What are you smoking? You would literally have to store in an oven or a Hot Spring to get those kind of temperatures.....possibly a solar concentrator. No tin can sitting in the desert is going to hit 150C without leaving it on top of a running engine. I saw a guy drape his old PASGT vest over the exhaust system of a HEMTT during the first Gulf War to warm it up (weather was cold). Left scorch marks on the fabric shell. Seriously, much of the design of military equipment is "grunt proofing". Do you know why the M-16A2 has a thicker barrel at the exposed end than the A1 did? Because guys in Vietnam would use the damn thing as a prybar and bend it. No, I guarantee that there are plenty of good ol' infantry folks out there who could find a hundred ways to melt a vest that goes bad at 300degF.
The dispute on effectiveness is irrelevant. As a twice-deployed Army vet, I'd say that's a matter of opinion. "It's simply a question of weight. Standard armour weighs 28lbs; Dragonskin weighs 47lbs. Despite increased flexibility and arguably better protection, our people can't operate effectively or safely under that penalty - their mobility, stamina, ordnance, and other equipment would all be unacceptably reduced. 19 pounds might seem like a lot to someone who's used to wearing, on a regular basis, perhaps 5 pounds of clothes; but to someone who goes to work carrying 10 pounds of water, 8 pounds of ammo, 4 pounds of grenades, 10 pounds of radio batteries, 4 pounds of helmet, 8 pounds of rifle, and about 10 pounds of other miscellaneous gear, the difference is negotiable. Deciding between an 70 pound load and a 90 pound load is far less significant. It's well within a range where tactical considerations should decide which armor to use, rather than a blanket decree from some fucktard West Point grad commanding a battalion of paper pusher at the Pentagon.
USArmy public relations are a brain-dead bunch of morons for not being more up-front about it. They couldn't. They'd be forced to admit that we drag our asses around carrying too much gear and that a few extra pounds of armor might not be that big a deal for a guy who spends most of his time riding in a truck.
They had a golden opportunity to appear both professional and caring, and somehow ended up looking irrevocably like a bunch of corrupt, disingenous wankers. "Somehow"? They ended up looking that way because that's exactly what they are.
Another poster reported that Dragonskin is almost twice as heavy as the other vests, too. Did Dateline try putting Dragonskin against two regular vests? Don't be daft. Just like in D&D, you can't stack armor. Just like you can't wear 2 suits of plate mail, you can't wear two vests. You wouldn't be able to move. So no, they didn't test against two regular OTVs. That'd be stupid.
Dragon Skin was recently tested by the Army and found to be deficient in many ways. Dunno about you, but I'm generally suspicious of tests where the only thing they make public is a press release. The Army claims the details of the test are "classified". What, saying that they heated it up to 200degF and then shot it with an RPK is a state secret? Give me a break. No, being a former soldier with 6 years active duty (two of them in Afghanistan), I can smell the stink of Pentagon chairborne "soldiers" biasing a test to perpetuate their own pet program (cough)IOTV(cough) because it would be detrimental to their career to do otherwise. When you send the Product Manager of the current ongoing body armor program to run tests on a competing product which might derail his gravy train, that fails the sniff test. Really, the big problem is that Dragon Skin failed one requirement: the adhesive they initially used couldn't stand up to 165degF for 6 hours. They have subsequently reformulated the adhesive. The question is, did the Army bake all 10 of their test vests, destroying the adhesive, and only then start shooting at them? We don't know. All we saw was some Pentagon political officer holding up a ruined Dragon Skin vest and saying "ayup, we done shot it a bunch o' times, and it dint work none!" The fact that every single other test by other groups (NIJ for one, and Dr. Gary Roberts, who exceeded DoD test standards) showed the Dragon Skin SOV-3000 armor passing with flying colors, that really throws the Army test into a questionable light. Why did it only fail when the Army tested it, and why won't they say what they did that made it fail?
Rather, flame the complete ignorance of the process by which new technologies trickle down to soldiers from the numerous trials and tests. People complain that the DoD can't get modern equipment to troops in combat in a timely manner, then they complain about how inadequately tested and developed equipment kills troops because it was fielded too soon. It's often a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. In the case of body armor, the DoD can't just shell out $500 million every 6 months to buy everyone the latest thing in body armor. The money isn't there, the manufacturing capacity isn't there, and (most important) documented proofing of the very latest armor designs isn't there. There are all kinds of stupid things that can go wrong. Zylon degrading due to moisture is a pretty good example. Second Chance, the maker of Zylon vests and one of the oldest makers of body armor, went bankrupt due to the Zylon degradation thing. You know what would happen to a government employee who listened to the "just send them the latest armor" drumbeat and rubber-stamped a request for an untested armor product that turned out to be flawed? Can you blame them for being cautious? It's human nature.
Not only has the US government mandated the use of corn and corn derived products in just about everything that US consumers use... It's not mandated, it's just the natural consequence of stupid policy. Corn products are used because corn is ridiculously subsidized.
I've heard that our heavy dependence on corn as an additive (e.g., corn syrup) is one main contributor to the lack of affordable, healthful food options in grocery stores. Corn syrup is only used because it's cheap. Corn syrup is cheap only because corn is subsidized and sugar is artificially supported by obscene import tariffs. It's not so much a "dependence" on corn syrup as it is an unintended consequence.
Might this work to reverse that trend? We can always hope. Of course the real problem is insane government agricultural policy. Increased demand for corn won't do much to fix that.
The problem isn't that though, the problem is storing the waste, no one wants it in their region. Waste shouldn't be "stored", it should be recycled. Nuclear plant "waste" is really only about 10% used. Stick it in a breeder reactor and you not only get more fuel you can stick into the first reactor, but you generate power in the process. No, the problem with waste is that a chain of political idiots and their energy department appointees (every president since Carter, inclusive) have prohibited or defunded the construction of waste reprocessing breeder reactors (Carter, Clinton), or displayed a near complete disinterest in promoting nuclear power (Reagan, Bush, Bush). The classic objection to breeders is that they produce plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs. This completely overlooks the fact that unless you build a breeder reactor specifically for the purpose of making pure Pu-239 for nuclear weapons, you get a mix of Pu isotopes which absolutely can not be detonated, and is only suitable for use as reactor fuel.
"The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel."
What moron put this analysis together? When people say "cleaner emissions", they mean lower hydrocarbons (HC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulates. Only an idiot would claim that switching from one hydrocarbon fuel to another would reduce CO2 emissions. It's the natural outcome of hydrocarbon combustion. Way to go, Environment Canada, debunking a claim that no one ever made!
Nortel Strong-Armed a competitor via a company that they have a minority interest in, and so the title should be, "Nortel Strong-Arms competitor" instead of "Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor". It shouldn't even read that. Based on the summary, it's clear that it should be "Nortel Strong-Arms Spun-Off Subsidiary Into Using Nortel Product". The slashdot janitors, being only trained chimps, can't actually read. Their training apparently consists of learning to randomly hit the "accept submission" button. Good thing they're not paid to be editors, right?
But the marginal costs to support an additional user are extant. Support is not part of the software product. It is a separate service.
And building a product that works for a bigger audience is also more expensive. Design and test for a product with a single user is a lot easier than for a million. The Marginal cost comes into play after the software is designed, written, and tested. For thick-headed children such as yourself who like to speak without understanding what they've read, the definition of marginal cost might provide a bit of education.
If you think electrolysis has an efficiency of 50%, you're off in la-la land. Electrolysis is very efficient. Now, if your electricity comes from any sort of heat cycle, you have the heat cycle losses, but the conversion from electricity to hydrogen isn't bad. If you're talking about the amount of energy you get out of a given volume of hydrogen via combustion vs. the amount of energy you put in to crack that hydrogen from water, you're looking at a 50-70% efficiency range. He may be pessimistic at 50%, but he's certainly not "in la-la land".
Is Speech Recognition Finally 'Good Enough'? Good enough for what? Good enough for the same jackasses who constantly assault us with half of their cell phone conversation to now share their latest memo to the sales department as well?
NATO letter names:...papá..." Perhaps it was just a typo, but the above is in error. The NATO phonetic alphabet always puts the stress on the first ejective consonant. In the radio alphabet, "papa" is definitely not pronounced "pah-PAH". See, it's all English, and designed to be shouted into a radio by a panicked infantryman wishing to call in an artillery or air strike.
Reply to: No really, it was on Discovery. So, it's fer sure.
Now that's a definitive source for ya. The cable channel on which the show aired has fuck-all to do with the production of the show. At any rate, the careful, rational experts they consulted are certainly more reputable than the same half dozen retarded moonbats the conspiracy fools keep trotting out.
And Popular Science definitively disproved 9/11 was an inside job, right? Mhh Hmm. Americans. No, the authorities in the appropriate fields they consulted disproved it, you smug prick.
Anyway, the CIA certainly shot Kennedy just as they did with Martin Luther King a few years later. Please. As evidenced by 9-11, the "surprise" fall of the Soviet Union, the Bay of Pigs, and countless others, it's quite obvious that the CIA couldn't find its collective ass with both hands and a flashlight. I've worked with the kind of ivy league fucktards that go into the CIA. They're all walking piles of preconceived notions. They couldn't conspire to have a pizza delivered, much less murder a public figure in broad daylight.
The burning of the Reichstag springs to mind Poor example. It's rather well known that the Reichstag fire actually was the work of one man. Van der Lubbe, the unemployed communist bricklayer, the so-called patsy in this "conspiracy". Really, the Nazis simply took advantage of the fire, at most perhaps hampering the efforts to put out the fire.
Secondly, if your theory is correct, that it is not possible for a large organization to keep a secret, how did a large international terrorist organization do it? By existing as hundreds of isolated cells that don't communicate. al Qaeda can be best described as a franchise of independent terror dealers. They all look to the corporate headquarters for general direction, but they're mostly self governed. This arrangement is intentional, under the theory that the easiest secret to keep is one you don't know.
How does organized crime work? Poorly. Rival gangs and backstabbing co-mobsters rat each other out all the time. The reason the big bosses are so hard to put away is that it's hard to gather sufficient evidence to convict a man 3 levels removed from the illegal action. It's certainly no secret what the mobs are doing, though.
Both require deep hooks into government to function and often carry out quite bold acts in broad daylight. Bold acts like what? I'm not sure what you're referring to.
The police knew full well the acts that Capone was responsible for but could not prove it, and he was so skilled in playing the media that much of the public refused to believe the charges as well. Bullcrap. Everyone knew he was a crime boss. They just couldn't convict him of anything because he didn't do anything himself.
The government's explanation is also a "conspiracy theory," and, a priori, deserves no more nor less consideration than any other. Other than the fact that it is the simplest explaination, matches the evidence, and requires no one to have kept silent so effectively.
You just want something to believe in that has no proof whatsoever so that it gives you something mysterious in your life. Fuck that. Personally, my theory about conspiracy theorists is that they're control freaks. They can't stand the thought that bad things happen for stupid reasons. No, they simply refuse to accept the truth, that there isn't some evil mastermind pulling the strings. They want to believe that if only we could stop these evil fiends, then these bad things could be stopped. They cannot accept that big horrible things can be perpetrated by 19 (9-11) or even 1 (kennedy) random nuts. Poor insecure babies.
You've proven yourself to be a presumptuous and exceedingly smug too. Ever hear of compartmentalization? Yes. I dealt directly with compartmentalization when I was an intelligence analyst in the Army. Compartmentalization is for hiding details, not the big picture. For example, you compartmentalize the information revealed to factory workers building M-1A1 Abrams tanks, or B-2 Spirits. That way, none of them know enough to single-handedly compromise the entire project--- but all of them, every single one, know they're building a tank or a bomber. Seriously, I'd love to hear your explaination how "compartmentalization" could sufficiently obscure something as big as planting explosives in the WTC or "vanishing" one or more 757s.
Yes it has EVERYTHING to do with knowledge. No I feel sorry for you. If the Saudis were solely responsible, then why are we not at war with Saudi Arabia right now, or Pakisistan (do a read up on Randy Glass and operation diamondback)? For the same reason we haven't burned down Buffalo, New York to retaliate for McVeigh blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City. The Saudi and Pakistani governments didn't send those 19 on their mission.
You dont accept we were deliberately mislead to go into Iraq? Irrelevant. Good ol' uncle George was itchin' to go into Iraq since day 1 of his presidency, looking to finish what his pa started. 9-11 gave him a convenient excuse. Honestly, you people call GWB an idiot, then you claim he pulled off all these grand conspiracies.
Yes the collapse does contradict physics. I have a formal education in Physics too. A) no it didn't, and B) a little education doesn't make you right. Popular Mechanics assembled the analysis of a number of experts, and I doubt your education and experience is anywhere near as extensive as theirs.
Forget the physics, look at all the other evidence, pre, during and post-9/11.
I would suggest you stop acting like a swarmy slashdork and try to be a true critical skeptic.
Sorry. None of the [skeptic/conspiracy nut] stuff is even a little credible. You need to offer credible counter-evidence, rather than smugly braying "open your eyes, you fools!"
3. The freshness. How long ago it was picked and roasted. Time since picked is largely irrelevant. Green beans last effectively forever. Once roasted though, you got about 20 minutes before it goes downhill, and certainly no more than a day before it achieves mediocrity.
Jamaican Blue Mountain ranks right up there with Kona as the most overrated coffee on the market today. yeah, anyone who extols the virtues of JBM or Kona over all others, clearly has not tasted good coffee. A good Yemen Matari beats either of those easily.
However, when I recently spotted a a site that vaguely extols freshness, I began to wonder how much the freshness of the beans themselves affects the quality. Normally I thought the whole beans would retain the quality far longer, due to less surface area exposed to air, but clearly there still must be a decline; worse yet, it is difficult to gauge that decline since the sellers usually do not advertise the age of the beans. You know, discussing the relative freshness of beans you didn't roast yourself is like discussing the quality of a Wal-Mart suit vs. a K-Mart suit. Neither of them are Armani, so what's the difference? You will certainly be able to tell the difference between stale beans (2 days old) and really stale beans (2 weeks old+), but in both cases, you're still drinking coffee made from stale beans. Roasted coffee beans have a short shelf life, flavor wise. Personally, I can taste the difference between truly fresh roasted beans and beans that have been allowed to sit an hour. Both are good, but the former is definitely better. I roast my own beans and never save any that are more than a day or two old.
And ground beans? Once ground, you have about 20-40 minutes before they start going bad. I cannot fathom how people can stand to drink that canned pre-ground crap. It's a step up from freeze dried, at least.
I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans? Start with green, unroasted beans. Kept in a cool, dry place, green coffee has a practically unlimited shelf life. Set water to boil while roasting beans to desired darkness. Grind to desired coarseness immediately when roasting is complete. Place in coffee press immediately. Add very nearly boiling (i.e. 211degF water) to coffee press. Allow to brew for 2-8 minutes. Time varies with coarseness of grind and desired strength. I like very nearly turkish grind, brewed 4 minutes. Pour and drink immediately.
The key word above is (obviously) immediately. Extremely fresh coffee is incomparable. It's 15 minutes from the time I pour the green beans in the roaster to the time I'm sitting down with my finished coffee. There's nothing like it. You know it's fresh when you can discern the faintest hint of carbonation due to CO2 trapped by the roasting process.
My personal favorite coffee is a 50-50 mix of Yemen Matari Mocha and AAA Kenya, roasted just until the beans start to get shiny.
Here is a good resource on how to be the master of your own coffee.
Slow the computer down until it can process information at the maximum speed a human synapse can fire, and see who wins a timed chess match. Unfair handicap. Among other things, human brains work massively in parallel, so synapse firing speed is not a reasonable comparison.
The amazing thing is that the computers only beat humans by looking at every single possibility. I think Deep Blue processed something like 200 million chess positions a second. But human grandmasters usually only consider 3 or 4 moves during their typical two-minutes of thinking.
It only seems like grandmasters are only considering 3 or 4 moves. What you're missing is the fact that they can, at a glance, take in the current state of the game and instantly dismiss several million avenues of consideration based on past analysis and current variations.
The real question is who has more customers that can be sued for patent infringement.
Being a consumer in no way protects you against patent infringement lawsuits. What the hell are you talking about? The maker of the product is responsible for the patent violation. How many CrackBerry users had to pay because RIM got hit with a patent infringement suit? NONE, you fool, NONE. The law states that liability for infringement lies with the party who has made, used, sold, offered to sell, or imported the infringing device or product.
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USArmy public relations are a brain-dead bunch of morons for not being more up-front about it. They couldn't. They'd be forced to admit that we drag our asses around carrying too much gear and that a few extra pounds of armor might not be that big a deal for a guy who spends most of his time riding in a truck. They had a golden opportunity to appear both professional and caring, and somehow ended up looking irrevocably like a bunch of corrupt, disingenous wankers. "Somehow"? They ended up looking that way because that's exactly what they are.
Don't be daft. Just like in D&D, you can't stack armor. Just like you can't wear 2 suits of plate mail, you can't wear two vests. You wouldn't be able to move. So no, they didn't test against two regular OTVs. That'd be stupid.
Might this work to reverse that trend? We can always hope. Of course the real problem is insane government agricultural policy. Increased demand for corn won't do much to fix that.
What moron put this analysis together? When people say "cleaner emissions", they mean lower hydrocarbons (HC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulates. Only an idiot would claim that switching from one hydrocarbon fuel to another would reduce CO2 emissions. It's the natural outcome of hydrocarbon combustion. Way to go, Environment Canada, debunking a claim that no one ever made!
Support is not part of the software product. It is a separate service.
And building a product that works for a bigger audience is also more expensive. Design and test for a product with a single user is a lot easier than for a million. The Marginal cost comes into play after the software is designed, written, and tested. For thick-headed children such as yourself who like to speak without understanding what they've read, the definition of marginal cost might provide a bit of education.
Now that's a definitive source for ya. The cable channel on which the show aired has fuck-all to do with the production of the show. At any rate, the careful, rational experts they consulted are certainly more reputable than the same half dozen retarded moonbats the conspiracy fools keep trotting out.
And Popular Science definitively disproved 9/11 was an inside job, right? Mhh Hmm. Americans. No, the authorities in the appropriate fields they consulted disproved it, you smug prick.
Anyway, the CIA certainly shot Kennedy just as they did with Martin Luther King a few years later. Please. As evidenced by 9-11, the "surprise" fall of the Soviet Union, the Bay of Pigs, and countless others, it's quite obvious that the CIA couldn't find its collective ass with both hands and a flashlight. I've worked with the kind of ivy league fucktards that go into the CIA. They're all walking piles of preconceived notions. They couldn't conspire to have a pizza delivered, much less murder a public figure in broad daylight.
Secondly, if your theory is correct, that it is not possible for a large organization to keep a secret, how did a large international terrorist organization do it? By existing as hundreds of isolated cells that don't communicate. al Qaeda can be best described as a franchise of independent terror dealers. They all look to the corporate headquarters for general direction, but they're mostly self governed. This arrangement is intentional, under the theory that the easiest secret to keep is one you don't know.
How does organized crime work? Poorly. Rival gangs and backstabbing co-mobsters rat each other out all the time. The reason the big bosses are so hard to put away is that it's hard to gather sufficient evidence to convict a man 3 levels removed from the illegal action. It's certainly no secret what the mobs are doing, though. Both require deep hooks into government to function and often carry out quite bold acts in broad daylight. Bold acts like what? I'm not sure what you're referring to.
The police knew full well the acts that Capone was responsible for but could not prove it, and he was so skilled in playing the media that much of the public refused to believe the charges as well. Bullcrap. Everyone knew he was a crime boss. They just couldn't convict him of anything because he didn't do anything himself.
The government's explanation is also a "conspiracy theory," and, a priori, deserves no more nor less consideration than any other. Other than the fact that it is the simplest explaination, matches the evidence, and requires no one to have kept silent so effectively.
the same fuckwad from OJ Simpson fame? lol. The same. All cops are fuckwads though. But fuckwad or not, he's a sharp guy, as cops go.
You dont accept we were deliberately mislead to go into Iraq? Irrelevant. Good ol' uncle George was itchin' to go into Iraq since day 1 of his presidency, looking to finish what his pa started. 9-11 gave him a convenient excuse. Honestly, you people call GWB an idiot, then you claim he pulled off all these grand conspiracies.
Yes the collapse does contradict physics. I have a formal education in Physics too. A) no it didn't, and B) a little education doesn't make you right. Popular Mechanics assembled the analysis of a number of experts, and I doubt your education and experience is anywhere near as extensive as theirs.
Forget the physics, look at all the other evidence, pre, during and post-9/11.
I would suggest you stop acting like a swarmy slashdork and try to be a true critical skeptic.
Sorry. None of the [skeptic/conspiracy nut] stuff is even a little credible. You need to offer credible counter-evidence, rather than smugly braying "open your eyes, you fools!"
And ground beans? Once ground, you have about 20-40 minutes before they start going bad. I cannot fathom how people can stand to drink that canned pre-ground crap. It's a step up from freeze dried, at least.
I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans? Start with green, unroasted beans. Kept in a cool, dry place, green coffee has a practically unlimited shelf life. Set water to boil while roasting beans to desired darkness. Grind to desired coarseness immediately when roasting is complete. Place in coffee press immediately. Add very nearly boiling (i.e. 211degF water) to coffee press. Allow to brew for 2-8 minutes. Time varies with coarseness of grind and desired strength. I like very nearly turkish grind, brewed 4 minutes. Pour and drink immediately.
The key word above is (obviously) immediately. Extremely fresh coffee is incomparable. It's 15 minutes from the time I pour the green beans in the roaster to the time I'm sitting down with my finished coffee. There's nothing like it. You know it's fresh when you can discern the faintest hint of carbonation due to CO2 trapped by the roasting process.
My personal favorite coffee is a 50-50 mix of Yemen Matari Mocha and AAA Kenya, roasted just until the beans start to get shiny.
Here is a good resource on how to be the master of your own coffee.
The amazing thing is that the computers only beat humans by looking at every single possibility. I think Deep Blue processed something like 200 million chess positions a second. But human grandmasters usually only consider 3 or 4 moves during their typical two-minutes of thinking.
It only seems like grandmasters are only considering 3 or 4 moves. What you're missing is the fact that they can, at a glance, take in the current state of the game and instantly dismiss several million avenues of consideration based on past analysis and current variations.