Niven ring is as bad as a solid sphere. It is not stable and serves no practical purpose other than bad scifi stories.
Given some for adjustment it should be maintainable and the ability to spin it solves the whole gravity issue. Since it's smaller it also means there is enough material to make it much thicker which solves some of the stress issues. Obviously any of these objects are still far beyond our technological level, with the exception of something like the Dyson swarm which is really more a collection of objects.
Why not just genetically engineer plants that grow meat, that way you get the best of both, flavor and saving the fuzzy animals. I look forward to sampling the bacon bush and porterhouse tree.
You are bad in math, are you? Or only bad in estimations?
The calculations have already been done, here is a quote from wikipedia "estimates that there is 1.82×1026 kg of easily usable building material in the Solar System, enough for a 1-AU shell with a mass of 600 kg/m2—about 8–20 cm thick on average, depending on the density of the material." Of course there are some debates as to whether that is sufficiently thick. Regardless of thickness there are a variety of design problems with the solid shell version and that's not what Dyson was actually proposing. A Dyson swarm or Niven ring would be much more practical.
Pretending a gun is anything less than a lethal option is misguided or dishonest.
I don't claim that actually. If the cops want to have a rifle in the car with lethal rounds I'm fine with that because it takes time and intention to go get it, I would prefer that it was stored in the trunk rather than in a rack next to the radio in order to increase the delay. The pistol on the other hand is always available and often pulled when you don't initially intend to kill.
Nahh, let's go with a civilization that has harvested all the planets from other solar systems near them for resources to start building a dyson sphere....
If you have a normal amount of planetary material there is no need to harvest materials from other solar systems in order to build a dyson sphere. That would be a far more monumental task.
If that were true, then the most logical result would have been for the first adopters of machinery to push for abolition.
Why would they do that? Instead they'd just sell their slaves and move on, the rest is someone else's problem.
So the spark for the US Civil war wasn't that the Missouri Compromise favored the North,
The causes of the civil war are many and varied and likely would take more room than we have here to discuss properly. Slavery was one, Arguments over Federalism was a big one, The North blocking industrialization of the South was one, contention over various political issues like the Louisiana Purchase, etc. etc. etc. Civil wars on that scale don't happen for one reason but a confluence of factors.
While the legislation would never pass due to entrenched interests, the method is actually pretty simple: Tax them. If big companies have to pay extra taxes then they'll shrink down to whatever size is just below the threshold.
Handguns come in a variety of calibers, I'm sure we could select one with sufficient muzzle velocity even using rubber bullets. For example, a.357 model 28 revolver was standard police issue for decades and has more than enough punch to deal with any normal use of force situation for a patrol officer. Obviously SWAT members have a different mission and would likely still require lethal ammo.
Owning slaves was an economic issue in the majority of cases. Once the economics changed then it no longer made sense to keep them. Since the economics was different for different industries there were differences in the order in which political entities abandoned slavery. Social change tends to lag technology and economics so in some cases there was conflict about the issue, like in the civil war, between areas that had different rates of change.
Actually many of the founders were against the whole idea of parties, sadly the first past the post voting system ensures that they will arise and be dominant.
Semantics aside, because we argue about that all day, the purpose of a police weapon is to disable, disuade and reduce the mobility of the opponent such that the officer can protect his life and make an arrest. Guns loaded with rubber bullets accomplish those objectives as has been proven countless times during riot duty. Rubber bullets are not non-lethal, they're merely less-lethal and as such represent a decent compromise between the needs of police to exert force and the rights of the citizen not to be murdered without trial.
Sort of. Human wants are infinite but people have a diminishing marginal propensity to consume. As people make ever larger amounts of income the fraction of that they spend on "consumption" rather than things like "savings & investment" goes down. This suggests that it would be possible to satisfy everyone at some level below infinite for certain values of "satisfy".
True, but we could likely become nearly post-scarcity in that average people would not have to sell their labor in order to have the normal requirements of life: food, housing, medical care, entertainment, transportation etc.
Sure, physical location and a variety of other things will still remain somewhat scarce and so there will have to be some way to allocate those goods but it could easily reach the point where it's not very relevant for the majority of people.
The only practical solution currently is rubber bullets. The cops get to keep the ease of use and most of the stopping power of a gun but the lethality levels go way down.
Slashdot Mirror
Niven ring is as bad as a solid sphere. It is not stable and serves no practical purpose other than bad scifi stories.
Given some for adjustment it should be maintainable and the ability to spin it solves the whole gravity issue. Since it's smaller it also means there is enough material to make it much thicker which solves some of the stress issues. Obviously any of these objects are still far beyond our technological level, with the exception of something like the Dyson swarm which is really more a collection of objects.
Why not just genetically engineer plants that grow meat, that way you get the best of both, flavor and saving the fuzzy animals. I look forward to sampling the bacon bush and porterhouse tree.
You are bad in math, are you? Or only bad in estimations?
The calculations have already been done, here is a quote from wikipedia "estimates that there is 1.82×1026 kg of easily usable building material in the Solar System, enough for a 1-AU shell with a mass of 600 kg/m2—about 8–20 cm thick on average, depending on the density of the material." Of course there are some debates as to whether that is sufficiently thick. Regardless of thickness there are a variety of design problems with the solid shell version and that's not what Dyson was actually proposing. A Dyson swarm or Niven ring would be much more practical.
Pretending a gun is anything less than a lethal option is misguided or dishonest.
I don't claim that actually. If the cops want to have a rifle in the car with lethal rounds I'm fine with that because it takes time and intention to go get it, I would prefer that it was stored in the trunk rather than in a rack next to the radio in order to increase the delay. The pistol on the other hand is always available and often pulled when you don't initially intend to kill.
Nahh, let's go with a civilization that has harvested all the planets from other solar systems near them for resources to start building a dyson sphere....
If you have a normal amount of planetary material there is no need to harvest materials from other solar systems in order to build a dyson sphere. That would be a far more monumental task.
Then I really would start to worry, every problem we declare war on gets worse.
If one of my sysadmins left that port open, he would be fired.
That's a tad extreme. A reprimand, a procedure review and an emergency change window sounds more appropriate.
All I have to say, is if this were Jeb, he would be in jail already.
Jail is for little people. Nothing would change if it were Jeb in trouble instead.
This is interesting but wouldn't adult sized Legos be easier?
They could try but as long as there were other smaller competitors in the market then the customers wouldn't stand for it.
You keep putting words in my mouth, no point in continuing.
Also true which is why we have a republic instead of a democracy.
If that were true, then the most logical result would have been for the first adopters of machinery to push for abolition.
Why would they do that? Instead they'd just sell their slaves and move on, the rest is someone else's problem.
So the spark for the US Civil war wasn't that the Missouri Compromise favored the North,
The causes of the civil war are many and varied and likely would take more room than we have here to discuss properly. Slavery was one, Arguments over Federalism was a big one, The North blocking industrialization of the South was one, contention over various political issues like the Louisiana Purchase, etc. etc. etc. Civil wars on that scale don't happen for one reason but a confluence of factors.
You might want to read up some more on that period and how it went for the average citizen.
While the legislation would never pass due to entrenched interests, the method is actually pretty simple: Tax them. If big companies have to pay extra taxes then they'll shrink down to whatever size is just below the threshold.
Handguns come in a variety of calibers, I'm sure we could select one with sufficient muzzle velocity even using rubber bullets. For example, a .357 model 28 revolver was standard police issue for decades and has more than enough punch to deal with any normal use of force situation for a patrol officer. Obviously SWAT members have a different mission and would likely still require lethal ammo.
Owning slaves was an economic issue in the majority of cases. Once the economics changed then it no longer made sense to keep them. Since the economics was different for different industries there were differences in the order in which political entities abandoned slavery. Social change tends to lag technology and economics so in some cases there was conflict about the issue, like in the civil war, between areas that had different rates of change.
Actually many of the founders were against the whole idea of parties, sadly the first past the post voting system ensures that they will arise and be dominant.
Money needs to be out of politics.
Which is essentially impossible. So, the only real solution is create total transparency so that we know exactly who is funding what and for how much.
Semantics aside, because we argue about that all day, the purpose of a police weapon is to disable, disuade and reduce the mobility of the opponent such that the officer can protect his life and make an arrest. Guns loaded with rubber bullets accomplish those objectives as has been proven countless times during riot duty. Rubber bullets are not non-lethal, they're merely less-lethal and as such represent a decent compromise between the needs of police to exert force and the rights of the citizen not to be murdered without trial.
As slavery was ended, across most of the world from 1850 to 1900, machines were needed to replace the "free" labor that was lost.
You have that backwards, the machines caused the end of slavery not the other way around.
....because human greed is infinite
Sort of. Human wants are infinite but people have a diminishing marginal propensity to consume. As people make ever larger amounts of income the fraction of that they spend on "consumption" rather than things like "savings & investment" goes down. This suggests that it would be possible to satisfy everyone at some level below infinite for certain values of "satisfy".
True, but we could likely become nearly post-scarcity in that average people would not have to sell their labor in order to have the normal requirements of life: food, housing, medical care, entertainment, transportation etc.
Sure, physical location and a variety of other things will still remain somewhat scarce and so there will have to be some way to allocate those goods but it could easily reach the point where it's not very relevant for the majority of people.
The only practical solution currently is rubber bullets. The cops get to keep the ease of use and most of the stopping power of a gun but the lethality levels go way down.
What's really needed are courses in things like "How not to fall into the debt trap"
If they got serious about teaching it properly that would be a hugely beneficial class. No way they'd be allowed to do it right though.