Sure, but in this case the kid is a ward of the state, and particularly one with a long criminal record including shooting someone (with a pellet gun and not an actual firearm, but still - a known history of using shooty things to shoot people can't bode well for his sense of personal responsibility in owning a firearm).
His "guardian" are officially the State of California. IANAL, so I don't know exactly what that means in terms of decisionmaking, but I doubt his "guardians" are about to approve of him getting a firearm at any time in the near future.
Probably even with a clean criminal record and no probation he'd have trouble asking his "guardians" in a liberal state to allow him to have a gun.
I don't disagree, and maybe I'm just not smarter than the courts, but how do you teach a lesson to a 15-year-old who has no parents (foster, real, etc) to act as proxies?
I mean, if he's my kid, I ground him. Simple. The state punishes me for the actions committed by people who I am the guardian of, and I try to correct the issue to avoid further punishment.
But what if the state IS the guardian?
If I'm a judge and I'm dealing with a ward of the state, what do I do? Technically, the State *IS* this kid's parents.
He's 15, a "ward of the state", and it sounds like he's already in juvie prison. Sending him to real pound-you-in-the-ass prison would really be less "cruel and unusual" than the State acting like the parent it legally is and grounding him?
He's 15 and a ward of the state, and violated probation for shooting someone with a pellet gun. First, minors generally cannot own firearms. Second, he's already violated probation for shooting someone (admittedly with an airgun and not a firearm, but I suspect the court doesn't differentiate between the two when setting probation terms).
So, no, I don't think this specific case needed to include a prohibition against possession of firearms.
If a 15-year-old in California is already authorized to possess a firearm while unsupervised (which I doubt), I bet not possessing one was one of the terms of his probation, since the probation was for shooting someone.
Here, if you are convicted for something, you cvan get a fine, community labour or jailtime.
In this case, since the kid is 15 years old and a "ward of the court" who was on probation for shooting someone with a pellet gun already, I don't think any of the three above punishments are appropriate. He's a minor. Fining his parents means the state would be paying a fine, which would be meaningless to him. Putting him on community service isn't going to teach him jack shit, he'll probably just hurt someone. And you can't generally send a minor to jail (yes, there are juvie jails, but chances are he's already in one from the sound of it).
This truly is a "nanny state" case, but given that the kid is a juvenile and the State is currently serving duties as his parents, this sounds more like a case of the State trying to act like a dutiful parent and applying an appropriate punishment (grounding the kid). But, of course, since it's a State and not a set of parents, they need to back it up with a court order.
How would your legal system handle this case? Does your country recognize the concept of "ward of the state (orphan, separation from parents, etc)" and "juvenile delinquency (people under a certain age committing crimes)"? Do you try everyone as adults, or do you punish youngsters at all for their crimes?
This is a graduate student doing some "tabletop science" in the lab. His specialty in the lab is "Animal Cleaning" http://www.me.gatech.edu/hu/Research/lab.html . I doubt he's trying for anything except his thesis.
I'd say he did a pretty good job building a preliminary predictive model and testing against that model and refining it. And it stands to reason that animals shaking water out of their fur might be of interest to him, since he probably bathes animals on a pretty regular basis and observes the behavior a lot. Building lab time researching something that interests you sounds pretty good to me.
It'll probably never cure cancer or give us faster-than-light drives, but most graduate student lab work is done with little expectation of changing the boundaries of science as we know it.
It's a research group at a University who focuses on performing simple, cheap, tabletop experiments. It's run by one of the professors at the University and most of the physicists appear to actually be students. Andrew Dickerson is a Grad student whose specialty in the lab is "Animal Cleaning", so it stands to reason that he might have become interested in wet dogs shaking and taken a few videos in the course of his work, and maybe theorized a formula or two.
So, the answer is, possibly - some of your taxpayer dollars might have been spent. Assuming you live in Georgia, of course. G. I. T. receives about 1/4 of its funding from the State of Georgia. They don't appear to receive any federal funding.
But, in their defense, it was "perform an interesting experiment in the lab" or "reproduce an experiment someone else has already done in a lab", because students need lab time to gain experience, and they need to publish papers to earn academic credibility. The overall materials cost appears to have been camera (which can be used for further experiments and may have already been in the lab) and some student time.
It sounds like Prof Hu might just be saving your tax money in the long run, though, by having his students focus on inexpensive (if somewhat frivolous) experiments in the course of their education.
But I'm sure you could write a letter telling them that HuLab is a waste of taxpayer money, and that the students should be focusing on reproducing classical experiments like re-measuring the boiling point of water and other useful pursuits.
In the pre-recorded lip sync, the performer at least is going to the effort of walking on stage and pretending to sing. Maybe you don't get to hear your chosen artist(s), but at least you get to see them.
I don't go to concerts any more, and when I did I preferred to see an actual live performance, occasional errors and all. To me, that was the point - watching a talented artist demonstrating their skill. I relished the mistakes more than a perfect performance, because it made the performance that I attended something unique and memorable. I'd have gladly paid extra to attend a practice session where the band is working out the timing of a new song. I, for one, want to know exactly how my sausage is made.
Music isn't made that way any more, and of course for a lot of artists it never has been. Instead of perfecting your voice through years of practice or adapting a song to your voice, you can now run your voice through software so everyone can have the perfect voice all the time.
Having said that, a lot of people want to hear a perfect performance. They want the end result. The best way to do that is to get the best performance that artist has ever done and play that recording back to each audience. But the artist is up there giving a show in accompaniment to their music, so at least there's some level of performance there. As long as the artist is honest about it, I'd be OK, but not nearly as happy, going to a Sting concert knowing that the music was pre-recorded. At least he's up there dancing around and I get to see him in person.
If you send the artist's avatar, then you're basically giving a performance similar to a movie. If I was still going to concerts, I might go to see one avatar performance for the novelty, but no way in hell would I repeatedly pay $100+ to basically see a 3D movie.
A couple of months ago, my ThinkPad reported my battery as "unusable" after a year of service. Odd thing was, the battery didn't slowly lose service life. I was getting 3 hours at first, and it was down to about 2 hours 30 minutes, then one day I plugged it in to recharge and the ThinkPad flat out refused to charge the battery. It was under warranty, so Lenovo issued my company a new one free of charge and even overnighted it, but...
I'm wondering if this is a sign that manufacturers are finally taking the scary explosive dangerousness that is highly unstable Li-Ion seriously, and programming their chargers to be overcautious about any and all perceived faults in the battery?
Because the most efficient batteries are the ones that aren't a bunch of teeny batteries all wired together into a larger one. You have all that wasted space, weight, and resistance loss due to all of the connectors. If this scaled, it would be best used in larger batteries.
And, from TFA, they are trying to match current densities, not improve on them. Take your 1Ah battery and replace it with 1,000 1mAh batteries that take up the same space, and now you have to connect 1,000 batteries together to come up with the same 1Ah battery. It's larger, heavier, more complex to build, and doesn't last any longer. It's about as logical as trying to get enough rechargeable button batteries to start your car. Sure, you could do it, but it's gonna be a lot bigger, heavier, expensive, and more prone to failure than your current battery.
The sole purpose of something like this is to power very tiny devices where there's no room for a full-sized battery. It's not improving energy density or efficiency.
Even if your passengers weigh in at 200 pounds each (FAA standard seems to be around 170 pounds), your 9-passenger whirlybird isn't capable of lifting a single ton even if there are no passengers on board. The capability to lift heavy loads means a big, high-maintenance, and very fuel-thirsty whirlybird.
Think "panel van" compared to "18-wheeler with a double trailer".
The price probably includes more than one pilot and some seriously-trained people and quality gear to strap its cargo properly, too, because dropping a 20-ton load on someone's house is somewhat frowned upon.
Not to mention the "drop stuff on people's houses" insurance they have to carry.:)
You're comparing unrelated costs. Operating cost rental cost. The rental includes a lot of little details like, say, a pilot.
Rental cost = operating cost + cost of qualified pilots + cost of qualified loaders/unloaders + share of annual maintenance costs + insurance + profit for the owner + several things I'm probably forgetting.
The helicopter probably costs far less than $8,000 per hour to actually operate. If you owned your own helicopter and were qualified to pilot it, that is.
Very true, and the "Hysterical Society" can't legally have a gripe with it since it is not a permanent change to the structure.
Unfortunately, that also requires the approval of his landlord, same as the "dish in the yard" possibility, since the yard and roof are both common property.
On the other hand, a disc-shaped plastic piece painted to match the roof color might not be objectionable to a landlord, where a 3-foot-wide dish on a post in the yard would almost certainly be. Less chance of vandalism up on the roof, too.
Right up until I looked at those links you sent me and found that it would cost well more than it would be worth to me to try and put something in... for $2100 I'll buy the shows I want to watch on iTunes;)
Exactly. And that is the (theorized) breakthrough that this idea provides. Not phased array, hell we've had that for the better part of a century now. But AFFORDABLE phased array.
This is an RV we're (generally) talking about here. Not having to physically deploy the unit means several nice things.
First, your passenger(s) could watch TV during all-day drives if they wanted to.
Second, if you arrive in a pouring rainstorm, no need spending 15 minutes out in the rain futzing around with your dish and a signal meter.
And third, you stand a better chance of locking in to a satellite, since the unit can test all of the satellites simultaneously and lock in to the strongest one.
Of course, a lot of this has more to do with the elimination of the need for a fixed-direction antenna. If a TV operator could orbit satellites at a lower, cheaper, non-geosync orbit, they could get a cleaner signal to you with less power and less latency (think Internet over Irridium II that might actually succeed, and satellite cell phones that can actually work affordably). Your antenna could simply track the satellites and switch between them as they drop below your horizon.
Lots of companies have put this into practice. Phased array satellite dishes are a commodity item (admittedly an EXPENSIVE commodity, but not at all rare).
I think this is about getting prices and power requirements down to a point somewhat competitive with fixed-dish installs.
#2 is even bigger than huge, because it removes the need for geosync satellites, meaning someone could orbit some satellites at a much lower orbit and the phased array could track them in real time. That means much cheaper costs put your birds into low-earth orbit, much lower power the satellite has to put out and much higher frequencies available for signal density, and much lower latency. Screw TV, we're talking viable satellite telephone and low-latency satellite Internet access. Hell, you could launch a bunch of high-altitude drones powered by solar arrays and a phased array antenna would have no problems picking up the nearest dozen of them simultaneously.
Phased arrays are currently available, you can buy one today. They've been available to the consumer market for years. They do, however, draw some significant power and start in the thousand-dollar range. I suspect this is more about making them cheaper and less power-hungry. The beauty of cheap, low-power phased array is that you can orbit the cheaper satellites and still have affordable no-moving-parts antennas that can use them. Cell companies don't need to install hundreds of towers to blanket a state with signal, they can orbit some drones or put up a half-dozen LEO satellites and get the whole country at once.
They can't stop him from putting up a temporary installation on any part of the building he is renting. In this case, he's rented a north-facing apartment, which means his windows are useless for a dish install, and unless he's specifically renting a bit of yard, the landlord can in fact stop him from installing a dish in a common area.
I've helped friends fight a few homeowner's associations and/or landlords hostile to a "temporary balcony or window dish" or a rooftop TV antenna. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm relatively familiar with this specific law. And, sadly, this one's pretty much a lost cause if the landlord won't allow him access to common areas.
His best bet is to look up the current crop of phased array satellite antennas and see if the landlord could tolerate one of those installed temporarily somewhere subtle on the building. They're a lot less ugly than dishes and can be installed far more creatively, and they don't need to be aimed. But they are expensive.
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Sure, but in this case the kid is a ward of the state, and particularly one with a long criminal record including shooting someone (with a pellet gun and not an actual firearm, but still - a known history of using shooty things to shoot people can't bode well for his sense of personal responsibility in owning a firearm).
His "guardian" are officially the State of California. IANAL, so I don't know exactly what that means in terms of decisionmaking, but I doubt his "guardians" are about to approve of him getting a firearm at any time in the near future.
Probably even with a clean criminal record and no probation he'd have trouble asking his "guardians" in a liberal state to allow him to have a gun.
I don't disagree, and maybe I'm just not smarter than the courts, but how do you teach a lesson to a 15-year-old who has no parents (foster, real, etc) to act as proxies?
I mean, if he's my kid, I ground him. Simple. The state punishes me for the actions committed by people who I am the guardian of, and I try to correct the issue to avoid further punishment.
But what if the state IS the guardian?
If I'm a judge and I'm dealing with a ward of the state, what do I do? Technically, the State *IS* this kid's parents.
So they do like any parent would do.
They ground him.
He's 15, a "ward of the state", and it sounds like he's already in juvie prison. Sending him to real pound-you-in-the-ass prison would really be less "cruel and unusual" than the State acting like the parent it legally is and grounding him?
He's 15, and a ward of the state. I bet monitoring him wouldn't be all that hard, since the State of California is his legal guardian.
He's 15 and a ward of the state, and violated probation for shooting someone with a pellet gun. First, minors generally cannot own firearms. Second, he's already violated probation for shooting someone (admittedly with an airgun and not a firearm, but I suspect the court doesn't differentiate between the two when setting probation terms).
So, no, I don't think this specific case needed to include a prohibition against possession of firearms.
If a 15-year-old in California is already authorized to possess a firearm while unsupervised (which I doubt), I bet not possessing one was one of the terms of his probation, since the probation was for shooting someone.
Here, if you are convicted for something, you cvan get a fine, community labour or jailtime.
In this case, since the kid is 15 years old and a "ward of the court" who was on probation for shooting someone with a pellet gun already, I don't think any of the three above punishments are appropriate. He's a minor. Fining his parents means the state would be paying a fine, which would be meaningless to him. Putting him on community service isn't going to teach him jack shit, he'll probably just hurt someone. And you can't generally send a minor to jail (yes, there are juvie jails, but chances are he's already in one from the sound of it).
This truly is a "nanny state" case, but given that the kid is a juvenile and the State is currently serving duties as his parents, this sounds more like a case of the State trying to act like a dutiful parent and applying an appropriate punishment (grounding the kid). But, of course, since it's a State and not a set of parents, they need to back it up with a court order.
How would your legal system handle this case? Does your country recognize the concept of "ward of the state (orphan, separation from parents, etc)" and "juvenile delinquency (people under a certain age committing crimes)"? Do you try everyone as adults, or do you punish youngsters at all for their crimes?
http://www.me.gatech.edu/hu/Research/lab.html
No grants required, this is a grad student group doing cheap science.
This is a graduate student doing some "tabletop science" in the lab. His specialty in the lab is "Animal Cleaning" http://www.me.gatech.edu/hu/Research/lab.html . I doubt he's trying for anything except his thesis.
I'd say he did a pretty good job building a preliminary predictive model and testing against that model and refining it. And it stands to reason that animals shaking water out of their fur might be of interest to him, since he probably bathes animals on a pretty regular basis and observes the behavior a lot. Building lab time researching something that interests you sounds pretty good to me.
It'll probably never cure cancer or give us faster-than-light drives, but most graduate student lab work is done with little expectation of changing the boundaries of science as we know it.
This was done by HuLab, run by Professor Hu at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
http://www.me.gatech.edu/hu/Research/lab.html
It's a research group at a University who focuses on performing simple, cheap, tabletop experiments. It's run by one of the professors at the University and most of the physicists appear to actually be students. Andrew Dickerson is a Grad student whose specialty in the lab is "Animal Cleaning", so it stands to reason that he might have become interested in wet dogs shaking and taken a few videos in the course of his work, and maybe theorized a formula or two.
So, the answer is, possibly - some of your taxpayer dollars might have been spent. Assuming you live in Georgia, of course. G. I. T. receives about 1/4 of its funding from the State of Georgia. They don't appear to receive any federal funding.
But, in their defense, it was "perform an interesting experiment in the lab" or "reproduce an experiment someone else has already done in a lab", because students need lab time to gain experience, and they need to publish papers to earn academic credibility. The overall materials cost appears to have been camera (which can be used for further experiments and may have already been in the lab) and some student time.
It sounds like Prof Hu might just be saving your tax money in the long run, though, by having his students focus on inexpensive (if somewhat frivolous) experiments in the course of their education.
But I'm sure you could write a letter telling them that HuLab is a waste of taxpayer money, and that the students should be focusing on reproducing classical experiments like re-measuring the boiling point of water and other useful pursuits.
In the pre-recorded lip sync, the performer at least is going to the effort of walking on stage and pretending to sing. Maybe you don't get to hear your chosen artist(s), but at least you get to see them.
I don't go to concerts any more, and when I did I preferred to see an actual live performance, occasional errors and all. To me, that was the point - watching a talented artist demonstrating their skill. I relished the mistakes more than a perfect performance, because it made the performance that I attended something unique and memorable. I'd have gladly paid extra to attend a practice session where the band is working out the timing of a new song. I, for one, want to know exactly how my sausage is made.
Music isn't made that way any more, and of course for a lot of artists it never has been. Instead of perfecting your voice through years of practice or adapting a song to your voice, you can now run your voice through software so everyone can have the perfect voice all the time.
Having said that, a lot of people want to hear a perfect performance. They want the end result. The best way to do that is to get the best performance that artist has ever done and play that recording back to each audience. But the artist is up there giving a show in accompaniment to their music, so at least there's some level of performance there. As long as the artist is honest about it, I'd be OK, but not nearly as happy, going to a Sting concert knowing that the music was pre-recorded. At least he's up there dancing around and I get to see him in person.
If you send the artist's avatar, then you're basically giving a performance similar to a movie. If I was still going to concerts, I might go to see one avatar performance for the novelty, but no way in hell would I repeatedly pay $100+ to basically see a 3D movie.
A couple of months ago, my ThinkPad reported my battery as "unusable" after a year of service. Odd thing was, the battery didn't slowly lose service life. I was getting 3 hours at first, and it was down to about 2 hours 30 minutes, then one day I plugged it in to recharge and the ThinkPad flat out refused to charge the battery. It was under warranty, so Lenovo issued my company a new one free of charge and even overnighted it, but...
I'm wondering if this is a sign that manufacturers are finally taking the scary explosive dangerousness that is highly unstable Li-Ion seriously, and programming their chargers to be overcautious about any and all perceived faults in the battery?
Can I hire you for User Interface design? You seem to have the type of thinking I'm looking for.
Because the most efficient batteries are the ones that aren't a bunch of teeny batteries all wired together into a larger one. You have all that wasted space, weight, and resistance loss due to all of the connectors. If this scaled, it would be best used in larger batteries.
And, from TFA, they are trying to match current densities, not improve on them. Take your 1Ah battery and replace it with 1,000 1mAh batteries that take up the same space, and now you have to connect 1,000 batteries together to come up with the same 1Ah battery. It's larger, heavier, more complex to build, and doesn't last any longer. It's about as logical as trying to get enough rechargeable button batteries to start your car. Sure, you could do it, but it's gonna be a lot bigger, heavier, expensive, and more prone to failure than your current battery.
The sole purpose of something like this is to power very tiny devices where there's no room for a full-sized battery. It's not improving energy density or efficiency.
What do you mean, African or European buttloads?
How many kilobuttloads in a decihogshead?
"Grain of salt?" What a coincidence, that's exactly what I was thinking when I read this.
Granted, but that premium is justifiable.
Even if your passengers weigh in at 200 pounds each (FAA standard seems to be around 170 pounds), your 9-passenger whirlybird isn't capable of lifting a single ton even if there are no passengers on board. The capability to lift heavy loads means a big, high-maintenance, and very fuel-thirsty whirlybird.
Think "panel van" compared to "18-wheeler with a double trailer".
The price probably includes more than one pilot and some seriously-trained people and quality gear to strap its cargo properly, too, because dropping a 20-ton load on someone's house is somewhat frowned upon.
Not to mention the "drop stuff on people's houses" insurance they have to carry. :)
You're comparing unrelated costs. Operating cost rental cost. The rental includes a lot of little details like, say, a pilot.
Rental cost = operating cost + cost of qualified pilots + cost of qualified loaders/unloaders + share of annual maintenance costs + insurance + profit for the owner + several things I'm probably forgetting.
The helicopter probably costs far less than $8,000 per hour to actually operate. If you owned your own helicopter and were qualified to pilot it, that is.
I'll take the "B" ship, thanks ever so much.
The "A" and "C" ships never existed and, if you'll recall, their planet was eaten by a space goat shortly after the launch of the "B" ship.
At least a FEW people from the "B" ship actually survived to colonize another planet (Earth).
And, hell, the phones were even clean.
Don't worry. You're safe, at least for now. It'll start with anyone who calls them "Legos". :)
Very true, and the "Hysterical Society" can't legally have a gripe with it since it is not a permanent change to the structure.
Unfortunately, that also requires the approval of his landlord, same as the "dish in the yard" possibility, since the yard and roof are both common property.
On the other hand, a disc-shaped plastic piece painted to match the roof color might not be objectionable to a landlord, where a 3-foot-wide dish on a post in the yard would almost certainly be. Less chance of vandalism up on the roof, too.
Right up until I looked at those links you sent me and found that it would cost well more than it would be worth to me to try and put something in ... for $2100 I'll buy the shows I want to watch on iTunes ;)
Exactly. And that is the (theorized) breakthrough that this idea provides. Not phased array, hell we've had that for the better part of a century now. But AFFORDABLE phased array.
This is an RV we're (generally) talking about here. Not having to physically deploy the unit means several nice things.
First, your passenger(s) could watch TV during all-day drives if they wanted to.
Second, if you arrive in a pouring rainstorm, no need spending 15 minutes out in the rain futzing around with your dish and a signal meter.
And third, you stand a better chance of locking in to a satellite, since the unit can test all of the satellites simultaneously and lock in to the strongest one.
Of course, a lot of this has more to do with the elimination of the need for a fixed-direction antenna. If a TV operator could orbit satellites at a lower, cheaper, non-geosync orbit, they could get a cleaner signal to you with less power and less latency (think Internet over Irridium II that might actually succeed, and satellite cell phones that can actually work affordably). Your antenna could simply track the satellites and switch between them as they drop below your horizon.
Lots of companies have put this into practice. Phased array satellite dishes are a commodity item (admittedly an EXPENSIVE commodity, but not at all rare).
I think this is about getting prices and power requirements down to a point somewhat competitive with fixed-dish installs.
#2 is even bigger than huge, because it removes the need for geosync satellites, meaning someone could orbit some satellites at a much lower orbit and the phased array could track them in real time. That means much cheaper costs put your birds into low-earth orbit, much lower power the satellite has to put out and much higher frequencies available for signal density, and much lower latency. Screw TV, we're talking viable satellite telephone and low-latency satellite Internet access. Hell, you could launch a bunch of high-altitude drones powered by solar arrays and a phased array antenna would have no problems picking up the nearest dozen of them simultaneously.
Phased arrays are currently available, you can buy one today. They've been available to the consumer market for years. They do, however, draw some significant power and start in the thousand-dollar range. I suspect this is more about making them cheaper and less power-hungry. The beauty of cheap, low-power phased array is that you can orbit the cheaper satellites and still have affordable no-moving-parts antennas that can use them. Cell companies don't need to install hundreds of towers to blanket a state with signal, they can orbit some drones or put up a half-dozen LEO satellites and get the whole country at once.
They can't stop him from putting up a temporary installation on any part of the building he is renting. In this case, he's rented a north-facing apartment, which means his windows are useless for a dish install, and unless he's specifically renting a bit of yard, the landlord can in fact stop him from installing a dish in a common area.
I've helped friends fight a few homeowner's associations and/or landlords hostile to a "temporary balcony or window dish" or a rooftop TV antenna. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm relatively familiar with this specific law. And, sadly, this one's pretty much a lost cause if the landlord won't allow him access to common areas.
His best bet is to look up the current crop of phased array satellite antennas and see if the landlord could tolerate one of those installed temporarily somewhere subtle on the building. They're a lot less ugly than dishes and can be installed far more creatively, and they don't need to be aimed. But they are expensive.