Hee hee. Yes, but Martians have FAR different tastes from Earthlings. At the Martian Pizza Hut, popular toppings include spideroni and black olives. And at the Martian Taco Bell, they include extra E Coli in the tacos. Come to think of it, they do that in New Jersey, too.
In related news, Starbucks announced it is booking passage on the next flight to the Red Planet. "This enables us to continue our mission of providing coffee to the races of the solar system," said its CEO. "I look forward to asking our first Martian customer, 'Would you like a double mocha latte, Mr. Xzart'FooKniznak?'
And would you rather I blindly believe some random flamebait from Slashdot
Gosh, dear, those are the sweetest words you've ever whispered in my ear.
If anything, the flamers are the people who blindly believe what they're told by the military, then spout off against those not accepting the official line.
The easiest and quickest link for item 5) is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
but I have read in perhaps four or five sources about the volunteers being asked to remove glasses, so it's pretty well-known. Just Google Active Denial Systems and read a bit. Also note the wiki mention of people being burned by metal objects in their clothes.
I add a prediction to my previous comments. The cornea contains tiny and delicate nerves that govern feedback for the eye's lachrymal (tear) system. If these nerves are damaged by millimeter wave energy, it can result in eventual breakdown of the tearing system and the condition known as 'dry eye'. This in turn can cause major eye damage. Cataracts can result, and a lot of other nasty things. So though someone hit by mm wave RF might not go blind instantly, their eyes could still be damaged as an after-effect. The military experiments only seem to have looked for near-term injury and have ignored follow-on, as far as I can tell. The review panel for the experiments concludes misleadingly that the probability of thermal eye injury is low. However, 1) low is not non-zero, and 2) there can be other damage as I've noted, that does not show up immediately as thermal damage.
I've been following the development of millimeter wave weapons for a long time, and have expertise in RF, worked on satellite radar, and have a biology minor, with my college advisor having been a visual systems researcher. So my interest is neither casual nor uninformed. Rebutting item by item:
1) if someone is trapped in a crowd and is exposed, they may not have the option of turning away, and are likely to be in pain but will keep their eyes open. If you suddenly start burning and are in panic in a crowd, are you going to close your eyes and keep them closed while trying to escape from an unknown source of RF radiation? Most of the public wouldn't.
2) Would you be willing to stare into an open running microwave oven for ANY length of time? Do you know how much damage can be done to tissues in even 250 ms of applied energy? Depends on the field intensity of course.
3) "Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim." This is a lie. Corneal damage of this sort does not heal in 24 hours. Try scratching your eye with a sharp object and seeing how long it takes for even that simple damage to heal, much less cells damaged by being cooked briefly by high-power RF. Go read ophthalmic medical journals. I have. Go research cataracts then come back and rebut me.
4) I didn't say the damage to pregnant women came from being burned. However, pregnant women being burned by this weapon will have great induced stress. Tell me how easy or difficult it is to trigger a miscarriage. Go ahead.
5) "Or when the field intensity ends up with strong lobes they never planned on, because of metal in the urban environment accidently causing concentration."
Yes, I'm sure that they, with their 10 years and $40 million, never thought of that; it's remarkable that you, with a few minutes, $0, and no experience whatsoever with the weapon, could so easily spot such a flaw.
They DID think of that, and in their tests asked volunteers to remove metal-framed glasses to prevent accidental refraction and focusing of the RF to a higher beam intensity around the eyes. I'm sorry to see you believe everything you're spoonfed by the military's PR guys. Of course, governments never lie, so let's all just take everything they say without questioning it. As I said, my background includes RF and microwaves, and yes, I do spot BS without needing the backing of $40 million to do it.
Yes, no lasting effects unless you count the cataracts and blindness in people who accidently stare too long straight at the antenna, trying to figure out what is causing the pain and when it will stop, while it cooks sensitive eye tissues.
Also, the first time it is used at a US political protest, such as a GOP convention, there's going to be hell to pay.
Or used on crowds with pregnant women, and tiny children who don't know what is going on. (Of course, in Cheney's view, ethics and minorities, no great loss.)
Or when the field intensity ends up with strong lobes they never planned on, because of metal in the urban environment accidently causing concentration.
This thing is, basically, a weapon of mass torture.
The Dimona reactor, which Israel denies exists, is equally capable of producing Polonium. The very visibility of the murder method makes me think of a frame-up. And who would stand to gain by alienating Russia from the West prior to an attack on Iran, and whose motto is "By deception shall thou wage war", and who has a large history of false-flag operations?
I have to ask how the AWE can claim the source matches a Russian reactor when they do not have access to Dimona and hence cannot rule it out.
And it would be very easy to plant traces on jets in order to create a false trail in order to frame Putin and the Russians. Also, some Russian oil barons and Russian Mafia now live exiled in Israel, and they hate Putin for having cut them off from their exploitations and resource-grabs.
I'm not taking this murder as anything simply explained, having observed over and over that a lot in the news is not what it seems, and there are usually deeper realities.
I disagree on Dell. One of my LCD monitors went out yesterday, a 3-year old 1800FP, and guess what? They won't support it. Manufactured July 2003. And if you look on their site - they have NO MORE support visible for LCD monitors. Guess I'm not buying a 24 inch LCD from them anytime soon.
What is happening is that some consumer vendors seem to be discouraging repair and pushing for you to replace the whole unit with a newer one, and more profit for them. So, before you buy anything, verify vendor support as deeply as you can. I now avoid HP because of bad support, Sony because it has gone downhill, and Dell for the aforementioned.
In related news, 63,000 Microsoft employees returned their Zunes to the company store, saying, "I'll work for Microsoft, but there's a limit to how much torture I'll take."
I seem to remember it was Byte magazine, and the technology was called PaperBytes or something like that. Circa 1977. I'd go downstairs and check my stacks of old magazines for it, but I'm not too fond of rats.
This is a coda to the above. I believe the press has been incorrectly using the term 'Taser' generically for any electroshock device. Not all such devices are Tasers. The two main classes of devices are: 1) the Taser, which uses gas-propelled darts attached to wires. It shoots the darts at medium range and allows the user to apply a high-voltage burst across the electrode. Importantly - it also fires a burst of tiny unique-numbered ID confetti which identifies the shot. The news claims four or five shots at UCLA. If a true Taser was used, the total number should be verifiable.
However, contrast this with the generic electroshock devices used by many security officers. This class of devices are unregulated, are used at close range in contact with the target, and put a high voltage across two or four electrodes near or touching the target's body. But they are like holding a small arc discharge against the target and the side effects include burns. The power supplies are not well-regulated; the timing of the discharge is for as long as the user pulls the trigger. In the wrong hands these can cause cardiac arrest and heart fibrillation. They are a bad device and should be banned in my opinion because of the potential for abuse. Because they do not identify their use with confetti, they can be used as many times as the officer chooses to in the heat of the moment and no one will ever know afterward.
When they are used, there is a distinctive 'zap' sound from the air discharge (spark) and you can see the flash from the high voltage ionizing air. A true Taser won't, if the electrodes have penetrated the skin.
Because the Taser is relatively expensive per cartridge hence per shot, whereas the generic electroshock devices only use up battery charge, and becuse of the distinctive short zaps I heard on the video, I suspect UCLA rent-a cops were not using using Tasers but instead the cheap models, and the press is getting it wrong.
The 'tasers' were the small close-range type, not the dart with wires type. You could hear the air-discharge from close point-electrodes even over the cellphone video audio. The problem is, this type is not as current-controlled as the official Taser brand-name type, and it is easy for a fool to pass enough current into the chest to actually cause heart defibrillation if he applies it incautiously on the torso. These weapons should not have been in security guard hands. Hell, they should not even be available for sale unlicensed, but they are, widely. Plenty of cheap Asian import models all over, unregulated. Even been used by muggers and rapists.
Maybe it's time to start wearing copper-mesh-impregnated shirts if this is the wave of the future.
It is conceivable that the student could have been so shaken, fearful, and angry he literally could not stand up, that he would prefer to just sit there and try to recover. I've seen Taser demonstrations where people could not get up after even a short 1-2 second burst (a TV newswoman for example). Further, had the student had any sort of pre-existing medical condition such as a heart condition or weakness caused by (legal) medications, he certainly would have justified in not responding to the 'get up' demands. Finally, by the third time he'd been Tasered, he is likely to have been quite weak and shaky regardless. Judging by the level of his repeated screams, I'd estimate that his heart rate accelerated a lot and he was weak with systemic shock. Long ago, when I was chased and shot at the first few times, I trembled from the adrenal rush and got weak and shaky too. This kid went through a combat experience, in effect.
Failure to show a piece of paper is no justification for the brutality shown. There was utterly no justifiable reason for the patrolmen to not have handled this in a more humane way. The school deserves whatever financial justice the UCLA alumni choose to visit upon them for hiring dumb thugs to 'protect' the students. Do not donate when solicited by UCLA. Make them hurt.
The video was the sickest thing I've witnessed recently, unless you count watching parts of the movie "Saw".
You realize this is the Holy Grail for the Hooters chain. No longer need they have to have guilty consciences about the millions of now-wingless chickens they massacred just so beer-drinking guys can stare at great boobs, while eating Spicy Buffalo Wings.
"R2D2, I don't know what's gotten into you! Stop all those whistling noises! I'm never going to take you anywhere anymore! Want some Ritalin? What do you mean, Princess Leia needs our help? "
Well, I once tried to make musical shorts out of Spandex. But the first time I tried to pop out a note, the shorts blew up and I ended in the hospital with a broken groin. Now I'm horribly disfigured and have to make a living as a Vista programmer at Microsoft.
Waiter! I'll have a human, lettuce, and tomato sandwich! On toast. And a glass of 30-weight Pennzoil, no ice. And snap it up, the service here is terrible! Move those gears, you slackerbot !
The TSA goons will now immediately ban diet coke and Mentos from flights. And if you've been drinking diet coke and eating Mentos, they'll stomach pump you. And if you've even LOOKED at Mentos, they'll have weasels rip your eyeballs out. But at least it keeps Joe Sixpack feeling safer. I, for one, salute our bomb-discouraging, brown-shirted overlords! Who needs that Constitution, it's just a piece of paper anyway.
When you consider 'self-awareness' demonstrated by such behavior as a being able to recognize itself in a mirror, the answer is yes. A cognitive entity requires some amount of proprioception to recognize itself. It has to be able to move an arm, see the arm in the mirror move, and derive cause and effect leading to understanding that the virtual image maps to itself. For a robot to gain the same ability, it must have some form of sensory mechanisms. Another way of saying is that some deep knowledge is heavily tied to sensory systems.
Hey, if multiple blades are good enough for servers, they're good enough for my chin! -- What? -- Not that kind of blade? What do you think I am, stupid?
Slashdot Mirror
This is all baloney. Although ever since I got back from my Mars vacation I've felt a little strange, but my wife tells me it should pass soon.
Although who's to say Mars didn't have fjords in some ancient distant aquatic past.
Hee hee. Yes, but Martians have FAR different tastes from Earthlings. At the Martian Pizza Hut, popular toppings include spideroni and black olives. And at the Martian Taco Bell, they include extra E Coli in the tacos. Come to think of it, they do that in New Jersey, too.
In related news, Starbucks announced it is booking passage on the next flight to the Red Planet. "This enables us to continue our mission of providing coffee to the races of the solar system," said its CEO. "I look forward to asking our first Martian customer, 'Would you like a double mocha latte, Mr. Xzart'FooKniznak?'
oops. Meant 'low is still not zero'.
Gosh, dear, those are the sweetest words you've ever whispered in my ear.
If anything, the flamers are the people who blindly believe what they're told by the military, then spout off against those not accepting the official line.
The easiest and quickest link for item 5) is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System but I have read in perhaps four or five sources about the volunteers being asked to remove glasses, so it's pretty well-known. Just Google Active Denial Systems and read a bit. Also note the wiki mention of people being burned by metal objects in their clothes.
I add a prediction to my previous comments. The cornea contains tiny and delicate nerves that govern feedback for the eye's lachrymal (tear) system. If these nerves are damaged by millimeter wave energy, it can result in eventual breakdown of the tearing system and the condition known as 'dry eye'. This in turn can cause major eye damage. Cataracts can result, and a lot of other nasty things. So though someone hit by mm wave RF might not go blind instantly, their eyes could still be damaged as an after-effect. The military experiments only seem to have looked for near-term injury and have ignored follow-on, as far as I can tell. The review panel for the experiments concludes misleadingly that the probability of thermal eye injury is low. However, 1) low is not non-zero, and 2) there can be other damage as I've noted, that does not show up immediately as thermal damage.
1) if someone is trapped in a crowd and is exposed, they may not have the option of turning away, and are likely to be in pain but will keep their eyes open. If you suddenly start burning and are in panic in a crowd, are you going to close your eyes and keep them closed while trying to escape from an unknown source of RF radiation? Most of the public wouldn't.
2) Would you be willing to stare into an open running microwave oven for ANY length of time? Do you know how much damage can be done to tissues in even 250 ms of applied energy? Depends on the field intensity of course.
3) "Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim." This is a lie. Corneal damage of this sort does not heal in 24 hours. Try scratching your eye with a sharp object and seeing how long it takes for even that simple damage to heal, much less cells damaged by being cooked briefly by high-power RF. Go read ophthalmic medical journals. I have. Go research cataracts then come back and rebut me.
4) I didn't say the damage to pregnant women came from being burned. However, pregnant women being burned by this weapon will have great induced stress. Tell me how easy or difficult it is to trigger a miscarriage. Go ahead.
5) "Or when the field intensity ends up with strong lobes they never planned on, because of metal in the urban environment accidently causing concentration."
Yes, I'm sure that they, with their 10 years and $40 million, never thought of that; it's remarkable that you, with a few minutes, $0, and no experience whatsoever with the weapon, could so easily spot such a flaw.
They DID think of that, and in their tests asked volunteers to remove metal-framed glasses to prevent accidental refraction and focusing of the RF to a higher beam intensity around the eyes. I'm sorry to see you believe everything you're spoonfed by the military's PR guys. Of course, governments never lie, so let's all just take everything they say without questioning it. As I said, my background includes RF and microwaves, and yes, I do spot BS without needing the backing of $40 million to do it.
Also, the first time it is used at a US political protest, such as a GOP convention, there's going to be hell to pay.
Or used on crowds with pregnant women, and tiny children who don't know what is going on. (Of course, in Cheney's view, ethics and minorities, no great loss.)
Or when the field intensity ends up with strong lobes they never planned on, because of metal in the urban environment accidently causing concentration.
This thing is, basically, a weapon of mass torture.
I have to ask how the AWE can claim the source matches a Russian reactor when they do not have access to Dimona and hence cannot rule it out.
And it would be very easy to plant traces on jets in order to create a false trail in order to frame Putin and the Russians. Also, some Russian oil barons and Russian Mafia now live exiled in Israel, and they hate Putin for having cut them off from their exploitations and resource-grabs.
I'm not taking this murder as anything simply explained, having observed over and over that a lot in the news is not what it seems, and there are usually deeper realities.
What is happening is that some consumer vendors seem to be discouraging repair and pushing for you to replace the whole unit with a newer one, and more profit for them. So, before you buy anything, verify vendor support as deeply as you can. I now avoid HP because of bad support, Sony because it has gone downhill, and Dell for the aforementioned.
In related news, 63,000 Microsoft employees returned their Zunes to the company store, saying, "I'll work for Microsoft, but there's a limit to how much torture I'll take."
I seem to remember it was Byte magazine, and the technology was called PaperBytes or something like that. Circa 1977. I'd go downstairs and check my stacks of old magazines for it, but I'm not too fond of rats.
You: "What do I have to eat?"
Fridge: "...one cabbage. Nothing else"
You: "What can I do with that?"
Fridge: "...you can have kim-chi in two weeks if you let it ferment."
You: "Starvation is always an option, I guess."
Fridge:" If you were a Transformer, you could suck back some motor oil."
You: "Better than kim-chi. Hey wait, fridge. Do you have Transformer-envy?"
Fridge: "Never mind. Besides, Korean babes eat kim-chi."
You: "No."
Fridge: "Yes."
You: "Lips that touch kim-chi shall never touch mine. I order you to dial the pizza number."
Fridge: "Okay, Wimp-san." (makes rude noise)
--- Smart houses are not necessarily a good idea.
I, for one, welcome our new superconductive Twinkie overlords.
However, contrast this with the generic electroshock devices used by many security officers. This class of devices are unregulated, are used at close range in contact with the target, and put a high voltage across two or four electrodes near or touching the target's body. But they are like holding a small arc discharge against the target and the side effects include burns. The power supplies are not well-regulated; the timing of the discharge is for as long as the user pulls the trigger. In the wrong hands these can cause cardiac arrest and heart fibrillation. They are a bad device and should be banned in my opinion because of the potential for abuse. Because they do not identify their use with confetti, they can be used as many times as the officer chooses to in the heat of the moment and no one will ever know afterward.
When they are used, there is a distinctive 'zap' sound from the air discharge (spark) and you can see the flash from the high voltage ionizing air. A true Taser won't, if the electrodes have penetrated the skin.
Because the Taser is relatively expensive per cartridge hence per shot, whereas the generic electroshock devices only use up battery charge, and becuse of the distinctive short zaps I heard on the video, I suspect UCLA rent-a cops were not using using Tasers but instead the cheap models, and the press is getting it wrong.
Maybe it's time to start wearing copper-mesh-impregnated shirts if this is the wave of the future.
Failure to show a piece of paper is no justification for the brutality shown. There was utterly no justifiable reason for the patrolmen to not have handled this in a more humane way. The school deserves whatever financial justice the UCLA alumni choose to visit upon them for hiring dumb thugs to 'protect' the students. Do not donate when solicited by UCLA. Make them hurt.
The video was the sickest thing I've witnessed recently, unless you count watching parts of the movie "Saw".
You realize this is the Holy Grail for the Hooters chain. No longer need they have to have guilty consciences about the millions of now-wingless chickens they massacred just so beer-drinking guys can stare at great boobs, while eating Spicy Buffalo Wings.
"R2D2, I don't know what's gotten into you! Stop all those whistling noises! I'm never going to take you anywhere anymore! Want some Ritalin? What do you mean, Princess Leia needs our help? "
Well, I once tried to make musical shorts out of Spandex. But the first time I tried to pop out a note, the shorts blew up and I ended in the hospital with a broken groin. Now I'm horribly disfigured and have to make a living as a Vista programmer at Microsoft.
I could not have said it any more eloquently. Er, word up, homie. (hitting myself in head with a brick repeatedly until the feeling passes.)
Waiter! I'll have a human, lettuce, and tomato sandwich! On toast. And a glass of 30-weight Pennzoil, no ice. And snap it up, the service here is terrible! Move those gears, you slackerbot !
The TSA goons will now immediately ban diet coke and Mentos from flights. And if you've been drinking diet coke and eating Mentos, they'll stomach pump you. And if you've even LOOKED at Mentos, they'll have weasels rip your eyeballs out. But at least it keeps Joe Sixpack feeling safer. I, for one, salute our bomb-discouraging, brown-shirted overlords! Who needs that Constitution, it's just a piece of paper anyway.
When you consider 'self-awareness' demonstrated by such behavior as a being able to recognize itself in a mirror, the answer is yes. A cognitive entity requires some amount of proprioception to recognize itself. It has to be able to move an arm, see the arm in the mirror move, and derive cause and effect leading to understanding that the virtual image maps to itself. For a robot to gain the same ability, it must have some form of sensory mechanisms. Another way of saying is that some deep knowledge is heavily tied to sensory systems.
Hey, if multiple blades are good enough for servers, they're good enough for my chin! -- What? -- Not that kind of blade? What do you think I am, stupid?