"Here, little Billy, take this metal screwdriver and see if there's still a charge in this capacitor."
Seriously, either you were "fixing" the TVs in some way that doesn't involve opening the case, you came from an obnoxiously rich household and none of your televisions involved cathode ray tubes and the associated components, or you had some extremely irresponsible parents.
"A 9.0 earthquake would release the equivalent of 1,800 Megatons,"
IIRC, that's a measure of the total energy released for the entire duration of the quake, which can be anywhere between seconds and minutes. A meteorite, though, would release all that energy more or less instantaneously.
"For those it did occur to, there's the question "What do you do?""
As with earthquakes and tornadoes, you plan ahead when you build things (by doing things like raising buildings and presenting as few broad surfaces to the sea as possible). Things like this have been added to the building codes in Hawaii after tsunamis hit Hilo several times in the Twentieth Century.
IIRC, with Hawaii's advantage of being fairly distant from major fault lines, they also have a fairly decent early warning system with sirens and such placed here and there, much like you see in the plains states WRT tornadoes. The only real problems there are the "false positives," since they currently have little idea how big (i. e. small) an incoming tsunami may be.
Of course, being in a "First World" country helps...
"Anyone who prefers playing games all the damn time to actually spending time with a loving woman"
Except that finding a good game is far easier than trying to figure out the whole relationship thing, and I never have to worry about hurting a game's feelings.
"that since a vacuum transfers heat rather poorly compared to rock,"
The key word is "transfer." You're talking about heat leaving one body and going into a second through some means. Here, there's only one body, the asteroid; when The Bomb goes off, it isn't a body of mass trying to radiate heat so much as it is the heat itself (infrafred photons, et al). It's not trying to radiate, it is radiation.
"All "freedoms" include responsibility for associated consequences."
Hence civil lawsuits and slander/libel laws on the books. Note that, while you are held responsible for what you say, you are not actually prevented from saying it.
"("I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it.")"
The Supreme Court only says things like that because it has ruled that pornography isn't speech, whcih is why those "decency" laws you mention are allowed to stand. Something nobody talks much about is that what the Court is also saying is "I can't define speech but I know it when I see it."
"They screaming the words "anthrax" in an American airport as loudly as you can, repeatedly and see how long your "freedom of speech" lasts."
You will be charged for the effects of the action (inciting a riot, etc.) but not for the action itself (saying the word "anthrax.")
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction applies not just to basic physics experiments but also to everything else in life."
If it was always equal and opposite, there'd be no need for the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
"Sometimes that is immediate, sometimes it has less visible repurcussions"
There is no "more visible/less visible," there is only "can/cannot be proven in court." If the supposedly harmful effects of an action cannot be demonstrated, then what is the justification of ignoring the whole "shall make no law" bit?
"Explain how your selected excerpt from the Bill of Rights could possibly have included a definition of speech which meant anything other than sound made from human lips absent of any recording of transmission technologies as none existed in the 1770s."
It doesn't matter
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Rights in the United States are, by default, retained by the people. The Ninth Amendment tells us that simply because electromagnetic broadcasts are not specifically mentioned in the First Amendment does not mean that Congress automatically has the power to regulate them as it sees fit. The Tenth Amendment tells us that Congress can only do what it is explicitly allowed to do by the Constitution. Personal rights are implicit and it's the government's rights that need to be explicit.
"using community-owned resources."
Explain how exactly the electromagnetic spectrum is a "community-owned resource," especially when you need private property (namely, a receiver) to access it.
"in late 1770s America"
Doesn't matter. The United States Constitution is a living document and as such both its content and its application changes with time. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion, since, as Thomas Jefferson himself pointed out as he tried to silence Federalist detractors, the First Amendment by itself does not prevent state governments from "abridging the freedom of speech."
"However, the physical energy released by the bomb must go somewhere."
Depends on how you want to define "physical." Most of the shockwave we come to associate with nuclear detonations here on Earth is the result of the great deal of thermal energy put out by the bomb. The air gets real hot real fast and wants to expand (immediately).
There is an explosive blast involved (which is what would push an Orion ship), but it's not nearly as much as the shockwave.
"Would it not be *more* focused on the asteroid,"
How would it "know" to put more energy in one direction and not in another?
"since it is the most available medium?"
Most of the energy put out by The Bomb is electromagnetic (heat, light, gamma rays), which doesn't really need a medium. The damage done by The Bomb comes when something tries to get in the way of that electromagnetic radiation and ends up absorbing it, the something's atoms getting smacked around by high-energy photons.
"ADSL as it is known it France, where it was invented"
Yeah, that explains the English acronym. Lord knows you French love English over there, almost as much as Quebec does.
Seriously, with the French panache for bass-ackwards acronyms (as far as their English translations are concerned), we'd probably all be talking about LSD.
"Seriously, put it in your will if it's important enough."
Yes, but you actually have to have a will before you can put anything in it, which is a minority of the people out there. Do you have any idea how many people die intestate? I used to type real estate abstracts for a livind and it wasn't all that uncommon for me to see property ownership split evenly 20+ different ways because neither their parents nor their grandparents made wills.
"Gamers want online gameplay. Nintendo says "we are sure that gamers aren't ready for this yet""
No, Nintendo says "Here's the broadband adapter and here's the modem. If you want anything else, go bug the game companies." The reason we're not seeing as much online games on the GCN as we have on the PS2 and Xbox is that Nintendo isn't bending over backwards to run everything but the servers (or even the servers as well), instead expecting game companies to take a PC-esque "Do it yourself" approach.
And in many ways this is the same tactic they're taking with the DS: wireless capabilities are provided, but they expect the software companies to be the ones to do something with it.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
Slashdot Mirror
"i wasn't stupid when i was 11, i was fixing TVs"
"Here, little Billy, take this metal screwdriver and see if there's still a charge in this capacitor."
Seriously, either you were "fixing" the TVs in some way that doesn't involve opening the case, you came from an obnoxiously rich household and none of your televisions involved cathode ray tubes and the associated components, or you had some extremely irresponsible parents.
"A 9.0 earthquake would release the equivalent of 1,800 Megatons,"
IIRC, that's a measure of the total energy released for the entire duration of the quake, which can be anywhere between seconds and minutes. A meteorite, though, would release all that energy more or less instantaneously.
"For those it did occur to, there's the question "What do you do?""
As with earthquakes and tornadoes, you plan ahead when you build things (by doing things like raising buildings and presenting as few broad surfaces to the sea as possible). Things like this have been added to the building codes in Hawaii after tsunamis hit Hilo several times in the Twentieth Century.
IIRC, with Hawaii's advantage of being fairly distant from major fault lines, they also have a fairly decent early warning system with sirens and such placed here and there, much like you see in the plains states WRT tornadoes. The only real problems there are the "false positives," since they currently have little idea how big (i. e. small) an incoming tsunami may be.
Of course, being in a "First World" country helps...
... an update to SNES-Station. Lord knows I can't get the current version to even boot at this point...
A PS2 port of It Might Be NES, one that would let me run it off the hard drive, would also be nice.
"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
"Anyone who prefers playing games all the damn time to actually spending time with a loving woman"
Except that finding a good game is far easier than trying to figure out the whole relationship thing, and I never have to worry about hurting a game's feelings.
"that since a vacuum transfers heat rather poorly compared to rock,"
The key word is "transfer." You're talking about heat leaving one body and going into a second through some means. Here, there's only one body, the asteroid; when The Bomb goes off, it isn't a body of mass trying to radiate heat so much as it is the heat itself (infrafred photons, et al). It's not trying to radiate, it is radiation.
Hence civil lawsuits and slander/libel laws on the books. Note that, while you are held responsible for what you say, you are not actually prevented from saying it.
"("I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it.")"
The Supreme Court only says things like that because it has ruled that pornography isn't speech, whcih is why those "decency" laws you mention are allowed to stand. Something nobody talks much about is that what the Court is also saying is "I can't define speech but I know it when I see it."
"They screaming the words "anthrax" in an American airport as loudly as you can, repeatedly and see how long your "freedom of speech" lasts."
You will be charged for the effects of the action (inciting a riot, etc.) but not for the action itself (saying the word "anthrax.")
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction applies not just to basic physics experiments but also to everything else in life."
If it was always equal and opposite, there'd be no need for the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
"Sometimes that is immediate, sometimes it has less visible repurcussions"
There is no "more visible/less visible," there is only "can/cannot be proven in court." If the supposedly harmful effects of an action cannot be demonstrated, then what is the justification of ignoring the whole "shall make no law" bit?
"Explain how your selected excerpt from the Bill of Rights could possibly have included a definition of speech which meant anything other than sound made from human lips absent of any recording of transmission technologies as none existed in the 1770s."
It doesn't matterRights in the United States are, by default, retained by the people. The Ninth Amendment tells us that simply because electromagnetic broadcasts are not specifically mentioned in the First Amendment does not mean that Congress automatically has the power to regulate them as it sees fit. The Tenth Amendment tells us that Congress can only do what it is explicitly allowed to do by the Constitution. Personal rights are implicit and it's the government's rights that need to be explicit.
"using community-owned resources."
Explain how exactly the electromagnetic spectrum is a "community-owned resource," especially when you need private property (namely, a receiver) to access it.
"in late 1770s America"
Doesn't matter. The United States Constitution is a living document and as such both its content and its application changes with time. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion, since, as Thomas Jefferson himself pointed out as he tried to silence Federalist detractors, the First Amendment by itself does not prevent state governments from "abridging the freedom of speech."
"However, the physical energy released by the bomb must go somewhere."
Depends on how you want to define "physical." Most of the shockwave we come to associate with nuclear detonations here on Earth is the result of the great deal of thermal energy put out by the bomb. The air gets real hot real fast and wants to expand (immediately).
There is an explosive blast involved (which is what would push an Orion ship), but it's not nearly as much as the shockwave.
"Would it not be *more* focused on the asteroid,"
How would it "know" to put more energy in one direction and not in another?
"since it is the most available medium?"
Most of the energy put out by The Bomb is electromagnetic (heat, light, gamma rays), which doesn't really need a medium. The damage done by The Bomb comes when something tries to get in the way of that electromagnetic radiation and ends up absorbing it, the something's atoms getting smacked around by high-energy photons.
"So that dumb youthful indiscretions do not tarnish one's life for ever?"
So should you have to send high school records to colleges you apply to?
The concept of legal minority is more an exception than a rule. Children are expected to be model citizens at younger and younger ages.
"Its unlikely that Poland would have done this as a pure solo effort, for fear of a backlash"
Why not? What's the worst that could have happened, being told they missed an opportunity to shut up again?
"ADSL as it is known it France, where it was invented"
Yeah, that explains the English acronym. Lord knows you French love English over there, almost as much as Quebec does.
Seriously, with the French panache for bass-ackwards acronyms (as far as their English translations are concerned), we'd probably all be talking about LSD.
"anymore than Pathfinder meant that Time-Warner got it."
What does Time-Warner have to do with Martian rovers?
"Seriously, put it in your will if it's important enough."
Yes, but you actually have to have a will before you can put anything in it, which is a minority of the people out there. Do you have any idea how many people die intestate? I used to type real estate abstracts for a livind and it wasn't all that uncommon for me to see property ownership split evenly 20+ different ways because neither their parents nor their grandparents made wills.
You've got flipped off!
Or:
It looks like you're trying to insult the driver in front of you. Would you like to:
Honk horn
Flash headlights
Send goatse to other driver's HUD
"DVD sales and rentals for 2003 topped $16B."
I call "bullshit" on this one. Everybody knows that P2P has killed off the DVD industry!
We're talking about the same MPAA whose members can't keep track of their own employees uploading copies of movies before the release date, right?
"Gamers want online gameplay. Nintendo says "we are sure that gamers aren't ready for this yet""
No, Nintendo says "Here's the broadband adapter and here's the modem. If you want anything else, go bug the game companies." The reason we're not seeing as much online games on the GCN as we have on the PS2 and Xbox is that Nintendo isn't bending over backwards to run everything but the servers (or even the servers as well), instead expecting game companies to take a PC-esque "Do it yourself" approach.
And in many ways this is the same tactic they're taking with the DS: wireless capabilities are provided, but they expect the software companies to be the ones to do something with it.
Actually, Totally Spies isn't that bad of a show...
:)
Where's that "post anonymously" checkbox...
"You'd think a security company"
You misspelled "protection racket."
"Sure, it is not from Microsoft's preferred partner, Verisign,"
It's not like anybody's ever gotten a certificate from Verisign that says "Microsoft" by using false credentials or anything...
He wants to know how he can trust Firefox? Well, we all know exactly how much we can trust IE: as much as we trust VeriSign.
Are we talking about venting off heat from the boxen or the interesting aromas from the users?
What games could you play at a LAN party that nobody in the local PTA wouldn't be up in arms about?
"To read their news for free just for filling in some info seems like a generous trade."
So they turn off the ads after you register?