So what exactly is SETI looking for at much greater distances? Deliberate signals designed to attract attention, or signals that are accidentally beamed in our direction.
Isotropic leakage signals are too faint to detect. The garbage people will tell you about aliens watching "I Love Lucy" is just that, garbage. TV signals have degraded into unintelligible nonsense before the even get to the first star.
I feel sorry for the girl, but ultimately it was HER DECISION to commit suicide. Committing suicide is rarely a decision made in a rational manner by a well person.
That said, I don't think that assholes should be held responsible for the mental health of children they encounter.
One question I have about this case is how long the girl's parents missed or ignored the symptoms of severe depression in their child. Healthy kids don't kill themselves because someone teases them online. Severe depression doesn't happen overnight. Like kids that shoot up their schools, kids that kill themselves have symptoms that can be observed, even by clueless parents.
How so? If I observe a rock to fall today, then no future observation will invalidate that observation that the rock fell. It may give a completely different reason for why that happens, but it will not change the fact that it did happen. Quantum mechanics is time reversible, which could be interpreted to mean that the past is the superposition of all the possible pasts that lead the present universe. To make a long story short that means that there may be a point in the future when it is impossible to tell the difference between a universe where the rock fell and a universe where it did not. At that point it will not be known, nor will it be possible to know, whether the rock did, in fact, fall.
It depends upon where you measure and what you are measuring. Different kinds of stars have different distributions. Different temperature gas has different distributions. The disk is thinner than the galactic bulge.
Then there is the question of how you define the extent. The Galaxy doesn't have a sharp boundary. Do you measure to the place where the relative density has fallen to exp(-1)? Do you measure to the place where 50% of the mass in interior? Do you measure to where the relative surface brightness has fallen to exp(-1)?
So you would be OK with the CIA assassinating you if you just happened to be on a trip to Mexico? Is this a straw-man I see? No, it's a legitimate question for those that think that there are no legal bounds to what the U.S. government can do outside of U.S. territory.
The US Constitution, is, strangely enough, a constitution for the USA. Others of us may admire it, but that doesn't make it globally binding. It is globally and universally binding on the government of the U.S. except in cases where it specifies otherwise.
> it's not Mozilla's obligation to make sure that Opera's secure
True, but surely Mozilla has a moral obligation to ensure that other browsers (and ultimately, users) have as much time as possible to prepare for when the exploit becomes public domain? That obligation is trumped by Mozilla's moral obligation to make sure that people who use Mozilla are not vulnerable to an exploit.
Are you really sure about the document's scope?
I suppose if you mean the physical territory of these United States, then anyone standing within the borders could be seen as "People of the United States".
Too, WRT Guantanamo Bay, the fact that the detainees are not in CONUS may be seen as keeping them out of legal theory range.
So you would be OK with the CIA assassinating you if you just happened to be on a trip to Mexico?
But that's beside the point. The Constitution enumerates the limited powers of the government of the United States. Where it makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens, it makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Also where it makes no distinction between U.S. territory and non-U.S. territory, it makes no distinction between U.S. territory and non-U.S. territory. They are both truisms.
The 4th amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It does not mention dressing up as a clown. That doesn't mean it's legal to conduct warrantless searches while dressed as a clown. No reasonable person could argue that the 4th amendment doesn't apply if the people conducting the searches are dressed as clowns. No reasonable person would state that it's "a debate that reasonable people can chew on for a while."
Not here to shill for anybody: it's a debate that reasonable people can chew on for a while. No, it's a debate that unreasonable people can and will use to convince easily frightened and uneducated people that it is necessary to give up some of their rights.
Where do I sign up for those? Just file your taxes! Yeah, lets borrow $100 billion from Canada, the UK and China, and then ship it to Japan and Korea in exchange for some TVs. And we can call it economic stimulus. That's the ticket.
Whoever tagged this article "whogivesafuck" should turn in their human card at the door.
Even though I wouldn't have said it, it's an appropriate sentiment. Fossett was a rich guy who got his kicks doing potentially dangerous stunts with little or no practical value. He died doing the setup work for his next stunt. C'est la vie.
His effect on my life was somewhere between "nothing at all" and "Steve who?" The same day he went missing, about 100 people in the U.S. died in car accidents. About the same number died of complications due to influenza. Do all of them deserve a slashdot story? Do you want to take the trouble to know their names? No. Because you are thinking "who gives a fuck." Well, those deaths are more regrettable because a large fraction of them probably could have been prevented. Personally, I think we should be doing more to prevent deaths from auto accidents and influenza. On the other hand, I don't think we should be wasting a dime trying to prevent rich people from doing stupid things.
The other person that gets mentioned in this context is Jim Gray. I do feel a loss there, both because Jim was an acquaintance who I last saw a week before his disappearance, and because Jim had an effect on how I do my work. He had an effect on how a lot of people do their work. Most people he affected don't know his name. He didn't shout it from mountain tops or advertise it with pointless stunts. But if you didn't know Jim, I don't expect you to feel a loss or care more than you would care for any of the thousands of people that died that day.
Sure, but how hard can you hit? It's not as if it were hitting a stone wall, it's hitting an exploding missile, that is, a fire ball. It's travelling at close to 8000 meters, or five miles, per second. Trying to destroy a spacecraft with a fireball would be pretty stupid, and I doubt the U.S. military would be that stupid.
What you want is a slowly expanding cloud of massive objects to intersect the satellite at high velocity. Lot's of explosives aren't necessary because you don't need to get the shrapnel to high velocity.
Since you've got 8 km/s of orbital velocity and probably around 3 km/s on the interceptor, you're probably talking about 10 km/s at the intercept. The heat of vaporization of iron is 250 kJ/kg and this thing has a mass of 11 tons, so we can assume 2.7 GJ will do quite a number on this satellite. Sure, it's not made of iron, but you don't really need to liquify it to destroy it. Satellites are usually only built to survive launch stresses, not impacts.
Anyhow at an impact velocity of 10 km/s 2.7 GJ would require a impactors with a total mass of 50 kg, probably in the form of lead or depleted uranium for compactness. To be thorough in your destruction, you probably want multiple small impactors, say 500 of them at 100 grams each. The total mass of the warhead depends upon how close you can get to the target. If you could be ensured a direct hit, 50kg would suffice. But it's likely that this won't be a direct hit, so you'll need to cover a larger area than the satellite itself.
We'll assume the satellite projects an aspect of 600 square meters (say about 60 meters by 10 meters) and that our shot cloud covers a circular area. Once your impact parameter exceeds 14 meters your warhead size goes up as the square of the distance. At 25 meters, you need 160 kg. At 50 meters you need 650 kg. At 100 meters you need 2.6 tons. At a kilometer you need 260 tons.
The only thing determined by the yield of the charge that scatters these impactors is the timing. How long before impact do you need to set it off and how accurate does your timing need to be? These are left as an exercise for the reader. If I were designing the thing I'd keep the scattering charge as small as possible. The bulk of the constraints are set by the trajectory. In a head on trajectory, there is nothing wrong with scattering the impactors 5 seconds or more before impact. For an interceptor that travels vertically, the maximum timing probably depends upon atmospheric properties.
Given the geometry of the likely impacts, it is unlikely there would be significant amounts of ejecta inserted into long lasting orbits. The worst cases would be insertions into elliptical orbits, but they would circularize quickly at low altitude due to the low perigee. It should be possible to choose in impact point that will minimize risk to other vehicles.
FWIW, I do not design space weaponry, and I do not know the actual capabilities of U.S. anti-satellite weaponry. I just know how to break things in a practical and sometimes dramatic manner.
Well then, they don't teach chain saw safety, or drill safety, in schools. They did at my high school. They also taught arc welder safety, belt sander safety, and acetylene torch safety. Have schools changed that much in the last 25 years?
Bullets, bombs, missiles, grenades, lasers, modern cannons, etc.: You will be dead before you know what's coming. Actually, the bullets from small arms are designed to wound a large fraction of those they hit rather than kill them. That's one reason military rounds are typically full metal jacket rather than soft point. Soft point bullets expand or fragment upon impact and deposit more of their energy in the body. Military rounds are often designed to pass through the body with little expansion.
There is a logical reason for this. If you instantly kill an enemy soldier, you've removed one soldier from the battlefield. If you wound an enemy soldier, you've removed the wounded soldier and the two who are carrying him to safety from the battlefield and also terrified anyone within earshot. You've also increased the number of vehicles needed to carry the wounded, the number of hospitals, doctors and nurses required, and the overall cost of the battle. It's cold, heartless logic, but logic none the less.
U.S. Constitution, Article III: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
I think it quite likely he would be acquitted if such charges were brought.
Out of interest, where do you think they get the images? If they are viewing an image of a abuse - that's a real life child being molested. Not necessarily. The current child pornography (18 U.S.C. 2256) definition includes "visual depiction that appears to be of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct" or "visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct" or "such visual depiction is advertised, promoted, presented, described, or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression that the material is or contains a visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct."
So under current law, if I were to create a link on my web site that said "click here for child pornography" that linked to a picture of the George W. Bush, I could be found guilty of distributing child pornography. If you were to click that link, you could be found guilty of receiving child pornography.
In a similar manner, any illustrated, animated, or otherwise simulated depictions of children involved in sexual activity is likely to be illegal under current law. No real children are required to be harmed in its production. It is not even required to contain images of people, real or simulated, if it is "advertised" as containing images of children involved in sexual activity.
This can be explained using this handy formula: link I'm not sure that I'd mod that as funny. More like informative or insightful. The "half your age plus seven" rule predates xkcd by many decades at least. I learned it at a fairly young age, and it is a good working approximation for what post-WWII America considers to be appropriate behavior. (i.e. no sexual activity before age 14 at the earliest, high school seniors should not date high school freshmen, college seniors can date college freshmen, etc) It's certainly more widely applicable than the "10 to 15 will get you 20" rule.
Even more than that, I would suggest "half your age plus 7, truncated at the decimal point" be considered as a replacement for current statutory rape laws when one or both parties is under age 18. It would be helpful in cases where overzealous prosecutors decide to throw the book at a 16 year old that has a 15 year old girlfriend.
How sure are you that Stalin was an atheist? In the "Religious Beliefs" section, the article you point to says "Stalin's beliefs are complicated and sometimes contradictory" and goes on to speculate that Stalin may have remained a theist even while he was espousing atheism.
Can someone do the math? 30% chance it's accidental
7% chance Iran did it
34.02% chance Israel did it with U.S assistance
3.78% chance Israel did it without U.S. assistance
25.2% chance someone else did it, which includes the possibility the U.S. did it with or without Israel's assistance
I think you miss the point. There is no sale here, no service, no transfer of wealth, as part owner, it's already my money, but I pay the income tax twice on it. No you don't. Before the dividend is granted that money belongs to the corporation, not the shareholders. Even though you are a shareholder, those assets belong to the corporation as an entity (a legal person) and you have no legal claim to it. The corporation pays the tax on it. Regardless of whether you are an owner, when the corporation gives you money in the form of a dividend wealth has been transfered from the corporation to you.
But for that last name he'd be the manager of the Radio Shack in Midland Texas. I think a towel boy at the Cliff House Spa in Kennebunkport is more likely. You may be forgetting where he's really from.
MS is fulfilling their duty to their shareholders. A corporation's duties do not end with its shareholders any more than the duties of a citizen end with their family.
A corporation isn't a person. A corporation is legally considered a person. From Wikipedia:
The existence of a corporation requires a special legal framework and body of law that specifically grants the corporation legal personality, and typically views a corporation as a fictional person, a legal person, or a moral person (as opposed to a natural person). As such, corporate statutes typically give corporations the ability to own property, sign binding contracts, pay taxes in a capacity that is separate from that of its shareholders (who are sometimes referred to as "members".) In the U.S. such "legal persons" are given many of the same rights as natural persons, such as many of those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. I personally think this is a perversion of the Constitution that should be remedied, but most corporations and the legislators they own feel otherwise.
Corporate taxation is merely a form of double taxation, which is counter-productive to the state anyway. You've been taken in by right wing propaganda. Republicans trot out the "double taxation" argument any time they see a tax that might make rich people slightly less rich. They do it for the estate tax and corporate income tax. There is no dividing line where flow of income starts and ends. All income taxes, capital gains taxes, sales taxes, gift taxes, and estate taxes are taxes on transfers of wealth.
I earn a salary and pay income taxes. I then use my income to buy a toaster and pay sales taxes. Double taxation! Then the store pays taxes on its income. Triple taxation! Then the store employees pay income taxes. Quadruple taxation! And then the store employees pay sales taxes on their purchases. Quintuple taxation! And so on. It's a totally meaningless argument.
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Isotropic leakage signals are too faint to detect. The garbage people will tell you about aliens watching "I Love Lucy" is just that, garbage. TV signals have degraded into unintelligible nonsense before the even get to the first star.
That said, I don't think that assholes should be held responsible for the mental health of children they encounter.
One question I have about this case is how long the girl's parents missed or ignored the symptoms of severe depression in their child. Healthy kids don't kill themselves because someone teases them online. Severe depression doesn't happen overnight. Like kids that shoot up their schools, kids that kill themselves have symptoms that can be observed, even by clueless parents.
Then there is the question of how you define the extent. The Galaxy doesn't have a sharp boundary. Do you measure to the place where the relative density has fallen to exp(-1)? Do you measure to the place where 50% of the mass in interior? Do you measure to where the relative surface brightness has fallen to exp(-1)?
True, but surely Mozilla has a moral obligation to ensure that other browsers (and ultimately, users) have as much time as possible to prepare for when the exploit becomes public domain? That obligation is trumped by Mozilla's moral obligation to make sure that people who use Mozilla are not vulnerable to an exploit.
Are you really sure about the document's scope?
So you would be OK with the CIA assassinating you if you just happened to be on a trip to Mexico?I suppose if you mean the physical territory of these United States, then anyone standing within the borders could be seen as "People of the United States".
Too, WRT Guantanamo Bay, the fact that the detainees are not in CONUS may be seen as keeping them out of legal theory range.
But that's beside the point. The Constitution enumerates the limited powers of the government of the United States. Where it makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens, it makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Also where it makes no distinction between U.S. territory and non-U.S. territory, it makes no distinction between U.S. territory and non-U.S. territory. They are both truisms.
The 4th amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It does not mention dressing up as a clown. That doesn't mean it's legal to conduct warrantless searches while dressed as a clown. No reasonable person could argue that the 4th amendment doesn't apply if the people conducting the searches are dressed as clowns. No reasonable person would state that it's "a debate that reasonable people can chew on for a while."
Not here to shill for anybody: it's a debate that reasonable people can chew on for a while. No, it's a debate that unreasonable people can and will use to convince easily frightened and uneducated people that it is necessary to give up some of their rights.Even though I wouldn't have said it, it's an appropriate sentiment. Fossett was a rich guy who got his kicks doing potentially dangerous stunts with little or no practical value. He died doing the setup work for his next stunt. C'est la vie.
His effect on my life was somewhere between "nothing at all" and "Steve who?" The same day he went missing, about 100 people in the U.S. died in car accidents. About the same number died of complications due to influenza. Do all of them deserve a slashdot story? Do you want to take the trouble to know their names? No. Because you are thinking "who gives a fuck." Well, those deaths are more regrettable because a large fraction of them probably could have been prevented. Personally, I think we should be doing more to prevent deaths from auto accidents and influenza. On the other hand, I don't think we should be wasting a dime trying to prevent rich people from doing stupid things.
The other person that gets mentioned in this context is Jim Gray. I do feel a loss there, both because Jim was an acquaintance who I last saw a week before his disappearance, and because Jim had an effect on how I do my work. He had an effect on how a lot of people do their work. Most people he affected don't know his name. He didn't shout it from mountain tops or advertise it with pointless stunts. But if you didn't know Jim, I don't expect you to feel a loss or care more than you would care for any of the thousands of people that died that day.
Since you've got 8 km/s of orbital velocity and probably around 3 km/s on the interceptor, you're probably talking about 10 km/s at the intercept. The heat of vaporization of iron is 250 kJ/kg and this thing has a mass of 11 tons, so we can assume 2.7 GJ will do quite a number on this satellite. Sure, it's not made of iron, but you don't really need to liquify it to destroy it. Satellites are usually only built to survive launch stresses, not impacts.
Anyhow at an impact velocity of 10 km/s 2.7 GJ would require a impactors with a total mass of 50 kg, probably in the form of lead or depleted uranium for compactness. To be thorough in your destruction, you probably want multiple small impactors, say 500 of them at 100 grams each. The total mass of the warhead depends upon how close you can get to the target. If you could be ensured a direct hit, 50kg would suffice. But it's likely that this won't be a direct hit, so you'll need to cover a larger area than the satellite itself.
We'll assume the satellite projects an aspect of 600 square meters (say about 60 meters by 10 meters) and that our shot cloud covers a circular area. Once your impact parameter exceeds 14 meters your warhead size goes up as the square of the distance. At 25 meters, you need 160 kg. At 50 meters you need 650 kg. At 100 meters you need 2.6 tons. At a kilometer you need 260 tons.
The only thing determined by the yield of the charge that scatters these impactors is the timing. How long before impact do you need to set it off and how accurate does your timing need to be? These are left as an exercise for the reader. If I were designing the thing I'd keep the scattering charge as small as possible. The bulk of the constraints are set by the trajectory. In a head on trajectory, there is nothing wrong with scattering the impactors 5 seconds or more before impact. For an interceptor that travels vertically, the maximum timing probably depends upon atmospheric properties.
Given the geometry of the likely impacts, it is unlikely there would be significant amounts of ejecta inserted into long lasting orbits. The worst cases would be insertions into elliptical orbits, but they would circularize quickly at low altitude due to the low perigee. It should be possible to choose in impact point that will minimize risk to other vehicles.
FWIW, I do not design space weaponry, and I do not know the actual capabilities of U.S. anti-satellite weaponry. I just know how to break things in a practical and sometimes dramatic manner.
Well then, they don't teach chain saw safety, or drill safety, in schools.
They did at my high school. They also taught arc welder safety, belt sander safety, and acetylene torch safety. Have schools changed that much in the last 25 years?
There is a logical reason for this. If you instantly kill an enemy soldier, you've removed one soldier from the battlefield. If you wound an enemy soldier, you've removed the wounded soldier and the two who are carrying him to safety from the battlefield and also terrified anyone within earshot. You've also increased the number of vehicles needed to carry the wounded, the number of hospitals, doctors and nurses required, and the overall cost of the battle. It's cold, heartless logic, but logic none the less.
Espionage charges are much easier to bring and to prove than treason charges, and the punishments are usually sufficient.
U.S. Constitution, Article III: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
I think it quite likely he would be acquitted if such charges were brought.
So under current law, if I were to create a link on my web site that said "click here for child pornography" that linked to a picture of the George W. Bush, I could be found guilty of distributing child pornography. If you were to click that link, you could be found guilty of receiving child pornography.
In a similar manner, any illustrated, animated, or otherwise simulated depictions of children involved in sexual activity is likely to be illegal under current law. No real children are required to be harmed in its production. It is not even required to contain images of people, real or simulated, if it is "advertised" as containing images of children involved in sexual activity.
Even more than that, I would suggest "half your age plus 7, truncated at the decimal point" be considered as a replacement for current statutory rape laws when one or both parties is under age 18. It would be helpful in cases where overzealous prosecutors decide to throw the book at a 16 year old that has a 15 year old girlfriend.
Believe it.
How sure are you that Stalin was an atheist? In the "Religious Beliefs" section, the article you point to says "Stalin's beliefs are complicated and sometimes contradictory" and goes on to speculate that Stalin may have remained a theist even while he was espousing atheism.7% chance Iran did it
34.02% chance Israel did it with U.S assistance
3.78% chance Israel did it without U.S. assistance
25.2% chance someone else did it, which includes the possibility the U.S. did it with or without Israel's assistance
Or were you being facetious?
I earn a salary and pay income taxes. I then use my income to buy a toaster and pay sales taxes. Double taxation! Then the store pays taxes on its income. Triple taxation! Then the store employees pay income taxes. Quadruple taxation! And then the store employees pay sales taxes on their purchases. Quintuple taxation! And so on. It's a totally meaningless argument.