Irrelevant. No mirror reflects 100% of the incoming light. The 3%* or so that remains will make short work of the reflective surface, and then the laser will get back to work.
The other 97% that is reflected couldn't be meaningfully redirected before the reflective surface is burned through.
*Ever been in a hall of mirrors at a science museum or fun house? If you get between two mirrors you'll notice the 'echos' getting progressively dimmer.
For those who tkae pride in how the state are different I'd like to point out if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black.
The men in black will be at your door in a moment.
Your point is of course proven by the fact that all those anti-war protesters who come out all the time dissappear the next day and are never heard from again. Did you know there's a concentration camp in the desert for peacenik hippies?
Seriously, they gather up all the rock-the-boat protesters you speak of, bring them out there, and put them into labor camps making a slow poison that they dope patchoulli oil with. After they get a few years supply, then they kill all the protesters and process their bodies for recoverable materials just like the nazis did.
Then they send out the doped patchoulli oil to all the smoke shops in the US, and the next wave of protesters who lather themselves up in it bring themselves a little closer to death each time. It's a fantastic posion, it'll make you die of syphillis-like symptoms so it gets blamed on all the 'free love' of the peacenik hippies.
Oh, brown and black people who 'rock the boat' are brought to the labor camps are just shot outright and fed into a furnace to heat the guard complex at night. These men then laugh when the stench of burnt hair straightener makes it's way through the air ducts because it reminds them how effective they are at keeping down the negroes.
\sarcasm off
You're a twit. Go live in China with your cousins and play it safe like the pansy you are. You clearly lack the spine to actually rock the boat in the US and test your absurd theories, but you're quite capable of whining about the bushchimpymchitler regime on the web.
I do not disagree that the design using epoxy resin to anchor the ceiling support bolts into place could work well but it requires a high level of quality control and ongoing periodic inspection.
The Big Dig used 'Affirmative Action' in staffing their quality assurance & inspection department. They took secretaries and otherwise unqualified people, trained them for a couple weeks and then sent them out into the field.
Having completely unqualified people inspect work is probably the easiest way to do crappy work and have it signed off as "SAT." There probably wasn't a conspiracy to that effect, but that's what happened.
My point was that predicting the past is far easier than predicting the future.
Validating against known data is spiffy and all, but you still had access to the data you 'predicted' so you could continously adjust variables that are little more than wild-assed guesses till it happens to fit.
I know that's a rather unsophisticated view of it but the global warming crusaders are facing this kind of view if they want to convince enough people to make a difference.
What they need to do is gain credibility the old fashioned way- stick a stake in the ground and say "10 years from this date, given these things continue, the conditions will be X"
If their predictions hold outside of random variation then it's hard proof that they have a good model. If all they do is backfit data they already have that's harder to take seriously.
Yeah, that's right. Chicken Little and his friends need some patience if they want to gain credibility. That's the way it works for every other science.
There's also the related issue of 'humans having an effect' vs 'OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.' Again if you want to establish the latter you need to establish credibility the old fashioned way.
So many different causes shriek about the dire consequences of not heading their word 'right now' that it's hard to take them seriously.
Global Warming alarmists want to rewrite entire economies based on nothing more then computer models whose predictions have not been time tested. It doesn't work that way, even if you're right. Make predictions for the future and then we can take you seriously if they come out to be true.
This has been a topic for a decade or two now. Are their no models from the 1990's or 1980's that have held out? Didn't those researchers test their models against historical data? If they did and their models did not hold then the latest models can't be taken seriously on historical validation alone either.
That's why there are extras. Take the sheet to an election official and get a new one.
How precisely to handle erronous ballots is something open to debate but you can change your mind up to the moment you feed the ballot into the machine.
There is no need to discuss your political leanings with poll workers so your point is... well, you don't have a point.
Everyone in the country should have filled out a scantron sheet by now. The technology is widespread and decades old. Filling in a little dot next to the one person you want to vote for is as simple as it gets.
Circling isn't (as) machine countable and since the boundaries for marking your vote aren't pre-defined there is room for interpretation after the fact. We don't want room for interpretation (hanging chad anyone?).
We do a very similar thing here in New Hampshire except you put the sheet in the scanner yourself and the election officials are nearby.
Eliminating the election official's handling of a marked ballot reduces the opportunity they have to mess with it. No sleight of hand tricks are even remotely possible.
A climatologist on the other hand figures at what rate the water as a whole is heating, and the effects of putting a lid on the pan, or turning up the heat. The effects can be accurately predicted quite a long way into the future when you're looking at the entire contents of the pan, not trying to predict where each convection current will be.
Personally I'd like to see proof that climatologists are any good at making predictions.
Honest Question: Are there any climatologist papers published in the last three or four decades that contain predictions that turned out to be true?
If so, it lends a great deal of credibility to the methods of the people who made the accurate predictions.
If not, it casts this entire global warming issue in a rather doubtful light.
If all you have are a string of predictions that never turned out to be true then you can't blame folks for doubting man-made Global Warming, especially when it's proponents demand solutions that would cripple economies.
Why do you need to resort to such a hysterical characterization as "holding a gun to people's heads" when the market-based reasoning you cited is so very much more convincing? Your post is a great argument against this act if you just leave out the anti-government rhetoric. With it left in, not so much.
Disobey the state, let it be known, and see what happens. First they'll probably fine you. Tell them to fuck off. Then they'll come for you in person to make you pay or take you to jail for contempt. Either way involves guns.
Never forget the soveriegn power of the state ultimately rests on the legitimized use of force to execute its laws. This is of course right and proper for most laws (rape, robbery, murder, theft, etc) but notsomuch for others.
Like this one. When the state tells you to change your lightbulbs, it's change your lightbulbs or else. At the end of the 'or else' line is the use of force to ensure compliance.
The GP post had it right. This is a misuse of the state's power.
I have a couple of 3 bulb lamps, and each of them have a socket that the CF bulb whines in if it's on. Changing the bulbs doesn't help, the sockets are 'bad' even though the light output is the same. When I don't have other sounds drowning out those sockets I turn those off.
Do all your CFL's sound like that? Or just the ones next to your recliner so it bugs you the most? Have you heard some at other folks homes that don't whine?
It could just be bad sockets with wiring that's off enough to annoy you. Or you can hear the switching frequency. Can't really be sure If I'm not in your head:).
Only because other people respect that ownership.(self)
All sovereignty, personal and national, rests ultimately on the ability to defend it with violence.
People who respect you aren't going to try to take away your rights any which way.
People who don't respect your rights must be kept at bay with the credible threat of violence, or become subject to violence if they try anyway.
This is why the right to keep and bear arms is the most important- not speech, not trials, not religion.
Arms. The means to preserve your personal sovereignty.
Most people nowadays happily subcontract violence to the police, security guards, or the military. Such sub-contracting does not dimish the truth of the matter: The credible threat of violence preserves your rights and civilization in general.
If you decide to take the 9th and 10th amendments seriously, then a whole lot of programs you probably support go away as well, because they weren't powers explicitly granted to the federal government in the constitution.
Of course that's what this is all about anyway- constitutional convenience. Pity you're blind to your own Constitutional convenience, because it makes the AG's all the easier.
I don't understand why people let companies walk all over them. I know having a job is important but your self respect is also important.
I know a large reason why: Debt and no savings. If that's true for an individual, the pretty much need a constant stream of income to maintain your self-respect with regard to paying your bills.
If, on the other hand, you have no debt and significant savings (3-6 months expenses), then you need not skitter from job to job or let trespasses against you slide for job security.
The Intelligent Community Forum is basically rating cities on how much they consume the services of the IT people who make up the forum. Think of it as marketing for the IT 'Guild.'
It has little to do with the actual overall quality of a community in anyway except the dollar amount of the IT salaries they pay out of tax money. Though, I suppose, slashdot would be the place for this sort of thing.
This is the way I understand modern economics as working. The pie is 10 slices big, but 1000 of them exist on paper. That last part describes fractional reserve banking, where depositor's money is lent while it sits in the bank, and the borrower puts their money in a bank while they use it, that bank then lends it to someone else, etc. A common activity and a dubious practice, though it has had a decent track record here. It's certainly a large part of our economy but one can imagine an economy without debt. An economy without debt is an economy without fractional reserve banking.
Past that, you're essentially saying modern economics is a zero-sum game, and it's pretty easy to demonstrate this is not the case.
The most direct way is to consider material wealth, and as the population of the world has grown, so has the food supply and the goods enjoyed in a person's daily life. Air Conditioning, cars, houses, apartment buildings, raw materials at home depot, etc, etc. These are all material examples of wealth that are created by every day efforts.
If wealth was strictly limited then the human population and the benefits they enjoy would have never grown past the caveman era, let alone provide historically unheard of advantages at an ever-increasing rate.
Try, "All of Western society." Basing large organizations on finance resembles nothing more than using a just in time compiler to me. The amusing thing is that it appears there's no way people are smart enough as a whole to either design or accept a more intelligent solution.
Reading the Wikipedia article on Ponzi shows something quite interesting - he gave people exactly what they wanted, and the only ones to get advantageous results were those who cashed out right before it all fell apart. Just another story of catastrophic market failure; I love how everyone sees these things coming and noone says, "Wait. How do we stop this before it gets too big?"
You're missing a key difference between ponzi schemes and "all of western society"
The participants in a ponzi scheme contribute nothing beyond their initial deposit. The orchestrators of the scheme generate nothing. The participants of capilitalistic western societies create new wealth every single day they go to work.
Now, if you said "socialistic western societies who operate extensive welfare states" you'd be exactly correct. If you avoid large scale wealth transfer between participants that decreases the motivation to work or the necessity thereof, then there's no reason it would ever implode.
Any which way, in terms of western societies collapsing like a ponzi scheme.... I bet France is first. Check out their economy. I might be wrong but I don't think so.
I'm not a libertarian. I just like to have standards and laws that means something.
I am against the endless expansion of the government but that's hardly a position unique to libertarians. I would vote for certain current programs to be included in the assigned federal powers, should the matter come up in a constitutional referendum. The particulars are not important.
Wether or not Lincoln or FDR did good things, or that the programs I listed are good things was not my point.
My point was that when you invite the trampling of the constitution for things you happen to support(which FDR and Lincoln did), you open the door for violations that you abhor. It is no longer sacred, it is no longer supreme, it's just some nice suggestions that we can explain away at our convienence.
Slashdot Mirror
Irrelevant.
No mirror reflects 100% of the incoming light. The 3%* or so that remains will make short work of the reflective surface, and then the laser will get back to work.
The other 97% that is reflected couldn't be meaningfully redirected before the reflective surface is burned through.
*Ever been in a hall of mirrors at a science museum or fun house? If you get between two mirrors you'll notice the 'echos' getting progressively dimmer.
Come to think of it, I probably haven't cleaned my .22 pistol in a while.
Thanks.
For those who tkae pride in how the state are different I'd like to point out if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black.
The men in black will be at your door in a moment.
Your point is of course proven by the fact that all those anti-war protesters who come out all the time dissappear the next day and are never heard from again. Did you know there's a concentration camp in the desert for peacenik hippies?
Seriously, they gather up all the rock-the-boat protesters you speak of, bring them out there, and put them into labor camps making a slow poison that they dope patchoulli oil with. After they get a few years supply, then they kill all the protesters and process their bodies for recoverable materials just like the nazis did.
Then they send out the doped patchoulli oil to all the smoke shops in the US, and the next wave of protesters who lather themselves up in it bring themselves a little closer to death each time. It's a fantastic posion, it'll make you die of syphillis-like symptoms so it gets blamed on all the 'free love' of the peacenik hippies.
Oh, brown and black people who 'rock the boat' are brought to the labor camps are just shot outright and fed into a furnace to heat the guard complex at night. These men then laugh when the stench of burnt hair straightener makes it's way through the air ducts because it reminds them how effective they are at keeping down the negroes.
\sarcasm off
You're a twit. Go live in China with your cousins and play it safe like the pansy you are. You clearly lack the spine to actually rock the boat in the US and test your absurd theories, but you're quite capable of whining about the bushchimpymchitler regime on the web.
I do not disagree that the design using epoxy resin to anchor the ceiling support bolts into place could work well but it requires a high level of quality control and ongoing periodic inspection.
The Big Dig used 'Affirmative Action' in staffing their quality assurance & inspection department. They took secretaries and otherwise unqualified people, trained them for a couple weeks and then sent them out into the field.
Having completely unqualified people inspect work is probably the easiest way to do crappy work and have it signed off as "SAT." There probably wasn't a conspiracy to that effect, but that's what happened.
That's such a rare and deep insight.
Truly.
Did you get it off a hallmark card?
That's better, yes.
Thank you, I'll check it out.
My point was that predicting the past is far easier than predicting the future.
Validating against known data is spiffy and all, but you still had access to the data you 'predicted' so you could continously adjust variables that are little more than wild-assed guesses till it happens to fit.
I know that's a rather unsophisticated view of it but the global warming crusaders are facing this kind of view if they want to convince enough people to make a difference.
What they need to do is gain credibility the old fashioned way- stick a stake in the ground and say "10 years from this date, given these things continue, the conditions will be X"
If their predictions hold outside of random variation then it's hard proof that they have a good model. If all they do is backfit data they already have that's harder to take seriously.
Yeah, that's right. Chicken Little and his friends need some patience if they want to gain credibility. That's the way it works for every other science.
There's also the related issue of 'humans having an effect' vs 'OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.' Again if you want to establish the latter you need to establish credibility the old fashioned way.
So many different causes shriek about the dire consequences of not heading their word 'right now' that it's hard to take them seriously.
Global Warming alarmists want to rewrite entire economies based on nothing more then computer models whose predictions have not been time tested. It doesn't work that way, even if you're right. Make predictions for the future and then we can take you seriously if they come out to be true.
This has been a topic for a decade or two now. Are their no models from the 1990's or 1980's that have held out? Didn't those researchers test their models against historical data? If they did and their models did not hold then the latest models can't be taken seriously on historical validation alone either.
That's why there are extras. Take the sheet to an election official and get a new one.
How precisely to handle erronous ballots is something open to debate but you can change your mind up to the moment you feed the ballot into the machine.
Voting fraud is bipartisan and as old as voting. Don't think it's a new Bush & Company thing.
Certainly we should strive to eliminate voting fraud and moving away from paperless touchscreen voting is a step in the right direction.
It's the principle of KISS. Keep it simple & stupid.
The voting paper trail and the tallying method are the same with bubble sheets. The touch screens are an unnecessary complexity.
Any unnecessary complexity invites defects and abuse.
There is no need to discuss your political leanings with poll workers so your point is... well, you don't have a point.
Everyone in the country should have filled out a scantron sheet by now. The technology is widespread and decades old. Filling in a little dot next to the one person you want to vote for is as simple as it gets.
Circling isn't (as) machine countable and since the boundaries for marking your vote aren't pre-defined there is room for interpretation after the fact. We don't want room for interpretation (hanging chad anyone?).
We do a very similar thing here in New Hampshire except you put the sheet in the scanner yourself and the election officials are nearby.
Eliminating the election official's handling of a marked ballot reduces the opportunity they have to mess with it. No sleight of hand tricks are even remotely possible.
What the Governor wants is exactly what we do here in New Hampshire.
The tallying is instantaneous, the technology is proven (scantron tests in every school in the country) and the paper trail is there.
If they ever want voting in Florida to cease being a national joke this is the way to do it.
A climatologist on the other hand figures at what rate the water as a whole is heating, and the effects of putting a lid on the pan, or turning up the heat. The effects can be accurately predicted quite a long way into the future when you're looking at the entire contents of the pan, not trying to predict where each convection current will be.
Personally I'd like to see proof that climatologists are any good at making predictions.
Honest Question:
Are there any climatologist papers published in the last three or four decades that contain predictions that turned out to be true?
If so, it lends a great deal of credibility to the methods of the people who made the accurate predictions.
If not, it casts this entire global warming issue in a rather doubtful light.
If all you have are a string of predictions that never turned out to be true then you can't blame folks for doubting man-made Global Warming, especially when it's proponents demand solutions that would cripple economies.
It never occurred to me that the socket would be relevant. In a 3 bulb lamp, why wouldn't all 3 sockets be the same?
I bought them at Walmart.
Why do you need to resort to such a hysterical characterization as "holding a gun to people's heads" when the market-based reasoning you cited is so very much more convincing? Your post is a great argument against this act if you just leave out the anti-government rhetoric. With it left in, not so much.
Disobey the state, let it be known, and see what happens. First they'll probably fine you. Tell them to fuck off. Then they'll come for you in person to make you pay or take you to jail for contempt. Either way involves guns.
Never forget the soveriegn power of the state ultimately rests on the legitimized use of force to execute its laws. This is of course right and proper for most laws (rape, robbery, murder, theft, etc) but notsomuch for others.
Like this one. When the state tells you to change your lightbulbs, it's change your lightbulbs or else. At the end of the 'or else' line is the use of force to ensure compliance.
The GP post had it right. This is a misuse of the state's power.
I have a couple of 3 bulb lamps, and each of them have a socket that the CF bulb whines in if it's on. Changing the bulbs doesn't help, the sockets are 'bad' even though the light output is the same. When I don't have other sounds drowning out those sockets I turn those off.
:).
Do all your CFL's sound like that? Or just the ones next to your recliner so it bugs you the most? Have you heard some at other folks homes that don't whine?
It could just be bad sockets with wiring that's off enough to annoy you. Or you can hear the switching frequency. Can't really be sure If I'm not in your head
Only because other people respect that ownership.(self)
All sovereignty, personal and national, rests ultimately on the ability to defend it with violence.
People who respect you aren't going to try to take away your rights any which way.
People who don't respect your rights must be kept at bay with the credible threat of violence, or become subject to violence if they try anyway.
This is why the right to keep and bear arms is the most important- not speech, not trials, not religion.
Arms. The means to preserve your personal sovereignty.
Most people nowadays happily subcontract violence to the police, security guards, or the military. Such sub-contracting does not dimish the truth of the matter: The credible threat of violence preserves your rights and civilization in general.
Careful.
If you decide to take the 9th and 10th amendments seriously, then a whole lot of programs you probably support go away as well, because they weren't powers explicitly granted to the federal government in the constitution.
Of course that's what this is all about anyway- constitutional convenience. Pity you're blind to your own Constitutional convenience, because it makes the AG's all the easier.
I don't understand why people let companies walk all over them. I know having a job is important but your self respect is also important.
I know a large reason why: Debt and no savings. If that's true for an individual, the pretty much need a constant stream of income to maintain your self-respect with regard to paying your bills.
If, on the other hand, you have no debt and significant savings (3-6 months expenses), then you need not skitter from job to job or let trespasses against you slide for job security.
The Intelligent Community Forum is basically rating cities on how much they consume the services of the IT people who make up the forum. Think of it as marketing for the IT 'Guild.'
It has little to do with the actual overall quality of a community in anyway except the dollar amount of the IT salaries they pay out of tax money. Though, I suppose, slashdot would be the place for this sort of thing.
This is the way I understand modern economics as working. The pie is 10 slices big, but 1000 of them exist on paper.
That last part describes fractional reserve banking, where depositor's money is lent while it sits in the bank, and the borrower puts their money in a bank while they use it, that bank then lends it to someone else, etc. A common activity and a dubious practice, though it has had a decent track record here. It's certainly a large part of our economy but one can imagine an economy without debt. An economy without debt is an economy without fractional reserve banking.
Past that, you're essentially saying modern economics is a zero-sum game, and it's pretty easy to demonstrate this is not the case.
The most direct way is to consider material wealth, and as the population of the world has grown, so has the food supply and the goods enjoyed in a person's daily life. Air Conditioning, cars, houses, apartment buildings, raw materials at home depot, etc, etc. These are all material examples of wealth that are created by every day efforts.
If wealth was strictly limited then the human population and the benefits they enjoy would have never grown past the caveman era, let alone provide historically unheard of advantages at an ever-increasing rate.
Try, "All of Western society." Basing large organizations on finance resembles nothing more than using a just in time compiler to me. The amusing thing is that it appears there's no way people are smart enough as a whole to either design or accept a more intelligent solution.
Reading the Wikipedia article on Ponzi shows something quite interesting - he gave people exactly what they wanted, and the only ones to get advantageous results were those who cashed out right before it all fell apart. Just another story of catastrophic market failure; I love how everyone sees these things coming and noone says, "Wait. How do we stop this before it gets too big?"
You're missing a key difference between ponzi schemes and "all of western society"
The participants in a ponzi scheme contribute nothing beyond their initial deposit. The orchestrators of the scheme generate nothing. The participants of capilitalistic western societies create new wealth every single day they go to work.
Now, if you said "socialistic western societies who operate extensive welfare states" you'd be exactly correct. If you avoid large scale wealth transfer between participants that decreases the motivation to work or the necessity thereof, then there's no reason it would ever implode.
Any which way, in terms of western societies collapsing like a ponzi scheme.... I bet France is first. Check out their economy. I might be wrong but I don't think so.
I'm not a libertarian. I just like to have standards and laws that means something.
I am against the endless expansion of the government but that's hardly a position unique to libertarians. I would vote for certain current programs to be included in the assigned federal powers, should the matter come up in a constitutional referendum. The particulars are not important.
Wether or not Lincoln or FDR did good things, or that the programs I listed are good things was not my point.
My point was that when you invite the trampling of the constitution for things you happen to support(which FDR and Lincoln did), you open the door for violations that you abhor. It is no longer sacred, it is no longer supreme, it's just some nice suggestions that we can explain away at our convienence.
There are states and localities that have what are effectively an all-out ban on weapons, and as such would go away. That is what I was referring to.