Nobody has claimed it was a bomb threat, they claim it was a "Hoax bomb threat" which means they already knew it wasn't a bomb but they had reason to believe *somebody* was trying to lead folks to believe there was a threat of a bomb, either now or in the future.
So don't get caught in the false narrative. Making a "hoax bomb threat" is a crime, but it only requires that you are making the threat of a bomb. You don't have any obvious bomb parts, build any possible parts or even know anything about how to obtain or build a bomb. You can create a "hoax" by just what you say and do. In this case, this kid built/repurposed an alarm clock which *could* be used as a bomb trigger. I don't know what he intended, what meaning he wished to convey when he (contrary the advice of his 1st period teacher) set it off during his third period English class, but I can see how these actions could easily be misinterpreted as a "Hoax Bomb threat" on it's face. If you can see that, then it's easy to figure out how the school and police got sucked into having to run the administrative procedures designed for such events, regardless of how stupid it all turns out to be in hindsight.
Public institutions like schools run on their procedures. It's a sad commentary at times, but procedures at the government level are necessary and often mandated by law. Officials are NOT afforded the leeway of diverting from the procedure, or they break the law in many cases. I believe that in this case both the school and police got stuck following procedures and couldn't divert from the process once they started.
Oh, You think Obama acts on the facts? That's rich...
Look, he's a politician, he obviously acts on things for his political advantage and that's what he did here. He saw an opportunity to score some political points on this and jumped on the bandwagon without the facts. The press went wall to wall coverage on this boy because of the narrative it advanced, not because the story was important to the nation. We got regaled with the daily updates, pictures of the kid in handcuffs, the device, stories about how bright and promising this kid's future was because it drew the attention of the Facebook founder.
NOBODY from the administration had time to fully investigate this boy and his family before that Tweet went out. Obama didn't have any facts, only the news stories we all heard and he jumped into the dog pile for political purposes and not much else.
It was the SAME thing with Travon Martin, Mike Brown and that incident with the Cambridge Police he waded into just to name a few. There is a narrative that he wants to draw attention to, a specific story line he want's folks to hear, so he jumps on stories in the current news cycle that fit the message, using the bully pulpit of the presidency to enforce the perceptions he wants to call attention too and ignoring those things that don't advance his agenda.
I don't begrudge him his ability to do this, he is the president and it's one of the things this position affords him. However, don't be fooled into thinking he had all the facts here, or that he would even care what they where if he had them. I don't think he sees past what he wants to push, what policy, what perceptions, what stays in the news that supports his political goals.
So, you know the story about how Obama snubbed this kid at the Whitehouse right? Ever thought to wonder *why* this is a story? Could it be that this kid turned out to be a little less gifted than previously discussed? That he really only ripped a 1970's Radio Shack LED clock out of it's case and clumsily screwed it into a pencil box and really didn't *invent* anything but ruined a perfectly good alarm clock? Now that this is becoming obvious, this kid no longer matches the picture needed to advance the narrative desired, so he becomes yesterday's news and get's largely ignored. All this is political and I seriously doubt Obama took time to look at the facts because it didn't matter at the time, and really doesn't matter now.
You are engaged in wishful thinking. It will NEVER be economically possible to put structures together in orbit that are measured in kilometers, espically ones that will need to be aligned to tolerances in the micrometers. It's too expensive to get the materials into orbit that would be required to build the transmitting array and it would take too long to assemble and align an array for any useful amount of power to get transferred to the surface. You cannot make smaller arrays because of the physics involved and no amount of engineering or technology can change this.
Don't you see, it's like saying the entire text of "War and Peace" could be written by monkeys hitting random keys on a typewriter if we use enough monkey typewriter pairs or wait long enough. Sure, it's *possible* in that we could assign a possibility that the a series of random selections just happened to match the text we are looking for, but it doesn't mean it will ever happen. One could never buy enough typewriters, obtain enough monkeys or create a workable schedule for this project yet you want to hang your hat on that "it's possible" part and just ignore the rest.
The lab demos of this amount to getting a group of monkeys to type "War" as their first word on the first page. They transferred a few watts over a very short distance and achieved fairly good efficiency. But, they used a LOT of time and Resources to create their transmission and receiving arrays for the power levels achieved, used very short distances compared to what would be required in an industrial application and then scaled up their engineered solution mathematically to simulate how it might work on an industrial scale. I implore you to scale up their costs and multiply by a few orders of magnitude to account for the difficulty of getting all this into space and assembled. The costs are HUGE and the payoff is nowhere near enough to justify it, and that will never change. Just like buying monkeys and typewriters will never get you "War and Peace" even though it's *possible* it could happen.
The "Use microwaves to send power back to earth from space" idea is NOT practical and that will never change because the physics of the problem require structures which are simply too large to build and maintain for the benefit they could possibly provide. No amount of engineering is going to change that, unless you are suggesting we can change the laws of physics if we simply try hard enough... It's never going to happen because the rules of physics don't change...
This isn't an engineering problem it's a physics problem, and it's the physics that make it impossible. Technology and engineering cannot change the physics, but must work within the rules that physics provides.
All lab experiments aside, the physics of the problem mean it will not work on an industrial scale at any reasonable distance for a price anybody can afford. Why? The structures required are HUGE, literally kilometers in size, both in space and on the ground and this size is driven by the physics. Building such structures, while conceivable and possible, is VERY expensive and VER"Y time consuming, especially in space. (Lots of money) X (Lots of time) = Never going to happen.
So "NEVER going to happen" is accurate enough for a rule of thumb in this case.
Some things just are never going to be practical, I don't care how much you wish it was different. Sometimes the physics of a problem require a solution that simply cannot ever be implemented. Where the theoretical solution is beyond what can be successfully engineered to a theoretically possible cost and schedule. This is such a problem/solution.
At this point, the police and school CANNOT release any records because the law requires permission and the family refuses to allow it. The school administration has made multiple public pleas to the family to release the records to no avail. So, we don't know if the school would or wouldn't release the records if allowed and your suggesting that they wouldn't is pointless.
However, the question about what's IN these records remains a valid question. The school and police maintain they want to release these records because these records explain their actions. The kids parents said "NO!" (or at least have not said yes) so asking yourself "why won't they release these records?" is a valid question.
Having "procedures to follow" does not in any way diminish your moral responsibility to do the right thing.
As a public official you follow the law which says you follow your procedures and that's the ethical, moral thing to do. The only time you get to choose is when the situation isn't covered or there are conflicting rules. In this case, the school was REQUIRED by law to have procedures for this kind of thing and required to follow the procedures they had.
Plus, your position assumes there wasn't some reason to proceed as they did, that they generally ignored the facts of the situation and went out and purposely mistreated this kid. I don't think anybody has evidence of that beyond hindsight. Remember, this kids parents are refusing to allow the school and police to speak freely about what happened and why. Further, they have avoided trying to fight the school over expelling their kid or the police for arresting him, I think because it would allow information into the public domain that doesn't match their narrative of what happened.
I suggest that everybody back off and carefully consider what we really know about this and admit that neither of us have a full picture of what exactly transpired. This means we don't jump to conclusions...
I interpret their relative slowness to market as doing proper testing before releasing product.
A hard drive maker TESTING products before releasing it to the masses? You cannot be serious... If you can get the SMART testing to pass in the factory and there are enough good sectors to get you the advertised size, ship it. Time is money, especially in commodity markets like this.
Like I said when this thing all originally broke....
Once the administration of the school got on the "bomb hoax" path with this thing, there is no getting off. People need to understand that there are processes and procedures in a post 9/11 world to deal with this kind of thing that we legally required from public schools. People also need to realize that we don't have the full story, only the story as told by the kid and his family, because the police and school are prohibited from releasing the records until the parents allow it.
The administration and police *may* have overreacted, but I seriously doubt it. Even with what we know, the case that this was perceived as a "bomb hoax" by the school is not totally far fetched. I can see how somebody mistook this thing and the kids actions as a hoax, just on it's face. But we don't know if the kid wasn't doing stupid stuff like leaving the device behind and running out the door yelling "it's a bomb!" or not. All we do know is that his 1st period teacher tells "him to put it away, don't show it to anybody, just take it home" yet it ends up plugged in and going off in 3rd period English class. Somebody thought the situation warranted being called a possible "hoax bomb" and with that, the train had left the station and you have to run the procedure rails dictated by what you are required to do for a possible "hoax bomb".
The evidence is that *something* was amiss with all this, because not only did the school administration treat this like a hoax bomb, the police did too. The police have their own set of policies and procedures to follow and they claim they did exactly that in this case. Somebody said that the boy was verbally combative, evasive and aloof when the police where there questioning him. Enough so to raise suspicion that their might be more to this situation, that an actual crime may have been committed, so they detain the boy until they can investigate, which is totally legal and reasonable as they can hold you for at least 48 hours without charges. Once they determine no crime was committed (or the prosecutor declines to charge him) they release the boy.
None of this seems outlandish or illegal to me. In hind sight it might be a bit much, but I expect that the family is refusing to release the school and police records of this for a reason and that reason is likely that the kid actually DID make a "hoax bomb threat" then acted inappropriately when interviewed by the administrators and police. The school believed it's case was good enough to expel him, and they haven't backed down from that. The only thing that saved him from being criminally charged is the DA refused to charge and try a minor for something like this.
So, we really don't have good evidence that the school or the police where over reacting to the situation. It's very possible (and IMHO likely) that if all the facts where known, if the family would release the records, that the school and police did the right things. And until the family releases the records, it is premature and inappropriate to critique the school or police without all the facts.
I'm pretty sure the Irving police department won't have a problem letting them go. Where they have likely defrauded folks with their story and enriched their bank accounts in the process it obviously didn't rise to the level of a crime. Defamation might be an issue, but that is a civil matter between individuals and would not preclude foreign travel.
In my view, let them go, help them go even. I'd be happy to help pack up their stuff for shipping. Have a long and healthy life young man.
Right to work doesn't end Unions, that's true and I never said it did. However, it allows non-union workers to exist in Union shops by not forcing prospective employees to first be union members, pay dues etc before they can be hired.
All I'm saying is that if Google finds it's staff unionized, given the nature of it's business and how it easily allows employees to be located in diverse geographic locations, I would expect them to avail themselves of the economic advantage of having employees which are non-union.
Google wouldn't be the first company to do this. Aircraft manufactures do this, Car makers do this, lots of companies do this kind of thing, even ones where the cost of moving their employees is pretty high and takes a long time. Google's costs would be nearly nothing and they could accomplish a significant shift in their labor location in a quarter if they wanted. The only thing one has to be careful of is the NLRB taking offense to your moves, so you need to be making the proper political donations while framing the movement so it doesn't directly bust the union up.
Seriously? Is this how they teach history in the public schools these days?
Here's a few questions to consider.... Does everybody speak English or French in Spain these days? AND Didn't Spain agree to enter the EU under their own free will? Truthful answers to these questions only serve to show that Spain is it's own country and not being forced to be part of anybody's empire...
This stuff? A few million cubic feet of soil? Easy, dump it in the Ocean.
It's not like this stuff is horribly dangerous or really radio active. Just barge it out to sea where it's really deep and push it over the side. End of problem. Want to keep it tied up a few thousand years? Encase it in concrete and push it over the side one block at a time. Either way, cheap and easy.
This bomb design actually was a bit dangerous because the conventional explosives where a bit unstable during aircraft crash events. This crash and another one two years later caused a number of changes to nuclear bomb design after the Mk28.
Where I don't think "narrowly avoided a nuclear explosion" is anywhere near accurate, these bombs did explode conventionally and spread their radioactive content around and there is a *remote* possibility that these devices when flying in the "Chrome Dome" operation could have accidently caused a nuclear explosion during a crash because they would have been fully armed physically. I hear that the Mk28 had a number of fail physical and electrical fail safe systems that made it nearly impossible to explode in a nuclear way, but it's not impossible to have these systems disabled/defeated during an accident. If it could go nuclear on command, it's remotely possible to do it on accident.
Yea it won't take much to clean this up, that's for sure...
One thing, I'm guessing the Am-241 was in the original fission material of the bomb and not really from Pu-239 decay, but either way, there is going to be so very little of it. Given it's spread out over about 500 acres by the conventional explosives, I'm wondering why Spain is still pushing to get this clean up done. It's been over 50 years now and all a huge excavation project will really accomplish is to make a mess.
Well, if it pumps some dollars into the local Spanish economy it might be worth the trouble... But really, what's the big deal at this point? Couldn't we just pay them for the land, put up a fence with "keep out for 3,000 years" signs and be done with this? Or is having this material so dangerous to Spain that it's worth taking a few million cubic meters of dirt and dumping it in the ocean?
i mean it sucks and all, but why should we be on the hook for this???
Well, let me see. The aircraft that crashed where ours. The bombs where ours. The pilots where ours and we where flying alone. The wreckage from the accident which was totally our fault fell on Spain... Hmmm...I don't know, Maybe we are responsible for the mess and should clean it up?
Oh, sorry, but if you are facing Daddy War Bucks, your troubles don't really change all that much. Your liability and risk may be different between the two systems, but Mr. War Bucks will never really care either way. He won't care about settling because it's chump change to him either way. But it is MORE coin if he looses and my system is in place, so if your cause is just and you are sure of the win, sue on. If you are not so sure you will prevail, then I wonder why you are suing in the first place?
Where I see your point, the financial risk is proportionally bigger for you than the rich guy, it really doesn't matter if you know you will win. If you press a loosing hand and loose, I guess you pay for being stupid. If this risk of loosing causes you second thoughts because your case is not sure enough or the risk is too great if you have to fork over legal fees when you loose, how's this different from then stringing you along with delays, requesting hearing after hearing, document after document, deposition after deposition, costing you legal fees you cannot afford now where everybody pays their own costs?
I don't care what system you choose, if you try to take a rich guy to the mat in court, even if you know you will win, they can drag you though more legal fees than you ever dreamed possible because they can afford it and you can't. Looser pays doesn't change this by all that much, and perhaps will serve to keep the "I'm angry so I'm suing you for some crazy reason" lawsuits in check.
The issue is not about the volume, but the energy passing though the surface of what ever geometry the radiator emits energy into. Of course the "isotropic" radiator is the theoretical device that puts out equal amounts of energy in all directions and makes the math simple because we can use a sphere. The surface area of a sphere is (4*Pi* Radius Squared).
I've run the numbers elsewhere, but if you have a 1 foot collection area about 1 foot away from an isotropic radiator, you will get about 1/10th of the radiated power at best. 2 Feet gives you about 1/50th of the power and 5 feet lowers the available power to 1/300.
Which is NOT practical approach, even for what is intended.
Microwave power transfer requires very high frequencies amd very large transmission antennas which can successfully keep all the energy from the transmitter in a narrow beam. Even then, the receiving end of this arrangement requires a receiving array kilometers in size because no antenna can perfectly produce a beam of energy and going though the ionosphere, atmosphere, clouds, dust, wind and rain causes a drop off on the cohesiveness of the beam and quickly degrades the efficiency to a formula that has the square of the distance in the denominator.
You see this is a geometry problem. You have to get all that energy though some transmission medium by making the energy stay narrowly confined and not refracting away and spreading out. Any amount of spreading and you end up with the distance squared in the bottom of the power in to power out ratio. It's really really hard to keep that ratio from going to absurd fractions (for a power system). Unless you can construct an antenna that only radiates in a single direction, has a zero degree beam width AND can put useable amounts of power out, get said antenna into space, pointing exactly at the right spot which is moving all the time without wreaking it, warping it or having it deform due to uneven heating in orbit, this technically possible feat, becomes practically impossible to accomplish.
So, Yes, what I said is true. It won't work. Nor will this idea of using microwaves to transfer power to earth ever work. The equipment require is too heavy to get into space, too difficult to assemble once it's there and impossible to get and keep aligned. Even a minor variation from the idea will quickly kill any efficiency and because the distance is SO large and the alignment required so exacting it's not going to be possible on an industrial scale. It won't work unless you have lots of power to waste and even then it's going to be darn hard and expensive to do and even more expensive to maintin.
You won't get 10% unless you are within a very short distance, lets say 1 foot is that distance, lets also say that the collection surface is 1 square foot, which is big for a phone, but is about right for a large tablet. Charging takes 1 hour. If you assume an isotropic radiation pattern from the emitter, a 1 foot sphere has a surface area of 4*Pi*(square of (1)) or about 12 square feet. My phone has a 12 Watt/Hour battery, so assume 1 square foot generates 12 watts, and my huge phone will charge in an hour.
Double the distance to two feet from the emitter and you have a sphere of (4*Pi*(Square 2)) = 50 square feet, so moving your phone ONE FOOT further away from the emitter takes the time to charge from 1 hour to 50.
Halfway across the room at say 5 feet the power available will be drastically reduced (4*Pi*(Square of 5)) = 314 Square Feet, which means now, with the same power input as before it's going to take 314 hours to charge that same phone.
Do you see how this doesn't work? Even if you have a directional radiation pattern, the power density you can get will suffer from the square of the distance being on the bottom of the ratios here.
Any technology which attempts to push power though a transmission medium where you have to worry about the "Inverse of the Square" of the distance is going to fail on it's face. Sound though air is such a problem. Magnetic and electric fields though air/vacuum is another. Power transfer may be possible, but the amount of losses means it will never be practical unless you have HUGE amounts of power to waste.
In this case you may not be able to hear ultra sonic frequencies, but that does NOT mean it cannot harm your hearing at the SPL's required to get any kind of power transferred.
In both cases, where you are sued or are being sued, it works to your advantage either way especially in cases where the outcome is uncertain.
In the current state of things using your example, everybody pays their own lawyers up front. If you bring the suit, you pay your legal team to draw up the paperwork, pay the filing and service fees, and then pay your lawyer by the hour for all the work he does to take this to trial hopefully within 2 years. You will pay for your lawyer's time for attending hearings and depositions, fees for court recorders and transcripts, coping fees, notary fees and all sorts of charges for things you never imagine. I'd say you can expect to spend AT LEAST $2-4K to get this to trial. If you are the one sued, you will be out a bit less (assuming you don't counter sue and hire a lawyer at the same rate) between $1.5-3.5K. As you are not seeking monetary damages, best I can tell, that's about it. It goes to trial and the jury/judge gives you a judgment that neither of you will like but your lawyers make sure to get paid in advance.
Under the "looser pays" plan, the complainant this all stays the same, with one exception, the chances for a settlement out of court goes up because as the case progresses the risk to each party of an unfavorable ruling includes the prospect of loosing and having to pay the other side's legal fees. So if you are the one who filed the suit, your up front costs remain the same, plus you are risking another $3K if you loose in court. The defendant is out $3K up front but stands to risk another $4K if they loose. I think this leads to more out of court settlements and less overall legal fees being paid because folks tend to become a bit more reasonable when there is serious money at risk. I think this will push people into a more reasonable stance and get their differences worked out OUTSIDE of the courts. If the possibility of paying the other's fees doesn't make you take pause, and you still believe your cause is just so you will win in court, all "looser pays" really does is change the how sure calculus of each party.
Now if you want to argue that in cases like yours, where you believe the outcome to be a toss up and you are the one considering filing the lawsuit, may I suggest that "Looser pays" is EXACTLY what we need and EXACTLY the kind of case that we need to put the brakes on. As a potential Juror, I can assure you I'm not going to find in your favor given what you've said so far, so I can only assume you are letting your anger and annoyance push you into a rash decision to sue the guy next door, that you WILL loose in court, that the best you can hope for is to get some kind of settlement agreement because they don't want to pay a lawyer...
In both cases "Looser pays" helps you. It prevents you from pushing a questionable position and it also applies more pressure to the defendant as things progress. It encourages every body to settle as soon as possible in the process, without preventing anybody from taking advantage of the process if they feel it necessary.
Hmm....I"m assuming getting laid is not very high on his priority list.
I don't know. I can see where not having a place could be limiting to relationships in the short term, but I can see where the lack of debt and a high disposable income level might be advantageous to a young man's appeal in some circles in the long run. After all, this "arrangement" lasted only 3 years after which he had apparently retired his student loan debt and owned a home, which would greatly enhance his appeal.
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Is that true or false?
Nobody has claimed it was a bomb threat, they claim it was a "Hoax bomb threat" which means they already knew it wasn't a bomb but they had reason to believe *somebody* was trying to lead folks to believe there was a threat of a bomb, either now or in the future.
So don't get caught in the false narrative. Making a "hoax bomb threat" is a crime, but it only requires that you are making the threat of a bomb. You don't have any obvious bomb parts, build any possible parts or even know anything about how to obtain or build a bomb. You can create a "hoax" by just what you say and do. In this case, this kid built/repurposed an alarm clock which *could* be used as a bomb trigger. I don't know what he intended, what meaning he wished to convey when he (contrary the advice of his 1st period teacher) set it off during his third period English class, but I can see how these actions could easily be misinterpreted as a "Hoax Bomb threat" on it's face. If you can see that, then it's easy to figure out how the school and police got sucked into having to run the administrative procedures designed for such events, regardless of how stupid it all turns out to be in hindsight.
Public institutions like schools run on their procedures. It's a sad commentary at times, but procedures at the government level are necessary and often mandated by law. Officials are NOT afforded the leeway of diverting from the procedure, or they break the law in many cases. I believe that in this case both the school and police got stuck following procedures and couldn't divert from the process once they started.
Oh, You think Obama acts on the facts? That's rich...
Look, he's a politician, he obviously acts on things for his political advantage and that's what he did here. He saw an opportunity to score some political points on this and jumped on the bandwagon without the facts. The press went wall to wall coverage on this boy because of the narrative it advanced, not because the story was important to the nation. We got regaled with the daily updates, pictures of the kid in handcuffs, the device, stories about how bright and promising this kid's future was because it drew the attention of the Facebook founder.
NOBODY from the administration had time to fully investigate this boy and his family before that Tweet went out. Obama didn't have any facts, only the news stories we all heard and he jumped into the dog pile for political purposes and not much else.
It was the SAME thing with Travon Martin, Mike Brown and that incident with the Cambridge Police he waded into just to name a few. There is a narrative that he wants to draw attention to, a specific story line he want's folks to hear, so he jumps on stories in the current news cycle that fit the message, using the bully pulpit of the presidency to enforce the perceptions he wants to call attention too and ignoring those things that don't advance his agenda.
I don't begrudge him his ability to do this, he is the president and it's one of the things this position affords him. However, don't be fooled into thinking he had all the facts here, or that he would even care what they where if he had them. I don't think he sees past what he wants to push, what policy, what perceptions, what stays in the news that supports his political goals.
So, you know the story about how Obama snubbed this kid at the Whitehouse right? Ever thought to wonder *why* this is a story? Could it be that this kid turned out to be a little less gifted than previously discussed? That he really only ripped a 1970's Radio Shack LED clock out of it's case and clumsily screwed it into a pencil box and really didn't *invent* anything but ruined a perfectly good alarm clock? Now that this is becoming obvious, this kid no longer matches the picture needed to advance the narrative desired, so he becomes yesterday's news and get's largely ignored. All this is political and I seriously doubt Obama took time to look at the facts because it didn't matter at the time, and really doesn't matter now.
You are engaged in wishful thinking. It will NEVER be economically possible to put structures together in orbit that are measured in kilometers, espically ones that will need to be aligned to tolerances in the micrometers. It's too expensive to get the materials into orbit that would be required to build the transmitting array and it would take too long to assemble and align an array for any useful amount of power to get transferred to the surface. You cannot make smaller arrays because of the physics involved and no amount of engineering or technology can change this.
Don't you see, it's like saying the entire text of "War and Peace" could be written by monkeys hitting random keys on a typewriter if we use enough monkey typewriter pairs or wait long enough. Sure, it's *possible* in that we could assign a possibility that the a series of random selections just happened to match the text we are looking for, but it doesn't mean it will ever happen. One could never buy enough typewriters, obtain enough monkeys or create a workable schedule for this project yet you want to hang your hat on that "it's possible" part and just ignore the rest.
The lab demos of this amount to getting a group of monkeys to type "War" as their first word on the first page. They transferred a few watts over a very short distance and achieved fairly good efficiency. But, they used a LOT of time and Resources to create their transmission and receiving arrays for the power levels achieved, used very short distances compared to what would be required in an industrial application and then scaled up their engineered solution mathematically to simulate how it might work on an industrial scale. I implore you to scale up their costs and multiply by a few orders of magnitude to account for the difficulty of getting all this into space and assembled. The costs are HUGE and the payoff is nowhere near enough to justify it, and that will never change. Just like buying monkeys and typewriters will never get you "War and Peace" even though it's *possible* it could happen.
The "Use microwaves to send power back to earth from space" idea is NOT practical and that will never change because the physics of the problem require structures which are simply too large to build and maintain for the benefit they could possibly provide. No amount of engineering is going to change that, unless you are suggesting we can change the laws of physics if we simply try hard enough... It's never going to happen because the rules of physics don't change...
This isn't an engineering problem it's a physics problem, and it's the physics that make it impossible. Technology and engineering cannot change the physics, but must work within the rules that physics provides.
All lab experiments aside, the physics of the problem mean it will not work on an industrial scale at any reasonable distance for a price anybody can afford. Why? The structures required are HUGE, literally kilometers in size, both in space and on the ground and this size is driven by the physics. Building such structures, while conceivable and possible, is VERY expensive and VER"Y time consuming, especially in space. (Lots of money) X (Lots of time) = Never going to happen.
So "NEVER going to happen" is accurate enough for a rule of thumb in this case.
Some things just are never going to be practical, I don't care how much you wish it was different. Sometimes the physics of a problem require a solution that simply cannot ever be implemented. Where the theoretical solution is beyond what can be successfully engineered to a theoretically possible cost and schedule. This is such a problem/solution.
At this point, the police and school CANNOT release any records because the law requires permission and the family refuses to allow it. The school administration has made multiple public pleas to the family to release the records to no avail. So, we don't know if the school would or wouldn't release the records if allowed and your suggesting that they wouldn't is pointless.
However, the question about what's IN these records remains a valid question. The school and police maintain they want to release these records because these records explain their actions. The kids parents said "NO!" (or at least have not said yes) so asking yourself "why won't they release these records?" is a valid question.
Having "procedures to follow" does not in any way diminish your moral responsibility to do the right thing.
As a public official you follow the law which says you follow your procedures and that's the ethical, moral thing to do. The only time you get to choose is when the situation isn't covered or there are conflicting rules. In this case, the school was REQUIRED by law to have procedures for this kind of thing and required to follow the procedures they had.
Plus, your position assumes there wasn't some reason to proceed as they did, that they generally ignored the facts of the situation and went out and purposely mistreated this kid. I don't think anybody has evidence of that beyond hindsight. Remember, this kids parents are refusing to allow the school and police to speak freely about what happened and why. Further, they have avoided trying to fight the school over expelling their kid or the police for arresting him, I think because it would allow information into the public domain that doesn't match their narrative of what happened.
I suggest that everybody back off and carefully consider what we really know about this and admit that neither of us have a full picture of what exactly transpired. This means we don't jump to conclusions...
I interpret their relative slowness to market as doing proper testing before releasing product.
A hard drive maker TESTING products before releasing it to the masses? You cannot be serious... If you can get the SMART testing to pass in the factory and there are enough good sectors to get you the advertised size, ship it. Time is money, especially in commodity markets like this.
Like I said when this thing all originally broke....
Once the administration of the school got on the "bomb hoax" path with this thing, there is no getting off. People need to understand that there are processes and procedures in a post 9/11 world to deal with this kind of thing that we legally required from public schools. People also need to realize that we don't have the full story, only the story as told by the kid and his family, because the police and school are prohibited from releasing the records until the parents allow it.
The administration and police *may* have overreacted, but I seriously doubt it. Even with what we know, the case that this was perceived as a "bomb hoax" by the school is not totally far fetched. I can see how somebody mistook this thing and the kids actions as a hoax, just on it's face. But we don't know if the kid wasn't doing stupid stuff like leaving the device behind and running out the door yelling "it's a bomb!" or not. All we do know is that his 1st period teacher tells "him to put it away, don't show it to anybody, just take it home" yet it ends up plugged in and going off in 3rd period English class. Somebody thought the situation warranted being called a possible "hoax bomb" and with that, the train had left the station and you have to run the procedure rails dictated by what you are required to do for a possible "hoax bomb".
The evidence is that *something* was amiss with all this, because not only did the school administration treat this like a hoax bomb, the police did too. The police have their own set of policies and procedures to follow and they claim they did exactly that in this case. Somebody said that the boy was verbally combative, evasive and aloof when the police where there questioning him. Enough so to raise suspicion that their might be more to this situation, that an actual crime may have been committed, so they detain the boy until they can investigate, which is totally legal and reasonable as they can hold you for at least 48 hours without charges. Once they determine no crime was committed (or the prosecutor declines to charge him) they release the boy.
None of this seems outlandish or illegal to me. In hind sight it might be a bit much, but I expect that the family is refusing to release the school and police records of this for a reason and that reason is likely that the kid actually DID make a "hoax bomb threat" then acted inappropriately when interviewed by the administrators and police. The school believed it's case was good enough to expel him, and they haven't backed down from that. The only thing that saved him from being criminally charged is the DA refused to charge and try a minor for something like this.
So, we really don't have good evidence that the school or the police where over reacting to the situation. It's very possible (and IMHO likely) that if all the facts where known, if the family would release the records, that the school and police did the right things. And until the family releases the records, it is premature and inappropriate to critique the school or police without all the facts.
I'm pretty sure the Irving police department won't have a problem letting them go. Where they have likely defrauded folks with their story and enriched their bank accounts in the process it obviously didn't rise to the level of a crime. Defamation might be an issue, but that is a civil matter between individuals and would not preclude foreign travel.
In my view, let them go, help them go even. I'd be happy to help pack up their stuff for shipping. Have a long and healthy life young man.
What difference, at this point, does it make?
Right to work doesn't end Unions, that's true and I never said it did. However, it allows non-union workers to exist in Union shops by not forcing prospective employees to first be union members, pay dues etc before they can be hired.
All I'm saying is that if Google finds it's staff unionized, given the nature of it's business and how it easily allows employees to be located in diverse geographic locations, I would expect them to avail themselves of the economic advantage of having employees which are non-union.
Google wouldn't be the first company to do this. Aircraft manufactures do this, Car makers do this, lots of companies do this kind of thing, even ones where the cost of moving their employees is pretty high and takes a long time. Google's costs would be nearly nothing and they could accomplish a significant shift in their labor location in a quarter if they wanted. The only thing one has to be careful of is the NLRB taking offense to your moves, so you need to be making the proper political donations while framing the movement so it doesn't directly bust the union up.
Seriously? Is this how they teach history in the public schools these days?
Here's a few questions to consider.... Does everybody speak English or French in Spain these days? AND Didn't Spain agree to enter the EU under their own free will? Truthful answers to these questions only serve to show that Spain is it's own country and not being forced to be part of anybody's empire...
They'd be fools not to. Over the side boys!
This stuff? A few million cubic feet of soil? Easy, dump it in the Ocean.
It's not like this stuff is horribly dangerous or really radio active. Just barge it out to sea where it's really deep and push it over the side. End of problem. Want to keep it tied up a few thousand years? Encase it in concrete and push it over the side one block at a time. Either way, cheap and easy.
This bomb design actually was a bit dangerous because the conventional explosives where a bit unstable during aircraft crash events. This crash and another one two years later caused a number of changes to nuclear bomb design after the Mk28.
Where I don't think "narrowly avoided a nuclear explosion" is anywhere near accurate, these bombs did explode conventionally and spread their radioactive content around and there is a *remote* possibility that these devices when flying in the "Chrome Dome" operation could have accidently caused a nuclear explosion during a crash because they would have been fully armed physically. I hear that the Mk28 had a number of fail physical and electrical fail safe systems that made it nearly impossible to explode in a nuclear way, but it's not impossible to have these systems disabled/defeated during an accident. If it could go nuclear on command, it's remotely possible to do it on accident.
Yea it won't take much to clean this up, that's for sure...
One thing, I'm guessing the Am-241 was in the original fission material of the bomb and not really from Pu-239 decay, but either way, there is going to be so very little of it. Given it's spread out over about 500 acres by the conventional explosives, I'm wondering why Spain is still pushing to get this clean up done. It's been over 50 years now and all a huge excavation project will really accomplish is to make a mess.
Well, if it pumps some dollars into the local Spanish economy it might be worth the trouble... But really, what's the big deal at this point? Couldn't we just pay them for the land, put up a fence with "keep out for 3,000 years" signs and be done with this? Or is having this material so dangerous to Spain that it's worth taking a few million cubic meters of dirt and dumping it in the ocean?
i mean it sucks and all, but why should we be on the hook for this???
Well, let me see. The aircraft that crashed where ours. The bombs where ours. The pilots where ours and we where flying alone. The wreckage from the accident which was totally our fault fell on Spain... Hmmm...I don't know, Maybe we are responsible for the mess and should clean it up?
Oh, sorry, but if you are facing Daddy War Bucks, your troubles don't really change all that much. Your liability and risk may be different between the two systems, but Mr. War Bucks will never really care either way. He won't care about settling because it's chump change to him either way. But it is MORE coin if he looses and my system is in place, so if your cause is just and you are sure of the win, sue on. If you are not so sure you will prevail, then I wonder why you are suing in the first place?
Where I see your point, the financial risk is proportionally bigger for you than the rich guy, it really doesn't matter if you know you will win. If you press a loosing hand and loose, I guess you pay for being stupid. If this risk of loosing causes you second thoughts because your case is not sure enough or the risk is too great if you have to fork over legal fees when you loose, how's this different from then stringing you along with delays, requesting hearing after hearing, document after document, deposition after deposition, costing you legal fees you cannot afford now where everybody pays their own costs?
I don't care what system you choose, if you try to take a rich guy to the mat in court, even if you know you will win, they can drag you though more legal fees than you ever dreamed possible because they can afford it and you can't. Looser pays doesn't change this by all that much, and perhaps will serve to keep the "I'm angry so I'm suing you for some crazy reason" lawsuits in check.
The issue is not about the volume, but the energy passing though the surface of what ever geometry the radiator emits energy into. Of course the "isotropic" radiator is the theoretical device that puts out equal amounts of energy in all directions and makes the math simple because we can use a sphere. The surface area of a sphere is (4*Pi* Radius Squared).
I've run the numbers elsewhere, but if you have a 1 foot collection area about 1 foot away from an isotropic radiator, you will get about 1/10th of the radiated power at best. 2 Feet gives you about 1/50th of the power and 5 feet lowers the available power to 1/300.
Which is NOT practical approach, even for what is intended.
Microwave power transfer requires very high frequencies amd very large transmission antennas which can successfully keep all the energy from the transmitter in a narrow beam. Even then, the receiving end of this arrangement requires a receiving array kilometers in size because no antenna can perfectly produce a beam of energy and going though the ionosphere, atmosphere, clouds, dust, wind and rain causes a drop off on the cohesiveness of the beam and quickly degrades the efficiency to a formula that has the square of the distance in the denominator.
You see this is a geometry problem. You have to get all that energy though some transmission medium by making the energy stay narrowly confined and not refracting away and spreading out. Any amount of spreading and you end up with the distance squared in the bottom of the power in to power out ratio. It's really really hard to keep that ratio from going to absurd fractions (for a power system). Unless you can construct an antenna that only radiates in a single direction, has a zero degree beam width AND can put useable amounts of power out, get said antenna into space, pointing exactly at the right spot which is moving all the time without wreaking it, warping it or having it deform due to uneven heating in orbit, this technically possible feat, becomes practically impossible to accomplish.
So, Yes, what I said is true. It won't work. Nor will this idea of using microwaves to transfer power to earth ever work. The equipment require is too heavy to get into space, too difficult to assemble once it's there and impossible to get and keep aligned. Even a minor variation from the idea will quickly kill any efficiency and because the distance is SO large and the alignment required so exacting it's not going to be possible on an industrial scale. It won't work unless you have lots of power to waste and even then it's going to be darn hard and expensive to do and even more expensive to maintin.
Consider this..
You won't get 10% unless you are within a very short distance, lets say 1 foot is that distance, lets also say that the collection surface is 1 square foot, which is big for a phone, but is about right for a large tablet. Charging takes 1 hour. If you assume an isotropic radiation pattern from the emitter, a 1 foot sphere has a surface area of 4*Pi*(square of (1)) or about 12 square feet. My phone has a 12 Watt/Hour battery, so assume 1 square foot generates 12 watts, and my huge phone will charge in an hour.
Double the distance to two feet from the emitter and you have a sphere of (4*Pi*(Square 2)) = 50 square feet, so moving your phone ONE FOOT further away from the emitter takes the time to charge from 1 hour to 50.
Halfway across the room at say 5 feet the power available will be drastically reduced (4*Pi*(Square of 5)) = 314 Square Feet, which means now, with the same power input as before it's going to take 314 hours to charge that same phone.
Do you see how this doesn't work? Even if you have a directional radiation pattern, the power density you can get will suffer from the square of the distance being on the bottom of the ratios here.
Any technology which attempts to push power though a transmission medium where you have to worry about the "Inverse of the Square" of the distance is going to fail on it's face. Sound though air is such a problem. Magnetic and electric fields though air/vacuum is another. Power transfer may be possible, but the amount of losses means it will never be practical unless you have HUGE amounts of power to waste.
In this case you may not be able to hear ultra sonic frequencies, but that does NOT mean it cannot harm your hearing at the SPL's required to get any kind of power transferred.
In both cases, where you are sued or are being sued, it works to your advantage either way especially in cases where the outcome is uncertain.
In the current state of things using your example, everybody pays their own lawyers up front. If you bring the suit, you pay your legal team to draw up the paperwork, pay the filing and service fees, and then pay your lawyer by the hour for all the work he does to take this to trial hopefully within 2 years. You will pay for your lawyer's time for attending hearings and depositions, fees for court recorders and transcripts, coping fees, notary fees and all sorts of charges for things you never imagine. I'd say you can expect to spend AT LEAST $2-4K to get this to trial. If you are the one sued, you will be out a bit less (assuming you don't counter sue and hire a lawyer at the same rate) between $1.5-3.5K. As you are not seeking monetary damages, best I can tell, that's about it. It goes to trial and the jury/judge gives you a judgment that neither of you will like but your lawyers make sure to get paid in advance.
Under the "looser pays" plan, the complainant this all stays the same, with one exception, the chances for a settlement out of court goes up because as the case progresses the risk to each party of an unfavorable ruling includes the prospect of loosing and having to pay the other side's legal fees. So if you are the one who filed the suit, your up front costs remain the same, plus you are risking another $3K if you loose in court. The defendant is out $3K up front but stands to risk another $4K if they loose. I think this leads to more out of court settlements and less overall legal fees being paid because folks tend to become a bit more reasonable when there is serious money at risk. I think this will push people into a more reasonable stance and get their differences worked out OUTSIDE of the courts. If the possibility of paying the other's fees doesn't make you take pause, and you still believe your cause is just so you will win in court, all "looser pays" really does is change the how sure calculus of each party.
Now if you want to argue that in cases like yours, where you believe the outcome to be a toss up and you are the one considering filing the lawsuit, may I suggest that "Looser pays" is EXACTLY what we need and EXACTLY the kind of case that we need to put the brakes on. As a potential Juror, I can assure you I'm not going to find in your favor given what you've said so far, so I can only assume you are letting your anger and annoyance push you into a rash decision to sue the guy next door, that you WILL loose in court, that the best you can hope for is to get some kind of settlement agreement because they don't want to pay a lawyer...
In both cases "Looser pays" helps you. It prevents you from pushing a questionable position and it also applies more pressure to the defendant as things progress. It encourages every body to settle as soon as possible in the process, without preventing anybody from taking advantage of the process if they feel it necessary.
Hmm....I"m assuming getting laid is not very high on his priority list.
I don't know. I can see where not having a place could be limiting to relationships in the short term, but I can see where the lack of debt and a high disposable income level might be advantageous to a young man's appeal in some circles in the long run. After all, this "arrangement" lasted only 3 years after which he had apparently retired his student loan debt and owned a home, which would greatly enhance his appeal.
Sometimes a bit of patience is rewarding...