Hmmm, that's interesting. I hadn't seen anything about it before, but I found several references for more information. Thanks, now I have some reading for today.:)
You don't have to be a pilot to observe it. I've seen some very nice examples of contrails, while riding in commercial aircraft. I like to sit behind the wing, so I can observe what the pilot is doing. It's not like I can do anything about it, but at least it's better than sitting back completely oblivious to what's happening. A few drinks later, it doesn't really matter though, I'll take a nice nap until I hear the landing gear go down.:)
Well, the bad things would be something like if a Cessna tried to take off immediately behind a heavy jet, the Cessna may find himself tumbling down the runway in most ungraceful ways. It's not limited to small vs big aircraft though. A heavy aircraft following another can have unintended (and nasty) results.
Come on, those guys are entertaining.:) I love the pictures where they show intersecting lines and say that the planes have been flying patterns to drop evil chemicals on the population. Well, the evil chemicals are present, but that's the aircraft's exhaust.
And for those who don't know, the "grids" are usually created by flights departing in two different directions. They get a pretty regular grid pattern because at busy airports, flights leave at a fairly regular interval. If you read up on how aircraft work, you'll see that the FAA requires a period between large aircraft due to the disturbed air. Failing to do so, the disturbed air would likely do "bad things" (i.e., unintended intersection of the flight path and the ground, in most ungraceful ways).
Err, I mean every aircraft is fitted with mind altering drugs that is distributed over the city, so some secret government agency can observe how the population reacts. Myself, it makes me laugh at conspiracy nuts who don't really know what they're talking about. I guess the mind control is working.:)
This isn't terribly surprising. Clouds are a delicate formation of moisture that hasn't collected into dense enough masses to fall. Aircraft disturb the air, blowing that moisture around. We've known about contrails for an awful long time. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find that particles in the exhaust give the moisture something to cling to (i.e., cloud seeding).
Oh, if you knew my life experiences. I could write a whole series of rather sorted books, that could be made into movies that the MPAA would refuse to rate, and would even probably be too explicit for Skinemax. Real life friends who have known parts of my life story have suggested that I start writing the books.
I've been through a few jury selections. A long time ago, for a short while, I was trained in law enforcement. During jury selection, it ends up coming up. The question I'm usually asked after I say "yes" to the LEO question was "do you think you know the law better than anyone else because you were involved in law enforcement"? I always answer "no". Every time, the defense has decided against keeping me on the jury because I may be more aware of some of the laws, and I may pay more attention to relevant details. Unfortunately, I can't say that I've never been on a jury to make a decision.
It's unfortunate, I would like to be one who helped make sure the laws were enforced properly, protecting the innocent, and ensuring the guilty are convicted appropriately. That's why I got into law enforcement. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that it wasn't what the job was all about, so I didn't pursue it. Protecting people doesn't equal being an agent of the government to make more money for them (i.e., writing BS traffic tickets).
I've done IT work for over a decade. The truth is in the logs, and people rarely try to shoot at me.:)
On Problem 1, it still comes down to trust. I know I don't trust those who are doing it now, and most people don't. The more capable the people running an election are, the more capable they are of inducing fraud. I believe I mentioned it before, I could show a perfect system. The code could be open sourced, and anyone could review it. In reality, a few line change in the tabulation program could sway the outcome significantly. That's where you must trust those who are doing it. I suppose a 3rd party (or parties) audit of the actual elections system post-election would likely show the trust was worth granting. It's never a totally trustworthy solution though. Imagine this as a cron 5 minutes after the voting closed.
Now your dirty elections system looks clean, and all the evidence is gone. It wouldn't have to be this obvious.
A good cryptographic solution is obviously the best choice, so we agree there.
I'd assume the voter ID number would be their ID, but only in much as to say "this person has voted". There would need to be something to associate the votes. I know it's a common problem where the voter says "I want to change my vote, I made a mistake." A hash of their ID number and password (like the last 4 of their SSN) would keep it relatively secret, but it's still extractable, since someone has all the voter ID numbers.
Well, on point 3, I didn't expand on the idea much in the previous post.
I'd suggest it be an online based system. When voting, people take time out of their days, drive to the voting location, stand in line for an hour, then stand in their little booth and make decisions from memory. Most people don't memorize the entire ballot. Some of us go in with cheat sheets. A friend of mine made up our cheat sheets. We agree on most political things. I reviewed her cheat sheet, and adjusted it at home before we went out voting. If I remember correctly, there were only two items that I didn't agree with.
But on with the show. If every eligible voter could vote from anywhere within a defined voting period (24 hours a day, during the several day period), the voter turnout would increase from what it is currently to a very clear majority. Every voting precinct would simply need computers online, so people with no computer who are used to voting at their given precinct would still be able to. Some people would need assistance, which they could get there. Government incentives to allow voting from Internet cafe's or even businesses who wanted to assist would help. Anyone could vote from their local McDonalds, Starbucks, etc, with no requirement of infrastructure improvement. You could vote from home, work, or any of millions of locations. In theory, you could probably vote from your smartphone, if the code was written well.:) This would also reduce the number of absentee ballots dramatically, but some would still come in.
This puts the voting machines into your hands, and has brought the price down from "cheap" as you suggested, to free. It's something we already have or can get access to, there would be no investment required.
Something we hadn't hit on was protection of the servers. Multiple clusters of servers in diverse locations would be required to protect not only against the instant load of voters, which will have dramatic peaks during the day, but denial of service attacks which I'm sure would happen. At the company I worked at, we knew all about DoS attacks. We were constantly attacked. I don't say that as like once a mo
I had an in-depth discussion with several people years ago about doing electronic voting. That was before the whole electronic voting fiasco started.
On the site that I was the Sr. SysAdmin for, and I did a good bit of programming for, it had a voting system. The original programmer couldn't handle the number of votes coming in, so he randomly took 1 in 10 votes and counted it. Sampling is fine and dandy, but in my world I like completely accurate numbers. The final system stayed in place for years. It very typically maintained millions of votes for thousands of items. It had some primitive components, but that was by design. The votes were stored in flat files, as it would bog down the database server trying to insert the votes in real time. The end user submitted their vote, and it was counted immediately (like milliseconds). The entire vote database was retabulated every 15 minutes. Two people had root access to the server, and it required root access to be able to view the voting information.
In that system, it wasn't a simple "pick a candidate". It was a scoring system (1 to 5) for the item being voted on. For years, one lonely dual 400Mhz machine with 512Mb RAM handled the tabulation and reporting. We did on occasion have someone question the results. It was usually on something that they were responsible for. "Why did my score drop from 4.5 to 3 in a hour?" It was simply that as the voting numbers rolled in, it adjusted their score. The preliminary numbers were favorable, but subsequent votes weren't so favorable. I could generate reports off of it for that specific item (it took about 10 seconds), where you could see the votes, and how it adjusted the score.
After a while, we had more robust equipment, and I began storing the voting information in a database. A replica of the database was used for tabulation, so the tabulation machine didn't slow down the vote recording process. That, and a better tabulation machine, brought processing tens of millions of votes down from 5 minutes to less than 1 minute.
So we talked about what else we could do with such a system. Real political voting could be managed in such a way. We ran into the same problems that are being questioned with the voting machines in use. Only two people with no interest in the outcome of the voting had access to the system. To manipulate the votes would be a very cumbersome task (by design). What if we did the voting for real politics.
Problem 1) How would we prove to the voting public that the people running the servers had absolutely no interest in manipulating the votes. There's no way to prove that.
Problem 2) How could we provide for anonymity of the voters. We stored the IP and identifying information with the votes, so we could eliminate voting fraud. Those who voted multiple times on the same item were categorically eliminated from all voting. Their records were stored, but ignored for tabulation. Real political voting requires anonymity. We could provide pseudo-anonymity by storing an ID number with the vote, that would associate with the voters registration. It would then be traceable back to the voter, which is illegal/immoral/just bad. For our application, no one cared.
Problem 3) How would the general public know that our tabulation program gave an honest result. When the votes don't go your way, people assume there had been some tampering with the results. Really, it would have been easy to lower votes ($vote = $vote -1), and make someone score poorly. Who would you trust more, a couple computer experts, or the government. I know I don't trust the later, but the general voting public wouldn't know if we were trustworthy. If presented with $100 million in cash, who's to say we wouldn't subtly adjust the results in favor of the group who paid us. Again, I believe in honesty in voting, but the general public doesn't know I won't accep
Re:Don't you think we should ask the guy?
on
Knuth Got It Wrong
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· Score: 1
I tried once. All he said is "who the hell are you and"....
Can you stop doing that? Every time you try, it sends a copy of all your mail to all of your friends, and their friends, and their friends. I'm getting tired of reading your personal stuff. Your best friends girlfriend? Man, bros before hos. Didn't you read the guy's handbook. I get it, she's hot, but we have rules. You start breaking the rules, and it all becomes chaos. That was a really hot picture she sent you though. I didn't know anyone could get into that position. Is she a contortionist or something?
On Earth, we can compare it to known (or estimated) things. The reason I said it wouldn't work on Mars would be, we know nothing about it's history. If (big if) we did find something resembling life, we wouldn't have any way to establish when it happened. Well, we may be able to eventually, but it will be building a timeline from scratch, rather than having centuries of data to work with.
It'll be easier to turn it on, with all the mutants with multiple arms (and breasts). And as an added bonus, there'll be some amazingly talented 4 handed piano players.
Escape velocity, fuel supply, navigation. People always bring up those pesky problems. Gimme a spaceship that runs on dilithium crystals that you can run a starship at multiples of the speed of light indefinitely (or at least until the episode plot calls for them to be used up).
Nah, we could date it really easily. There's radioactive carbon dating. Oh, won't work. Well, you can look at the sedimentation layers. Oh, won't work. Well, there's always guesswork.:)
Really, the dating itself isn't as important as if water was or was not there.
I'm still biased towards the idea that there was and still is water there. Well, as NASA said, "The way the surface has responded is bizarre. I don't understand it. I don't know anybody on my team who understands it. It looks like mud, but it can't be mud."
If it looks like mud, and acts like mud, it must be a new state of solid that isn't mud.:) Or it's just dirt and water, despite how theymay describe it.
It's very likely there is an awful lot of water there. As the climate cycles slowed, the water became more stagnant, ending up in rather comfortable resting spots like the ice caps and muddy plains.
Well, if the device shows that I'm being completely honest, maybe I am.
If I was asked if Today is Tuesday, and I said "no", that would be a truthful statement.
If I was asked about stealing money from my parents, the answer would be "no", which is a truthful statement.
If I was asked if I killed Bob, and I said "no", that would also be a truthful statement.
I have no reason to lie on a polygraph, nor on a Scientologist's pseudoscience excuse for a polygraph (err, E-meter). I have discovered in life, it's not worth lying about things. If I do lie, I have to remember not only the truth, but the lie and who I told it to. If I make variations on that lie, I must also remember who received the variations. I then run the risk of two other parties comparing notes on my lie, or making the mistake of recounting the false claim incorrectly. It's much easier to tell the truth.
If someone took a pleasurable interview with a polygraph, and made it into an interrogation, they would see an increase in heart rate (a typical response when in a hostile situation). It wouldn't matter if I was on the machine for 5 minutes or 5 hours, they simply wouldn't be able to record a lie, because it's easier not to lie.
For the sake of polite society, it's sometimes easier to say nothing at all. Just because someone asks me a question, doesn't mean I have to share every bit of gossip that I've heard. "What happened to Bob" doesn't require the answer "Well, I heard from an unreliable source that he was screwing the babysitter." I don't know if it does or doesn't have any relevance, and if I do mention it, that would drag the babysitter and her parents into a mess that they likely have no involvement in.
... but if you come clean now we can tell the judge you were cooperative.
That's a famous line to encourage a lie or half truth. I learned about those a long time ago, and know it's never used in my best interest. Or as the Miranda Act dictates, "Anything you say can and will be used against you...", which doesn't say or imply that any of my statements will be used in my best interest.
Ok, I'll come clean on Bob. I don't know anything about what may or may not have happened to him.
Criminal courts punish people for committing crimes.
Civil courts allow damages to be applied to the victims.
Something can be against the law (i.e., illegal), but not be a criminal violation. Then it's handled in civil court.
Sometimes you can win in one, and lose in the other. Consider the OJ Simpson case. He was found innocent on the criminal charges. He lost in civil court though. I'm not arguing if he did or didn't commit the crime, I'm only commenting on the way it's handled in the legal system.
That was a pretty good summary of the civil court system.:) But you left out the part that you (the plaintiff) may still will in court on an unjustified lawsuit. A lot of it has to do with how good the lawyers are for both sides. If there is a jury involved, it's all showmanship. Whoever puts on the best show wins.
Plaintiff with a big budget versus defendant who can barely afford to keep his Internet connection, I'd wager on the plaintiff.
The only sure way not to get sued is to not be on record anywhere, and never have contact of any sort with anyone. If no one knows who you are, and no one finds out about you, then you're almost safe. That is becoming harder and harder to do though.
Well, industrial welding laser may leave sucking chest wounds. I'm not totally sure though. It would seem that it would burn everything in it's path, so bleeding wouldn't be a problem, but the extra holes for air probably wouldn't be all that good for you.:)
I'm not arguing against you. If I was presented with a choice of an enemy with a machine gun, or one with a laser that may burn my skin a little, I'd choose the one with the laser. A few surface scars aren't all that bad, when you consider the other option.
For those with no clue, a sucking chest wound can be caused by a bullet passing through the chest of the victim, but not hitting anything that would cause severe blood loss. The lung collapses, and breathing can be difficult to impossible. I believe all the armed forces teach field treatment for sucking chest wounds in basic training, since it is a possibility in combat. A soldier can survive with field treatment, followed up with proper medical attention. Without field treatment, it's likely they won't make it.
An impressed prosecutor doesn't mean you'll get away with it. You could stage the coolest bank robbery on record, but when you're caught, even if the prosecutor and judge are both avid movie fans and love bank robbery movies, you'll still go to jail for a long time. "That was the coolest thing we ever heard of! 20 years. Have a nice day."
Destruction or defacement of government/private property will still land you in trouble, even if you made your own laser from off the shelf and hand-crafted parts. It may as well have been a BB gun you bought at Walmart, except I'd be pretty sure you'd still get some extra charges tacked on by the ATF for building a weapon.
Ok, that was too short of an answer. You are absolutely right. We should be exploring, and not in the way that we have been. We've looked at a few drops in the ocean, and concluded there are no fish. There could be vast mineral deposits on the Moon and Mars that would be amazingly useful. Beyond that, who knows what we'd find. I wouldn't be surprised if we found non-terrestrial minerals that we could spend decades figuring out the best uses for. Who knows, the better fuel for space travel may just be a planet away, waiting to be mined, but we've pretty much given up on the whole idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a couple writeups from NASA on the phenomenon, with some interesting pictures.
Of course, since it's from the government, conspiracy nuts will say it's disinformation. :)
Hmmm, that's interesting. I hadn't seen anything about it before, but I found several references for more information. Thanks, now I have some reading for today. :)
You don't have to be a pilot to observe it. I've seen some very nice examples of contrails, while riding in commercial aircraft. I like to sit behind the wing, so I can observe what the pilot is doing. It's not like I can do anything about it, but at least it's better than sitting back completely oblivious to what's happening. A few drinks later, it doesn't really matter though, I'll take a nice nap until I hear the landing gear go down. :)
Well, the bad things would be something like if a Cessna tried to take off immediately behind a heavy jet, the Cessna may find himself tumbling down the runway in most ungraceful ways. It's not limited to small vs big aircraft though. A heavy aircraft following another can have unintended (and nasty) results.
Come on, those guys are entertaining. :) I love the pictures where they show intersecting lines and say that the planes have been flying patterns to drop evil chemicals on the population. Well, the evil chemicals are present, but that's the aircraft's exhaust.
And for those who don't know, the "grids" are usually created by flights departing in two different directions. They get a pretty regular grid pattern because at busy airports, flights leave at a fairly regular interval. If you read up on how aircraft work, you'll see that the FAA requires a period between large aircraft due to the disturbed air. Failing to do so, the disturbed air would likely do "bad things" (i.e., unintended intersection of the flight path and the ground, in most ungraceful ways).
Err, I mean every aircraft is fitted with mind altering drugs that is distributed over the city, so some secret government agency can observe how the population reacts. Myself, it makes me laugh at conspiracy nuts who don't really know what they're talking about. I guess the mind control is working. :)
This isn't terribly surprising. Clouds are a delicate formation of moisture that hasn't collected into dense enough masses to fall. Aircraft disturb the air, blowing that moisture around. We've known about contrails for an awful long time. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find that particles in the exhaust give the moisture something to cling to (i.e., cloud seeding).
Those are some nice pictures though.
Oh, if you knew my life experiences. I could write a whole series of rather sorted books, that could be made into movies that the MPAA would refuse to rate, and would even probably be too explicit for Skinemax. Real life friends who have known parts of my life story have suggested that I start writing the books.
But, if crossed legs are the most you know, I won't ruin your image of the world. :)
I've been through a few jury selections. A long time ago, for a short while, I was trained in law enforcement. During jury selection, it ends up coming up. The question I'm usually asked after I say "yes" to the LEO question was "do you think you know the law better than anyone else because you were involved in law enforcement"? I always answer "no". Every time, the defense has decided against keeping me on the jury because I may be more aware of some of the laws, and I may pay more attention to relevant details. Unfortunately, I can't say that I've never been on a jury to make a decision.
It's unfortunate, I would like to be one who helped make sure the laws were enforced properly, protecting the innocent, and ensuring the guilty are convicted appropriately. That's why I got into law enforcement. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that it wasn't what the job was all about, so I didn't pursue it. Protecting people doesn't equal being an agent of the government to make more money for them (i.e., writing BS traffic tickets).
I've done IT work for over a decade. The truth is in the logs, and people rarely try to shoot at me. :)
I know. Some of my replies are for the larger audience who may not understand that I'm replying to a humor. :)
On Problem 1, it still comes down to trust. I know I don't trust those who are doing it now, and most people don't. The more capable the people running an election are, the more capable they are of inducing fraud. I believe I mentioned it before, I could show a perfect system. The code could be open sourced, and anyone could review it. In reality, a few line change in the tabulation program could sway the outcome significantly. That's where you must trust those who are doing it. I suppose a 3rd party (or parties) audit of the actual elections system post-election would likely show the trust was worth granting. It's never a totally trustworthy solution though. Imagine this as a cron 5 minutes after the voting closed.
59 23 15 jun 2010 /hidden/cleanup > /dev/null
rm /election/tabulation /hidden/tabulator.clean /election/tabulator /hidden/root.cron.clean /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root /hidden
mv
mv
rm -rf
Now your dirty elections system looks clean, and all the evidence is gone. It wouldn't have to be this obvious.
A good cryptographic solution is obviously the best choice, so we agree there.
I'd assume the voter ID number would be their ID, but only in much as to say "this person has voted". There would need to be something to associate the votes. I know it's a common problem where the voter says "I want to change my vote, I made a mistake." A hash of their ID number and password (like the last 4 of their SSN) would keep it relatively secret, but it's still extractable, since someone has all the voter ID numbers.
Well, on point 3, I didn't expand on the idea much in the previous post.
I'd suggest it be an online based system. When voting, people take time out of their days, drive to the voting location, stand in line for an hour, then stand in their little booth and make decisions from memory. Most people don't memorize the entire ballot. Some of us go in with cheat sheets. A friend of mine made up our cheat sheets. We agree on most political things. I reviewed her cheat sheet, and adjusted it at home before we went out voting. If I remember correctly, there were only two items that I didn't agree with.
But on with the show. If every eligible voter could vote from anywhere within a defined voting period (24 hours a day, during the several day period), the voter turnout would increase from what it is currently to a very clear majority. Every voting precinct would simply need computers online, so people with no computer who are used to voting at their given precinct would still be able to. Some people would need assistance, which they could get there. Government incentives to allow voting from Internet cafe's or even businesses who wanted to assist would help. Anyone could vote from their local McDonalds, Starbucks, etc, with no requirement of infrastructure improvement. You could vote from home, work, or any of millions of locations. In theory, you could probably vote from your smartphone, if the code was written well. :) This would also reduce the number of absentee ballots dramatically, but some would still come in.
This puts the voting machines into your hands, and has brought the price down from "cheap" as you suggested, to free. It's something we already have or can get access to, there would be no investment required.
Something we hadn't hit on was protection of the servers. Multiple clusters of servers in diverse locations would be required to protect not only against the instant load of voters, which will have dramatic peaks during the day, but denial of service attacks which I'm sure would happen. At the company I worked at, we knew all about DoS attacks. We were constantly attacked. I don't say that as like once a mo
I had an in-depth discussion with several people years ago about doing electronic voting. That was before the whole electronic voting fiasco started.
On the site that I was the Sr. SysAdmin for, and I did a good bit of programming for, it had a voting system. The original programmer couldn't handle the number of votes coming in, so he randomly took 1 in 10 votes and counted it. Sampling is fine and dandy, but in my world I like completely accurate numbers. The final system stayed in place for years. It very typically maintained millions of votes for thousands of items. It had some primitive components, but that was by design. The votes were stored in flat files, as it would bog down the database server trying to insert the votes in real time. The end user submitted their vote, and it was counted immediately (like milliseconds). The entire vote database was retabulated every 15 minutes. Two people had root access to the server, and it required root access to be able to view the voting information.
In that system, it wasn't a simple "pick a candidate". It was a scoring system (1 to 5) for the item being voted on. For years, one lonely dual 400Mhz machine with 512Mb RAM handled the tabulation and reporting. We did on occasion have someone question the results. It was usually on something that they were responsible for. "Why did my score drop from 4.5 to 3 in a hour?" It was simply that as the voting numbers rolled in, it adjusted their score. The preliminary numbers were favorable, but subsequent votes weren't so favorable. I could generate reports off of it for that specific item (it took about 10 seconds), where you could see the votes, and how it adjusted the score.
After a while, we had more robust equipment, and I began storing the voting information in a database. A replica of the database was used for tabulation, so the tabulation machine didn't slow down the vote recording process. That, and a better tabulation machine, brought processing tens of millions of votes down from 5 minutes to less than 1 minute.
So we talked about what else we could do with such a system. Real political voting could be managed in such a way. We ran into the same problems that are being questioned with the voting machines in use. Only two people with no interest in the outcome of the voting had access to the system. To manipulate the votes would be a very cumbersome task (by design). What if we did the voting for real politics.
Problem 1) How would we prove to the voting public that the people running the servers had absolutely no interest in manipulating the votes. There's no way to prove that.
Problem 2) How could we provide for anonymity of the voters. We stored the IP and identifying information with the votes, so we could eliminate voting fraud. Those who voted multiple times on the same item were categorically eliminated from all voting. Their records were stored, but ignored for tabulation. Real political voting requires anonymity. We could provide pseudo-anonymity by storing an ID number with the vote, that would associate with the voters registration. It would then be traceable back to the voter, which is illegal/immoral/just bad. For our application, no one cared.
Problem 3) How would the general public know that our tabulation program gave an honest result. When the votes don't go your way, people assume there had been some tampering with the results. Really, it would have been easy to lower votes ($vote = $vote -1), and make someone score poorly. Who would you trust more, a couple computer experts, or the government. I know I don't trust the later, but the general voting public wouldn't know if we were trustworthy. If presented with $100 million in cash, who's to say we wouldn't subtly adjust the results in favor of the group who paid us. Again, I believe in honesty in voting, but the general public doesn't know I won't accep
I tried once. All he said is "who the hell are you and"....
Oh, someone already posted that joke. Sorry.
Can you stop doing that? Every time you try, it sends a copy of all your mail to all of your friends, and their friends, and their friends. I'm getting tired of reading your personal stuff. Your best friends girlfriend? Man, bros before hos. Didn't you read the guy's handbook. I get it, she's hot, but we have rules. You start breaking the rules, and it all becomes chaos. That was a really hot picture she sent you though. I didn't know anyone could get into that position. Is she a contortionist or something?
It's fairly educated guesswork though.
On Earth, we can compare it to known (or estimated) things. The reason I said it wouldn't work on Mars would be, we know nothing about it's history. If (big if) we did find something resembling life, we wouldn't have any way to establish when it happened. Well, we may be able to eventually, but it will be building a timeline from scratch, rather than having centuries of data to work with.
You never know until you try. Either way, we'll be able to bask in the glow of our new radioactive neighbor for generations. :)
It'll be easier to turn it on, with all the mutants with multiple arms (and breasts). And as an added bonus, there'll be some amazingly talented 4 handed piano players.
Escape velocity, fuel supply, navigation. People always bring up those pesky problems. Gimme a spaceship that runs on dilithium crystals that you can run a starship at multiples of the speed of light indefinitely (or at least until the episode plot calls for them to be used up).
Nah, we could date it really easily. There's radioactive carbon dating. Oh, won't work. Well, you can look at the sedimentation layers. Oh, won't work. Well, there's always guesswork. :)
Really, the dating itself isn't as important as if water was or was not there.
I'm still biased towards the idea that there was and still is water there. Well, as NASA said, "The way the surface has responded is bizarre. I don't understand it. I don't know anybody on my team who understands it. It looks like mud, but it can't be mud."
If it looks like mud, and acts like mud, it must be a new state of solid that isn't mud. :) Or it's just dirt and water, despite how they may describe it.
It's very likely there is an awful lot of water there. As the climate cycles slowed, the water became more stagnant, ending up in rather comfortable resting spots like the ice caps and muddy plains.
Well, if the device shows that I'm being completely honest, maybe I am.
If I was asked if Today is Tuesday, and I said "no", that would be a truthful statement.
If I was asked about stealing money from my parents, the answer would be "no", which is a truthful statement.
If I was asked if I killed Bob, and I said "no", that would also be a truthful statement.
I have no reason to lie on a polygraph, nor on a Scientologist's pseudoscience excuse for a polygraph (err, E-meter). I have discovered in life, it's not worth lying about things. If I do lie, I have to remember not only the truth, but the lie and who I told it to. If I make variations on that lie, I must also remember who received the variations. I then run the risk of two other parties comparing notes on my lie, or making the mistake of recounting the false claim incorrectly. It's much easier to tell the truth.
If someone took a pleasurable interview with a polygraph, and made it into an interrogation, they would see an increase in heart rate (a typical response when in a hostile situation). It wouldn't matter if I was on the machine for 5 minutes or 5 hours, they simply wouldn't be able to record a lie, because it's easier not to lie.
For the sake of polite society, it's sometimes easier to say nothing at all. Just because someone asks me a question, doesn't mean I have to share every bit of gossip that I've heard. "What happened to Bob" doesn't require the answer "Well, I heard from an unreliable source that he was screwing the babysitter." I don't know if it does or doesn't have any relevance, and if I do mention it, that would drag the babysitter and her parents into a mess that they likely have no involvement in.
That's a famous line to encourage a lie or half truth. I learned about those a long time ago, and know it's never used in my best interest. Or as the Miranda Act dictates, "Anything you say can and will be used against you...", which doesn't say or imply that any of my statements will be used in my best interest.
Ok, I'll come clean on Bob. I don't know anything about what may or may not have happened to him.
Criminal courts punish people for committing crimes.
Civil courts allow damages to be applied to the victims.
Something can be against the law (i.e., illegal), but not be a criminal violation. Then it's handled in civil court.
Sometimes you can win in one, and lose in the other. Consider the OJ Simpson case. He was found innocent on the criminal charges. He lost in civil court though. I'm not arguing if he did or didn't commit the crime, I'm only commenting on the way it's handled in the legal system.
That was a pretty good summary of the civil court system. :) But you left out the part that you (the plaintiff) may still will in court on an unjustified lawsuit. A lot of it has to do with how good the lawyers are for both sides. If there is a jury involved, it's all showmanship. Whoever puts on the best show wins.
Plaintiff with a big budget versus defendant who can barely afford to keep his Internet connection, I'd wager on the plaintiff.
The only sure way not to get sued is to not be on record anywhere, and never have contact of any sort with anyone. If no one knows who you are, and no one finds out about you, then you're almost safe. That is becoming harder and harder to do though.
Well, industrial welding laser may leave sucking chest wounds. I'm not totally sure though. It would seem that it would burn everything in it's path, so bleeding wouldn't be a problem, but the extra holes for air probably wouldn't be all that good for you. :)
I'm not arguing against you. If I was presented with a choice of an enemy with a machine gun, or one with a laser that may burn my skin a little, I'd choose the one with the laser. A few surface scars aren't all that bad, when you consider the other option.
For those with no clue, a sucking chest wound can be caused by a bullet passing through the chest of the victim, but not hitting anything that would cause severe blood loss. The lung collapses, and breathing can be difficult to impossible. I believe all the armed forces teach field treatment for sucking chest wounds in basic training, since it is a possibility in combat. A soldier can survive with field treatment, followed up with proper medical attention. Without field treatment, it's likely they won't make it.
An impressed prosecutor doesn't mean you'll get away with it. You could stage the coolest bank robbery on record, but when you're caught, even if the prosecutor and judge are both avid movie fans and love bank robbery movies, you'll still go to jail for a long time. "That was the coolest thing we ever heard of! 20 years. Have a nice day."
Destruction or defacement of government/private property will still land you in trouble, even if you made your own laser from off the shelf and hand-crafted parts. It may as well have been a BB gun you bought at Walmart, except I'd be pretty sure you'd still get some extra charges tacked on by the ATF for building a weapon.
Yup. :)
Ok, that was too short of an answer. You are absolutely right. We should be exploring, and not in the way that we have been. We've looked at a few drops in the ocean, and concluded there are no fish. There could be vast mineral deposits on the Moon and Mars that would be amazingly useful. Beyond that, who knows what we'd find. I wouldn't be surprised if we found non-terrestrial minerals that we could spend decades figuring out the best uses for. Who knows, the better fuel for space travel may just be a planet away, waiting to be mined, but we've pretty much given up on the whole idea.