Inventing ways for crowd control is almost like admitting that the "powers that be" recongnize that people do not like what they do and flat-out expect dissent on a wide scale. The fact that these devices are actually made proves that not only do they expect it, but they don't care about the reasons behind the dissent, and only want to control it. It's this kind of mentality that has caused foriegn terrorism to blossim.
Whomever approves of this device with either a signature or funding is basically saying: "We know people don't like us or the things we do. We know you will try and protest and you know what? We don't give a flying fuck; here have some radiation in your eyeball."
The only role the moon might play in the actual Mars launch would be as a gravitational slingshot.
You don't really get a gravitational boost from the Moon when leaving Earth. The Moon is in enough of Earth's sphere of influence that you will waste fuel trying to align to the Moon's plane than just trying a direct hoffman transfer to Mars.
However, if you are already on the Moon, you get a huge boost in fuel effeciency by escaping the Moon Apollo style and fall back towards Earth. When you are falling towards Earth, the spacecraft will pick up velocity. This adds potential energy to the fuel. The faster the velocity, the more delta velocity you get from the same amount of burn time. As the ship reachest its lowest point in Earth orbit, a short burn will send you all the way out to Mars. You can also use small burns to amplify the Earth swing by to get drastic plane changes and all sorts of cheap long range maneuvars.
Burning for energy gain while you are fast is a very important concept for optimality, and easy to see with simple equations. E = V*V/2 - GM / r so: dE/dV = V shows that this derivative is PROPORTIONAL to velocity. Quick example:
The Earth orbits the sun at about 30 km/s. If you were somehow able to do a burn at 40 km/s (relative to the sun) instead of 30 km/s (relative to the sun), a fixed delta-V would give you 33% more energy gain.
It seems to me that modern news outlets are far too obsessed with presenting a "fair and balanced" viewpoint. Sometimes information doesn't have to be presented with a neat and comprehensive list of counter arguments.
Modern news outlets are far too obsessed with presenting the appearance of a "fair and balanced" viewpoint. In reality they don't give a shit and will present whatever supports an agenda. It doesn't matter that it supports an agenda as long as no one figures that part out.
The product is not DRMed, the music files you choose to place on it are. I have 4 DAPs. Cowen Audio X5, ipod 4g, ipod 5g, and an iriver. Just because the device supports drm, doesn't mean it imposes it on you.
I hate frivolous lawsuits as much as the next honest bloke, but having all ipod owners unite and sue Doug Morris for defamation would be worth the trouble. He just called us all thieves without proof.
So far none of the examples succeeded on their own merits.
While you have a partial point, individual success is not what Microsoft is about. They are about complete brand control. If your point was 100% true and Microsoft was a sum of its individual successes or failures, Microsoft would not be one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Look around you at most of the people you may work with in IT. How many of them are social creatures, going out and partying on weekends etc? Yes, it's a bad stereotype, that computer geeks are antisocial misfits, but all stereotypes come from truth.
I'm not trying to be a dick here, but not everyone likes to party and go out. I go clubbing a lot personally. I even DJ on the side quite a bit in my town so I'm very familar with the "scene". I work with a lot of people that are geeks, and I used to even play entirely too much quake and warcraft 2 back in the day. I thought some of my fellow co-workers could use a night out. So I invited 4 of them to come out with my friends and I. Only 2 showed up, and you could tell they didn't belong.
They didn't belong not because they didn't have expensive or nice clothes on, not because they projected zero confidence, not because they didn't really like the music, not because they weren't drinking, or not even because they weren't flirting with women. They didn't belong because they didn't want to be there. They thanked me for the evening and said they had a good time, but I could tell they didn't. Monday morning they were back to their normal routine chatting about video games and deals at Frys.
It occured to me then that they have their own lives and I used to think that they were just too shy to get out and have a good time like I do. Then it dawned on me that they like their lives just fine and didn't want to apologize for it.
Look around a college campus during class change. How many of those people have a phone attached to their head, completely ignoring all the real people around them? Sure they're connected to another person at that moment, but they're cut off from the physical world they're walking through almost entirely.
So? I'm on my cell phone a lot both voice and text. It helps me keep up with a lot more people than I ever could if I didn't have that piece of technology. Does that not make me more connected with people? I have a lot of friends that don't live in the same part of town or even in the same city, and I only get to see them on the weekends about twice a month. I talk with them on the phone all the time. We arrange get togethers with text message and e-mail chains. I don't know how the hell I'd keep up with it all if I had to rely on just a single phone attached to a wall in my phone.
So what if I'm ignoring all the real people around me? I don't know them and they don't know me. I'd rather talk to the people I do know even if they are miles away.
As for the rest of the comment about gamers, like I said before, that's just how some people choose to live their lives. I'm pretty geeky myself but don't game nearly as much as I used to. Unless you count paintball, but it's the same damn thing. After I grew out of gaming a little bit I used to have this attitude of disent towards gamers, especially hardcore. I thought I was cooler than them just because they didn't get out and enjoy life like I do. But as I mentioned before, my attitude has since changed. We all have our hobbies. Who's to say one is better than the other? No one. Pick the life you like to live and live it. Fuck what everyone else says and fuck what Bill O'Riely says.
I don't think he has a point, I think he is missing the point. Technology can be used to make the world smaller and connect more humans. I wouldn't get to see and hang out with half the humans I do if it weren't for technology.
I think technology brings more people together than it doesn't. With the exception of TV. Even games like WoW bring a lot of people who would probably just watch TV instead into a social enviroment. Music is technology, and made from technology. And that brings together HUNDREDS of people in close proximity every weekend. We get together and listen to bad ass music and dance. It's brilliant and I wouldn't want to live with out it. But if you call foul on gaming technology, you can't call foul on music technology. They both bring people together.
This was pretty sick. If you get hit by a tazer it's pretty impossible to stand up for at least a few minutes. That's the entire point of a tazer. They could have just handcuffed him and carried him out. I hope these "officers" go to jail.
I would never say never, but that really wouldn't happen. There would be so much energy required to spin a black hole that fast it would violate the plank density.
If there was a planet with a gravitational pull equivalent to a Black Hole, I bet they'd find it pretty quick.
Erm, if there was a planet with a gravitational pull equivalent to a black hole, it would for all intents and purposes be a black hole. A hunk of matter with enough mass to equal the gravitational pull of a black hole would also not emit light. It would also have to be incredibly spread out. It would also have enough mass to start fusion and would either be a gas giant or would collapse and form a star, and then collapse more as the fusion/fission process wouldn't be enough to keep it expanded and would become a black hole anyway, sigularity and all.
So yea... it would be easy to find by using gravity inferences, like how they find black holes anyway, but it would still not emit light.
Thank you,
Captain Semantic
I have a general disdain for the oil industry for greed and profiteering not for raping natural resources. But it's not really their fault, this is a free market. The world needs energy. They supply an energy form that is cheap and convienent. It is up to others to develop alternatives.
Makes perfect sense to me. Simple supply and demand. It's in OPEC's and the Oil Industries interest to create an artificial supply issue. Demand keeps going up and a simple way to increase profits is to create a scare about the supply. Hence peak oil and oil production issues.
Oil is still a terrible way to supply the world's energy though. I hope reports like this do not deter people from moving to alternative energy. I also seriously doubt it will have any impact on long term fuel prices.
and it STILL takes just as much actual energy to put anything in orbit...just it does so pathetically slowly.
This is just not true.
While it takes just as much energy to raise the apoapsis (highest point in an orbit) as it would with rockets, height is only one part of the orbital equation. You also must achieve the neccesary tangential velocity.
To use the ISS as an example, it has an apoapsis of around ~355 kilometers or ~210
miles and must achieve a tangential velocity of ~7,430 kilometers per second or 16500 miles per hour.
A counter balance in geo-synchronis orbit will be traveling the same speed as the Earth is rotating. But at each point in the cable will be traveling at the neccesary orbital speed for its given height.
You save a ton of energy when it comes to applying tangential velocity by stealing it from the Earth's rotational momentum.
So we'll never know how much damage they really caused? Then shouldn't the damage only be what is provable? If you can prove that X people downloaded the file, then you charge X *.70 cents. If you can't, you only charge.70 cents.
Chaos theory is not applied to crime, nor should it be to cival cases. If I hit you over the head with a baseball bat sending you into a coma for 4 weeks, I can be charged with a number of things. Assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, ect ect. I can not, however, be charged with crimes against humanity because in that intervening 4 weeks you may or may not have discovered the cure for cancer, or discovered a pratical way to develop free energy from cold fusion.
Which begs the question why can't they just split the countries up? I never even hear this an option. Iraq is divided. Ok so who cares? Take all the like minded people in region A and call them Assholia. Take all the like minded people in region B and call them Fucktardistan. Why do people try so hard to make it work. Split the factions up, divide the land up, and let them be angry neighbors, not angry countrymen.
From a semantics point of view, you are correct. The problem is that Bush uses "war" both in the semantics context (i.e. we are shooting them, they are shooting us) and in the legal context (i.e. Commander in Chief, broad war powers, etc.) Without that formal declaration, the legal context doesn't exist, and therefore the derivative powers don't exist.
I agree with you for most part, but what good is a declaration of war when we don't use it when we go to war? My point is that it hardly matters who declares what. It doesn't matter that the Congress did not pass a resolution of a formal declaration of war. Why? Three reasons:
Bush exercises whatever derivative powers he feels like under the guise of national security.
No one in congress is allowed to challenge the exercise of the derivative powers due to national security and secrecy. They aren't even allowed to know what's going on.
The only course of action the Congress can take at this point is to impeach the President for allowing #1 and #2 to happen.
Because #3 has not occurred, then that is pretty much the same as Congress passing a resolution for war. There is inherently no difference than formally declaring war and letting the war happen anyway. The entire point of the law for the formal declaration of war is to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. The fact that it happened anyway means that formally declaring war is pointless and unnecessary. Therefore we can be at war without declaring it.
Remember, it isn't just the Bush administration that is to blame for this war. It's every single Congressman and Congresswoman in both the House and the Senate who are too chickenshit to excercise the very checks and balances their jobs exist for. Therefore, ultimately the responsibility belongs to the American people for this war for not voting more responsible people into various offices. The fault belongs to the government. The responsibility to the people.
I don't think I was being clear enough and you've misunderstood my post. When I say silly piece of paper, I mean a bill passing a resolution for war. Not the consitution. When I say "get over it", I do not mean the war. I've never been a supporter of this debacle. What I meant is that people need to stop arguing over wether or not we've declared war. It doesn't matter if we declared "Cheese". We're still in the middle of a god damn war.
Oh that's been getting old since the Korean War. For fucks sake, it's a war. Was war officially declared? No. But let's say I walk up to you and punch you in the face. If you just fall down and don't hit back, well that's assault on my part. If you hit me back, that's a fight. Just because we didn't declare our intentions to fight, we still had a bloody fight.
War is when people kill eachother in an organized fashion. No piece of paper, silly declaration from congress, stamp, official gold star thingy, or anything is going to change that.
If there are men being ordered to kill other men by men in charge, it's a war.
Most of the voting population out there is misinformed, so what's the difference between uninformed? Lots of voters in 04 thought there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. The majority of voters also thought we found working WMD (keyword working, not that dodgey shit they actually did find) in Iraq. Lots of voters are flat out misinformed by various media news outlets, but that doesn't stop them from voting.
So to answer the submitters question; I say yes! Just because you ignore politics (tsk tsk) doesn't mean you are as uninformed as you think you are. And if you are completely uninformed, set aside 30 minutes and start typing names into google. Find out who the candidates are. Find their websites. Read the websites.
You can be bothered to submit to Ask Slashdot and subsequently read the comments. So you have no excuses that you can't set aside a measly half hour dedicated to this.
Sure we're a Republic, but that has very little to do with how our government works. In fact, all it means is that we don't have a king anymore.
Before calling me wrong in a very arrogant and obtuse manner you should do some of your own fact checking. A republic does not mean we don't lack a king. By that definition any government without a king is a republic. I'd be hard pressed to call the third reich a republic. No, we are a republic because we elect representatives of the people to represent the people when it comes to legislating the laws that govern us. We also elect those responsible for the execution of those laws. The fact that we elect our President, the fact that we elect our senate, our house, our state governers, our local majors, local sherrifs, local tax officers, local judges, ect ect the list goes on; makes us a republic. Not because we lack a monarchy.
Hey I know this country is messed up, but what kind of fucked up place do you work for? If that was some paranoid Orwellian example, then you have an exgeration problem.
If you work for the type of place, or the type of boss, who would fire you for abstaining to vote and/or voting differently then you should have quit long before the point of getting fired.
The ideal democracy would be a hybrid of represntation republic and true democracy.
For example, there might be a law in place that says the President can use military force for 30 days without congressional approval. After that, congress must approve. Sort of like it is today. Then after a period of 6 months, or perhaps a year depending on the issue, a public vote, much like an election, would be cast on the subject.
The ideal democracy would also allow for changes in its election process that reflect the will of the people.
The ideal democracy would allow the people to impeach its leaders at all levels of the government. Ours only allows this process at certain levels of the government. For higher levels, impeachment must be started and carried about by those in power. A true breach of a government by the people for the people.
The ideal democracy would be composed of people who actually cared. Would be composed of an educated mass of people who were taught to ignore distraction and cheap marketing gimmicks. Who would see guile and sweet talk from miles away.
Clearly we are not the ideal democracy. Or a democracy at all. We are barely a represnted republic. If I asked you to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are a represented repubic and not a comercialized feudal system, you couldn't. No one could.
The justification to the congress and the American people for the Iraq war was WMD. Do you remember Colin Powel holding up supposed chemical weapon examples in front of the U.N.? He wasn't talking about Oil for Food violations. He wasn't talking about terrorism. He was talking about WMDs.
Did we break international law? Meh, that's really up for debate, like you point out. Did we pretty much lie to the world audience about our intentions? You betcha.
Slashdot Mirror
Whomever approves of this device with either a signature or funding is basically saying: "We know people don't like us or the things we do. We know you will try and protest and you know what? We don't give a flying fuck; here have some radiation in your eyeball."
However, if you are already on the Moon, you get a huge boost in fuel effeciency by escaping the Moon Apollo style and fall back towards Earth. When you are falling towards Earth, the spacecraft will pick up velocity. This adds potential energy to the fuel. The faster the velocity, the more delta velocity you get from the same amount of burn time. As the ship reachest its lowest point in Earth orbit, a short burn will send you all the way out to Mars. You can also use small burns to amplify the Earth swing by to get drastic plane changes and all sorts of cheap long range maneuvars.
Burning for energy gain while you are fast is a very important concept for optimality, and easy to see with simple equations. E = V*V/2 - GM / r so: dE/dV = V shows that this derivative is PROPORTIONAL to velocity. Quick example: The Earth orbits the sun at about 30 km/s. If you were somehow able to do a burn at 40 km/s (relative to the sun) instead of 30 km/s (relative to the sun), a fixed delta-V would give you 33% more energy gain.
For fuck's sake... stop saying Gootube.
Modern news outlets are far too obsessed with presenting the appearance of a "fair and balanced" viewpoint. In reality they don't give a shit and will present whatever supports an agenda. It doesn't matter that it supports an agenda as long as no one figures that part out.
The product is not DRMed, the music files you choose to place on it are. I have 4 DAPs. Cowen Audio X5, ipod 4g, ipod 5g, and an iriver. Just because the device supports drm, doesn't mean it imposes it on you.
I hate frivolous lawsuits as much as the next honest bloke, but having all ipod owners unite and sue Doug Morris for defamation would be worth the trouble. He just called us all thieves without proof.
I'm not trying to be a dick here, but not everyone likes to party and go out. I go clubbing a lot personally. I even DJ on the side quite a bit in my town so I'm very familar with the "scene". I work with a lot of people that are geeks, and I used to even play entirely too much quake and warcraft 2 back in the day. I thought some of my fellow co-workers could use a night out. So I invited 4 of them to come out with my friends and I. Only 2 showed up, and you could tell they didn't belong.
They didn't belong not because they didn't have expensive or nice clothes on, not because they projected zero confidence, not because they didn't really like the music, not because they weren't drinking, or not even because they weren't flirting with women. They didn't belong because they didn't want to be there. They thanked me for the evening and said they had a good time, but I could tell they didn't. Monday morning they were back to their normal routine chatting about video games and deals at Frys.
It occured to me then that they have their own lives and I used to think that they were just too shy to get out and have a good time like I do. Then it dawned on me that they like their lives just fine and didn't want to apologize for it.
So? I'm on my cell phone a lot both voice and text. It helps me keep up with a lot more people than I ever could if I didn't have that piece of technology. Does that not make me more connected with people? I have a lot of friends that don't live in the same part of town or even in the same city, and I only get to see them on the weekends about twice a month. I talk with them on the phone all the time. We arrange get togethers with text message and e-mail chains. I don't know how the hell I'd keep up with it all if I had to rely on just a single phone attached to a wall in my phone.
So what if I'm ignoring all the real people around me? I don't know them and they don't know me. I'd rather talk to the people I do know even if they are miles away.
As for the rest of the comment about gamers, like I said before, that's just how some people choose to live their lives. I'm pretty geeky myself but don't game nearly as much as I used to. Unless you count paintball, but it's the same damn thing. After I grew out of gaming a little bit I used to have this attitude of disent towards gamers, especially hardcore. I thought I was cooler than them just because they didn't get out and enjoy life like I do. But as I mentioned before, my attitude has since changed. We all have our hobbies. Who's to say one is better than the other? No one. Pick the life you like to live and live it. Fuck what everyone else says and fuck what Bill O'Riely says.
I don't think he has a point, I think he is missing the point. Technology can be used to make the world smaller and connect more humans. I wouldn't get to see and hang out with half the humans I do if it weren't for technology.
I think technology brings more people together than it doesn't. With the exception of TV. Even games like WoW bring a lot of people who would probably just watch TV instead into a social enviroment. Music is technology, and made from technology. And that brings together HUNDREDS of people in close proximity every weekend. We get together and listen to bad ass music and dance. It's brilliant and I wouldn't want to live with out it. But if you call foul on gaming technology, you can't call foul on music technology. They both bring people together.
This was pretty sick. If you get hit by a tazer it's pretty impossible to stand up for at least a few minutes. That's the entire point of a tazer. They could have just handcuffed him and carried him out. I hope these "officers" go to jail.
I would never say never, but that really wouldn't happen. There would be so much energy required to spin a black hole that fast it would violate the plank density.
Erm, if there was a planet with a gravitational pull equivalent to a black hole, it would for all intents and purposes be a black hole. A hunk of matter with enough mass to equal the gravitational pull of a black hole would also not emit light. It would also have to be incredibly spread out. It would also have enough mass to start fusion and would either be a gas giant or would collapse and form a star, and then collapse more as the fusion/fission process wouldn't be enough to keep it expanded and would become a black hole anyway, sigularity and all.
So yea... it would be easy to find by using gravity inferences, like how they find black holes anyway, but it would still not emit light. Thank you, Captain Semantic
I have a general disdain for the oil industry for greed and profiteering not for raping natural resources. But it's not really their fault, this is a free market. The world needs energy. They supply an energy form that is cheap and convienent. It is up to others to develop alternatives.
Oil is still a terrible way to supply the world's energy though. I hope reports like this do not deter people from moving to alternative energy. I also seriously doubt it will have any impact on long term fuel prices.
This is just not true.
While it takes just as much energy to raise the apoapsis (highest point in an orbit) as it would with rockets, height is only one part of the orbital equation. You also must achieve the neccesary tangential velocity.
To use the ISS as an example, it has an apoapsis of around ~355 kilometers or ~210 miles and must achieve a tangential velocity of ~7,430 kilometers per second or 16500 miles per hour.
A counter balance in geo-synchronis orbit will be traveling the same speed as the Earth is rotating. But at each point in the cable will be traveling at the neccesary orbital speed for its given height.
You save a ton of energy when it comes to applying tangential velocity by stealing it from the Earth's rotational momentum.
Chaos theory is not applied to crime, nor should it be to cival cases. If I hit you over the head with a baseball bat sending you into a coma for 4 weeks, I can be charged with a number of things. Assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, ect ect. I can not, however, be charged with crimes against humanity because in that intervening 4 weeks you may or may not have discovered the cure for cancer, or discovered a pratical way to develop free energy from cold fusion.
Which begs the question why can't they just split the countries up? I never even hear this an option. Iraq is divided. Ok so who cares? Take all the like minded people in region A and call them Assholia. Take all the like minded people in region B and call them Fucktardistan. Why do people try so hard to make it work. Split the factions up, divide the land up, and let them be angry neighbors, not angry countrymen.
I agree with you for most part, but what good is a declaration of war when we don't use it when we go to war? My point is that it hardly matters who declares what. It doesn't matter that the Congress did not pass a resolution of a formal declaration of war. Why? Three reasons:
Because #3 has not occurred, then that is pretty much the same as Congress passing a resolution for war. There is inherently no difference than formally declaring war and letting the war happen anyway. The entire point of the law for the formal declaration of war is to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. The fact that it happened anyway means that formally declaring war is pointless and unnecessary. Therefore we can be at war without declaring it.
Remember, it isn't just the Bush administration that is to blame for this war. It's every single Congressman and Congresswoman in both the House and the Senate who are too chickenshit to excercise the very checks and balances their jobs exist for. Therefore, ultimately the responsibility belongs to the American people for this war for not voting more responsible people into various offices. The fault belongs to the government. The responsibility to the people.
I don't think I was being clear enough and you've misunderstood my post. When I say silly piece of paper, I mean a bill passing a resolution for war. Not the consitution. When I say "get over it", I do not mean the war. I've never been a supporter of this debacle. What I meant is that people need to stop arguing over wether or not we've declared war. It doesn't matter if we declared "Cheese". We're still in the middle of a god damn war.
War is when people kill eachother in an organized fashion. No piece of paper, silly declaration from congress, stamp, official gold star thingy, or anything is going to change that.
If there are men being ordered to kill other men by men in charge, it's a war.
Get over it.
Speak of the devil: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/08/rumsfeld.ap /index.html
So to answer the submitters question; I say yes! Just because you ignore politics (tsk tsk) doesn't mean you are as uninformed as you think you are. And if you are completely uninformed, set aside 30 minutes and start typing names into google. Find out who the candidates are. Find their websites. Read the websites.
You can be bothered to submit to Ask Slashdot and subsequently read the comments. So you have no excuses that you can't set aside a measly half hour dedicated to this.
Before calling me wrong in a very arrogant and obtuse manner you should do some of your own fact checking. A republic does not mean we don't lack a king. By that definition any government without a king is a republic. I'd be hard pressed to call the third reich a republic. No, we are a republic because we elect representatives of the people to represent the people when it comes to legislating the laws that govern us. We also elect those responsible for the execution of those laws. The fact that we elect our President, the fact that we elect our senate, our house, our state governers, our local majors, local sherrifs, local tax officers, local judges, ect ect the list goes on; makes us a republic. Not because we lack a monarchy.
If you work for the type of place, or the type of boss, who would fire you for abstaining to vote and/or voting differently then you should have quit long before the point of getting fired.
Fuck that attitude, have some self respect.
For example, there might be a law in place that says the President can use military force for 30 days without congressional approval. After that, congress must approve. Sort of like it is today. Then after a period of 6 months, or perhaps a year depending on the issue, a public vote, much like an election, would be cast on the subject.
The ideal democracy would also allow for changes in its election process that reflect the will of the people.
The ideal democracy would allow the people to impeach its leaders at all levels of the government. Ours only allows this process at certain levels of the government. For higher levels, impeachment must be started and carried about by those in power. A true breach of a government by the people for the people.
The ideal democracy would be composed of people who actually cared. Would be composed of an educated mass of people who were taught to ignore distraction and cheap marketing gimmicks. Who would see guile and sweet talk from miles away.
Clearly we are not the ideal democracy. Or a democracy at all. We are barely a represnted republic. If I asked you to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are a represented repubic and not a comercialized feudal system, you couldn't. No one could.
The justification to the congress and the American people for the Iraq war was WMD. Do you remember Colin Powel holding up supposed chemical weapon examples in front of the U.N.? He wasn't talking about Oil for Food violations. He wasn't talking about terrorism. He was talking about WMDs.
Did we break international law? Meh, that's really up for debate, like you point out. Did we pretty much lie to the world audience about our intentions? You betcha.