I agree with you, but unfortunately juries still tend to hold it against defendants that don't take the stand. It's always been the case, but it has been made much worse by the Nancy Grace's of the world.
I get where you're coming from; I really do. The issue I see is that, if your beef is with the existence of "eyes in the sky", then you're about fifty years too late. There are commercial satellites with the resolution to read your license plate, so just imagine what the government has up there. Worrying about drones under those conditions is like bitching that somebody tracked dirt into your dirt-floor house.
Yeah, but people generally have a much bigger fear of local law enforcement than they do the CIA or the NSA. Local law enforcement shouldn't be in the spying business.
FFS I wish the people harping on about the 1st amendment at every opportunity would take the time to fucking read it.
The actual text no longer matters, because the Supreme Court and the 16th ammendment has further defined and expanded the meaning.
By a strict reading, state and local goverments are free to ignore the 1st ammendment, but Supreme Court decisions have incorporated the 16th ammendment to apply the 1st ammendment to all levels of government.
no, you can't be jailed indefinitely for contempt.
Sure you can. The problem is that a person jailed for contempt is considered to "hold the keys to his own cell", so higher courts don't see it as actual imprisonment but a type of voluntary confinement. Yeah, it's crazy but it's the real world.
That's how those accused of not paying child support end up in de facto debtor's prisons.
Governments don't pay salaries using money from "selling stuff". If they allowed that, it would open the door to all sorts of corruption.
Not directly, but law enforcement agencies do indirectly. They auction the items they've seized and use that to pay for equipment that would otherwise come out of the overall budget.
You are right that it does open to the door to all sorts of corruption and the practice should be abolished. The agencies become dependent on the revenue.
Much of the threshold is due to state law. To prevent local governments from creating "1mph over" speed traps that are within the margin of error, states prohibit local cops from writing speeding tickets for anything less that something like 10 mph over the limit. (Sometimes this only applies to state roads.)
Some of the threshold is also due to the legacy reasons - speedometers and detection equipment in the past were considered more innacurate in the past so a 10 mph margin has become the norm.
Also, sometimes law enforcement does pull over entire groups of cars. Florida used to be well known for this.
The law is the law, and if the speed limit is 55 or 60 inside Baltimore City then that's what the drivers should be doing. If they find that objectionable rather than destroy the cameras, they should be lobbying to have the speed increased to 65.
Top end speed limits are controlled by the federal government and are based on such things as population density. Local governments can lower them but cannot raise them above the federal limits.
Lobbying tiny local governments is hard enough, lobbying the federal government is pretty much impossible unless your group has very deep pockets.
They've shown methods to foil fingerprint scanners and infrared alarm systems as well, but those don't afffect law enforcment revenue or safety.
There is no way that the Mythbusters would even admit that an approach to defeat the speed cameras even existed. I wouldn't be surprised if they did that whole segment as a favor to law enforcement.
The Mythbusters are completely dependent on the cooperation of law enforcement, so there is no way that they will ever disclose anything that would directly negatively affect police revenue.
For all we know, several approaches may have worked but the Mythbusters said they failed. That segment should have never been done because of the huge conflict of interest.
The correct equation is 1.94 arccosh (n/1.94 + 1) apparent years : where n = number of light years to travel. This takes into account 1g acceleration and deceleration. The andromeda galaxy can be reached in 28 years, not 3,115.
Is that online, and if so do you have a link? It sounds like it would be immensely interesting. All I could find was the podcast by that name that interviewed him in 2009, and his Cosmic Variance blog entry about the experiment. In which he says that his favorite theoretical explanation for the result is violating Lorentz Invariance, i.e. the speed of light being the same for all observers and one of the fundamental assumptions of Relativity.
It was really interesting. Here is link. The whole first half hour is devoted to the topic but the real meat is around the 20:30 mark.
The really interesting part (paraphrasing) was "Relativity doesn't say that particles can't go faster than light. Relativity says that particles either (1) go faster than light, (2) slower than light or (3) at the speed of light and they never change what they do. We've never found particles that go faster than light and we don't think that they exist. We use particles that travel slower than light to help explain causality."
I've never really heard it put that way before. He didn't explain himself so I'm thinking he is referring to the infinite energy that is required to traverse the speed of light.
Check out the 2nd half hour too where the pauli exclusion principle is discussed. It's not in relation to the FTL discussion, but is still really interesting.
I was mistaken on the Sean Carroll being the one that made the point about the value of c being redefined. It was one of the other the other This Week in Science podcasts - I think with it was either Lawrence Krause or Brian Greene.
If the result had panned out, it would have been exceedingly difficult to conclude anything but that the neutrinos were traveling FTL.
The point being that Relativity woudln't be overturned, only the value of c. Relativity would be deemed incomplete and we would need to discover why our previous calculations seemed to work so well using the highly precise but incorrect value of c.
Sean Carrol discussed this in depth on a recent episode of This Week in Science.
It's nice to have the math on your side, but that's not sufficient. You also need to have physics on your side. Based on Newton's equations the math showed it was possible to go faster then the speed of light if we just kept adding more energy to a particle. Turns out the physics was incomplete and now we know we can't do that.
The hope for those that desire FTL travel is that Relativity is incomplete as well.
Er, well, to be clear... FTL is out for the count because of Einstein, so for FTL to be possible means a up-ending of one of the fundamental assumptions of Relativity. It is hypothetically possible that this is the case, but it is not to be presumed lightly (unless you're writing a sci-fi story.)
We would all like for it to be true. Believe me, a huge number of people were hoping that despite the odds the "FTL neutrinos" would turn out to be real rather than an equipment failure.
The faster than light neutrinos wouldn't have overturned relativity though - it would have mostly just redifined the value of c. The calculations that were previously working despite using an incorrect value of c would need to be looked at, but it would be similar to what happened to Newtonian calculations after relativity.
Yes. A ship accelerating at 1g and then decelerating at 1g halfway there, could reach the Andromeda galaxy in less than 50 years (passenger time). The nearest star could be reached in less than 5 years.
Again, the engery and engineering requirements for this is way beyond anything we have today, but it is theoretically possible.
I agree completely with your overall point, but with constant 1g acceleration, the passengers in a ship could arrive somewhere within 100 years due to time dilation,
Of course, the energy required and the engineering challenges are immese, but theoritically the nearest star could be reached in less than 40 years (passenger time).
Nukes were considered to be more damaging in the BSG universe than how you portrayed them. Both cylons and humans were very concerned any time nukes entered the picture (which was rare). There was a standoff where BSG was going to launch nukes against a cylon basestar and they backed down.
Battlestars were somewhat tougher than cylonss basestars though. The basestars were quasi-organic while the battlestars were heavily armored.
In the prequal movie (The Plan), the cyclon nukes that destroyed the colonies seemed to be smaller MIRV type warheads, so cylon warheads may tend to be less powerful than Colonial ones.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you, but unfortunately juries still tend to hold it against defendants that don't take the stand. It's always been the case, but it has been made much worse by the Nancy Grace's of the world.
I get where you're coming from; I really do. The issue I see is that, if your beef is with the existence of "eyes in the sky", then you're about fifty years too late. There are commercial satellites with the resolution to read your license plate, so just imagine what the government has up there. Worrying about drones under those conditions is like bitching that somebody tracked dirt into your dirt-floor house.
Yeah, but people generally have a much bigger fear of local law enforcement than they do the CIA or the NSA. Local law enforcement shouldn't be in the spying business.
I can't say I'd be willing to do the work to remove them from the statistics for a Slashdot post, though.
You should though, because your original post is dependent on it.
Others have said that he worked for one dollar.
I think he meant Toronto. Not sure how you could have missed this is you researched Hurricane Hazel.
Congress shall make no law.
Doesn't say judges shall make no order.
FFS I wish the people harping on about the 1st amendment at every opportunity would take the time to fucking read it.
The actual text no longer matters, because the Supreme Court and the 16th ammendment has further defined and expanded the meaning.
By a strict reading, state and local goverments are free to ignore the 1st ammendment, but Supreme Court decisions have incorporated the 16th ammendment to apply the 1st ammendment to all levels of government.
But it has the force of law which is realistically all that matters.
no, you can't be jailed indefinitely for contempt.
Sure you can. The problem is that a person jailed for contempt is considered to "hold the keys to his own cell", so higher courts don't see it as actual imprisonment but a type of voluntary confinement. Yeah, it's crazy but it's the real world.
That's how those accused of not paying child support end up in de facto debtor's prisons.
Governments don't pay salaries using money from "selling stuff". If they allowed that, it would open the door to all sorts of corruption.
Not directly, but law enforcement agencies do indirectly. They auction the items they've seized and use that to pay for equipment that would otherwise come out of the overall budget.
You are right that it does open to the door to all sorts of corruption and the practice should be abolished. The agencies become dependent on the revenue.
Much of the threshold is due to state law. To prevent local governments from creating "1mph over" speed traps that are within the margin of error, states prohibit local cops from writing speeding tickets for anything less that something like 10 mph over the limit. (Sometimes this only applies to state roads.)
Some of the threshold is also due to the legacy reasons - speedometers and detection equipment in the past were considered more innacurate in the past so a 10 mph margin has become the norm.
Also, sometimes law enforcement does pull over entire groups of cars. Florida used to be well known for this.
The law is the law, and if the speed limit is 55 or 60 inside Baltimore City then that's what the drivers should be doing. If they find that objectionable rather than destroy the cameras, they should be lobbying to have the speed increased to 65.
Top end speed limits are controlled by the federal government and are based on such things as population density. Local governments can lower them but cannot raise them above the federal limits.
Lobbying tiny local governments is hard enough, lobbying the federal government is pretty much impossible unless your group has very deep pockets.
They've shown methods to foil fingerprint scanners and infrared alarm systems as well, but those don't afffect law enforcment revenue or safety.
There is no way that the Mythbusters would even admit that an approach to defeat the speed cameras even existed. I wouldn't be surprised if they did that whole segment as a favor to law enforcement.
The Mythbusters are completely dependent on the cooperation of law enforcement, so there is no way that they will ever disclose anything that would directly negatively affect police revenue.
For all we know, several approaches may have worked but the Mythbusters said they failed. That segment should have never been done because of the huge conflict of interest.
What do you think happens to the oil when it is consumed by bacteria?
But it is not the biggest oil spill in history.
The correct equation is 1.94 arccosh (n/1.94 + 1) apparent years : where n = number of light years to travel. This takes into account 1g acceleration and deceleration. The andromeda galaxy can be reached in 28 years, not 3,115.
Here's a link for the derivations.
Is that online, and if so do you have a link? It sounds like it would be immensely interesting. All I could find was the podcast by that name that interviewed him in 2009, and his Cosmic Variance blog entry about the experiment. In which he says that his favorite theoretical explanation for the result is violating Lorentz Invariance, i.e. the speed of light being the same for all observers and one of the fundamental assumptions of Relativity.
It was really interesting. Here is link. The whole first half hour is devoted to the topic but the real meat is around the 20:30 mark.
The really interesting part (paraphrasing) was "Relativity doesn't say that particles can't go faster than light. Relativity says that particles either (1) go faster than light, (2) slower than light or (3) at the speed of light and they never change what they do. We've never found particles that go faster than light and we don't think that they exist. We use particles that travel slower than light to help explain causality."
I've never really heard it put that way before. He didn't explain himself so I'm thinking he is referring to the infinite energy that is required to traverse the speed of light.
Check out the 2nd half hour too where the pauli exclusion principle is discussed. It's not in relation to the FTL discussion, but is still really interesting.
I was mistaken on the Sean Carroll being the one that made the point about the value of c being redefined. It was one of the other the other This Week in Science podcasts - I think with it was either Lawrence Krause or Brian Greene.
If the result had panned out, it would have been exceedingly difficult to conclude anything but that the neutrinos were traveling FTL.
The point being that Relativity woudln't be overturned, only the value of c. Relativity would be deemed incomplete and we would need to discover why our previous calculations seemed to work so well using the highly precise but incorrect value of c.
Sean Carrol discussed this in depth on a recent episode of This Week in Science.
It's nice to have the math on your side, but that's not sufficient. You also need to have physics on your side. Based on Newton's equations the math showed it was possible to go faster then the speed of light if we just kept adding more energy to a particle. Turns out the physics was incomplete and now we know we can't do that.
The hope for those that desire FTL travel is that Relativity is incomplete as well.
Agreed - I was significantly rounding up to try to account for difficulties of maintaining a 1G acceleration when approaching higher percentages of c.
The trip would really only take you 3.6 (passenger time) if the 1G acceleration could be maintained for 50% of the distance.
Er, well, to be clear... FTL is out for the count because of Einstein, so for FTL to be possible means a up-ending of one of the fundamental assumptions of Relativity. It is hypothetically possible that this is the case, but it is not to be presumed lightly (unless you're writing a sci-fi story.)
We would all like for it to be true. Believe me, a huge number of people were hoping that despite the odds the "FTL neutrinos" would turn out to be real rather than an equipment failure.
The faster than light neutrinos wouldn't have overturned relativity though - it would have mostly just redifined the value of c. The calculations that were previously working despite using an incorrect value of c would need to be looked at, but it would be similar to what happened to Newtonian calculations after relativity.
Yes. A ship accelerating at 1g and then decelerating at 1g halfway there, could reach the Andromeda galaxy in less than 50 years (passenger time). The nearest star could be reached in less than 5 years.
Again, the engery and engineering requirements for this is way beyond anything we have today, but it is theoretically possible.
I agree completely with your overall point, but with constant 1g acceleration, the passengers in a ship could arrive somewhere within 100 years due to time dilation,
Of course, the energy required and the engineering challenges are immese, but theoritically the nearest star could be reached in less than 40 years (passenger time).
Cool - glad I could help.
Nukes were considered to be more damaging in the BSG universe than how you portrayed them. Both cylons and humans were very concerned any time nukes entered the picture (which was rare). There was a standoff where BSG was going to launch nukes against a cylon basestar and they backed down.
Battlestars were somewhat tougher than cylonss basestars though. The basestars were quasi-organic while the battlestars were heavily armored.
In the prequal movie (The Plan), the cyclon nukes that destroyed the colonies seemed to be smaller MIRV type warheads, so cylon warheads may tend to be less powerful than Colonial ones.