A nifty idea, but there are countermeasures a miner might take that are easy to implement.
a solution of solvent and typical mine explosive, either sprayed over the entire field of installed mines, sprayed over un-mined areas that you'd like to slow them down, or better yet, spray patches randomly over an installed mine field so that there are many false positives, indistinguishable from the tell of a real mine. Do all of these randomly so that a detection will require a thourough seach no matter what. Thats the whole point of a mine field anyway...
Edge a real mine field with 50 meters of false spots. Regions of false spots bordering regions of mines, randomly shaped and sized.
Encapsulate mines with impermeable skin... ziplok?
Saturate the ground with a persistent anti-microbial =)
Saturate only some of the field with anti-microbial =D
Now if you're a galactic civilization, the last thing you're going to do is be stupid enough to get yourself mixed up in that kind of a mess. All intelligent species would evolve with very strong competitive instincts Exactly. Suppose you have a stable interstellar civilaization - a system that you've spent millenia to develop. You notice yet another young competitive race emerging, or atleast broadcasting radio. "Hey, Zop, check out the talking meat. Can you believe this stuff? They look like trouble. The simplest and least risky answer to protect you system is to nip it at the bud; "nuke the troublesome species from orbit, it's the only way to be sure." Or maybe nudge a few planet killers from the asteroid belt. And (your) life goes on.
Extending your other premise, that wholesale gene-scrubbing might be required, you may be living under a version of Brave New World and have a rigidly self-controlled caste society. Or look at Dune - technology limited by a ruling aristocracy that manage regions rather than nationalstic systems per-se. Look at Imperial China - rulers limited technology for centuries to folter out disruptive developments.
I suspect that any civilization that has established itself, is going to take a no-nonsense approach to newbs. Whether it's (The Day the Earth Stood Still) robots or some UP (United Planets?) we may get a (big)nuke strapped to our planet with the warning that if we screw around we're toast.
Generally, radiatiative cooling will be limited by the Stefan Boltzman law, j (watts/m^2) = (stefan-boltzman constant) * T^4 (kelvins), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body
where = 5.670 400(40)×108 Wm-2K-4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzmann_constant So, the hotter your radiator, it increases output by a power of 4 and since space is very near absolute zero, for emissivity and absorption considerations, it's really dumping energy. You'd be surprised at how fast a simple radiation cooling scheme will operate.
I had to run a themo-vacc qualification test for some ISS hardware (on the mobile transporter). In a chanber with a very hard vaccum, even under a shroud made from a 1/8" skin aluminum box, painted with high emmissivity paint, we had good performance using a cooler lining the chamber, chilled with LN2, aprox -375F IIRC. I forget the cooling rate, but it wasn't bad. We had to modulate the cooler to get our cooling/heating profile, so we could have gone faster.
From TFA, it wasn't clear how they were pumping the photon source, I assume it'll be electric. So it's either batteries(Ha!) or some sort of nuke plant - thermionic orf some sort of (sterling ?) heat engine, either of which will be rejecting a bunch of heat, to generate - what, someone said like 370MWatt? So ya, big radiators of some sort. Plus, the photon source might also be generating it's own heat, aside from the photons, depending on the efficiency.
This'll basically be a big flashlight, just don't stand behind it or you're looking at one heck of sunburn, at least until you're vaporized. But the really cool thing is you don't need to schlep along tons of reaction mass, the photons do it for you, as they have a (very small) momentum. You just need a nice compact high power energy source.
If we have nationwide distribution system for natural gas, than hydrogen wouldn't be much different.
I imagine hydrogen disulfide (isn't that what's added to NG to make it stink?) could be added to H2. However, H2 is much harder to contain, since the molecule is much smaller. It leaks through seals NG wouldn't. It's harder to assemble secure fittings for H2 transport. LNG is waaay easier to make/contain that LH2. It also seeps into metals causing embrittlement. Has an invisible flame... Fun stuff.
Now, what sort of concentrations are generated from a spill of 5mg in an average sized bedroom? FTFOA:
EXPOSURE LIMITS
* OSHA PEL The current Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit (PEL) for mercury vapor is 0.1 milligram per cubic meter (mg/m(3)) of air as a ceiling limit. A worker's exposure to mercury vapor shall at no time exceed this ceiling level.
* NIOSH REL
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has established a recommended exposure limit (REL) for mercury vapor of 0.05 mg/m(3) as a TWA for up to a 10-hour workday and a 40-hour workweek. NIOSH also assigns a "Skin" notation, which indicates that the cutaneous route of exposure, including mucous membranes and eyes, contributes to overall exposure [NIOSH 1992].
* ACGIH TLV
The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) has assigned mercury vapor a threshold limit value (TLV) of 0.025 mg/m(3) as a TWA for a normal 8-hour workday and a 40-hour workweek and considers mercury vapor an A4 substance (not classifiable as a human carcinogen). The ACGIH also assigns a "Skin" notation to mercury vapor [ACGIH 1994, p. 25].
* Rationale for Limits
The NIOSH limit is based on the risk of central nervous system damage, eye, skin, and respiratory tract irritation [NIOSH 1992].
The ACGIH has not published documentation for the current TLV for mercury vapor. The 1991 Documentation of Threshold Limit Values (6th edition) discusses the basis for the prior TLV of 0.05 mg/m(3), but does not discuss the current TLV for mercury vapor [ACGIH 1991, p. 881].
HEALTH HAZARD INFORMATION
* Routes of Exposure
Exposure to mercury vapor can occur through inhalation, and eye or skin contact.
* Summary of toxicology
1. Effects on Animals: Mercury vapor can damage the kidneys, liver, brain, heart, lungs and colon in experimental animals. It is also mutagenic and can affect the immune system. Rabbits exposed for a single 4 hour period to mercury vapor at a concentration of 28.8 mg/m(3) developed severe damage to the kidneys, liver, brain, heart, lungs, and colon [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Rabbits exposed to 0.86 mg/m(3) for 6 weeks had significant brain and kidney damage, which resolved on cessation of exposure. Exposure to 6 mg/m(3) mercury vapor caused severe damage to the kidney, heart, lung, and brain of rabbits; however, dogs exposed to 0.1 mg/m(3) for 83 weeks had no microscopic indication of tissue damage [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Mercury may injure the kidneys through an autoimmune mechanism [ACGIH 1991]. Mercury was mutagenic in eukaryotic cells [ACGIH 1991].
2. Effects on Humans: Mercury vapor can cause effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems, lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes in humans. It is also mutagenic and affects the immune system [Hathaway et al. 1991; Clayton and Clayton 1981; Rom 1992]. Acute exposure to high concentrations of mercury vapor causes severe respiratory damage, while chronic exposure to lower levels is primarily associated with central nervous system damage [Hathaway et al. 1991]. Chronic exposure to mercury is also associated with behavioral changes and alterations in peripheral nervous system [ACGIH 1991]. Pulmonary effects of mercury vapor inhalation include diffuse interstitial pneumonitis with profuse fibrinous exudation [Gosselin 1984]. Glomerular dysfunction and proteinuria have been observed mercury exposed workers [ACGIH 1991]. Chronic mercury exposure can cause discoloration of the cornea and lens, eyelid tremor and, rarely, disturbances of vision and extraocular muscles [Grant 1986]. Delayed hypersensitivity reactions have been reported in individuals exposed to mercury vapor [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Mercury vapor is reported to b
The commerce clause is the root password to the Constitution.
Shame on the Supremes for not nipping this one at the bud long ago. But, as it's abused the influence and power of the whole of the Fed is bouyed up, the Court along with it....
Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions. The various faults of remotely read RFID-like devices used as ID's have been beaten like a dead horse over the last few months; RFIDs are sorely wanting. If the intent is only to provide a mechanism to ease border crossings; even it's pretty iffy - there are too many competing methods that are more secure, and less expensive to implement.
If, however, your goal is not to provide a fool-proof form of Passport, but rather to normalize the use of a remotely (and covertly) polled identification device in the general population, then it works well. Regardless of their potential usefulness and the presumably good intentions of the developers, they are the perfect tool of an authoritarian government. As such, we use them at our peril; it doesn't require much imagination to think of ways such things could be used to monitor and shape the behaviour of a given citizenry. And no this is not anti-GOP rant. In this case the party lines are more like the incumbents vs. the rest of us.
DMV agent: Oho, it appears you were in close proximity to a known radical several times last year. It also looks like you were in a bookstore looking at political titles no less than 20 times! Your travel license (ex-drivers license?) is now restricted to areas that are safer, to protect you from dangerous ideas. Deviations will be noted. Anomalous sequencing of scans will be noted. (Ain't computers grand?) Anomalous lack of registrations will be noted (foil pockets - forbidden). We have to keep a look out for dangerous people seeking to harm the American People's children!
This was an issue since Windows 2000 SP2 actually. This clause was removed with Windows XP due to complaints from companies and such.
I have to wonder, if the ELUA said they could, does that mean the mechanism is already in place in the software and MS honorably declines to use it? And even if they removed the caveat from the Agreement, does that mean they removed it from the OS? Uhm, hidden admin account "sbalmer"?
(tinfoilhat = "on") Makes me wonder what the big government lawsuit was really about... since the whole monopoly issue sort of went away. Perhaps the Gov got what it wanted and it had nothing at all to do with monopolies. (tinfoilhat="off")
Woo, that first link sounds like something out of Terry Gillaim's Brazil. So sorry about that computer Mr. Buttle, err Tuttle....now kindly get in this straight jacket.
The hard lesson that is frequently forgotten, is that to preserve a free society requires an interested, educated, involved citizenry that understands it's role in it's own governance. We seem to tolerate fools, if they promise to take from some 49% and give to the other 51%, to which we are assured we belong to. One good election is about all it would take to radically change things. However, getting the average sheep to educate themselves about the ramifications of issues is not an easy task. Finding sources of information that are not simply spins from the gov or from some other agendized interest group is not as easy thing. Although offered up as an alternative, the Greens couldn't be much better, they simply have a different idea of what should be made mandatory through the use of the governments monopoly on power. And, no, anarchy is not the answer. The issue is not whose hand is on the tiler, the issue is the government weilds entirely too much power over all sectors of society, persons and businesses. That power attracts those who would use it to their own benefit. "Our" guys might be in for a while and use it how we like, but come the next election, some other crowd will get in and use those same tools to thier own ends and maybe to our own ending.
If you hand even good men the tools of tyranny for a noble cause, eventually you'll have a tyranny with no recourse. Ask Germans who lived through National Socialism what choice they had.
Somehow, I don't think US courts or laws, for that matter, amount to a hill of rice in the PRC. If what they did was in the PRC and was legal in the PRC then the lawsuit is baseless.
This is sort of like the Iranian government trying the Danish paper in an Iranian court for the stupid drawings they published and expecting the ruling and sentence to matter anywhere but in Iran.
...this is about forcing Apple to at least license the AAC format, and it looks like they're toying with breaking DRM entirely.
I'm sure there'll be some caveat that allows French media companies to keep their DRM. Hells bells media Co's wrote tha damn thing.
Good. Apple have been getting passes from the technical community on a few things. They've earned them. But they have no competition as targets for this kind of legislation, and someone had to fire the first shot. Good for the French.
Why exactly should Apple be forced to license their DRM scheme? This is not a coercive monopoly. As you admit, they got the market by doing it right and taking care of their client -the end user, when everyone else was doing it wrong by screwing over the end user and taking care of their client, the RIAA, snicker. Any wonder they are sucking? There are plenty of viable alternatives on both the player end and the service end with no barriers to market entry on the part of the consumer, short of the cost of the player and terms of the services. There is absolutely nothing keeping you from using the alternaive scheme. Why is Apple baaad for not handing away their crown jewels? They are operating ethically and legally, I'm sorry you can't see that. I suspect that if they did, the Board would be removed by the shareholders and prosecuted successfuly. This is all about making it hard for an American Company to operate in franss [sic].
So... 1)Wait for someone to come up with a cool idea. 2)Buy legislation to force them to allow you to use the cool infrastructure they developed at great expense and risk so you can tap into it with your crappy derivative device. 3)PROFIT!
Specifically, you should save your anger for these people (just going from the past 40 years of American history):
Henry Kissenger Robert McNamara Donald Rumsfeld Richard Cheney
Perhaps you might add the names of their bosses, the guys who sign the orders:
JFK LBJ and GWB
And as far as Viet Nam is concerned, let's start that one with the real genesis, the folks who signedf up to the Potsdam Agreement (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade17 .htm) who handed Viet Nam over to the British and Chinese after WW2 (http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/vietnam-policie s.html). Too bad the Brits promptly rearmed the Vichy French who'd been captured with the Japanese occupation forces and handed So. VietNam back to the French- I suppose so they could feel better about having the Germans and Japanese hand them their collective asses. The French were stomping on Indochina before WW2 and we put them back in place to continue where they left off.
We had advisors in Japanese occupied Viet Nam during WW2 and helped them beat the Japanese and win thier own freedom. Christ, at his presidential inauguration, Ho read the our Declaration of Independence. What a blown opportunity - Ho loved us because we helped and didn't try to dominate them. Too bad we didn't stand by our own ideals and keep europe out.
But then where would the First World countries keep on getting nastier weapons?
From folks here who would rather this country continued to exist, on our own terms and not on the terms of any other nation or group. Who also realize the world is not a nice plastic wrapped market, but full of thugs who are kept in check by a really big gun. Who are fully aware of what they design and build can do. Who would MUCH rather see our troops so much better armed than the next possible adversary that a direct military threat is unthinkable. Who, along with Patton, would much rather make the other poor bastard die for his country than have a US troopie die for his. As for the ethics of those US scientists who worked on the Manahattan Project, I think they had a harder choice to make than your simplistic black and white castigation. Guess what, Nazi Germany was working the problem, Japan was working the problem and the USSR was working the problem. Trust that those governments would have used them with no hesitation and that you would now be speaking Japanese, German or Russian had they been a little quicker.
Are nuke weapons bad? Sure. Maybe we should have banned steel as it makes some nice swords too. The implication that they existed based on published physics was out, or should that have been banned as forbidden knowledge? It was a matter of time before they were developed and I'm pretty damn glad the US got there first. Call on all scientists to forgo any such work? Not gonna happen.
History is very clear on this: be weak and you will be conquered. Like or not it's how the world has worked since men existed and will continue to be true for the forseeable future and all the wishfull thinking in the world will not change that. Weapons will be developed and advanced. Either by engineers in the US or abroad for some other power.While I do not wholly trust any National Government, I rather trust the US one more that any other and as it is my own, I would rather it be in control of these devices than, oh, I don't know, Iran?
...and capitalism trumping everything......and you're telling me the liberals won one?!?
Actually, capitalism did win one - this was certainly in the best interest of the corporate brand. Good will is nice to have and hard to get - this balanced decision will certainly help. I sort of doubt there are many folks on WoW with an undead necromancer of a Druid (pagan scum!)who would describe themselves as "Religous Right". I hastily add that I do indeed have a necro and a druid on EQ and that IANARRWJ(1)...
Had this been a Liberal win, all newbs would complete a sensitivty quest.
My comparisons are for illustration, not for direct correlation.
Didn't mean to throw u under the bus...
As much as some spots get abused, I've noticed some funny things at times, at some of the popular spots in EQ/EQ2. We used to suspect they had anti-camping features that were subtle - maybe altering spawn rates for rare mobs depending on level of camper or duration of stay. Never really researched it though. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, heh. In EQ2, however, there can be patterns to spawning rare mobs, that don't seem to work if the level mix in a group is too wide - and maybe if they're too low relative to the hunter. Happened too many times to be a coincidence, where a hi level tagged along to finish off a tough rare mob and could never get it to spawn, but after they left it poped after a couple mob cycles. That kind of stuff would help a lot. Also, if the hunter is too high to get experience, the only drops that can be had or the trivial worthless stuff.
Oh I always wished they could have implimented some clever features for punishing the more egregious offeneders, like spawning a level 80 untargetable demon, to pick up the miscreant, carry him around the zone, offering observations on his misdeeds then eat and permakill the toon. Now that would have been fun to see. =)
really made a good MMO with missions and the ability to play a piece of the game at a time, get up and come back later.really made a good MMO with missions and the ability to play a piece of the game at a time, get up and come back later.
Aye, that killed me in EQ - some places just cannot be reached quickly, adn then require an exteneded camp to spwn the target. Can't just camp out of game and return there. Returning would be a quick death, solo.
Does this kind of 'virtual capitalism' affect online economies of MMOs? Sure. How is this different from someone in real life finding a 'renewable resource' and making money on it over and over? Take the job market. You might compare it to a particular lucrative camping point on an online game, say compare to a company that holds great employment potential. So certain people who are qualified say, because their parents were wealthy had more opportunity for training and they beat you out of a job. That's considered the job market today, with no complaining. Just like anyone who owns a successful capital venture usually makes their living by doing something well, over and over again. I think game companies should embrace this, as the truth still remains that money can't buy levels...
Hmm, first this has nothing at all to do with capitalism or any other -ism. Capitalism is about how companies are financed by selling stock to investors etc. Free market != capitalism, but captalism is an effective way of financing companies, so get over it.
With a MMOG the operational economic system is being manipulated through a meta-system with a different valuation set, ie RL. Farming would exist to some degree without a meta-market to trade gold but the goal would be to farm resources for tradeskill or for sale IN GAME to fund buying items IN GAME. A closed system. And inherently self-limiting; you only need to buy so much gear.
Also, our RL economy is generally a closed system -However, folks from some other economies (valuation difference of time - hmm, compare to off-shoring heheh) find the few bucks they earn faming to be a significant fraction of their normal earning potential whereas for most in the US, it's a drop in the bucket, so the motivation is amplified by that.
The point is, it promotes overcamping by the same POS farmers over and over again and grossly distorts the cost of items. So some sorry bastard can make a few RL bucks. Well screw that; any game developer that permits it does it at it's own peril.
No. Rockets "push against" their exhaust, not what they launch from. However, if they used a mass-driver to accelerate the payloads, the asteroid would be pushed back. But it's a simple calculation.
Erm, no. No difference between the two. Both exert a force to accelerate matter in one direction to accelerate themselves in the opposite direction (a reaction force). Force=mass*acceleration. That is the force exerted to accelerate the mass in a direction, generates an equal but opposite reaction force on the source body (ie a rocket). The acceleration observed on the 2 elements depends on the mass. Very high accelerations on gas but small on the rocket.
Oddly enough, although light has no mass it can trasfer momentum, and so also acts as a reaction exaust. It's just very very small so you need one hell of a lot of photons.
Geez, I learned this stuff in grade school reading Niven and Asimov long before I got to HS, let alone an engineering program.
Even ignoring that, these studys are essentially claiming to show that we have no free will, and are mere puppets with strings connected to the playstation.
I think you've actually come damn to close to describing one of the fundamental perceptions of the world held by waaay too many folks. That is: if the general citizenry cannot control themselves, being at the control of whatever media they view or just by the 'tyrrany of the majority', they need to be guided by those who understand the Way Things Really Are (tm); like those on the typical University staff or your congresscritter.
This paraphrases one of the excuses offered by left intelligentia darling (may he rot in hell) Herbert Marcuse for censorship and outright control of the majority (read: that masses) by the enlightned minority. He posits that since they are existing in the system they fail to recognize the control that sustem exerts over their perception of the world and so, think democracy is really a good thing. Basically a statist revolutionary tract, refreshingly unambiguous of his goals, means and rationale.
This guy is important to understand as his crap has colored the whole of the university system and the bulk of "liberal thought". It goes far to explain the whole Political Correctness thing. Suppression of the "majority" (per Marcuse, Conservative)in favor of the "minority" (per Marcuse, Liberal) All sounds sweet but he's advocating a dictatorship by the enlightened to re-educate the poor plebes in their care and ruthlessly repress all dissent since any dissagreement with the "Policy" is regressive and counter-revolutionary and so, is not a valid "oppossition view" and must be crushed. Think Pol Pot. Think Mao tse Tung and year zero. Think Vladimir Lenin. Etc.
This is just a different expression of the same philosophy.
By saying that, you give unfettered, unchecked power to the judiciary. Regardless of any law that the democratically elected representatives of the people may enact, the judiciary will be able to create a right that invalidates that law.
I think the point he was making was that the Contitution does NOT GRANT RIGHTS. It enumerates those natural rights some of the authors wanted to highlight, as it were. This concern was spelled out in the 9th: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Just because we didn't list it here, doesn't mean it doesn't exit. This an explicit directive to the Fed that it shall not infringe on those rights, in any event. Further, the Fed has no authority beyond that narrowly laid out by the Constitiuion,not the other way around. The document tells it only what it may do. We, as citizen have complete freedom of action except where explicitly prohibited by the constitiution or law.
Direct commentary exists on this point. Some felt that it was sufficient to write a document that explicitly described those activities the Fed was allowed to perform and that the people, obviously, could engage in whatever things they wished. The old fist and nose caveat fits here. Some worried that if not specifically listed, some of later generations, being knavish and immoral, would seek to pretend powers where none exist and slowly extend the mantle of oppression of the citizenry. The former group, of course, feared that if a few "right" wre listed, eventually only those would exist; the same "lean and hungry" men would contrive to remove all freedom of action beyond what was listed and turn the whole of the contitution iside out. That is to say, that the Citizenry have ONLY the rights enumerated while the Fed may do as it please in all places.
Say it: Rights are not derived from the government. They exist idependent of ANY government. We created a strictly limited Government to protect our rights. IT only has the authority granted by the Constitution.
I leave the evaluation of our current (this century) situation to you as an exercise.
Hmm, I think the elected officials of many municipalities, states and the Fed, enacted laws that supported and codified the owning of Slaves. The fact that a majority decide to make a law, does not make that law Constitutional. Nor, for that matter, right.
While it may be technically possible to have a democratic communism, it seems very unlikely. Communism as defined requires an overarching central government to act as absolute the mediator of the ecomony and in fact "own" everything. That degree of control cannot be separated into purely economic and polital spheres, never mind how society functions- it demands a defacto totalitarian scheme.
Further, I'm unwilling to accept your central premise, that communism is merely an ecomnomic system. That is not true; communism assumes that the functioning of society (government, economy, the whole social contract thing is re-written)is a single object, subject to the "will of the proletariet" (snicker) Who ever the hell they are. Oh ya, sort of like an athiest's version of Divine Right. (bwaaahahaha).
Even assuming the dichotmy is real, can you really imagine a populace actually voting in a government that advocates a communist ecomonic plan? Or re-electing it after surviving the attendant disaster? With out first taking some potent hallucinogen?
Never the less, any system that grants the government wholesale control over the economic funtioning of the country (socialism and communism are different shades on the same spectrum) will necessarily be at odds with the notion of a free society. How can it be otherwise?
David Strayer has been kind enough to provide an index of papers and articles he's authored or co-authored on this subject (no few - while I would never suggest any kind of bias, he really seems to have it out for cellphones.):
From that index may I point out an item that appears to suggest that merely carry on a conversation even absent the mechanical problems associated with a cell phone/earbud etc. will cause impairment: http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/ViV_ 2001.pdf
This would seem to support the use of HOV lanes not as a reward for environmental sensitivity but as a safety measure for the rest of us singletons just trying to get to work in one piece; HOV need to be partitioned from the rest of traffic to protect us, heh. And what if the passenger is wearing a skimpy dress(!)while yaking about the absolute DEAL they got at Nordstroms.
Never mind the distraction factor from changing the radio station/CD, eating, makeup, picking nose, etc. Surely tasks that involve the motor regions would be even more troublesome than simply speaking...
In another item from the DoT, all autos will now be refitted with passenger gags.
Carried aboard the impactor will be a standard mini-CD containing the names of comet, space and other enthusiasts from around the world. ...and will be converted to plasma, along with the impactor, on impact. Nice gesture - whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
A nifty idea, but there are countermeasures a miner might take that are easy to implement.
a solution of solvent and typical mine explosive, either sprayed over the entire field of installed mines, sprayed over un-mined areas that you'd like to slow them down, or better yet, spray patches randomly over an installed mine field so that there are many false positives, indistinguishable from the tell of a real mine. Do all of these randomly so that a detection will require a thourough seach no matter what. Thats the whole point of a mine field anyway...
Edge a real mine field with 50 meters of false spots. Regions of false spots bordering regions of mines, randomly shaped and sized.
Encapsulate mines with impermeable skin... ziplok?
Saturate the ground with a persistent anti-microbial =)
Saturate only some of the field with anti-microbial =D
Exactly. Suppose you have a stable interstellar civilaization - a system that you've spent millenia to develop. You notice yet another young competitive race emerging, or atleast broadcasting radio. "Hey, Zop, check out the talking meat. Can you believe this stuff? They look like trouble. The simplest and least risky answer to protect you system is to nip it at the bud; "nuke the troublesome species from orbit, it's the only way to be sure." Or maybe nudge a few planet killers from the asteroid belt. And (your) life goes on.
Extending your other premise, that wholesale gene-scrubbing might be required, you may be living under a version of Brave New World and have a rigidly self-controlled caste society. Or look at Dune - technology limited by a ruling aristocracy that manage regions rather than nationalstic systems per-se. Look at Imperial China - rulers limited technology for centuries to folter out disruptive developments.
I suspect that any civilization that has established itself, is going to take a no-nonsense approach to newbs. Whether it's (The Day the Earth Stood Still) robots or some UP (United Planets?) we may get a (big)nuke strapped to our planet with the warning that if we screw around we're toast.
where = 5.670 400(40)×108 Wm-2K-4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzmann_constant So, the hotter your radiator, it increases output by a power of 4 and since space is very near absolute zero, for emissivity and absorption considerations, it's really dumping energy. You'd be surprised at how fast a simple radiation cooling scheme will operate.
I had to run a themo-vacc qualification test for some ISS hardware (on the mobile transporter). In a chanber with a very hard vaccum, even under a shroud made from a 1/8" skin aluminum box, painted with high emmissivity paint, we had good performance using a cooler lining the chamber, chilled with LN2, aprox -375F IIRC. I forget the cooling rate, but it wasn't bad. We had to modulate the cooler to get our cooling/heating profile, so we could have gone faster.
From TFA, it wasn't clear how they were pumping the photon source, I assume it'll be electric. So it's either batteries(Ha!) or some sort of nuke plant - thermionic orf some sort of (sterling ?) heat engine, either of which will be rejecting a bunch of heat, to generate - what, someone said like 370MWatt? So ya, big radiators of some sort. Plus, the photon source might also be generating it's own heat, aside from the photons, depending on the efficiency.
This'll basically be a big flashlight, just don't stand behind it or you're looking at one heck of sunburn, at least until you're vaporized. But the really cool thing is you don't need to schlep along tons of reaction mass, the photons do it for you, as they have a (very small) momentum. You just need a nice compact high power energy source.
I imagine hydrogen disulfide (isn't that what's added to NG to make it stink?) could be added to H2. However, H2 is much harder to contain, since the molecule is much smaller. It leaks through seals NG wouldn't. It's harder to assemble secure fittings for H2 transport. LNG is waaay easier to make/contain that LH2. It also seeps into metals causing embrittlement. Has an invisible flame... Fun stuff.
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/mercuryv apor/recognition.html
Now, what sort of concentrations are generated from a spill of 5mg in an average sized bedroom?
FTFOA:
EXPOSURE LIMITS
* OSHA PEL The current Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit (PEL) for mercury vapor is 0.1 milligram per cubic meter (mg/m(3)) of air as a ceiling limit. A worker's exposure to mercury vapor shall at no time exceed this ceiling level.
* NIOSH REL
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has established a recommended exposure limit (REL) for mercury vapor of 0.05 mg/m(3) as a TWA for up to a 10-hour workday and a 40-hour workweek. NIOSH also assigns a "Skin" notation, which indicates that the cutaneous route of exposure, including mucous membranes and eyes, contributes to overall exposure [NIOSH 1992].
* ACGIH TLV
The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) has assigned mercury vapor a threshold limit value (TLV) of 0.025 mg/m(3) as a TWA for a normal 8-hour workday and a 40-hour workweek and considers mercury vapor an A4 substance (not classifiable as a human carcinogen). The ACGIH also assigns a "Skin" notation to mercury vapor [ACGIH 1994, p. 25].
* Rationale for Limits
The NIOSH limit is based on the risk of central nervous system damage, eye, skin, and respiratory tract irritation [NIOSH 1992].
The ACGIH has not published documentation for the current TLV for mercury vapor. The 1991 Documentation of Threshold Limit Values (6th edition) discusses the basis for the prior TLV of 0.05 mg/m(3), but does not discuss the current TLV for mercury vapor [ACGIH 1991, p. 881].
HEALTH HAZARD INFORMATION
* Routes of Exposure
Exposure to mercury vapor can occur through inhalation, and eye or skin contact.
* Summary of toxicology
1. Effects on Animals: Mercury vapor can damage the kidneys, liver, brain, heart, lungs and colon in experimental animals. It is also mutagenic and can affect the immune system. Rabbits exposed for a single 4 hour period to mercury vapor at a concentration of 28.8 mg/m(3) developed severe damage to the kidneys, liver, brain, heart, lungs, and colon [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Rabbits exposed to 0.86 mg/m(3) for 6 weeks had significant brain and kidney damage, which resolved on cessation of exposure. Exposure to 6 mg/m(3) mercury vapor caused severe damage to the kidney, heart, lung, and brain of rabbits; however, dogs exposed to 0.1 mg/m(3) for 83 weeks had no microscopic indication of tissue damage [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Mercury may injure the kidneys through an autoimmune mechanism [ACGIH 1991]. Mercury was mutagenic in eukaryotic cells [ACGIH 1991].
2. Effects on Humans: Mercury vapor can cause effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems, lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes in humans. It is also mutagenic and affects the immune system [Hathaway et al. 1991; Clayton and Clayton 1981; Rom 1992]. Acute exposure to high concentrations of mercury vapor causes severe respiratory damage, while chronic exposure to lower levels is primarily associated with central nervous system damage [Hathaway et al. 1991]. Chronic exposure to mercury is also associated with behavioral changes and alterations in peripheral nervous system [ACGIH 1991]. Pulmonary effects of mercury vapor inhalation include diffuse interstitial pneumonitis with profuse fibrinous exudation [Gosselin 1984]. Glomerular dysfunction and proteinuria have been observed mercury exposed workers [ACGIH 1991]. Chronic mercury exposure can cause discoloration of the cornea and lens, eyelid tremor and, rarely, disturbances of vision and extraocular muscles [Grant 1986]. Delayed hypersensitivity reactions have been reported in individuals exposed to mercury vapor [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Mercury vapor is reported to b
...til Lotus won't run.
Yeah, but what damage comes from Chicken Pox. -masdog
Shingles - look it up. It sucks. Trust me - I know =(
terrorism? Security? pffft...
Mandatory comment:
The commerce clause is the root password to the Constitution.
Shame on the Supremes for not nipping this one at the bud long ago. But, as it's abused the influence and power of the whole of the Fed is bouyed up, the Court along with it....
Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions. The various faults of remotely read RFID-like devices used as ID's have been beaten like a dead horse over the last few months; RFIDs are sorely wanting. If the intent is only to provide a mechanism to ease border crossings; even it's pretty iffy - there are too many competing methods that are more secure, and less expensive to implement.
If, however, your goal is not to provide a fool-proof form of Passport, but rather to normalize the use of a remotely (and covertly) polled identification device in the general population, then it works well. Regardless of their potential usefulness and the presumably good intentions of the developers, they are the perfect tool of an authoritarian government. As such, we use them at our peril; it doesn't require much imagination to think of ways such things could be used to monitor and shape the behaviour of a given citizenry. And no this is not anti-GOP rant. In this case the party lines are more like the incumbents vs. the rest of us.
DMV agent: Oho, it appears you were in close proximity to a known radical several times last year. It also looks like you were in a bookstore looking at political titles no less than 20 times! Your travel license (ex-drivers license?) is now restricted to areas that are safer, to protect you from dangerous ideas. Deviations will be noted. Anomalous sequencing of scans will be noted. (Ain't computers grand?) Anomalous lack of registrations will be noted (foil pockets - forbidden). We have to keep a look out for dangerous people seeking to harm the American People's children!
This was an issue since Windows 2000 SP2 actually. This clause was removed with Windows XP due to complaints from companies and such.
I have to wonder, if the ELUA said they could, does that mean the mechanism is already in place in the software and MS honorably declines to use it? And even if they removed the caveat from the Agreement, does that mean they removed it from the OS? Uhm, hidden admin account "sbalmer"?
(tinfoilhat = "on")
Makes me wonder what the big government lawsuit was really about... since the whole monopoly issue sort of went away. Perhaps the Gov got what it wanted and it had nothing at all to do with monopolies.
(tinfoilhat="off")
Woo, that first link sounds like something out of Terry Gillaim's Brazil. So sorry about that computer Mr. Buttle, err Tuttle....now kindly get in this straight jacket.
t ml
The hard lesson that is frequently forgotten, is that to preserve a free society requires an interested, educated, involved citizenry that understands it's role in it's own governance. We seem to tolerate fools, if they promise to take from some 49% and give to the other 51%, to which we are assured we belong to. One good election is about all it would take to radically change things. However, getting the average sheep to educate themselves about the ramifications of issues is not an easy task. Finding sources of information that are not simply spins from the gov or from some other agendized interest group is not as easy thing. Although offered up as an alternative, the Greens couldn't be much better, they simply have a different idea of what should be made mandatory through the use of the governments monopoly on power. And, no, anarchy is not the answer. The issue is not whose hand is on the tiler, the issue is the government weilds entirely too much power over all sectors of society, persons and businesses. That power attracts those who would use it to their own benefit. "Our" guys might be in for a while and use it how we like, but come the next election, some other crowd will get in and use those same tools to thier own ends and maybe to our own ending.
If you hand even good men the tools of tyranny for a noble cause, eventually you'll have a tyranny with no recourse. Ask Germans who lived through National Socialism what choice they had.
Tarkas
http://www.hayekcenter.org/friedrichhayek/hayek.h
Somehow, I don't think US courts or laws, for that matter, amount to a hill of rice in the PRC. If what they did was in the PRC and was legal in the PRC then the lawsuit is baseless.
This is sort of like the Iranian government trying the Danish paper in an Iranian court for the stupid drawings they published and expecting the ruling and sentence to matter anywhere but in Iran.
...this is about forcing Apple to at least license the AAC format, and it looks like they're toying with breaking DRM entirely.
I'm sure there'll be some caveat that allows French media companies to keep their DRM. Hells bells media Co's wrote tha damn thing.
Good. Apple have been getting passes from the technical community on a few things. They've earned them. But they have no competition as targets for this kind of legislation, and someone had to fire the first shot. Good for the French.
Why exactly should Apple be forced to license their DRM scheme? This is not a coercive monopoly. As you admit, they got the market by doing it right and taking care of their client -the end user, when everyone else was doing it wrong by screwing over the end user and taking care of their client, the RIAA, snicker. Any wonder they are sucking? There are plenty of viable alternatives on both the player end and the service end with no barriers to market entry on the part of the consumer, short of the cost of the player and terms of the services. There is absolutely nothing keeping you from using the alternaive scheme. Why is Apple baaad for not handing away their crown jewels? They are operating ethically and legally, I'm sorry you can't see that. I suspect that if they did, the Board would be removed by the shareholders and prosecuted successfuly. This is all about making it hard for an American Company to operate in franss [sic].
So...
1)Wait for someone to come up with a cool idea.
2)Buy legislation to force them to allow you to use the cool infrastructure they developed at great expense and risk so you can tap into it with your crappy derivative device.
3)PROFIT!
Specifically, you should save your anger for these people (just going from the past 40 years of American history):
7 .htm) who handed Viet Nam over to the British and Chinese after WW2 (http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/vietnam-policie s.html). Too bad the Brits promptly rearmed the Vichy French who'd been captured with the Japanese occupation forces and handed So. VietNam back to the French- I suppose so they could feel better about having the Germans and Japanese hand them their collective asses. The French were stomping on Indochina before WW2 and we put them back in place to continue where they left off.
Henry Kissenger
Robert McNamara
Donald Rumsfeld
Richard Cheney
Perhaps you might add the names of their bosses, the guys who sign the orders:
JFK
LBJ
and GWB
And as far as Viet Nam is concerned, let's start that one with the real genesis, the folks who signedf up to the Potsdam Agreement (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade1
We had advisors in Japanese occupied Viet Nam during WW2 and helped them beat the Japanese and win thier own freedom. Christ, at his presidential inauguration, Ho read the our Declaration of Independence. What a blown opportunity - Ho loved us because we helped and didn't try to dominate them. Too bad we didn't stand by our own ideals and keep europe out.
But then where would the First World countries keep on getting nastier weapons?
From folks here who would rather this country continued to exist, on our own terms and not on the terms of any other nation or group. Who also realize the world is not a nice plastic wrapped market, but full of thugs who are kept in check by a really big gun. Who are fully aware of what they design and build can do. Who would MUCH rather see our troops so much better armed than the next possible adversary that a direct military threat is unthinkable. Who, along with Patton, would much rather make the other poor bastard die for his country than have a US troopie die for his. As for the ethics of those US scientists who worked on the Manahattan Project, I think they had a harder choice to make than your simplistic black and white castigation. Guess what, Nazi Germany was working the problem, Japan was working the problem and the USSR was working the problem. Trust that those governments would have used them with no hesitation and that you would now be speaking Japanese, German or Russian had they been a little quicker.
Are nuke weapons bad? Sure. Maybe we should have banned steel as it makes some nice swords too. The implication that they existed based on published physics was out, or should that have been banned as forbidden knowledge? It was a matter of time before they were developed and I'm pretty damn glad the US got there first. Call on all scientists to forgo any such work? Not gonna happen.
History is very clear on this: be weak and you will be conquered. Like or not it's how the world has worked since men existed and will continue to be true for the forseeable future and all the wishfull thinking in the world will not change that. Weapons will be developed and advanced. Either by engineers in the US or abroad for some other power.While I do not wholly trust any National Government, I rather trust the US one more that any other and as it is my own, I would rather it be in control of these devices than, oh, I don't know, Iran?
...and capitalism trumping everything... ...and you're telling me the liberals won one?!?
Actually, capitalism did win one - this was certainly in the best interest of the corporate brand. Good will is nice to have and hard to get - this balanced decision will certainly help. I sort of doubt there are many folks on WoW with an undead necromancer of a Druid (pagan scum!)who would describe themselves as "Religous Right". I hastily add that I do indeed have a necro and a druid on EQ and that IANARRWJ(1)...
Had this been a Liberal win, all newbs would complete a sensitivty quest.
1. I Am Not A Religous Right Wack Job
My comparisons are for illustration, not for direct correlation.
Didn't mean to throw u under the bus...
As much as some spots get abused, I've noticed some funny things at times, at some of the popular spots in EQ/EQ2. We used to suspect they had anti-camping features that were subtle - maybe altering spawn rates for rare mobs depending on level of camper or duration of stay. Never really researched it though. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, heh. In EQ2, however, there can be patterns to spawning rare mobs, that don't seem to work if the level mix in a group is too wide - and maybe if they're too low relative to the hunter. Happened too many times to be a coincidence, where a hi level tagged along to finish off a tough rare mob and could never get it to spawn, but after they left it poped after a couple mob cycles. That kind of stuff would help a lot. Also, if the hunter is too high to get experience, the only drops that can be had or the trivial worthless stuff.
Oh I always wished they could have implimented some clever features for punishing the more egregious offeneders, like spawning a level 80 untargetable demon, to pick up the miscreant, carry him around the zone, offering observations on his misdeeds then eat and permakill the toon. Now that would have been fun to see. =)
really made a good MMO with missions and the ability to play a piece of the game at a time, get up and come back later.really made a good MMO with missions and the ability to play a piece of the game at a time, get up and come back later.
Aye, that killed me in EQ - some places just cannot be reached quickly, adn then require an exteneded camp to spwn the target. Can't just camp out of game and return there. Returning would be a quick death, solo.
Tarkas
Does this kind of 'virtual capitalism' affect online economies of MMOs? Sure. How is this different from someone in real life finding a 'renewable resource' and making money on it over and over? Take the job market. You might compare it to a particular lucrative camping point on an online game, say compare to a company that holds great employment potential. So certain people who are qualified say, because their parents were wealthy had more opportunity for training and they beat you out of a job. That's considered the job market today, with no complaining. Just like anyone who owns a successful capital venture usually makes their living by doing something well, over and over again. I think game companies should embrace this, as the truth still remains that money can't buy levels...
Hmm, first this has nothing at all to do with capitalism or any other -ism. Capitalism is about how companies are financed by selling stock to investors etc. Free market != capitalism, but captalism is an effective way of financing companies, so get over it.
With a MMOG the operational economic system is being manipulated through a meta-system with a different valuation set, ie RL. Farming would exist to some degree without a meta-market to trade gold but the goal would be to farm resources for tradeskill or for sale IN GAME to fund buying items IN GAME. A closed system. And inherently self-limiting; you only need to buy so much gear.
Also, our RL economy is generally a closed system -However, folks from some other economies (valuation difference of time - hmm, compare to off-shoring heheh) find the few bucks they earn faming to be a significant fraction of their normal earning potential whereas for most in the US, it's a drop in the bucket, so the motivation is amplified by that.
The point is, it promotes overcamping by the same POS farmers over and over again and grossly distorts the cost of items. So some sorry bastard can make a few RL bucks. Well screw that; any game developer that permits it does it at it's own peril.
-Tarkas
No. Rockets "push against" their exhaust, not what they launch from. However, if they used a mass-driver to accelerate the payloads, the asteroid would be pushed back. But it's a simple calculation.
Erm, no. No difference between the two. Both exert a force to accelerate matter in one direction to accelerate themselves in the opposite direction (a reaction force). Force=mass*acceleration. That is the force exerted to accelerate the mass in a direction, generates an equal but opposite reaction force on the source body (ie a rocket). The acceleration observed on the 2 elements depends on the mass. Very high accelerations on gas but small on the rocket.
Oddly enough, although light has no mass it can trasfer momentum, and so also acts as a reaction exaust. It's just very very small so you need one hell of a lot of photons.
Geez, I learned this stuff in grade school reading Niven and Asimov long before I got to HS, let alone an engineering program.
Back to Physics 101 for u.
-Tarkas
... Can we sign you up first to be the first house that the fire department doesn't respond to? Cool....
More tired old political hack FUD! Unless we raise taxes the sky will fall! Oh please. Prioritize and cut out the crap spending.
Even ignoring that, these studys are essentially claiming to show that we have no free will, and are mere puppets with strings connected to the playstation.
o lerance.htm;jsessionid=EPLNNHDBDPGF
I think you've actually come damn to close to describing one of the fundamental perceptions of the world held by waaay too many folks. That is: if the general citizenry cannot control themselves, being at the control of whatever media they view or just by the 'tyrrany of the majority', they need to be guided by those who understand the Way Things Really Are (tm); like those on the typical University staff or your congresscritter.
This paraphrases one of the excuses offered by left intelligentia darling (may he rot in hell) Herbert Marcuse for censorship and outright control of the majority (read: that masses) by the enlightned minority. He posits that since they are existing in the system they fail to recognize the control that sustem exerts over their perception of the world and so, think democracy is really a good thing. Basically a statist revolutionary tract, refreshingly unambiguous of his goals, means and rationale.
A classic of Orwellian doublethink: Repressive Tolerance http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/65repressivet
This guy is important to understand as his crap has colored the whole of the university system and the bulk of "liberal thought". It goes far to explain the whole Political Correctness thing. Suppression of the "majority" (per Marcuse, Conservative)in favor of the "minority" (per Marcuse, Liberal) All sounds sweet but he's advocating a dictatorship by the enlightened to re-educate the poor plebes in their care and ruthlessly repress all dissent since any dissagreement with the "Policy" is regressive and counter-revolutionary and so, is not a valid "oppossition view" and must be crushed. Think Pol Pot. Think Mao tse Tung and year zero. Think Vladimir Lenin. Etc.
This is just a different expression of the same philosophy.
By saying that, you give unfettered, unchecked power to the judiciary. Regardless of any law that the democratically elected representatives of the people may enact, the judiciary will be able to create a right that invalidates that law.
I think the point he was making was that the Contitution does NOT GRANT RIGHTS. It enumerates those natural rights some of the authors wanted to highlight, as it were. This concern was spelled out in the 9th: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Just because we didn't list it here, doesn't mean it doesn't exit. This an explicit directive to the Fed that it shall not infringe on those rights, in any event. Further, the Fed has no authority beyond that narrowly laid out by the Constitiuion,not the other way around. The document tells it only what it may do. We, as citizen have complete freedom of action except where explicitly prohibited by the constitiution or law.
Direct commentary exists on this point. Some felt that it was sufficient to write a document that explicitly described those activities the Fed was allowed to perform and that the people, obviously, could engage in whatever things they wished. The old fist and nose caveat fits here. Some worried that if not specifically listed, some of later generations, being knavish and immoral, would seek to pretend powers where none exist and slowly extend the mantle of oppression of the citizenry. The former group, of course, feared that if a few "right" wre listed, eventually only those would exist; the same "lean and hungry" men would contrive to remove all freedom of action beyond what was listed and turn the whole of the contitution iside out. That is to say, that the Citizenry have ONLY the rights enumerated while the Fed may do as it please in all places.
Say it: Rights are not derived from the government. They exist idependent of ANY government. We created a strictly limited Government to protect our rights. IT only has the authority granted by the Constitution.
I leave the evaluation of our current (this century) situation to you as an exercise.
Hmm, I think the elected officials of many municipalities, states and the Fed, enacted laws that supported and codified the owning of Slaves. The fact that a majority decide to make a law, does not make that law Constitutional. Nor, for that matter, right.
While it may be technically possible to have a democratic communism, it seems very unlikely. Communism as defined requires an overarching central government to act as absolute the mediator of the ecomony and in fact "own" everything. That degree of control cannot be separated into purely economic and polital spheres, never mind how society functions- it demands a defacto totalitarian scheme.
Further, I'm unwilling to accept your central premise, that communism is merely an ecomnomic system. That is not true; communism assumes that the functioning of society (government, economy, the whole social contract thing is re-written)is a single object, subject to the "will of the proletariet" (snicker) Who ever the hell they are. Oh ya, sort of like an athiest's version of Divine Right. (bwaaahahaha).
Even assuming the dichotmy is real, can you really imagine a populace actually voting in a government that advocates a communist ecomonic plan? Or re-electing it after surviving the attendant disaster? With out first taking some potent hallucinogen?
Never the less, any system that grants the government wholesale control over the economic funtioning of the country (socialism and communism are different shades on the same spectrum) will necessarily be at odds with the notion of a free society. How can it be otherwise?
-Me
David Strayer has been kind enough to provide an index of papers and articles he's authored or co-authored on this subject (no few - while I would never suggest any kind of bias, he really seems to have it out for cellphones.):
_ 2001.pdf
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/
From that index may I point out an item that appears to suggest that merely carry on a conversation even absent the mechanical problems associated with a cell phone/earbud etc. will cause impairment:
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/ViV
This would seem to support the use of HOV lanes not as a reward for environmental sensitivity but as a safety measure for the rest of us singletons just trying to get to work in one piece; HOV need to be partitioned from the rest of traffic to protect us, heh. And what if the passenger is wearing a skimpy dress(!)while yaking about the absolute DEAL they got at Nordstroms.
Never mind the distraction factor from changing the radio station/CD, eating, makeup, picking nose, etc. Surely tasks that involve the motor regions would be even more troublesome than simply speaking...
In another item from the DoT, all autos will now be refitted with passenger gags.
Carried aboard the impactor will be a standard mini-CD containing the names of comet, space and other enthusiasts from around the world. ...and will be converted to plasma, along with the impactor, on impact. Nice gesture - whatever.
-Me