Not to bust the conspiracy bubble, but unless you're refering to use of Electric cars, how exactally do you plan to use Fusion power to drive mobile objects such as cars? Even if is international project happens, and the reactor starts right up as expected, it will be quite a ways more down the road before you'll find cars that are capable of making use of that power in any form.
Is a police officer that speeds gratuitiously, sidewipes people on high persuit chases, and eventually catches the bad guy (some murderer) a hero? He's done his job by placing his own life at risk, but he's also endangered the lives of others in the process. How about those officers that lie, cheat, or steal, but still catch the bad guy? Or all those officers that willingly follow the 'ticketing quota' system, since after all, there MUST be a certain amount of crime going on in the world for every individual?
No, I'm sorry. I've become a bit jaded, and simply 'being a cop' doesn't cut it as being heroic in my eye. I've seen too much crap that they pull, the apparent 'holier than thou' behavior they exhibit in pursuit of their job. To me, a hero is more than that, and it doesn't stop at the risk of death. It also most certainly requires more work than a choice of profession, regardless of what that profession might be.
As for the differences between respect for one's actions and calling someone a hero, perhaps you should consider the differences those two terms carry. They are not synonomous.
That's the thing, isn't it? Valve doesn't have to do anything to prosecute you, you must take them to court in what amounts to a "countersuit" because they imposed a punishment outside the legal juristiction of the courts. Get this... it should not be the responsibility of the accused/victim to bring a lawsuit to regain rights taken away by an entity outside the legal system.
A proper and legal way to punish someone that wronged you is to take the person to court, not to inflict what you consider due process upon them. In all honesty, it sounds very vigilante-ish.
Well, it's led to one decreased sale at the moment while I weigh the issues of:
1) Do I want to put up with this crap?
Being connected to the internet just to play my game bothers me in no small order, especially when I play a single player game installed on my computer. Why should I be using resources outside the scope of the game just to play? This interferes with use of a laptop to play while offline, playing a single player game should my internet connection (broadband) take a dive, or doing lan parties where the hosting individual doesn't have a good or any internet connection. Will I find myself in these situations often enough to be significantly agrivated (though, to me, any agrivation decreases the value of the game to me).
2) Is there any value added to this for me?
Is HL2 sufficiently advanced for me to even forget the fact that I'm going to be gangraped by copy protection every time I play?
I have absolutely no problem paying for the game, and would love to do just that, but if I find myself getting agrivated more than enjoying the game, I have just paid $$'s to be pissed off, and... hell, if that's what I want to do, I can just go drive around in traffic for free.
So, for now, I wait, and see if it's worth it. I may even wait until the point at which it's a gift, or until my interests turn to something else. I cannot imagine I am the only one leery of this kind of crap.
Protecting is all well and good, but protecting alone will not teach children right from wrong. Only education, usually best done by the parents, will teach them that, whether they are sheltered or not. If there is no indication as to a why they must learn about right from wrong (ie: they can't even see the world outside), they may blow off the teaching as irrelivent, since their lives are so proper anyways. It's more teaching and moderation, channeling and allowing them to see what they can handle as soon as they have the basics.
God forbid you have a child, sheltered and taught right from wrong, and then on their 18th birthday, you expose it all for them. What a way to watch a mind snap.
Funny thing right now is that much of the border isn't well guarded. For example, Oregon has miles upon miles of coastline that anyone can come ashore on, carrying whatever they like, and there are not nearly enough highway patrol members around to watch it all. Once it is within the borders, while it is still detectable fairly easily, most materials can be shipped around without too much of a hassle.
Besides, it doesn't even have to be anything fancy like Plutonium or Uranium. It could be sufficient quantities of radioactive dye or other such materials. All it has to do is be radioactive and be in sufficient quantities to cause illness over a wide area. Dirty bombs don't actually make nuclear explosions.
How much use would that ballistic missle defense shield have been against our own aircraft? Oops, none at all! Damn.
How much use would that ballistic missle defense shield have been against a dirty bomb? Oops, none again! Hmm.
How much... hopefully you see the point. Many of the tactics of terrorist warfare do not make use of major weapons or missles and rockets. Not only does that tie them into one area, but that requires an infrastructure on the order of an entire nation to support and build. That is usually not something terrorists generally have the support of.
If terrorists strike again, then they are likely to make use of the loose security we have within our free society. Fertilizer bombs, dirty bombs (throw nuclear fissionable material all over the place), grab a few more planes, etc. We have enough 'non-standard' armaments within the US that they hardly have to even consider building their own, they just have to buy or steal it from within the US. (Now, this is not to say we should be ever fearful of the next joe that wants to take our lives, meerly to be aware of the reality of the situation.)
Now I ask you, what use is a ballistic missle defense shield when the threat to human life comes from inside that shield? If your answer is none, why should we invest billions in something that is not likely to be used?
What you talk about is library reference problems between systems, NOT kernel recompilations forcing problems with the system above it. You can compile and replace the kernel many times on the same system, taking it from, say, 2.0 up to 2.6 all without having any major effect on programs compiled on the system already.
Kyoto shows a mind set that predates globalization because in the modern age polluters can just migrate to countries that don't sign it or to those who are given a blank check to pollute under it, namely "developing" countries.
Man, it's statements like this that make me glad we have the Polution industry, who's sole goal in life is to dump tons and tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and are so totally mobile they can just up and move their huge expensive plants overseas.
Seriously, though. What exactally do you think produces the most CO2 emissions in the US? Random factories like.. a car factory, or energy production plants, like.. oh, I don't know, a coal plant? Do you think it's easy for a coal plant producing electricity for the US power grid to just up and move to China so they can continue to burn coal and pipe their product back overseas to the US for sale? Seems a little far of a reach for modern power transmission lines, over all that water.
The only way companies can move to another country to continue using cheap and harmful manufacturing methods is if they are capable of shipping the product back to the location they sell it (the US) cheaper than it would cost to clean up their emissions. If this is not true, then the companies won't move just to continue poluting, but will rather take the cheap way out and install whatever manufacturing filters are needed to decrease their production of greenhouse gasses.
I wonder exactally what the problem is with software manufacturers that seem convinced that they own the product even after they sell it to you. Excuse me, is that like saying that once you buy a book, you have to check with the publisher before you open it up to your bookmark to read?
For systems where you connect to their servers and play on their machines, then yes, I can see where you can get off in refusing service if they don't play nicely. However, and I suppose I'll be corrected if wrong, HL2 at least seems to have a single player mode, and this Steam authentication happens no matter what mode you play in. Which basically opens up the possibility of Valve to shut you down from playing your single player mode if something crazy happens like.. their servers go down, or the internet gets fried one day.
Seems a bit excessive to me to require users to be connected to the internet just to open and unlock the copy of the game they paid for when it's running on nothing more than their system.
Not to mention the fact that someone could track anyone in the school after they figure out which RFID is theirs.
Not necessarily true, depending on the quality of the RFID badge and scanners. Have you ever seen those credit card like cards that companies use for secured access? Ever wondered "How they do that?" RFID. While I'm not a big fan of RFID on everything, carrying a badge with such a tag is commonplace for companies with secured areas. Oddly enough, dispite that, there still isn't a way to put a scanner in a room and actively scan who is where.
Eventually, when CCD resolution becomes very high and reliable, then optics will wind up being more important and talked about. Right now, digital photography is still developing, and CCDs vary quite a bit from low end to high end.
It's also generally assumed that if you pay the money for the better CCD/resolution digital camera, you also get better optics. So far as I've seen, this holds true (ie: Sony's 8 mpixel camera with large/elaborate lenses).
With optical cameras, the resolution and clarity of the image is more influenced by the optics (lens, etc) than the film, because the film is capable of storing an obscene resolution. A cheap little disposable camera is capable of having that same picture printed at 3"x4" or 8"x10", and the only thing that influences it is the optics that were used as to how clear that image is.
For digital cameras, the optics are not nearly as critical in defining the quality of image as the CCD is (photoreceptors). If the best you can do is 2.0 megapixels for top image size of the camera, the best you'll be able to print out with clarity is probably like 3"x4". However, if you take a camera capable of doing 5.2 megapixels, you can turn right around and print out that image at 8"x10" without loss in quality.
While optics do play a role in how clear the image is, if the photoreceptors are incapable of recording the resolution you're seeking for high quality, optics cease being the defining characteristic.
A toy doesn't have to have mystery to be entertaining. Lego's are certainly not mysterious. It's more of a way to play, to do something that inspires joy or amusement or excitement in you. If a Gyroscope doesn't do that, then cool, it doesn't do that for you. However, blanketing "all adults" as having outgrown the gyroscope is like saying all adults have outgrown toys.
Goin' on 30 soon and I still have a good number of mine. Now, if I could ever find my Micro Machines...
The hindenburg is a horrible example to use for this. For two reasons:
1) It was airborn and easily vented in huge quantities should the whole fragile structure of the balloon rupture (similar to how it did). People did survive, but when the balloon ruptured, it opened gaps larger than would happen in surface-based tanks. It was unlikely the balloon was under as much pressure as surface tanks would be either.
2) The outer layer of the zeplin was extremely poorly designed, to the point that (if my info is correct), it was a latent form of Thermite, a highly flamable substance.
Put those two together and that aircraft was a disaster waiting to happen. Besides, as I recall, it was something like static discharge or lightning that touched off the explosion, and even then it wasn't really an explosion but more of a fast intense burn, starting on the skin of the balloon and using what hydrogen didn't escape to further fuel the fire.
Both those conditions make the comparison between the Hindenburg and a hydrogen fuel station a far reach for similarity.
Ironically, there is a seperate 911 fee placed on your phone bill for exactally that service. However, you still have to pay state and local taxes. Why, if 911 is the reason, and being funded by some other fee?
I'm sure the victim of rape would prefer that the attacker's existance would end on their sentancing. For as intrusive and violent a crime as that can be, nothing short of a comperable revenge could ever come close to relieving the suffering of the victim. There's only one problem, the justice and legal system isn't charged with vengance, they're charged with ensuring that such crimes against it's citizens don't happen.
People confuse prison and fines with proper punishments. The point SHOULD be that the offender has something done to them (be it treatment, fine, property confescation, or in the most extreme, death) that honestly and truely keeps them from doing the crime they committed again. THAT is what the law and courts should do, not just declare some random, cookiecutter punishment and wind up using crimes as money making ventures.
Examples:
Person habitually and dangerously speeding?
Set up a framework with auto makers, dealers, and whatever else is necessary and install a throttle governer in their car that stops them from going over 55 mph. Ideal? No, but from a technical standpoint, it cures the problem. They want to just sell the car? That's where the framework comes in, as they are flagged by dealers not to be sold a vehicle without a governer. Not all the holes, but it puts a serious crimp in one's style.
Rape?
As brutal as it may seem, either hormonal or surgical treatments to end the biological impulse.
As you get higher, it does get fuzzier to meter out an appropriate act to end the crime, but the idea is good.
Of course, along with this, governments should strive to limit the number of laws on the books to only those necessary, enforcable, and for the common good. Laws that infringe upon personal freedoms without a very good reason (dictating what you can or can't do in your own home, for example) should not be on the books.
Here is an excellent question, and a notion of my own taxation philosophy.
Taxation should be necessary, relevent, and funds garnered from it reused in related affairs. Take, for instance, gasoline tax. This is (should) used to build and maintain roads, an act directly related to the consumption of gasoline. It even makes sense. The more gasoline you buy, the more you are driving, and the more wear you put on the road. Similarly, the more you wear the road down, so too should you aid more in repairing same.
Now, the question about taxing phone service and VoIP. Is this a necessary taxation? Is there some reason why it may be necessary for the government to seek money out of this business? Under what general principle is this money to be used? Are they attempting to compare sales tax (property acquisition) to service sales, something that does not seem to be taxed? (ie: IIRC, my cable internet bill is not taxed, and I don't recall any other cases where 'service' with no product is taxed) Seems to be to be a rather vague and specious reason to tax VoIP "just because" phone service was taxed. VoIP is a completely different breed of service, and by itself does not even require a service provider to function (direct IP to IP calls).
Screw the government if it thinks it needs to tax things just out of principle. This is how taxes should be driven, out of a need by the government to fund a related community-at-large project. I honestly don't see phone taxes as doing anything of the sort. If they can't come up with a good reason why VoIP needs to be taxed, and what that money is going to be used for, then they do not need to tax it.
Easy fix for that. Get the bearing 'bomb' into orbit then fire off their payload one by one (or in quick succession in a varying pattern). Keeps them in orbit (not fired out outwards or inwards) and the velocity imparted to the bearings won't fling them into a significantly higher orbit.
There are ways to make a 'shield' around low earth orbit without using explosives.
Re:The times are a changin'
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
Hell, I remember playing System Shock 2. Weapons? Ya, there were a ton of weapons, but you could only wield a few effectively, and even then, you still had to find ammo for them all, since it didn't just spontanious appear in your hands. That made the game just a bit more interesting, though my preference for the shotgun was just a little too predictable (the mutants that carried shotguns had least one shell in them).
Are you refering to smog, ie: low to the ground polution? It seems like you are, since ironically C02 is colorless and odorless.
Perhaps you confuse smog with CO2 pollution? That would seem to be the issue. Perhaps you should read up on the two phenomenon. Be an eye opener all around.
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Not to bust the conspiracy bubble, but unless you're refering to use of Electric cars, how exactally do you plan to use Fusion power to drive mobile objects such as cars? Even if is international project happens, and the reactor starts right up as expected, it will be quite a ways more down the road before you'll find cars that are capable of making use of that power in any form.
Is a police officer that speeds gratuitiously, sidewipes people on high persuit chases, and eventually catches the bad guy (some murderer) a hero? He's done his job by placing his own life at risk, but he's also endangered the lives of others in the process. How about those officers that lie, cheat, or steal, but still catch the bad guy? Or all those officers that willingly follow the 'ticketing quota' system, since after all, there MUST be a certain amount of crime going on in the world for every individual?
No, I'm sorry. I've become a bit jaded, and simply 'being a cop' doesn't cut it as being heroic in my eye. I've seen too much crap that they pull, the apparent 'holier than thou' behavior they exhibit in pursuit of their job. To me, a hero is more than that, and it doesn't stop at the risk of death. It also most certainly requires more work than a choice of profession, regardless of what that profession might be.
As for the differences between respect for one's actions and calling someone a hero, perhaps you should consider the differences those two terms carry. They are not synonomous.
A proper and legal way to punish someone that wronged you is to take the person to court, not to inflict what you consider due process upon them. In all honesty, it sounds very vigilante-ish.
Well, it's led to one decreased sale at the moment while I weigh the issues of:
1) Do I want to put up with this crap?
Being connected to the internet just to play my game bothers me in no small order, especially when I play a single player game installed on my computer. Why should I be using resources outside the scope of the game just to play? This interferes with use of a laptop to play while offline, playing a single player game should my internet connection (broadband) take a dive, or doing lan parties where the hosting individual doesn't have a good or any internet connection. Will I find myself in these situations often enough to be significantly agrivated (though, to me, any agrivation decreases the value of the game to me).
2) Is there any value added to this for me?
Is HL2 sufficiently advanced for me to even forget the fact that I'm going to be gangraped by copy protection every time I play?
I have absolutely no problem paying for the game, and would love to do just that, but if I find myself getting agrivated more than enjoying the game, I have just paid $$'s to be pissed off, and... hell, if that's what I want to do, I can just go drive around in traffic for free.
So, for now, I wait, and see if it's worth it. I may even wait until the point at which it's a gift, or until my interests turn to something else. I cannot imagine I am the only one leery of this kind of crap.
Protecting is all well and good, but protecting alone will not teach children right from wrong. Only education, usually best done by the parents, will teach them that, whether they are sheltered or not. If there is no indication as to a why they must learn about right from wrong (ie: they can't even see the world outside), they may blow off the teaching as irrelivent, since their lives are so proper anyways. It's more teaching and moderation, channeling and allowing them to see what they can handle as soon as they have the basics.
God forbid you have a child, sheltered and taught right from wrong, and then on their 18th birthday, you expose it all for them. What a way to watch a mind snap.
Funny thing right now is that much of the border isn't well guarded. For example, Oregon has miles upon miles of coastline that anyone can come ashore on, carrying whatever they like, and there are not nearly enough highway patrol members around to watch it all. Once it is within the borders, while it is still detectable fairly easily, most materials can be shipped around without too much of a hassle.
Besides, it doesn't even have to be anything fancy like Plutonium or Uranium. It could be sufficient quantities of radioactive dye or other such materials. All it has to do is be radioactive and be in sufficient quantities to cause illness over a wide area. Dirty bombs don't actually make nuclear explosions.
How much use would that ballistic missle defense shield have been against our own aircraft? Oops, none at all! Damn.
How much use would that ballistic missle defense shield have been against a dirty bomb? Oops, none again! Hmm.
How much... hopefully you see the point. Many of the tactics of terrorist warfare do not make use of major weapons or missles and rockets. Not only does that tie them into one area, but that requires an infrastructure on the order of an entire nation to support and build. That is usually not something terrorists generally have the support of.
If terrorists strike again, then they are likely to make use of the loose security we have within our free society. Fertilizer bombs, dirty bombs (throw nuclear fissionable material all over the place), grab a few more planes, etc. We have enough 'non-standard' armaments within the US that they hardly have to even consider building their own, they just have to buy or steal it from within the US. (Now, this is not to say we should be ever fearful of the next joe that wants to take our lives, meerly to be aware of the reality of the situation.)
Now I ask you, what use is a ballistic missle defense shield when the threat to human life comes from inside that shield? If your answer is none, why should we invest billions in something that is not likely to be used?
What you talk about is library reference problems between systems, NOT kernel recompilations forcing problems with the system above it. You can compile and replace the kernel many times on the same system, taking it from, say, 2.0 up to 2.6 all without having any major effect on programs compiled on the system already.
Man, it's statements like this that make me glad we have the Polution industry, who's sole goal in life is to dump tons and tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and are so totally mobile they can just up and move their huge expensive plants overseas.
Seriously, though. What exactally do you think produces the most CO2 emissions in the US? Random factories like.. a car factory, or energy production plants, like.. oh, I don't know, a coal plant? Do you think it's easy for a coal plant producing electricity for the US power grid to just up and move to China so they can continue to burn coal and pipe their product back overseas to the US for sale? Seems a little far of a reach for modern power transmission lines, over all that water.
The only way companies can move to another country to continue using cheap and harmful manufacturing methods is if they are capable of shipping the product back to the location they sell it (the US) cheaper than it would cost to clean up their emissions. If this is not true, then the companies won't move just to continue poluting, but will rather take the cheap way out and install whatever manufacturing filters are needed to decrease their production of greenhouse gasses.
I wonder exactally what the problem is with software manufacturers that seem convinced that they own the product even after they sell it to you. Excuse me, is that like saying that once you buy a book, you have to check with the publisher before you open it up to your bookmark to read?
For systems where you connect to their servers and play on their machines, then yes, I can see where you can get off in refusing service if they don't play nicely. However, and I suppose I'll be corrected if wrong, HL2 at least seems to have a single player mode, and this Steam authentication happens no matter what mode you play in. Which basically opens up the possibility of Valve to shut you down from playing your single player mode if something crazy happens like.. their servers go down, or the internet gets fried one day.
Seems a bit excessive to me to require users to be connected to the internet just to open and unlock the copy of the game they paid for when it's running on nothing more than their system.
Not necessarily true, depending on the quality of the RFID badge and scanners. Have you ever seen those credit card like cards that companies use for secured access? Ever wondered "How they do that?" RFID. While I'm not a big fan of RFID on everything, carrying a badge with such a tag is commonplace for companies with secured areas. Oddly enough, dispite that, there still isn't a way to put a scanner in a room and actively scan who is where.
You think you need to have some special program from the MPAA to notice that huge 600+ meg file sitting over there chewing up your disk space?
Eventually, when CCD resolution becomes very high and reliable, then optics will wind up being more important and talked about. Right now, digital photography is still developing, and CCDs vary quite a bit from low end to high end.
It's also generally assumed that if you pay the money for the better CCD/resolution digital camera, you also get better optics. So far as I've seen, this holds true (ie: Sony's 8 mpixel camera with large/elaborate lenses).
It's funny.
Brittan probably thought of the revolutionaries as terrorists. We thought of them as revolutionaries.
Perspective sure has a hefty influence on whether people committing acts of violence are good or bad, doesn't it?
It isn't lunacy.
With optical cameras, the resolution and clarity of the image is more influenced by the optics (lens, etc) than the film, because the film is capable of storing an obscene resolution. A cheap little disposable camera is capable of having that same picture printed at 3"x4" or 8"x10", and the only thing that influences it is the optics that were used as to how clear that image is.
For digital cameras, the optics are not nearly as critical in defining the quality of image as the CCD is (photoreceptors). If the best you can do is 2.0 megapixels for top image size of the camera, the best you'll be able to print out with clarity is probably like 3"x4". However, if you take a camera capable of doing 5.2 megapixels, you can turn right around and print out that image at 8"x10" without loss in quality.
While optics do play a role in how clear the image is, if the photoreceptors are incapable of recording the resolution you're seeking for high quality, optics cease being the defining characteristic.
A toy doesn't have to have mystery to be entertaining. Lego's are certainly not mysterious. It's more of a way to play, to do something that inspires joy or amusement or excitement in you. If a Gyroscope doesn't do that, then cool, it doesn't do that for you. However, blanketing "all adults" as having outgrown the gyroscope is like saying all adults have outgrown toys.
Goin' on 30 soon and I still have a good number of mine. Now, if I could ever find my Micro Machines...
The hindenburg is a horrible example to use for this. For two reasons:
1) It was airborn and easily vented in huge quantities should the whole fragile structure of the balloon rupture (similar to how it did). People did survive, but when the balloon ruptured, it opened gaps larger than would happen in surface-based tanks. It was unlikely the balloon was under as much pressure as surface tanks would be either.
2) The outer layer of the zeplin was extremely poorly designed, to the point that (if my info is correct), it was a latent form of Thermite, a highly flamable substance.
Put those two together and that aircraft was a disaster waiting to happen. Besides, as I recall, it was something like static discharge or lightning that touched off the explosion, and even then it wasn't really an explosion but more of a fast intense burn, starting on the skin of the balloon and using what hydrogen didn't escape to further fuel the fire.
Both those conditions make the comparison between the Hindenburg and a hydrogen fuel station a far reach for similarity.
Ironically, there is a seperate 911 fee placed on your phone bill for exactally that service. However, you still have to pay state and local taxes. Why, if 911 is the reason, and being funded by some other fee?
I'm sure the victim of rape would prefer that the attacker's existance would end on their sentancing. For as intrusive and violent a crime as that can be, nothing short of a comperable revenge could ever come close to relieving the suffering of the victim. There's only one problem, the justice and legal system isn't charged with vengance, they're charged with ensuring that such crimes against it's citizens don't happen.
People confuse prison and fines with proper punishments. The point SHOULD be that the offender has something done to them (be it treatment, fine, property confescation, or in the most extreme, death) that honestly and truely keeps them from doing the crime they committed again. THAT is what the law and courts should do, not just declare some random, cookiecutter punishment and wind up using crimes as money making ventures.
Examples:
Person habitually and dangerously speeding?
Set up a framework with auto makers, dealers, and whatever else is necessary and install a throttle governer in their car that stops them from going over 55 mph. Ideal? No, but from a technical standpoint, it cures the problem. They want to just sell the car? That's where the framework comes in, as they are flagged by dealers not to be sold a vehicle without a governer. Not all the holes, but it puts a serious crimp in one's style.
Rape?
As brutal as it may seem, either hormonal or surgical treatments to end the biological impulse.
As you get higher, it does get fuzzier to meter out an appropriate act to end the crime, but the idea is good.
Of course, along with this, governments should strive to limit the number of laws on the books to only those necessary, enforcable, and for the common good. Laws that infringe upon personal freedoms without a very good reason (dictating what you can or can't do in your own home, for example) should not be on the books.
Here is an excellent question, and a notion of my own taxation philosophy.
Taxation should be necessary, relevent, and funds garnered from it reused in related affairs. Take, for instance, gasoline tax. This is (should) used to build and maintain roads, an act directly related to the consumption of gasoline. It even makes sense. The more gasoline you buy, the more you are driving, and the more wear you put on the road. Similarly, the more you wear the road down, so too should you aid more in repairing same.
Now, the question about taxing phone service and VoIP. Is this a necessary taxation? Is there some reason why it may be necessary for the government to seek money out of this business? Under what general principle is this money to be used? Are they attempting to compare sales tax (property acquisition) to service sales, something that does not seem to be taxed? (ie: IIRC, my cable internet bill is not taxed, and I don't recall any other cases where 'service' with no product is taxed) Seems to be to be a rather vague and specious reason to tax VoIP "just because" phone service was taxed. VoIP is a completely different breed of service, and by itself does not even require a service provider to function (direct IP to IP calls).
Screw the government if it thinks it needs to tax things just out of principle. This is how taxes should be driven, out of a need by the government to fund a related community-at-large project. I honestly don't see phone taxes as doing anything of the sort. If they can't come up with a good reason why VoIP needs to be taxed, and what that money is going to be used for, then they do not need to tax it.
Easy fix for that. Get the bearing 'bomb' into orbit then fire off their payload one by one (or in quick succession in a varying pattern). Keeps them in orbit (not fired out outwards or inwards) and the velocity imparted to the bearings won't fling them into a significantly higher orbit.
There are ways to make a 'shield' around low earth orbit without using explosives.
Hell, I remember playing System Shock 2. Weapons? Ya, there were a ton of weapons, but you could only wield a few effectively, and even then, you still had to find ammo for them all, since it didn't just spontanious appear in your hands. That made the game just a bit more interesting, though my preference for the shotgun was just a little too predictable (the mutants that carried shotguns had least one shell in them).
Are you refering to smog, ie: low to the ground polution? It seems like you are, since ironically C02 is colorless and odorless.
Perhaps you confuse smog with CO2 pollution? That would seem to be the issue. Perhaps you should read up on the two phenomenon. Be an eye opener all around.
Returned a faulty laptop cooling pad (fans were buzzing). Had a receipt. No ID requested.
Someone downloads the movie, shitty resolution (even 800x600 doesn't compare to today's hyper-huge-screen theaters), crappy sound.
Just FYI, Some theaters have headphone jacks for the hearing impaired. Heaphone out to line in = the win for clear sound.