Close. Plenty of people pay their taxes, whether they want to or not.
The problem is that politicians would then rather spend those taxes on something new and shiny than on maintaining the existing infrastructure. New and shiny gets votes, repair jobs don't.
Not knowing chemistry can kill you. (Like, you mix chlorine bleach and drain cleaner and die from chlorine fumes -- among many other scenarios.)
Not knowing public speaking, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML is far less likely to be fatal. Moreover, it's a lot easier to teach yourself the latter than the former, at least without getting put on some DHS watch list (although political science and public speaking might be iffy there too). School chem labs generally beat what you can do at home.
Mind, my dad gave me my first chemistry set for my seventh birthday.
Shooting to wound is enough to get you killed -- as any combat shooting instructor will tell you.
If you're actually in such a situation, you're pumped so full of adrenaline it's all you can do to shoot straight at all (shakes); your best bet is to aim for the center of mass and hope you hit something that will put the guy down so that he can't return fire/stab you/bludgeon you to death with a shovel. (The latter is a risk if you're using too small a caliber -- real incident.)
Or perhaps you believed all those westerns where the good guy can shoot the villain's gun out of his hand?
This reminds me of the old remark about Unix (and Linux) being very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
The nice thing about not being beholden to commercial interests -- as open source isn't -- is that it doesn't have to compromise to make the lowest common denominator happy.
Ubuntu is hardly the only distro out there.
(Personally I don't give much of a rat's ass about computer games; when it comes down it they're all about playing against a programmer who is actually no longer playing, and a random number generator. Cheap thrills. For my other 3D needs I have a Radeon card.)
I've been writing software for nearly 20 years and this has never been the case anywhere I've worked.
Then I can only conclude you've been working in the shrinkwrap software industry, or whatever they're calling it this week. In businesses where software is part of the infrastructure rather than the sole product, then yes, specifications are very real, and tend to be stable. Although come to think of it, when I was in the software biz, we took specs pretty seriously too. Mind, we weren't doing phone apps or mass-market software-in-a-box, we were doing enterprise level systems where you weren't worth talking to unless you were thinking of spending at least a half-million on the product.
(As for complete well, I could probably write a book on "debugging the spec". But debugging the spec means a lot of time not spent on debugging the program.)
Apple INVENTED Swipe to Unlock (or at least patented it first) it was a big deal when it first came out..
Funny, I've had this gizmo on my garden gate that I swipe to unlock. It's been there for decades.
Patented != invented, as any idiot who has been paying attention to what the PTO has been selling* would know.
*The PTO finances itself with fees, not tax money. It collects more when it issues a patent than when it doesn't. There's no money-back guarantee that the patent will stand up in court -- but usually it doesn't have to.
To defeat the squirrels, just reinforce the layer of bug screen (whether fiber or metal) with a layer of chicken wire. Then reinforce that with a layer of chain-link fencing if you're worried about the zombie apocalypse.
Anybody know a way to speed up the rotation of a planet?
Slam a (largish) moon into it at a shallow angle.
Mind, that tends to melt the surface of the planet, so you'll need to leave it for a few hundred thousand years to cool off.
Less dramatic is to put one or more dense moons in low orbit around the planet and let tidal drag do the work. That still tends to heat up the surface, though, so expect volcanoes. (See Jupiter's moon Io, for example.)
Moving said moons is left as an exercise for the reader.;-)
You can't fool Mother Nature at all. Anything you can do, she permitted. Which is not at all to say that we know all that she permits. Saying causality is violated merely because some information leaked beyond its light cone is like saying you're predicting the future because you expect thunder some seconds after seeing a lightning flash.
The weird thing is, if the supernova 1987a observation (not experiment!) implies that neutrinos move at lightspeed, then they can't have mass. Massy neutrinos would be retarded by the gravitational field of the star going supernova to the extent that they should have arrived considerably later.
(I forget the number -- worked it out once -- but long enough that it's unlikely anyone would have correlated the simultaneous detection of bursts at several neutrino observatories with the 1987a event. Hell, if the arrival time didn't so closely coincide with the light pulse from 1987a, they could have been from an earlier supernova -- but the coincidence is too bizarre.)
I suppose it's possible that they only have mass in some of their oscillation states, not all of them. Which leads to a whole 'nother crop of interesting questions.
The problem is that FTL constitutes time travel, and breaks causality
I've yet to see anyone spout this who really understood what they were talking about, rather than just parroting something they'd heard or read somewhere.
The fact is it doesn't, and causality is overrated.
In an absolute objective reference frame* (wait for it!) mere FTL doesn't constitute time travel. Faster than infinite speed would, sure, but not something as slow as light (which takes hours to even get out of the solar system). But, you protest, Einstein (et al) proved that there are no absolute reference frames, that everything is relative. Well, yes, he did show that (within the bounds of the currently observable -- there are some niggly quantum thingies which raise issues). But that particular observation doesn't prove that FTL equals time travel. That old saw is as much bad sci-fi as anything else.
*Or as The Doctor would put it, "a non-linear, non-subjective point of view";-)
In fact it would break most of modern physics if possible.
An event (breaking then-modern physics) which seems to happen every couple of generations.
Problem is the false alarms. There are a lot of possible inventions or interpretations of unusual phenomena which 'break modern physics', the trick is figuring out which are valid and which aren't, not in dismissing them all merely because they conflict with the teachings of the previous generation.
The structure of reality never falls apart, only your perception of it.
Reality is what it is. If FTL works (and to a degree we seem to have an existence proof that it does in the expansion of the early universe) and if it does imply time travel (it doesn't necessarily; it's a perception thing), then reality was always that way and we're just misunderstanding it.
Perception is a fragile thing. You can build up an elaborate structure of "interlocking ideas about the structure of space time and causality which require a speed limit" -- and if that all comes tumbling down because of some new insight (wouldn't be the first time in physics by a long shot) it's not reality that was at fault.
If you think it IS in fact possible, then you fundamentally do not understand what the speed of light is, why it is, or how space-time works.
On the contrary, your statement that it is not possible demonstrates your lack of understanding of how space-time works.
Consider that shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was expanding faster than light. Now go read up on the Alcubierre metric and van den Broek's and others' lower-energy solutions to same. (Sure, Finazzi instability is a consideration, but by no means proven and there may be workarounds.)
Granted, we're not talking about Newtonian 'accelerate through normal space to and beyond lightspeed' here. Just as well, because the energy requirements for that (if it could work at all, which it can't) are ridiculous.
But flatly stating that "FTL is not possible. Period." reveals a profound ignorance and an utter failure of imagination.
Several posters have rightly pointed out the problems with 'printing' a whole gun, namely the need for hardened and high-pressure-resistant parts.
However, if you put that requirement in the ammo instead and make the gun essentially a rocket launcher, like the Gyrojet weapons developed in the 1960s, you probably could print the whole thing (except maybe for some springs).
Problem is that since nobody (AFAIK) makes Gyrojet ammo any more, the rounds -- which were never cheap compared to conventional ammo -- now cost in the range of $100 a piece.
If the stuff on the pole is 110V drops to the surrounding houses
It isn't. For one, drops to houses are 220V three phase, the house splits that into two 110V circuits. For another, that's the voltage that comes out of the "pole pigs", the trash-can sized cylindrical transformers which supply power to several adjacent houses. Transmission voltage between poles is going to be at least 440 V, and often higher.
And vice-versa. You can buy (or could) low-dose codeine-containing pain relievers over the counter in Canada, not in the US. (Higher dose requires a script.)
Also, [citation needed] for needing a script for Excedrin -- there's nothing in it but acetaminophen (Tylenol), aspirin and caffeine.
For utility companies using each other's poles, there are lease agreements in place. Typically one utility will own the pole (electric or phone company) and others (cable, etc) will lease rights to use it. (The owner also has to pay property tax on it. I once architected software to manage a telco's outside plant assets, so I had to know this stuff.)
So yes, trespassing and in a way theft of service if the use of the pole is not being paid for. Authorization from the city doesn't matter if the city doesn't own the pole, they need authorization from the owner.
The boxes should, IMHO, have clear identification on the outside of them stating the owner/operator. The red-light cams around here do.
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LBJ made a grave mistake in Vietnam.
Actually the mistake was in DC. He kept on JFK's SecDef, Robert McNamara, and listened to him. That war started under JFK.
Close. Plenty of people pay their taxes, whether they want to or not.
The problem is that politicians would then rather spend those taxes on something new and shiny than on maintaining the existing infrastructure. New and shiny gets votes, repair jobs don't.
Not knowing chemistry can kill you. (Like, you mix chlorine bleach and drain cleaner and die from chlorine fumes -- among many other scenarios.)
Not knowing public speaking, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML is far less likely to be fatal. Moreover, it's a lot easier to teach yourself the latter than the former, at least without getting put on some DHS watch list (although political science and public speaking might be iffy there too). School chem labs generally beat what you can do at home.
Mind, my dad gave me my first chemistry set for my seventh birthday.
Shooting to wound is enough to get you killed -- as any combat shooting instructor will tell you.
If you're actually in such a situation, you're pumped so full of adrenaline it's all you can do to shoot straight at all (shakes); your best bet is to aim for the center of mass and hope you hit something that will put the guy down so that he can't return fire/stab you/bludgeon you to death with a shovel. (The latter is a risk if you're using too small a caliber -- real incident.)
Or perhaps you believed all those westerns where the good guy can shoot the villain's gun out of his hand?
This reminds me of the old remark about Unix (and Linux) being very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
The nice thing about not being beholden to commercial interests -- as open source isn't -- is that it doesn't have to compromise to make the lowest common denominator happy.
Ubuntu is hardly the only distro out there.
(Personally I don't give much of a rat's ass about computer games; when it comes down it they're all about playing against a programmer who is actually no longer playing, and a random number generator. Cheap thrills. For my other 3D needs I have a Radeon card.)
I've been writing software for nearly 20 years and this has never been the case anywhere I've worked.
Then I can only conclude you've been working in the shrinkwrap software industry, or whatever they're calling it this week. In businesses where software is part of the infrastructure rather than the sole product, then yes, specifications are very real, and tend to be stable. Although come to think of it, when I was in the software biz, we took specs pretty seriously too. Mind, we weren't doing phone apps or mass-market software-in-a-box, we were doing enterprise level systems where you weren't worth talking to unless you were thinking of spending at least a half-million on the product.
(As for complete well, I could probably write a book on "debugging the spec". But debugging the spec means a lot of time not spent on debugging the program.)
Apple INVENTED Swipe to Unlock (or at least patented it first) it was a big deal when it first came out..
Funny, I've had this gizmo on my garden gate that I swipe to unlock. It's been there for decades.
Patented != invented, as any idiot who has been paying attention to what the PTO has been selling* would know.
*The PTO finances itself with fees, not tax money. It collects more when it issues a patent than when it doesn't. There's no money-back guarantee that the patent will stand up in court -- but usually it doesn't have to.
To defeat the squirrels, just reinforce the layer of bug screen (whether fiber or metal) with a layer of chicken wire. Then reinforce that with a layer of chain-link fencing if you're worried about the zombie apocalypse.
Always nice to see another Niven fan.
Anybody know a way to speed up the rotation of a planet?
Slam a (largish) moon into it at a shallow angle.
Mind, that tends to melt the surface of the planet, so you'll need to leave it for a few hundred thousand years to cool off.
Less dramatic is to put one or more dense moons in low orbit around the planet and let tidal drag do the work. That still tends to heat up the surface, though, so expect volcanoes. (See Jupiter's moon Io, for example.)
Moving said moons is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-)
You can't fool Mother Nature with parlor tricks.
You can't fool Mother Nature at all. Anything you can do, she permitted. Which is not at all to say that we know all that she permits. Saying causality is violated merely because some information leaked beyond its light cone is like saying you're predicting the future because you expect thunder some seconds after seeing a lightning flash.
The weird thing is, if the supernova 1987a observation (not experiment!) implies that neutrinos move at lightspeed, then they can't have mass. Massy neutrinos would be retarded by the gravitational field of the star going supernova to the extent that they should have arrived considerably later.
(I forget the number -- worked it out once -- but long enough that it's unlikely anyone would have correlated the simultaneous detection of bursts at several neutrino observatories with the 1987a event. Hell, if the arrival time didn't so closely coincide with the light pulse from 1987a, they could have been from an earlier supernova -- but the coincidence is too bizarre.)
I suppose it's possible that they only have mass in some of their oscillation states, not all of them. Which leads to a whole 'nother crop of interesting questions.
The problem is that FTL constitutes time travel, and breaks causality
I've yet to see anyone spout this who really understood what they were talking about, rather than just parroting something they'd heard or read somewhere.
The fact is it doesn't, and causality is overrated.
In an absolute objective reference frame* (wait for it!) mere FTL doesn't constitute time travel. Faster than infinite speed would, sure, but not something as slow as light (which takes hours to even get out of the solar system). But, you protest, Einstein (et al) proved that there are no absolute reference frames, that everything is relative. Well, yes, he did show that (within the bounds of the currently observable -- there are some niggly quantum thingies which raise issues). But that particular observation doesn't prove that FTL equals time travel. That old saw is as much bad sci-fi as anything else.
*Or as The Doctor would put it, "a non-linear, non-subjective point of view" ;-)
In fact it would break most of modern physics if possible.
An event (breaking then-modern physics) which seems to happen every couple of generations.
Problem is the false alarms. There are a lot of possible inventions or interpretations of unusual phenomena which 'break modern physics', the trick is figuring out which are valid and which aren't, not in dismissing them all merely because they conflict with the teachings of the previous generation.
The structure of reality never falls apart, only your perception of it.
Reality is what it is. If FTL works (and to a degree we seem to have an existence proof that it does in the expansion of the early universe) and if it does imply time travel (it doesn't necessarily; it's a perception thing), then reality was always that way and we're just misunderstanding it.
Perception is a fragile thing. You can build up an elaborate structure of "interlocking ideas about the structure of space time and causality which require a speed limit" -- and if that all comes tumbling down because of some new insight (wouldn't be the first time in physics by a long shot) it's not reality that was at fault.
FTL is not possible. Period.
Ah, a little knowledge is such a dangerous thing.
If you think it IS in fact possible, then you fundamentally do not understand what the speed of light is, why it is, or how space-time works.
On the contrary, your statement that it is not possible demonstrates your lack of understanding of how space-time works.
Consider that shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was expanding faster than light. Now go read up on the Alcubierre metric and van den Broek's and others' lower-energy solutions to same. (Sure, Finazzi instability is a consideration, but by no means proven and there may be workarounds.)
Granted, we're not talking about Newtonian 'accelerate through normal space to and beyond lightspeed' here. Just as well, because the energy requirements for that (if it could work at all, which it can't) are ridiculous.
But flatly stating that "FTL is not possible. Period." reveals a profound ignorance and an utter failure of imagination.
Several posters have rightly pointed out the problems with 'printing' a whole gun, namely the need for hardened and high-pressure-resistant parts.
However, if you put that requirement in the ammo instead and make the gun essentially a rocket launcher, like the Gyrojet weapons developed in the 1960s, you probably could print the whole thing (except maybe for some springs).
Problem is that since nobody (AFAIK) makes Gyrojet ammo any more, the rounds -- which were never cheap compared to conventional ammo -- now cost in the range of $100 a piece.
are doffing coffins?
(er, sorry. carry on.)
"werecycle" -- is that someone who turns into a bicycle during a full moon?
+1 insightful, although that's one reason linemen use safety belts.
If the stuff on the pole is 110V drops to the surrounding houses
It isn't. For one, drops to houses are 220V three phase, the house splits that into two 110V circuits. For another, that's the voltage that comes out of the "pole pigs", the trash-can sized cylindrical transformers which supply power to several adjacent houses. Transmission voltage between poles is going to be at least 440 V, and often higher.
It's called a removable battery and virtually all cellphones have one.
Removable is one thing, and sure, you can remove the battery from any phone that has one.
Replacing it afterwards in eg an iPhone can be a bit of a challenge though.
And vice-versa. You can buy (or could) low-dose codeine-containing pain relievers over the counter in Canada, not in the US. (Higher dose requires a script.)
Also, [citation needed] for needing a script for Excedrin -- there's nothing in it but acetaminophen (Tylenol), aspirin and caffeine.
For utility companies using each other's poles, there are lease agreements in place. Typically one utility will own the pole (electric or phone company) and others (cable, etc) will lease rights to use it. (The owner also has to pay property tax on it. I once architected software to manage a telco's outside plant assets, so I had to know this stuff.)
So yes, trespassing and in a way theft of service if the use of the pole is not being paid for. Authorization from the city doesn't matter if the city doesn't own the pole, they need authorization from the owner.
The boxes should, IMHO, have clear identification on the outside of them stating the owner/operator. The red-light cams around here do.
Not quite where I thought you were going with this...
"Breaker one-nine. Looks like we got us a convoy."