I can't look at the numbers. I'm at a friends house, and he only has one pair of glasses. He refused to buy a set for his family, since it would have cost him more than a new BluRay player and a half dozen movies.
I agree. Just with the sheer number of planets that exist, there's got to be life out there. And odds are there are a few intelligent species as well. What are the odds they'd find us, even if they could get here? Coming for resources is stupid, there's plenty out there, undoubtedly much closer to wherever they would be. And if you had the resources and means to cover gazillions of light years, wtf are the resources on Earth going to do for you? Coming to disable nukes or some other altruistic endeavor? That's equally ridiculous as coming to steal our water/women/Christmas. There really is only one reason they would come, as Charles Pellegrino outlined in "The Killing Star", a sort of postulation on sentient alien life (I blatantly stole this from a review. I couldn't remember the lines verbatim, and can't be arsed to flip through my copy to find it):
1. Any species will place its own survival before that of a different species.
2. Any species that has made it to the top on its planet of origin will be intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
3. They will assume that the first two rules apply to us.
Get them before they get you.
However the USPS is not a govt agency, govt funded maybe but not direct govt.
Did you mean to say "the USPS is not a state govt agency? Because it most certainly is a federal funded, constitutionally mandated federal function, with the Postmaster General being a cabinet level position. The specific rules, funding, and post office distribution is certainly up to debate, however. Citation, plz?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause
It's certainly appears to be smaller than a MICLIC, but it doesn't seem to have as much linear coverage, or explosive power. This might be a good thing in the typical current urban combat environment though. Deploying a MICLIC under fire is great, as long as it's being used from an armored vehicle, but tracked vehicles are pretty limited in use in Afghanistan. Deploying the trailer version of the MICLIC under fire would be near suicide, so the robot would probably have the advantage there. If the bad guys have RPG's though, I'm pretty sure the robot is toast. In any case, it seems that the robot would be a pretty expensive piece of equipment with a fairly limited scope of use.
If the new recruits cannot take the standard training, perhaps there should be a "pre-boot camp", but to allow them to play games? Insane.
There is a such thing....if you can't pass a preliminary Physical Fitness Test done during the induction phase (paperwork, uni's, haircut) you are sent to the Physical Fitness Improvement Company for 2-3 weeks. The test itself is much less stringent than the official test by a good margin. If the "Fat Ass Company" as it was called didn't have you passing the shortened test at the conclusion, you repeated it. Again and again until you passed. And then you started the real basic training. The really cruel ball-buster was if you failed the real PT test at the end of basic....you were sent to the Fat-Ass Company for several weeks, and then had to repeat the entirety of Basic Training again. And no, I didn't have to do those things, but it was instilled on you when you first arrived that was the fate that awaited you. There were a bunch of nervous fat kids.
That was 20 years ago though, I'm sure it's changed somewhat. And also considering the recruiting problems over the last few years, I'm sure it's been altered.Standards are usually lowered in a pinch like that.
It's interesting to see this coming, as in google becoming a digital Harry Seldon. But while it's good to have plenty of info to which base decisions on, it's becoming what in the Army is referred to as "paralysis by analysis". At some point, you need to trust your instincts, and do it. Pouring over the amount of data google can provide, filtering what is relevant (google isn't perfect), and then deciding what to do would likely take longer than going with your gut, or the smaller amount of available data, and then adjusting from there.
VA hospitals are a pretty good system, but they should really be for everyone, not just ex soldiers. Public health care is good for everyone, not just people who were in wars.
I actually paused at that to try and determine if you were joking or not. The VA system, which always gets a lot of deserved and undeserved bad press, is swamped right now only handling former military members. Swapping it over to handling all military personnel is quite literally impossible. You would have to do a massive spending spree to build the facilities and recruit and hire the people to man it. It's not as simple as just taking the military medical facilities, draining out the medical officers, and filling it back up with VA personnel. By the time congress had passed the laws to do the switch, stuffing it with favorable contracts for their districts, it would cost massively more than the current system. Even if you could just wave a magic wand and switch them without additional cost, you've just swapped the money from one office to the one down the hall. The VA is not part of DoD. It is its own independent cabinet level office of government. Since you pay taxes for all of them, it is a net savings to you of zero.
If you take a peek at this handy little graph at http://gregmciver.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/federal-spending.jpg , you'll see that with the exception of a couple post-WWII years, the federal budget has never gone down in the last 66 years. When congress tells you they are "cutting" programs and/or departments, what they are telling you that instead of spending 100 million over last years budget for department X, they will only be spending 50 million additional dollars. And in most cases, the 50 million in "savings" is moved to another department elsewhere.
It won't be nukes. They'll be a thousand chunks of tungsten, traveling at.92 c and weight 1,500 tons each.
With apologies to Carl Sagan:
1. Any species will place its own survival before that of a different species.
2. Any species that has made it to the top on its planet of origin will be intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
3. They will assume that the first two rules apply to us.
You forgot the deflector array. It can be reconfigured to emit, absorb, modulate, or discombobulate any known particle, frequency, energy, or deli sandwich in the known, unknown, partially known, or ridiculous universe.
I'm not sure if direct cash payouts from the school or government is the way to go. However, my daughter was getting good grades to begin with, and she also is a big reader. I decided to reward her good report cards, 5$ B, 10$ A, 25$ A+, redeemable at the local Borders/Barnes & Noble. She is on the honor roll every quarter, and is in honor/high level courses.
.... we understand that "Ugliness" and "Fatness" are genetic disorders, much like baldness or necrophilia, and it's only your fault if you don't hate yourself enough to do something about it.
In 60,000 years we've progressed from scratching symbols on eggshells and shitting in caves to producing electronic television shows like "Jersey Shore" and "The Hills." How far we've come.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't look at the numbers. I'm at a friends house, and he only has one pair of glasses. He refused to buy a set for his family, since it would have cost him more than a new BluRay player and a half dozen movies.
I agree. Just with the sheer number of planets that exist, there's got to be life out there. And odds are there are a few intelligent species as well. What are the odds they'd find us, even if they could get here? Coming for resources is stupid, there's plenty out there, undoubtedly much closer to wherever they would be. And if you had the resources and means to cover gazillions of light years, wtf are the resources on Earth going to do for you? Coming to disable nukes or some other altruistic endeavor? That's equally ridiculous as coming to steal our water/women/Christmas. There really is only one reason they would come, as Charles Pellegrino outlined in "The Killing Star", a sort of postulation on sentient alien life (I blatantly stole this from a review. I couldn't remember the lines verbatim, and can't be arsed to flip through my copy to find it): 1. Any species will place its own survival before that of a different species. 2. Any species that has made it to the top on its planet of origin will be intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary. 3. They will assume that the first two rules apply to us. Get them before they get you.
I know that thanks to cell phones storing all my contacts by name, I no longer remember anyone's phone number.
It's "NEWQ YOU LERRR". Get it right or I'll worsh your mouth out.
A card that contains a digital copy of large amount of personal and private information? Given to every person? What's the worst that could happen?
Bravo. Well done, you have entirely too much free time.
http://ladyahhhahhhh.ytmnd.com/ This, with no way to turn it off. Ever.
However the USPS is not a govt agency, govt funded maybe but not direct govt.
Did you mean to say "the USPS is not a state govt agency? Because it most certainly is a federal funded, constitutionally mandated federal function, with the Postmaster General being a cabinet level position. The specific rules, funding, and post office distribution is certainly up to debate, however. Citation, plz? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause
That joke never gets old - ever.
Fixed
Nobody says potawto.
It's certainly appears to be smaller than a MICLIC, but it doesn't seem to have as much linear coverage, or explosive power. This might be a good thing in the typical current urban combat environment though. Deploying a MICLIC under fire is great, as long as it's being used from an armored vehicle, but tracked vehicles are pretty limited in use in Afghanistan. Deploying the trailer version of the MICLIC under fire would be near suicide, so the robot would probably have the advantage there. If the bad guys have RPG's though, I'm pretty sure the robot is toast. In any case, it seems that the robot would be a pretty expensive piece of equipment with a fairly limited scope of use.
If the new recruits cannot take the standard training, perhaps there should be a "pre-boot camp", but to allow them to play games? Insane.
There is a such thing....if you can't pass a preliminary Physical Fitness Test done during the induction phase (paperwork, uni's, haircut) you are sent to the Physical Fitness Improvement Company for 2-3 weeks. The test itself is much less stringent than the official test by a good margin. If the "Fat Ass Company" as it was called didn't have you passing the shortened test at the conclusion, you repeated it. Again and again until you passed. And then you started the real basic training. The really cruel ball-buster was if you failed the real PT test at the end of basic....you were sent to the Fat-Ass Company for several weeks, and then had to repeat the entirety of Basic Training again. And no, I didn't have to do those things, but it was instilled on you when you first arrived that was the fate that awaited you. There were a bunch of nervous fat kids. That was 20 years ago though, I'm sure it's changed somewhat. And also considering the recruiting problems over the last few years, I'm sure it's been altered.Standards are usually lowered in a pinch like that.
Except stupid people doing stupid things more often hurting/maiming/killing other people than themselves.
It's interesting to see this coming, as in google becoming a digital Harry Seldon. But while it's good to have plenty of info to which base decisions on, it's becoming what in the Army is referred to as "paralysis by analysis". At some point, you need to trust your instincts, and do it. Pouring over the amount of data google can provide, filtering what is relevant (google isn't perfect), and then deciding what to do would likely take longer than going with your gut, or the smaller amount of available data, and then adjusting from there.
VA hospitals are a pretty good system, but they should really be for everyone, not just ex soldiers. Public health care is good for everyone, not just people who were in wars.
I actually paused at that to try and determine if you were joking or not. The VA system, which always gets a lot of deserved and undeserved bad press, is swamped right now only handling former military members. Swapping it over to handling all military personnel is quite literally impossible. You would have to do a massive spending spree to build the facilities and recruit and hire the people to man it. It's not as simple as just taking the military medical facilities, draining out the medical officers, and filling it back up with VA personnel. By the time congress had passed the laws to do the switch, stuffing it with favorable contracts for their districts, it would cost massively more than the current system. Even if you could just wave a magic wand and switch them without additional cost, you've just swapped the money from one office to the one down the hall. The VA is not part of DoD. It is its own independent cabinet level office of government. Since you pay taxes for all of them, it is a net savings to you of zero. If you take a peek at this handy little graph at http://gregmciver.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/federal-spending.jpg , you'll see that with the exception of a couple post-WWII years, the federal budget has never gone down in the last 66 years. When congress tells you they are "cutting" programs and/or departments, what they are telling you that instead of spending 100 million over last years budget for department X, they will only be spending 50 million additional dollars. And in most cases, the 50 million in "savings" is moved to another department elsewhere.
Am I the only one who looked at the RSS feed and read, "ArpaNets MMO Design Manifesto"? I should stop reading these things in the morning.
It won't be nukes. They'll be a thousand chunks of tungsten, traveling at .92 c and weight 1,500 tons each.
With apologies to Carl Sagan:
1. Any species will place its own survival before that of a different species.
2. Any species that has made it to the top on its planet of origin will be intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
3. They will assume that the first two rules apply to us.
You forgot the deflector array. It can be reconfigured to emit, absorb, modulate, or discombobulate any known particle, frequency, energy, or deli sandwich in the known, unknown, partially known, or ridiculous universe.
Well, I upped my game. Now up yours.
I'm not sure if direct cash payouts from the school or government is the way to go. However, my daughter was getting good grades to begin with, and she also is a big reader. I decided to reward her good report cards, 5$ B, 10$ A, 25$ A+, redeemable at the local Borders/Barnes & Noble. She is on the honor roll every quarter, and is in honor/high level courses.
Nasha...Nahssss.....Not gonna work here anymore!
Cool story, bro
First?
.... we understand that "Ugliness" and "Fatness" are genetic disorders, much like baldness or necrophilia, and it's only your fault if you don't hate yourself enough to do something about it.
In 60,000 years we've progressed from scratching symbols on eggshells and shitting in caves to producing electronic television shows like "Jersey Shore" and "The Hills." How far we've come.
In which direction?