If a virtualization host can be installed first on the HW, why dual boot? Why not just run both Ubuntu and Chrome OS simultaneously? If you can share the clipboard, "Chrome OS" could be just what's for browsing, and Ubuntu is really your OS for doing more serious (interactive) work on what you find while browsing. Indeed, if the two could share a desktop, it might not even look like two OSes, but rather just one with two personalities.
Assange is being called a terrorist by prominent government types, and not just in the US. He's not, even if the US or other countries have laws prohibiting publishing leaked classified material - whether or not he's bound by those laws. Terrorism is an effort to make political change by credibly threatening violence, typically by actual violence followed by explicit or implied threats to repeat it. Assange does not threaten violence, and the only change his (and Wikileaks behind him) efforts try to make is to reduce secrecy. Terrorism is arguably underwritten by violence against noncombatants, and only actual state actors (and their direct partners) are exposed in these Wikileaks releases. To call Assange a terrorist for that is to call any journalist who ever publishes a secret leaked to them a terrorist, even though Assange is not as recognizable a journalist. Indeed, it's because our journalists, especially in the US, have become nearly unrecognizable as people who would tell the public what many of these leaks reveal that Assange is not as recognizable as a journalist; if "real" journalists were busier exposing America's state secrets that Americans should know about, Assange would be more clearly one of them. But then he probably wouldn't be leaking these secrets, since others would be, and he wouldn't have an audience.
But now Anonymous "defends" Assange by actually terrorizing corporations and some (ie. Sweden and Switzerland) governments. That's terrorism: the violence and the threat (do what you did to Assange, and you get hit again) is designed to counteract the political activity that harassed Assange, which makes it equally political action - that's terrorism. Those targets might have had it coming. But now it's easy for the people calling Assange a terrorist to get people to believe it. Many won't distinguish between Assange and Anonymous; many will believe that Anonymous is really Assange; many will be unable to distinguish between "Assange the leaker" (which he isn't; he's the publisher) and "Anonymous the terrorist", especially as many think Assange is a "computer hacker" (which he isn't).
Geeks are becoming familiar with the "Streisand effect" when some controller tries to suppress some released info, which draws attention to it. But that's closely related to the effect where Assange's "defenders" make public perception of Assange worse, because his "allies" are what Assange's enemies call him. You're known by the company you keep, and Anonymous has now made Assange known as a terrorist.
Paypal doesn't loan money, so it's not like all the rest of those banks.
It's also not like those banks because it's not FDIC insured, so if it goes broke anyway (despite not loaning money), that money is lost.
And Paypal does steal money (which helps keep those books balanced). It tried to steal thousands of dollars from me, and it took me years to get it back.
So no, I don't trust Paypal. Even though I don't trust the regulated banks either, my distrust doesn't prevent me from using mine for the purpose I do, because I'm insuring it with my fellow Americans. And I have no choice about that - nor would I save the bailout money if I didn't use them, since it's being paid out of my taxes.
It turns out we totally agree. Except that I find my $50:mo for 10Mbps (NYC suburb) cable ISP to be worth it:).
There is no problem with network capacity, so long as speeds are capped and the caps are reasonable. The networks want caps so they can charge more for faster connections, which again would be OK if the prices per tier are reasonable. The problem is that the networks want the prices per tier to be unreasonable (or, simply looked at another way, reasonable prices only for too-slow speeds), to force people into the higher priced tiers. Hiding under that basic business greed is that the networks want to lock out or otherwise impede some endpoints, basically based on content/app. They want to compete unfairly with those other endpoints, either with their own products or at higher levels depending on politics (censorship).
None of that would be a problem in practice if there were competition among these networks. Real choices would let customers pick the better deal, the fewer restrictions for their money - or more restrictions if they don't want to pay less. A market for faster:$ or universal access would be served by some competitor, who would have a monopoly in that niche that would be vulnerable to competitors entering to take some of the revenue.
The problem in practice is that there are too many monopolies, especially in "last mile". Even where there is occasionally competition in a given geography, the cost of switching is too high, usually risky, and takes too long. The practical problem is that running last mile networks is expensive, duplication is wasteful, and so a monopoly or duopoly (eg. cablenet + Fios) is a natural effect of the economics. So those monopolies must either be regulated or public (like the water/sewer system), or strictly regulated (like the electricity or natgas grids) - or the network monopolies will jerk us around, gouging money, killing competitive innovation, and censoring our media.
That boils down to the government operating in the market. The obvious, traditional way is regulation. But another way, that has in the past decade proven to work well in telecom, is for the government to enter the market with its own service. Not even as the public operator of a "natural monopoly", but as a competitor. The government can operate a service according to the same rules and tariffs it might enforce as mandatory on competitors, forcing them to actually compete. It's an effective way to break a cartel, and then auction the government's service to the cartel once it's properly competing.
And this WiFi in every Federal building is like that. It's a platform for a "public WiFi" service. There should already be universal WiFi across all populated parts of the country, more coverage with transparent handoffs than in 3G cell service, but there isn't. Because it's a cartel. Really the government should break up the silos the telcos have built on segregated frequencies and technologies, so phones are locked to a network (especially in data), but any competition would be a start. And since the public's access to info without censorship is essential to a functioning democracy, the government cannot ignore that censorship is already going on.
I think this bill is the kind of thing the government should have done years ago, and that it doesn't go far enough. The telcos killed public "municipal WiFi" during the Bush Republican era. The possibility that the public can protect itself now means we should grab the opportunity before the political winds shift again (as they are already doing) and the government returns to protecting cartels wherever it finds them.
No, a monopoly does not require zero competition. It requires market control through market dominance. Macroeconomics doesn't turn on single exceptions that don't change the categorical behavior, just as classical physics doesn't turn on a small statistical anomalies outweighed by the main objects. Xipwire is orders of magnitude smaller than Paypal, and doesn't affect Paypal's market dominance.
Coat everything that's attached to the grid with PV material, especially things that already have an inverter. Reusing existing infrastructure can cut starting costs by half or more, which makes PV usually cheaper than the other grid generators. Every little bit counts, and the more distributed the solar receivers the more likely somewhere is getting sunlight at any given time. PV on as many roofs as possible not only increases generation, but distributes it around the grid, reducing substantial transmission losses and increasing efficiency. The generating plants for the top demand, that come on and off intermittently instead of running constantly, will be called on less, which is a very big savings, including not building as many new ones.
I don't trust PayPal: it's an unregulated global banking monopoly, that routinely abuses its monopoly to steal money from people. It's not insured by the FDIC like a regular bank, so if it goes bust any money in there is going to disappear.
What about Xipwire? Has it demonstrated theft, dishonesty or any other reason not to trust it with money and private info? Is there any reason to believe it won't just do like PayPal (or worse) once it does become big enough not to care, like PayPal?
If I don't trust PayPal, is there any reason I should use Xipwire instead?
The Seebeck effect is pretty inefficient, but it does produce electricity from heat which is better than no electricity. If the PV is maxxed but still hot, maybe the extra costs of the material justify the little extra bit of electricity it can add with the Seeback effect. Until we see actual efficiency measurements of an actual device, this announced device could be a waste of time. It always bothers me when a report doesn't mention the efficiency of the power generation or conversion, because it's never high enough to ignore, and is practically always the make/break factor in what's announced.
Radiant heat is light, infrared. The heat in materials that is transferred conductively, like when you touch it or when a house warms surrounding outside air, is not light.
It seems to me that 3 flying cameras surrounding the scene should be able to capture practically any scene in 3D (4D, really, including time - though time might be a fractional dimension since it seems to move only forward).
Do these shells really need to be solid metal? Electric charges form only on the surface of metal objects. Couldn't the shells be just some tough kevlar bag coated with metal for acceleration? Filled with water to deliver mass and keep an aerodynamic shape, that probably will be forced into the most aerodynamic shape by shoving it through the air. That would mean the ship could carry just the empty bags, filling them with seawater. That saves a lot of weight and space on the ship, which means a larger arsenal and longer range (and time between refueling). Indeed, if the ship carries several square KM of solar panels, daytime sunlight (over a MW) could charge a shot every 3 seconds, or (if stored) at least every 10 seconds through the night. Which means the ship's arsenal would be limited to the number of bags it could carry, which is probably hundreds of times as many as the shells the carry now. If the bags could somehow be produced at sea (perhaps from fish or kelp, or the floating plastic trash islands), these gunships could fire continuously, indefinitely, especially since the guns and their charges have few moving parts with very little friction. Docked and connected to shore power could deliver that kind of arsenal practically anywhere in the world.
Charging 33Mj in 300s is only 110KW. A US house typically takes from the grid 200A at 220V: 44KW max (uses a special panel to distribute it; standard is 100A:22KW). So two neighbors and I could charge this thing in just about 4 minutes. It consumes only 9.17KWh, which costs under $1 from the average US grid utility. A US car floored at about 200KW would charge it in 2m45s.
Of course the real action is in the firing, when 33Mj is released in (FTA) 10ms. That's 3.3GW, which powers 1.65 million typical US homes (typical SF-sized city + immediate suburbs) at their 1KW average consumption (non-electric heating: if all electric heated, that's about 200,000 Northeast homes in January). At about 35Mj:gal that's only about 9 gallons of gas at 100% efficient electric generation; a typical high-end generator at 20% needs about 45 gallons for each shot.
Of the storage, quick charging and even quicker discharging this railgun demonstrates I hope the Navy produces even more productive research in just the storage and quick charging efficiencies. Naval ships probably won't want to wait 5 minutes, or even 5 seconds, to reload, so 1.1MW charging is a good target. I don't know whether these capacitors charge in a massively parallel array, but they should; I'm not really sure why all modern batteries don't charge many subcells in parallel for faster charging than discharging - though this gun will never achieve that rate, even if charged on shore by a nuke plant (typically 2-3GW). More research, especially basic science in electrochemistry on nanomaterials, would improve electric appliance performance, especially in our critically growing mobile devices.
But storage density is the key factor. Destroyers typically carry about 200Kgal of fuel retaining about 25Kgal reserve, plus about 30Kgal jet fuel. A fuel cell at 70% efficiency would need only about 22 gallons per shot; 1000 shots would be less than the reserve. These caps are designed for fast charge/discharge, not capacity, since they're much larger (at least a couple shipping containers, over 5000 cubic feet, instead of 6CF). We need supercapacitors that can store greater than gasoline's 35Mj:l (and better than its 45Mj:Kg). At large scales, capacitors should be much smaller and lighter than gasoline, since each cap atom should store more electrons than in the one or two max in each chemical bond in fuel molecules (and which never completely, or even mostly, "discharge"). This project probably won't do that kind of research, but it could feed other research into that much harder and more common problem of increased storage density.
In the meantime, it's great the Navy will be able to move to very powerful electric guns. Instead of fuel energy locked up in separate propulsion turbine tanks and ammo charges, the whole mission can be more flexible with electric powering everything. Fuel cells can double or triple (or better) the conversion efficiency, while eliminating emissions (and generating drinking water at sea with no extra energy consumed). Which all means more efficiency, which means less fuel carried around, which means even more efficiency. Ships might eventually carry square KMs sheets of solar panels to float around them, generating a megawatt (in daytime) for charging caps that fire every 5 seconds or faster.
And the more we get the Navy energy efficient, the less the Pentagon will demand we stay at war to protect global oil supplies, and the more it will prioritize energy innovation that keeps America more independent and effective generally. Which means less shooting, which is the real (and only legitimate) goal of the military: to end wars with America victorious, either by superior force or by avoiding them entirely.
The states were not actually sovereign until the war was won; that was the entire point of the "War of Independence", which was not decided until the British surrendered in 1784. The states were briefly sovereign enough to switch to a new government with sovereignty over them. Only through acts of that Federal government could the Constitution or the US be dissolved, which was decided by the Civil War; the policy of the Federal government never changed. Those are the two most important wars in defining the sovereignty of the Federal government and states under it. No sovereign states as are nations, except in the abstract and when you want to start a war (that you lose).
In Europe the federal EU is much less hierarchically sovereign over its member states. Sure the EU has the power to force changes in laws and policies within member states, but so do international courts and policymaking bodies have the power to change US laws, or force the US government into compensating action when in conflict with US laws. The EU is much more of a mutual treaty organization of its states than a single nation like the US.
These matters are somewhat complex. But the facts about US state sovereignty are that they have never actually been soverign, except briefly and only in principle.
The EU is made-up of FORMERLY sovereign states, just as the US is made-up of formerly sovereign states. They aren't sovereign no more.
As for another poster's claim, "the US never had roaming charges" I disagree with that. I was with Cingular (now ATT) in the early 2000s, and all my calls were free within the Washington/Baltimore market. But as soon as I went somewhere distant, like Cumberland MD or Ocean City MD, I was hit with 50 cent per minute "roaming" charges. ----- These charges were eventually eliminated, not by the Member State or Union government, but by the free market and unhappy customers complaining to the corporations ("Why did I get a $100 bill when it's only supposed to be $20?") or taking our business to other companies w/o roaming charges. The invisible hand of the market eliminated the roaming charges.
Side-thought: This article also erases the myth that EU cellplans are so much cheaper than US cellplans. Sounds like they are more expensive.
The US states were never sovereign. They were colonies of a monarchy until they became members of a federal nation. Unless you count the very brief time while those states were coming up with first the Articles of Confederation. But by that measure Cheney was president several times in the past decade, as Bush had brief medical treatments - these periods are so brief that they're only trivial. Europe's states have hundreds and thousands of years of sovereignty behind them, under a much looser federation than the US ever had.
Telco cartel, cable cartel, oil cartel, bank cartel, insurance cartel, pharmaco cartel, car cartel... all too big to fail, too big to compete with. And those are just the ones in the news for epic abuses this year - with no change to their business model or even executives.
The "punishments" you're referring to are tiny costs of doing business compared to the huge profits these cartels reap by suppressing competition. "Illegal" means something different to a mere human or small business than it does to a cartel. It means "fee", and usually "extra bribes".
I was being sarcastic. But in the US, "free market" theocrats will tell you that anything government does is socialism. Because private business does everything better, as an article of faith (disproof has no power over faith). Meanwhile, we could use a healthy dose of actual socialism, instead of the private monopolism that's managed to take over our government and is busy eating what's left of generations of hard-won social democracy.
I expect that national laws make the national data and voice rates work well enough in those markets. The EU hasn't regulated the cartel across Europe well enough yet. But at least it's not a state-owned monopoly, or the cartel-friendly state the US has become.
Iran's backing Hezbollah in Lebanon counts as aggression. It's hundreds of miles and several (hostile) countries away from Iran's borders.
Israel invaded South Lebanon when the Syrians were the ones launching rockets from the advantageous highlands there into Israel. The "Judea/Samaria" propaganda is to satisfy the British and American funders and military backers who carved up the region according to those myths, and for Israelis sucker enough to buy it. The British carved up the "Levant" as it carved up all the colonies from which it withdrew at its own pace: designed to set local tribes at each other for foreseeable generations, keeping them all down while the UK and its allies sells all sides weapons. Israel's aggression doesn't extend beyond securing or eliminating active threats, including South Lebanon and Gaza, and Libyan and Iraqi nuke reactors. The past couple generations (Baby Boomers) have been neocons with the usual incompetence beyond running up debt, arms budgets and defeats, and is really unnacceptable. But the point is that an Iranian nuke doesn't protect Iran's borders from Israel, because Israel has no designs on Iranian territory. Iran has designs on Israel's territory controlled by its clients, particularly Hezbollah but other proxies will do. Those are two very different military postures, as heinous as each is. I'm not dismissing Israel - to the contrary. But I am making the distinction that is quite evident from the actual facts.
And they are very different than the military conflict that is locked into the conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which each of them distract themselves and everyone else from by (mostly rhetorically by the Saudis) attacking Israel. That conflict between just those two countries would be bad enough, but they play it out among many of the world's Muslims, some of whom are really bad guys, and who are active in extremely volatile and globally critical places.
Israel is only defensively a foe of Iran, except for Iran's necessary propaganda. Saudi Arabia is locked in a global battle for Islam with Iran. Which is why the Sauds have been trying hard to get the US to invade Iran. Saudi Arabia is a lot closer to Iran's military and missiles than is Israel, and SA's rapid military growth is a very rattley saber. Your dismissal is just the conventional wisdom's blind spot as to the actual regional geopolitics.
Like the aggression. Iran is active in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. It has backed aggression around the world, especially in the Mideast, particularly in South Lebanon, for decades. Israel's aggression is limited to seizing places from which militias launch actual physical attacks, which were carved out by the British for precisely this mutually destabilizing death spiral. Especially in South Lebanon, where Iranian supported Hezbollah has created its own nation in the vacuum left by the failed Lebanese state (occupied and controlled by Syria) from which attacks are routinely launched into Israel. I strongly disagree with Israel's methods of responding in there, fighting terrorism with terrorism. But I don't mistake Israel's overzealous aggressive defense for actual territorial expansion the way Iran (and Russia, for that matter) have demonstrated far from their borders with military aggression for years, through today.
OPEC is just fine with unstable prices that stay above $75 a barrel, and reach over $100. The more oil Iran uses domestically, the less oil Russia competes with on the open market. In this case
Your reads are what we see on the news. That kind of superficial insight doesn't merit baseless condescension like "baloney" and "dream on". Get past what you're fed, or quit shoving it at me.
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Chrome is different from Chrome OS. And virtualization doesn't have to kill battery life.
You don't know what you're talking about.
If a virtualization host can be installed first on the HW, why dual boot? Why not just run both Ubuntu and Chrome OS simultaneously? If you can share the clipboard, "Chrome OS" could be just what's for browsing, and Ubuntu is really your OS for doing more serious (interactive) work on what you find while browsing. Indeed, if the two could share a desktop, it might not even look like two OSes, but rather just one with two personalities.
You have a link to a source explaining that the SUVLEV and oil-burning electric plants exhaust is cleaner than the intake air?
Why not?
Assange is being called a terrorist by prominent government types, and not just in the US. He's not, even if the US or other countries have laws prohibiting publishing leaked classified material - whether or not he's bound by those laws. Terrorism is an effort to make political change by credibly threatening violence, typically by actual violence followed by explicit or implied threats to repeat it. Assange does not threaten violence, and the only change his (and Wikileaks behind him) efforts try to make is to reduce secrecy. Terrorism is arguably underwritten by violence against noncombatants, and only actual state actors (and their direct partners) are exposed in these Wikileaks releases. To call Assange a terrorist for that is to call any journalist who ever publishes a secret leaked to them a terrorist, even though Assange is not as recognizable a journalist. Indeed, it's because our journalists, especially in the US, have become nearly unrecognizable as people who would tell the public what many of these leaks reveal that Assange is not as recognizable as a journalist; if "real" journalists were busier exposing America's state secrets that Americans should know about, Assange would be more clearly one of them. But then he probably wouldn't be leaking these secrets, since others would be, and he wouldn't have an audience.
But now Anonymous "defends" Assange by actually terrorizing corporations and some (ie. Sweden and Switzerland) governments. That's terrorism: the violence and the threat (do what you did to Assange, and you get hit again) is designed to counteract the political activity that harassed Assange, which makes it equally political action - that's terrorism. Those targets might have had it coming. But now it's easy for the people calling Assange a terrorist to get people to believe it. Many won't distinguish between Assange and Anonymous; many will believe that Anonymous is really Assange; many will be unable to distinguish between "Assange the leaker" (which he isn't; he's the publisher) and "Anonymous the terrorist", especially as many think Assange is a "computer hacker" (which he isn't).
Geeks are becoming familiar with the "Streisand effect" when some controller tries to suppress some released info, which draws attention to it. But that's closely related to the effect where Assange's "defenders" make public perception of Assange worse, because his "allies" are what Assange's enemies call him. You're known by the company you keep, and Anonymous has now made Assange known as a terrorist.
Paypal doesn't loan money, so it's not like all the rest of those banks.
It's also not like those banks because it's not FDIC insured, so if it goes broke anyway (despite not loaning money), that money is lost.
And Paypal does steal money (which helps keep those books balanced). It tried to steal thousands of dollars from me, and it took me years to get it back.
So no, I don't trust Paypal. Even though I don't trust the regulated banks either, my distrust doesn't prevent me from using mine for the purpose I do, because I'm insuring it with my fellow Americans. And I have no choice about that - nor would I save the bailout money if I didn't use them, since it's being paid out of my taxes.
It turns out we totally agree. Except that I find my $50:mo for 10Mbps (NYC suburb) cable ISP to be worth it :).
There is no problem with network capacity, so long as speeds are capped and the caps are reasonable. The networks want caps so they can charge more for faster connections, which again would be OK if the prices per tier are reasonable. The problem is that the networks want the prices per tier to be unreasonable (or, simply looked at another way, reasonable prices only for too-slow speeds), to force people into the higher priced tiers. Hiding under that basic business greed is that the networks want to lock out or otherwise impede some endpoints, basically based on content/app. They want to compete unfairly with those other endpoints, either with their own products or at higher levels depending on politics (censorship).
None of that would be a problem in practice if there were competition among these networks. Real choices would let customers pick the better deal, the fewer restrictions for their money - or more restrictions if they don't want to pay less. A market for faster:$ or universal access would be served by some competitor, who would have a monopoly in that niche that would be vulnerable to competitors entering to take some of the revenue.
The problem in practice is that there are too many monopolies, especially in "last mile". Even where there is occasionally competition in a given geography, the cost of switching is too high, usually risky, and takes too long. The practical problem is that running last mile networks is expensive, duplication is wasteful, and so a monopoly or duopoly (eg. cablenet + Fios) is a natural effect of the economics. So those monopolies must either be regulated or public (like the water/sewer system), or strictly regulated (like the electricity or natgas grids) - or the network monopolies will jerk us around, gouging money, killing competitive innovation, and censoring our media.
That boils down to the government operating in the market. The obvious, traditional way is regulation. But another way, that has in the past decade proven to work well in telecom, is for the government to enter the market with its own service. Not even as the public operator of a "natural monopoly", but as a competitor. The government can operate a service according to the same rules and tariffs it might enforce as mandatory on competitors, forcing them to actually compete. It's an effective way to break a cartel, and then auction the government's service to the cartel once it's properly competing.
And this WiFi in every Federal building is like that. It's a platform for a "public WiFi" service. There should already be universal WiFi across all populated parts of the country, more coverage with transparent handoffs than in 3G cell service, but there isn't. Because it's a cartel. Really the government should break up the silos the telcos have built on segregated frequencies and technologies, so phones are locked to a network (especially in data), but any competition would be a start. And since the public's access to info without censorship is essential to a functioning democracy, the government cannot ignore that censorship is already going on.
I think this bill is the kind of thing the government should have done years ago, and that it doesn't go far enough. The telcos killed public "municipal WiFi" during the Bush Republican era. The possibility that the public can protect itself now means we should grab the opportunity before the political winds shift again (as they are already doing) and the government returns to protecting cartels wherever it finds them.
No, a monopoly does not require zero competition. It requires market control through market dominance. Macroeconomics doesn't turn on single exceptions that don't change the categorical behavior, just as classical physics doesn't turn on a small statistical anomalies outweighed by the main objects. Xipwire is orders of magnitude smaller than Paypal, and doesn't affect Paypal's market dominance.
Coat everything that's attached to the grid with PV material, especially things that already have an inverter. Reusing existing infrastructure can cut starting costs by half or more, which makes PV usually cheaper than the other grid generators. Every little bit counts, and the more distributed the solar receivers the more likely somewhere is getting sunlight at any given time. PV on as many roofs as possible not only increases generation, but distributes it around the grid, reducing substantial transmission losses and increasing efficiency. The generating plants for the top demand, that come on and off intermittently instead of running constantly, will be called on less, which is a very big savings, including not building as many new ones.
I don't trust PayPal: it's an unregulated global banking monopoly, that routinely abuses its monopoly to steal money from people. It's not insured by the FDIC like a regular bank, so if it goes bust any money in there is going to disappear.
What about Xipwire? Has it demonstrated theft, dishonesty or any other reason not to trust it with money and private info? Is there any reason to believe it won't just do like PayPal (or worse) once it does become big enough not to care, like PayPal?
If I don't trust PayPal, is there any reason I should use Xipwire instead?
The Seebeck effect is pretty inefficient, but it does produce electricity from heat which is better than no electricity. If the PV is maxxed but still hot, maybe the extra costs of the material justify the little extra bit of electricity it can add with the Seeback effect. Until we see actual efficiency measurements of an actual device, this announced device could be a waste of time. It always bothers me when a report doesn't mention the efficiency of the power generation or conversion, because it's never high enough to ignore, and is practically always the make/break factor in what's announced.
Radiant heat is light, infrared. The heat in materials that is transferred conductively, like when you touch it or when a house warms surrounding outside air, is not light.
It seems to me that 3 flying cameras surrounding the scene should be able to capture practically any scene in 3D (4D, really, including time - though time might be a fractional dimension since it seems to move only forward).
Do these shells really need to be solid metal? Electric charges form only on the surface of metal objects. Couldn't the shells be just some tough kevlar bag coated with metal for acceleration? Filled with water to deliver mass and keep an aerodynamic shape, that probably will be forced into the most aerodynamic shape by shoving it through the air. That would mean the ship could carry just the empty bags, filling them with seawater. That saves a lot of weight and space on the ship, which means a larger arsenal and longer range (and time between refueling). Indeed, if the ship carries several square KM of solar panels, daytime sunlight (over a MW) could charge a shot every 3 seconds, or (if stored) at least every 10 seconds through the night. Which means the ship's arsenal would be limited to the number of bags it could carry, which is probably hundreds of times as many as the shells the carry now. If the bags could somehow be produced at sea (perhaps from fish or kelp, or the floating plastic trash islands), these gunships could fire continuously, indefinitely, especially since the guns and their charges have few moving parts with very little friction. Docked and connected to shore power could deliver that kind of arsenal practically anywhere in the world.
Charging 33Mj in 300s is only 110KW. A US house typically takes from the grid 200A at 220V: 44KW max (uses a special panel to distribute it; standard is 100A:22KW). So two neighbors and I could charge this thing in just about 4 minutes. It consumes only 9.17KWh, which costs under $1 from the average US grid utility. A US car floored at about 200KW would charge it in 2m45s.
Of course the real action is in the firing, when 33Mj is released in (FTA) 10ms. That's 3.3GW, which powers 1.65 million typical US homes (typical SF-sized city + immediate suburbs) at their 1KW average consumption (non-electric heating: if all electric heated, that's about 200,000 Northeast homes in January). At about 35Mj:gal that's only about 9 gallons of gas at 100% efficient electric generation; a typical high-end generator at 20% needs about 45 gallons for each shot.
Of the storage, quick charging and even quicker discharging this railgun demonstrates I hope the Navy produces even more productive research in just the storage and quick charging efficiencies. Naval ships probably won't want to wait 5 minutes, or even 5 seconds, to reload, so 1.1MW charging is a good target. I don't know whether these capacitors charge in a massively parallel array, but they should; I'm not really sure why all modern batteries don't charge many subcells in parallel for faster charging than discharging - though this gun will never achieve that rate, even if charged on shore by a nuke plant (typically 2-3GW). More research, especially basic science in electrochemistry on nanomaterials, would improve electric appliance performance, especially in our critically growing mobile devices.
But storage density is the key factor. Destroyers typically carry about 200Kgal of fuel retaining about 25Kgal reserve, plus about 30Kgal jet fuel. A fuel cell at 70% efficiency would need only about 22 gallons per shot; 1000 shots would be less than the reserve. These caps are designed for fast charge/discharge, not capacity, since they're much larger (at least a couple shipping containers, over 5000 cubic feet, instead of 6CF). We need supercapacitors that can store greater than gasoline's 35Mj:l (and better than its 45Mj:Kg). At large scales, capacitors should be much smaller and lighter than gasoline, since each cap atom should store more electrons than in the one or two max in each chemical bond in fuel molecules (and which never completely, or even mostly, "discharge"). This project probably won't do that kind of research, but it could feed other research into that much harder and more common problem of increased storage density.
In the meantime, it's great the Navy will be able to move to very powerful electric guns. Instead of fuel energy locked up in separate propulsion turbine tanks and ammo charges, the whole mission can be more flexible with electric powering everything. Fuel cells can double or triple (or better) the conversion efficiency, while eliminating emissions (and generating drinking water at sea with no extra energy consumed). Which all means more efficiency, which means less fuel carried around, which means even more efficiency. Ships might eventually carry square KMs sheets of solar panels to float around them, generating a megawatt (in daytime) for charging caps that fire every 5 seconds or faster.
And the more we get the Navy energy efficient, the less the Pentagon will demand we stay at war to protect global oil supplies, and the more it will prioritize energy innovation that keeps America more independent and effective generally. Which means less shooting, which is the real (and only legitimate) goal of the military: to end wars with America victorious, either by superior force or by avoiding them entirely.
The states were not actually sovereign until the war was won; that was the entire point of the "War of Independence", which was not decided until the British surrendered in 1784. The states were briefly sovereign enough to switch to a new government with sovereignty over them. Only through acts of that Federal government could the Constitution or the US be dissolved, which was decided by the Civil War; the policy of the Federal government never changed. Those are the two most important wars in defining the sovereignty of the Federal government and states under it. No sovereign states as are nations, except in the abstract and when you want to start a war (that you lose).
In Europe the federal EU is much less hierarchically sovereign over its member states. Sure the EU has the power to force changes in laws and policies within member states, but so do international courts and policymaking bodies have the power to change US laws, or force the US government into compensating action when in conflict with US laws. The EU is much more of a mutual treaty organization of its states than a single nation like the US.
These matters are somewhat complex. But the facts about US state sovereignty are that they have never actually been soverign, except briefly and only in principle.
In both cases the computer is not running. You just want to resist seeing they're the same. Don't bother stopping it - I'm out of here.
The EU is made-up of FORMERLY sovereign states, just as the US is made-up of formerly sovereign states. They aren't sovereign no more.
As for another poster's claim, "the US never had roaming charges" I disagree with that. I was with Cingular (now ATT) in the early 2000s, and all my calls were free within the Washington/Baltimore market. But as soon as I went somewhere distant, like Cumberland MD or Ocean City MD, I was hit with 50 cent per minute "roaming" charges. ----- These charges were eventually eliminated, not by the Member State or Union government, but by the free market and unhappy customers complaining to the corporations ("Why did I get a $100 bill when it's only supposed to be $20?") or taking our business to other companies w/o roaming charges. The invisible hand of the market eliminated the roaming charges.
Side-thought: This article also erases the myth that EU cellplans are so much cheaper than US cellplans. Sounds like they are more expensive.
The US states were never sovereign. They were colonies of a monarchy until they became members of a federal nation. Unless you count the very brief time while those states were coming up with first the Articles of Confederation. But by that measure Cheney was president several times in the past decade, as Bush had brief medical treatments - these periods are so brief that they're only trivial. Europe's states have hundreds and thousands of years of sovereignty behind them, under a much looser federation than the US ever had.
Telco cartel, cable cartel, oil cartel, bank cartel, insurance cartel, pharmaco cartel, car cartel... all too big to fail, too big to compete with. And those are just the ones in the news for epic abuses this year - with no change to their business model or even executives.
The "punishments" you're referring to are tiny costs of doing business compared to the huge profits these cartels reap by suppressing competition. "Illegal" means something different to a mere human or small business than it does to a cartel. It means "fee", and usually "extra bribes".
Ownership != control, and vice versa. Except in Sim City, Libertaria.
I was being sarcastic. But in the US, "free market" theocrats will tell you that anything government does is socialism. Because private business does everything better, as an article of faith (disproof has no power over faith). Meanwhile, we could use a healthy dose of actual socialism, instead of the private monopolism that's managed to take over our government and is busy eating what's left of generations of hard-won social democracy.
I expect that national laws make the national data and voice rates work well enough in those markets. The EU hasn't regulated the cartel across Europe well enough yet. But at least it's not a state-owned monopoly, or the cartel-friendly state the US has become.
No, that's socialism, and you go to hell for that.
The free market is making people rich, and it's a sin to stop it with some dirty hippie collective like a government.
Iran's backing Hezbollah in Lebanon counts as aggression. It's hundreds of miles and several (hostile) countries away from Iran's borders.
Israel invaded South Lebanon when the Syrians were the ones launching rockets from the advantageous highlands there into Israel. The "Judea/Samaria" propaganda is to satisfy the British and American funders and military backers who carved up the region according to those myths, and for Israelis sucker enough to buy it. The British carved up the "Levant" as it carved up all the colonies from which it withdrew at its own pace: designed to set local tribes at each other for foreseeable generations, keeping them all down while the UK and its allies sells all sides weapons. Israel's aggression doesn't extend beyond securing or eliminating active threats, including South Lebanon and Gaza, and Libyan and Iraqi nuke reactors. The past couple generations (Baby Boomers) have been neocons with the usual incompetence beyond running up debt, arms budgets and defeats, and is really unnacceptable. But the point is that an Iranian nuke doesn't protect Iran's borders from Israel, because Israel has no designs on Iranian territory. Iran has designs on Israel's territory controlled by its clients, particularly Hezbollah but other proxies will do. Those are two very different military postures, as heinous as each is. I'm not dismissing Israel - to the contrary. But I am making the distinction that is quite evident from the actual facts.
And they are very different than the military conflict that is locked into the conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which each of them distract themselves and everyone else from by (mostly rhetorically by the Saudis) attacking Israel. That conflict between just those two countries would be bad enough, but they play it out among many of the world's Muslims, some of whom are really bad guys, and who are active in extremely volatile and globally critical places.
Israel is only defensively a foe of Iran, except for Iran's necessary propaganda. Saudi Arabia is locked in a global battle for Islam with Iran. Which is why the Sauds have been trying hard to get the US to invade Iran. Saudi Arabia is a lot closer to Iran's military and missiles than is Israel, and SA's rapid military growth is a very rattley saber. Your dismissal is just the conventional wisdom's blind spot as to the actual regional geopolitics.
Like the aggression. Iran is active in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. It has backed aggression around the world, especially in the Mideast, particularly in South Lebanon, for decades. Israel's aggression is limited to seizing places from which militias launch actual physical attacks, which were carved out by the British for precisely this mutually destabilizing death spiral. Especially in South Lebanon, where Iranian supported Hezbollah has created its own nation in the vacuum left by the failed Lebanese state (occupied and controlled by Syria) from which attacks are routinely launched into Israel. I strongly disagree with Israel's methods of responding in there, fighting terrorism with terrorism. But I don't mistake Israel's overzealous aggressive defense for actual territorial expansion the way Iran (and Russia, for that matter) have demonstrated far from their borders with military aggression for years, through today.
OPEC is just fine with unstable prices that stay above $75 a barrel, and reach over $100. The more oil Iran uses domestically, the less oil Russia competes with on the open market. In this case
Your reads are what we see on the news. That kind of superficial insight doesn't merit baseless condescension like "baloney" and "dream on". Get past what you're fed, or quit shoving it at me.