A shield covered with corner reflectors would not be heavy. You only need a very thin layer of aluminum foil to reflect microwave radiation, so the weight of the shield would depend entirely on the thickness of the cardboard or plastic backing.
The shield would not protect you from the microwaves, though. It would be very tricky to make something that you could actually hide behind, as waves bend around reflective surfaces. The protection lies in inflicting pain on the operator, which hopefully makes him let go of the trigger.
I'd claim the corner reflectors just happened to be in my backpack because I was going to mount them on my boat later. Heck, I wasn't even part of the manifestation. I just happened to be walking by when he shot me with the pain ray. I could not prevent the corner reflectors to shoot it back at him. That's just the laws of physics.
If you ever go to a protest where you expect the government to use one of these on you, bring a buch of corner reflectors.. They can be bought in boat stores, or made cheaply out of paper lined with aluminum foil, and they will send the "pain ray" right back at the operator.
No, NP stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time". Informally, it means that the problem can be solved in polynomial time if you are really, really lucky.
This is not as incredible as it sounds. To explain how it works, it is perhaps easiest to start with a simpler device. I could take a brick, connect a battery to it and say "Look! This brick is only consuming one milliwatt of electric power, yet it is emitting one Watt of infrared radiation. That is 100 000 % efficiency!" If I did the same thing at 1 000 degrees Celcius, the brick would even be emitting visible light (wether connected to a battery or not.)
What the people at MIT do is a little more complicated. They don't use the black body radiation directly. Instead they take electrons that would have emitted infrared photons, add some more energy to them, and get visible light. For this to work, they only have to add the difference between the energy of an infrared photon and a visible photon, yet they get the light output of a visible photon. At a temperature of 135 degrees Celcius (that is 275 degrees Farenheit if you happen to live in Belize or the United States) the difference between the black body radiation and visible light was small enough that they managed to get over 100 % efficiency. No laws of thermodynamics were violated.
While it would be cool if they were an international police force arresting cybercriminals, Interpol is really just an organisation for information exchange between national police forces. The arrests were made by the ordinary police in the respective countries and according to local laws.
Why would you need a special "safe" message? The usuial "I'm sitting on the toilet now" status updates already let you know that somebody is alive, since they're timestamped (and often geotaged as well).
She stole from people who were defrauded on the car sales website, not from the Nigerians. They never lost a penny, as it was not their money to begin with.
The Nigerians did not go to the police. The ripped-off car buyers did. (Smitty777 obviously did not read TFA before writing TFS.)
It has gotten you pretty much exactly where whoever was behind the attacks intended, I am guessing.
Next step, introduce legislation whereby most Americans can bypass TSA checks. People with certain ethnic backgrounds will of course be subject to even more intrusive checks in exchange. As will anyone who protests too loudly against the new system.
Heartland institute says the document entitled "Heartland Climate Strategy" is a fake. Peter Gleick says the document entilteld "2012 fundraising strategy and budget" is real. They are probably both right. Why is this news?
The system is working as intended. The whole point of TSA is to bother people, not to increase security. A few years from now, noboby will oppose legislation that lets everybody except a certain ethnic group bypass the scanners. and... Godwin anyone?
In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand lines of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 50K-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS/2, how much they did. How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to convince them - hey, if we have - a developer's got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he's made something smaller and faster, less K-LOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that's the methodology. Ugh! Anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing. -- Steve Balmer.
Not much has changed at IBM since the 70s, apparently.
Denying a preliminary injunction is not the same thing as saying ReDigi don't infringe on copyright. All the judge is saying is that this does not cause irreparable harm. That is: He believes any harm done can be repaired by ReDigi paying damages after the trial, so there's no need to shut them down now.
If that were the case, then MS could circumvent this law by publishing a "Windows, Crapware Edition" that retails for $1 or is a free download. Laptop manufacturers could then legally refuse to refund anything to customers who don't want Windows.
Until that happens, I hope this law forces manufacturers to offer Windows-free options.
I think most people would be offended if you told them you "forgive them for being gay". It implies that it's something that needs forgiving.
What the U.K. government is saying is that Alan Turing did not do anything that requires forgiveness. The law was "cruel and absurd" and shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
A shield covered with corner reflectors would not be heavy. You only need a very thin layer of aluminum foil to reflect microwave radiation, so the weight of the shield would depend entirely on the thickness of the cardboard or plastic backing.
The shield would not protect you from the microwaves, though. It would be very tricky to make something that you could actually hide behind, as waves bend around reflective surfaces. The protection lies in inflicting pain on the operator, which hopefully makes him let go of the trigger.
I'd claim the corner reflectors just happened to be in my backpack because I was going to mount them on my boat later. Heck, I wasn't even part of the manifestation. I just happened to be walking by when he shot me with the pain ray. I could not prevent the corner reflectors to shoot it back at him. That's just the laws of physics.
If you ever go to a protest where you expect the government to use one of these on you, bring a buch of corner reflectors.. They can be bought in boat stores, or made cheaply out of paper lined with aluminum foil, and they will send the "pain ray" right back at the operator.
That would also be an easy way to handle network lag in multiplayer games.
Because in that fictinoal universe, the religion is not illogical, superstitious, or ill-founded. It actually works.
If Christians could turn water into wine for real, I'd be a Christian.
And drunk!
"Hard to understand" is preferable to "wrong", though. Saying that NP stands for "Not Polynomial" implies that you have disproved P =
NP.
No, NP stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time". Informally, it means that the problem can be solved in polynomial time if you are really, really lucky.
This is not as incredible as it sounds. To explain how it works, it is perhaps easiest to start with a simpler device. I could take a brick, connect a battery to it and say "Look! This brick is only consuming one milliwatt of electric power, yet it is emitting one Watt of infrared radiation. That is 100 000 % efficiency!" If I did the same thing at 1 000 degrees Celcius, the brick would even be emitting visible light (wether connected to a battery or not.)
What the people at MIT do is a little more complicated. They don't use the black body radiation directly. Instead they take electrons that would have emitted infrared photons, add some more energy to them, and get visible light. For this to work, they only have to add the difference between the energy of an infrared photon and a visible photon, yet they get the light output of a visible photon. At a temperature of 135 degrees Celcius (that is 275 degrees Farenheit if you happen to live in Belize or the United States) the difference between the black body radiation and visible light was small enough that they managed to get over 100 % efficiency. No laws of thermodynamics were violated.
Yes, or simply 315 569 260 jails.
This is not helping, guys!
While it would be cool if they were an international police force arresting cybercriminals, Interpol is really just an organisation for information exchange between national police forces. The arrests were made by the ordinary police in the respective countries and according to local laws.
Why would you need a special "safe" message? The usuial "I'm sitting on the toilet now" status updates already let you know that somebody is alive, since they're timestamped (and often geotaged as well).
Of course, that made-in china integrated circuit in one of the subcomponents already has physical access...
I vote for: C) The politicians who decided it was a good idea for Jaques to have a $2 breathalyzer in his car are sent to prison along with him.
She stole from people who were defrauded on the car sales website, not from the Nigerians. They never lost a penny, as it was not their money to begin with.
The Nigerians did not go to the police. The ripped-off car buyers did. (Smitty777 obviously did not read TFA before writing TFS.)
Look where that got us.
It has gotten you pretty much exactly where whoever was behind the attacks intended, I am guessing.
Next step, introduce legislation whereby most Americans can bypass TSA checks. People with certain ethnic backgrounds will of course be subject to even more intrusive checks in exchange. As will anyone who protests too loudly against the new system.
And everyone will buy from Apple, because "wearing iGlasses" sounds so much more plesant than "wearing a Galaxy HUD".
Heartland institute says the document entitled "Heartland Climate Strategy" is a fake.
Peter Gleick says the document entilteld "2012 fundraising strategy and budget" is real.
They are probably both right. Why is this news?
Hiring Barbara Streissand as a legal consultant was not their smartest move.
The system is working as intended. The whole point of TSA is to bother people, not to increase security. A few years from now, noboby will oppose legislation that lets everybody except a certain ethnic group bypass the scanners. and ... Godwin anyone?
In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand lines of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 50K-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS/2, how much they did. How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to convince them - hey, if we have - a developer's got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he's made something smaller and faster, less K-LOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that's the methodology. Ugh! Anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing. -- Steve Balmer.
Not much has changed at IBM since the 70s, apparently.
I'd go as far as saying that all reasonable countries are free of software patents. Saying otherwise would be to redefine the word "reasonable".
Denying a preliminary injunction is not the same thing as saying ReDigi don't infringe on copyright. All the judge is saying is that this does not cause irreparable harm. That is: He believes any harm done can be repaired by ReDigi paying damages after the trial, so there's no need to shut them down now.
If that were the case, then MS could circumvent this law by publishing a "Windows, Crapware Edition" that retails for $1 or is a free download. Laptop manufacturers could then legally refuse to refund anything to customers who don't want Windows.
Until that happens, I hope this law forces manufacturers to offer Windows-free options.
I think most people would be offended if you told them you "forgive them for being gay". It implies that it's something that needs forgiving.
What the U.K. government is saying is that Alan Turing did not do anything that requires forgiveness. The law was "cruel and absurd" and shouldn't have existed in the first place.