In today's new-house market, that pretty well sums up your options.
Oh, nonsense!
My parents wanted a new house. They looked around for some land out in the country but near to town (and hospitals, they're not getting younger), bought nine acres, built a house to suit them.
Far as I know, the only requirement that the land purchase had was that they couldn't subdivide the lot. Not even sure that that was there, but I think I remember hearing mom say that back when they bought the place.
Yes, you're not going to be able to live in "high class" subdivisions without restrictions. That is, after all, why those areas are "high class". But there are plenty of options to buy land and a house (or buy land and build a house) that don't entail onerous restrictions.
No, gravity is not what causes free fall. Gravity does, on the other hand, make orbits.
Orbit is, by the by, an example of the concept of "throwing yourself at the ground and missing". Essentially, you're falling fast enough in the right direction to miss the planet/star/whatever. But gravity at LEO is still almost a full g. Rather lower at GEO, but still substantially larger in magnitude than any other force acting on the satellite.
Useful clue for whoever wrote TFS: indignity is not the same as undignified. Yes, they both have "digni" in the middle. doesn't give them the same meaning.
Bad enough when the commenters are semiliterate, now the editors are semiliterate too?
It should be noted that President Obama is the guy in charge of the Executive Branch now, which includes the NSA and TSA.
Doesn't really matter who created those agencies, he gets to decide what they do while he is in office. So, pretty much everything done in the last seven years by those two agencies was done with at least the tacit approval of President Obama.
Just as what was done by them for the previous eight years was done with at least the tacit approval of President Bush.
...is that just under half the people using autonomous cars won't get any extra time to spend doing useful (to them) things.
Which implies that rather more than half (up to about 2/3) of people WILL have more time to spend doing useful (to them) things.
I fail to see how this "study", even in its worst case scenario, translates to "people won't have more time available if they have autonomous vehicles"....
Depends on just how poor they are. Which depends, among other things, on whether they're married, how many kids they have, etc.
Also depends on what you are counting when you talk about the poor paying taxes. Usually when people say that, they're talking Income Taxes. They usually ignore the SSA and sales taxes that the poor pay.
Suffice it to say, depending on just what definition of "poor" and "taxes" you are using, the poor pay somewhere between zero and about 30% of their income in taxes (all taxes, not just Federal Income).
that $50 million performance bond (before Verizon had a chance to "reduce" it, which I don't understand how they can unilaterally do anyway)?
Given that I (and noone else discussing this here) has actually read the contract, there's no way to say for certain.
That said, I infer that the contract reduces that performance bond when certain milestones are met. Verizon thinks it met them, NYC disagrees.
Who is right? Well, most likely the party with the best lawyers. Because this case is going to be about specific words in specific places in the contract. And without being a lawyer, none of us are even going to understand the arguments....
Just curious. Whatever makes you think that YOUR government isn't corrupt?
Seriously, most of the people I've met (US, Euro, Middle Eastern, farther eastern, whatever) seem to believe that corruption is pretty much normal in every government...except their government, of course.
Oh, and as to "have you even visited Europe?", lived there for eight or nine years. Didn't see much to suggest that European governments were paragons of virtue, really.
If a country enters into a binding diplomatic agreement with other countries to regulate X, they can't then change the rules on X for their own benefit.
Actually, for the most part, they can.
Imprimus: in most countries, laws supersede Treaties, and Treaties require enabling legislation. The USA is an exception here, in that Treaties are Constitutionally recognized as binding automagically.
Secundus: in all countries, new laws supersede old laws. So a law requiring Apple to pay $12 gazillion in taxes vanishes like a puff of smoke if a new law is passed requiring Apple to pay $1.93....
Now, would doing something like that put Ireland in violation of whatever Treaty controls such things? Yep. Would that allow their Treaty partners to say "fix this or you're out of the Treaty"? Yep. Would that require Ireland to fix it? Nope. They can just tell their Treaty partners "buh-bye!"....
Otherwise, yes we should go ahead and seed everything we can find.
Note that we should use a pretty generous definition of "intelligence" for that caveat. I'm not sure I'd count a chimp, but would definitely count Australopithecus Africanus, and maybe Afarensis.
While it's true that liquid oxygen and kerosene make an explosive mixture, they still need something to start the big kaboom. Which is what SpaceX is trying to find - what got the bang started. This provides not clue one....
If OSIRIS, however, brings back a sample replete with, say, gold or rare earth metals,
A couple of things:
Gold isn't worth enough to go after in an asteroid. Yet.
"Rare Earths" aren't actually rare. What they are is better described as "dispersed" - no ores with lots and lots of them to find, just dig up some ground, and sift out the very small amounts of "rare earths". So they wouldn't be worth going after either.
If asteroid mining ever makes it big, it'll be because asteroids provide things like iron and aluminum that are already at the top of the gravity well. Building things in space is much easier if you don't have to lift it from the ground to start.
Note, by the by, that in terms of deltaV required to move things into LEO, the asteroids are closer than the Earth is....
Just let everyone with >= $1 billion alive, and you have exterminated poverty!
Well, no.
Since poverty is relative (virtually everyone in the USA defined as "poor" is wealthier than 90+% of everyone who has ever lived), once you've eliminated all the non-billionaires, the guys with less than TEN billion will be "poor".
All this ignores, of course, the fact that if we have robots doing all the work, for all practical purposes we'll ALL be billionaires....
Because launching rockets is more useful than helping to wipe out disease and paying for education programs? I mean it's more glamourous, but is it a better use of resources?
Yes. In general, launching rockets is more important than helping to wipe out diseases and paying for education programs.
GPS. Communications satellites. Weather satellites. Among many others.
Just the weather satellites pay for the entire thing. The gain to the world as a whole to accurate weather forecasting is worth far more than the cost of all the space programs (including Apollo) combined.
And yet, Spacecom is going to be getting ~$200M from insurance on that satellite already. Not sure whether the payout covers just the physical satellite, or the whole shebang, mind you. So this "$50M or free flight" may just be them trying to save themselves the money that they paid SpaceX for the launch....
How are you going to travel "a few thousands light years"?
Hmm, at 0.01c, it would take 430 or so years to reach AlphaCent. It would take 20M years or so to get to the other side of the Milky Way.
It's probably safe to say that a Type II civilisation would be capable of at least 0.01c, and that it would last 20M years or more.
This completely ignoring that if you have the entire energy output of a star to play with, speeds closer to 0.25c+ would be more realistic than 0.01c....
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, nonsense!
My parents wanted a new house. They looked around for some land out in the country but near to town (and hospitals, they're not getting younger), bought nine acres, built a house to suit them.
Far as I know, the only requirement that the land purchase had was that they couldn't subdivide the lot. Not even sure that that was there, but I think I remember hearing mom say that back when they bought the place.
Yes, you're not going to be able to live in "high class" subdivisions without restrictions. That is, after all, why those areas are "high class". But there are plenty of options to buy land and a house (or buy land and build a house) that don't entail onerous restrictions.
No, gravity is not what causes free fall. Gravity does, on the other hand, make orbits.
Orbit is, by the by, an example of the concept of "throwing yourself at the ground and missing". Essentially, you're falling fast enough in the right direction to miss the planet/star/whatever. But gravity at LEO is still almost a full g. Rather lower at GEO, but still substantially larger in magnitude than any other force acting on the satellite.
Useful clue for whoever wrote TFS: indignity is not the same as undignified. Yes, they both have "digni" in the middle. doesn't give them the same meaning.
Bad enough when the commenters are semiliterate, now the editors are semiliterate too?
It should be noted that President Obama is the guy in charge of the Executive Branch now, which includes the NSA and TSA.
Doesn't really matter who created those agencies, he gets to decide what they do while he is in office. So, pretty much everything done in the last seven years by those two agencies was done with at least the tacit approval of President Obama.
Just as what was done by them for the previous eight years was done with at least the tacit approval of President Bush.
...is that just under half the people using autonomous cars won't get any extra time to spend doing useful (to them) things.
Which implies that rather more than half (up to about 2/3) of people WILL have more time to spend doing useful (to them) things.
I fail to see how this "study", even in its worst case scenario, translates to "people won't have more time available if they have autonomous vehicles"....
Depends on just how poor they are. Which depends, among other things, on whether they're married, how many kids they have, etc.
Also depends on what you are counting when you talk about the poor paying taxes. Usually when people say that, they're talking Income Taxes. They usually ignore the SSA and sales taxes that the poor pay.
Suffice it to say, depending on just what definition of "poor" and "taxes" you are using, the poor pay somewhere between zero and about 30% of their income in taxes (all taxes, not just Federal Income).
Food chain.
It's jarring things like that that make me wonder if you know what you're talking about.
Given that I (and noone else discussing this here) has actually read the contract, there's no way to say for certain.
That said, I infer that the contract reduces that performance bond when certain milestones are met. Verizon thinks it met them, NYC disagrees.
Who is right? Well, most likely the party with the best lawyers. Because this case is going to be about specific words in specific places in the contract. And without being a lawyer, none of us are even going to understand the arguments....
dying.
Just curious. Whatever makes you think that YOUR government isn't corrupt?
Seriously, most of the people I've met (US, Euro, Middle Eastern, farther eastern, whatever) seem to believe that corruption is pretty much normal in every government...except their government, of course.
Oh, and as to "have you even visited Europe?", lived there for eight or nine years. Didn't see much to suggest that European governments were paragons of virtue, really.
Hmm, in the 19th Century, we had combines and such replacing farm jobs. Many of the jobs were "less skilled", some not so much.
And yet, we don't have 70%+ unemployment now. Those disappearing farm jobs provided workers for factories.
Same sort of thing happened in the 20th. Some jobs disappeared, to be replaced with jobs that didn't even exist before.
I expect the same will happen now....
Actually, for the most part, they can.
Imprimus: in most countries, laws supersede Treaties, and Treaties require enabling legislation. The USA is an exception here, in that Treaties are Constitutionally recognized as binding automagically.
Secundus: in all countries, new laws supersede old laws. So a law requiring Apple to pay $12 gazillion in taxes vanishes like a puff of smoke if a new law is passed requiring Apple to pay $1.93....
Now, would doing something like that put Ireland in violation of whatever Treaty controls such things? Yep. Would that allow their Treaty partners to say "fix this or you're out of the Treaty"? Yep. Would that require Ireland to fix it? Nope. They can just tell their Treaty partners "buh-bye!"....
Umm, the Catholic Church didn't exist in the "B.C. era". Unless you're using BC differently than the rest of us....
Otherwise, yes we should go ahead and seed everything we can find.
Note that we should use a pretty generous definition of "intelligence" for that caveat. I'm not sure I'd count a chimp, but would definitely count Australopithecus Africanus, and maybe Afarensis.
While it's true that liquid oxygen and kerosene make an explosive mixture, they still need something to start the big kaboom. Which is what SpaceX is trying to find - what got the bang started. This provides not clue one....
No, he didn't say there were no grounds to prosecute her.
What he said is that he was unlikely to be able to find a DA willing to prosecute her....
A couple of things:
Gold isn't worth enough to go after in an asteroid. Yet.
"Rare Earths" aren't actually rare. What they are is better described as "dispersed" - no ores with lots and lots of them to find, just dig up some ground, and sift out the very small amounts of "rare earths". So they wouldn't be worth going after either.
If asteroid mining ever makes it big, it'll be because asteroids provide things like iron and aluminum that are already at the top of the gravity well. Building things in space is much easier if you don't have to lift it from the ground to start.
Note, by the by, that in terms of deltaV required to move things into LEO, the asteroids are closer than the Earth is....
Note the use, some years back, of "bad" meaning "good" in American English. Or "bad" meaning "tough". Among MANY other changes over the years.
Languages change, for better or worse. Why should Arabic be any different?
"Mettle". Or were you suggesting that they were miners?
Well, no.
Since poverty is relative (virtually everyone in the USA defined as "poor" is wealthier than 90+% of everyone who has ever lived), once you've eliminated all the non-billionaires, the guys with less than TEN billion will be "poor".
All this ignores, of course, the fact that if we have robots doing all the work, for all practical purposes we'll ALL be billionaires....
Yes. In general, launching rockets is more important than helping to wipe out diseases and paying for education programs.
GPS. Communications satellites. Weather satellites. Among many others. Just the weather satellites pay for the entire thing. The gain to the world as a whole to accurate weather forecasting is worth far more than the cost of all the space programs (including Apollo) combined.
And yet, Spacecom is going to be getting ~$200M from insurance on that satellite already. Not sure whether the payout covers just the physical satellite, or the whole shebang, mind you. So this "$50M or free flight" may just be them trying to save themselves the money that they paid SpaceX for the launch....
Drive to Mexico City, take plane from there....
Hmm, at 0.01c, it would take 430 or so years to reach AlphaCent. It would take 20M years or so to get to the other side of the Milky Way.
It's probably safe to say that a Type II civilisation would be capable of at least 0.01c, and that it would last 20M years or more.
This completely ignoring that if you have the entire energy output of a star to play with, speeds closer to 0.25c+ would be more realistic than 0.01c....
***sighs*** Way too early in the AM.
Insert "mining coal" after "have died" in the previous post....