I have seen refrigerated cases before,there was even a company that specialized in them, but I cant remember the name. The problem I see with using freon is freon refrigeration a. Uses a compressor to force the freon to a liquid state, which is more complicated and expensive then the simple water pump, and b. reaches a temperature low enough to make condensation a serious concern. Water cooling is more then adequate for CPU cooling, even with heavy overclocking. Using a freon system would only have benefits in the "because I could" category, and like I said, it's been done before.
If you don't want to pay for advertising, buy the generic/store brand of whatever product it is and quit bitching. Businesses wouldn't spend so much money on advertizing if it didn't work.
There are many "dominant" (as in supress a recessive trait) genes that are not desirable. A complete mixing of races would actually probably be very bad, as it would mean less deviation in genes, which means greater susceptibility to disease. An example of this is the gene that causes Huntington's Disease. Also some recessive genes may be desirable. The can cary unique mutations that may give resilience to certain diseases that the more common dominant forms don't have. An example of this is the gene responsible for sickle cell, it also confers a resistance to Malaria (and is much more prevelant in the native people of areas with high rates of Malaria). Recessive doesn't neccesarily mean bad or weak, detrimental dominant genes are just more rare because carriers of the gene are more likely to die out, while detrimental reccessive genes can "hide" in perfectly healthy people. It's not that Im against interracial children or anything, it's just a fact that variety is an important factor in a species survival and continued evolution.
My point about "normal" hurricane was that a hurricane does not normally cause massive flooding. You can't compare the response to a category 4 hurricane without signifigant flooding to a cat 5 which hits an area so vulnerable to flooding it may take weeks or months to drain it out. The two things are disasters on a completely different scale. Cuba is neither below sea level (they are in the sea so that would be hard)or a signifigant flooding threat. It is more fair to compare a hurricane hitting cuba to a hurricane hitting florida, where such things are a pretty normal occurence (just like cuba) and any flooding caused dissipates quickly.
This comment is ridiculous. The two aren't even comparable. When Andrew (another cat 5 storm) hit Miami, we were able to handle it. The problem in New Orleans was not the hurricane but the flooding it caused. In a normal hurricane, The hurricane goes over, the damage is done, and then you dispatch teams to clear the roads etc. and things start getting back to normal right away. In this situation the flooding meant the usual response doesn't apply. you cant drive a truck through 5 feet of water, you can't clear debris and get the communications infrastructure back up to organize relief efforts. The situations are entirely different. We are completely prepared (as much as you can be) for a "normal" hurricane. This is completely different.
At the time i'm writing this, according to gamerankings.com, the scores for madden games (ps2 version) are: 2006: 88% 2005: 90% 2004: 91% 2003: 91%
These scores are pretty respectable, especially for a sports title. If you are expecting any respectable gaming mag to ever give a "realistic" (as opposed to a mario sports title) sports game 100% you can pretty much forget it. Sports games appeal to people who like the sport, and want to relive a little bit of it at home. They don't really appeal to hardcore gamers, who could care less about having an updated roster. The real test will be the sales numbers on this title, I'm betting lots of people will buy it and enjoy it. What the/. obsession with Madden is I'm not sure, they are average games that fit a certain niche market perfectly. Besides that I have a feeling this year's Madden got less development time because the developers are busy preparing for the upcoming Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 titles. Madden could potentially make or break these consoles so I'm sure Sony and MS are putting all their weight on EA.
If your gonna shoot off like you know something, make sure your right. The foam insulation is used because the fuel tanks store liquid oxygen, which is very very cold. The coldness of the tanks combined with humid florida air causes ice to form. A shower of falling ice is a hell of a lot worse then foam. The insulation works as a barrier between the cold tank and the air. It has nothing to do with keeping the tanks cold (which is NOT gonna happen). Electric heaters serve the same purpose, by heating the outside of the tank they prevent ice from forming. The foam has NOTHING to do with reentry, it is on the fuel tanks that fall away shortly after launch. There is no ablative material on the shuttle, the shuttle uses a ceramic heat shield design (the tiles everyone talks about). The problem with that design is if the ceramic tiles are damaged heat breaks through the "shield" and starts disintegrating the shuttle. Ablatives were used in the Apollo program, but they weren't made of insulating foam, they use a special resin made for the purpose.
What you are talking about has nothing to do with the bill if rights, it is the concept of Natural Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law, specifically it's interpretation by John Locke, whose writings heavily influenced the founders of America. The declaration of independence pretty much paraphrases Locke, and the Bill of Rights is heavily influenced by him as well. The Bill of rights itself however, is just an enumeration of 10 rights the founders felt the national government had no business interferring with( note the bill of rights applied only to actions of the federal government, and not the state governments until the 14th ammendment). The concept of natural rights has become integral to the American psyche, to the point that we often feel compelled to protect the rights of others, even when not asked. Not everyone believes people are universally entitled to these rights, or even that having these rights is a positive thing.
Jetliners like a 747 last a long time, with upgrades and servicing. They also get moved around a lot between operators and can wind up doing many entirely different duties throughout their lifespan. It wouldn't make sense to buy a new 747, when a used one that needs retrofitting anyway would be cheaper and closer to what Nasa wanted. Tight budgets aside, it was probably just a smart decision practically and financially.
I meant the censorship attempted by entities within the US, such as schools and libraries on their networks, not by the U.S. government or on the internet in general. These systems are a universal complete and utter failure, and ussually manage to block everything but the porn. The Chinese censoring is much more complicated and impressive, and they have a lot more control, but they still face a lot of the same problems, and the people they are trying to censor have a lot more reason to intentionally try to sneak through.
It still doesnt make sense. China was in a position to force google to censor to do business in their country. Australia isn't in the same position (well they could try but I have a feeling Australians would be awful mad when the government breaks google). If google is against internet censorship, then why go along with Australia when they don't have to? Especially because the demand is so ridiculous (the exact same images are available from many other sources). Whether google's choice is right or wrong with China doesnt really matter, they had the choice to play along or go home, and they chose play along. With Australia, they have the choice to play along or tell an Australian bureocrat to shove it, and they are chosing tell him to shove it. The OP claimed that because they gave in to China means they are on a "slippery slope" and might as well give in to Australia, when the reality is the situations are different, the stakes are different, and there isn't really a "slippery slope" as long as they stand by the decision they have made.
Google had to make a choice, is China better off with a government censored version of google, or no google at all? We all know how censoring the millions of little website around the web is impossible, look at US attempts to censor porn (which generally doesnt even try to hide it's message). But censoring the tools to find that information is easier. If Google didnt make token compliance, China would have no google at all. Who are the Chinese better off with, google search with Chinese censorship or a completely Chinese government run and mandated search site? The situation is completely different in Australia. Whether google complies with the request or not, Australia will not be blocking google any time soon. Google probably doesnt want to get trapped into censoring images of installations governments deem "sensitive" all around the world, especially when that information is available elsewhere anyway. It's not like google even owns the images, or the satellites that take them. The Chinese government backed google in to a wall, but that doesn't mean they are forever damned to comply with the whims of censorship. Censoring these images on google is kind of like sticking your head in the ground, there will still be access to it, and even if it's a little harder it's not like terrorists are gonna say "well if google doesnt have an aerial map I guess we won't bother attacking anything".
The second bomb could have been avoided entirely if the Japanese government had surrendered after the Hiroshima bombing. The bombs were dropped 3 days apart, and I doubt the U.S. was trying hard to hide the fact it blew up an entire city (the entire point was to force the japanese, and the growing russian postwar threat, to realize the futility of fighting America armed with nuclear bombs). Both cities were legitimate military targets, containing large amounts of military equipment. Consider also the Japanese were in the process of arming women and children, and had ordered their troops to fight to the last man in other theatres. Also, from the wikipedia article on the subject "Hiroshima was a city of considerable industrial and military significance. Some military camps were located nearby such as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was as a major supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops." and "This, combined with the delay in relief supplies from the Allies, could have resulted in a far greater death toll, due to famine and malnutrition, than actually occurred. "Immediately after the defeat, some estimated that 10 million people were likely to starve to death", noted historian Daikichi Irokawa. Meanwhile, in addition to the Soviet attacks, offensives were scheduled in southern China, and Malaysia. As a result of the war, noncombatants were dying throughout Asia at a rate of about 200,000 per month." The japanese leadership didnt give up after the hiroshima bombing, what makes you think a second bombing at a militarily insignifigant place would have made a differince? The point wasnt that we had nuclear bombs capable of destroying a city, it was that we had them, and would use them, and would keep using them until Japan could no longer mount any resistance at all. Civilians in japan in WW2 were just the people who ran the factories to make weapons, or washed the clothes of soldiers, or raised children to be future soldiers, etc. How else could such a small nation keep up?
This was a war of such proportions that had dragged on 6 years, and the prospect of victory and defeat had wavered back and forth many times. To say the bombings were "simply international terrorism, and revenge, enacted by men who were so powerful and so desperate to win, that they "ran up the score"." insults the men who had desperatly fought this war, had seen the horrible crimes commited by their enemy in liberated territory, and had a new list of dead americans on their desk every morning. It's easy to say now, that they were just powerful men who wanted to play with their toys, but the reality is the people responsible for this decision finally saw a way to end the fighting, restore peace, and avoid a terrible land campaign across the japanese homeland. They didn't flip a coin to determine whether to drop the bomb, they had the weight of hundred's of thousands on their shoulders, and they made a choice. Hindsight has shown us it may not have been the best choice, that Japan may have been closer to surrender then thought, or that resistance could have been less to anticipate. But when the prospect of sending American soldiers to fight and die in pointless battles against an army of women and children seems very real, the chance to end the war NOW, with the loss of "only" two cities might seem a lot more appealing to you. I agree that it is good to debate and criticize the decision, it's extremely important. But to come down personally on the people who had to make the choice, not in the world of theory but in reality, so harshly hardly seems fair.
The problem is you'd have to build not just a rocket platform, but all the facilities required to retrofit and prepare the shuttle for launch. Go down to Florida and look at the vehicle assembly building and understand what you are asking. All of this would have to be out in the middle of a desert at 4k altitude. Then you'd have to convince thousands of the best engineers and scientists and techinicians (who are already payed less then they would get in the private sector) to move to a desert in Chile. The location in Florida chosen was a very practical decision at the time, and remains so. The area around KSC is only a swamp because NASA likes it that way, they carefully maintain a wild-life preserve there to keep a safety buffer between the rockets and the public. The threat from ice might be reduced but a new element of sand storms and other desert weather problems would be created. KSC was built in the 1960's(and was already in use by the military in the 50's), when off-shoring rockets was not a serious option. The capital investment to move now could just as easily build new shuttles or upgrade the old one's with electric heaters (as the design originally called for). I may be biased, I am a native Floridian and have always enjoyed getting to visit KSC and am proud to have the facility in my state. But the reality is if you want to look for government pork, look not at KSC but Houston. The NASA headquarters was created and maintaned there purely as a nod to a powerful senator representing the aerospace industry.
To say they took it isn't really accurate, the half-life mod was a remake of the original mod by the original authors (who had been hired by valve). The idea was to keep TF alive until the release of the upcoming stand-alone game Team Fortress 2, which is surpassed only by Duke Nukem Forever in it's vaporware-ness.
Sodium is also very reactive, and can be a very dangerous chemical. Trucks carrying large amounts of sodium would probably be worse then hydrogen. Worst hydrogen can do is explode, sodium can cause a serious ecological disaster. Direct skin contact with sodium will probably cause some nasty damage to your skin (as it will aggressivly react with the water present) and it is also highly combustible and burns very hot. I worked in a chem lab for awhile and we were told to be extremely careful with the sodium and it had to be stored in special containers of mineral oil (to keep it from absorbing water and other chemicals from the air). If Hydrogen gets released into the atmosphere it will disperse harmlessly into the atmosphere, even if it catches fire or explodes it will leave no harmful byproducts behind. If Sodium gets released it will poison the enviroment and generally make a mess of things and will require extensive clean-up, probably exceeding that neccesary for petroleum spills.
That store that got them early will sell out quickly, and have to turn customers away (a very bad thing for business, and probably worse then the benefit from selling all those books) and the stores that got them late will be stuck with all the stores that got it early's unsold inventory. Not to mention, as a customer it's really annoying to have to hunt around for the store that has what you want in stock, it's much easier to just know that on x date they will have it.
Remember this is an injunction not a court decision. Injunctions are a temporary measure to halt further damage until formal court case can be completed. For example, if I claim that you have used my copywrited material illegally in your product, I can file for an injunction to halt all sales of the product until such time as a court case can be completed. In this situation the publisher may have grounds to file suit etc. and the injunction is a measure to limit that damage until the court case is resolved. I agree it is kind of silly to order 15 people to not talk about it, but it is only for a short period of time.
Distributors used to hold shiping books until the release, so store got their copies and could sell them the same day. The problem is shipping problems/delays meant some stores go their copies early and some got theirs late. The stores that got them late lost out on a lot of sales, and stores that got them early quickly sold out. So the solution is the stores enter into a voluntary agreement (if they do not agree the books arent shipped until after the release date) that they recieve it early, so shipping problems/delays can be fixed before release, and they hold the books until the release date. The arrangement benefits the store more then the publisher (the publisher generally makes the same amount of money no matter which particular store sells it) and customers who can depend on their favorite store having it on release day. Of course some people break the agreement through greed or just by accident and the publisher does it's best to minimize the damage. These agreements aren't oppressive schemes by the publishers, they actually benefit everyone. Stores that don't like it can take their chances.
The Amish have tons of stuff other people want. They make highly desirable furniture and food, have nice houses(with a little remodeling) and fertile farm land. Not to mention a large workforce of able-bodied men and women. Man of them are successfull businessmen, and since they normally deal exclusively in cash probably a good amount of money. Theres plenty of things there I would like personally, especially if I could walk in there and take it for free. If I pick up a baseball bat, walk to the nearest "pacifist" (amish or otherwise) community, and demand their women for sex, their money and belonging, and that they immediatly vacate the property, they will either restrain me with violence or the threat of violence, or call the police to do it for them. If they were truly pacifist they would have to give in to my demands or passively resist them (which means standing there while I bludgeon them to death one at a time with my baseball bat) The same would be true if we had an entire country of amish and noone willing to use force to protect them and the attacker was an invading army. The fact that they rely on others to protect them (who they look down upon as inferior) is what makes pacifists parasites. Unless you live in a (particulary damp and nasty) cave and forage for food (that noone else might eat) you have things other people, people willing to use force, want. The military industrial complex just ups the stakes. But even if we did not do military research, and develop better weapons, someone else will and they will conquer us for lacking them. Do you think Russia just wanted to play nice in the Cold War? If they had developed a signifigant technological advantage we'd all be drinking vodka. History is full of examples of civilizations conquered by others who developed better weapons and methods of war. It is only recently that the stakes of waging war have grown so high (the possible complete nuclear annihalation of everyone involved) that wars of conquest have pretty much stopped. The smaller countries of the world do not worry about military only because the superpowers will protect them. Even then when one of those countries pisses off a superpower enough, the superpower squishes them flat (witness Iraq). The reality of this world is anyone incapable of protecting themselves, or hiring someone to protect them, is just waiting for someone to come buy and take everything they have, including their life.
Pacifist's are always parasitical. The world is not a happy fun place where if you don't piss anyone off they will leave you alone. The reality is if you have something someone else wants and no means to protect yourself they will come and take it. You really think if we somehow placated all the people we have pissed off over the years, abolished our military, and took up pacifism the world would leave us alone? How long would it be before countries that had lower standards of living and a military saw our wealth and wanted a piece of it. And because we are pacifists, any country that could get a hold of a boat and some guns could take anything they wanted. Current "pacifists" get by only because large, powerful countries like ourselves will protect them. All it takes to bring pacifism down is one group who realizes they can have anything they desire without any work by taking it with force. Noone considers invading us because they know we could crush them with superior m,ilitary might. If we lay down our arms, (and didn't have any militarily strong allies willing to protect us) how long till aggressive countries like China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. decided to take our wealth for their own? How long until the son's and daughters of the new pacifist america are drafted into the people's army at penalty of death? Pacifism is a pathetic excuse for a philosophy. What it boils down to is "we are better then to fight and die to protect our lives and belongings, let the unbelievers waste their lives protecting us". Pacifism can never work on a large scale without 100% participation (and even pacifist communities cant manage 0 violence among themselves).
I play Wow, I also use bit torrent extensively. The WoW implementation of BT is broken beyond belief in several ways. First, it has lots of problems with routers and firewalls that normal BT has no problems with. Many people who routinely use BT can't get it to work correctly, Second, the client has no setting to limit the UL speed, like every decent BT client. This setting is important because otherwise the UL can completely throttle the download (this is a problem with every BT implementation). Setting a limit slightly below your maximum upstream bandwidth greatly improves performance. Finally, the client does not continue seeding by default, and has no option to continue seeding during the patching process or while playing the game. So what happens on patch day is everyone logs in eagerly to see the new changes as soon as the patch is released. All these people have nothing to share back and all have to share blizzard's woefully inadequate seed. As people start to get some downloaded and share with each other is will speed up some, but as soon as someone has the full file they leave the torrent because they are eager to play and blizzard has not made the option to continue seeding while playing available. The torrent is generally completely useless for at least a day until traffic dies down. I left it on for 4 hours on a release day and saw I was not even 5% finished and had a U/D ratio of 1000%. That is not a working patch delivery system. Everyone who actually wants to play just goes to fileplanet or filefront or similiar sites and gets the patch in under 5 minutes. People even sometimes set up their own torrents of the patches and they always work better then Blizzard's. If Blizzard was willing to devote a fat enough pipe to seeding (or just rent it from someone else) it would probably work a lot better, but that kinda ruins the point of bit torrent.
Re:Boiling Point, Stupid!
on
How Ice Melts
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· Score: 1
This is actually easily explained (although I suspect you were joking). Any liquid, including gravy has 3 important heat related constants. The "specific heat", which is how much heat is required to raise 1 kilogram of a substance 1 degree kelvin. The "heat of fusion", which is how much heat must be removed per kilogram to freeze the substance, and the "Heat of vaporization" which is how much heat must be added to vaporize (aka boil) the substance. The Specific heat of water is (from memory so I may be off) 4180 J/(kgK) and the heat of vaporization is 2260 kiloJ/kg. So to to raise 1 kg of water from 0 to 100 degrees celsius is 418 kJ, to boil that water away requires 2260 kj. So as the water in your gravy finishes boiling away, the process that has been consuming large amounts of heat stops, and by now you have a smaller mass to heat and a very hot stove. The new solution requires less heat to raise in temperature and will heat up much more quickly.
The japanese are notoriously xenophobic, and often treat foreignors and "ethnic japanese" (the race of people native to the islands now known as Japan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people) with contempt and racism. The depiction of foreignors in anime (which I admittedly have watched too much of) is almost always negative. This is not to say that all Japanese people are racist and evil, but compared to America it is a VERY homogenous population and culture. I watch a lot of anime, especially fansubbed anime that will prob never see U.S. release, but Im sick of the anime nerd's japan is better in every way mentality, because its just not true. America is called "the world's melting pot" for a reason, we have welcomed people from every country in the world to America, and we have very liberal immigration policies. Maybe the fact that we are the result of mixing cultures from all over the world gives our exported tv and movies wide appeal and the fact that anime is the product of a more closed culture with lots of completely inexplicable cultural quirks. If it was just americans are closed minded then anime should be taking off in other countries like hollywood movies are, yet we see the same thing, anime forms a niche market.
When you go fishing, do you just head straight out 20 miles into the ocean and start casting? No, you head towards reefs and other areas that attract large populations of fish. There are very, very few fish near the surface in the middle of the ocean. In fact most of the ocean has a pretty low large life form density period. In the middle of the atlantic you could not find enough fish to feed a crew, and a fish diet alone would cause severe malnutrition that would eventually disable/kill the crew.
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I have seen refrigerated cases before,there was even a company that specialized in them, but I cant remember the name. The problem I see with using freon is freon refrigeration a. Uses a compressor to force the freon to a liquid state, which is more complicated and expensive then the simple water pump, and b. reaches a temperature low enough to make condensation a serious concern. Water cooling is more then adequate for CPU cooling, even with heavy overclocking. Using a freon system would only have benefits in the "because I could" category, and like I said, it's been done before.
If you don't want to pay for advertising, buy the generic/store brand of whatever product it is and quit bitching. Businesses wouldn't spend so much money on advertizing if it didn't work.
There are many "dominant" (as in supress a recessive trait) genes that are not desirable. A complete mixing of races would actually probably be very bad, as it would mean less deviation in genes, which means greater susceptibility to disease. An example of this is the gene that causes Huntington's Disease. Also some recessive genes may be desirable. The can cary unique mutations that may give resilience to certain diseases that the more common dominant forms don't have. An example of this is the gene responsible for sickle cell, it also confers a resistance to Malaria (and is much more prevelant in the native people of areas with high rates of Malaria). Recessive doesn't neccesarily mean bad or weak, detrimental dominant genes are just more rare because carriers of the gene are more likely to die out, while detrimental reccessive genes can "hide" in perfectly healthy people. It's not that Im against interracial children or anything, it's just a fact that variety is an important factor in a species survival and continued evolution.
My point about "normal" hurricane was that a hurricane does not normally cause massive flooding. You can't compare the response to a category 4 hurricane without signifigant flooding to a cat 5 which hits an area so vulnerable to flooding it may take weeks or months to drain it out. The two things are disasters on a completely different scale. Cuba is neither below sea level (they are in the sea so that would be hard)or a signifigant flooding threat. It is more fair to compare a hurricane hitting cuba to a hurricane hitting florida, where such things are a pretty normal occurence (just like cuba) and any flooding caused dissipates quickly.
This comment is ridiculous. The two aren't even comparable. When Andrew (another cat 5 storm) hit Miami, we were able to handle it. The problem in New Orleans was not the hurricane but the flooding it caused. In a normal hurricane, The hurricane goes over, the damage is done, and then you dispatch teams to clear the roads etc. and things start getting back to normal right away. In this situation the flooding meant the usual response doesn't apply. you cant drive a truck through 5 feet of water, you can't clear debris and get the communications infrastructure back up to organize relief efforts. The situations are entirely different. We are completely prepared (as much as you can be) for a "normal" hurricane. This is completely different.
At the time i'm writing this, according to gamerankings.com, the scores for madden games (ps2 version) are:
/. obsession with Madden is I'm not sure, they are average games that fit a certain niche market perfectly. Besides that I have a feeling this year's Madden got less development time because the developers are busy preparing for the upcoming Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 titles. Madden could potentially make or break these consoles so I'm sure Sony and MS are putting all their weight on EA.
2006: 88%
2005: 90%
2004: 91%
2003: 91%
These scores are pretty respectable, especially for a sports title. If you are expecting any respectable gaming mag to ever give a "realistic" (as opposed to a mario sports title) sports game 100% you can pretty much forget it. Sports games appeal to people who like the sport, and want to relive a little bit of it at home. They don't really appeal to hardcore gamers, who could care less about having an updated roster. The real test will be the sales numbers on this title, I'm betting lots of people will buy it and enjoy it. What the
If your gonna shoot off like you know something, make sure your right. The foam insulation is used because the fuel tanks store liquid oxygen, which is very very cold. The coldness of the tanks combined with humid florida air causes ice to form. A shower of falling ice is a hell of a lot worse then foam. The insulation works as a barrier between the cold tank and the air. It has nothing to do with keeping the tanks cold (which is NOT gonna happen). Electric heaters serve the same purpose, by heating the outside of the tank they prevent ice from forming. The foam has NOTHING to do with reentry, it is on the fuel tanks that fall away shortly after launch. There is no ablative material on the shuttle, the shuttle uses a ceramic heat shield design (the tiles everyone talks about). The problem with that design is if the ceramic tiles are damaged heat breaks through the "shield" and starts disintegrating the shuttle. Ablatives were used in the Apollo program, but they weren't made of insulating foam, they use a special resin made for the purpose.
What you are talking about has nothing to do with the bill if rights, it is the concept of Natural Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law, specifically it's interpretation by John Locke, whose writings heavily influenced the founders of America. The declaration of independence pretty much paraphrases Locke, and the Bill of Rights is heavily influenced by him as well. The Bill of rights itself however, is just an enumeration of 10 rights the founders felt the national government had no business interferring with( note the bill of rights applied only to actions of the federal government, and not the state governments until the 14th ammendment). The concept of natural rights has become integral to the American psyche, to the point that we often feel compelled to protect the rights of others, even when not asked. Not everyone believes people are universally entitled to these rights, or even that having these rights is a positive thing.
Jetliners like a 747 last a long time, with upgrades and servicing. They also get moved around a lot between operators and can wind up doing many entirely different duties throughout their lifespan. It wouldn't make sense to buy a new 747, when a used one that needs retrofitting anyway would be cheaper and closer to what Nasa wanted. Tight budgets aside, it was probably just a smart decision practically and financially.
I meant the censorship attempted by entities within the US, such as schools and libraries on their networks, not by the U.S. government or on the internet in general. These systems are a universal complete and utter failure, and ussually manage to block everything but the porn.
The Chinese censoring is much more complicated and impressive, and they have a lot more control, but they still face a lot of the same problems, and the people they are trying to censor have a lot more reason to intentionally try to sneak through.
It still doesnt make sense. China was in a position to force google to censor to do business in their country. Australia isn't in the same position (well they could try but I have a feeling Australians would be awful mad when the government breaks google). If google is against internet censorship, then why go along with Australia when they don't have to? Especially because the demand is so ridiculous (the exact same images are available from many other sources). Whether google's choice is right or wrong with China doesnt really matter, they had the choice to play along or go home, and they chose play along. With Australia, they have the choice to play along or tell an Australian bureocrat to shove it, and they are chosing tell him to shove it. The OP claimed that because they gave in to China means they are on a "slippery slope" and might as well give in to Australia, when the reality is the situations are different, the stakes are different, and there isn't really a "slippery slope" as long as they stand by the decision they have made.
Google had to make a choice, is China better off with a government censored version of google, or no google at all? We all know how censoring the millions of little website around the web is impossible, look at US attempts to censor porn (which generally doesnt even try to hide it's message). But censoring the tools to find that information is easier. If Google didnt make token compliance, China would have no google at all. Who are the Chinese better off with, google search with Chinese censorship or a completely Chinese government run and mandated search site? The situation is completely different in Australia. Whether google complies with the request or not, Australia will not be blocking google any time soon. Google probably doesnt want to get trapped into censoring images of installations governments deem "sensitive" all around the world, especially when that information is available elsewhere anyway. It's not like google even owns the images, or the satellites that take them. The Chinese government backed google in to a wall, but that doesn't mean they are forever damned to comply with the whims of censorship. Censoring these images on google is kind of like sticking your head in the ground, there will still be access to it, and even if it's a little harder it's not like terrorists are gonna say "well if google doesnt have an aerial map I guess we won't bother attacking anything".
The second bomb could have been avoided entirely if the Japanese government had surrendered after the Hiroshima bombing. The bombs were dropped 3 days apart, and I doubt the U.S. was trying hard to hide the fact it blew up an entire city (the entire point was to force the japanese, and the growing russian postwar threat, to realize the futility of fighting America armed with nuclear bombs). Both cities were legitimate military targets, containing large amounts of military equipment. Consider also the Japanese were in the process of arming women and children, and had ordered their troops to fight to the last man in other theatres. Also, from the wikipedia article on the subject "Hiroshima was a city of considerable industrial and military significance. Some military camps were located nearby such as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was as a major supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops." and "This, combined with the delay in relief supplies from the Allies, could have resulted in a far greater death toll, due to famine and malnutrition, than actually occurred. "Immediately after the defeat, some estimated that 10 million people were likely to starve to death", noted historian Daikichi Irokawa. Meanwhile, in addition to the Soviet attacks, offensives were scheduled in southern China, and Malaysia. As a result of the war, noncombatants were dying throughout Asia at a rate of about 200,000 per month." The japanese leadership didnt give up after the hiroshima bombing, what makes you think a second bombing at a militarily insignifigant place would have made a differince? The point wasnt that we had nuclear bombs capable of destroying a city, it was that we had them, and would use them, and would keep using them until Japan could no longer mount any resistance at all. Civilians in japan in WW2 were just the people who ran the factories to make weapons, or washed the clothes of soldiers, or raised children to be future soldiers, etc. How else could such a small nation keep up?
This was a war of such proportions that had dragged on 6 years, and the prospect of victory and defeat had wavered back and forth many times. To say the bombings were "simply international terrorism, and revenge, enacted by men who were so powerful and so desperate to win, that they "ran up the score"." insults the men who had desperatly fought this war, had seen the horrible crimes commited by their enemy in liberated territory, and had a new list of dead americans on their desk every morning. It's easy to say now, that they were just powerful men who wanted to play with their toys, but the reality is the people responsible for this decision finally saw a way to end the fighting, restore peace, and avoid a terrible land campaign across the japanese homeland. They didn't flip a coin to determine whether to drop the bomb, they had the weight of hundred's of thousands on their shoulders, and they made a choice. Hindsight has shown us it may not have been the best choice, that Japan may have been closer to surrender then thought, or that resistance could have been less to anticipate. But when the prospect of sending American soldiers to fight and die in pointless battles against an army of women and children seems very real, the chance to end the war NOW, with the loss of "only" two cities might seem a lot more appealing to you.
I agree that it is good to debate and criticize the decision, it's extremely important. But to come down personally on the people who had to make the choice, not in the world of theory but in reality, so harshly hardly seems fair.
The problem is you'd have to build not just a rocket platform, but all the facilities required to retrofit and prepare the shuttle for launch. Go down to Florida and look at the vehicle assembly building and understand what you are asking. All of this would have to be out in the middle of a desert at 4k altitude. Then you'd have to convince thousands of the best engineers and scientists and techinicians (who are already payed less then they would get in the private sector) to move to a desert in Chile. The location in Florida chosen was a very practical decision at the time, and remains so. The area around KSC is only a swamp because NASA likes it that way, they carefully maintain a wild-life preserve there to keep a safety buffer between the rockets and the public. The threat from ice might be reduced but a new element of sand storms and other desert weather problems would be created. KSC was built in the 1960's(and was already in use by the military in the 50's), when off-shoring rockets was not a serious option. The capital investment to move now could just as easily build new shuttles or upgrade the old one's with electric heaters (as the design originally called for). I may be biased, I am a native Floridian and have always enjoyed getting to visit KSC and am proud to have the facility in my state. But the reality is if you want to look for government pork, look not at KSC but Houston. The NASA headquarters was created and maintaned there purely as a nod to a powerful senator representing the aerospace industry.
To say they took it isn't really accurate, the half-life mod was a remake of the original mod by the original authors (who had been hired by valve). The idea was to keep TF alive until the release of the upcoming stand-alone game Team Fortress 2, which is surpassed only by Duke Nukem Forever in it's vaporware-ness.
Sodium is also very reactive, and can be a very dangerous chemical. Trucks carrying large amounts of sodium would probably be worse then hydrogen. Worst hydrogen can do is explode, sodium can cause a serious ecological disaster. Direct skin contact with sodium will probably cause some nasty damage to your skin (as it will aggressivly react with the water present) and it is also highly combustible and burns very hot. I worked in a chem lab for awhile and we were told to be extremely careful with the sodium and it had to be stored in special containers of mineral oil (to keep it from absorbing water and other chemicals from the air). If Hydrogen gets released into the atmosphere it will disperse harmlessly into the atmosphere, even if it catches fire or explodes it will leave no harmful byproducts behind. If Sodium gets released it will poison the enviroment and generally make a mess of things and will require extensive clean-up, probably exceeding that neccesary for petroleum spills.
That store that got them early will sell out quickly, and have to turn customers away (a very bad thing for business, and probably worse then the benefit from selling all those books) and the stores that got them late will be stuck with all the stores that got it early's unsold inventory. Not to mention, as a customer it's really annoying to have to hunt around for the store that has what you want in stock, it's much easier to just know that on x date they will have it.
Remember this is an injunction not a court decision. Injunctions are a temporary measure to halt further damage until formal court case can be completed. For example, if I claim that you have used my copywrited material illegally in your product, I can file for an injunction to halt all sales of the product until such time as a court case can be completed. In this situation the publisher may have grounds to file suit etc. and the injunction is a measure to limit that damage until the court case is resolved. I agree it is kind of silly to order 15 people to not talk about it, but it is only for a short period of time.
Distributors used to hold shiping books until the release, so store got their copies and could sell them the same day. The problem is shipping problems/delays meant some stores go their copies early and some got theirs late. The stores that got them late lost out on a lot of sales, and stores that got them early quickly sold out. So the solution is the stores enter into a voluntary agreement (if they do not agree the books arent shipped until after the release date) that they recieve it early, so shipping problems/delays can be fixed before release, and they hold the books until the release date. The arrangement benefits the store more then the publisher (the publisher generally makes the same amount of money no matter which particular store sells it) and customers who can depend on their favorite store having it on release day. Of course some people break the agreement through greed or just by accident and the publisher does it's best to minimize the damage. These agreements aren't oppressive schemes by the publishers, they actually benefit everyone. Stores that don't like it can take their chances.
The Amish have tons of stuff other people want. They make highly desirable furniture and food, have nice houses(with a little remodeling) and fertile farm land. Not to mention a large workforce of able-bodied men and women. Man of them are successfull businessmen, and since they normally deal exclusively in cash probably a good amount of money. Theres plenty of things there I would like personally, especially if I could walk in there and take it for free. If I pick up a baseball bat, walk to the nearest "pacifist" (amish or otherwise) community, and demand their women for sex, their money and belonging, and that they immediatly vacate the property, they will either restrain me with violence or the threat of violence, or call the police to do it for them. If they were truly pacifist they would have to give in to my demands or passively resist them (which means standing there while I bludgeon them to death one at a time with my baseball bat) The same would be true if we had an entire country of amish and noone willing to use force to protect them and the attacker was an invading army. The fact that they rely on others to protect them (who they look down upon as inferior) is what makes pacifists parasites. Unless you live in a (particulary damp and nasty) cave and forage for food (that noone else might eat) you have things other people, people willing to use force, want. The military industrial complex just ups the stakes. But even if we did not do military research, and develop better weapons, someone else will and they will conquer us for lacking them. Do you think Russia just wanted to play nice in the Cold War? If they had developed a signifigant technological advantage we'd all be drinking vodka. History is full of examples of civilizations conquered by others who developed better weapons and methods of war. It is only recently that the stakes of waging war have grown so high (the possible complete nuclear annihalation of everyone involved) that wars of conquest have pretty much stopped. The smaller countries of the world do not worry about military only because the superpowers will protect them. Even then when one of those countries pisses off a superpower enough, the superpower squishes them flat (witness Iraq). The reality of this world is anyone incapable of protecting themselves, or hiring someone to protect them, is just waiting for someone to come buy and take everything they have, including their life.
Pacifist's are always parasitical. The world is not a happy fun place where if you don't piss anyone off they will leave you alone. The reality is if you have something someone else wants and no means to protect yourself they will come and take it. You really think if we somehow placated all the people we have pissed off over the years, abolished our military, and took up pacifism the world would leave us alone? How long would it be before countries that had lower standards of living and a military saw our wealth and wanted a piece of it. And because we are pacifists, any country that could get a hold of a boat and some guns could take anything they wanted. Current "pacifists" get by only because large, powerful countries like ourselves will protect them. All it takes to bring pacifism down is one group who realizes they can have anything they desire without any work by taking it with force. Noone considers invading us because they know we could crush them with superior m,ilitary might. If we lay down our arms, (and didn't have any militarily strong allies willing to protect us) how long till aggressive countries like China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. decided to take our wealth for their own? How long until the son's and daughters of the new pacifist america are drafted into the people's army at penalty of death? Pacifism is a pathetic excuse for a philosophy. What it boils down to is "we are better then to fight and die to protect our lives and belongings, let the unbelievers waste their lives protecting us". Pacifism can never work on a large scale without 100% participation (and even pacifist communities cant manage 0 violence among themselves).
I play Wow, I also use bit torrent extensively. The WoW implementation of BT is broken beyond belief in several ways. First, it has lots of problems with routers and firewalls that normal BT has no problems with. Many people who routinely use BT can't get it to work correctly, Second, the client has no setting to limit the UL speed, like every decent BT client. This setting is important because otherwise the UL can completely throttle the download (this is a problem with every BT implementation). Setting a limit slightly below your maximum upstream bandwidth greatly improves performance. Finally, the client does not continue seeding by default, and has no option to continue seeding during the patching process or while playing the game. So what happens on patch day is everyone logs in eagerly to see the new changes as soon as the patch is released. All these people have nothing to share back and all have to share blizzard's woefully inadequate seed. As people start to get some downloaded and share with each other is will speed up some, but as soon as someone has the full file they leave the torrent because they are eager to play and blizzard has not made the option to continue seeding while playing available. The torrent is generally completely useless for at least a day until traffic dies down. I left it on for 4 hours on a release day and saw I was not even 5% finished and had a U/D ratio of 1000%. That is not a working patch delivery system. Everyone who actually wants to play just goes to fileplanet or filefront or similiar sites and gets the patch in under 5 minutes. People even sometimes set up their own torrents of the patches and they always work better then Blizzard's. If Blizzard was willing to devote a fat enough pipe to seeding (or just rent it from someone else) it would probably work a lot better, but that kinda ruins the point of bit torrent.
This is actually easily explained (although I suspect you were joking). Any liquid, including gravy has 3 important heat related constants. The "specific heat", which is how much heat is required to raise 1 kilogram of a substance 1 degree kelvin. The "heat of fusion", which is how much heat must be removed per kilogram to freeze the substance, and the "Heat of vaporization" which is how much heat must be added to vaporize (aka boil) the substance. The Specific heat of water is (from memory so I may be off) 4180 J/(kgK) and the heat of vaporization is 2260 kiloJ/kg. So to to raise 1 kg of water from 0 to 100 degrees celsius is 418 kJ, to boil that water away requires 2260 kj. So as the water in your gravy finishes boiling away, the process that has been consuming large amounts of heat stops, and by now you have a smaller mass to heat and a very hot stove. The new solution requires less heat to raise in temperature and will heat up much more quickly.
The japanese are notoriously xenophobic, and often treat foreignors and "ethnic japanese" (the race of people native to the islands now known as Japan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people) with contempt and racism. The depiction of foreignors in anime (which I admittedly have watched too much of) is almost always negative. This is not to say that all Japanese people are racist and evil, but compared to America it is a VERY homogenous population and culture. I watch a lot of anime, especially fansubbed anime that will prob never see U.S. release, but Im sick of the anime nerd's japan is better in every way mentality, because its just not true. America is called "the world's melting pot" for a reason, we have welcomed people from every country in the world to America, and we have very liberal immigration policies. Maybe the fact that we are the result of mixing cultures from all over the world gives our exported tv and movies wide appeal and the fact that anime is the product of a more closed culture with lots of completely inexplicable cultural quirks. If it was just americans are closed minded then anime should be taking off in other countries like hollywood movies are, yet we see the same thing, anime forms a niche market.
When you go fishing, do you just head straight out 20 miles into the ocean and start casting? No, you head towards reefs and other areas that attract large populations of fish. There are very, very few fish near the surface in the middle of the ocean. In fact most of the ocean has a pretty low large life form density period. In the middle of the atlantic you could not find enough fish to feed a crew, and a fish diet alone would cause severe malnutrition that would eventually disable/kill the crew.