a cloud behind the ship. And that cloud glows.
Unless you're talking about being closer than Mars ... how did it get closer to Mars without being detected?
Saying that the answer is somewhere else is not addressing my point. Quote it. Like I quoted the Wikipedia article on how much the lasers diffuse between the Earth and the Moon.
Just someone with a background in physics.
You are now talking about a distance less than the distance between the Earth and Mars. So something blocking out part of Mars would be very noticeable. Not to mention the Sun would be reflecting off of it. And that's not even addressing the interplanetary material that you had previously discounted.
Interplanetary != interstellar.
kilometers 350,000 is about Earth to the Moon
kilometers 200,000,000 is about Earth to Mars
kilometers 39,900,000,000,000 is about Earth to Alpha Centauri
There is no stealth in space.
So he can hit 6 out of 10.
Wouldn't random chance give him 5 out of 10?
And that's not even factoring in whether his comments are correct. And most people do NOT give accurate reports of their own winning/losing patterns.
And his self-reported "strategy" is to buy what other people are buying and to sell when they sell.
So who is selling when he is buying? Wouldn't he constantly be behind the curve? Paying too much for the stock and selling for too little?
That was a direct quote from your post. You posted it.
Are you going to stick to the facts as they are understood today? In order for a ship to move it needs reaction mass.
And "vast majority" does not equal "stealth". You'd still show up as a glowing cloud of exhaust. That's the point.
You were arguing about making them bigger. They DO increase in mass proportional to their size being increased. Make it twice as big and it weighs at least twice as much.
Again, you'd show up as a glowing cloud of your own exhaust with a dark spot in the middle. To the defender it would look like a bullseye.
That's a pretty huge caveat there. Why would the hypothetical defenders be LESS capable than we are today? Our equipment has (possibly) detected background radiation from The Big Bang.
So a new source would have to be less visible than that.
Reaction mass goes out the back of the ship so that the ship can move forward. That's a fairly fundamental concept. And it is what you are arguing for hiding. Unless you are postulating a reactionless drive. Which is, again, its own error.
It is physics.
Reaction mass comes out the back of the ship.
You claim that it can be hidden across interstellar distances using a shield.
Along with all the other heat produced by the ship.
I say that you are wrong and that, in your example, the ship would be appear as a shielded dark spot in a glowing cloud of its own exhaust and that it would eclipse other objects behind it. Making it very easy to track.
I'm replying to your post.
And that is the problem. You take that and assume that:
a. the exhaust will always be hidden by the ship
b. shields can be put on the ship to hide the exhaust
Lightweight is not the same as no-weight. Which gets back to the increase engines to support shields requiring more engines requiring more shields repeat.
While space is mostly empty space your reaction mass is not. Otherwise it would not be reaction mass. And you'd have postulated a reactionless drive. Which is a completely different error.
Ships have heat. Life support and engines if nothing else. This is NOT the same as reaction mass. You have to get rid of that heat AND the exhaust AND the heat of the exhaust.
With your proposal you'd show up as a glow of your own expanding exhaust cloud with a large dark shield in the center that eclipsed the stars/galaxies/nebula behind you.
That would be the part where they discussed whether shielding your engines would be possible. So, yeah, they do.
I think that you are incorrectly conflating those two statements. The engines give off reaction mass to move the ship forward. That reaction mass is probably very hot. Which means that it will radiate heat which will be seen.
Unless you are proposing some kind of reactionless drive. Which would probably violate Newton's Third Law of Motion.
And if you are going to use the Voyager craft as examples, please remember that it took 12 years to reach Neptune and will take THREE HUNDRED YEARS to reach the Oort cloud.
The first problem with that is that it means you have to increase your engines to support the mass of the additional shielding.
Which means more engine heat that needs to be shielded.
Which means more heat shields.
Repeat.
The second problem with that is that the beam of heat "behind" you will still radiate in all directions if it comes in contact with any object behind you. And the beam will lose focus over distance. Which means that it will have more area in which to hit objects. While the energy will be weaker it should still allow your ship to be seen in profile.
And the most common object for the heat beam to hit would be your engine's reaction mass. That is, the stuff that your ship shoots out the back in order for it to go forward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law
Energy weapons in space all have the same problem. The distances involved mean that they get real weak real fast.
At best they'd be useful in a fixed-site-defense scenario. Such as putting them on moons to defend against incoming ships.
But then you have the problem where your defeneses are not manoeuvrable. So asteroid bombardment becomes an option.
Missiles travel very, Very, VERY slow (in space). Even if they are under constant acceleration.
Lasers travel very, Very, VERY fast. But they lose energy/focus over space-type distances.
So it comes down to how well the writer understands economics and what technological advances they are postulating.
Not to mention WHY there is a war in the first place if both sides have that kind of technology available to them.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#id--There_Ain't_No_Stealth_In_Space
Project Rho explains that in detail.
If you cannot move faster-than-light then your engines will give you away every time.
We're all going to die some day.
You can die on Earth like billions of people before you have.
Or you can die IN SPACE!!!
Personally, I'd choose to die IN SPACE.
If the government develops X then X belongs to the people and should be released to them.
Unless X is vital to security/war/whatever. Then X should not be released to ANYONE outside of government.
The NSA is developing X and licensing it to selected corporations. So, 100% wrong to be licensing it and 100% wrong to be doing so to non-government entities and 100% to be doing so selectively.
And even then there will be times when something breaks on that $5K car. Then you have to choose between making the payment to keep a broken car from not being shut down or missing the payment to fix the car so that it runs while risking it being shut down.
You're fucked either way.
And if you're late/miss your low end job too often then you're fired.
Here's the full quote from that partial in the summary:
He's wrong. The problem is that the concept of "God" is un-falsifiable. So you can always tack "because God wanted it that way" onto anything.
And then it gets worse:
Normally I'd say that that was trolling. Why toss irrelevant insults into a discussion? But I think it is an attempt to bolster an argument that he knows cannot stand on its own.
And then he COMPLETELY skips over how Tyson believes that science is "like magic". He makes that insulting statement and then fails to support it.
He thinks that Economics is a science. That's how wrong he is.
Please look up the definition of "bombastic".
TFA could be a great example of trolling or Poe's Law or such. But I think it is just crap writing from someone who does not understand the subject.
Look up "Galaxy Zoo". You can start contributing today.
As for classes, start reading. Find out which books are used for the courses and buy the books and read them even if you cannot take the courses.
They tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing
Snowden released the files he had in 2013.
That's TWENTY YEARS where they would be using their old communication methods while we were hunting them. There should not be a terrorist left alive.
The PROBLEM is that we collect too much data. It is impossible to process into useful information. It is a mass of "dots" for 300,000,000 people that increases every single day.
And terrorists are so rare that they (and their communications) vanish into the mass of regular people. If you live in the USofA you are more likely to be killed by someone in your own family than by a terrorist.
Yep.
As an analogy I'd point to pedigree and breed in a dog show. Your FORMAL education also has a breed (your major/minor) and a pedigree (which schools you attended).
But when it comes to hiring, I'd be looking for the "big dogs". And while breed and pedigree can be a factor (Chihuahua compared to Sheep Dog) I won't exclude the mutts.
If you have the drive and dedication to complete a formal major in one field while spending your free time becoming competitive in a different field then you are someone I should be interviewing.
While I'd tend toward Computer Science (since that is what my degree is in) I'd FIRST want to see what they've done already.
Is there anything the Lit major can show that demonstrates his programming skills? Like patches submitted to a FLOSS project? Or a mobile app? Or even a personal website?
It's not that you cannot get a programming job with a Lit degree. It is that the other candidates will probably have more DEMONSTRATED skills in the programming field.
Show me that you CAN program (sufficient to the basic requirements of the project) AND that your Lit degree gives you a different perspective AND how you implement that perspective.
Physics - awesome!
Chemistry - awesome
Biology - awesome
But I think he's wrong on some many issues. From the summary:
Why? That's like looking at a single car from one country and claiming an "education". Think REALITY. The students could see HOW the objects were created. What tools were used. Who crafted the item. What the society was like that required it.
They're called "chat rooms". Wanna "cyber"? Porn is NOT the same as education.
Looking at other students would be a distraction.
Why does it matter that you see avatars looking at the same point that you are looking at?
And he keeps going on about that. For him it is all about "seeing" other "people" (really just avatars) so it can be the same "experience" as real life.
That's stupid. They are not people. They are avatars. And knowing how people are, their avatars would be designed to be as distracting as possible.
Here is the quote from TFA. It provides the context.
No. That is not referring to an IDE drive.
Or, more completely:
So no. They are not talking about an IDE "master/slave" situation. They are talking about humans using machines (with examples provided) and equating that to "slavery".
That would be nice. But in the meantime ... it's about property. From TFA:
Because they are non-sentient property. Ask again once AI is achieved.
And the difference between a stored text communication and a written letter? Learn the 4th Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Really? "Slaves"? Maybe you should look into actual slavery.
As to "uncertain" just look for the sales receipt or lease agreement. My car is a machine and there is no uncertainty as to who owns it.
Fuck you.
Learn what technology really is before you go off on movie tangents.
a. Being offensive is not the same as being offended.
b. Rights are not the sole consideration. There is also politeness.
The first question would be whether the person being offensive would say the same things on a public street corner. People who are offensive tend to be a lot more insistent upon their claimed "Rights" when they have anonimity.
The next question would be whether they'd say it alone on a public street corner. The people from Westboro Baptist Church seem to be focused on being offensive. Which is why they "protest" in groups.
If you cannot pass both those tests then you are being "offensive" and your goal is to offend someone else. So do not try the "no freedom of speech" argument.
The guy standing on the street corner telling the world about how the government is tracking him through his dental fillings is doing more for "freedom of speech" than the guy screaming "fucking jew whore" when his character is shot in a video game.
From TFA:
There needs to be a law to make those plastic bags really, REALLY watertight so people who are NOT being stupid by putting their phone in one and then going on a raft ...
Were you really going to answer the phone while you were on the raft? No that's not stupid. (sarcasm)
And you did not ask "why" because ... ?
Is there some reason /. keeps posting bullshit like this?
He made a series of stupid decisions about his 1st-world-toy and now he wants the government to make it better for him.
I'm old. I remember the times before cell phones. Sometimes, when you moved, you were without phone service for a whole week or more. And you had to tell everyone who mattered what your new phone number was.
And still society managed to survive.
Somehow, without constant phone reception, the country put men on the moon.
But let's make a law now so companies will be forced to stock replacement phones because OVERNIGHT is too slow.
Worse. It's that child whinging because he cannot have the toy he really really wants RIGHT NOW! Tomorrow is too late!