Because as long as the publicly released footage only show brave firefighters saving members of the public its a "great tool", but as soon as they show mistakes/incompetence they are "a threat to privacy". Seems kind of like law enforcements mentality in regards to dash cam (and probably future badge-cam) footage, if it shows police in a good light it ends up on dozens of "caught on tape" style shows, but if the footage is of officers threatening to kill members of the public, shooting people in the back, conspiracy to frame people for assault or other misdeeds its far less likely to see the light of day.
"and only a small hand full of them have betrayed their country"
You have a very interesting definition of "betrayed", personally I'd say that those who violated their oaths of office, ignored the highest laws of our land, lied to the people REPEATEDLY & continue to waste billions upon billions of our dollars are those who are betraying our country. Those who brought these crimes into the light of day, no matter their motives, may not be full fledged hero's. But they are certainly more worthy of praise than those who consider us, the people of the United States nothing but petty, replaceable cogs in their selfish quest for money, power & acclaim.
I think its a great idea, if it is streamed to a separate departments server (say the prosecutors office, clerks office, etc) that has an obligation to keep the footage intact and unedited as a matter of law. And that officers who remove or have "accidents" with their video gear at "inconvenient" times are SEVERELY reprimanded (fired, prosecuted, etc). As we have seen all too many times, if officers have access to evidence that will implicate them in a crime (Oscar Grant Shooting, Hollywood FL framing, Michael DeHererra beating, etc) they will happily destroy, edit or obscure the footage.
Probably the same way aircraft deal with limiting their thermal signature, they pull in air and mix it with their jet exhaust. I believe they also try to extend some bulkheads or cowlings over the engines to prevent them, or the exhaust immediately exiting the engine, from being directly seen. And not that I particular like the hybrid-electric rig for a snowmobile, but pairing a rather small but efficient electric generator (running gas/diesel/kerosene/etc) with some super-capacitors (which I don't believe lose performance in cold weather) and an electric engine would make a halfway decent stealth snowmobile.
A hybrid-electric snowmobile seems a bit excessive if you're just trying to make it more stealthy. Switching up from a two cycle to a four cycle, adding some soundproofing and extending the muffler system would make one pretty quiet but not cost much as most of it would be off the shelf tech and would probably extend the range by using a more efficient engine and keeping the weight low. You're going to lose a bit of performance but that is always to be expected when going for stealth.
Cost of course, NYC for example is putting in only a few miles of tunnel to replace an aging aqueduct and it is costing billions and taking decades to complete (60 miles, $6 Billion). Sure you could go with shallow trenches but if you do you loose the primary advantages of elevating or full fledged tunneling, not having to deal with all of the clutter, property & transit issues at ground level.
Red tape? ROW restrictions? Sound Pollution? Grade restrictions? base material restrictions? etc. High speed rail has some pretty significant drawbacks that limit its use and increase its costs. There are some pretty significant advantages to elevating the "tubeway", decreasing the size of the footprint (ROW in this case) and simplifying the "cars". Not saying its going to be a walk in the park, but with high speed rails mounting costs ($65-117 Billion and climbing) for Californians HSR project alone and ever distant completion times (2040 at the earliest) alternatives should be considered.
Ah..... I remember the days of playing Half Life on a 233Mhz computer with probably 256Mb of ram and not a single hiccup in the graphics. Now days I'm running 1.9 - 2.4 Ghz with 4-6 Gb of ram and my computers seem to have trouble dealing with even simple FPS games with slightly better graphics.
You might want to do a little research, Curiosity has only recorded radiation levels equivalent to being aboard ISS, and that is without any shielding (I believe). Astronauts on ISS itself receive about 1 millisievert per day, whereas people in Colorado for example are probably exposed to 9-15 millisievert per year. So it is quite an increase from Earth normal, but even astronauts with long duration space stays only have a few percent higher risk (3% I believe). There is no doubt that inhabitants of Mars will have a higher incidence of Cancer (even with decent shielding), but they're not going to drop in 9 months. With even basic shielding 98% of people are going to live for decades, with decent shielding they're going to live quite normal lives. If you go extreme, with subterranean facilities for example, cancer risks for Long term Mars inhabitants could actually be below that of "Earthlings".
Who says you need to use it in sunlight? Use it for a for however long you want indoors/under shade and then put it outside to charge. According to the article/summary it has a 10 hour battery life (probably embellished to be sure, but it probably lasts at least 6 under normal usage). If the designers are really clever, they'll give it two separate battery packs, one that stays with the laptop and one that is attached to an undockable solar module. Use the laptop indoors (theoretical 5 hour battery life) while you leave the solar module in the sun. Re-dock the solar module and it starts transferring at least partial power back to the laptops batteries (not sure how well laptop battery packs can transfer +90% of their power to another battery but 50/50 distribution should be relatively easy) so you can place the solar module back in the sun more quickly.
Maybe an absolute novice with only a passing interest in firearms. I consider myself a low level gun enthusiast and I just fired probably close to 100 rounds TODAY (a mixture of 7.62x51 and 22lr) "plinking", and watched another person go through dialing in a new scope fire at least 150 rounds. Now all of these guns were semi-auto clip fed, which tends to encourage a bit of excessive/unproductive firing. But even shooting a lever action Winchester I'll usually go through 20-60 rounds in a day, I know I've put over 400 rounds through that gun and I'm probably the third or fourth owner of it. Granted I don't get out to shoot much, but over my lifetime I've probably fired over 5,000 rounds through about a dozen guns (12ga, 410, 16ga, 223, 7.62x51, 30-30, 7.62x39, 50BMG, 9mm, 45acp,.500 S&W, 7.62x54r)
Why does this situation remind me of a quote from "Idiocracy"
"There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!"
This article seems to be alluding to the solar wind stripping Mars's atmosphere away. Wasn't there just a study a few months ago showing that the effects of solar winds on a planetary atmosphere are not nearly as significant as was once believed, and that there is almost no way that the solar wind alone could be responsible for the Martian atmospheres losses. Personally I'd trust that data a lot more as I think it was based on current measurements of the effects of the solar wind on the Martian atmosphere, not extrapolations from microscopic amounts of materials found in Martian meteorites that likely went through extreme events getting here (being blown off of Mars, spending years, decades, centuries and even eons in space, and then atmospheric reentry) that could have altered their chemistry. My two cents on the whole thing is most of the Martian atmosphere is probably still on Mars, tens, hundreds or even thousands of miles below the surface. Most people don't conceive of how narrow a margin we cling to life on this spinning ball of mud floating on a sea of lava. If you took a basketball and laid a single sheet of paper on its surface that width is far more than the area in which humans can survive without supplemental support systems. As the planets interior cooled the atmosphere may have retreated into the crust, on Earth this is prevented the elements in question (water, nitrogen, oxygen) tend to be ejected by Earths interior in a variety of ways (geysers, volcanoes, fissures) because of their tendency to expand when they come into contact with heat. On Mars as the planet cooled the atmosphere could have leaked through fissures and permeable areas in the crust as the internal temperatures were no longer able to keep it near the surface. This could open interesting possibilities for colonization, as to retrieve significant amounts of atmosphere, water and other necessary components future colonists may only need to sink "wells" deep enough to reach those deposits. Microbial life may even have followed these life sustaining elements into the planets crust as they retreated over the eons.
"But energy is needed to circulate the air or water."
Not really, I know a while back a similar technology was proposed as a replacement for the alternator in cars (not sure it its still in development though). It would be placed along the exhaust on one side and some air cooling fins on the other. No additional energy requirements, and no real increase in weight because it would REPLACE the alternator.
You know, it actually might. I recall reading part of an official police study/report on an incident. An individual was being handcuffed, he was non-resistive, an office was holding him down, and was in the process of being handcuffed. Suddenly the gun of an officer standing about ~5' away from the suspect fired. Surprised, the officer acts confused for a short time, then puts her gun back into her holster as several other officers approach the scene presumably asking what happened. Luckily the suspect was only grazed. The report, mentioned earlier, was of course long and drawn out. Statistics and analyses, probability and forensic studies. But what it all boiled down to, the reason for this near tragedy ? "When the officer pulled the trigger the gun fired", literally the crux of the document was that the the trigger weight was too lite. Despite the fact that this model had one of the heavier trigger pulls of any gun on the market, not only that but her specific gun was tested and it had a significantly heavier trigger pull than the specs! So you're right, a police firearm that doesn't fire when an officer pulls the trigger would be an "benefit". Preventing numerous accidental shootings.
Theres a good reason why its such a failure. Guns and electronics can make bad bedfellows. I remember a light/laser combo that I put on a shotgun, it literally shook itself apart after a few outings. The shock from firing can be pretty brutal, firearms manufacturers have taken centuries to figure out little tricks to keep the guns from literally shaking themselves apart. Thats not to say that electronics cant be integrated into firearms, I have a couple dot scopes that prove that. But they have to be built very robust, and the manufacturer cant skimp on their materials. I don't particularly trust electronics as part of the firing mechanism at present, maybe down the road, far down the road.
Your average CCTV camera has a lower resolution than a 30 year old camcorder, and while there are attempts to bring the resolution up currently there is neither the bandwidth, storage, or processing power to capture/process all of that data cheaply enough to be widely distributed. I'm sure iris scanning can be done with current technology at a distance, but not cheaply, not reliably, and not quickly. The scanners at London Gatwick appear to be a modern, slow turnstile, people have to stand and stare for a time into a scanner. You cant currently set up a $1,000 device in a mall entrance/building lobby/sports event and capture everyone identities as they enter/exit (yet). That being said I'm sure there are companies right now working on it, hopefully they will go bankrupt trying and fail miserably.
I'd prefer it over fingerprint scanners as it is much less usable for mass surveillance. You don't leave it all over the place like DNA or finger prints and at least for the moment the technology doesn't exist for setting up mass scanners for public areas (think "Minority Report"). That said it has the same deficiency as all biometric systems, if your "password" gets stolen you can't change it. And don't think that "you can't fake iris scans", they have said that about every biometric security system invented and within 5 years after it becomes widely used someone is parading around a method of beating it, sometimes in hilariously easy ways.
"You can, of course, be arrested for anything at any time. However, you will not be convicted of"
Thats why being arrested in and of itself is being used as a form of punishment these days. If arrested you're held for the full period allowed by law (72 hours I believe in most areas, there are of course always attempts to extend this limit) and in most cases never charged. You have your fingerprints, image and now even your DNA taken as evidence to be used against you in the future. If you want proof you don't have to look far, during the OWS protests thousands were arrested, I doubt 15% of them were charged. In NYC even those cases where they did try to charge the protestors the cases were thrown out left and right, due to lack of any evidence, evidence (video) proving the charges were bogus, case after case where the arresting officer "couldn't"/wouldn't come to court and even a case where the police write up of the "criminal activity" wasn't a crime(the officer claimed that by dressing up like a pixie she was "impeding traffic").
From what I understand the issue with Mars isn't so much the gravity, as it is only 2.2 times that of the Moon. Its the combination of the lower gravity with just enough atmosphere to make landing and takeoff a pain. The advantage with the moon is that there is really no atmosphere, so a craft doesn't experience drag and doesn't require atmospheric considerations in its design (and the added weight of those considerations). There is at least some possibility that disadvantage could be turned into an advantage, fuel could conceivably be manufactured from the atmosphere itself using a few relatively minor components brought from earth.
I suspect there will be a few more "undesirable persons/situations" apps in the near future if this one catches on. An app for singling out the LGBT community, one for locating Muslims, I'm sure we'll get one for locating people with STDs. There's a reason why this kind of "spy on your neighbor" behavior has been looked down upon from the beginnings of civilization, it gets out of control real quick.
As noted in the article, this was during a time of war. When the war ended, so did the spying. Today we live in a perpetual state of "war", even though none of our "enemies" can actually harm us on the national level.
"telling Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that his statement was "clearly erroneous.""
You mean it was clearly a lie, and you were caught. Clapper should be charged with perjury, they've done so when baseball players lied to congress about taking performance enhancing drugs how can lying to congress about illegal/unconstitutional activities that adversely effect millions of Americans merit any less? By the way, I'm noticing no official response yet on the "Pardon Snowden" White House petition. Not that I'm expecting much, I'm just curious to see what BS they parade about to justify their imprisonment of a person for minor classification violations when they do nothing about the thousands of illegal/unconstitutional acts that the whistle-blower reveals.
If left the the ravages of nature alone you could be right (a few million anyways) but sadly I doubt they can withstand human intervention. I believe that there were once several more pyramids, but over time people took blocks from them to build homes and other monuments. Once upon a time all of the pyramids were clad in white limestone, but all of those stones were removed for Mosques and government buildings a hundred or more years ago. And this isn't something that "used to happen in the past", This year a Central American Mayan pyramid was destroyed by a building contractor to save money on gravel fill for a road. Sadly I imagine that a similarly unceremonious fate will claim the pyramids at Giza, crushed into d-stone for a road base or for the construction of aqueducts or dams by some lazy builder a few hundred years from now after interest in them has waned like it has so many times before.
I think I see the reason for the islands extensive degradation of the structures, re-bar. Its great stuff but you have to remember that it can still rust even inside concrete if you don't stabilize it, especially in a sea air environment. And when metal rusts it has a tendency to expand, kind of like putting a glass jar full of water in the freezer, when the water turns to ice it expands and shatters the jar.
Slashdot Mirror
Because as long as the publicly released footage only show brave firefighters saving members of the public its a "great tool", but as soon as they show mistakes/incompetence they are "a threat to privacy". Seems kind of like law enforcements mentality in regards to dash cam (and probably future badge-cam) footage, if it shows police in a good light it ends up on dozens of "caught on tape" style shows, but if the footage is of officers threatening to kill members of the public, shooting people in the back, conspiracy to frame people for assault or other misdeeds its far less likely to see the light of day.
"and only a small hand full of them have betrayed their country"
You have a very interesting definition of "betrayed", personally I'd say that those who violated their oaths of office, ignored the highest laws of our land, lied to the people REPEATEDLY & continue to waste billions upon billions of our dollars are those who are betraying our country. Those who brought these crimes into the light of day, no matter their motives, may not be full fledged hero's. But they are certainly more worthy of praise than those who consider us, the people of the United States nothing but petty, replaceable cogs in their selfish quest for money, power & acclaim.
I think its a great idea, if it is streamed to a separate departments server (say the prosecutors office, clerks office, etc) that has an obligation to keep the footage intact and unedited as a matter of law. And that officers who remove or have "accidents" with their video gear at "inconvenient" times are SEVERELY reprimanded (fired, prosecuted, etc). As we have seen all too many times, if officers have access to evidence that will implicate them in a crime (Oscar Grant Shooting, Hollywood FL framing, Michael DeHererra beating, etc) they will happily destroy, edit or obscure the footage.
"I'm not sure how you block the IR signature"
Probably the same way aircraft deal with limiting their thermal signature, they pull in air and mix it with their jet exhaust. I believe they also try to extend some bulkheads or cowlings over the engines to prevent them, or the exhaust immediately exiting the engine, from being directly seen. And not that I particular like the hybrid-electric rig for a snowmobile, but pairing a rather small but efficient electric generator (running gas/diesel/kerosene/etc) with some super-capacitors (which I don't believe lose performance in cold weather) and an electric engine would make a halfway decent stealth snowmobile.
A hybrid-electric snowmobile seems a bit excessive if you're just trying to make it more stealthy. Switching up from a two cycle to a four cycle, adding some soundproofing and extending the muffler system would make one pretty quiet but not cost much as most of it would be off the shelf tech and would probably extend the range by using a more efficient engine and keeping the weight low. You're going to lose a bit of performance but that is always to be expected when going for stealth.
"Why not dig instead of going 500 ft tall?"
Cost of course, NYC for example is putting in only a few miles of tunnel to replace an aging aqueduct and it is costing billions and taking decades to complete (60 miles, $6 Billion). Sure you could go with shallow trenches but if you do you loose the primary advantages of elevating or full fledged tunneling, not having to deal with all of the clutter, property & transit issues at ground level.
"this will be cheaper than a high-speed rail?"
Red tape? ROW restrictions? Sound Pollution? Grade restrictions? base material restrictions? etc. High speed rail has some pretty significant drawbacks that limit its use and increase its costs. There are some pretty significant advantages to elevating the "tubeway", decreasing the size of the footprint (ROW in this case) and simplifying the "cars". Not saying its going to be a walk in the park, but with high speed rails mounting costs ($65-117 Billion and climbing) for Californians HSR project alone and ever distant completion times (2040 at the earliest) alternatives should be considered.
Ah..... I remember the days of playing Half Life on a 233Mhz computer with probably 256Mb of ram and not a single hiccup in the graphics. Now days I'm running 1.9 - 2.4 Ghz with 4-6 Gb of ram and my computers seem to have trouble dealing with even simple FPS games with slightly better graphics.
"High radiation levels"
You might want to do a little research, Curiosity has only recorded radiation levels equivalent to being aboard ISS, and that is without any shielding (I believe). Astronauts on ISS itself receive about 1 millisievert per day, whereas people in Colorado for example are probably exposed to 9-15 millisievert per year. So it is quite an increase from Earth normal, but even astronauts with long duration space stays only have a few percent higher risk (3% I believe). There is no doubt that inhabitants of Mars will have a higher incidence of Cancer (even with decent shielding), but they're not going to drop in 9 months. With even basic shielding 98% of people are going to live for decades, with decent shielding they're going to live quite normal lives. If you go extreme, with subterranean facilities for example, cancer risks for Long term Mars inhabitants could actually be below that of "Earthlings".
Who says you need to use it in sunlight? Use it for a for however long you want indoors/under shade and then put it outside to charge. According to the article/summary it has a 10 hour battery life (probably embellished to be sure, but it probably lasts at least 6 under normal usage). If the designers are really clever, they'll give it two separate battery packs, one that stays with the laptop and one that is attached to an undockable solar module. Use the laptop indoors (theoretical 5 hour battery life) while you leave the solar module in the sun. Re-dock the solar module and it starts transferring at least partial power back to the laptops batteries (not sure how well laptop battery packs can transfer +90% of their power to another battery but 50/50 distribution should be relatively easy) so you can place the solar module back in the sun more quickly.
"Most people only fire their gun about 100 times"
Maybe an absolute novice with only a passing interest in firearms. I consider myself a low level gun enthusiast and I just fired probably close to 100 rounds TODAY (a mixture of 7.62x51 and 22lr) "plinking", and watched another person go through dialing in a new scope fire at least 150 rounds. Now all of these guns were semi-auto clip fed, which tends to encourage a bit of excessive/unproductive firing. But even shooting a lever action Winchester I'll usually go through 20-60 rounds in a day, I know I've put over 400 rounds through that gun and I'm probably the third or fourth owner of it. Granted I don't get out to shoot much, but over my lifetime I've probably fired over 5,000 rounds through about a dozen guns (12ga, 410, 16ga, 223, 7.62x51, 30-30, 7.62x39, 50BMG, 9mm, 45acp, .500 S&W, 7.62x54r)
Why does this situation remind me of a quote from "Idiocracy"
"There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!"
This article seems to be alluding to the solar wind stripping Mars's atmosphere away. Wasn't there just a study a few months ago showing that the effects of solar winds on a planetary atmosphere are not nearly as significant as was once believed, and that there is almost no way that the solar wind alone could be responsible for the Martian atmospheres losses. Personally I'd trust that data a lot more as I think it was based on current measurements of the effects of the solar wind on the Martian atmosphere, not extrapolations from microscopic amounts of materials found in Martian meteorites that likely went through extreme events getting here (being blown off of Mars, spending years, decades, centuries and even eons in space, and then atmospheric reentry) that could have altered their chemistry. My two cents on the whole thing is most of the Martian atmosphere is probably still on Mars, tens, hundreds or even thousands of miles below the surface. Most people don't conceive of how narrow a margin we cling to life on this spinning ball of mud floating on a sea of lava. If you took a basketball and laid a single sheet of paper on its surface that width is far more than the area in which humans can survive without supplemental support systems. As the planets interior cooled the atmosphere may have retreated into the crust, on Earth this is prevented the elements in question (water, nitrogen, oxygen) tend to be ejected by Earths interior in a variety of ways (geysers, volcanoes, fissures) because of their tendency to expand when they come into contact with heat. On Mars as the planet cooled the atmosphere could have leaked through fissures and permeable areas in the crust as the internal temperatures were no longer able to keep it near the surface. This could open interesting possibilities for colonization, as to retrieve significant amounts of atmosphere, water and other necessary components future colonists may only need to sink "wells" deep enough to reach those deposits. Microbial life may even have followed these life sustaining elements into the planets crust as they retreated over the eons.
"But energy is needed to circulate the air or water."
Not really, I know a while back a similar technology was proposed as a replacement for the alternator in cars (not sure it its still in development though). It would be placed along the exhaust on one side and some air cooling fins on the other. No additional energy requirements, and no real increase in weight because it would REPLACE the alternator.
You know, it actually might. I recall reading part of an official police study/report on an incident. An individual was being handcuffed, he was non-resistive, an office was holding him down, and was in the process of being handcuffed. Suddenly the gun of an officer standing about ~5' away from the suspect fired. Surprised, the officer acts confused for a short time, then puts her gun back into her holster as several other officers approach the scene presumably asking what happened. Luckily the suspect was only grazed. The report, mentioned earlier, was of course long and drawn out. Statistics and analyses, probability and forensic studies. But what it all boiled down to, the reason for this near tragedy ? "When the officer pulled the trigger the gun fired", literally the crux of the document was that the the trigger weight was too lite. Despite the fact that this model had one of the heavier trigger pulls of any gun on the market, not only that but her specific gun was tested and it had a significantly heavier trigger pull than the specs! So you're right, a police firearm that doesn't fire when an officer pulls the trigger would be an "benefit". Preventing numerous accidental shootings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOI9ahGxMfk
Theres a good reason why its such a failure. Guns and electronics can make bad bedfellows. I remember a light/laser combo that I put on a shotgun, it literally shook itself apart after a few outings. The shock from firing can be pretty brutal, firearms manufacturers have taken centuries to figure out little tricks to keep the guns from literally shaking themselves apart. Thats not to say that electronics cant be integrated into firearms, I have a couple dot scopes that prove that. But they have to be built very robust, and the manufacturer cant skimp on their materials. I don't particularly trust electronics as part of the firing mechanism at present, maybe down the road, far down the road.
Your average CCTV camera has a lower resolution than a 30 year old camcorder, and while there are attempts to bring the resolution up currently there is neither the bandwidth, storage, or processing power to capture/process all of that data cheaply enough to be widely distributed. I'm sure iris scanning can be done with current technology at a distance, but not cheaply, not reliably, and not quickly. The scanners at London Gatwick appear to be a modern, slow turnstile, people have to stand and stare for a time into a scanner. You cant currently set up a $1,000 device in a mall entrance/building lobby/sports event and capture everyone identities as they enter/exit (yet). That being said I'm sure there are companies right now working on it, hopefully they will go bankrupt trying and fail miserably.
I'd prefer it over fingerprint scanners as it is much less usable for mass surveillance. You don't leave it all over the place like DNA or finger prints and at least for the moment the technology doesn't exist for setting up mass scanners for public areas (think "Minority Report"). That said it has the same deficiency as all biometric systems, if your "password" gets stolen you can't change it. And don't think that "you can't fake iris scans", they have said that about every biometric security system invented and within 5 years after it becomes widely used someone is parading around a method of beating it, sometimes in hilariously easy ways.
"You can, of course, be arrested for anything at any time. However, you will not be convicted of"
Thats why being arrested in and of itself is being used as a form of punishment these days. If arrested you're held for the full period allowed by law (72 hours I believe in most areas, there are of course always attempts to extend this limit) and in most cases never charged. You have your fingerprints, image and now even your DNA taken as evidence to be used against you in the future. If you want proof you don't have to look far, during the OWS protests thousands were arrested, I doubt 15% of them were charged. In NYC even those cases where they did try to charge the protestors the cases were thrown out left and right, due to lack of any evidence, evidence (video) proving the charges were bogus, case after case where the arresting officer "couldn't"/wouldn't come to court and even a case where the police write up of the "criminal activity" wasn't a crime(the officer claimed that by dressing up like a pixie she was "impeding traffic").
From what I understand the issue with Mars isn't so much the gravity, as it is only 2.2 times that of the Moon. Its the combination of the lower gravity with just enough atmosphere to make landing and takeoff a pain. The advantage with the moon is that there is really no atmosphere, so a craft doesn't experience drag and doesn't require atmospheric considerations in its design (and the added weight of those considerations). There is at least some possibility that disadvantage could be turned into an advantage, fuel could conceivably be manufactured from the atmosphere itself using a few relatively minor components brought from earth.
I suspect there will be a few more "undesirable persons/situations" apps in the near future if this one catches on. An app for singling out the LGBT community, one for locating Muslims, I'm sure we'll get one for locating people with STDs. There's a reason why this kind of "spy on your neighbor" behavior has been looked down upon from the beginnings of civilization, it gets out of control real quick.
As noted in the article, this was during a time of war. When the war ended, so did the spying. Today we live in a perpetual state of "war", even though none of our "enemies" can actually harm us on the national level.
"telling Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that his statement was "clearly erroneous.""
You mean it was clearly a lie, and you were caught. Clapper should be charged with perjury, they've done so when baseball players lied to congress about taking performance enhancing drugs how can lying to congress about illegal/unconstitutional activities that adversely effect millions of Americans merit any less? By the way, I'm noticing no official response yet on the "Pardon Snowden" White House petition. Not that I'm expecting much, I'm just curious to see what BS they parade about to justify their imprisonment of a person for minor classification violations when they do nothing about the thousands of illegal/unconstitutional acts that the whistle-blower reveals.
If left the the ravages of nature alone you could be right (a few million anyways) but sadly I doubt they can withstand human intervention. I believe that there were once several more pyramids, but over time people took blocks from them to build homes and other monuments. Once upon a time all of the pyramids were clad in white limestone, but all of those stones were removed for Mosques and government buildings a hundred or more years ago. And this isn't something that "used to happen in the past", This year a Central American Mayan pyramid was destroyed by a building contractor to save money on gravel fill for a road. Sadly I imagine that a similarly unceremonious fate will claim the pyramids at Giza, crushed into d-stone for a road base or for the construction of aqueducts or dams by some lazy builder a few hundred years from now after interest in them has waned like it has so many times before.
I think I see the reason for the islands extensive degradation of the structures, re-bar. Its great stuff but you have to remember that it can still rust even inside concrete if you don't stabilize it, especially in a sea air environment. And when metal rusts it has a tendency to expand, kind of like putting a glass jar full of water in the freezer, when the water turns to ice it expands and shatters the jar.