Most migrating birds fly at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet.
Nope.. Most migrating birds are flying UNDER 2,000 ft AGL which is where most bird strike incidents happen. There have been NO REPORTED strikes above 6,000 feet.
Yea, ditch the canopy and have to bail out of the aircraft blind when the power fails. Any idea how often the power fails on one of these things? It is NOT a good idea to make all the instrumentation in the aircraft mission critical and leave the pilot without the ability to look around. No manned fighter is going to *ever* do this.
On your "leave the pilot on the ground" idea.... There are serious issues with doing this for a fighter. Actively controlling an aircraft at a distance requires bidirectional data links with sufficient bandwidth and low latency. Establishment of such links requires RF energy to be radiated from both the aircraft and from the control point. Jamming communications and Shooting missiles at transmitters is fairly easy, so the bad guys have an easy way to defeat your drone.
Then there is the whole stealth issue. It's really hard to stay stealthy when you have to keep the RF transmitter running on an aircraft. Checkmate, at least for fighters.
We are going to see manned fighters for a long time. Bombers though are an entirely different issue, but the Tomahawk seems to be taking care of that.
Did the predators get entrapped to sign online? Or tricked into joining a chat room? Did they get tricked into replying to a 10 yr old girl? Did they get tricked into asking the girl to cam? did they get tricked into asking the girl to undress or telling the girl they will pay for them? These are pedophiles, nothing more nothing less. No entrapment.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. There is no entrapment because the people posing as the 10 year old girl are not law enforcement and NOBODY is being charged with a crime so NOBODY has been enticed to commit a crime, even if they did all the things you say they didn't...
Yep. Entrapment by police and entrapment by well-intentioned vigilante investigators are completely different things. Though if they have done their research, they'll know the importance of never leading the suspect on or enticing them to any action.
I don't think they are on firm legal ground here. Nobody is going to get charged with a crime and when they start naming names they run the risk of being sued for defamation.
I don't like child predators and I want them caught and locked up, but this kind of activity doesn't help that much.
Given that the people doing this where not doing law enforcement and where not sanctioned by a law enforcement entity, legally entrapment is not an option here. The main reason is that nobody will get charged with a crime where they can use entrapment as a defense.
What these folks are doing is trying to embarrass the nut cases that walk into their trap. Nobody is going to jail based on their efforts, although they might be accused of defamation by the people they choose to name.
Long term low level radiation exposure is deadly to life of all kinds. The simpler the life form, the better is survives, but the more complex forms are much less resistant. Human life is one of the most complex, so it will be more easily damaged by the radiation in space. This will make it necessary to provide radiation levels close to those on earth's surface or the occupants of the craft will not survive the 100+ year one way trip.
Physics says that effective shielding requires but one thing, mass. The lower the radiation levels required, the more mass will be required. Some radiation types can be deflected using magnetic fields, but to be effective the fields must be very strong (requiring lots of power to maintain) or very large (requiring large structures to produce). In all cases, you are adding to mass and/or complexity of the system, both of which are extremely difficult issues to deal with for missions lasting the 100+ years required.
As Scottie is always mumbling... "I cannot change the laws of physics!" and I don't think that advancements in technology will either. The basic physics around radiation and shielding from it haven't changed in over a century and are very well understood. Where it might be possible that a huge shake up of our understanding of physics happens, the probability of that is very remote. I contend that the fundamental laws of physics we now understand are not going to change.
So... If we are stuck with the physics we now have. We are stuck in this solar system just by virtue of the travel times required to get to anyplace else makes the trip unsurvivable. Given the makeup of other planets, we are likely stuck on Earth for the most part. Given the life cycle of the sun, earth will be burned to cinders eventually. All this is because we are stuck with the physics we currently understand.
Sorry, but the science fiction stories and plot devices you read and see on TV do not make future reality. They make you feel better to think it does, but the cold hard truth is they are fiction and will remain so. In the end, the laws of thermodynamics doom the universe as a whole, and the laws of physics doom us long before that.
So we can get there in 5-10 generations of space travelers? Just making a self contained system that can support life that long without resupply is going to be some feat. Staying alive in the harsh radiation environment of space for 200 years will be quite another. Keeping the equipment working that long will be even more unthinkable if there is any kind of complexity to the technology used.
We are stuck in this solar system, and the future does not look good. Eventually the sun will make the earth into something that looks a lot like a marshmallow thrown into the camp fire.
I dono... I'd be on very safe ground to agree with Einstein's theories... I think it's pretty clear, C is going to be the galactic speed limit, relatively speaking.
Your idea has merit, but there are more efficient ways to store electricity than fuel cells and hydrogen, at least on a small to midsize scale. There are no large scale examples, so I assume it is not viable at that scale either. It's just cheaper to just buy power at night.
I took the call and 8-10 cents/Kilowatt Hour is decidedly NOT competitive cost numbers. Commercial power prices are less than half that at wholesale levels. Sent them to voice mail. Darn telemarketers!
Creation of Hydrogen gas is only commercially viable though reforming natural gas, which produces C02 as a byproduct. Electrolysis is not cost effective and requires more electrical power than your fuel cell could produce. Generation of electrical power usually requires a release of CO2 as well.
If you have a fuel cell that burns methane (i.e. Natural gas) or other fuels the fuel cell will have to reform it into Hydrogen (releasing CO2) before it's used. If you burn just Hydrogen, somebody else did the reforming (releasing the CO2 for you).
The only way this works out as a plus for the environment is by making it possible to use LESS fuel for the same amount of power. And in this way it *might* work out to be marginally better, based on the possible efficiency gains of fuel cells.
Snowden should be commended for standing up to a government who has been 'caught with it's hand in the cookie jar', engaging in illegal and immoral espionage of its own people.
Really? There are some *really* legal arguments that say what they are doing is NOT illegal, immoral or unethical.
Does the NSA have the *ability* to do illegal monitoring of it's own people? Sure does. But we are FAR from having proof that they have routinely monitored citizens within the borders of the USA illegally. You can put on your tinfoil hat and claim they do, but that puts you in the same class as the nutcases that think Apollo lunar landings where faked. Just remember that absolutely NOBODY has a credible claim of being wrongly prosecuted on illegally gathered evidence. Until you have such, you have no argument, at least for monitoring INSIDE the USA.
Now before you go off confused, remember that OUTSIDE the USA is legally fair game for monitoring by the NSA. They can, and DO routinely monitor things that move, create sound, radiate energy, reflect light etc. The USA courts have found that constitutional protections DO NOT EXIST on foreign soil (i.e. outside sovereign US territory) and certainly do NOT apply to non-US citizens despite how "self evident" the constitutional rights may be. The US Constitution does not apply to other countries or peoples, unless they choose to adopt it themselves. Where there is *some* legal protection for USA citizens on foreign soil, the NSA can legally monitor whatever they choose without having to get a USA court order or search warrant. If that evidence could be used to charge you with a crime, is somewhat grey legal ground, but they can collect it.
Before you go out and start claiming the NSA can't break international law or the laws of the countries they monitor in, stop and ask yourself if it matters? I for one don't care if the NSA breaks some other country's laws. Other countries are free to defend their soil and laws as they see fit and are free to conduct surveillance as they choose, so the USA is free to defend itself and gather information as we choose. I'm not bound by the laws of France (unless I'm IN France) and the French are not bound by US law, unless they are in the US, so what the NSA does on foreign soil is not subject to Constitutional restrictions.
So if you want to say the NSA "got caught", fine with me, but we have zero evidence that they are doing anything illegal on a routine basis within the USA and outside the USA anything goes. All we have is a bunch of hearsay, assumptions and conspiracy theories fed by little real evidence provided by somebody with obviously selfish motives. (Who is also a traitor of the first order, despite his claims otherwise.)
First: having a friend forward items to you would likely be the best bet for low volume things or high value things. I find that international flat rate priority mail boxes are wonderful things. They are size limited, but service is good even to New Guinea where I'm ship stuff.
Second... Watch what electronics you buy. In the US we have 60 Cycles 120V and over there it's 50 Cycles 220V. It's not usually a problem, but it can be sometimes. The connectors are generally NOT the same, but adapters abound down there. Also, radio stuff (wifi routers and such) are subject to different rules down under and you might be better off performance wise to use locally distributed stuff. Just be careful out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Most migrating birds fly at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet.
Nope.. Most migrating birds are flying UNDER 2,000 ft AGL which is where most bird strike incidents happen. There have been NO REPORTED strikes above 6,000 feet.
See the WikiPedia article on Bird Migration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_migration and look at the second to last paragraph in the "General Patterns" section.
Yea, ditch the canopy and have to bail out of the aircraft blind when the power fails. Any idea how often the power fails on one of these things? It is NOT a good idea to make all the instrumentation in the aircraft mission critical and leave the pilot without the ability to look around. No manned fighter is going to *ever* do this.
On your "leave the pilot on the ground" idea.... There are serious issues with doing this for a fighter. Actively controlling an aircraft at a distance requires bidirectional data links with sufficient bandwidth and low latency. Establishment of such links requires RF energy to be radiated from both the aircraft and from the control point. Jamming communications and Shooting missiles at transmitters is fairly easy, so the bad guys have an easy way to defeat your drone.
Then there is the whole stealth issue. It's really hard to stay stealthy when you have to keep the RF transmitter running on an aircraft. Checkmate, at least for fighters.
We are going to see manned fighters for a long time. Bombers though are an entirely different issue, but the Tomahawk seems to be taking care of that.
Make them all unmanned drones. We're going that way anyway. It's expensive to keep people alive at 800mph.
Not really. Unmanned drones have their issues and some serious limitations which may not be obvious at first blush.
And it's not the 800Mph that's the issue, it's the 50,000 ft altitude that's the issue.
In favor of flying radio controlled airplanes?
There is a *reason* we put pilots in aircraft... It's the same reason we still have computer programers...
Maybe the (snip) swallows?
African or European?
Wii's where not hard core... Even when they first came out.
Did the predators get entrapped to sign online? Or tricked into joining a chat room? Did they get tricked into replying to a 10 yr old girl? Did they get tricked into asking the girl to cam? did they get tricked into asking the girl to undress or telling the girl they will pay for them? These are pedophiles, nothing more nothing less. No entrapment.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. There is no entrapment because the people posing as the 10 year old girl are not law enforcement and NOBODY is being charged with a crime so NOBODY has been enticed to commit a crime, even if they did all the things you say they didn't...
Yep. Entrapment by police and entrapment by well-intentioned vigilante investigators are completely different things. Though if they have done their research, they'll know the importance of never leading the suspect on or enticing them to any action.
I don't think they are on firm legal ground here. Nobody is going to get charged with a crime and when they start naming names they run the risk of being sued for defamation.
I don't like child predators and I want them caught and locked up, but this kind of activity doesn't help that much.
Given that the people doing this where not doing law enforcement and where not sanctioned by a law enforcement entity, legally entrapment is not an option here. The main reason is that nobody will get charged with a crime where they can use entrapment as a defense.
What these folks are doing is trying to embarrass the nut cases that walk into their trap. Nobody is going to jail based on their efforts, although they might be accused of defamation by the people they choose to name.
The physics of this betray you.
Long term low level radiation exposure is deadly to life of all kinds. The simpler the life form, the better is survives, but the more complex forms are much less resistant. Human life is one of the most complex, so it will be more easily damaged by the radiation in space. This will make it necessary to provide radiation levels close to those on earth's surface or the occupants of the craft will not survive the 100+ year one way trip.
Physics says that effective shielding requires but one thing, mass. The lower the radiation levels required, the more mass will be required. Some radiation types can be deflected using magnetic fields, but to be effective the fields must be very strong (requiring lots of power to maintain) or very large (requiring large structures to produce). In all cases, you are adding to mass and/or complexity of the system, both of which are extremely difficult issues to deal with for missions lasting the 100+ years required.
As Scottie is always mumbling... "I cannot change the laws of physics!" and I don't think that advancements in technology will either. The basic physics around radiation and shielding from it haven't changed in over a century and are very well understood. Where it might be possible that a huge shake up of our understanding of physics happens, the probability of that is very remote. I contend that the fundamental laws of physics we now understand are not going to change.
So... If we are stuck with the physics we now have. We are stuck in this solar system just by virtue of the travel times required to get to anyplace else makes the trip unsurvivable. Given the makeup of other planets, we are likely stuck on Earth for the most part. Given the life cycle of the sun, earth will be burned to cinders eventually. All this is because we are stuck with the physics we currently understand.
Sorry, but the science fiction stories and plot devices you read and see on TV do not make future reality. They make you feel better to think it does, but the cold hard truth is they are fiction and will remain so. In the end, the laws of thermodynamics doom the universe as a whole, and the laws of physics doom us long before that.
So we can get there in 5-10 generations of space travelers? Just making a self contained system that can support life that long without resupply is going to be some feat. Staying alive in the harsh radiation environment of space for 200 years will be quite another. Keeping the equipment working that long will be even more unthinkable if there is any kind of complexity to the technology used.
We are stuck in this solar system, and the future does not look good. Eventually the sun will make the earth into something that looks a lot like a marshmallow thrown into the camp fire.
We are doomed.
In my math, anytime you divide a non-zero real number by zero, you do NOT get zero but a really large number.
But you where making a joke.....Right?
No intelligent life here... Ok.. So it's mostly true.
I dono... I'd be on very safe ground to agree with Einstein's theories... I think it's pretty clear, C is going to be the galactic speed limit, relatively speaking.
Which means they *could* be right.... Or not.
Your idea has merit, but there are more efficient ways to store electricity than fuel cells and hydrogen, at least on a small to midsize scale. There are no large scale examples, so I assume it is not viable at that scale either. It's just cheaper to just buy power at night.
Methane requires "reforming" into hydrogen before a fuel cell can use it. Some fuel cells do it within the cell, but it happens none the less.
The first three laws of thermodynamics rule that out. Not going to happen.
I took the call and 8-10 cents /Kilowatt Hour is decidedly NOT competitive cost numbers. Commercial power prices are less than half that at wholesale levels. Sent them to voice mail. Darn telemarketers!
Creation of Hydrogen gas is only commercially viable though reforming natural gas, which produces C02 as a byproduct. Electrolysis is not cost effective and requires more electrical power than your fuel cell could produce. Generation of electrical power usually requires a release of CO2 as well.
If you have a fuel cell that burns methane (i.e. Natural gas) or other fuels the fuel cell will have to reform it into Hydrogen (releasing CO2) before it's used. If you burn just Hydrogen, somebody else did the reforming (releasing the CO2 for you).
The only way this works out as a plus for the environment is by making it possible to use LESS fuel for the same amount of power. And in this way it *might* work out to be marginally better, based on the possible efficiency gains of fuel cells.
I hear it's going to explode on the market
Nah, it'll go down in flames.
For sure in New Jersey...
Only when landing in Lakehurst NJ... Oh the Humanity...
Well, we could use just plain H. Wouldn't Hydrogen be better? After all it's lighter. It could make a drive failure a bit more obvious and fun...
(Sarcastic grin)
Snowden should be commended for standing up to a government who has been 'caught with it's hand in the cookie jar', engaging in illegal and immoral espionage of its own people.
Really? There are some *really* legal arguments that say what they are doing is NOT illegal, immoral or unethical.
Does the NSA have the *ability* to do illegal monitoring of it's own people? Sure does. But we are FAR from having proof that they have routinely monitored citizens within the borders of the USA illegally. You can put on your tinfoil hat and claim they do, but that puts you in the same class as the nutcases that think Apollo lunar landings where faked. Just remember that absolutely NOBODY has a credible claim of being wrongly prosecuted on illegally gathered evidence. Until you have such, you have no argument, at least for monitoring INSIDE the USA.
Now before you go off confused, remember that OUTSIDE the USA is legally fair game for monitoring by the NSA. They can, and DO routinely monitor things that move, create sound, radiate energy, reflect light etc. The USA courts have found that constitutional protections DO NOT EXIST on foreign soil (i.e. outside sovereign US territory) and certainly do NOT apply to non-US citizens despite how "self evident" the constitutional rights may be. The US Constitution does not apply to other countries or peoples, unless they choose to adopt it themselves. Where there is *some* legal protection for USA citizens on foreign soil, the NSA can legally monitor whatever they choose without having to get a USA court order or search warrant. If that evidence could be used to charge you with a crime, is somewhat grey legal ground, but they can collect it.
Before you go out and start claiming the NSA can't break international law or the laws of the countries they monitor in, stop and ask yourself if it matters? I for one don't care if the NSA breaks some other country's laws. Other countries are free to defend their soil and laws as they see fit and are free to conduct surveillance as they choose, so the USA is free to defend itself and gather information as we choose. I'm not bound by the laws of France (unless I'm IN France) and the French are not bound by US law, unless they are in the US, so what the NSA does on foreign soil is not subject to Constitutional restrictions.
So if you want to say the NSA "got caught", fine with me, but we have zero evidence that they are doing anything illegal on a routine basis within the USA and outside the USA anything goes. All we have is a bunch of hearsay, assumptions and conspiracy theories fed by little real evidence provided by somebody with obviously selfish motives. (Who is also a traitor of the first order, despite his claims otherwise.)
First: having a friend forward items to you would likely be the best bet for low volume things or high value things. I find that international flat rate priority mail boxes are wonderful things. They are size limited, but service is good even to New Guinea where I'm ship stuff.
Second... Watch what electronics you buy. In the US we have 60 Cycles 120V and over there it's 50 Cycles 220V. It's not usually a problem, but it can be sometimes. The connectors are generally NOT the same, but adapters abound down there. Also, radio stuff (wifi routers and such) are subject to different rules down under and you might be better off performance wise to use locally distributed stuff. Just be careful out there.
And thirdly, More's law is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.