So, what he's saying is that the interstellar hydrogen density will limit us to no more than about 9600 light years nonstop at a continuous 1g acceleration/deceleration.
Given that even a matter/antimatter conversion drive would require about 116,000,000 tons of reaction mass (half antimatter) for every ton of payload, it would seem that we're going to be hitting a great many limits long before this particular limit begins to be meaningful.
possible amnesty on its $1.27 billion Nevada tax maneuverings.
So, Washington is proposing that Microsoft get amnesty on a completely legal activity (yes, the Nevada activities are completely legal)? And here I thought we usually gave amnesties for criminal acts, not legal acts.
Note, by the way, that NOT giving them amnesty on their perfectly legal past activities amounts to an ex post facto law - which is perfectly unconstitutional....
Grocery store patrons would take all of a week to need to order 2kg instead of 1lb.
Well, if I wanted a pound, I think I'd order 0.5 kg rather than 2 kg. Why buy four and a half pounds of meat when you need one?
Oddly enough, I've never had any problem dealing with either SI or Imperial. Contrary to rumour, there's no real ease of use difference - it's not like we do our math with sliderules anymore, and my calculator can divide by 12 (or 5280 or whatever) as easily as it can by 10.
Along those lines I would argue that a solution is to ban nuclear weapons development (and redevelopment) point blank but permit nuclear countermeasure development. Knowing that they can't boost their capacity for offense any more, a countermeasure arms race will ensue amounst the nuke-holding powers until the entire world's nuclear arsenal is literally useless. It can then be decommissioned.
And this would work because, as we all know, no-one would ever ignore solemn treaty obligations and develop nuclear weapons in secret.
I should point out though, for historical reference, that the last time the subject of nuclear development & countermease development came up, the Treaty allowed the nuclear development and forbade the countermeasure development....
Limbaugh may be obnoxious and rude, but I can't think of anything particularly offensive about his voice that I don't hear pretty much every day walking down the street.
Likewise, Guns & Roses and Queen aren't especially anything other than loud - nothing especially offensive about the sounds of either.
Did they consider trying a really offensive noise? Like a jet engine spinning up? Or a Shuttle taking off? Or a machinegun firing?
Or even Ozzy doing whatever he was doing when he thought he was singing?
This ruling is actually not the "Great Evil" it's being portrayed as. We've got one Court of Appeals saying the one thing, and another saying the opposite (yes, Courts of Appeal have ruled the reverse several times in history).
Which pretty much guarantees that if the defendant appeals to the Supremes, they'll have to take the case, and come up with a definitive ruling.
Alas, neither Sputnik nor Mercury had any way to orbit other than to bring along the upper stage of their booster (which promptly fell away due to drag effects - it's not like they were very high) - no onboarrd thrusters means no independent maneuvering.
Gemini had limited ability to maneuver without a booster, but had no capability to enter orbit sans booster either. Note that the overwhelming majority of the deltaV available to Gemini (sans Titan) was the solid fuel retro rockets. The remainder was the various attitude control systems (both orbital and reentry).
And Titan has been used to put other things than Gemini into orbit.
Useful clue - the difference between an ICBM and an oribt-capable launch vehicle is frequently one of payload. If something is designed to deliver 5000 kg to a spot 10000 km away, it can generally manage to put 1000 kg into orbit.
I say not repaying the loan to China would be the worst thing we could do to them.
No, that would be the best thing we could do to them. They get interest every year, after all. Plus the ability to screw with us by either dumping the T-bills or threatening same gives them clout that they wouldn't otherwise have.
The worst thing we could do to them is rearrange our budget so we have a surplus every year, and pay off our loans from China and everyone else.
It was a Soviet ICBM that would go into a circular orbit, then deorbit when in position to actually hit the assigned target. Unlike a "conventional" ICBM, it had no upper limit on range.
Note further that Sputnik was launched into orbit atop an ICBM.
I have dental sealant, and it's no where near as good as natural enamel.
Last time I talked to a Dentist on a related subject, he told me that that's by design - better that your natural teeth wear on the sealant/crown/whatever than that the sealant/crown/whatever be hard enough to cause wear on your remaining natural enamel.
Call me lazy, but I don't want to do even simple math to figure out that yes, the current level is much higher than the safety limit.
Actually, from TFA, it's not. The groundwater level at the plant is higher than the safety limit for drinking water. But since noone gets drinking water from under the nuke plant, saying that the level under the plant is higher than the limit for drinking water is misleading, though literally true.
What they did ass sort of like saying "the truck was caught driving at 70 mph on I10, even though the speed limit on West Esplanade is only 30 mph." True, but not strictly relevant.
I give you H.R. 676 [loc.gov], a bill which would provide simple, single-payer health care to all legal residents of the United States, but keeps getting buried by Congress in favour of their massive, complex "health reform" bill that ironically does far less for the people.
I read the bill. It doesn't actually require that you be a legal resident of the USA. Nor does it look to be "simple", with both a National Board, and 50 State Boards used to determine salaries, costs, etc.
It has been shown several times that single-payer care costs far, far less in the long run, and allows you to keep everything you have now, minus the insurance company that wants profit over your own health.
It has certainly been claimed several times. I'm not sure where it's been shown. I'm not, by the by, talking about "well, the British NHS works, so our system will work just the same". I'm talking about someone doing an analysis of OUR system, and showing where the costs would go down with National Healthcare.
Let's see, fine print in that bill...
The part about having to issue T-Bills (which means increasing the National Debt) to pay the entire health system to non-profit.
The part where any Doctor or Hospital doesn't actually have to take part in the system if they don't want. Sure, that might just marginalize those doctors/hosptials, but if there's only one hospital where you live, and it opts out, you're paying for National Health Care without really getting any benefits for same. And if the very best doctors/hosptials decide not to play, then the general quality of care will go down slightly, not up.
Also, I didn't actually see anywhere in the Bill where it mentioned how the system was to be paid for. So there's really no way to say whether it'd be cheaper.
Now, all that said, what I really think of the bill you mentioned is that it's completely unnecessary. If we really want National Healthcare, all we have to do is write a very short (the Table of Contents might be longer than the text) bill which lowered the age of Medicare eligibility to zero (birth). There, simple solution to the problem.
Note that we'd want to add a requirement that any politician in the USA must use the same system as the masses, of course. That'll add an extra line or two to the bill....
Or is spending 1000 dollars on bad health care to a private company good and 100 dollars on good health care to the government bad?
If it could be clearly demonstrated that we'd get the same healthcare as we're getting now for a lower price on government-run healthcare, I doubt you could find more than a handful of people in this country who'd oppose it.
Alas, so far, not a single proposal for government-run healthcare has met that criterion. Certainly this last go-round didn't. What we keep getting from the government is "we'll improve your healthcare by making it cost more, but not deliver more"....
So while true, your explanation really does not really help explain anything about the movies or real life.
The movie bad guy usually has 10 or 20 notches on his gun, so why did he not learn that the Bang does nothing?
Well, if you've ever read any history on the Old West, one of the first things you'll learn about gunfighters is that many of them couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. Accurate shooting with a pistol wasn't really part of most people's training back then.
Competition would have been offering two (or three or four or more) companies contracts for each general category of hardware (launcher, capsule, etc).
Picking one company for each piece of hardware is just handing money to someone and saying "Please don't just piss this money away on hookers and coke!".
Alternatively, of course, they could have done it the way the military does it - release the specs, allow anyone to enter a design, and hold trials. The design that wins, gets the contract.
Or the way that the military handles big-ticket items - same as above, but pay for development of the two or three most promising designs, then hold the trials.
I think it's understandable that NASA has chosen the Atlas V over the Falcon 9, given that the Atlas V has been launched 19 times with a near-perfect success rate.
It should be noted, for reference, that Shuttle had flown 24 times with a perfect record before Challenger failed.
It should also be noted that Shuttle carried crews on each of those launches, unlike Atlas V.
1. Slashdot readers tend to be very analytical. We like to get all the facts and make a decision based on those facts. Marketing often obscures the facts by which we could make informed decisions.
Well, as long as the facts agree with their preconceptions, anyway.
From all I've seen over the years,/. readers are as likely to ignore inconvenient facts as any other demographic out there.
The only time you're voting for 'individuals' is when you're voting in a primary where you have more then one candidate from the same party to pick from, and even then, in a lot of cases, it's a choice between clones. "Do I vote for the white guy who is spouting the party line, or do I vote for the other white guy who is spouting the same party line?"
Umm, in La we have an open primary. All the candidates - Dem, Rep, Indie - run against each other. The top two vote getters (which could be one Dem and one Rep, two Reps, two Dems, two indies, any other combination you can think of) run against each other in the general election.
It should also be noted that relatively few people are self-identified Republicans or Democrats. Less than 60% of the population, last I looked, and the self-identified independents outnumber either Party.
Of course, it may be that you, personally, are dumb enough to vote the Party. It may also be true that there are many others that dumb.
It should be pointed out, though, that in the classical European system, you vote for a Party, not for an individual. You don't cast a vote for your Party's candidate in your district, you cast a vote for your Party, and the seats are divvied up later in proportion to the votes for each Party.
Which is why whenever the subject of electronic voting comes up, the Europeans (and Canadians) have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that our ballots don't just have a list of Parties (pick one), but sometimes dozens of races (pick one for each race)....
A missile defense system can only ever work against a limited number of incoming missiles, launched in a rather haphazard way; it's purposes are A) Limited attacks by rouge nations/generals/terrorists or B) Defense against a counter-attack after a major (nuclear) war has already been won.
A missile defense system is DESIGNED to work against a limited attack, though there's no special requirement that the attackers be Communists (I assume that's what you meant by "rouge nations", at least). In a major nuclear exchange, both sides are going to burn.
It should be noted, by the by, that pretty much noone (except maybe us) has enough operational missiles for a real, old-fashioned doomsday scenario anymore.
As for Japan - they were already finished by the time USA dropped the bombs. Everyone on the inside knew that, but the USA went ahead and murdered countless innocent civilians anyway.
Umm, no.
A couple of things. First, one must consider that "countless" innocent civilians were NOT killed by the two atomic bombs. About 240,000 total was the count (over a period of several months - the immediate casualties of the bombs were closer to 150,000). Note that more were killed in one night of routine bombing of Tokyo than in both atomic bombings combined.
Second, the assertion that "Japan was finished by the time USA dropped the bombs". Remember Okinawa? Two months before the atomic bombings, and the Japanese managed to inflist 50,000 American casualties for one small island? Now, imagine extending that to the invasion of the entirety of Japan...
Third, if Japan were indeed "finished" before we dropped the bombs, why didn't they surrender after the first bomb was dropped? It's not like we dropped them on the same day - plenty of time to get to a radio and cry "uncle" if they were so inclined.
We won't even go into the oddity that both cities (and several others) were spared conventional bombing for years. The AAF wanted, if we actually used the Bomb, to get information on the effects of the Bomb on undamaged cities. So they made a list of military targets (Hiroshima's Naval Base comes to mind) that were put off limits for bombing. I understand that the AAF brass had to do quite the song and dance to justify to their subordinates not bombing those cities for years....
The political system of the west is built to let blunders of this kind disappear. Because you can not vote on issues, only on parties.
Not in the USA. We vote for individuals, not Parties. Which is why, for instance, La has one Democratic Senator and one Republican Senator, elected independently in two separate statewide votes.
If we're of a conservative bend, and our local Dem is conservative, he'll be as likely to get the vote as the Republican (assuming that the Republican is conservative - not all of them are, in spite of what you may have read in the news).
Likewise, if we're liberally inclined, we can (and will) vote for a liberal Republican (yes, there are even a few of those) over a conservative Democrat (and a few of those).
So the beetles are using us to deliver them into space so the can colonize the universe?
We are nothing but slaves!
I have heard a quite reasonable argument that the grasses have domesticated us - we tend them carefully, destroy their predators, protect them from diseases, serve their every need....
And any cat person would agree that cats have us thoroughly domesticated;)
And yet, police shoot-to-kill when confronted with something that only vaguely looks like a firearm (squirtgun? cellphone? keys?). It can't always be easy-peasy, can it?
What, and you think that the police never go into panic-mode?
Note that "shoot first and ask questions later" is a lot easier if you're pretty sure your job description means you'll get away with murder if you make a mistake.
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So, what he's saying is that the interstellar hydrogen density will limit us to no more than about 9600 light years nonstop at a continuous 1g acceleration/deceleration.
Given that even a matter/antimatter conversion drive would require about 116,000,000 tons of reaction mass (half antimatter) for every ton of payload, it would seem that we're going to be hitting a great many limits long before this particular limit begins to be meaningful.
So, Washington is proposing that Microsoft get amnesty on a completely legal activity (yes, the Nevada activities are completely legal)? And here I thought we usually gave amnesties for criminal acts, not legal acts.
Note, by the way, that NOT giving them amnesty on their perfectly legal past activities amounts to an ex post facto law - which is perfectly unconstitutional....
Well, if I wanted a pound, I think I'd order 0.5 kg rather than 2 kg. Why buy four and a half pounds of meat when you need one?
Oddly enough, I've never had any problem dealing with either SI or Imperial. Contrary to rumour, there's no real ease of use difference - it's not like we do our math with sliderules anymore, and my calculator can divide by 12 (or 5280 or whatever) as easily as it can by 10.
And this would work because, as we all know, no-one would ever ignore solemn treaty obligations and develop nuclear weapons in secret.
I should point out though, for historical reference, that the last time the subject of nuclear development & countermease development came up, the Treaty allowed the nuclear development and forbade the countermeasure development....
The guy you were responding to used the word "debt", not "deficit". There is a difference.
Limbaugh may be obnoxious and rude, but I can't think of anything particularly offensive about his voice that I don't hear pretty much every day walking down the street.
Likewise, Guns & Roses and Queen aren't especially anything other than loud - nothing especially offensive about the sounds of either.
Did they consider trying a really offensive noise? Like a jet engine spinning up? Or a Shuttle taking off? Or a machinegun firing?
Or even Ozzy doing whatever he was doing when he thought he was singing?
This ruling is actually not the "Great Evil" it's being portrayed as. We've got one Court of Appeals saying the one thing, and another saying the opposite (yes, Courts of Appeal have ruled the reverse several times in history).
Which pretty much guarantees that if the defendant appeals to the Supremes, they'll have to take the case, and come up with a definitive ruling.
Alas, neither Sputnik nor Mercury had any way to orbit other than to bring along the upper stage of their booster (which promptly fell away due to drag effects - it's not like they were very high) - no onboarrd thrusters means no independent maneuvering.
Gemini had limited ability to maneuver without a booster, but had no capability to enter orbit sans booster either. Note that the overwhelming majority of the deltaV available to Gemini (sans Titan) was the solid fuel retro rockets. The remainder was the various attitude control systems (both orbital and reentry).
And Titan has been used to put other things than Gemini into orbit.
Useful clue - the difference between an ICBM and an oribt-capable launch vehicle is frequently one of payload. If something is designed to deliver 5000 kg to a spot 10000 km away, it can generally manage to put 1000 kg into orbit.
No, that would be the best thing we could do to them. They get interest every year, after all.
Plus the ability to screw with us by either dumping the T-bills or threatening same gives them clout that they wouldn't otherwise have.
The worst thing we could do to them is rearrange our budget so we have a surplus every year, and pay off our loans from China and everyone else.
Fractional Orbital Bomabardment System (FOBS).
It was a Soviet ICBM that would go into a circular orbit, then deorbit when in position to actually hit the assigned target. Unlike a "conventional" ICBM, it had no upper limit on range.
Note further that Sputnik was launched into orbit atop an ICBM.
And Mercury.
And Gemini.
Last time I talked to a Dentist on a related subject, he told me that that's by design - better that your natural teeth wear on the sealant/crown/whatever than that the sealant/crown/whatever be hard enough to cause wear on your remaining natural enamel.
Actually, from TFA, it's not. The groundwater level at the plant is higher than the safety limit for drinking water. But since noone gets drinking water from under the nuke plant, saying that the level under the plant is higher than the limit for drinking water is misleading, though literally true.
What they did ass sort of like saying "the truck was caught driving at 70 mph on I10, even though the speed limit on West Esplanade is only 30 mph." True, but not strictly relevant.
The existence of a National Healthcare System does not, in fact, imply that people can't afford to pay for a hospital's service.
While I consider it unlikely that a hospital would opt out, I don't consider it impossible. Especially if it's a captive audience sort of hospital.
I read the bill. It doesn't actually require that you be a legal resident of the USA. Nor does it look to be "simple", with both a National Board, and 50 State Boards used to determine salaries, costs, etc.
It has certainly been claimed several times. I'm not sure where it's been shown. I'm not, by the by, talking about "well, the British NHS works, so our system will work just the same". I'm talking about someone doing an analysis of OUR system, and showing where the costs would go down with National Healthcare.
Let's see, fine print in that bill...
The part about having to issue T-Bills (which means increasing the National Debt) to pay the entire health system to non-profit.
The part where any Doctor or Hospital doesn't actually have to take part in the system if they don't want. Sure, that might just marginalize those doctors/hosptials, but if there's only one hospital where you live, and it opts out, you're paying for National Health Care without really getting any benefits for same. And if the very best doctors/hosptials decide not to play, then the general quality of care will go down slightly, not up.
Also, I didn't actually see anywhere in the Bill where it mentioned how the system was to be paid for. So there's really no way to say whether it'd be cheaper.
Now, all that said, what I really think of the bill you mentioned is that it's completely unnecessary. If we really want National Healthcare, all we have to do is write a very short (the Table of Contents might be longer than the text) bill which lowered the age of Medicare eligibility to zero (birth). There, simple solution to the problem.
Note that we'd want to add a requirement that any politician in the USA must use the same system as the masses, of course. That'll add an extra line or two to the bill....
If it could be clearly demonstrated that we'd get the same healthcare as we're getting now for a lower price on government-run healthcare, I doubt you could find more than a handful of people in this country who'd oppose it.
Alas, so far, not a single proposal for government-run healthcare has met that criterion. Certainly this last go-round didn't. What we keep getting from the government is "we'll improve your healthcare by making it cost more, but not deliver more"....
Well, if you've ever read any history on the Old West, one of the first things you'll learn about gunfighters is that many of them couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. Accurate shooting with a pistol wasn't really part of most people's training back then.
Just so.
Competition would have been offering two (or three or four or more) companies contracts for each general category of hardware (launcher, capsule, etc).
Picking one company for each piece of hardware is just handing money to someone and saying "Please don't just piss this money away on hookers and coke!".
Alternatively, of course, they could have done it the way the military does it - release the specs, allow anyone to enter a design, and hold trials. The design that wins, gets the contract.
Or the way that the military handles big-ticket items - same as above, but pay for development of the two or three most promising designs, then hold the trials.
It should be noted, for reference, that Shuttle had flown 24 times with a perfect record before Challenger failed.
It should also be noted that Shuttle carried crews on each of those launches, unlike Atlas V.
Well, as long as the facts agree with their preconceptions, anyway.
From all I've seen over the years, /. readers are as likely to ignore inconvenient facts as any other demographic out there.
Umm, in La we have an open primary. All the candidates - Dem, Rep, Indie - run against each other. The top two vote getters (which could be one Dem and one Rep, two Reps, two Dems, two indies, any other combination you can think of) run against each other in the general election.
It should also be noted that relatively few people are self-identified Republicans or Democrats. Less than 60% of the population, last I looked, and the self-identified independents outnumber either Party.
Of course, it may be that you, personally, are dumb enough to vote the Party. It may also be true that there are many others that dumb.
It should be pointed out, though, that in the classical European system, you vote for a Party, not for an individual. You don't cast a vote for your Party's candidate in your district, you cast a vote for your Party, and the seats are divvied up later in proportion to the votes for each Party.
Which is why whenever the subject of electronic voting comes up, the Europeans (and Canadians) have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that our ballots don't just have a list of Parties (pick one), but sometimes dozens of races (pick one for each race)....
A missile defense system is DESIGNED to work against a limited attack, though there's no special requirement that the attackers be Communists (I assume that's what you meant by "rouge nations", at least). In a major nuclear exchange, both sides are going to burn.
It should be noted, by the by, that pretty much noone (except maybe us) has enough operational missiles for a real, old-fashioned doomsday scenario anymore.
Umm, no.
A couple of things. First, one must consider that "countless" innocent civilians were NOT killed by the two atomic bombs. About 240,000 total was the count (over a period of several months - the immediate casualties of the bombs were closer to 150,000). Note that more were killed in one night of routine bombing of Tokyo than in both atomic bombings combined.
Second, the assertion that "Japan was finished by the time USA dropped the bombs". Remember Okinawa? Two months before the atomic bombings, and the Japanese managed to inflist 50,000 American casualties for one small island? Now, imagine extending that to the invasion of the entirety of Japan...
Third, if Japan were indeed "finished" before we dropped the bombs, why didn't they surrender after the first bomb was dropped? It's not like we dropped them on the same day - plenty of time to get to a radio and cry "uncle" if they were so inclined.
We won't even go into the oddity that both cities (and several others) were spared conventional bombing for years. The AAF wanted, if we actually used the Bomb, to get information on the effects of the Bomb on undamaged cities. So they made a list of military targets (Hiroshima's Naval Base comes to mind) that were put off limits for bombing. I understand that the AAF brass had to do quite the song and dance to justify to their subordinates not bombing those cities for years....
Not in the USA. We vote for individuals, not Parties. Which is why, for instance, La has one Democratic Senator and one Republican Senator, elected independently in two separate statewide votes.
If we're of a conservative bend, and our local Dem is conservative, he'll be as likely to get the vote as the Republican (assuming that the Republican is conservative - not all of them are, in spite of what you may have read in the news).
Likewise, if we're liberally inclined, we can (and will) vote for a liberal Republican (yes, there are even a few of those) over a conservative Democrat (and a few of those).
I have heard a quite reasonable argument that the grasses have domesticated us - we tend them carefully, destroy their predators, protect them from diseases, serve their every need....
And any cat person would agree that cats have us thoroughly domesticated ;)
What, and you think that the police never go into panic-mode?
Note that "shoot first and ask questions later" is a lot easier if you're pretty sure your job description means you'll get away with murder if you make a mistake.