Until the producers let go of the whole Liberals in Space "We Come In Peace" kumbayah bit and let the writers put together something with a PLOT, Enterprise will continue to suck and people will continue to stay away in droves.
Science fiction requires a plot and characters who are not cardboard cutouts. There's just too much suspension of scepticism required to imagine any sane organization trusting Scott Bakula's character with any vehicle larger than a hot dog cart. Much less a star ship!
The hockey stick has been debunked, google it up and see. Lazyness does not impress.
Here's something else to look up. Large volcanos like Mt.St. Helens barf more particulates and greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in a single eruption than all the human activity since 1900. One extra eruption over a given period completely overwhelms any effect of human origin.
Hence some of the current disagreement over Global Warming.
"The point is that our actions are causing changes, over and above the normal warming we'd expect to see due to normal ebb and flow of ice ages."
As it happens, there's no compelling evidence to support this claim. What we have is a SMALL measured change in global temperature which is well within the normal variation of the last 50 years, never mind the last 50,000, plus a great deal of unsupported, computer model generated balderdash. Total evidence of human-caused warming beyond mere correlation: zero. Correlations are interesting, but not proof of causal relationships.
Go look it up. Net change since ~1950 is under +2 degrees C, well within the "noise" level. I'll save my panic for later, thanks all the same.
Besides, being Canadian I'd say better warming than cooling. You can irrigate a desert but its hard to farm a glacier.
Another new breakthrough for painters, besides the drop sheet, is the amazing painter's spray mask. You put it on your head and it actually filters the air for you!
You want to breath some scary shit, try high end car paint some time. You have to wear a full coverage bunny suit with remote air supply because it can go in through your skin and eyes, not just your lungs. It contains one of the most dangerous metals in the periodic table.
Oddly this is considered more enviro-friendly than nitrocellulose laquer by the EPA. If they didn't mandate its use nobody would touch it with a barge pole.
Dude, what do you think ordinary latex paint is made of? The tinting agents are all metals, primarily titanium.
These guys are adding aluminum and copper strands, which will take many, many years to break down in the soil. Go to an old shooting range some time, you can find copper jacketed ammunition from pre-WWI that's still 100% intact.
Then there's this breakthrough device called a drop sheet...
Its called a DROP SHEET. You put it on the ground when you paint and it collects all the drips. And you know, it can be used to collect up all the peeling paint when you scrape it off in five or ten years.
Jeasus! Can't you wankers get over the envirocrap for even one second?
I regret to say that this does not fill me with confidence. OSHA's track record for running with junk science is abysmal. That they haven't run with this particular one yet is merely coincidence. Give them time, I'm sure they'll discover cell phones are bad.
Lawyers, of course! Also all the no-talent wankers who keep getting grants to churn out this bilge, and the journals which print it.
How bad, how science-free is this stuff? National Academy of Sciences just gave their review report on gun control. Here's some comment on it. http://www.investors.com/editorial/issues.asp?v=1/ 12
Bottom line, even though the thing was paid for by a bunch of anti-gun foundations (Pew, Ford etc.) and even though all but one of the people on the review were publicly avowed anti-guners, and indeed even though they avoided any and all research that suggested guns might be of some benefit to the owner: their net result was no evidence that gun control works.
Thirty years of crappy research, millions and millions of public health research dollars pissed away, all completely wasted.
DDT? Same story as above, lots of total CRAP written with zero useful scientific content.
Global warming? See above.
OSHA? They nearly put through regulations to protect workers from back injuries that would have bankrupted every employer in the USA. The only thing that stopped them was the 2000 election. Science? BWAHAHA!!!! As if!
I could go on, but I'm sure you're getting the drift. Anybody with an axe to grind is seizing on these bogus issues. They should all take some lessons in basic statistics.
It is possible to prove cell phones dangerous. You do experiments to look for effects on biological systems.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove them safe. One cannot prove a negative.
However if Dr. Wantsagrant couldn't find more than four studies that even suggested a correlation, I'm thinking there's damn little chance that the feeble little radio wave coming out of that cell phone is going to cook a neuron, or even raise its temperature slightly.
So if this turns out to be true I'll run off and join the Reformed Church of Elvis. Hey, anything's possible. Or not!
Oh joy, another propaganda campaign. File this one next to global warming, frankenfood, DDT, "the coming death of the Web" and gun control in the circular bin.
You can always tell a BS campaign by the way they say "there's no proof, but just in case..." to justify their vaporous musings.
Couldn't these people find something useful to do?
Whenever you see a result like 75% for, 25% neutral, 0% opposed to any hypothesis, you have to assume there's a publication bias.
Example, public health studies of gun control. I've read them ALL up to about 1995 and most of the big ones after that. In US, Canadian and British medical journals 60 of 65 articles from 1975 up to about 1995 on the subject advocated increased gun control as a solution to murder rates, the other five were neutral. That's 91.6% for, 8.3% neutral, 0% against. Yet we know that there was a thriving debate on the issue with considerable publication of scholarly opinion and scientific evidence against gun control as a solution to violence.
The medical journals ignored any and all authors whose conclusions did not support gun control, plain and simple. Medical journal editors cherry picked articles they liked, spiked ones they didn't, and authors obliged them by not quoting from contrary findings. They are STILL DOING IT, even after the US Congress cut the CDC's funding for doing it.
Given that eye opener, I have to say I can believe in a systematic publication bias a lot faster than I can believe that NOBODY has found any reason to doubt the global warming hypothesis. People are not as noble and concerned with the Pursuit of Truth as one would like to believe.
Now, since I'm on a mission to destroy karma, I'd like all you little EcoNazis with mod points to crash this comment down to -1 as fast as possible. You managed to get me timed-out last time I posted on this subject but it took you a day or two. See if you can get it down to a couple of hours this time, eh?
And since I'm still here talking, take note of just how much return you're getting from your effort to shut guys like me up.
"The reason nature has adopted the flapping wing is simply because it cannot emulate a shaft unidirctionally rotating in a bearing in a biological structure, so it had to "make do."
This isn't strictly true. Many protozoans (and our sperm cells too) have flagella that provide propulsion by rotation. The little ATP burning motor is an amazing machine.
Never took off in larger animals for some reason. Be an interesting endeavor to find out why that is, eh?
Gun control is ALREADY dead, particularly in Scotland. Any moderatly handy individual with a welder and a metal lathe can make a Sten Gun in an afternoon. No plans required, just a rough idea of what you're trying to make.
Prehaps you've noticed the rush of crimes commited in the Isles with formerly non-functional "replica" firearms? Doesn't take much to make them work. Takes even less to build a full auto Sten Gun from scratch. Any size you want too.
As soon as the government declares any item banned, a cottage industry starts making them by the basketful. Modern CNC machines can punch them out by the cart load. And they do. Pretty much boners the gun control concept.
Which begs the question, whatnhell were they thinking of when they banned firearms in Britain? Public safety? Nuh uh.
You hadn't heard I suppose that NBC had a crew with the 101st who walked the length of the place and found not a single UN sticker? In APRIL 2003? One day after the fall of DadsBag?
You hadn't heard that there was a unit there with a reporter even before the 101st was there and they found no UN stickers either? Name escapes me for the moment.
I hasn't occured to you that possibly the UN guy who started this freakshow with the NY Slimes might possibly have an interest in the outcome of the US election? Or that the NY Slimes might?
Finally, I take it that you think its worse that "we know not who" -might- have their hands on a bunch of nuke building explosives than knowing 100% that Saddam Hussein had control of them?
Face it. Saddam had the shit moved before US forces crossed the Kuwait border in 2003 because he was afraid it would be bombed to crap. We are talking 35 tractor-trailer loads of material here. Who in post-attack Iraq had that many 18 wheelers hanging off his upper lip? That wouldn't instantly be targeted and blown to hell from the air? Uncle Sam and nobody else.
This is just the latest lump in the steady stream of bullshit from John&John. Not making me want to see them in the White House one little bit.
I await my -1 score with baited breath. Mod me, baby.
I've got an SGI Octane sitting here on my desk typing this that I got for $120.00 WITH a monitor, keyboard, external CD and floppy drives and a 10 gig hard drive init. You can buy O2s all day on Ebay for $90 bucks too.
Ok,Octane won't run Linux, no port to it yet.
How about a P120 HP Vectra running my Linux router for $40 bucks?
Computers are CHEAP! Never buy new unless you absolutely positively HAVE TO run Doom 3. ~:D
Improved battlefield efficiency means you kill more of the enemy's soldiers, faster.
It also means, if you are the USA or another civilised nation, killing less non-combatants by accident. Ultimate battlefield efficiency would be the destruction of only the leadership and military command of an enemy country, with the general populace not even noticing anything had happened.
Conversly if you are Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Ossama Bin Laden or Yasser Arafat there's no such thing as a non-combatant, and very pinnacle of battlefield effciency is the H-bomb. VX nerve gas running a close second of course, because its easier to make.
Some people must be fought. The alternative is surrender followed by death. It therefore behoves us to figure out the most effective methods and to use them to secure victory.
The point of securing a network is to keep the private stuff private, and let the Internet stuff work properly. Obviously.
So I don't care who evesdrops on what once it leaves my firewall. One can safely assume that anything using a public router can be copied, cracked, read, changed, corrupted, etc. That's why we have firewalls, to keep the BS of a hostile world out of the house.
The problem with wireless home networks is that people can see and mess with what's on MY side of the firewall. Until some company produces a wireless scheme they are willing to guarantee, as in pay me money if somebody cracks it, I'm sticking to wire-only.
You know, not everyone in the world has the time, energy and inclination to figure out all the networking BS on the new wireless router they just bought. You think people have nothing better to do than mess with this stuff? Most likely they bought it because the salesman threw it in with their shiny new PC, all they want to do is surf and send e-mail. Networking they know nothing and care less.
That's my category. I'm SO not interested in frigging with the wireless. Plus I strongly doubt it can be secured anyway. So I stick with tristed pair and RJ45 crimpers. That stuff I know how it works, so I'll put up with the minor inconvenience of having another wire sticking out of my laptop. Nobody frigs with my connection baby.
I also know it can be snooped upon, but the equipment to do so is very, very expensive. Government issue only, pretty much. Unlike wardriving, which any pimply faced dork can afford to do.
Eavsedropping on people's portable phones is actually LESS intrusive and objectionable than wardriving, because all the eavesdropper can do is listen. The wardriver can use the victims internet connection to do -anything-. Legal or much more likely illegal. Kiddie porn mainly, but also terrorism, drug dealers, whatever. So the problem is not trivial.
As for the bureaucracy, that's the inevitable first reaction of government. Start a special squad, give them a budget and a phone. Problem solved. Well, so far as the city gubmint is concerned anyway. Now all the annoying taxpayers have somebody to call and bitch to besides the mayor.
The proper method for securing wireless networking equipment is to have the manufacturer make it secure out of the box, like a phone or a firewall box. Doesn't have to be impossible to crack, just expensive enough to keep the lowlife out of it.
Many posts have mentioned that immense electrical power is required to make antimatter, as are immense particle accelerators, magnets, containment bottles with super hard vacuums etc.
Outer space has most of the expensive stuff available free.
A moon base or large orbital station could easilly produce sufficent electricity from solar collectors, and vacuum is free up there. That leaves building the machinery, which while expensive is not impossibly so. Think Superconducting Supercollider but without the need for digging the big friggin' hole for it.
Down the road a few decades this technology could become practical.
Uses are many. First is the best rocket fuel ever. Antimatter powered rockets? Small and incredibly fast, super duper cheap on reaction mass given 100% energy conversion.
Bombs? Same yeild as a nuke, but -clean-. Nice side effect of the gamma radiation is a cockroach killing zone of considerable size outside the blast effect area. One could light an antimatter device off over a city and cook the inhabitants without knocking all that much over, and without poisoning the place for 50 years.
Ultimate space-based ass kicker, antimatter rockets with antimatter warheads. Kind of like a large scale BFG 9000. Nuke 'em today, move in next week.
I'd very much like to see it not get built however. The rockets would be nice, but the temptation of a city killer that didn't knock down the city might be too much for certain world leaders.
Let's not forget that Russia signed because they got a special deal. They can keep their targets without destroying their existing economy. The USA can't.
Besides, do you really think European countries are going to voluntarily butcher their own electrical generating systems and transportation just to meet Kyoto? Power on from 9AM to 5PM, no private cars? Sure.
France and Germany bitch at the USA, but they haven't met their targets and never will.
Besides, the USA's CO2 is a drop in the bucket compared to Iceland's volcanos. Maybe we should tax the Icelanders! Yeah! FUCK ICELAND!!!! MAKE THE BASTARDS PAY!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Until the producers let go of the whole Liberals in Space "We Come In Peace" kumbayah bit and let the writers put together something with a PLOT, Enterprise will continue to suck and people will continue to stay away in droves.
Science fiction requires a plot and characters who are not cardboard cutouts. There's just too much suspension of scepticism required to imagine any sane organization trusting Scott Bakula's character with any vehicle larger than a hot dog cart. Much less a star ship!
Give us a break. Hire some writers.
The hockey stick has been debunked, google it up and see. Lazyness does not impress.
Here's something else to look up. Large volcanos like Mt.St. Helens barf more particulates and greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in a single eruption than all the human activity since 1900. One extra eruption over a given period completely overwhelms any effect of human origin.
Hence some of the current disagreement over Global Warming.
G'head, get to work. We'll wait.
"The point is that our actions are causing changes, over and above the normal warming we'd expect to see due to normal ebb and flow of ice ages."
As it happens, there's no compelling evidence to support this claim. What we have is a SMALL measured change in global temperature which is well within the normal variation of the last 50 years, never mind the last 50,000, plus a great deal of unsupported, computer model generated balderdash. Total evidence of human-caused warming beyond mere correlation: zero. Correlations are interesting, but not proof of causal relationships.
Go look it up. Net change since ~1950 is under +2 degrees C, well within the "noise" level. I'll save my panic for later, thanks all the same.
Besides, being Canadian I'd say better warming than cooling. You can irrigate a desert but its hard to farm a glacier.
Another new breakthrough for painters, besides the drop sheet, is the amazing painter's spray mask. You put it on your head and it actually filters the air for you!
You want to breath some scary shit, try high end car paint some time. You have to wear a full coverage bunny suit with remote air supply because it can go in through your skin and eyes, not just your lungs. It contains one of the most dangerous metals in the periodic table.
Oddly this is considered more enviro-friendly than nitrocellulose laquer by the EPA. If they didn't mandate its use nobody would touch it with a barge pole.
Dude, what do you think ordinary latex paint is made of? The tinting agents are all metals, primarily titanium.
These guys are adding aluminum and copper strands, which will take many, many years to break down in the soil. Go to an old shooting range some time, you can find copper jacketed ammunition from pre-WWI that's still 100% intact.
Then there's this breakthrough device called a drop sheet...
Its called a DROP SHEET. You put it on the ground when you paint and it collects all the drips. And you know, it can be used to collect up all the peeling paint when you scrape it off in five or ten years.
Jeasus! Can't you wankers get over the envirocrap for even one second?
I regret to say that this does not fill me with confidence. OSHA's track record for running with junk science is abysmal. That they haven't run with this particular one yet is merely coincidence. Give them time, I'm sure they'll discover cell phones are bad.
Lawyers, of course! Also all the no-talent wankers who keep getting grants to churn out this bilge, and the journals which print it.
/ 12
How bad, how science-free is this stuff? National Academy of Sciences just gave their review report on gun control. Here's some comment on it. http://www.investors.com/editorial/issues.asp?v=1
Bottom line, even though the thing was paid for by a bunch of anti-gun foundations (Pew, Ford etc.) and even though all but one of the people on the review were publicly avowed anti-guners, and indeed even though they avoided any and all research that suggested guns might be of some benefit to the owner: their net result was no evidence that gun control works.
Thirty years of crappy research, millions and millions of public health research dollars pissed away, all completely wasted.
DDT? Same story as above, lots of total CRAP written with zero useful scientific content.
Global warming? See above.
OSHA? They nearly put through regulations to protect workers from back injuries that would have bankrupted every employer in the USA. The only thing that stopped them was the 2000 election. Science? BWAHAHA!!!! As if!
I could go on, but I'm sure you're getting the drift. Anybody with an axe to grind is seizing on these bogus issues. They should all take some lessons in basic statistics.
It is possible to prove cell phones dangerous. You do experiments to look for effects on biological systems.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove them safe. One cannot prove a negative.
However if Dr. Wantsagrant couldn't find more than four studies that even suggested a correlation, I'm thinking there's damn little chance that the feeble little radio wave coming out of that cell phone is going to cook a neuron, or even raise its temperature slightly.
So if this turns out to be true I'll run off and join the Reformed Church of Elvis. Hey, anything's possible. Or not!
Oh joy, another propaganda campaign. File this one next to global warming, frankenfood, DDT, "the coming death of the Web" and gun control in the circular bin.
You can always tell a BS campaign by the way they say "there's no proof, but just in case..." to justify their vaporous musings.
Couldn't these people find something useful to do?
Whenever you see a result like 75% for, 25% neutral, 0% opposed to any hypothesis, you have to assume there's a publication bias.
Example, public health studies of gun control. I've read them ALL up to about 1995 and most of the big ones after that. In US, Canadian and British medical journals 60 of 65 articles from 1975 up to about 1995 on the subject advocated increased gun control as a solution to murder rates, the other five were neutral. That's 91.6% for, 8.3% neutral, 0% against. Yet we know that there was a thriving debate on the issue with considerable publication of scholarly opinion and scientific evidence against gun control as a solution to violence.
The medical journals ignored any and all authors whose conclusions did not support gun control, plain and simple. Medical journal editors cherry picked articles they liked, spiked ones they didn't, and authors obliged them by not quoting from contrary findings. They are STILL DOING IT, even after the US Congress cut the CDC's funding for doing it.
Given that eye opener, I have to say I can believe in a systematic publication bias a lot faster than I can believe that NOBODY has found any reason to doubt the global warming hypothesis. People are not as noble and concerned with the Pursuit of Truth as one would like to believe.
Now, since I'm on a mission to destroy karma, I'd like all you little EcoNazis with mod points to crash this comment down to -1 as fast as possible. You managed to get me timed-out last time I posted on this subject but it took you a day or two. See if you can get it down to a couple of hours this time, eh?
And since I'm still here talking, take note of just how much return you're getting from your effort to shut guys like me up.
"The reason nature has adopted the flapping wing is simply because it cannot emulate a shaft unidirctionally rotating in a bearing in a biological structure, so it had to "make do."
This isn't strictly true. Many protozoans (and our sperm cells too) have flagella that provide propulsion by rotation. The little ATP burning motor is an amazing machine.
Never took off in larger animals for some reason. Be an interesting endeavor to find out why that is, eh?
Gun control is ALREADY dead, particularly in Scotland. Any moderatly handy individual with a welder and a metal lathe can make a Sten Gun in an afternoon. No plans required, just a rough idea of what you're trying to make.
Prehaps you've noticed the rush of crimes commited in the Isles with formerly non-functional "replica" firearms? Doesn't take much to make them work. Takes even less to build a full auto Sten Gun from scratch. Any size you want too.
As soon as the government declares any item banned, a cottage industry starts making them by the basketful. Modern CNC machines can punch them out by the cart load. And they do. Pretty much boners the gun control concept.
Which begs the question, whatnhell were they thinking of when they banned firearms in Britain? Public safety? Nuh uh.
Damn fool Red state Nazi Republicans banning taxes on the Internet, how the hell are the Poor going to get their web access...!
oh, wait a second...
...you'll believe anything.
You hadn't heard I suppose that NBC had a crew with the 101st who walked the length of the place and found not a single UN sticker? In APRIL 2003? One day after the fall of DadsBag?
You hadn't heard that there was a unit there with a reporter even before the 101st was there and they found no UN stickers either? Name escapes me for the moment.
I hasn't occured to you that possibly the UN guy who started this freakshow with the NY Slimes might possibly have an interest in the outcome of the US election? Or that the NY Slimes might?
Finally, I take it that you think its worse that "we know not who" -might- have their hands on a bunch of nuke building explosives than knowing 100% that Saddam Hussein had control of them?
Face it. Saddam had the shit moved before US forces crossed the Kuwait border in 2003 because he was afraid it would be bombed to crap. We are talking 35 tractor-trailer loads of material here. Who in post-attack Iraq had that many 18 wheelers hanging off his upper lip? That wouldn't instantly be targeted and blown to hell from the air? Uncle Sam and nobody else.
This is just the latest lump in the steady stream of bullshit from John&John. Not making me want to see them in the White House one little bit.
I await my -1 score with baited breath. Mod me, baby.
I've got an SGI Octane sitting here on my desk typing this that I got for $120.00 WITH a monitor, keyboard, external CD and floppy drives and a 10 gig hard drive init. You can buy O2s all day on Ebay for $90 bucks too.
Ok,Octane won't run Linux, no port to it yet.
How about a P120 HP Vectra running my Linux router for $40 bucks?
Computers are CHEAP! Never buy new unless you absolutely positively HAVE TO run Doom 3. ~:D
Improved battlefield efficiency means you kill more of the enemy's soldiers, faster.
It also means, if you are the USA or another civilised nation, killing less non-combatants by accident. Ultimate battlefield efficiency would be the destruction of only the leadership and military command of an enemy country, with the general populace not even noticing anything had happened.
Conversly if you are Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Ossama Bin Laden or Yasser Arafat there's no such thing as a non-combatant, and very pinnacle of battlefield effciency is the H-bomb. VX nerve gas running a close second of course, because its easier to make.
Some people must be fought. The alternative is surrender followed by death. It therefore behoves us to figure out the most effective methods and to use them to secure victory.
Dude, unless you firewall yourself from the wireless segment, you get broken into as well.
And remember, if Mum and Dad go broke because somebody ripped off their banking info your meal ticket just got cancelled.
Here in the Great White North, known as the People's Republic of Kanada, we have hot summers too.
But we also have basements. ~:D
Have you considered running the cable along the baseboard until winter time? That's what generations of lazy phone company installers have done.
The point of securing a network is to keep the private stuff private, and let the Internet stuff work properly. Obviously.
So I don't care who evesdrops on what once it leaves my firewall. One can safely assume that anything using a public router can be copied, cracked, read, changed, corrupted, etc. That's why we have firewalls, to keep the BS of a hostile world out of the house.
The problem with wireless home networks is that people can see and mess with what's on MY side of the firewall. Until some company produces a wireless scheme they are willing to guarantee, as in pay me money if somebody cracks it, I'm sticking to wire-only.
You know, not everyone in the world has the time, energy and inclination to figure out all the networking BS on the new wireless router they just bought. You think people have nothing better to do than mess with this stuff? Most likely they bought it because the salesman threw it in with their shiny new PC, all they want to do is surf and send e-mail. Networking they know nothing and care less.
That's my category. I'm SO not interested in frigging with the wireless. Plus I strongly doubt it can be secured anyway. So I stick with tristed pair and RJ45 crimpers. That stuff I know how it works, so I'll put up with the minor inconvenience of having another wire sticking out of my laptop. Nobody frigs with my connection baby.
I also know it can be snooped upon, but the equipment to do so is very, very expensive. Government issue only, pretty much. Unlike wardriving, which any pimply faced dork can afford to do.
Eavsedropping on people's portable phones is actually LESS intrusive and objectionable than wardriving, because all the eavesdropper can do is listen. The wardriver can use the victims internet connection to do -anything-. Legal or much more likely illegal. Kiddie porn mainly, but also terrorism, drug dealers, whatever. So the problem is not trivial.
As for the bureaucracy, that's the inevitable first reaction of government. Start a special squad, give them a budget and a phone. Problem solved. Well, so far as the city gubmint is concerned anyway. Now all the annoying taxpayers have somebody to call and bitch to besides the mayor.
The proper method for securing wireless networking equipment is to have the manufacturer make it secure out of the box, like a phone or a firewall box. Doesn't have to be impossible to crack, just expensive enough to keep the lowlife out of it.
Go vote slacker boy, or I'll stick this BFG 9000 up your...
Many posts have mentioned that immense electrical power is required to make antimatter, as are immense particle accelerators, magnets, containment bottles with super hard vacuums etc.
Outer space has most of the expensive stuff available free.
A moon base or large orbital station could easilly produce sufficent electricity from solar collectors, and vacuum is free up there. That leaves building the machinery, which while expensive is not impossibly so. Think Superconducting Supercollider but without the need for digging the big friggin' hole for it.
Down the road a few decades this technology could become practical.
Uses are many. First is the best rocket fuel ever. Antimatter powered rockets? Small and incredibly fast, super duper cheap on reaction mass given 100% energy conversion.
Bombs? Same yeild as a nuke, but -clean-. Nice side effect of the gamma radiation is a cockroach killing zone of considerable size outside the blast effect area. One could light an antimatter device off over a city and cook the inhabitants without knocking all that much over, and without poisoning the place for 50 years.
Ultimate space-based ass kicker, antimatter rockets with antimatter warheads. Kind of like a large scale BFG 9000. Nuke 'em today, move in next week.
I'd very much like to see it not get built however. The rockets would be nice, but the temptation of a city killer that didn't knock down the city might be too much for certain world leaders.
Its sarcasm. De Nile is a river in Egypt.
Let's not forget that Russia signed because they got a special deal. They can keep their targets without destroying their existing economy. The USA can't.
Besides, do you really think European countries are going to voluntarily butcher their own electrical generating systems and transportation just to meet Kyoto? Power on from 9AM to 5PM, no private cars? Sure.
France and Germany bitch at the USA, but they haven't met their targets and never will.
Besides, the USA's CO2 is a drop in the bucket compared to Iceland's volcanos. Maybe we should tax the Icelanders! Yeah! FUCK ICELAND!!!! MAKE THE BASTARDS PAY!!!!