"Besides, if you're within range of a nuclear EM pulse, you've probably got other things to worry about besides whether or not your car runs or not..."
Not neccesarily. If the weapon were used at high altitude to maximize EMP effects, you could be miles not experience any significant blast, radiation, or firestorm but still see EMP related effects.
"Several incidents related to the 1963 detonation of a 1.4 megaton nuclear device 250 miles above Johnston Island highlighted the potential effects of EMP. Immediately following the detonation, the island of Oahu, Hawaii, which was located 800 miles from ground zero, experienced several power outages, the activation of hundreds of burglar alarms and the short-circuiting of thirty strings of streetlights (1). EMP is of great concern today. As the field of electronics has evolved from the vacuum tube era to today's integrated microcircuits which can handle only minute quantities of voltage current, its susceptibility to EMP has increased significantly. Consequently, this results in modern communications and electronics equipment being highly vulnerable to the power surges of EMP." -http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/ 1988/CM2.htm
Let's see, I don't have to worry about starving this winter because of a bad harvest in fall. I don't have to worry about some minor cut getting infected and causing me to die or have to have a limb amputated. I don't worry that a hurricane will sneak up on me and wipe out the town.
I do worry that modern air travel would allow a new pandemic; but that would really not be new stress as much as the return of old stress. Even the environmental effects of technology so many like to worry about are no more stressful than worrying about the darn village upstream peeing in the water must have been.
I'll take the stress technology brings; the constant expansion of the average lifespan suggests strongly that it is less serious than the stress of not having technology.
We need a transformation of NASA, similar to the transformation of military affairs Rummy is trying at the Pentagon. For all the good NASA does, they also waste a lot of money, resources, and time on pork and various functionaries's pet projects. On the one hand, I fear how much more inefficiency will occur if you just hand NASA a bigger checkbook. On the otherhand, perhaps the problem is analogous to peacetime army problems. A lot of BS develops in the military during peacetime, that gets quickly dropped in wartime when the pressure of combat operations shows it to be the waste of time that it is. Sure, some BS survives in a wartime army, but not as much. Perhaps that is what is going on at NASA. Maybe they would be a lot more efficient and have less BS if they had a dramatic and difficult goal to focus their attention. Just throwing money at them will do more harm than good. Throwing a difficult task at them might be what they need.
"Well...since everyone is well aware that ninety-eight percent of all meetings/presentations are either useless or downright counterproductive, perhaps we should ditch the lot of it."
Staff meetings and status updates may be mostly useless, but the presentations at technical conferences are VERY productive "meetings" where PowerPoint is frequently used, and they aren't just put on for the benifit of the wingtip shoe crowd.
Years ago I read a sci-fi short story something like this. Aliens wanted to destroy Earth's economcy so they gave us (just left them out in public somewhere) a pair of devices that could copy anything. Of course, it wasn't too long before someone thought to copy one with the other and then before you know it everyone is getting them. The hero of the story was the manager of a large dept. store (like Macy's). In the morning when he goes to work it is a normal day and they are in business selling mass produced items. As the "duplicators" start showing up, he realizes that the old business model doesn't work anymore. He orders his staff to stop selling items for their marked price and to charge customers a small fee to copy anything in the store. He then orders the stores buyers to stop trying to get good prices on mass produced items and instead try to find one of every weird or unique thing they can. At the end of the day the store is still in business, but with a completely different business model, relying on good customer service and having a wide selection of unique items to be copied for a small price. Can anyone recall what the name of this story is or its author?
Of course there are some fields where we already have such "duplictor" based business models. The printing press made books the 1st such field. Now, of course, we have the same thing with music, software, and other information based businesses.
-Information wants to be free the same way that jewelry wants to be free.
I have been trying to expand my personal library. Because my fields of interest are a little eccentric many of the books I want are long out of print. Thanks to online used booksellers I have been able to get the books I want, and I have noticed that many of them are former* library books. This service is the sort of thing the internet is great for. As a young professional I can build a complete technical library much easier than if I had to do it the old fashioned way. The library gets more money than if they had just sold it for a dollar to some local patron who thought it looked interesting enough to be worth a buck. And the book has a much better chance of winding up with someone who really wants it.
It's like a matchmaking service for books and readers instead of romantic couples.
* I guess someone could just check out books under a false name and sell them, but 1) that seems like a lot of trouble for little return and 2) the libraries usually stamp them as having been disposed of... though it's not like a book thief couldn't just make up his own stamp.
It probably takes CNC code. Most CAD/CAM software will have drivers available to generate the appropriate code from a drawing. If you don't have that, it's not to hard to write the code yourself. A used one would likely be too old to have a USB plug. It would probably have an RS232 connection or similar; still, it would not be difficult to download cutting programs to it from a PC.
Yes, you can operate them at reduced power for engraving.
20 times more power at 3 times the cost
on
More on the Versalaser
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
For about $20,000 dollars more you can get a used 1kW industrial laser. It'll be powerful enough to cut 3/8" steel plate if you slow the feed rate down. Of course it takes up more room. And the operating costs will be a tad higher. But, it is just the thing for disposing of unwanted British spies.
I doubt that Al Qaeda's goal was really to turn us into a police state, they probably didn't even consider the death and destruction to be their primary goals. More likely, they wanted us to (after an brief period of blustering, and maybe some cruise missle strikes at mud hits in the middle of nowhere) pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Whether this is because they are offended at foriegn troops being based in the same region as Mecca or because Bin Laden has designs on the House of Saud and needs to get us out of the way so he can have an uninteruped coup is up for debate. If Al Qaeda wanted the former, then they got it! If he wanted the latter, which is what I suspect, then they are probably not so happy with the result. We moved our troops out of Saudi Arabia because we now have bigger and more reliable bases just across the border in Iraq.
As to your complaint about lasting peace... nothing will bring lasting peace between nations. The question is only what will do the best job of of providing temporary peace (without sacrificing your liberty or property along with it). Everyone is free to their own opinion, but I think deterence through power will produce better and longer lasting results than trying peace through appeasement or appealing to the better angels of mankind's nature.
We* may be headed into another big war; but only if the situation in N. Korea goes bad. Our other problem areas like Iran and Syria would probably only develop into a medium sized war if they went bad; and I think the odds of them requiring a war to solve are smaller than the odds of Kim Jungle doing something crazy.
As for WWIII, I always considered the Cold War (an excellent example of using strength, diplomacy, and small wars to replace one huge war)to be World War 3. And I would me much happier if the only game I ever participate in that requires me to look at another person over my front sights is paintball. I prefer the capitalism game myself.
* By we I mean The West. If you mean we as in the industrial world, India and Pakistan worry me a lot, too.
Actually it only depends on the image of power lasting. Good marketing can to some degree make up for reduced strength (and bad marketing can cancel it).
As for anything lasting indefinitely... not on this Earth. Nations themselves are not immortal, so of course their power won't be. But we still make governments because even though we know it may only last a few centuries (the optimists hope for a millenia, the French and Italians seem happy with a few decades), while it lasts it is much better than anarchy. Rule of law most of the time punctuated by periodic rebellion or reorganization is better than chaos all the time. Similarly, while peace through strength requires occasional small wars in between the peace, it is better than large wars all the time. Perhaps if the world were populated with angels instead of people, we would not need the small wars to keep nations honest; but then we wouldn't need governments to keep people honest, either.
I think Al Qaeda fell into the worried-but-not-afraid category. After Beruit, GW1, Somalia, etc. I think they convinced themselves that conflict with us would NOT be useless; that we didn't have any staying power.
If we can finish what we have started the last couple of years, then I don't think we will have many nations or organizations that will still think a military conflict with the United States is winnable (and that includes assymetric conflicts). If history is any indication, then the world will remember that only for a generation or two, and then some new idiot will require another demonstration of our resolve and capability to buy us a few more decades of peace. Diplomacy is, after all, done on credit. You have to make your margin calls a couple of times every century just so people know you are good for it. Perhaps the best way to reduce war would be better history classes.
If they have enough confidence to fight against you, then obviously you haven't made them fearful enough. You don't just need enough strength to make them worry. You have to have enough strength that they know deep down that military conflict with you would be a useless waste of men and wealth. Then they can be as tense as they like.
And swarms of small satellite mines that shadow Western spacecraft like annoying siblings ("I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you.") waiting to cripple our space forces should the Chicoms ever decide they want to collectivise Tiawan.
Slashdot Mirror
"people" might not be Democrats.
Considering that John Glenn served in the Senate as a Democrat for about a quarter century, I think it is safe to say that he is.
As for common sense... no, they generally don't teach that in the schools. You have to learn that out in the real world.
And in other news, Democratic Senators find any excuse to criticise the sitting Republican President during an election year.
"Besides, if you're within range of a nuclear EM pulse, you've probably got other things to worry about besides whether or not your car runs or not..."
/ 1988/CM2.htm
Not neccesarily. If the weapon were used at high altitude to maximize EMP effects, you could be miles not experience any significant blast, radiation, or firestorm but still see EMP related effects.
"Several incidents related to the 1963 detonation of a 1.4 megaton nuclear device 250 miles above Johnston Island highlighted the potential effects of EMP. Immediately following the detonation,
the island of Oahu, Hawaii, which was located 800 miles from ground zero, experienced several power outages, the activation of hundreds of burglar alarms and the short-circuiting of thirty strings of streetlights (1). EMP is of great concern today. As the field of electronics has evolved from the vacuum tube era to today's integrated microcircuits which can handle only minute quantities of voltage current, its susceptibility to EMP has increased significantly. Consequently, this results in modern communications and electronics equipment being highly vulnerable to the power surges of EMP." -http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report
Let's see, I don't have to worry about starving this winter because of a bad harvest in fall. I don't have to worry about some minor cut getting infected and causing me to die or have to have a limb amputated. I don't worry that a hurricane will sneak up on me and wipe out the town.
I do worry that modern air travel would allow a new pandemic; but that would really not be new stress as much as the return of old stress. Even the environmental effects of technology so many like to worry about are no more stressful than worrying about the darn village upstream peeing in the water must have been.
I'll take the stress technology brings; the constant expansion of the average lifespan suggests strongly that it is less serious than the stress of not having technology.
I'd be willing to put up with that if they would also track the cards so that I could be 100% certain the dealer wasn't dealing seconds.
We need a transformation of NASA, similar to the transformation of military affairs Rummy is trying at the Pentagon. For all the good NASA does, they also waste a lot of money, resources, and time on pork and various functionaries's pet projects. On the one hand, I fear how much more inefficiency will occur if you just hand NASA a bigger checkbook. On the otherhand, perhaps the problem is analogous to peacetime army problems. A lot of BS develops in the military during peacetime, that gets quickly dropped in wartime when the pressure of combat operations shows it to be the waste of time that it is. Sure, some BS survives in a wartime army, but not as much. Perhaps that is what is going on at NASA. Maybe they would be a lot more efficient and have less BS if they had a dramatic and difficult goal to focus their attention. Just throwing money at them will do more harm than good. Throwing a difficult task at them might be what they need.
Drat.
Delete the space between "r" and "o".
You mean this:
/ pr oducts/adv_tech/autonomy1_010702.html
http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/environment
A meter is a device. A yard is a unit of measure.
"Well...since everyone is well aware that ninety-eight percent of all meetings/presentations are either useless or downright counterproductive, perhaps we should ditch the lot of it."
Staff meetings and status updates may be mostly useless, but the presentations at technical conferences are VERY productive "meetings" where PowerPoint is frequently used, and they aren't just put on for the benifit of the wingtip shoe crowd.
http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/Article.cfm?issuetoc id=309&ArchiveIssueID=35
Years ago I read a sci-fi short story something like this. Aliens wanted to destroy Earth's economcy so they gave us (just left them out in public somewhere) a pair of devices that could copy anything. Of course, it wasn't too long before someone thought to copy one with the other and then before you know it everyone is getting them. The hero of the story was the manager of a large dept. store (like Macy's). In the morning when he goes to work it is a normal day and they are in business selling mass produced items. As the "duplicators" start showing up, he realizes that the old business model doesn't work anymore. He orders his staff to stop selling items for their marked price and to charge customers a small fee to copy anything in the store. He then orders the stores buyers to stop trying to get good prices on mass produced items and instead try to find one of every weird or unique thing they can. At the end of the day the store is still in business, but with a completely different business model, relying on good customer service and having a wide selection of unique items to be copied for a small price. Can anyone recall what the name of this story is or its author?
Of course there are some fields where we already have such "duplictor" based business models. The printing press made books the 1st such field. Now, of course, we have the same thing with music, software, and other information based businesses.
-Information wants to be free the same way that jewelry wants to be free.
I have been trying to expand my personal library. Because my fields of interest are a little eccentric many of the books I want are long out of print. Thanks to online used booksellers I have been able to get the books I want, and I have noticed that many of them are former* library books. This service is the sort of thing the internet is great for. As a young professional I can build a complete technical library much easier than if I had to do it the old fashioned way. The library gets more money than if they had just sold it for a dollar to some local patron who thought it looked interesting enough to be worth a buck. And the book has a much better chance of winding up with someone who really wants it.
It's like a matchmaking service for books and readers instead of romantic couples.
* I guess someone could just check out books under a false name and sell them, but 1) that seems like a lot of trouble for little return and 2) the libraries usually stamp them as having been disposed of... though it's not like a book thief couldn't just make up his own stamp.
It's probably because this year is the centenial of flight.
my vote for America's greatest engineering marvel: Panama Canal
Yep, I forsee a lot of international mooning incidents.
It probably takes CNC code. Most CAD/CAM software will have drivers available to generate the appropriate code from a drawing. If you don't have that, it's not to hard to write the code yourself. A used one would likely be too old to have a USB plug. It would probably have an RS232 connection or similar; still, it would not be difficult to download cutting programs to it from a PC.
Yes, you can operate them at reduced power for engraving.
For about $20,000 dollars more you can get a used 1kW industrial laser. It'll be powerful enough to cut 3/8" steel plate if you slow the feed rate down. Of course it takes up more room. And the operating costs will be a tad higher. But, it is just the thing for disposing of unwanted British spies.
http://www.franeklaser.com/usedlasers.htm
The most dangerous thing in the design looks like the coolant.
I prefer the term privateer.
I doubt that Al Qaeda's goal was really to turn us into a police state, they probably didn't even consider the death and destruction to be their primary goals. More likely, they wanted us to (after an brief period of blustering, and maybe some cruise missle strikes at mud hits in the middle of nowhere) pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Whether this is because they are offended at foriegn troops being based in the same region as Mecca or because Bin Laden has designs on the House of Saud and needs to get us out of the way so he can have an uninteruped coup is up for debate. If Al Qaeda wanted the former, then they got it! If he wanted the latter, which is what I suspect, then they are probably not so happy with the result. We moved our troops out of Saudi Arabia because we now have bigger and more reliable bases just across the border in Iraq.
As to your complaint about lasting peace... nothing will bring lasting peace between nations. The question is only what will do the best job of of providing temporary peace (without sacrificing your liberty or property along with it). Everyone is free to their own opinion, but I think deterence through power will produce better and longer lasting results than trying peace through appeasement or appealing to the better angels of mankind's nature.
We* may be headed into another big war; but only if the situation in N. Korea goes bad. Our other problem areas like Iran and Syria would probably only develop into a medium sized war if they went bad; and I think the odds of them requiring a war to solve are smaller than the odds of Kim Jungle doing something crazy.
As for WWIII, I always considered the Cold War (an excellent example of using strength, diplomacy, and small wars to replace one huge war)to be World War 3. And I would me much happier if the only game I ever participate in that requires me to look at another person over my front sights is paintball. I prefer the capitalism game myself.
* By we I mean The West. If you mean we as in the industrial world, India and Pakistan worry me a lot, too.
Actually it only depends on the image of power lasting. Good marketing can to some degree make up for reduced strength (and bad marketing can cancel it).
As for anything lasting indefinitely... not on this Earth. Nations themselves are not immortal, so of course their power won't be. But we still make governments because even though we know it may only last a few centuries (the optimists hope for a millenia, the French and Italians seem happy with a few decades), while it lasts it is much better than anarchy. Rule of law most of the time punctuated by periodic rebellion or reorganization is better than chaos all the time. Similarly, while peace through strength requires occasional small wars in between the peace, it is better than large wars all the time. Perhaps if the world were populated with angels instead of people, we would not need the small wars to keep nations honest; but then we wouldn't need governments to keep people honest, either.
I think Al Qaeda fell into the worried-but-not-afraid category. After Beruit, GW1, Somalia, etc. I think they convinced themselves that conflict with us would NOT be useless; that we didn't have any staying power.
If we can finish what we have started the last couple of years, then I don't think we will have many nations or organizations that will still think a military conflict with the United States is winnable (and that includes assymetric conflicts). If history is any indication, then the world will remember that only for a generation or two, and then some new idiot will require another demonstration of our resolve and capability to buy us a few more decades of peace. Diplomacy is, after all, done on credit. You have to make your margin calls a couple of times every century just so people know you are good for it. Perhaps the best way to reduce war would be better history classes.
If they have enough confidence to fight against you, then obviously you haven't made them fearful enough. You don't just need enough strength to make them worry. You have to have enough strength that they know deep down that military conflict with you would be a useless waste of men and wealth. Then they can be as tense as they like.
And swarms of small satellite mines that shadow Western spacecraft like annoying siblings ("I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you.") waiting to cripple our space forces should the Chicoms ever decide they want to collectivise Tiawan.