Imagine that there are 2-dimensional people living in this 2d world.
How am I supposed to do that? What is it that you are picturing exactly? A 2 dimensional person would be a person which could only be measured on 2 axes, entirely without depth. In my mind I can imagine a person or object and decrease the Z axis of a 3 dimensional object until the object disappears, but I cannot imagine any physical object with only 2 dimensions. The closest I could get would be too imagine a shadow projected onto a 3 dimensional object. But without the 3 dimensional object I cannot imagine it.
The shadow would be defined by a lack of photons (or EM waves) bouncing off that part of the 3 dimensional object. Photons are the only kind of matter which is said to be entirely massless. But the massless nature of photons is contradicted by certain experiments in which they do seem to possess mass, albeit a very, very small one. We are not even certain that a photon is a real particle per se due to the wave/particle nature of EM waves. The existence of shadows (or even the circle of a flashlight beam reflecting off a 3d object) is not evidence for 2 dimensional matter.
I think that our assumption that space is 3 dimensional is a bit self centered. If we lived in 2 dimensional space, we'd never be able to consider or access the 3'rd dimension.
That is a religious idea. Not a scientific one. According to science no object can exist with only length and width and, no, you cannot imagine one either. By definition such an object would in a very real sense not exist at all. It would be matter without mass: a contradiction in terms. So the first problem with your analogy is that neither you nor anything else could live in 2 dimensions. You would have to postulate a life form without any mass at all.
The idea of empty space being physically "warped" is also not science. It is certainly not based on any evidence. Nor can you even really imagine it. The meaning of the word "warp" only validly applies to matter, to objects. You ask us to imagine a physical object like a record even though that has no relevance to n-dimensional space. The record is just another 3 dimensional object. You can bend and twist it or even break it or melt it, but no matter what you do to it it will still have exactly 3 physical dimensions when you measure it.
There is another problem. Math is a closed system. It cannot in itself be used to prove anything in the outside world. It can predict certain quantitative relationships in the outside world, but you still need actual experiment to validate a theory or model. Also just because time can be represented mathematically as equal to a physical dimension does not mean that it actually is equal to a physical dimension. Time itself is just a concept which represents changing matter. If all matter were motionless there would be no way to even measure this thing you refer to as "time". In a very important sense it does not even exist. For this reason, although it may be possible mathematically to go backwards in time, in the real world the idea is nonsensical.
Not necessarily. To visualize increasing dimensions, think of a sheet of paper. Two dimensions. Imagine it being progressively crumpled, until it becomes a paper ball. Now it's three dimensional.
That doesn't help. A sheet of paper is very much 3 dimensional, which is a shame since it would probably be a lot cheaper if it were actually massless. When you crumple a sheet of paper it does not become 4 dimensional. It just becomes crumpled. You have merely changed its shape, not the fundamental nature of reality.
How about using a valid analogy: start by imagining a massless 2 dimensional object, one with only length and width, but no depth at all. Then add depth. Still doesn't help you to imagine going from an object with length, width, and height to an object with length, width, height, and [some other measurement that we cannot even imagine] though.
Hasn't time dilation been demonstrated experimentally? I agree that n-dimensional FantasyLand is nothing but a tribute to our imaginations and will certainly not move science forward any more than other pseudo-science or religious beliefs will, but the mathematics of both special and general relativity has real experimental evidence in its favor. The equations have great predictive value, but they cannot explain the nature of the universe per se (except quantitatively within certain constraints). Only experiment can do that.
I don't think the problem is with the mathematics per se. The problem is with the flights of fantasy that the mathematician-scientists are using to try to explain the equations. That is a leap of logic that they cannot make without evidence. They only err when they use far-fetched analogies (which in no way genuinely reflect the math) to try to explain the math.
Just because a concept exists in mathematics does not imply that it also exists out there in the real world. This is why we have this thing called "science". To connect FantasyLand with Reality. Also there is a concept that "breaks down". The concept of n-dimensional matter where n does not equal 3. 1 dimension (a point or line) can exist in mathematics. It cannot exist in reality. 2 dimensions (a line or plane) can exist in mathematics. It cannot exist in the real world. Physical dimensions (length, width, and height) are just aspects of matter. They have no reality apart from the matter that they are describing. Color is another example of something that cannot exist without matter. The (non-supernatural) concept of dimension is no different.
I wouldn't say so. A particle is just an identifiable thing, something which retains its identity over time.
Is there even the slightest shred of empirical evidence to suggest that any physical ''identifiable thing'' with less than 3 physical dimensions actually exists? It is one thing to postulate that an n greater than 3 or n less than 3 dimensional object *could* exist in theory and it is quite another to claim that it does. I would argue that there is no evidence (mathematics by itself cannot be evidence of anything) to suggest that 1 or 2 dimensional matter does exist or could exist. Even if a 1 or 2 dimensional object could exist we would have absolutely no way of perceiving/measuring it. So, from a scientific POV such matter would be irrelevant since the scientific method could not help you to learn anything about it. Four dimensional matter (4 physical dimensions: length, width, height, and strange) is more plausible since presumably we would be able to perceive at least part of it. However there is still no evidence of such matter.
As for Minkowski/Einsteinian spacetime, that is a useful but strictly mathematical construct that does not imply anything about the physical dimensions of matter. It is merely a way of looking at matter that incorporates what we think of as change (aka time). Just because time can be added on and called a "dimension" does not mean that you can arbitrarily add/subtract any number of physical dimensions to matter.
The ultimate survival scenario would be something along the lines of a chicxulub-sized meteor/comet strike, nuclear/biological war, a plague, or an extra-terrestrial attack, a food-chain collapse, or some combination of these. The first consideration in such a scenario is to be one of the survivors in the first place. Most people would be dead. An intentional attack, whether from a foreign government, terrorists, or aliens would almost certainly be aimed at the most populated areas. Basically major cities. Just living in any sufficiently remote area would save you from most attacks that are not aimed at destroying either the planet itself (i.e. a neutronium or micro black hole "bomb", food-chain collapsing device or ultra-lethal bioweapon) or all life. Other than a ready to launch self-sufficient spaceship and sufficient advanced warning, there is obviously no defense against destruction of the planet itself and not much defense against any plan specifically designed to destroy all life on earth. A sufficiently advanced alien civilization with the technology for interstellar travel would probably also have the technology to simply sterilize the earth, but maybe not.
If you do not live in a remote area, then to survive the inital blast wave and immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack with high levels of ambient radiation and airborne radioactive particulates you would need some kind of bunker or underground home to shield you from the initial blast and to provide a filtered air supply (which standard home construction is simply not designed to do). If you live on the coast a sufficiently deep underwater habitat may serve the same function and provide even greater protection from the searing heat wave of a nuclear blast.
If you live far enough outside the blast radius that the initial pressure wave is not strong enough to destroy your structure then an above ground habitat with a fully sealed, pressurized, filtered and/or scrubbed environment and lead-lined and/or water-filled walls might be sufficient initial protection. Ideally you would also want an air-lock with decontamination system, a lead-lined space suit and full-faced respirator so that you could venture outside from time to time. The same system would also serve you well in a biological warfare or plague scenario. Perhaps a geodesic dome or igloo built entirely out of lead bricks?
For a near extinction event, maintaining a long term source of electricity would be very important for many reasons. Perhaps the most important would be to power a laptop computer. There would of course be no internet, but you could maintain an up to date copy of vast knowledge sources such as wikipedia, real encyclopedias, and how-stuff-works on the hard drive, the knowledge from which would be indispensable for both long and short term survival. Also a full set of paper encyclopedias would be priceless.
Unless you have the knowledge to find, extract, and refine underground oil reserves (or make bio-diesel) every internal combustion engine on the planet suddenly becomes nothing more than scrap metal. At first glance photovoltaic cells would seem to be an excellent power source in a post-apoc world, but they have some pretty serious problems. The most important of which is that they have a finite and relatively short lifespan. Usually no more than 20 years and often less. They are also extremely fragile and difficult to repair if damaged. Especially with the tools and conditions in a post-apoc world. To have lasting value as post-apoc tech you would have to be able to manufacture them which involves being able to produce silicon wafers and P-N junctions. Essentially you are talking about diode/transistor and overall semiconductor manufacturing methods. OTOH photovoltaics may be the only practical power source in the event of serious environmental contamination where to leave your habitat at all means death. By the time the PV panel dies in 10-20 years it may be safe to venture outside.
Wind and water and steam generators used either as a direct power
Furthermore, HGSTâ¦has been a price aggressor in the HDD market, so its being taken over by WDC is an incremental positive for both WDC and STX.
IOW, Western Digital is spending 4.3 Billion dollars so that they can buy out their biggest competitor and raise their prices? Ruh Roh. If WD kills the nifty 3TB 7K3000 (which can already by had for $170 shipped when on sale) and doubles the price of their upcoming 3TB Caviar Black I'm gonna cry. There goes their only even somewhat reliable competitor in the large capacity 7200 rpm market segment. Now they will have a monopoly on that type of drive. If you want a 7200 rpm cutting-edge areal-density drive that isn't gonna break in the first few months it will now be WD or the highway. Samsung makes some very reliable drives, but they have given up on 7200 rpm spindle speeds and aren't even close to cutting edge in terms of high areal density + capacity drives.
America is founded on ideals of freedom, democracy, and that all men are created equal. Americans aren't unified by respect/fear for a king, like Syria, or a dictatorship, like the Soviet Union was, or love of Empire, like Great Britain was. We are unified by great ideals. And as long as we remember them, we'll be ok. It's only when we get off those, and start acting like an empire, or in fear, or dominion, that we run into trouble.
Some of us believe in freedom and liberty as they are defined in the dictionary. While others, perhaps even the majority of Americans, are united by "me, first", "me, at any price", and "don't like to think too much". Most Americans don't have any idea what liberty actually is and if they did they almost certainly wouldn't want it.
The TSA is proof that safety trumps liberty for most Ameicans. As long as you never break the rules and are patriotic (as in not insulting your divine leader aka president) a tyranny tends to be a very safe place. Police states boast low crime and order and that is what most people and certainly most Americans value above all else. Liberty is just a word to them and the pledge of allegiance has nothing to do with believing in liberty. It is just something we were all trained (aka forced) to learn when we were little kids by our government. Every country has something like that. The Soviet Union did too.
Actually America was founded by a bunch of libertarian revolutionaries who would be regarded as dangerous terrorists today. And yes they were, all of them, what we would now call libertarians. The document those terrorists wrote up, their manifesto, became our constitution. A strict, non-creative interpretation of said document portrays a very free society with a very tiny government which the vast majority of Americans would not support. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the government we have today. Pretending that it does may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but that does not make it true.
The founders would definitely support a bloody revolution at this point in time, a spilling of the blood of both patriots and tyrants. They had no illusions that a piece of paper (their manifesto) or majority rule about which tyrant to select would infallibly prevent the growth of the very same kind of tyranny they fought against. They knew that their noble experiment might not last forever and that one day it may be necessary for citizen-terrorists to once again pull their muskets from their closets and start putting holes in people to regain the freedom for which their contemporaries had sacrificed so much.
"Checks and balances" my ass. Did you miss all the anti-Iraqi war demonstrations before the war? There are no checks and balances. The different branches of the government work together. Even the idea that there are "branches" per se is a sham. It is not in any of their interests to reduce their own powers. And there is the whole professional courtesy aspect. Think of the business world. Especially a market where there are only 3 large competitors. They can either collude and keep their prices as high as they would be if they each had a monopoly or they could get into price wars until their prices are so low they can barely stay in business. In the real world sometimes they can manage to get together and agree to keep prices high for all of their benefit and sometimes they can't. It is the same with governments with "seperation of powers" except that no formal agreement is necessary to collude. They know it is not in their interest to screw each other over, especially when, say, a supreme court justice owes favors to the executive and legislative branches (which often function as one anyway) which is nearly always the case.
What about the freedom to exceed arbitrarily set speed limits? Surely that can't be popular in the UK. Actually the real problem is the one you always have with speed cameras. We have them too. They make law enforcement too efficient. For murders that would be great, but the main reason people tolerate (often ridiculously low) speed limits is that the enforcement was always spotty. First you get speed cameras. Then you get GPS speed trackers in your car which automatically contact the authorities and either send you a ticket in the mail or automatically deduct the fine from your bank account if you exceed the posted limit even for a millisecond. That's just not the kind of world I want to live in. I would guess that eventually it would all be done electronically. Your car will be physically unable to exceed the electronically posted limit for any reason. Only emergency vehicles and police cars will be exempt. Tampering with your transponder would obviously be punishable by various draconian measures.
ok, do you REALLY think that if enough people in America got together to form a revolt, and they actually had enough people to win........do you really think that they wouldn't be able to also win an election?
So you believe that a revolution requires a majority? haha. That's a good one. Go ahead and read about some actual revolutions. Like say that of Batista in Cuba. It does requires quite a few armed people willing to kill and willing to die, but not even close to the number that would be necessary to win an election. Generally the majority will support candidates who support tyranny as long as they don't actually call it that. Don't forget that Adolf Hitler was voted in via a legit democratic election. Democracy is not a defense against tyranny. Or at least not a very good one.
Sigh. Isn't this supposed to be a site for geeks and techies? IR is not invisible to the cameras and neither are you. It would be much better to make the laser device itself invisible and yourself as well while you are at it. Or do something genuinely geeky and build a small autonomous robot with a mounted laser (no need to make it IR) that is trained to systematically recognize and disable the cameras. The robot could either be a helicopter drone or a ground based buggy or walker. For power you could use photovoltaic+battery or an atomic battery (i.e. a betavoltaic) for a power source.
The majority of the government cameras in the UK are traffic monitoring cameras, used to spot traffic jams and introduce variable speed limits or recommend diversions on motorways, but apparently they are an infringement of our civil liberties too.
Bah. Those idiotic indexes are nearly always wrong. If you want to know if a given country is a nice place to live just go live there for at least a few months and make up your own mind. Assuming the airlines and/or the TSA will let you.
Having lived as an expat in a number of countries in Asia and South America I can confirm that the US is most definitely *not* the best country to live in. It is not the most free anymore. It doesn't have the lowest taxes anymore. It is probably not even the best place to start a business anymore if only because doing so is so much more expensive than in many other countries. In the US you generally already have to be fairly rich to start a business. Although the prices you get for your product/service may be higher your costs will also be higher.
One of the best things about non-US countries is that (leaving aside the UK for the moment) the people are usually nicer. Although Brits are definitely not nicer than Americans at least they are often smarter, less ignorant, and more polite.
What people don't seem to understand is that muslims control countries and rule them according to their laws, and those laws are contrary to basic human rights.
And that is different from the U.S. how exactly? America is not exactly a pinnacle of human rights these days.
Convicted criminals, yes. The moral problem with that would be... what exactly?
Well it depends what they did. If their only crime was being rude to a police officer then I think there would be a very big moral problem. If the accused had been found guilty of killing a bunch of school children based on overwhelming evidence, not so much. What you should have said was convicted murderers. Not convicted criminals. The moral justification for capital punishment in the US is an eye for an eye. So it cannot be used except for the crime of murder. If you kill someone then you can't really object to someone killing you. OTOH, I don't think our government has any business murdering people even if that murder is justified. If the victim's family was given the option to legally kill the murderer though I wouldn't have a problem with that. As long as the method of murder were "humane" enough to be used on animals. IOW, no state sanctioned torture.
You're a Brit? Wow. You just completely changed my view of British law enforcement. Forget about the law then. Isn't it impolite to track citizens without specific evidence that they are guilty of something? How can you do that and still be an English gentleman? I didn't think you blokes were quite as thuggish as American cops. I guess a lot of Brits will be laughing at me now.
Right. Because it is a big secret to the subject that he is under investigation. The FBI exists to serve the public. It is a right of the public to know whether they have some kind of specific evidence against the guy or whether they are just on some kind of fishing expedition. All they would have to say is "we have specific evidence in this case". They don't have to reveal exactly what that is at this point. Although eventually they should be required to. The fact is the FBI should be required to have a warrant for this kind of intrusive surveillance. They shouldn't be able to randomly pick people on a whim.
So if a private individual put a tracker on your car and you kept it would you be guilty of theft? That's some strange logic you've got there. I don't care what the law says. That's insane.
Of course. I see a much larger problem with asking the person on whom it was used. Every person I've ever detained or arrested will swear to you that they were innocent. Half of them will probably tell you I curb-stomped a puppy and ate an infant right before I arrested them.
Ah. So you are a cop. That explains everything. No point in debating with you then. American cops are simple minded thugs almost without exception. The laws you blindly enforce make you the criminals. And not a single one of you could think in a philosophical manner (aka for yourselves) if your life depended on it. Which lucky for you it doesn't. The only good cop is a dead one. Please DIAF. Thank you.
If I were to plant audio and video bugs throughout your house and car would that be just an "inconvenience" to you? A pinhole camera with a wireless transmitter in your bedroom and bathroom? The video later posted on the internet? Not a problem for you right? After all it didn't prevent you from going anywhere or doing anything. It won't prevent you from getting a job or delay you from an important meeting. Your house and car both pieces of property which are in a public location are just being "tracked".
Not if their investigations was part of a wider, deeper project to root out Muslim terrorists hiding in the US, plotting their next attack innocent civilians.
Note that the FBI has not claimed anything of the kind. So you just want to give them the benefit of the doubt? How about giving that to the victim instead? Besides this wider, deeper project may be a dragnet that covers hundreds of thousands of middle eastern or middle eastern looking Americans with absolutely no probable cause and no evidence of wrong-doing. Do you hate the US constitution so much? What's it like to be so afraid of your own shadow all the time that you would welcome government thugs entering so deeply into our lives? Oh wait... We wouldn't be investigated because we are of European descent and look it.
Seems sensible to check him out. He's probably okay, but really, it might make sense to just be sure about this as long as they can do it in a manner that isn't going to inconvenience the poor man.
What do the words "Police State" mean to you? He was under active surveillance. That is more than just an "inconvenience". Are you an LEO of some kind? Just curious. The kind of world you envision as reasonable is not one that I would want to live in.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine that there are 2-dimensional people living in this 2d world.
How am I supposed to do that? What is it that you are picturing exactly? A 2 dimensional person would be a person which could only be measured on 2 axes, entirely without depth. In my mind I can imagine a person or object and decrease the Z axis of a 3 dimensional object until the object disappears, but I cannot imagine any physical object with only 2 dimensions. The closest I could get would be too imagine a shadow projected onto a 3 dimensional object. But without the 3 dimensional object I cannot imagine it.
The shadow would be defined by a lack of photons (or EM waves) bouncing off that part of the 3 dimensional object. Photons are the only kind of matter which is said to be entirely massless. But the massless nature of photons is contradicted by certain experiments in which they do seem to possess mass, albeit a very, very small one. We are not even certain that a photon is a real particle per se due to the wave/particle nature of EM waves. The existence of shadows (or even the circle of a flashlight beam reflecting off a 3d object) is not evidence for 2 dimensional matter.
I think that our assumption that space is 3 dimensional is a bit self centered. If we lived in 2 dimensional space, we'd never be able to consider or access the 3'rd dimension.
That is a religious idea. Not a scientific one. According to science no object can exist with only length and width and, no, you cannot imagine one either. By definition such an object would in a very real sense not exist at all. It would be matter without mass: a contradiction in terms. So the first problem with your analogy is that neither you nor anything else could live in 2 dimensions. You would have to postulate a life form without any mass at all.
The idea of empty space being physically "warped" is also not science. It is certainly not based on any evidence. Nor can you even really imagine it. The meaning of the word "warp" only validly applies to matter, to objects. You ask us to imagine a physical object like a record even though that has no relevance to n-dimensional space. The record is just another 3 dimensional object. You can bend and twist it or even break it or melt it, but no matter what you do to it it will still have exactly 3 physical dimensions when you measure it.
There is another problem. Math is a closed system. It cannot in itself be used to prove anything in the outside world. It can predict certain quantitative relationships in the outside world, but you still need actual experiment to validate a theory or model. Also just because time can be represented mathematically as equal to a physical dimension does not mean that it actually is equal to a physical dimension. Time itself is just a concept which represents changing matter. If all matter were motionless there would be no way to even measure this thing you refer to as "time". In a very important sense it does not even exist. For this reason, although it may be possible mathematically to go backwards in time, in the real world the idea is nonsensical.
Not necessarily. To visualize increasing dimensions, think of a sheet of paper. Two dimensions. Imagine it being progressively crumpled, until it becomes a paper ball. Now it's three dimensional.
That doesn't help. A sheet of paper is very much 3 dimensional, which is a shame since it would probably be a lot cheaper if it were actually massless. When you crumple a sheet of paper it does not become 4 dimensional. It just becomes crumpled. You have merely changed its shape, not the fundamental nature of reality.
How about using a valid analogy: start by imagining a massless 2 dimensional object, one with only length and width, but no depth at all. Then add depth. Still doesn't help you to imagine going from an object with length, width, and height to an object with length, width, height, and [some other measurement that we cannot even imagine] though.
Hasn't time dilation been demonstrated experimentally? I agree that n-dimensional FantasyLand is nothing but a tribute to our imaginations and will certainly not move science forward any more than other pseudo-science or religious beliefs will, but the mathematics of both special and general relativity has real experimental evidence in its favor. The equations have great predictive value, but they cannot explain the nature of the universe per se (except quantitatively within certain constraints). Only experiment can do that.
I don't think the problem is with the mathematics per se. The problem is with the flights of fantasy that the mathematician-scientists are using to try to explain the equations. That is a leap of logic that they cannot make without evidence. They only err when they use far-fetched analogies (which in no way genuinely reflect the math) to try to explain the math.
Just because a concept exists in mathematics does not imply that it also exists out there in the real world. This is why we have this thing called "science". To connect FantasyLand with Reality. Also there is a concept that "breaks down". The concept of n-dimensional matter where n does not equal 3. 1 dimension (a point or line) can exist in mathematics. It cannot exist in reality. 2 dimensions (a line or plane) can exist in mathematics. It cannot exist in the real world. Physical dimensions (length, width, and height) are just aspects of matter. They have no reality apart from the matter that they are describing. Color is another example of something that cannot exist without matter. The (non-supernatural) concept of dimension is no different.
I wouldn't say so. A particle is just an identifiable thing, something which retains its identity over time.
Is there even the slightest shred of empirical evidence to suggest that any physical ''identifiable thing'' with less than 3 physical dimensions actually exists? It is one thing to postulate that an n greater than 3 or n less than 3 dimensional object *could* exist in theory and it is quite another to claim that it does. I would argue that there is no evidence (mathematics by itself cannot be evidence of anything) to suggest that 1 or 2 dimensional matter does exist or could exist. Even if a 1 or 2 dimensional object could exist we would have absolutely no way of perceiving/measuring it. So, from a scientific POV such matter would be irrelevant since the scientific method could not help you to learn anything about it. Four dimensional matter (4 physical dimensions: length, width, height, and strange) is more plausible since presumably we would be able to perceive at least part of it. However there is still no evidence of such matter.
As for Minkowski/Einsteinian spacetime, that is a useful but strictly mathematical construct that does not imply anything about the physical dimensions of matter. It is merely a way of looking at matter that incorporates what we think of as change (aka time). Just because time can be added on and called a "dimension" does not mean that you can arbitrarily add/subtract any number of physical dimensions to matter.
The ultimate survival scenario would be something along the lines of a chicxulub-sized meteor/comet strike, nuclear/biological war, a plague, or an extra-terrestrial attack, a food-chain collapse, or some combination of these. The first consideration in such a scenario is to be one of the survivors in the first place. Most people would be dead. An intentional attack, whether from a foreign government, terrorists, or aliens would almost certainly be aimed at the most populated areas. Basically major cities. Just living in any sufficiently remote area would save you from most attacks that are not aimed at destroying either the planet itself (i.e. a neutronium or micro black hole "bomb", food-chain collapsing device or ultra-lethal bioweapon) or all life. Other than a ready to launch self-sufficient spaceship and sufficient advanced warning, there is obviously no defense against destruction of the planet itself and not much defense against any plan specifically designed to destroy all life on earth. A sufficiently advanced alien civilization with the technology for interstellar travel would probably also have the technology to simply sterilize the earth, but maybe not.
If you do not live in a remote area, then to survive the inital blast wave and immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack with high levels of ambient radiation and airborne radioactive particulates you would need some kind of bunker or underground home to shield you from the initial blast and to provide a filtered air supply (which standard home construction is simply not designed to do). If you live on the coast a sufficiently deep underwater habitat may serve the same function and provide even greater protection from the searing heat wave of a nuclear blast.
If you live far enough outside the blast radius that the initial pressure wave is not strong enough to destroy your structure then an above ground habitat with a fully sealed, pressurized, filtered and/or scrubbed environment and lead-lined and/or water-filled walls might be sufficient initial protection. Ideally you would also want an air-lock with decontamination system, a lead-lined space suit and full-faced respirator so that you could venture outside from time to time. The same system would also serve you well in a biological warfare or plague scenario. Perhaps a geodesic dome or igloo built entirely out of lead bricks?
For a near extinction event, maintaining a long term source of electricity would be very important for many reasons. Perhaps the most important would be to power a laptop computer. There would of course be no internet, but you could maintain an up to date copy of vast knowledge sources such as wikipedia, real encyclopedias, and how-stuff-works on the hard drive, the knowledge from which would be indispensable for both long and short term survival. Also a full set of paper encyclopedias would be priceless.
Unless you have the knowledge to find, extract, and refine underground oil reserves (or make bio-diesel) every internal combustion engine on the planet suddenly becomes nothing more than scrap metal. At first glance photovoltaic cells would seem to be an excellent power source in a post-apoc world, but they have some pretty serious problems. The most important of which is that they have a finite and relatively short lifespan. Usually no more than 20 years and often less. They are also extremely fragile and difficult to repair if damaged. Especially with the tools and conditions in a post-apoc world. To have lasting value as post-apoc tech you would have to be able to manufacture them which involves being able to produce silicon wafers and P-N junctions. Essentially you are talking about diode/transistor and overall semiconductor manufacturing methods. OTOH photovoltaics may be the only practical power source in the event of serious environmental contamination where to leave your habitat at all means death. By the time the PV panel dies in 10-20 years it may be safe to venture outside.
Wind and water and steam generators used either as a direct power
Furthermore, HGSTâ¦has been a price aggressor in the HDD market, so its being taken over by WDC is an incremental positive for both WDC and STX.
IOW, Western Digital is spending 4.3 Billion dollars so that they can buy out their biggest competitor and raise their prices? Ruh Roh. If WD kills the nifty 3TB 7K3000 (which can already by had for $170 shipped when on sale) and doubles the price of their upcoming 3TB Caviar Black I'm gonna cry. There goes their only even somewhat reliable competitor in the large capacity 7200 rpm market segment. Now they will have a monopoly on that type of drive. If you want a 7200 rpm cutting-edge areal-density drive that isn't gonna break in the first few months it will now be WD or the highway. Samsung makes some very reliable drives, but they have given up on 7200 rpm spindle speeds and aren't even close to cutting edge in terms of high areal density + capacity drives.
America is founded on ideals of freedom, democracy, and that all men are created equal. Americans aren't unified by respect/fear for a king, like Syria, or a dictatorship, like the Soviet Union was, or love of Empire, like Great Britain was. We are unified by great ideals. And as long as we remember them, we'll be ok. It's only when we get off those, and start acting like an empire, or in fear, or dominion, that we run into trouble.
Some of us believe in freedom and liberty as they are defined in the dictionary. While others, perhaps even the majority of Americans, are united by "me, first", "me, at any price", and "don't like to think too much". Most Americans don't have any idea what liberty actually is and if they did they almost certainly wouldn't want it.
The TSA is proof that safety trumps liberty for most Ameicans. As long as you never break the rules and are patriotic (as in not insulting your divine leader aka president) a tyranny tends to be a very safe place. Police states boast low crime and order and that is what most people and certainly most Americans value above all else. Liberty is just a word to them and the pledge of allegiance has nothing to do with believing in liberty. It is just something we were all trained (aka forced) to learn when we were little kids by our government. Every country has something like that. The Soviet Union did too.
Actually America was founded by a bunch of libertarian revolutionaries who would be regarded as dangerous terrorists today. And yes they were, all of them, what we would now call libertarians. The document those terrorists wrote up, their manifesto, became our constitution. A strict, non-creative interpretation of said document portrays a very free society with a very tiny government which the vast majority of Americans would not support. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the government we have today. Pretending that it does may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but that does not make it true.
The founders would definitely support a bloody revolution at this point in time, a spilling of the blood of both patriots and tyrants. They had no illusions that a piece of paper (their manifesto) or majority rule about which tyrant to select would infallibly prevent the growth of the very same kind of tyranny they fought against. They knew that their noble experiment might not last forever and that one day it may be necessary for citizen-terrorists to once again pull their muskets from their closets and start putting holes in people to regain the freedom for which their contemporaries had sacrificed so much.
"Checks and balances" my ass. Did you miss all the anti-Iraqi war demonstrations before the war? There are no checks and balances. The different branches of the government work together. Even the idea that there are "branches" per se is a sham. It is not in any of their interests to reduce their own powers. And there is the whole professional courtesy aspect. Think of the business world. Especially a market where there are only 3 large competitors. They can either collude and keep their prices as high as they would be if they each had a monopoly or they could get into price wars until their prices are so low they can barely stay in business. In the real world sometimes they can manage to get together and agree to keep prices high for all of their benefit and sometimes they can't. It is the same with governments with "seperation of powers" except that no formal agreement is necessary to collude. They know it is not in their interest to screw each other over, especially when, say, a supreme court justice owes favors to the executive and legislative branches (which often function as one anyway) which is nearly always the case.
What about the freedom to exceed arbitrarily set speed limits? Surely that can't be popular in the UK. Actually the real problem is the one you always have with speed cameras. We have them too. They make law enforcement too efficient. For murders that would be great, but the main reason people tolerate (often ridiculously low) speed limits is that the enforcement was always spotty. First you get speed cameras. Then you get GPS speed trackers in your car which automatically contact the authorities and either send you a ticket in the mail or automatically deduct the fine from your bank account if you exceed the posted limit even for a millisecond. That's just not the kind of world I want to live in. I would guess that eventually it would all be done electronically. Your car will be physically unable to exceed the electronically posted limit for any reason. Only emergency vehicles and police cars will be exempt. Tampering with your transponder would obviously be punishable by various draconian measures.
ok, do you REALLY think that if enough people in America got together to form a revolt, and they actually had enough people to win........do you really think that they wouldn't be able to also win an election?
So you believe that a revolution requires a majority? haha. That's a good one. Go ahead and read about some actual revolutions. Like say that of Batista in Cuba. It does requires quite a few armed people willing to kill and willing to die, but not even close to the number that would be necessary to win an election. Generally the majority will support candidates who support tyranny as long as they don't actually call it that. Don't forget that Adolf Hitler was voted in via a legit democratic election. Democracy is not a defense against tyranny. Or at least not a very good one.
Sigh. Isn't this supposed to be a site for geeks and techies? IR is not invisible to the cameras and neither are you. It would be much better to make the laser device itself invisible and yourself as well while you are at it. Or do something genuinely geeky and build a small autonomous robot with a mounted laser (no need to make it IR) that is trained to systematically recognize and disable the cameras. The robot could either be a helicopter drone or a ground based buggy or walker. For power you could use photovoltaic+battery or an atomic battery (i.e. a betavoltaic) for a power source.
The majority of the government cameras in the UK are traffic monitoring cameras, used to spot traffic jams and introduce variable speed limits or recommend diversions on motorways, but apparently they are an infringement of our civil liberties too.
Are you saying they are not?
Bah. Those idiotic indexes are nearly always wrong. If you want to know if a given country is a nice place to live just go live there for at least a few months and make up your own mind. Assuming the airlines and/or the TSA will let you.
Having lived as an expat in a number of countries in Asia and South America I can confirm that the US is most definitely *not* the best country to live in. It is not the most free anymore. It doesn't have the lowest taxes anymore. It is probably not even the best place to start a business anymore if only because doing so is so much more expensive than in many other countries. In the US you generally already have to be fairly rich to start a business. Although the prices you get for your product/service may be higher your costs will also be higher.
One of the best things about non-US countries is that (leaving aside the UK for the moment) the people are usually nicer. Although Brits are definitely not nicer than Americans at least they are often smarter, less ignorant, and more polite.
What people don't seem to understand is that muslims control countries and rule them according to their laws, and those laws are contrary to basic human rights.
And that is different from the U.S. how exactly? America is not exactly a pinnacle of human rights these days.
Convicted criminals, yes. The moral problem with that would be... what exactly?
Well it depends what they did. If their only crime was being rude to a police officer then I think there would be a very big moral problem. If the accused had been found guilty of killing a bunch of school children based on overwhelming evidence, not so much. What you should have said was convicted murderers. Not convicted criminals. The moral justification for capital punishment in the US is an eye for an eye. So it cannot be used except for the crime of murder. If you kill someone then you can't really object to someone killing you. OTOH, I don't think our government has any business murdering people even if that murder is justified. If the victim's family was given the option to legally kill the murderer though I wouldn't have a problem with that. As long as the method of murder were "humane" enough to be used on animals. IOW, no state sanctioned torture.
You're a Brit? Wow. You just completely changed my view of British law enforcement. Forget about the law then. Isn't it impolite to track citizens without specific evidence that they are guilty of something? How can you do that and still be an English gentleman? I didn't think you blokes were quite as thuggish as American cops. I guess a lot of Brits will be laughing at me now.
Right. Because it is a big secret to the subject that he is under investigation. The FBI exists to serve the public. It is a right of the public to know whether they have some kind of specific evidence against the guy or whether they are just on some kind of fishing expedition. All they would have to say is "we have specific evidence in this case". They don't have to reveal exactly what that is at this point. Although eventually they should be required to. The fact is the FBI should be required to have a warrant for this kind of intrusive surveillance. They shouldn't be able to randomly pick people on a whim.
So if a private individual put a tracker on your car and you kept it would you be guilty of theft? That's some strange logic you've got there. I don't care what the law says. That's insane.
Of course. I see a much larger problem with asking the person on whom it was used. Every person I've ever detained or arrested will swear to you that they were innocent. Half of them will probably tell you I curb-stomped a puppy and ate an infant right before I arrested them.
Ah. So you are a cop. That explains everything. No point in debating with you then. American cops are simple minded thugs almost without exception. The laws you blindly enforce make you the criminals. And not a single one of you could think in a philosophical manner (aka for yourselves) if your life depended on it. Which lucky for you it doesn't. The only good cop is a dead one. Please DIAF. Thank you.
If I were to plant audio and video bugs throughout your house and car would that be just an "inconvenience" to you? A pinhole camera with a wireless transmitter in your bedroom and bathroom? The video later posted on the internet? Not a problem for you right? After all it didn't prevent you from going anywhere or doing anything. It won't prevent you from getting a job or delay you from an important meeting. Your house and car both pieces of property which are in a public location are just being "tracked".
Not if their investigations was part of a wider, deeper project to root out Muslim terrorists hiding in the US, plotting their next attack innocent civilians.
Note that the FBI has not claimed anything of the kind. So you just want to give them the benefit of the doubt? How about giving that to the victim instead? Besides this wider, deeper project may be a dragnet that covers hundreds of thousands of middle eastern or middle eastern looking Americans with absolutely no probable cause and no evidence of wrong-doing. Do you hate the US constitution so much? What's it like to be so afraid of your own shadow all the time that you would welcome government thugs entering so deeply into our lives? Oh wait... We wouldn't be investigated because we are of European descent and look it.
Seems sensible to check him out. He's probably okay, but really, it might make sense to just be sure about this as long as they can do it in a manner that isn't going to inconvenience the poor man.
What do the words "Police State" mean to you? He was under active surveillance. That is more than just an "inconvenience". Are you an LEO of some kind? Just curious. The kind of world you envision as reasonable is not one that I would want to live in.