No contamination resulted because the capsule (typically a small welded stainless steel container that holds a wire containing cobalt ) was not itself opened.
And replace it with a better, less "piss-poor" single payer system or with a "cut-throat private system"?
Private system always ends up being a "cut-throat" system. Only question is if it ends up being run by a group of mutually competitive companies (in theory - in practice they are more like allies as they have the same goals and interests for which they then lobby) - or by a single monopoly. Neither of which is there to serve the needed but to acquire profit.
The main problem with availability of service is not the signal range - it's power. As in power to RUN the communication machine.
With mobile phones or other solutions requiring external power supply to run, in case of an actual emergency you have a serial power outage issue. Both the network AND the communication device have to have working power supply - so you get twice the chance of failure compared to POTS which supplies the power to the communication device through the network.
Plus, it is a separate source of power going into the disaster area in case of emergency. You can't really run your big screen TV or boil water on it, but you can sure as hell connect a radio or a charger for your GPS/radio/flashlight/WiFi-enabled smartphone to it and at least get the needed information in and maybe get some of it out.
During the war (here in Bosnia) we had electricity on for only couple of hours each day. So people would routinely connect radios to the phone lines to listen to the news - despite warnings to stop doing that. You simply can't do that with a mobile or VoIP (unless it runs on the power supplied by the POTS).
At best, making every cell-tower and every mobile phone solar powered would provide such functionality. Up to the point where cell-towers are far more vulnerable to disruptions from everything that flies, falls, blows, burns or radiates.
Basically, America's system can't ever work, and never really will except for the rich.
Doesn't that actually imply that simply throwing money at the problem actually works?
US health system is built to accommodate most those who can afford it - clearly it works splendidly for that purpose. Keep your rich healthy and they'll live longer, work longer and grow richer.
A bunch of people, uneducated in law or the actual matter of the trial, who really don't want to be there but are too stupid to come up with an excuse to be let go? So they are bored, angry and just want to go home?
Or worse - people who think that it is their patriotic duty to pass judgement on others.
I heard that there is a small chance that smoking that weed may turn one into a human paraquat. There was one rather famous case of that happening back in the nineties.
social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers
Seems to me more like "social media helps to uncover insane asshats among government workers". Seriously, this guy apparently prejudiced against someone in a sexual assault case based on a font - he just gave everyone with whose cases he was involved a cause to ask for a retrial. What are the chances an innocent person went to jail cause he didn't like their font or their hair style?
Once again this just proves that if you give asshats enough rope, they will eventually hang themselves with it. I say "thumbs up" for the social media.
It damages the ability of others to act. It damages the ability of others to go about their day as they wish.
If I come and sit on your favorite chair in the restaurant I did not "damage" your ability to sit on that chair. I've merely hindered it for a while.
Damage is a permanent alteration to something which reduces the functionality of said something.
You won't suddenly forget how to sit nor will the particular chair become unusable forever because I sat in it. That is... unless you have a problem with someone of my color/age/sex/ethnicity/political affiliation/taste/whatever "contaminating" a chair available to the public, which you've gotten emotionally attached to. I that case - you have bigger problems then me "breaking your ability to enjoy your special chair".
Violence will meet violence. Making people angry and then having them respond is anger is totally understandable. That is after all the point of the "non violent" action, to make some people angry, Punching them is hardly any different.
So by that logic, cause your bullshit nonsense of a comment is hurting me by its sheer lack of logic or reason, causing my brain to try to comprehend such nonsense by trying to think like you, and thereby making me dumber... I am free to gun you down in the middle of the street. Or run you over with a car. Or poison the town's water supply cause there's a chance that I will get you too. Before I burn it all down.
Hey! You were hurting my brain. That's violence and you're making me angry. I'm just taking it to the logical conclusion according to your appropriate response scale. Something makes you angry - you punch someone. Someone hurts your brain - you poison and cremate that person and everything in a five mile radius around them. Appropriately and understandably.
What happened? Someone died and left you that 5-digit ID? You won it in a poker game? You fell down some stairs and now you're dumber? You got old, senile and grumpy?
Or were you always such an illogical obnoxious prick?
On a second thought, you better not answer that. I don't have time to kill and burn more than everything in a 5 miles around someone.
It will also most probably be short range cause unlike the army and NSA police needs a warrant to snoop on half the city at once, which one of those flying at 1000 feet would probably be doing. Also, if it's gonna cover an area effectively it will have to be capable of hovering in urban environments without crashing into buildings when wind hits it from one side AND should it fall down on unsuspecting civilians it should not be able to crush and kill anyone. Also, being a police drone, it should be able to fit into a trunk of a police cruiser.
Again, we're talking police and criminals in an urban area and not Afghanistan. Taking all that in account, it will have to be of limited size, weight, flying and spying range and it will most definitely have no firepower.
As for the flying altitude... Seriously... you think the guys firing AKs at police drones will bother with ranging them? They'll simply rain a cloud of bullets on the drone. If it goes down - good, it was in the range, let's get outta here. It doesn't - it's out of the range, let's get outta here.
They are not there on some recon mission or on their way to their secret mountain stronghold so it's vital to them to cover their tracks nor are they in it to prove their sharpshooting skills. They are trying to deal drugs and not get caught doing it. Shooting at a drone is just cheap and affordable flak.
We never had that. At best, we had precious few enlightened men during some ages. Everyone else always danced and still dances to the witchdoctor's drum.
Presently we are in an age where we have more enlightened men than ever before - but we also have a lot more witchdoctors and dancers. But we did win a battle or two along the way. E.g. You won't be burned at a stake for using a match or a lighter any more, or be accused of stealing someone's soul when taking a photo of them. It adds up.
Couple of thousand years more and no one will believe in astrology anymore. Probably.
How about going through Sci-Fi books and patenting EVERYTHING left and right - androids to zappers? And just letting them run out.
Most of those things won't be nowhere near a working model for centuries - and should they one day be invented they'd automagically be in public domain due to their patents having already run out.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
No contamination resulted because the capsule (typically a small welded stainless steel container that holds a wire containing cobalt ) was not itself opened.
And replace it with a better, less "piss-poor" single payer system or with a "cut-throat private system"?
Private system always ends up being a "cut-throat" system.
Only question is if it ends up being run by a group of mutually competitive companies (in theory - in practice they are more like allies as they have the same goals and interests for which they then lobby) - or by a single monopoly.
Neither of which is there to serve the needed but to acquire profit.
The main problem with availability of service is not the signal range - it's power.
As in power to RUN the communication machine.
With mobile phones or other solutions requiring external power supply to run, in case of an actual emergency you have a serial power outage issue.
Both the network AND the communication device have to have working power supply - so you get twice the chance of failure compared to POTS which supplies the power to the communication device through the network.
Plus, it is a separate source of power going into the disaster area in case of emergency.
You can't really run your big screen TV or boil water on it, but you can sure as hell connect a radio or a charger for your GPS/radio/flashlight/WiFi-enabled smartphone to it and at least get the needed information in and maybe get some of it out.
During the war (here in Bosnia) we had electricity on for only couple of hours each day.
So people would routinely connect radios to the phone lines to listen to the news - despite warnings to stop doing that.
You simply can't do that with a mobile or VoIP (unless it runs on the power supplied by the POTS).
At best, making every cell-tower and every mobile phone solar powered would provide such functionality.
Up to the point where cell-towers are far more vulnerable to disruptions from everything that flies, falls, blows, burns or radiates.
You are describing a solution, not a problem.
There's probably even a huge tax write-off for supporting an entire army and thus boosting the economy.
Added later not even as an afterthought and with much struggle against it.
AND only for a small section of the population.
Also, emphasis on MOST in "built to accommodate most".
Nothing that hasn't been seen among the poor or the well off too.
Or among the animals for that matter.
I fail to see any evidence of the evolution of the rich.
Basically, America's system can't ever work, and never really will except for the rich.
Doesn't that actually imply that simply throwing money at the problem actually works?
US health system is built to accommodate most those who can afford it - clearly it works splendidly for that purpose.
Keep your rich healthy and they'll live longer, work longer and grow richer.
A bunch of people, uneducated in law or the actual matter of the trial, who really don't want to be there but are too stupid to come up with an excuse to be let go?
So they are bored, angry and just want to go home?
Or worse - people who think that it is their patriotic duty to pass judgement on others.
I heard that there is a small chance that smoking that weed may turn one into a human paraquat.
There was one rather famous case of that happening back in the nineties.
social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers
Seems to me more like "social media helps to uncover insane asshats among government workers".
Seriously, this guy apparently prejudiced against someone in a sexual assault case based on a font - he just gave everyone with whose cases he was involved a cause to ask for a retrial.
What are the chances an innocent person went to jail cause he didn't like their font or their hair style?
Once again this just proves that if you give asshats enough rope, they will eventually hang themselves with it.
I say "thumbs up" for the social media.
It damages the ability of others to act. It damages the ability of others to go about their day as they wish.
If I come and sit on your favorite chair in the restaurant I did not "damage" your ability to sit on that chair.
I've merely hindered it for a while.
Damage is a permanent alteration to something which reduces the functionality of said something.
You won't suddenly forget how to sit nor will the particular chair become unusable forever because I sat in it.
That is... unless you have a problem with someone of my color/age/sex/ethnicity/political affiliation/taste/whatever "contaminating" a chair available to the public, which you've gotten emotionally attached to.
I that case - you have bigger problems then me "breaking your ability to enjoy your special chair".
Violence will meet violence. Making people angry and then having them respond is anger is totally understandable. That is after all the point of the "non violent" action, to make some people angry, Punching them is hardly any different.
So by that logic, cause your bullshit nonsense of a comment is hurting me by its sheer lack of logic or reason, causing my brain to try to comprehend such nonsense by trying to think like you, and thereby making me dumber... I am free to gun you down in the middle of the street.
Or run you over with a car. Or poison the town's water supply cause there's a chance that I will get you too. Before I burn it all down.
Hey! You were hurting my brain. That's violence and you're making me angry.
I'm just taking it to the logical conclusion according to your appropriate response scale.
Something makes you angry - you punch someone.
Someone hurts your brain - you poison and cremate that person and everything in a five mile radius around them.
Appropriately and understandably.
What happened?
Someone died and left you that 5-digit ID?
You won it in a poker game?
You fell down some stairs and now you're dumber?
You got old, senile and grumpy?
Or were you always such an illogical obnoxious prick?
On a second thought, you better not answer that.
I don't have time to kill and burn more than everything in a 5 miles around someone.
I think I saw such a scenario in one of those Mel Gibson/Danny Glover documentaries.
Or was it one with Arnold Braunschweiger?
The comment you were replying to was a joke.
You insensitive clod.
Half the joke is getting the point in on the first try.
This is not a joking matter.
Tech like this can spare those in need a lot of pain.
You insensitive prick.
If it's a police UAV it will be a standard model.
It will also most probably be short range cause unlike the army and NSA police needs a warrant to snoop on half the city at once, which one of those flying at 1000 feet would probably be doing.
Also, if it's gonna cover an area effectively it will have to be capable of hovering in urban environments without crashing into buildings when wind hits it from one side AND should it fall down on unsuspecting civilians it should not be able to crush and kill anyone.
Also, being a police drone, it should be able to fit into a trunk of a police cruiser.
Again, we're talking police and criminals in an urban area and not Afghanistan.
Taking all that in account, it will have to be of limited size, weight, flying and spying range and it will most definitely have no firepower.
As for the flying altitude...
Seriously... you think the guys firing AKs at police drones will bother with ranging them?
They'll simply rain a cloud of bullets on the drone.
If it goes down - good, it was in the range, let's get outta here. It doesn't - it's out of the range, let's get outta here.
They are not there on some recon mission or on their way to their secret mountain stronghold so it's vital to them to cover their tracks nor are they in it to prove their sharpshooting skills.
They are trying to deal drugs and not get caught doing it.
Shooting at a drone is just cheap and affordable flak.
Bullets are also tiny - but there are many of them.
And as long as the coordinates of some of them overlap with those "57 cm across"...
5 guys with AKs can create a bullet ridden area that will quickly cover those 57 cm and more.
Don't think of it as sharpshooting - think flak.
What about you and a couple of your friends armed with AKs?
If I recall correctly that kind of shooting is effective up to 600 meters (concentrated firing).
...with a single bullet.
They will more likely be willing to simultaneously empty several clips of several automatic rifles in the general direction of the target.
oil/fluid leaks dripping on to cataclysmic converters...
Well, there's your problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjuptfaTqyo
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Distant_Origin_(episode)
We never had that.
At best, we had precious few enlightened men during some ages. Everyone else always danced and still dances to the witchdoctor's drum.
Presently we are in an age where we have more enlightened men than ever before - but we also have a lot more witchdoctors and dancers.
But we did win a battle or two along the way.
E.g. You won't be burned at a stake for using a match or a lighter any more, or be accused of stealing someone's soul when taking a photo of them.
It adds up.
Couple of thousand years more and no one will believe in astrology anymore. Probably.
Wow! You make no sensible comment or claim AND your arguments are all ad hominems.
Your mom must be proud.
By proud I mean she killed herself cause she couldn't stand bringing such a sorry excuse for a biped to the world.
How about going through Sci-Fi books and patenting EVERYTHING left and right - androids to zappers?
And just letting them run out.
Most of those things won't be nowhere near a working model for centuries - and should they one day be invented they'd automagically be in public domain due to their patents having already run out.