First off, you mistaken when you imply that the Geneva Conventions are the USA's means of imposing their crooked laws on the rest of humanity. If anything it's the other way around as most of the recent additions to the conventions have been over the USA's objections (including Protocol IV).
Secondly, there's no philosophical error.
The motivation behind the Additional Protocol (IV) on Blinding Laser Weapons was not to turn eveyone into teletubbies, the geneva conventions are on limits to war. The convention is thus crafted as a means to eliminate weapons which can cause massive suffering without removing by the same token our means of defending our counties.
No, and had you read the article you would have known that.
Here's the complete text to the 1995 addition to the geneva convention (http://www.unog.ch/frames/disarm/distreat/ccwprot 4.pdf
):
ADDITIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE CONVENTION ON PROHIBITIONS OR RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF CERTAIN CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS WHICH MAY BE DEEMED TO BE EXCESSIVELY INJURIOUS OR TO HAVE INDISCRIMINATE EFFECTS
ARTICLE 1: ADDITIONAL PROTOCOL
The following protocol shall be annexed to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the
Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have
Indiscriminate Effects ("the Convention") as Protocol IV: Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (Protocol IV)
Article 1
It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices. The High Contracting Parties shall not transfer such weapons to any State or non-State entity.
Article 2
In the employment of laser systems, the High Contracting Parties shall take all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision. Such precautions shall include training of their armed forces and other practical measures.
Article 3
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this protocol.
Article 4
For the purpose of this Protocol 'permanent blindness' means irreversible and uncorrectable loss of vision which is seriously disabling with no prospect of recovery. Serious disability is equivalent to visual acuity of less than 20/200 Snellen measured using both eyes.
Only lasers specifically designed to blind are disallowed by the convention. Imagine a disco ball lit with a spotlight & an UV laser - the spotlight is so the eye gets drawn to the discoball without being too bright for anyone to feel the need to look away. The UV laser burns the retinas of everyone who looks. THIS cheap yet massivly debilitating weapon is what the addition to the convention is about. Only the ignorant conclude that ALL lasers are forbidden.
Gopher was a protocol devised to replace FTP. Anyone who has ever taken a look at the protocol FTP uses or set up a firewall knows how crufty FTP is (FTP needs 2 ports, a get implies a connection from the server tu the client, etc).
Gopher had the advantage of a clean protocol & easy to use clients.
FTP had the advantage of being widely deployed.
Had not prettified clients like web browsers come along at the time they did, ftp was doomed, but once the clients were easy enough to use there wasn't enough incentive to replace crufty old FTP.
Manufacturing fuel & oxidiser at Mars has been studied for almost 40 years. One solution to this that has been present in a number of Mars mission plans (Zubrin's Mars direct IIRC) is to send a robot mission to Mars BEFORE anyone leaves Earth. This robot mission contains all that is needed to fabricate fuel + oxidiser. The factory must be working for the astronauts to be autorized to leave for Mars.
This was long before abundant supplies of H were known to be present on Mars, so the robots were to be cracking atmospheric CO2 into CO + 0, but I shouldn't imagine that mining the H out of the soil would be an insurmountable obstacle. O can be obtained from the soil if the H is present as water, or from the atmosphere if it is not.
The visitors to Mir spent extended time in microgravity. Visitors to Mars will not.
All recent mission plans to Mars have used a means of generating "artificial gravity" during the extended coast phase between Earth & Mars. The most common method is splitting the the spacecraft into 2 major assemblies which are connected by cables & then spinning the assembly up to Mars level G forces.
It's just another version of the no-contact access badges I uses at work. There are only two main components. An antenna/induction loop + a chip. The detector has a charged loop that generates a magnetic field. When passing the card/speedpass within a certain radius of the detector, an inducted current strong enough for the chip to be powered will be generated by the antenna in the card/speedpass. The card/speedpass chip then uses the antenna to generate a coded radio pulse. This pulse is then read by the detector and used to identify the sendor.
As an access key, this system works great. It's cheap & simple, as the intelligence is in the software used to manage the card ID's, not in the cards. For example; if I lose my key, only MY key needs to be canceled. As all the detectors are set at pocket level, I don't even need to have a hand free to open doors.
The only minor bug I've encountered is that you cannot have two cards in the same pocket. They both wake up & send their signal pulse at the same time which corrupts both pulses.
However, as a means to control acces to a credit card, this system really sucks as there is NO AUTHENTIFICATION. All you need is a detector to be able to stealthily read anyones ID. The owner of the speedpass will never even know that the ID has been stolen, after all it never left his pocket/wrist!
Coming up with a device able to resend the purloined ID is within the means of most EE grad students, so I predict that abuse of this system in the very near future.
From what I can see from the speedpass website there is no authentification to verify that the possesor of the speedpass is really the owner.
A speedpass is the electronic equivalent of a blank cashiers check to my bank account, so if I lose a speedpass I lose the equivalent of my credit card plus my pin code! Am I willing to risk this just so I can wave my wrist/keys without having to type a PIN? NO! I may be lazy, but not stupid.
I'd like to buy a device like this, add a HD & some powered speakers myself, but it won't work.
One of the major differences between USB & 1394 is that USB uses a master/slave configuration whereas 1394 is peer to peer. The implications of this are that you cannot connect USB slave devices without a master. I can connect my 1394 DV camera to my 1394 hard drive & copy data to & fro, but it is impossible (as yet) to do the same with USB because they would almost certainly be implemented as USB slaves. For the same reason, I cannot hook up 2 Ipaqs and transfer direct over USB.
This and not latency is why I'm waiting for a similar device with 1394 instead of USB.
USB 2.0 is supposed to implement peer to peer à la 1394, but I'll believe it when I can see, and play with it with my own hands.
I beg to differ, there are GSM 1800 networks in France, Germany, England, Italy, Spain, Norway, i.e.: througout europe.
1800 nets were deployed in europe before the rest of the world. While 900 was the original frequency that was GSM developped for, 1800 has advantages in urban environments (smaller cell size) that make it better adapted to the dense urban environment.
The NB-52 is uniquely qualified for this task due to it's high wing configuration, multi-ton capable hardpoints, ability to reach high altitudes and instrumentation. No other large aircraft is so equipped. The L1011 that OSC modified for the Pegasus has encountered more problems than the launcher itself! Alot of the x planes, like the X15, etc were launched the two NB-52's that Nasa has owned. One was only used early in the X15 program and was retired long ago but the other has soldiered on and is still used in drop tests like the X33.
As for "The task of getting it into orbit is likely somewhat trivial", coming from "Alien54", I suppose it could be for you, but it certainly is not for us humans.
There was only one test. Even though it was successful, Air launched ICBM's were never pursued as that wasn't the main objective of the program for the USAF. The REAL objective was to get the Navy to stop telling congressmen that the bomber leg of the nuclear triad (Bombers/Sub lauched Ballistic Missles/ICBMS) were obsolete as they would probably be shot down before reaching their objectives. The Navy had been trying to Hijack the USAF's bomber budget to build more Tridents but when faced with the threat of air launched ICBM's, they quietly backed off...
Price per kilo to orbit is NOT the only hurdle! I can see three major obstacles off the top of my head:
No Funding: Who in this age of recession is foolhardy enough to finance such a venture after all the venture capital firms got burned in last years crash?
Payload design: Modern satellites are custom designed to match their launchers. Diameter, mass, etc are optimized during the design stages to the specifications of the intended launcher. Who exactly is going to redesign their multi-million dollar satellites for the unique constraints used in this design?
Market: Who will be buying? Any air lauched design is going to be limited by the launch aircraft, in Pegasus's (L1011) case by aircraft's undercarriage, and in Bladerunner's (Which aircraft? C131/C5/C17's? Good luck in convincing the USAF to lend you one, they are waaay overtasked already.) by cargo bay weight constraints. Since Iridium chapter 11'ed the market for lightweight sats in LEO has almost completely evaporated.
Uh, Taco, would you mind letting us know where we might find the definition of "endorced". I've tried dictionaries, a thesaurus, and the Internet without succes...
The big problem with supersonic or better flight for commercial use isn't the fuel economy, it's the fact that many countries (the US being the first that leaps to my mind) don't allow commercial aircraft to fly supersonic over their land at any altitude.
Not quite.
First off, it's not just the USA that has outlawed supersonic flight over populated areas, it's every country. That includes France & England -- the builders of the Concorde. Concorde flights have a longer subsonic portion of their transatlantic flights on the european side than they do on the US side as Paris & London are further inland than New York or Washington DC.
Secondly, you're confusing cause with effect. The reason for the limitations on Supersonic flight are due to the sonic booms. Eliminate the boom & supersonic overflights become possible. There is no bang detectable at ground level due to overflight by hypersonic aircraft as they must fly at the very edge of space in order to avoid the dense lower atmosphere to avoid airframe heating.
You tell me: Who is guilty when a public official is bribed? The corrupt official and/or the person giving the bribe?
IMO, the guilt is shared.
Lockmart's share is because they pushed VentureStar for the "low risk" X-33, and Nasa's is for choosing the project with the highest risks/dev costs.
Yeah, well, I'm tired of seeing the defenders of the Nasa employment agency/Defense contractor spending plan status-quo mischaracterize the goals of DC-X. The goals of DC-X were cheap acces to space. Full stop. Getting there without spending billions developmental costs is the way to get there. BMSDO's succes in creating a viable test vehicule on a shoestring budget is the proof. Engine redundancy ind a production Delta Clipper would have precluded the failure that caused the accident - vertical launch/vertical landing was not the problem. "They" also said that VL/VL was impossible until DC-X proved them wrong.
Killing off DC-X and pushing Venturestar was the Empires's revenge. Instead of combining off the shelf equipment, Lockmart won by appealing to Nasa's weakness: Make it sexy but above all make sure it needs loads of development before it sees the light of day.
The curse of X-33 was not the tanks, it was the fact that Nasa/Lockmart have no incentive to lower launch costs. Hooting and praising the "wonderful" technology the program financed is pointless as it won't be used in any shuttle successor, oh no, we'll have to spend yet more tens of billions/man decades to develop yet more NEW technology -- if Nasa's current spend more/less filling corporate outlook is still extant.
All the money & time wasted on a paper X-33 do not change the fact that we are now no closer to seeing cheap acces to space than we were the day DC-X was shanked. A tiny fraction of the resources squandered over the past 8 years would have brought us significantly closer to that goal had they been spent on DC-X.
Ah, and if the bomb in question is essentially irretreviable and can no longer explode, does it still "Matter"? The USG spent months in a major effort trying to retrieve the fissile materiel lost in the accident. From what I remember from reading a report on the accident (supplemented by a quick search using google), on
Jan 29th 1961 a B52 carrying a number of H-bombs crashed. While over water/swamp & before the bomber itself crashed the bombs were released (unarmed) to avoid having the conventional explosives cook off (& scatter the fissiles) within the airframe during a post-crash fire.
While most of the bombs were recovered intact, one bomb fell into a swamp and it's core separated from the rest of the bomb. A hole 50 ft deep and over 3 acres in area were excavated to look for the core. Over 4 million cu. ft. of earth were removed before the search was abandoned.
Anyone trying to recover the core would have to mount an operation even larger than that performed in the 1960's. You can be sure that any operation of this type in the area will bring out the black helicopters X-Files fans are so fond of...
Pat
P.S.: The weapon in question had a yield of 24, not 2.4 Mt.
Screw my karma, 90% of this post is too dumb to let slide:
Yes, we are fiercely proud of our national heritage.
Great, so should everybody, but not to the point where it overrides common sense.
We have the most beautiful language - a good balance between a melifluous sound and expressiveness. None of that germanic harshness.
Which is why I sometimes feel like I've been garling with marbles after speaking french for a while. Try Italian for a language that most people find more audibly pleasing -- included a majority of frenchmen from a survey I read in l'Express a while back.
It is a shame that we must defend it so vigorously against franglais abominations such as le weekend
I suppose this explains why all the french people I know like to make fun of the way les quebecois use funny ancient french words instead of using such linguisically pure words as parking.
We have the best football team in the world (world cup 1998 and european cup 2000), and the best football player (zinadine zidane).
Of course! None of them play in the french national league! It also explains why only 2 french league teams have ever one a european championship -- ever.
We have the best literature, check out Moliere, for example.
I suppose the supposed supremacy of french litterature explains the near absence of plays by Moliere outside of France and the frequent adaptations of Shakespeare's plays in Paris.
I could continue...
Please don't, you have little of interest to say...
Pat
Sometimes I'm embarassed to be french, right now for example...
Laugh away dweeb, but the day you find that you're working for a comany under French law that wants to make you fulfill all your contractual obligations (your usual 3 months presence after resigning, non competition - non-concurrence en francais) you'll find that the joke is on you.
That work contract you signed is just that: A contract & "Human rights" do not in any way excuse you from your oblications in a court of law (prudhommes). I've seen it happen. Large companies are more than willing to use any means possible to "punish" as much as possible key workers who jump ship to discourage others who may be thinking about it. The higher you get in these companies the more likely it is that it'll happen. Paying one guy for three months to do shit work in a tiny office is a tiny price to pay if that means the others keep working.
I'd advise you to look at your work contract a little closer before giving advice that could get someone else burned...
Re:GM food is not a good idea yet
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 2
Oh, puhleeze. The subject at hand is not "wholesale introduction of GM foods" it's about golden rice. If you read the article you'll find that the modification was limited to the production of a vitamine in rice. The absence of this vitamine has killed hundreds of thousands of people through malnourishment this year alone.
I'm allergic to pennicillin & most of it's derivitives. I almost died from a dose when I was a child. Others have and continue to die from allergic reactions to even today. It does not follow that antibiotics are to be banned as "we can't afford a single mistake". Had Alexander Fleming's discovery of pennicillin had to be held to the same level of luddite reasoning that you want to apply to golden rice, the millions that have been saved through antibiotics use would have died!
I just hope that if we're related, you inherited all the recessives...
You're confusing government mandated monopolies and all monopolies. Standard Oil was a monopoly due to the fact that it had a monopoly over the market, not due any laws/regulations protecting it from competition. Microsoft is not a government mandated monopolies, yet...
Slashdot Mirror
Secondly, there's no philosophical error.
The motivation behind the Additional Protocol (IV) on Blinding Laser Weapons was not to turn eveyone into teletubbies, the geneva conventions are on limits to war. The convention is thus crafted as a means to eliminate weapons which can cause massive suffering without removing by the same token our means of defending our counties.
Here's the complete text to the 1995 addition to the geneva convention (http://www.unog.ch/frames/disarm/distreat/ccwprot 4.pdf
):
ADDITIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE CONVENTION ON PROHIBITIONS OR RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF CERTAIN CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS WHICH MAY BE DEEMED TO BE EXCESSIVELY INJURIOUS OR TO HAVE INDISCRIMINATE EFFECTS
ARTICLE 1: ADDITIONAL PROTOCOL
The following protocol shall be annexed to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects ("the Convention") as Protocol IV: Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (Protocol IV)
Article 1
It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices. The High Contracting Parties shall not transfer such weapons to any State or non-State entity.
Article 2
In the employment of laser systems, the High Contracting Parties shall take all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision. Such precautions shall include training of their armed forces and other practical measures.
Article 3
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this protocol.
Article 4
For the purpose of this Protocol 'permanent blindness' means irreversible and uncorrectable loss of vision which is seriously disabling with no prospect of recovery. Serious disability is equivalent to visual acuity of less than 20/200 Snellen measured using both eyes.
Only lasers specifically designed to blind are disallowed by the convention. Imagine a disco ball lit with a spotlight & an UV laser - the spotlight is so the eye gets drawn to the discoball without being too bright for anyone to feel the need to look away. The UV laser burns the retinas of everyone who looks. THIS cheap yet massivly debilitating weapon is what the addition to the convention is about. Only the ignorant conclude that ALL lasers are forbidden.
Pat
aerodynamic breaking... LOL.
Pat
Gopher had the advantage of a clean protocol & easy to use clients.
FTP had the advantage of being widely deployed.
Had not prettified clients like web browsers come along at the time they did, ftp was doomed, but once the clients were easy enough to use there wasn't enough incentive to replace crufty old FTP.
Manufacturing fuel & oxidiser at Mars has been studied for almost 40 years. One solution to this that has been present in a number of Mars mission plans (Zubrin's Mars direct IIRC) is to send a robot mission to Mars BEFORE anyone leaves Earth. This robot mission contains all that is needed to fabricate fuel + oxidiser. The factory must be working for the astronauts to be autorized to leave for Mars.
This was long before abundant supplies of H were known to be present on Mars, so the robots were to be cracking atmospheric CO2 into CO + 0, but I shouldn't imagine that mining the H out of the soil would be an insurmountable obstacle. O can be obtained from the soil if the H is present as water, or from the atmosphere if it is not.
The visitors to Mir spent extended time in microgravity. Visitors to Mars will not.
All recent mission plans to Mars have used a means of generating "artificial gravity" during the extended coast phase between Earth & Mars. The most common method is splitting the the spacecraft into 2 major assemblies which are connected by cables & then spinning the assembly up to Mars level G forces.
It's just another version of the no-contact access badges I uses at work. There are only two main components. An antenna/induction loop + a chip. The detector has a charged loop that generates a magnetic field. When passing the card/speedpass within a certain radius of the detector, an inducted current strong enough for the chip to be powered will be generated by the antenna in the card/speedpass. The card/speedpass chip then uses the antenna to generate a coded radio pulse. This pulse is then read by the detector and used to identify the sendor.
As an access key, this system works great. It's cheap & simple, as the intelligence is in the software used to manage the card ID's, not in the cards. For example; if I lose my key, only MY key needs to be canceled. As all the detectors are set at pocket level, I don't even need to have a hand free to open doors.
The only minor bug I've encountered is that you cannot have two cards in the same pocket. They both wake up & send their signal pulse at the same time which corrupts both pulses.
However, as a means to control acces to a credit card, this system really sucks as there is NO AUTHENTIFICATION. All you need is a detector to be able to stealthily read anyones ID. The owner of the speedpass will never even know that the ID has been stolen, after all it never left his pocket/wrist!
Coming up with a device able to resend the purloined ID is within the means of most EE grad students, so I predict that abuse of this system in the very near future.
I certainly won't be using one.
From what I can see from the speedpass website there is no authentification to verify that the possesor of the speedpass is really the owner. A speedpass is the electronic equivalent of a blank cashiers check to my bank account, so if I lose a speedpass I lose the equivalent of my credit card plus my pin code! Am I willing to risk this just so I can wave my wrist/keys without having to type a PIN? NO! I may be lazy, but not stupid.
So, if my Blu-Ray burner dies, I can't restore any of my backups using a replacement drive!?!
If this is progress, I don't want any, thank you...
I'd like to buy a device like this, add a HD & some powered speakers myself, but it won't work.
One of the major differences between USB & 1394 is that USB uses a master/slave configuration whereas 1394 is peer to peer. The implications of this are that you cannot connect USB slave devices without a master. I can connect my 1394 DV camera to my 1394 hard drive & copy data to & fro, but it is impossible (as yet) to do the same with USB because they would almost certainly be implemented as USB slaves. For the same reason, I cannot hook up 2 Ipaqs and transfer direct over USB.
This and not latency is why I'm waiting for a similar device with 1394 instead of USB.
USB 2.0 is supposed to implement peer to peer à la 1394, but I'll believe it when I can see, and play with it with my own hands.
Pat
I beg to differ, there are GSM 1800 networks in France, Germany, England, Italy, Spain, Norway, i.e.: througout europe.
1800 nets were deployed in europe before the rest of the world. While 900 was the original frequency that was GSM developped for, 1800 has advantages in urban environments (smaller cell size) that make it better adapted to the dense urban environment.
What complete Tripe.
The NB-52 is uniquely qualified for this task due to it's high wing configuration, multi-ton capable hardpoints, ability to reach high altitudes and instrumentation. No other large aircraft is so equipped. The L1011 that OSC modified for the Pegasus has encountered more problems than the launcher itself! Alot of the x planes, like the X15, etc were launched the two NB-52's that Nasa has owned. One was only used early in the X15 program and was retired long ago but the other has soldiered on and is still used in drop tests like the X33.
As for "The task of getting it into orbit is likely somewhat trivial", coming from "Alien54", I suppose it could be for you, but it certainly is not for us humans.
There was only one test. Even though it was successful, Air launched ICBM's were never pursued as that wasn't the main objective of the program for the USAF. The REAL objective was to get the Navy to stop telling congressmen that the bomber leg of the nuclear triad (Bombers/Sub lauched Ballistic Missles/ICBMS) were obsolete as they would probably be shot down before reaching their objectives. The Navy had been trying to Hijack the USAF's bomber budget to build more Tridents but when faced with the threat of air launched ICBM's, they quietly backed off...
Price per kilo to orbit is NOT the only hurdle! I can see three major obstacles off the top of my head:
No Funding: Who in this age of recession is foolhardy enough to finance such a venture after all the venture capital firms got burned in last years crash?
Payload design: Modern satellites are custom designed to match their launchers. Diameter, mass, etc are optimized during the design stages to the specifications of the intended launcher. Who exactly is going to redesign their multi-million dollar satellites for the unique constraints used in this design?
Market: Who will be buying? Any air lauched design is going to be limited by the launch aircraft, in Pegasus's (L1011) case by aircraft's undercarriage, and in Bladerunner's (Which aircraft? C131/C5/C17's? Good luck in convincing the USAF to lend you one, they are waaay overtasked already.) by cargo bay weight constraints. Since Iridium chapter 11'ed the market for lightweight sats in LEO has almost completely evaporated.
Yeah, but...
Does it really work?
;-)
Uh, Taco, would you mind letting us know where we might find the definition of "endorced". I've tried dictionaries, a thesaurus, and the Internet without succes...
Pat
The big problem with supersonic or better flight for commercial use isn't the fuel economy, it's the fact that many countries (the US being the first that leaps to my mind) don't allow commercial aircraft to fly supersonic over their land at any altitude.
Not quite.
First off, it's not just the USA that has outlawed supersonic flight over populated areas, it's every country. That includes France & England -- the builders of the Concorde. Concorde flights have a longer subsonic portion of their transatlantic flights on the european side than they do on the US side as Paris & London are further inland than New York or Washington DC.
Secondly, you're confusing cause with effect. The reason for the limitations on Supersonic flight are due to the sonic booms. Eliminate the boom & supersonic overflights become possible. There is no bang detectable at ground level due to overflight by hypersonic aircraft as they must fly at the very edge of space in order to avoid the dense lower atmosphere to avoid airframe heating.
Pat
IMO, the guilt is shared. Lockmart's share is because they pushed VentureStar for the "low risk" X-33, and Nasa's is for choosing the project with the highest risks/dev costs.
Killing off DC-X and pushing Venturestar was the Empires's revenge. Instead of combining off the shelf equipment, Lockmart won by appealing to Nasa's weakness: Make it sexy but above all make sure it needs loads of development before it sees the light of day.
The curse of X-33 was not the tanks, it was the fact that Nasa/Lockmart have no incentive to lower launch costs. Hooting and praising the "wonderful" technology the program financed is pointless as it won't be used in any shuttle successor, oh no, we'll have to spend yet more tens of billions/man decades to develop yet more NEW technology -- if Nasa's current spend more/less filling corporate outlook is still extant.
All the money & time wasted on a paper X-33 do not change the fact that we are now no closer to seeing cheap acces to space than we were the day DC-X was shanked. A tiny fraction of the resources squandered over the past 8 years would have brought us significantly closer to that goal had they been spent on DC-X.
While most of the bombs were recovered intact, one bomb fell into a swamp and it's core separated from the rest of the bomb. A hole 50 ft deep and over 3 acres in area were excavated to look for the core. Over 4 million cu. ft. of earth were removed before the search was abandoned.
Anyone trying to recover the core would have to mount an operation even larger than that performed in the 1960's. You can be sure that any operation of this type in the area will bring out the black helicopters X-Files fans are so fond of...
Pat
P.S.: The weapon in question had a yield of 24, not 2.4 Mt.
Yes, we are fiercely proud of our national heritage.
Great, so should everybody, but not to the point where it overrides common sense.
We have the most beautiful language - a good balance between a melifluous sound and expressiveness. None of that germanic harshness.
Which is why I sometimes feel like I've been garling with marbles after speaking french for a while. Try Italian for a language that most people find more audibly pleasing -- included a majority of frenchmen from a survey I read in l'Express a while back.
It is a shame that we must defend it so vigorously against franglais abominations such as le weekend
I suppose this explains why all the french people I know like to make fun of the way les quebecois use funny ancient french words instead of using such linguisically pure words as parking.
We have the best football team in the world (world cup 1998 and european cup 2000), and the best football player (zinadine zidane).
Of course! None of them play in the french national league! It also explains why only 2 french league teams have ever one a european championship -- ever.
We have the best literature, check out Moliere, for example.
I suppose the supposed supremacy of french litterature explains the near absence of plays by Moliere outside of France and the frequent adaptations of Shakespeare's plays in Paris.
I could continue...
Please don't, you have little of interest to say...
Pat
Sometimes I'm embarassed to be french, right now for example...
That work contract you signed is just that: A contract & "Human rights" do not in any way excuse you from your oblications in a court of law (prudhommes). I've seen it happen. Large companies are more than willing to use any means possible to "punish" as much as possible key workers who jump ship to discourage others who may be thinking about it. The higher you get in these companies the more likely it is that it'll happen. Paying one guy for three months to do shit work in a tiny office is a tiny price to pay if that means the others keep working.
I'd advise you to look at your work contract a little closer before giving advice that could get someone else burned...
I'm allergic to pennicillin & most of it's derivitives. I almost died from a dose when I was a child. Others have and continue to die from allergic reactions to even today. It does not follow that antibiotics are to be banned as "we can't afford a single mistake". Had Alexander Fleming's discovery of pennicillin had to be held to the same level of luddite reasoning that you want to apply to golden rice, the millions that have been saved through antibiotics use would have died!
I just hope that if we're related, you inherited all the recessives...
Ummm no, the Dec Rainbow in 1981/2 used a Z80 for CPM & a 8088 for a Dos look alike...
You're confusing government mandated monopolies and all monopolies. Standard Oil was a monopoly due to the fact that it had a monopoly over the market, not due any laws/regulations protecting it from competition. Microsoft is not a government mandated monopolies, yet...