The point wasn't to reduce the tensile strength required; that material science problem still needs to be solved.
The point was that once you have accomplished that and it's a matter of manufacturing and will, you can make use of smaller cables in stages while waiting for the full construction to finish, much like you could use portions of the interstate system before it was done. But instead of making roads that are full width, but not the full length needed, you're making ribbons that are full length but not full width.
At least one substantial elevator proposal uses this approach.
What I do is I pitch a modified version of the idea where several key components are blatantly impossible, stupid, and possibly illegal. Then I pitch it to my friendly neighborhood geek and ask for his advice. They'll start ranting about how retarded my idea is, but I'll keep goading them and say "Okay, but imagine if we could fix that, what else do you think?" Knowing how geeks are amenable to abstract hypotheticals, and love to refute things in a thorough point-by-point fashion, they'll keep going on and on about the rest of the design too. I'll pretend to take notes the whole time, but in actuality I'm just seeing what they say about the real parts of the design. But when I depart, they're left with the overall impression that my idea was retarded and useless. I get my feedback, and they're none the wiser!
Anyway, that irrelevant nonsense aside, I'm busy working on a high performance V-8 hemi engine powered by babies. I'm having some troubles with the baby pump getting clogged by babies, and also my valve timing equations could use some tweaking. Any automotive engineers want to help me out with some constructive criticism and proprietary engine timings? Thanks!
It got done eventually. Meanwhile the finished sections were already usable. A space elevator cable that's 1 km too short is useless.
You can still do the project in stages, just to a lesser degree. First you make a thin cable that is only useful for small payloads, which will include the next section of cable when its ready, and so on until you have your full-strength cable.
Well, you know, in a way, the huge distance by itself isn't that big a problem.
The big problem is the material science, creating macro-scale nanotubes long enough to be woven into a cable or ribbon, and strong enough to support the ribbon itself plus whatever we want to lift. Last I heard (and I'm admittedly not following it closely at all) they could manufacture single nanotubes a meter long, and had nanotubes less than an order of magnitude from the desired tensile strength. But not at the same time. Still, it's promising, but there's a long way to go.
Once you've solved the material science problem, and hopefully made large-scale manufacturing feasible if not cheap, then it's mostly a matter of motivation. Laying down and occasionally carving paths through the mountains for 75,000km of interstate probably sounded daunting, but it got done because there was a perceived need. Between the military uses and commercial uses, I think it would exist for the space elevator too. But it would probably be the DoD who would have the money to do it. With low cost to orbit, Project Thor would be an economical reality. That's my pitch. I'm sure we could add more. Of course we have time, though, because for now, large-scale manufacturing of carbon nanotube cables is still a dream, and thus so is the elevator.:)
Whatever researchers may use it to mean, the majority of people will probably be inclined to use the dictionary definition, and the most common one, if you don't clarify:
1 a: capable of being seen <stars visible to the naked eye> b: situated in the region of the electromagnetic spectrum perceptible to human vision < visible light>
Wait. You're telling me that the majority of people will use definition 1a, and only 1a, without even considering 1b, even though 1b specifically and directly refers to the exact phrase being used -- "visible light"?
You're telling me that the majority of English speaking people do not ever consider the multiple definitions that nearly every word in our language has, and choose based on contextual clues what the most likely intended meaning is? I don't buy that for a second. You know why? Because just now, without even thinking about it, you automatically processed the word "buy" and based on the contextual clues chose meaning number 5.
This has nothing to do with people choosing the first definition from a dictionary as opposed to the second, because nobody was looking in a dictionary. This has to do with people not knowing a scientific term so common and non-obscure it's definition 1b in said dictionary.
So basically, if you mean "light in the visible spectrum", just say that. "Visible light" will be interpreted by most people according to the 1a definition of "visible", not the 1b definition. It comes first because it's common...
Okay, once again I'm surprised, and again I admit it must just be the fault of my perception.
I would never have guessed that people who have no idea what "visible light" means would find the phrase "light in the visible spectrum", or even just "spectrum" meaningful. I wouldn't have thought those people even knew that the stuff outside the visible spectrum was light. So you're telling me that people know that the colors in a rainbow and X-rays and radio waves are all the same thing, they're all light, but at the same time have no idea what "visible light" could mean? I really never would have expected that.
I guess this illustrates one of the difficulties of writing about technical material for a layman audience -- remembering what it was like to be a layman, and thus what a layman would understand, when that could have been a long time ago. As far as I can remember, I learned about the EM radiation spectrum that includes X-rays, radio waves, infrared, and the light our eyes are sensitive to along with the phrase "visible light" to describe the latter section of the spectrum in a single class session in high school physics. So it would never have occurred to me that you could expect your audience to know one and not the other.
And you're assuming that Slashdot headlines are viewed as Scientific forum (capitalization used to emphasize your bias).
When the sentence containing the phrase in question also includes the phrase "scientists reveal" and the next sentence includes "researchers show", then it is probably safe to interpret it in a scientific context.
I will admit that I am biased towards thinking that most slashdotters would have attended and been interested enough to pay attention to high school or entry-level college physics. I realize that's not true. I guess I'm just really surprised that the term "visible light" is outside so many/.ers experience.
Slashdot is not a scientific forum, but a nerd-emphasised general forum.
Uh-huh. And one common attribute of nerds -- at least a virtue of anyone who I would call a nerd as a compliment -- is the desire to learn. When I read articles on/. about things not in my area of expertise, I often learn things from the article and from other readers who are familiar with the terms and phrases used in the article. It's one of the more enjoyable aspects of this forum.
And now you know what "visible light" means in a scientific context. That's the most common context for that phrase, by the way. When talking in layman's terms, using "visible" to describe "light" would generally be redundant. Nobody would say "Then I saw a visible light shining through the woods."
Slashdot may not be a scientific forum, but there are a lot of science articles on it. So you should be prepared to see scientific terms and to interpret them in a scientific context. You should probably not be upset when a scientific article uses scientific terms.
Thus the common or vernacular definition should always be used, and the editors should remember that headlines are summaries of the article and stand alone frequently without further explanation.
Okay, so next time an article mentions "infrared", it should instead specify "electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between 750 nm and 100 m" so that readers don't say "What's infrared? I know from latin that 'infra' means 'below', but what's 'below' red? Maroon? Fuchsia?" Er, but wait, "electromagnetic" and "wavelength" don't aren't vernacular in any way... So no science terms? No technical terms? How do you even describe what this article is about using only vernacular definitions?
Look, I don't understand a lot of legal terms (for one example among many), but I'm not about to ask that every YRO article avoids using them, or kvetch about it when I fail to comprehend a term and am corrected.
I don't think that's obvious... well, other than the fact that they don't emit visible light by the definition I'd normally assume was meant. Since I can look around and see that they don't...
It's extremely obvious if you're aware of the meaning of "visible light" in a scientific context. Anytime you see the phrase "visible light" in the same sentence as "scientists say" or "researchers have shown", then it is nearly 100% certain that this is the intended meaning. The clincher would be if you consider the layman's definition of "visible", realize that this is clearly not true, then consider the scientific definition and realize it is the only one that makes sense. Of course this still depends on knowing the scientific definition.
And I'll admit I'm rather shocked that so many/.ers apparently don't know that meaning of the phrase "visible light". I know we have a more diverse background than we used to, but I still figured the average slashdotter was likely to have gotten a science degree where basic physics was a requirement, or at least have payed more attention than normal in high school physics or even just read the many science/astronomy related articles posted here, or read xkcd, or something.
It made more sense to me when I just assumed people were being pedantic dicks.:P
And you're playing a semantic trick where you take a word with multiple definitions, and change the definition you're using from the one that was clearly implied by the original context.
In the headline "People Emit Visible Light", "Visible" means "in the visible portion of the spectrum". "Visible Light", especially in a scientific context, usually means "light which is in the visible portion of the spectrum".
And how is getting caught violating the GPL, and only then complying with the license so as not to get sued, supposed to earn my trust?!
If that's your and MS' idea of building bridges, then damn fucking right I'll never trust them because they'll never be worthy of trust! Only idiots would trust someone who builds bridges like this.
No matter how you slice it, it's good for the GPL & open source. Either Microsoft has conceded that the GPL is legally enforceable and thus must be taken seriously, OR they have decided that they want to play ball with the open source kids, and are using this as the first step in a new direction towards working with open source developers & projects.
Well, since they didn't release the source until they were contacted and told they were violating the GPL, I'm guessing it's the former! And of course they knew all along that the GPL was legally enforceable, though a somewhat moot point since if it wasn't, that wouldn't leave them with any license to use the copyrighted code.
Yeah, no shit they can't win, because they already lost when they violated the GPL. The win/lose ship has already sailed. They were already given more consideration and benefit of the doubt than they deserve when, as usual, the copyright holder of the GPL code didn't try to extort or sue MS for damages, but rather simply tried to resolve the non-compliance issue going forward.
That MS took one of the valid, legal, and ethical approaches to resolving the issue is not to their credit, unless you're impressed by people who don't like getting in even deeper shit than they're already in. When you pick one of several offered punishments for having committed a crime, there is no "right" choice where you "win" and are no longer a criminal, like you get brownie points just for accepting the judgment of the court. Same deal here.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't? NO. Damned because you already did.
And surely, that last eclipse on Heroes was the longest, rather than this one - certainly more than a few measly minutes! Not to mention the global coverage!
Obviously the result of an as-yet-undiscovered Hero with Super Solar Eclipse powers. Or maybe even something more powerful, like General Purpose Plot Device powers... though I guess that'd be redundant with just about everyone else.
(And please don't complain about spoilers... after the decline since season 1, you can't possibly complain)
Speaking of spoilers, about the only thing I liked about the dumb season 3 finale (even though I liked the season overall) was that they gave a Season 4 sneak-peak that "spoiled" the twist that Sylar was gonna figure out he was Sylar. Because if they'd even tried to pretend that was a surprise...
They were in violation of the GPL, when they realised it they had a few options. Among those options were come into compliance, contact the copyright owner and try to make a deal or try to cover it up. Of those three options they chose the more ethical in my opinion.
Option 4 would have been to remove the GPL code from their product and write their own. That would have been an ethical choice too.
Just pointing that out, since it's always an option and the main reason the GPL isn't "viral". A virus is something you can't just decide to remove. Nobody will ever be forced to GPL their own code.
As for those saying "this is old, outdated Cold War junk", realize that they only came into service in 2005 and they are more advanced than what the competition has.
The technology may be tip-top, but the thinking behind it is outdated Cold War junk. It's a plane designed for the Warsaw Pact/NATO conflict that Cold War dinosaurs and Clancy fans still have nightmares/wet dreams about.
For the conflicts of today, and the conflicts most likely to occur during the F-22's lifespan, it's useless.
As for never doing anything? They've only been in service since 2005, and we've managed to stay out of any major wars since then with the likes of China or Russia (ie those with more advanced aircraft), yes? Then I think they've served (part of) their purpose by dissuading hostile action. Nobody ever attacked Athens by sea or Sparta by land, for good reason.
Please. I have stains in my boxers that have as much to do with us not going to war with China or Russia, only the stains also keep tigers away. The geopolitical situation hasn't been conducive to either country being actively hostile towards us since before the F-22 was just a concept. And to whatever extent they may have been considering it, it sure as hell wasn't the F-22 that's kept them from launching an invasion against the United States. I'm pretty sure there's something else much more important that deters them... What was it... I can't recall, but I think it was a combination of an integrated circuit and a bowel movement. Which sounds pretty scary!
Look, it's good that we have the world's top air superiority fighter. It may be highly unlikely, but if we get in a shooting war with a significant military power (i.e. one that can field planes that our current F-15s couldn't mop the floor with, thus very unlikely) having a fighter that can take control of the skies is a good thing. But even then if it truly is the superior plane you don't need thousands of them. Building a huge fleet of them for a worst-case-yet-not scenario where it's full-scale war against Russia but nukes somehow aren't involved doesn't make any sense. We have more than enough of them.
Er, TFS doesn't say it "Rivals" gas powered cars, it says it "Outperforms rival gas powered cars". Which it doesn't.
TFS says "outperforms" because it's/. policy to make summaries wrong and stupid. TFA says "rivals", as in "MIT electric car may rival gas models on performance" and the word "outperform" or any variation is not in it at all.
All the extra weight of the Tesla comes from the battery pack which weighs about 900 lbs. No doubt if the battery pack was half the weight and if the gearing was a bit higher, it'd be able to match the Exige in performance, but we've still got at least a couple years before batteries reach that kind of energy/power density.
Huh. That was a much more valid comparison, and it does make the importance of battery energy density clear.
FWIW, I'd still take the Tesla over the Exige if I could afford either. Being able to refuel every night at home is a killer feature. Not to mention being able to refuel with renewable energy and having no tailpipe emissions.
I would too, but partly because I love the sound (or lack thereof) of electrics. I was watching something about electric drag racers. They had some old timers saying that at first they didn't like them because they didn't sound powerful, but in part because of how well they performed, they came around and admired the way they'd tear off with just road noise and an electric whir. Personally I agree it sounds awesome.
The problem with that is you have to get in range to do so. Missiles do not have an unlimited range.
That's not a problem at all. We're talking about facing off against significant military powers, i.e. modern industrial/technological nations with a budget and access to 1980s+ military technology.
The good ol' Tomahawk cruise missile has a range of 2500km. At half a million bucks a pop, you can fire a LOT of them at a Nimitz class aircraft carrier and get an amazing return on investment, simply on a $-spent vs $-destroyed basis. On a strategic level? Forget about it. No brainer. Let's say you make specialized cruise missiles designed to foil carrier defense systems. Let's say they cost twice as much as a result, a million each. Fire a thousand of them if you think you need to. If you sink the ship, if you even just damage the flight deck enough that the carrier can't launch or land planes, you've scored an astounding victory at budget prices.
Then there's the enemy submarines and their high-tech anti-ship torpedoes... Torpedoes are nasty, because a missile trying to blast holes in the hull is fighting an upward battle against the ship's thick armor and many isolated airtight chambers, but a torpedo that explodes under the keel is using the ship's own mass against it.
It's funny. I thought aircraft carriers were obsolete for this reason. But turns out they're very useful for what our military is actually going to be doing. Funny how they still need the huge battle groups (you know, in case anyone tries some shit), but they're mostly useful for getting planes to areas where nobody is going to be a threat to the carrier at all. They're almost perfectly safe off-shore mobile home bases. Very useful, at least once you've already got them thanks to Cold War funding.
An inductor after converting it to DC? You sure about that?
You can be sure that no AC-DC converter does the job perfectly. This isn't a physics problem where it says "assume DC current" and you can say "Oh the voltage is constant".:)
This fight wasn't so much about saving the money on 7 planes (when 187 have already been paid for). It was about changing the direction both of our strategic development and the way in which defense projects are funded. I guarantee you Robert Gates doesn't really give a shit how many days of stimulus package interest he's saving. What he wants is for Congress to fund programs that will develop weapons that are useful to him and the conflicts he is currently fighting and sees us fighting in the future, as opposed to continually preparing for the NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict that never happened.
Slashdot Mirror
The point wasn't to reduce the tensile strength required; that material science problem still needs to be solved.
The point was that once you have accomplished that and it's a matter of manufacturing and will, you can make use of smaller cables in stages while waiting for the full construction to finish, much like you could use portions of the interstate system before it was done. But instead of making roads that are full width, but not the full length needed, you're making ribbons that are full length but not full width.
At least one substantial elevator proposal uses this approach.
Huh. Maybe you could come back with "I'm already shining!" and trick him into letting you sleep another ten minutes?
Should also make it run slightly quieter as long as you can make the liquidizer quieter than dozens of screaming babies.
I dunno, that would ruin the whole aesthetic I'm going for!
What I do is I pitch a modified version of the idea where several key components are blatantly impossible, stupid, and possibly illegal. Then I pitch it to my friendly neighborhood geek and ask for his advice. They'll start ranting about how retarded my idea is, but I'll keep goading them and say "Okay, but imagine if we could fix that, what else do you think?" Knowing how geeks are amenable to abstract hypotheticals, and love to refute things in a thorough point-by-point fashion, they'll keep going on and on about the rest of the design too. I'll pretend to take notes the whole time, but in actuality I'm just seeing what they say about the real parts of the design. But when I depart, they're left with the overall impression that my idea was retarded and useless. I get my feedback, and they're none the wiser!
Anyway, that irrelevant nonsense aside, I'm busy working on a high performance V-8 hemi engine powered by babies. I'm having some troubles with the baby pump getting clogged by babies, and also my valve timing equations could use some tweaking. Any automotive engineers want to help me out with some constructive criticism and proprietary engine timings? Thanks!
It got done eventually. Meanwhile the finished sections were already usable. A space elevator cable that's 1 km too short is useless.
You can still do the project in stages, just to a lesser degree. First you make a thin cable that is only useful for small payloads, which will include the next section of cable when its ready, and so on until you have your full-strength cable.
You lie. That film had ONE main part. Any evidence of some kind of 'sequel' was planted by the machines to confuse your mind.
Huh, are you sure? I could have sworn that movie had a sequel where the bad guy from the first movie put on a mask and became a poetic anti-hero. :)
Also a lot of people don't know this but the Super Devil doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible.
Well, you know, in a way, the huge distance by itself isn't that big a problem.
The big problem is the material science, creating macro-scale nanotubes long enough to be woven into a cable or ribbon, and strong enough to support the ribbon itself plus whatever we want to lift. Last I heard (and I'm admittedly not following it closely at all) they could manufacture single nanotubes a meter long, and had nanotubes less than an order of magnitude from the desired tensile strength. But not at the same time. Still, it's promising, but there's a long way to go.
Once you've solved the material science problem, and hopefully made large-scale manufacturing feasible if not cheap, then it's mostly a matter of motivation. Laying down and occasionally carving paths through the mountains for 75,000km of interstate probably sounded daunting, but it got done because there was a perceived need. Between the military uses and commercial uses, I think it would exist for the space elevator too. But it would probably be the DoD who would have the money to do it. With low cost to orbit, Project Thor would be an economical reality. That's my pitch. I'm sure we could add more. Of course we have time, though, because for now, large-scale manufacturing of carbon nanotube cables is still a dream, and thus so is the elevator. :)
Wait. You're telling me that the majority of people will use definition 1a, and only 1a, without even considering 1b, even though 1b specifically and directly refers to the exact phrase being used -- "visible light"?
You're telling me that the majority of English speaking people do not ever consider the multiple definitions that nearly every word in our language has, and choose based on contextual clues what the most likely intended meaning is? I don't buy that for a second. You know why? Because just now, without even thinking about it, you automatically processed the word "buy" and based on the contextual clues chose meaning number 5.
This has nothing to do with people choosing the first definition from a dictionary as opposed to the second, because nobody was looking in a dictionary. This has to do with people not knowing a scientific term so common and non-obscure it's definition 1b in said dictionary.
Okay, once again I'm surprised, and again I admit it must just be the fault of my perception.
I would never have guessed that people who have no idea what "visible light" means would find the phrase "light in the visible spectrum", or even just "spectrum" meaningful. I wouldn't have thought those people even knew that the stuff outside the visible spectrum was light. So you're telling me that people know that the colors in a rainbow and X-rays and radio waves are all the same thing, they're all light, but at the same time have no idea what "visible light" could mean? I really never would have expected that.
I guess this illustrates one of the difficulties of writing about technical material for a layman audience -- remembering what it was like to be a layman, and thus what a layman would understand, when that could have been a long time ago. As far as I can remember, I learned about the EM radiation spectrum that includes X-rays, radio waves, infrared, and the light our eyes are sensitive to along with the phrase "visible light" to describe the latter section of the spectrum in a single class session in high school physics. So it would never have occurred to me that you could expect your audience to know one and not the other.
And you're assuming that Slashdot headlines are viewed as Scientific forum (capitalization used to emphasize your bias).
When the sentence containing the phrase in question also includes the phrase "scientists reveal" and the next sentence includes "researchers show", then it is probably safe to interpret it in a scientific context.
I will admit that I am biased towards thinking that most slashdotters would have attended and been interested enough to pay attention to high school or entry-level college physics. I realize that's not true. I guess I'm just really surprised that the term "visible light" is outside so many /.ers experience.
Slashdot is not a scientific forum, but a nerd-emphasised general forum.
Uh-huh. And one common attribute of nerds -- at least a virtue of anyone who I would call a nerd as a compliment -- is the desire to learn. When I read articles on /. about things not in my area of expertise, I often learn things from the article and from other readers who are familiar with the terms and phrases used in the article. It's one of the more enjoyable aspects of this forum.
And now you know what "visible light" means in a scientific context. That's the most common context for that phrase, by the way. When talking in layman's terms, using "visible" to describe "light" would generally be redundant. Nobody would say "Then I saw a visible light shining through the woods."
Slashdot may not be a scientific forum, but there are a lot of science articles on it. So you should be prepared to see scientific terms and to interpret them in a scientific context. You should probably not be upset when a scientific article uses scientific terms.
Thus the common or vernacular definition should always be used, and the editors should remember that headlines are summaries of the article and stand alone frequently without further explanation.
Okay, so next time an article mentions "infrared", it should instead specify "electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between 750 nm and 100 m" so that readers don't say "What's infrared? I know from latin that 'infra' means 'below', but what's 'below' red? Maroon? Fuchsia?" Er, but wait, "electromagnetic" and "wavelength" don't aren't vernacular in any way... So no science terms? No technical terms? How do you even describe what this article is about using only vernacular definitions?
Look, I don't understand a lot of legal terms (for one example among many), but I'm not about to ask that every YRO article avoids using them, or kvetch about it when I fail to comprehend a term and am corrected.
I don't think that's obvious... well, other than the fact that they don't emit visible light by the definition I'd normally assume was meant. Since I can look around and see that they don't...
It's extremely obvious if you're aware of the meaning of "visible light" in a scientific context. Anytime you see the phrase "visible light" in the same sentence as "scientists say" or "researchers have shown", then it is nearly 100% certain that this is the intended meaning. The clincher would be if you consider the layman's definition of "visible", realize that this is clearly not true, then consider the scientific definition and realize it is the only one that makes sense. Of course this still depends on knowing the scientific definition.
And I'll admit I'm rather shocked that so many /.ers apparently don't know that meaning of the phrase "visible light". I know we have a more diverse background than we used to, but I still figured the average slashdotter was likely to have gotten a science degree where basic physics was a requirement, or at least have payed more attention than normal in high school physics or even just read the many science/astronomy related articles posted here, or read xkcd, or something.
It made more sense to me when I just assumed people were being pedantic dicks. :P
And you're playing a semantic trick where you take a word with multiple definitions, and change the definition you're using from the one that was clearly implied by the original context.
In the headline "People Emit Visible Light", "Visible" means "in the visible portion of the spectrum". "Visible Light", especially in a scientific context, usually means "light which is in the visible portion of the spectrum".
Naw, this only proves that we're shiny. There's still other kinds. Stipe just likes the happy ones. Other potential variants on the song include:
Shiny Angry People holding knives!
Shiny Horny People holding wangs!
Shiny Stupid People reading digg!
And how is getting caught violating the GPL, and only then complying with the license so as not to get sued, supposed to earn my trust?!
If that's your and MS' idea of building bridges, then damn fucking right I'll never trust them because they'll never be worthy of trust! Only idiots would trust someone who builds bridges like this.
No matter how you slice it, it's good for the GPL & open source. Either Microsoft has conceded that the GPL is legally enforceable and thus must be taken seriously, OR they have decided that they want to play ball with the open source kids, and are using this as the first step in a new direction towards working with open source developers & projects.
Well, since they didn't release the source until they were contacted and told they were violating the GPL, I'm guessing it's the former! And of course they knew all along that the GPL was legally enforceable, though a somewhat moot point since if it wasn't, that wouldn't leave them with any license to use the copyrighted code.
MS can't win here...
Yeah, no shit they can't win, because they already lost when they violated the GPL. The win/lose ship has already sailed. They were already given more consideration and benefit of the doubt than they deserve when, as usual, the copyright holder of the GPL code didn't try to extort or sue MS for damages, but rather simply tried to resolve the non-compliance issue going forward.
That MS took one of the valid, legal, and ethical approaches to resolving the issue is not to their credit, unless you're impressed by people who don't like getting in even deeper shit than they're already in. When you pick one of several offered punishments for having committed a crime, there is no "right" choice where you "win" and are no longer a criminal, like you get brownie points just for accepting the judgment of the court. Same deal here.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't? NO. Damned because you already did.
And surely, that last eclipse on Heroes was the longest, rather than this one - certainly more than a few measly minutes! Not to mention the global coverage!
Obviously the result of an as-yet-undiscovered Hero with Super Solar Eclipse powers. Or maybe even something more powerful, like General Purpose Plot Device powers... though I guess that'd be redundant with just about everyone else.
(And please don't complain about spoilers... after the decline since season 1, you can't possibly complain)
Speaking of spoilers, about the only thing I liked about the dumb season 3 finale (even though I liked the season overall) was that they gave a Season 4 sneak-peak that "spoiled" the twist that Sylar was gonna figure out he was Sylar. Because if they'd even tried to pretend that was a surprise...
Yeah, cus who gives a fuck if someone thinks that will work and ends up blinding themselves staring at an eclipse!
Seriously, whoever shit in your cheerios this morning, it wasn't the OP.
(it was me)
They were in violation of the GPL, when they realised it they had a few options. Among those options were come into compliance, contact the copyright owner and try to make a deal or try to cover it up. Of those three options they chose the more ethical in my opinion.
Option 4 would have been to remove the GPL code from their product and write their own. That would have been an ethical choice too.
Just pointing that out, since it's always an option and the main reason the GPL isn't "viral". A virus is something you can't just decide to remove. Nobody will ever be forced to GPL their own code.
As for those saying "this is old, outdated Cold War junk", realize that they only came into service in 2005 and they are more advanced than what the competition has.
The technology may be tip-top, but the thinking behind it is outdated Cold War junk. It's a plane designed for the Warsaw Pact/NATO conflict that Cold War dinosaurs and Clancy fans still have nightmares/wet dreams about.
For the conflicts of today, and the conflicts most likely to occur during the F-22's lifespan, it's useless.
As for never doing anything? They've only been in service since 2005, and we've managed to stay out of any major wars since then with the likes of China or Russia (ie those with more advanced aircraft), yes? Then I think they've served (part of) their purpose by dissuading hostile action. Nobody ever attacked Athens by sea or Sparta by land, for good reason.
Please. I have stains in my boxers that have as much to do with us not going to war with China or Russia, only the stains also keep tigers away. The geopolitical situation hasn't been conducive to either country being actively hostile towards us since before the F-22 was just a concept. And to whatever extent they may have been considering it, it sure as hell wasn't the F-22 that's kept them from launching an invasion against the United States. I'm pretty sure there's something else much more important that deters them... What was it... I can't recall, but I think it was a combination of an integrated circuit and a bowel movement. Which sounds pretty scary!
Look, it's good that we have the world's top air superiority fighter. It may be highly unlikely, but if we get in a shooting war with a significant military power (i.e. one that can field planes that our current F-15s couldn't mop the floor with, thus very unlikely) having a fighter that can take control of the skies is a good thing. But even then if it truly is the superior plane you don't need thousands of them. Building a huge fleet of them for a worst-case-yet-not scenario where it's full-scale war against Russia but nukes somehow aren't involved doesn't make any sense. We have more than enough of them.
Er, TFS doesn't say it "Rivals" gas powered cars, it says it "Outperforms rival gas powered cars". Which it doesn't.
TFS says "outperforms" because it's /. policy to make summaries wrong and stupid. TFA says "rivals", as in "MIT electric car may rival gas models on performance" and the word "outperform" or any variation is not in it at all.
All the extra weight of the Tesla comes from the battery pack which weighs about 900 lbs. No doubt if the battery pack was half the weight and if the gearing was a bit higher, it'd be able to match the Exige in performance, but we've still got at least a couple years before batteries reach that kind of energy/power density.
Huh. That was a much more valid comparison, and it does make the importance of battery energy density clear.
FWIW, I'd still take the Tesla over the Exige if I could afford either. Being able to refuel every night at home is a killer feature. Not to mention being able to refuel with renewable energy and having no tailpipe emissions.
I would too, but partly because I love the sound (or lack thereof) of electrics. I was watching something about electric drag racers. They had some old timers saying that at first they didn't like them because they didn't sound powerful, but in part because of how well they performed, they came around and admired the way they'd tear off with just road noise and an electric whir. Personally I agree it sounds awesome.
The problem with that is you have to get in range to do so. Missiles do not have an unlimited range.
That's not a problem at all. We're talking about facing off against significant military powers, i.e. modern industrial/technological nations with a budget and access to 1980s+ military technology.
The good ol' Tomahawk cruise missile has a range of 2500km. At half a million bucks a pop, you can fire a LOT of them at a Nimitz class aircraft carrier and get an amazing return on investment, simply on a $-spent vs $-destroyed basis. On a strategic level? Forget about it. No brainer. Let's say you make specialized cruise missiles designed to foil carrier defense systems. Let's say they cost twice as much as a result, a million each. Fire a thousand of them if you think you need to. If you sink the ship, if you even just damage the flight deck enough that the carrier can't launch or land planes, you've scored an astounding victory at budget prices.
Then there's the enemy submarines and their high-tech anti-ship torpedoes... Torpedoes are nasty, because a missile trying to blast holes in the hull is fighting an upward battle against the ship's thick armor and many isolated airtight chambers, but a torpedo that explodes under the keel is using the ship's own mass against it.
It's funny. I thought aircraft carriers were obsolete for this reason. But turns out they're very useful for what our military is actually going to be doing. Funny how they still need the huge battle groups (you know, in case anyone tries some shit), but they're mostly useful for getting planes to areas where nobody is going to be a threat to the carrier at all. They're almost perfectly safe off-shore mobile home bases. Very useful, at least once you've already got them thanks to Cold War funding.
An inductor after converting it to DC? You sure about that?
You can be sure that no AC-DC converter does the job perfectly. This isn't a physics problem where it says "assume DC current" and you can say "Oh the voltage is constant". :)
This fight wasn't so much about saving the money on 7 planes (when 187 have already been paid for). It was about changing the direction both of our strategic development and the way in which defense projects are funded. I guarantee you Robert Gates doesn't really give a shit how many days of stimulus package interest he's saving. What he wants is for Congress to fund programs that will develop weapons that are useful to him and the conflicts he is currently fighting and sees us fighting in the future, as opposed to continually preparing for the NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict that never happened.