"Why do you have to be registered to drive a car?"
You don't. You only need a license to drive on roads owned and operated by the state. If you don't intend to go off your own private property, you don't need a license.
" any of which can go 10,000 - 30,000 rounds without a jam or misfire..."
That's awfully high odds of a misfire for the "last possible moment" you describe. If you were as concerned about reliability as you say you are, you should be using either a revolver or a muzzle loader.
What would a video record of the shooting tell you that current ballistics evidence couldn't? We can already tell what gun said slug came from, and we can usually tell what position the victim was in when shot, and from what direction. The only thing mandatory guncams seem to do is to make it easier to circumvent the Fourth Amendment in the name of preserving the Second.
You assume the techie wasn't in the US. I worked for a third party that did Dell tech support based in Florida, and I can assure you that any number of Americans would treat you the same way. The problem isn't location or education, it's the corporate policy of "Get the customer off the fucking phone!" It's a policy that stresses the fast answer over the right answer, and it's also related to the policy "Why hire more/better people when we can force idiots to work overtime for less?"
The flip side is "Why would anybody start a corporation (or any kind of business) when the government seeks to put so many burdens on operating a business?"
Re:The US has ALWAYS been third world
on
U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery."
Um... what? Says who? Sources? Links to related journals? Those numbers you conveniently don't provide?
"I won't provide statistics, but check out (a) Literacy rates (b) Infant mortality (c) Homicide rates (d) % of population below the poverty line, and (e) the gap between the rich and poor."
And I suppose this has absolutely nothing to do with the way we accept more immigrants than any other country in the world hands down? I don't know about you, but I would tend to expect a few Third World tendancies when we're busily accepting people from said Third World.
Of course, I'm sure our numbers would be "better" if we simply took a "Not just no but Hell No!" approach to immigration, much like they seem to do in the EU. I suppose Third World problems are best dealt with at arm's length. Where's Joerg Haider when you need him?
Those "literacy rates..." Are they a count of literacy in general or just literacy in English?
"A large middle class running in hamster wheels does not a First World country make."
How about an economic environment that fosters self-entrepenuership, allowing just about anybody to hang their own shingle? How about a political environment that has virtually no distinctions between "citizenship by choice" and "citizenship by blood?" How about a social environment that prizes hard work and self determination above all else?
"And in pure opinion, I believe it has less to do with Democratic myopism and more to do with some extremely rich people pulling the ladder up after themselves."
You mean like "limiting the numbers and sources of immigrants that can come into the US?" You mean like "unions that both require membership to work and deny membership to non-citizens?"
If sealing our borders from cheap labor and hiking tariffs on everything were the best answer, Herbert Hoover would have prevented the Great Depression. History shows that such policies actually worsened the problem.
"But as hard as i try to imagine something without end"
A circle is infinite from a one-dimensional point of view. A sphere is infinite from a two-dimentional point of view. A hypersphere is infinite from a three-dimensional point of view. "Infinite" means different things to different people.
"However, what can contain something infinite? The answer to that is NOTHING. "
Your average second semester calculus student knows about a mathematical function called "Gabriel's Horn," which produces a solid that has a finite volume but an infinite surface area.
"The answer to that is NOTHING. So, if we cannot imagine a cosmos that is finite then we must exist in nothing..."
The universe is far from limited by human imagination. Just look at quantum mechanics.
You're thinking classically. The Big Bang didn't just create all the matter and energy that fills up space-time, it created space-time itself. There is no "moving beyond the edge of the universe" (at least not in four dimensions). And space-time is defined by a lot more than just "the distance between two points." It's closer to "the ability to have distance between two points."
Go see if you can dig up a copy of Sphereland, it's a very good allegory
"Just because they are free of crime, war and violence doesn't mean that those buggers won't spell trouble!"
Just because they are free of crime and war amongst true believers doesn't mean they're really free of them. Think of all the weapons the Pope banned for use against fellow Christians (like crossbows), but were still fair game on heathens in the Middle East and South America.
"Yes, actually doing illegal things allows you to avoid laws."
All I'm doing is pointing out the justification that will be used to require this little tax to be enforced by electronic snooping methods, must like the British do with televisions.
"The great thing about Europe though is the concept of open borders,"
Yeah! Somebody from the UK can just go across the channel, buy a television and... Oh, wait, that's right, the UK won't let you use a television without paying that particular tax, and they have electronic snooping methods to make sure you don't cheat. So much for free and open Europe!
Could be worse, though. The EU could be trying to force international merchants to collect VAT from EU customers. Oh, wait...
"Think of it this way: if the emulation is good enough so that no observer can distinguish between the original and the emulation, then that person has been transferred."
Except there would be differences between the two starting the instant the copy comes online. Each of them will have mutually exclusive experiences. While they'd be just about invisible at first, as the two live out their lives the differences will be come obvious.
"The difference is you just "charge" them up with hydrogen, which is a convenient energy storage medium."
A superfluid is not a convenient storage medium!
Let's pretend for a moment we had a room that was cold enough to keep hydrogen liquified. We then fill a glass of hydrogen and place it on the table. What happens? Surface tension would cause the hydrogen to climb up the walls fo the glass, over the edge, onto the table, and ultimately onto the floor, spreading itself out until the entire floor is covered with an even layer of liquid hydrogen.
What if you put it in a sealed jar? Hydrogen molecules are extremely small and will work their way through the screw of the lid (if not between the glass molecules in the jar!)
You know that cap that is on the top of the shuttle's external tank, the one that gets removed shortly before launch? That's the fuel nozzle. They have to constantly fill and re-fill the shuttle's H2 tanks, because it seeps out of the tank. Always.
The same is true for when hydrogen is gaseous, to a greater degree. And I haven't even touched upon the problems of cryogenic fuel storage.
Lead acid is a far more convenient storage medium.
"I'm talking about multi-kilometre deep bores where you pump your own water down."
So, essentially an oil well. The kind nobody wants in the ANWR.
A kilometers-long shaft means the steam would condense again long before it reached the surface, especially since it has to come up the same hole liquid water is coming down (natural geothermal avoids that by feeding water in from the water table). And even if you could solve that problem, you can't use that steam directly, it'd be way too dirty. You'd have use a heat exchanger to use the steam to boil a cleaner water source (adding an inefficiency in the process), much like what is done in a nuclear plant.
It would make more sense to build OTEC plants. At least there you can get away with the use more efficient mediums like ammonia.
"(1) Solar takes up less place if you also factor in the amount of land wasted by open cut coal mines."
But don't forget you'll need to at least double the area needed so that it produces electricity to get you through both day and night. And you'll also need something to function as a big-ass capacitor or battery to store the "surplus" electricity made during the day.
"(2) You don't need to clear-cut land. You can use house roofing (free space) or deserts (flat enough)."
Using houses means that each house has to be capable of generating twice as much energy as they need during the day (ie. each roof has to be capable of powering two houses during the day), and that still doesn't get around the energy storage problem (unless they fill the attic with lead acid batteries or something similar).
And deserts may be flat and clear, but you're still talking about putting square miles under shade that wouldn't be there otherwise. There will be an environmental impact.
Um... What are two elements we can get ungodly amounts of energy out of per unit mass and volume, in a process that doesn't dump tons of by-product into the atmosphere, Alex?
Nuclear power plants don't take up dozens of square miles like solar, wind and hydro. It doesn't put anything into the atmosphere except water vapor (or it can be cracked into H2 and O2 and bottled, in which case it doesn't put anything into the atmosphere). The only real by-product is both solid and concentrated (ie. easy to find and store). And it's only considered a "by-product" until we can think of better ways to separate out the radioisotopes from the spent fuel, in which case the by-product once again becomes a fuel. Fission is about as green as you're going to get.
Worried about radiation? Worry about all that C-14 fossil fuel plants are dumping into the atmosphere.
"Postscript: I use methanol, rather than ethanol because ethanol fuel cells are noticalby more difficult (== expensive), and producing methonal from biomass uses wood and other indigestable matter. Generating ethanol requires sugars, i.e. food."
That still doesn't give a reason why we should use hydrogen-based cars instead of, say, electric. You'd be going from coal-fired plant to electricity, instead of coal-fired plant to electricity to hydrogen to electricity.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why do you have to be registered to drive a car?"
You don't. You only need a license to drive on roads owned and operated by the state. If you don't intend to go off your own private property, you don't need a license.
"Same reason. (Think about it...)"
What, the state owns me?
" any of which can go 10,000 - 30,000 rounds without a jam or misfire..."
That's awfully high odds of a misfire for the "last possible moment" you describe. If you were as concerned about reliability as you say you are, you should be using either a revolver or a muzzle loader.
What would a video record of the shooting tell you that current ballistics evidence couldn't? We can already tell what gun said slug came from, and we can usually tell what position the victim was in when shot, and from what direction. The only thing mandatory guncams seem to do is to make it easier to circumvent the Fourth Amendment in the name of preserving the Second.
And strap a flamethrower onto the bottom for the alien queen, hm?
I'd rather have one of the motion-sensing automated chainguns.
You assume the techie wasn't in the US. I worked for a third party that did Dell tech support based in Florida, and I can assure you that any number of Americans would treat you the same way. The problem isn't location or education, it's the corporate policy of "Get the customer off the fucking phone!" It's a policy that stresses the fast answer over the right answer, and it's also related to the policy "Why hire more/better people when we can force idiots to work overtime for less?"
The flip side is "Why would anybody start a corporation (or any kind of business) when the government seeks to put so many burdens on operating a business?"
"In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery."
Um... what? Says who? Sources? Links to related journals? Those numbers you conveniently don't provide?
"I won't provide statistics, but check out (a) Literacy rates (b) Infant mortality (c) Homicide rates (d) % of population below the poverty line, and (e) the gap between the rich and poor."
And I suppose this has absolutely nothing to do with the way we accept more immigrants than any other country in the world hands down? I don't know about you, but I would tend to expect a few Third World tendancies when we're busily accepting people from said Third World.
Of course, I'm sure our numbers would be "better" if we simply took a "Not just no but Hell No!" approach to immigration, much like they seem to do in the EU. I suppose Third World problems are best dealt with at arm's length. Where's Joerg Haider when you need him?
Those "literacy rates..." Are they a count of literacy in general or just literacy in English?
"A large middle class running in hamster wheels does not a First World country make."
How about an economic environment that fosters self-entrepenuership, allowing just about anybody to hang their own shingle? How about a political environment that has virtually no distinctions between "citizenship by choice" and "citizenship by blood?" How about a social environment that prizes hard work and self determination above all else?
"And in pure opinion, I believe it has less to do with Democratic myopism and more to do with some extremely rich people pulling the ladder up after themselves."
You mean like "limiting the numbers and sources of immigrants that can come into the US?" You mean like "unions that both require membership to work and deny membership to non-citizens?"
If sealing our borders from cheap labor and hiking tariffs on everything were the best answer, Herbert Hoover would have prevented the Great Depression. History shows that such policies actually worsened the problem.
Think about all the use a polygamist would have for a penis enlarger, though!
But what if we built them out of Twinkies thirty-five feet long and weighed approximately 600 pounds?
Foreign nationals continue to really jump ship in the US hoping to get a US job.
"But as hard as i try to imagine something without end"
A circle is infinite from a one-dimensional point of view. A sphere is infinite from a two-dimentional point of view. A hypersphere is infinite from a three-dimensional point of view. "Infinite" means different things to different people.
"However, what can contain something infinite? The answer to that is NOTHING. "
Your average second semester calculus student knows about a mathematical function called "Gabriel's Horn," which produces a solid that has a finite volume but an infinite surface area.
"The answer to that is NOTHING. So, if we cannot imagine a cosmos that is finite then we must exist in nothing..."
The universe is far from limited by human imagination. Just look at quantum mechanics.
You're thinking classically. The Big Bang didn't just create all the matter and energy that fills up space-time, it created space-time itself. There is no "moving beyond the edge of the universe" (at least not in four dimensions). And space-time is defined by a lot more than just "the distance between two points." It's closer to "the ability to have distance between two points."
Go see if you can dig up a copy of Sphereland, it's a very good allegory
"Just because they are free of crime, war and violence doesn't mean that those buggers won't spell trouble!"
Just because they are free of crime and war amongst true believers doesn't mean they're really free of them. Think of all the weapons the Pope banned for use against fellow Christians (like crossbows), but were still fair game on heathens in the Middle East and South America.
Was it found dead next to Stephen King?
"Yes, actually doing illegal things allows you to avoid laws."
All I'm doing is pointing out the justification that will be used to require this little tax to be enforced by electronic snooping methods, must like the British do with televisions.
"The great thing about Europe though is the concept of open borders,"
Yeah! Somebody from the UK can just go across the channel, buy a television and... Oh, wait, that's right, the UK won't let you use a television without paying that particular tax, and they have electronic snooping methods to make sure you don't cheat. So much for free and open Europe!
Could be worse, though. The EU could be trying to force international merchants to collect VAT from EU customers. Oh, wait...
"Or only three days (
Actually, no. In 2001, the feds spent ~18% of their money on social programs, just as much as they did on defense.
On the other hand, the big "winner" by far was Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs with ~36%
"Thus, it's just added onto the price (like a sales tax) when you buy it."
Unless it was imported illegally. Such things happen.
"But just imagine a slashdot without duplicate stories."
My head hurts just thinking about the concept. Maybe I need a new hippocampus...
"Think of it this way: if the emulation is good enough so that no observer can distinguish between the original and the emulation, then that person has been transferred."
Except there would be differences between the two starting the instant the copy comes online. Each of them will have mutually exclusive experiences. While they'd be just about invisible at first, as the two live out their lives the differences will be come obvious.
"The difference is you just "charge" them up with hydrogen, which is a convenient energy storage medium."
A superfluid is not a convenient storage medium!
Let's pretend for a moment we had a room that was cold enough to keep hydrogen liquified. We then fill a glass of hydrogen and place it on the table. What happens? Surface tension would cause the hydrogen to climb up the walls fo the glass, over the edge, onto the table, and ultimately onto the floor, spreading itself out until the entire floor is covered with an even layer of liquid hydrogen.
What if you put it in a sealed jar? Hydrogen molecules are extremely small and will work their way through the screw of the lid (if not between the glass molecules in the jar!)
You know that cap that is on the top of the shuttle's external tank, the one that gets removed shortly before launch? That's the fuel nozzle. They have to constantly fill and re-fill the shuttle's H2 tanks, because it seeps out of the tank. Always.
The same is true for when hydrogen is gaseous, to a greater degree. And I haven't even touched upon the problems of cryogenic fuel storage.
Lead acid is a far more convenient storage medium.
"I'm talking about multi-kilometre deep bores where you pump your own water down."
So, essentially an oil well. The kind nobody wants in the ANWR.
A kilometers-long shaft means the steam would condense again long before it reached the surface, especially since it has to come up the same hole liquid water is coming down (natural geothermal avoids that by feeding water in from the water table). And even if you could solve that problem, you can't use that steam directly, it'd be way too dirty. You'd have use a heat exchanger to use the steam to boil a cleaner water source (adding an inefficiency in the process), much like what is done in a nuclear plant.
It would make more sense to build OTEC plants. At least there you can get away with the use more efficient mediums like ammonia.
"(1) Solar takes up less place if you also factor in the amount of land wasted by open cut coal mines."
But don't forget you'll need to at least double the area needed so that it produces electricity to get you through both day and night. And you'll also need something to function as a big-ass capacitor or battery to store the "surplus" electricity made during the day.
"(2) You don't need to clear-cut land. You can use house roofing (free space) or deserts (flat enough)."
Using houses means that each house has to be capable of generating twice as much energy as they need during the day (ie. each roof has to be capable of powering two houses during the day), and that still doesn't get around the energy storage problem (unless they fill the attic with lead acid batteries or something similar).
And deserts may be flat and clear, but you're still talking about putting square miles under shade that wouldn't be there otherwise. There will be an environmental impact.
"Uranium and plutonium!"
Um... What are two elements we can get ungodly amounts of energy out of per unit mass and volume, in a process that doesn't dump tons of by-product into the atmosphere, Alex?
Nuclear power plants don't take up dozens of square miles like solar, wind and hydro. It doesn't put anything into the atmosphere except water vapor (or it can be cracked into H2 and O2 and bottled, in which case it doesn't put anything into the atmosphere). The only real by-product is both solid and concentrated (ie. easy to find and store). And it's only considered a "by-product" until we can think of better ways to separate out the radioisotopes from the spent fuel, in which case the by-product once again becomes a fuel. Fission is about as green as you're going to get.
Worried about radiation? Worry about all that C-14 fossil fuel plants are dumping into the atmosphere.
"Postscript: I use methanol, rather than ethanol because ethanol fuel cells are noticalby more difficult (== expensive), and producing methonal from biomass uses wood and other indigestable matter. Generating ethanol requires sugars, i.e. food."
That still doesn't give a reason why we should use hydrogen-based cars instead of, say, electric. You'd be going from coal-fired plant to electricity, instead of coal-fired plant to electricity to hydrogen to electricity.