The only copyright violation notice I've ever had in my life was recently with Verizon and it was for some TV show! So you may have something there. It would be interesting if the only copyright violations they enforced was for TV. They've been trying to get me to upgrade and add TV service for ages.
What's left of Team Torment is thinking about it. Chris Avellone, the mastermind behind PS:T, would like to make it. You might want to let him know yourself how you feel. I would guess that the success or failure of Brian Fargo's attempt will affect their decision on whether or not to do their own kickstart funded sequel-in-spirit to Planescape: Torment.
Based on what you've told me I would say the US system is better. It's the people who are corrupt. Trusting someone who is part of the system to actively work against the system is generally not a great method. I don't care how much they know about the law, if they are biased they are biased and justice will not be done.
It's certainly possible that Canadians in general are less tempted to make judgments purely for emotional reasons, but I am skeptical that there aren't any Canadian judges at all who are biased against those accused of crimes, believing 'where there is smoke there is fire'. Having lived in Canada for a while I do think that Canadians are slightly better people, but they are not perfect by any means and relying on perfection in your judges seems overly optimistic to me. In any case, I'd prefer to give the accused the choice. It's his life that is at risk. If he thinks a judge is more competent then he can choose a judge.
So you think you are a fair prosecutor? What about a case where the only 'evidence' is the word of one or more police officers? Would you dismiss the case if you couldn't find any corroborating evidence? In other words, would you ever consider the idea that a police officer is lying and just making up his charges?
Unless your friend was psychic, there was no way he could know that his clients were guilty. Unless you are claiming that 99.999999999999% of his clients told him that they were guilty. Is your friend by any chance a Republican? Just curious. Someone like that should definitely not be a public defender. I'm guessing he was just doing it because he couldn't find a job as a prosecutor yet. BTW, it must feel good to know that there are no innocent people in jail or any lives ruined by our injustice system. The very fact that there are people like you (and your cynical lawyer friend) who might end up on a jury pretty much demonstrates that getting a fair trial is unlikely in this country.
Well there is at least one example where the US is superior to Canada. That is just insane. Four years in prison is not considered serious enough for a jury trial? Judges are part of the system and often friends with both the prosecutor and the police. Unless you can absolutely prove your innocence you will be found guilty.
The fact still remains that, by convicting another human being of a 'crime' that you don't personally consider wrong you are acting against your own code of ethics which, by definition, is wrong. So yes, I do think voting your conscience both on the evidence and on the justice of the law itself is our responsibility, not just as citizens, but as human beings. That anyone could punish another human being for something they don't believe is wrong is incredible to me. I would never do so. If I were ever on a jury it would be instant mistrial for any crime in which I cannot easily find a victim.
Domestic violence is also one of those charges where you are most definitely not innocent until proven guilty. You can't get a fair trial against such charges period. I definitely think you made the right choice. Although anyone who hears that you pleaded guilty to such charges is going to think you are some kind of monster. Still better than 4 years in jail though.
Maybe it depends on the state, but in my state you have to have a sufficiently low income to be represented for free. And your income has to be very low indeed. The problem with public defenders is not that they are incompetent (although they often only recently passed the bar exam), but that they have too high a case load to give your case sufficient attention. At least that's what I've heard. I met the income requirement, but was able to borrow the money for a private attorney. I'll be in debt for a long time though because the fee is about 3/4 of my annual income. To me it's worth it if it gives me a better chance of staying out of jail, but the price is very steep indeed.
Bingo. That just might be it. An ultra high vacuum is required if the device is gyrotron based, which it almost certainly is. But that assumes that the tube cannot hold its vacuum over time.
Actually he is correct. There is no way this design is using some kind of ultra-capacitor that takes 16 hours to charge. The physics just doesn't work. Even a capacitor the size of a large building wouldn't take that long to charge. It's almost certainly some kind of chemical battery. If they had used fuel cells instead of chemical batteries they could probably have avoided the 16 hour delay and just filled up with hydrogen. If it is batteries then the 16 hours is probably more of a worst case where the batteries have been completely discharged. 16 hours is probably also for an optimal charging rate to prolong the life of the uber-expensive battery pack. If they needed to use the system in a hurry they could fast charge it at the risk of overheating, or, if the battery pack was at half charge or something, just use it as is and live with shorter battery life.
Batteries. A capacitor bank would be used for a pulsed device, but this device seems to be continuous wave. So we are probably talking batteries + inverter + high voltage transformer. Ultimately what you want for a device like this is a high voltage DC current. So after the transformer the AC is probably converted back to DC again before powering the CW gyrotron. Actually the device could use short duty cycle pulses, but in that case the capacitor charge time would probably be measured in milliseconds or nanoseconds not in hours.
The puzzler for me is at 100 GHZ you're gonna use WR8 or WR10 and those do not tolerate more than 10 KW or so before arcing over.
You seem to be thinking solid state. Think tubes. I would imagine such a high power device would almost certainly use a gyrotron. With a gyrotron they could output megawatts of power, even in long pulse or CW. I bet L3 Communications (their California Tube Laboratory) made them the gyrotron and maybe designed the whole system as well.
1. A chain mail suit, except ideally made of copper or aluminum, would give you some level of protection. The problem is that the suit might heat up. So you'd probably want some kind of water cooling system. Any method of keeping the suit wet should work.
2. Any protest that is anticipating this device could get a whole truck full of dry ice or an industrial fog machine or just some smoke bombs. 95 Ghz EM waves are highly attenuated by such things.
3. A parabolic reflector made of aluminum, even cardboard lined with aluminum foil, would concentrate and reflect the mm wave energy at whatever target you aimed it at. Hopefully someone with a badge and and a love of causing pain. I would imagine that a whole crowd of protesters armed with parabolic reflectors would be a rather nice deterrent to the police.
4. Standing behind a large piece of sheet metal should protect you. Any conductive material, preferably with a high melting point, should do the trick.
5. The 16 hour time could be for battery charging. Maybe whatever generator they are using cannot output enough energy and it needs an additional boost from a large bank of batteries. It's certainly not for charging capacitors. The device behind this is almost certainly a gyrotron which requires a high voltage (probably between 60 - 120 kV) and a powerful magnet, probably a superconducting solenoid. Making a portable power source that can meet these requirements is challenging. I wonder how long they can use the device before draining their batteries.
People with college degrees do tend to earn significantly more than people without them, and college is more valuable, IMHO, to teach you how to think than to teach specific skills. I find the people with multicultural studies degrees have better critical thinking skills than those who studied specific professions (e.g., engineering).
So you didn't know how to think before colllege? That 'teaching you how to think' stuff is just bullshit. University doesn't do that and it's not supposed to do that and outside of the U.S. no one even talks about it doing that. Outside of the U.S. people somehow learn how to think in grammar school. Perhaps one of the reasons we have so much trouble competing with other countries is due to the fact that we have this belief that thinking is something you learn in college. If I hadn't had to deal with so much of that liberal arts bullshit I might have actually had time to finish my degree and I wouldn't have been so screwed over in the workplace.
I probably would be willing to do a dangerous job that pays $20/hr, but probably only because I don't have a degree. Now I earn $10/hr and work as little as possible. That wasn't such a bad wage a few years ago, but since the new fed chairman's love affair with inflation it's no longer enough. $15/hr is the new $10/hr. With inflation wages are the last thing to go up. Maybe that's why these companies are having a problem. They don't yet realize that $20/hr is no longer $20/hr because $20 isn't $20 anymore.
1. Build a StarTram in the Himalayas. 2. Send all the aluminium struts and panels to the moon. 3. Build the SKA on the far side of the moon.
Cold temperatures. No atmosphere to get in the way. Most terrestrial interference would be blocked by the moon itself. Most frequencies that you might want to listen for are being blocked by the atmosphere. We have some atmospheric windows at 1-15 Ghz, 34 - 37 Ghz, and 73 - 77 Ghz and, aside from the visual spectrum, that's about it. Pathetic really. For all we know some friendly aliens on Alpha Centauri could be broadcasting to us outside of those windows and we'd never know. Higher frequencies are more efficient for deep space transmission. So it's actually quite likely. Maybe that's the cause of The Great Silence aka The Fermi Paradox. Maybe we need an SKA in space before we can start picking up transmissions from The Federation.
For SETI/METI purposes Brasil is directly below some interesting targets such as Gliese 581. Just make sure the astronomers don't watch City of God before visiting. The language barrier could also be a problem. Not nearly as many people speak Portuguese as a second language as Spanish (or English).
The high humidity could also be a problem. Water vapor starts to attenuate signals after about 9-12 Ghz. Deserts, preferable high altitude deserts, are ideal. The Atacama Desert in Chile and the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico are good examples.
If I were paying the bill, I would vote for South Africa due to the abundance of cheap labor available compared to Australia. Cheap labor is a huge advantage with such a huge construction project. You might even be able to import labor from a nearby country. OTOH, if I think in terms of centuries or millenia, I would vote for Australia due to its long term political stability, its physical isolation and its much greater size. Look back 100 (or even 10,000) years and ask yourself which country would be more likely to suffer from a military attack on the array. We really should be thinking in terms of all the changes that can happen in centuries or millenia. Australia is simply a much safer place to build such a device than is South Africa. Even Chile or Argentina would probably be safer, although I could envision a war between the two countries in which one bombs the other's SKA. Still, both Chile and Argentina have better internal stability than SA, which will always be a bit of a powder keg due to the racial tensions.
The southern hemisphere is better for radio astronomy and SETI. It has more interesting targets, including the most interesting nearby stars and the galactic center. Also, there are more radio telescopes in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere already, including Arecibo and the new 500 meter FAST dish being constructed in Southern China.
Cite proof that such illegal acts are the standard behavior by the police. I don't doubt that it does occasionally happen, but most officers are actually trying to do an honest job.
As someone who was recently framed by an angry out of control, murderous cop in such a way that all the other cops on the scene would have to be on the same page, I don't have a lot of sympathy for your belief that most cops are basically honest people. They are just people who were schoolyard bullies as children and never changed. They certainly aren't any more honest than the rest of the population. So how about a citation for your idea that most cops are honest? Or are do you just believe that because you would prefer to believe that?
Slashdot Mirror
The only copyright violation notice I've ever had in my life was recently with Verizon and it was for some TV show! So you may have something there. It would be interesting if the only copyright violations they enforced was for TV. They've been trying to get me to upgrade and add TV service for ages.
What's left of Team Torment is thinking about it. Chris Avellone, the mastermind behind PS:T, would like to make it. You might want to let him know yourself how you feel. I would guess that the success or failure of Brian Fargo's attempt will affect their decision on whether or not to do their own kickstart funded sequel-in-spirit to Planescape: Torment.
Based on what you've told me I would say the US system is better. It's the people who are corrupt. Trusting someone who is part of the system to actively work against the system is generally not a great method. I don't care how much they know about the law, if they are biased they are biased and justice will not be done.
It's certainly possible that Canadians in general are less tempted to make judgments purely for emotional reasons, but I am skeptical that there aren't any Canadian judges at all who are biased against those accused of crimes, believing 'where there is smoke there is fire'. Having lived in Canada for a while I do think that Canadians are slightly better people, but they are not perfect by any means and relying on perfection in your judges seems overly optimistic to me. In any case, I'd prefer to give the accused the choice. It's his life that is at risk. If he thinks a judge is more competent then he can choose a judge.
So you think you are a fair prosecutor? What about a case where the only 'evidence' is the word of one or more police officers? Would you dismiss the case if you couldn't find any corroborating evidence? In other words, would you ever consider the idea that a police officer is lying and just making up his charges?
Unless your friend was psychic, there was no way he could know that his clients were guilty. Unless you are claiming that 99.999999999999% of his clients told him that they were guilty. Is your friend by any chance a Republican? Just curious. Someone like that should definitely not be a public defender. I'm guessing he was just doing it because he couldn't find a job as a prosecutor yet. BTW, it must feel good to know that there are no innocent people in jail or any lives ruined by our injustice system. The very fact that there are people like you (and your cynical lawyer friend) who might end up on a jury pretty much demonstrates that getting a fair trial is unlikely in this country.
Well there is at least one example where the US is superior to Canada. That is just insane. Four years in prison is not considered serious enough for a jury trial? Judges are part of the system and often friends with both the prosecutor and the police. Unless you can absolutely prove your innocence you will be found guilty.
The fact still remains that, by convicting another human being of a 'crime' that you don't personally consider wrong you are acting against your own code of ethics which, by definition, is wrong. So yes, I do think voting your conscience both on the evidence and on the justice of the law itself is our responsibility, not just as citizens, but as human beings. That anyone could punish another human being for something they don't believe is wrong is incredible to me. I would never do so. If I were ever on a jury it would be instant mistrial for any crime in which I cannot easily find a victim.
Domestic violence is also one of those charges where you are most definitely not innocent until proven guilty. You can't get a fair trial against such charges period. I definitely think you made the right choice. Although anyone who hears that you pleaded guilty to such charges is going to think you are some kind of monster. Still better than 4 years in jail though.
Maybe it depends on the state, but in my state you have to have a sufficiently low income to be represented for free. And your income has to be very low indeed. The problem with public defenders is not that they are incompetent (although they often only recently passed the bar exam), but that they have too high a case load to give your case sufficient attention. At least that's what I've heard. I met the income requirement, but was able to borrow the money for a private attorney. I'll be in debt for a long time though because the fee is about 3/4 of my annual income. To me it's worth it if it gives me a better chance of staying out of jail, but the price is very steep indeed.
Bingo. That just might be it. An ultra high vacuum is required if the device is gyrotron based, which it almost certainly is. But that assumes that the tube cannot hold its vacuum over time.
Actually he is correct. There is no way this design is using some kind of ultra-capacitor that takes 16 hours to charge. The physics just doesn't work. Even a capacitor the size of a large building wouldn't take that long to charge. It's almost certainly some kind of chemical battery. If they had used fuel cells instead of chemical batteries they could probably have avoided the 16 hour delay and just filled up with hydrogen. If it is batteries then the 16 hours is probably more of a worst case where the batteries have been completely discharged. 16 hours is probably also for an optimal charging rate to prolong the life of the uber-expensive battery pack. If they needed to use the system in a hurry they could fast charge it at the risk of overheating, or, if the battery pack was at half charge or something, just use it as is and live with shorter battery life.
Batteries. A capacitor bank would be used for a pulsed device, but this device seems to be continuous wave. So we are probably talking batteries + inverter + high voltage transformer. Ultimately what you want for a device like this is a high voltage DC current. So after the transformer the AC is probably converted back to DC again before powering the CW gyrotron. Actually the device could use short duty cycle pulses, but in that case the capacitor charge time would probably be measured in milliseconds or nanoseconds not in hours.
The puzzler for me is at 100 GHZ you're gonna use WR8 or WR10 and those do not tolerate more than 10 KW or so before arcing over.
You seem to be thinking solid state. Think tubes. I would imagine such a high power device would almost certainly use a gyrotron. With a gyrotron they could output megawatts of power, even in long pulse or CW. I bet L3 Communications (their California Tube Laboratory) made them the gyrotron and maybe designed the whole system as well.
1. A chain mail suit, except ideally made of copper or aluminum, would give you some level of protection. The problem is that the suit might heat up. So you'd probably want some kind of water cooling system. Any method of keeping the suit wet should work.
2. Any protest that is anticipating this device could get a whole truck full of dry ice or an industrial fog machine or just some smoke bombs. 95 Ghz EM waves are highly attenuated by such things.
3. A parabolic reflector made of aluminum, even cardboard lined with aluminum foil, would concentrate and reflect the mm wave energy at whatever target you aimed it at. Hopefully someone with a badge and and a love of causing pain. I would imagine that a whole crowd of protesters armed with parabolic reflectors would be a rather nice deterrent to the police.
4. Standing behind a large piece of sheet metal should protect you. Any conductive material, preferably with a high melting point, should do the trick.
5. The 16 hour time could be for battery charging. Maybe whatever generator they are using cannot output enough energy and it needs an additional boost from a large bank of batteries. It's certainly not for charging capacitors. The device behind this is almost certainly a gyrotron which requires a high voltage (probably between 60 - 120 kV) and a powerful magnet, probably a superconducting solenoid. Making a portable power source that can meet these requirements is challenging. I wonder how long they can use the device before draining their batteries.
Except that he is a superb speaker. It was one of the most beautiful speeches I have ever seen.
People with college degrees do tend to earn significantly more than people without them, and college is more valuable, IMHO, to teach you how to think than to teach specific skills. I find the people with multicultural studies degrees have better critical thinking skills than those who studied specific professions (e.g., engineering).
So you didn't know how to think before colllege? That 'teaching you how to think' stuff is just bullshit. University doesn't do that and it's not supposed to do that and outside of the U.S. no one even talks about it doing that. Outside of the U.S. people somehow learn how to think in grammar school. Perhaps one of the reasons we have so much trouble competing with other countries is due to the fact that we have this belief that thinking is something you learn in college. If I hadn't had to deal with so much of that liberal arts bullshit I might have actually had time to finish my degree and I wouldn't have been so screwed over in the workplace.
I probably would be willing to do a dangerous job that pays $20/hr, but probably only because I don't have a degree. Now I earn $10/hr and work as little as possible.
That wasn't such a bad wage a few years ago, but since the new fed chairman's love affair with inflation it's no longer enough. $15/hr is the new $10/hr. With inflation wages are the last thing to go up. Maybe that's why these companies are having a problem. They don't yet realize that $20/hr is no longer $20/hr because $20 isn't $20 anymore.
I choose:
(c) Mohawks are comfortable with heights from their experience shape-shifting into animal forms
They probably would just shapeshift into birds and fly up there.
1. Build a StarTram in the Himalayas.
2. Send all the aluminium struts and panels to the moon.
3. Build the SKA on the far side of the moon.
Cold temperatures. No atmosphere to get in the way. Most terrestrial interference would be blocked by the moon itself. Most frequencies that you might want to listen for are being blocked by the atmosphere. We have some atmospheric windows at 1-15 Ghz, 34 - 37 Ghz, and 73 - 77 Ghz and, aside from the visual spectrum, that's about it. Pathetic really. For all we know some friendly aliens on Alpha Centauri could be broadcasting to us outside of those windows and we'd never know. Higher frequencies are more efficient for deep space transmission. So it's actually quite likely. Maybe that's the cause of The Great Silence aka The Fermi Paradox. Maybe we need an SKA in space before we can start picking up transmissions from The Federation.
For SETI/METI purposes Brasil is directly below some interesting targets such as Gliese 581. Just make sure the astronomers don't watch City of God before visiting. The language barrier could also be a problem. Not nearly as many people speak Portuguese as a second language as Spanish (or English).
The high humidity could also be a problem. Water vapor starts to attenuate signals after about 9-12 Ghz. Deserts, preferable high altitude deserts, are ideal. The Atacama Desert in Chile and the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico are good examples.
If I were paying the bill, I would vote for South Africa due to the abundance of cheap labor available compared to Australia. Cheap labor is a huge advantage with such a huge construction project. You might even be able to import labor from a nearby country. OTOH, if I think in terms of centuries or millenia, I would vote for Australia due to its long term political stability, its physical isolation and its much greater size. Look back 100 (or even 10,000) years and ask yourself which country would be more likely to suffer from a military attack on the array. We really should be thinking in terms of all the changes that can happen in centuries or millenia. Australia is simply a much safer place to build such a device than is South Africa. Even Chile or Argentina would probably be safer, although I could envision a war between the two countries in which one bombs the other's SKA. Still, both Chile and Argentina have better internal stability than SA, which will always be a bit of a powder keg due to the racial tensions.
The southern hemisphere is better for radio astronomy and SETI. It has more interesting targets, including the most interesting nearby stars and the galactic center. Also, there are more radio telescopes in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere already, including Arecibo and the new 500 meter FAST dish being constructed in Southern China.
Cite proof that such illegal acts are the standard behavior by the police. I don't doubt that it does occasionally happen, but most officers are actually trying to do an honest job.
As someone who was recently framed by an angry out of control, murderous cop in such a way that all the other cops on the scene would have to be on the same page, I don't have a lot of sympathy for your belief that most cops are basically honest people. They are just people who were schoolyard bullies as children and never changed. They certainly aren't any more honest than the rest of the population. So how about a citation for your idea that most cops are honest? Or are do you just believe that because you would prefer to believe that?
Do you have a citation for that study?
The Chinese have the money. And the manpower.
Isn't that gen-1 system similar to the railgun system proposed in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?