Actually, musket balls were round, so the rounded tip of modern ammunition isn't really an issue in a "fair" test.
Also, modern rifle ammunition isn't designed to penetrate armor. They do make armor-piercing rounds, but the standard round is the "ball" round, which isn't designed to penetrate armor.
Actually, your trajectory isn't flat out to 700m. It's just that the range setting on your sight/scope make it look that way.
Assume a spherical horse of uniform density... I mean, assume the bullet has a constant velocity for the entire flight time. For easy math, we'll use a muzzle velocity of 1400m/s, a range of 700m, and call gravity at 10m/s^2. It will take the bullet 0.5 seconds to travel to the target, which means it will fall: (1/2)*(10)*(0.5)^2 or 1.25 meters. Which, if you were going for a center mass shot, would put the bullet into the ground at their feet. Unless they were really tall, and then you might hit their ankle.
However, what the proper range setting does is raise the back side of the sight/scope, which requires the shooter to lower the back end of the weapon to get proper sight alignment and sight picture. This means the weapon is now at an angle, and the bullet will arc through the air so it rises, (in this case), 0.6 meters and then falls 0.6 meters to put it on the line-of-sight just as it arrives at the target. Since most sights/scopes don't have very long range settings, after a certain point they are no longer compensating for the large drop by having it arc higher, and all of the drop due to gravity "shows up".
The bullet also continues to accelerate downwards as it flies so the angle of the weapon changes more dramatically at longer ranges to compensate for the overall drop. That's why it takes more "clicks" of elevation to go from 400 to 500 meters than from 100 to 200 meters.
They STILL don't have to vote with the state. There are 24 states make it a criminal offense to be a Faithless Elector, but they can't stop an Elector from voting how they want - only punish them afterwards.
The catch here is that it takes a non-trivial amount of time to become a doctor.
Even a talented individual would need 3-5 years of medical school. Then a few years as a resident to practice what they learned. Then, if they are going into a speciality, it's another 3-5 years to specifically learn the heart, brain, etc.
Most people that need a specialist don't have 10 years to wait while someone who can do it cheaper learns how to do it in the first place.
So medical doctors would be the richest people in the world. I can choose to go without a car. I can choose not to use roads. I can choose to raise my own food and make my own clothes. However, when I get very sick, I can either find a doctor and pay them whatever they want, or die. Sure, if I want to hold strongly to my beliefs, I can tell the doctor to go screw themselves. However, death is kind of a big deal. You don't get to change your mind.
Plus, this was the attitude that allowed Crassus to become one of the richest people in history. His fire brigade would show up at your house fire and refuse to work unless you sold him everything for pennies on the dollar. Again, I could hold to my beliefs and watch it burn, or I could sell it and salvage something from the fire.
So what does technology have to do with this? You mean we'll develop something that removes the CO2 in the future? It's not going to be very energy efficient though, getting the stuff back down will cost a lot more than we gained by releasing it in first place.
CFLs do contain more mercury than incandescent bulbs. However, they don't have a high enough level to warrant special disposal procedures. In addition, over their life span, they result in a net drop in mercury emissions since less coal has to be burned to power them, meaning fewer trace materials are sent up the smoke stack. Sure, those toxins will eventually end up in ground water but is that really better than being put into the air and, through biological processes, end up in the water anyway?
CFLs aren't a great solution. But they are still better than incandescent bulbs.
You agreed to a contract. You might not have noticed it, but you did.
There is always something to the effect of: "By registering for classes, (accepting admittance to, paying my bill, showing up for class, etc.) I agree to follow and abide by all school rules and regulations."
Trust me, if there was a "but I didn't sign anything agreeing to the rules" defense a student would have used it years ago when they were getting booted out of school for drinking, streaking, urinating in the hall, swearing, cheating or some other stupid offense. Just because you don't remember signing it specifically, doesn't mean you didn't.
I think Clinton should have been impeached for committing perjury. (He should have invoked his 5th amendment rights.) I don't care what happened between him and anyone else in the oval office, (as long as that person was a consenting adult), that's his private life.
I also think Bush should have been impeached for his (many) abuses of the Constitution.
First, every satellite would be "down". That means no GPS. No communication satellites. No weather satellites.
Second, a violent storm can overload the power grid. Which means days without electricity - assuming important components aren't overloaded and destroyed.
Third, cell phones, radios and other wireless devices could go down. Your home network will probably be fine. But forget using your 3G phone for anything. Your cordless phone will probably be OK to call emergency services but they won't be able to get them on the radio to tell them where to go.
So, as long as you don't depend on modern technology, you should be fine.
Actually, he crashed because the physics in the game are different than real-life physics.
He was trying to pass someone when he saw oncoming traffic and swerved back into the correct lane and the car started skidding. (A move that would have worked in the game.)
Moral of the story... We need better physics in the GTA series of games.
It might be impractical for large companies to store all of their records on-site, or even at an off-site facility that they control. That's why companies like Iron Mountain exist.
However, if you have records in long-term storage, it isn't a 5-minute deal to get it back out. First, the storage company needs to properly verify your request. Then one of their employee needs to determine where the desired item is in the secure facility. Then they have to actually get the appropriate folder/tape/drive/disk/media from storage, and document the hell out of the process. (Copy of the request and verification, who took it out, when, who they are handing it off to, etc.) Then they have to send that item to you, so you can add the cost of FedEx Overnight.
Sure, it's easy to say that companies could keep it all on the servers. However, if you had terabytes of data that only got accessed 3 or 4 times a year, would you keep that data available, or would you put it in storage and jump through the hoops for those few times you need to access it?
An investment is something you do when the benefits outweigh the costs.
An investment is something you do when the PERCEIVED benefits outweigh the PERCEIVED costs.
When the economy is doing well, the perceived benefit of the government getting involved can be less than the perceived cost of it. That is, they might make more jobs but that will screw up the system, resulting in a net loss. However, when the economy is in the toilet, the perceived cost may be lower and the perceived benefit higher.
Example: Let's say there is a town with 10 people in it. If 9 out of 10 are unemployed, there is only 1 job at risk but a potential gain of 9 jobs. If 9 out of 10 are employed, there are 9 jobs at risk and a potential gain of only 1 job.
I personally find it very telling that the US government turned down Blowfish despite larger keysize, longer keyspace initialization, non-fixed S-boxes, and better performance, compared to AES.
You can turn off your conspiracy detector. First, Blowfish wasn't allowed to be used in AES since the call for algorithms required it to handle a block size of 128 bits.
Twofish was submitted but Rijndael was selected because of it's performance in the different types of hardware that they tried. There is a Report on the Development of the Advanced Encryption Standard [PDF warning], that provides a performance comparison, (by rating it I, II or III), of the various algorithms submitted for AES using a variety of hardware and environments, like 8-bit C and Assembler. (Figures 2, 3 and 4 in the paper.)
Also, the NSA approved AES for use on U.S. Top Secret information. They would hardly do that if there was a known method of cracking it.
If you have to spend almost $2k/month on rent in a 1-bedroom apartment, that $80k isn't going as far as you would like. If you are married, with children, you better hope your spouse works. Even with the housing bust, in some areas you can be paying over $300k for a house in a nice neighborhood. (And I'm not talking about a McMansion, either.)
"Look Mike, it's not personal. We know you are probably a good person. A patriotic American to be sure. You paid your taxes the last 10 years. However, as you can see from all these charts, graphs, and police reports, people that look like you are the most common perpetrators of these sets of crimes. Statistically, we find more middle-aged white men to be serial killers than any other group. By cooperating with us and being a good sport you are being a good patriotic American and a service to your country. Don't you feel better now?"
This huge mistake is some of the best, (and most expensive), training a person can get. Do you think they will EVER get caught without proper backups/recovery plans in place? I doubt it.
They weren't removing pictures of nursing, in general. It was pictures of nursing that showed a nipple or areola. While this may not be obscene to an adult, it could be "obscene" for a kid-friendly website.
I believe there is an error in the original equation:
115M books * 1 kg/book * 390 kJ/mol CO2 / 0.012 mol C/kg...or on the order of 4 petajoules.
1 mol of C = 12 grams, or 0.012 g/mol of C. Not 0.012 mol C/kg.
Now, to make things easier, we can apply the value for the energy released by burning wood pulp given by the U.S. Department of Energy which is: 17455.6 J/g. Reference:
This would give us: 115M books * 1 kg/book * 1000 grams/kg * 17455.6 J/g = 2 * 10^15
Which is still on the same order of magnitude as the original equation, but also means we don't have to worry about the mass of oxygen consumed by the burning, or the mass of the CO2 given off. (Thanks to the DoE for giving the Gross Heat of Combustion for cellulose products.)
Actually, sending an email when the Internet is "down" isn't always a bad idea.
One time our connection went down to 200 bps. That isn't enough to do anything interactive, but it is enough to send a short (text only) email.
Was the Internet actually down? No. However, unless the user can do some advanced troubleshooting, they will never know the difference between down and just unusable.
Note: The ISP for our small town telco couldn't find anything wrong and had no idea where the problem was coming from. It turned out someone had plowed/piled 5 or 6 feet of snow over one of the telco's boxes. Not sure what the problem was with the equipment itself but I would guess too much moisture from the melting snow, or overheating since the vents were blocked (which would be ironic).
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Actually, musket balls were round, so the rounded tip of modern ammunition isn't really an issue in a "fair" test.
Also, modern rifle ammunition isn't designed to penetrate armor. They do make armor-piercing rounds, but the standard round is the "ball" round, which isn't designed to penetrate armor.
Actually, your trajectory isn't flat out to 700m. It's just that the range setting on your sight/scope make it look that way.
Assume a spherical horse of uniform density... I mean, assume the bullet has a constant velocity for the entire flight time. For easy math, we'll use a muzzle velocity of 1400m/s, a range of 700m, and call gravity at 10m/s^2. It will take the bullet 0.5 seconds to travel to the target, which means it will fall: (1/2)*(10)*(0.5)^2 or 1.25 meters. Which, if you were going for a center mass shot, would put the bullet into the ground at their feet. Unless they were really tall, and then you might hit their ankle.
However, what the proper range setting does is raise the back side of the sight/scope, which requires the shooter to lower the back end of the weapon to get proper sight alignment and sight picture. This means the weapon is now at an angle, and the bullet will arc through the air so it rises, (in this case), 0.6 meters and then falls 0.6 meters to put it on the line-of-sight just as it arrives at the target. Since most sights/scopes don't have very long range settings, after a certain point they are no longer compensating for the large drop by having it arc higher, and all of the drop due to gravity "shows up".
The bullet also continues to accelerate downwards as it flies so the angle of the weapon changes more dramatically at longer ranges to compensate for the overall drop. That's why it takes more "clicks" of elevation to go from 400 to 500 meters than from 100 to 200 meters.
They STILL don't have to vote with the state. There are 24 states make it a criminal offense to be a Faithless Elector, but they can't stop an Elector from voting how they want - only punish them afterwards.
The catch here is that it takes a non-trivial amount of time to become a doctor.
Even a talented individual would need 3-5 years of medical school. Then a few years as a resident to practice what they learned. Then, if they are going into a speciality, it's another 3-5 years to specifically learn the heart, brain, etc.
Most people that need a specialist don't have 10 years to wait while someone who can do it cheaper learns how to do it in the first place.
So medical doctors would be the richest people in the world. I can choose to go without a car. I can choose not to use roads. I can choose to raise my own food and make my own clothes. However, when I get very sick, I can either find a doctor and pay them whatever they want, or die. Sure, if I want to hold strongly to my beliefs, I can tell the doctor to go screw themselves. However, death is kind of a big deal. You don't get to change your mind.
Plus, this was the attitude that allowed Crassus to become one of the richest people in history. His fire brigade would show up at your house fire and refuse to work unless you sold him everything for pennies on the dollar. Again, I could hold to my beliefs and watch it burn, or I could sell it and salvage something from the fire.
So what does technology have to do with this? You mean we'll develop something that removes the CO2 in the future? It's not going to be very energy efficient though, getting the stuff back down will cost a lot more than we gained by releasing it in first place.
We could plant trees.
I call FUD.
CFLs do contain more mercury than incandescent bulbs. However, they don't have a high enough level to warrant special disposal procedures. In addition, over their life span, they result in a net drop in mercury emissions since less coal has to be burned to power them, meaning fewer trace materials are sent up the smoke stack. Sure, those toxins will eventually end up in ground water but is that really better than being put into the air and, through biological processes, end up in the water anyway?
CFLs aren't a great solution. But they are still better than incandescent bulbs.
Might I recommend using Interlibrary Loan? You might have to wait a few days or weeks for your requested materials, but it's free.
You agreed to a contract. You might not have noticed it, but you did.
There is always something to the effect of: "By registering for classes, (accepting admittance to, paying my bill, showing up for class, etc.) I agree to follow and abide by all school rules and regulations."
Trust me, if there was a "but I didn't sign anything agreeing to the rules" defense a student would have used it years ago when they were getting booted out of school for drinking, streaking, urinating in the hall, swearing, cheating or some other stupid offense. Just because you don't remember signing it specifically, doesn't mean you didn't.
I'll bite on this one...
I think Clinton should have been impeached for committing perjury. (He should have invoked his 5th amendment rights.) I don't care what happened between him and anyone else in the oval office, (as long as that person was a consenting adult), that's his private life.
I also think Bush should have been impeached for his (many) abuses of the Constitution.
I am an equal opportunity impeacher.
Lessen? Yes. Could it still be catastrophic? Yes.
First, every satellite would be "down". That means no GPS. No communication satellites. No weather satellites.
Second, a violent storm can overload the power grid. Which means days without electricity - assuming important components aren't overloaded and destroyed.
Third, cell phones, radios and other wireless devices could go down. Your home network will probably be fine. But forget using your 3G phone for anything. Your cordless phone will probably be OK to call emergency services but they won't be able to get them on the radio to tell them where to go.
So, as long as you don't depend on modern technology, you should be fine.
I'm also giving you a "Brilliant!" on the story.
On a side note, you must be really into science fiction. I mean you thought the editors might actually edit your submission.
Actually, he crashed because the physics in the game are different than real-life physics.
He was trying to pass someone when he saw oncoming traffic and swerved back into the correct lane and the car started skidding. (A move that would have worked in the game.)
Moral of the story... We need better physics in the GTA series of games.
Plus, everyone who has a converter box and buys a new TV will try and dump their converter box for $5 at the next garage sale.
It might be impractical for large companies to store all of their records on-site, or even at an off-site facility that they control. That's why companies like Iron Mountain exist.
However, if you have records in long-term storage, it isn't a 5-minute deal to get it back out. First, the storage company needs to properly verify your request. Then one of their employee needs to determine where the desired item is in the secure facility. Then they have to actually get the appropriate folder/tape/drive/disk/media from storage, and document the hell out of the process. (Copy of the request and verification, who took it out, when, who they are handing it off to, etc.) Then they have to send that item to you, so you can add the cost of FedEx Overnight.
Sure, it's easy to say that companies could keep it all on the servers. However, if you had terabytes of data that only got accessed 3 or 4 times a year, would you keep that data available, or would you put it in storage and jump through the hoops for those few times you need to access it?
An investment is something you do when the benefits outweigh the costs.
An investment is something you do when the PERCEIVED benefits outweigh the PERCEIVED costs.
When the economy is doing well, the perceived benefit of the government getting involved can be less than the perceived cost of it. That is, they might make more jobs but that will screw up the system, resulting in a net loss. However, when the economy is in the toilet, the perceived cost may be lower and the perceived benefit higher.
Example: Let's say there is a town with 10 people in it. If 9 out of 10 are unemployed, there is only 1 job at risk but a potential gain of 9 jobs. If 9 out of 10 are employed, there are 9 jobs at risk and a potential gain of only 1 job.
I personally find it very telling that the US government turned down Blowfish despite larger keysize, longer keyspace initialization, non-fixed S-boxes, and better performance, compared to AES.
You can turn off your conspiracy detector. First, Blowfish wasn't allowed to be used in AES since the call for algorithms required it to handle a block size of 128 bits.
Twofish was submitted but Rijndael was selected because of it's performance in the different types of hardware that they tried. There is a Report on the Development of the Advanced Encryption Standard [PDF warning], that provides a performance comparison, (by rating it I, II or III), of the various algorithms submitted for AES using a variety of hardware and environments, like 8-bit C and Assembler. (Figures 2, 3 and 4 in the paper.)
Also, the NSA approved AES for use on U.S. Top Secret information. They would hardly do that if there was a known method of cracking it.
Simply replace the spaces with a different character, or combination of characters. Problem solved.
It depends on where you live.
If you have to spend almost $2k/month on rent in a 1-bedroom apartment, that $80k isn't going as far as you would like. If you are married, with children, you better hope your spouse works. Even with the housing bust, in some areas you can be paying over $300k for a house in a nice neighborhood. (And I'm not talking about a McMansion, either.)
You are comparing apples to oranges. The DS has a different form factor and resource requirements.
You can easily take the DS anywhere you want and, (especially important in a multi-person household), you don't need to tie-up the TV to use it.
You missed:
"Look Mike, it's not personal. We know you are probably a good person. A patriotic American to be sure. You paid your taxes the last 10 years. However, as you can see from all these charts, graphs, and police reports, people that look like you are the most common perpetrators of these sets of crimes. Statistically, we find more middle-aged white men to be serial killers than any other group. By cooperating with us and being a good sport you are being a good patriotic American and a service to your country. Don't you feel better now?"
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
This huge mistake is some of the best, (and most expensive), training a person can get. Do you think they will EVER get caught without proper backups/recovery plans in place? I doubt it.
They weren't removing pictures of nursing, in general. It was pictures of nursing that showed a nipple or areola. While this may not be obscene to an adult, it could be "obscene" for a kid-friendly website.
I believe there is an error in the original equation:
115M books * 1 kg/book * 390 kJ/mol CO2 / 0.012 mol C/kg ...or on the order of 4 petajoules.
1 mol of C = 12 grams, or 0.012 g/mol of C. Not 0.012 mol C/kg.
Now, to make things easier, we can apply the value for the energy released by burning wood pulp given by the U.S. Department of Energy which is: 17455.6 J/g. Reference:
This would give us: 115M books * 1 kg/book * 1000 grams/kg * 17455.6 J/g = 2 * 10^15
Which is still on the same order of magnitude as the original equation, but also means we don't have to worry about the mass of oxygen consumed by the burning, or the mass of the CO2 given off. (Thanks to the DoE for giving the Gross Heat of Combustion for cellulose products.)
Actually, sending an email when the Internet is "down" isn't always a bad idea.
One time our connection went down to 200 bps. That isn't enough to do anything interactive, but it is enough to send a short (text only) email.
Was the Internet actually down? No. However, unless the user can do some advanced troubleshooting, they will never know the difference between down and just unusable.
Note: The ISP for our small town telco couldn't find anything wrong and had no idea where the problem was coming from. It turned out someone had plowed/piled 5 or 6 feet of snow over one of the telco's boxes. Not sure what the problem was with the equipment itself but I would guess too much moisture from the melting snow, or overheating since the vents were blocked (which would be ironic).