I have never seen a serious design for a closed-cycle gas core nuclear rocket engine that has a thrust/weight ratio greater than one. All that specific impulse is useless if it can't get off the ground. In the essay you link to, the author seems to simply assume that it's possible to build a nuclear lightbulb engine with 1.2 million lb of thrust that masses 60 ton. If you have any sort of reference to a source that indicates this is possible, I would be very interested to see it. But this seems badly out of line with what most experts believe is possible.
philosophically speaking, you lose some of your identity when you self-enhance. if you don't buy my argument, i have two words for you: barry bonds. This is a self-referential argument. Barry Bonds' accomplishments are only devalued by his drug use if you assume a priori that the drugs devalue his accomplishments.
Those of us who are trying to compete with these people are being harmed. Now you put us in a bad position--take them too, or fall behind. Is that fair to us? We don't get a choice in whether we actually want to take these--take them, or don't have a career. The same could be said of many things other than drugs. Some of the professors in my department choose to sacrifice their health and personal relationships so that they can be at work 60-80 hours/week. I have to compete with that if I want to get tenure. Is it "fair" that I am forced to work at least 8 am to 8 pm Monday-Friday in order to keep up with them and not be "that lazy guy who doesn't publish enough"? Those sorts of work habits can easily be as damaging to one's health and relationships as drug abuse. But if they were willing to do it and I was not, they would deserve the job more than me. I would never dream of saying that they should only be allowed to work 40 hours/week on the basis of "fairness". They aren are only "harming" me in the same way that a guy who wins an auction by bidding more than me and getting the item I wanted is harming me. Sure, you could argue that this is a form of "harm," but that certainly doesn't mean it's unfair.
Certainly a high risk of harm to others gene really does put an odd slant on genetic testing. Think of all those sociopath corporate types who want genetic testing to exclude people from health insurance or employment, now they might have pause to rethink that whole idea when it would be aimed at them. What makes you think it would be viewed as a negative? Corporations might want people who "don't let emotions get in the way of business" or some such.
I see all kinds of more dangerous traffic infractions that almost no cop gives a damn about. YES
In my city people commonly drive very dangerously - not signaling when they turn, aggressively weaving around in lanes so they can get to the red light 3 seconds before everyone else, running red light/stop signs, pulling out in front of traffic so that everyone else has to stop briefly to avoid hitting you - but the cops never seem to give a damn. Go more than 6 mph over the speed limit, though, and they pounce on you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people should speed - but the amount of enforcement effort that goes into speeding seems vastly excessive compared to the relative danger it poses.
People always argue that we shouldn't be able to buy and sell organs because it gives the rich an unfair advantage over the poor when they need an organ transplant - but this viewpoint ignores the fact that being able to pay for organs actually increases the supply of organs. I guarantee you that many, many more people would check the "I want to donate my organs if I die" box if they knew that their surviving family would be gettings some money for it. Likewise, people would be much more likely to allow the organs of their deceased family members to be harvested if they received money for it. In the end, allowing people to pay for organs results in more people getting transplants and surviving.
As I work alongside today's Airmen, many with very specialized skill sets in great demand outside the Air Force, I find them to be incredibly well trained and up-to-speed on current technologies. We bring them in from a general practitioner level and take them to expert level in reasonable time... No way. The problem here is that it takes many years of training before someone could really be an "expert" on computer security - it's a field that's on par with designing a jet engine or performing surgery in terms of how complicated and specialized it is. If someone signs up for a four-year term in the military, you could easily spend that entire four years giving them intense academic/practical training and still not have someone who is really qualified. At best, you will have someone who is able to implement a security policy that was designed by someone else who is actually an expert. The vast majority of true computer security experts are 30+ years old and have over a decade of learning and experience. For comparison, a person can be taught to fly a jet fighter in "only" a few years.
Which of course brings us back to the original question about how the airforce plans to attract older computer scientists, if they want to actually employ computer security experts - which the general didn't even attempt to answer.
If I asked you what you believe, you would point me to materials I can read, tell me yourself, or point me to someone else who can explain it better... That's the common argument that people bring out when trying to justify why scientology "isn't a religion", but in fact there are many non-evangelical indigenous tribal religions in Australia, North America, and Africa that try to keep their theologies secret from the "uninitiated". You just don't usually hear about them much because they don't make any particular effort to recruit new members. Scientology isn't really unique in that it tries to keep its teachings secret, it's unique in that it tries to keep its teachings secret and it actively tries to recruit.
Add then rental, and are you sure you don't just want to go to the theatre? Since it costs $9/ticket for adults at the theaters in my town, it's a minimum of $18/movie for my wife and I to go to the theater - and see the movie once. At 20 movies/year for 5 years, that's $1800 total. So no, it's still an easy choice to rent movies and watch them at home. Especially since you have the convenience of starting when you want, being able to stop the movie if you want to, etc. For the price of a trip to the theater you can usually purchase the movie, especially if you're willing to wait a few months. If you don't mind buying used disks that the rental store, you can get virtually any movie for around $10 - almost half the price of a trip to the theater, and then you *own* the disk and can watch it forever if you wish.
Your point about protecting the species from extinction is arguably a good one, by it's silly to suggest that it might alleviate population issues. Our population is growing by more that 200k people/day. Even in the most ambitious programs imaginable, where we are constantly shipping loads of people up and away in multiple space elevators, I don't think anyone expects to ever send people into space *that* rapidly.
My rating is less than 300, but it's 100% and I put a lot of effort into my listings to try to keep it that way. For the most part I sell old PC and Sun hardware that I no longer use thanks to upgrading. My auctions go into an enormous amount of detail with respect to an item's condition, how I tested it to make sure that it works, and I list anything that's wrong that I cannot fix, like scratches, dents, missing 5-1/4" bay covers, etc. Wow...that actually works for you? In my experience many buyers leave negative feedback simply because they didn't read the auction terms or item description carefully. I've seen negative feedback complaining about items not being new when they were clearly described as used, negative feedback because of damage to items that was explicitly described (with pictures of the damage even!), and complaining about missing manuals/documentation when it was clearly stated that these would not be included.
There's a simple, unambiguous test anyone can apply to objectively determine whether a theory is scientific. That is: is the theory falsifiable? Does the theory make predictions that could potentially be proven wrong by evidence? Intelligent Design fails this test. Well, ID "theory" does indeed make predictions - it's just that none of those predictions seem to be accurate. For example, if lifeforms were designed by an "intelligent" designer then one would not expect animals to have useless (or even potentially harmful) vestigial organs like the appendix.
The ironic thing there is that you could easily answer this objection by pointing out that the "designer" might not have been perfect, and perhaps did an imperfect job of designing...but no proponent of ID would ever say that, because "designer" is just a code word for their god (who is supposed to be perfect).
Neither Joe Q. Inventor working in his garage or Sally S. Songwriter are going to be able to pay the taxes on a high valuation, meaning Evil Record Label/Evil Faceless Corporation will be able to buy everything they've created at a low price. If the IP actually has value, then Joe Q. Inventor and Sally S. Songwriter can pay the taxes with the money they make off the IP. If some big corporation comes along and actually bids so much for the IP that they have to spend more on taxes than they can make off the IP, then Joe Q. Inventor and Sally S. Songwriter come out ahead - they ot more money from the corporation than they could have made had they tried to extract money from the IP.
Has anyone ever actually demonstrated that looking at porn is harmful to children/teens? Everyone seems to be taking it as a forgone conclusion, but I've never seen any scientific evidence in a psychology journal. If looking at porn is really as dangerous as many people like to believe, it should be very easy to demonstrate the harm - but so far as I know, nobody has ever done that.
And no, I don't consider "It gives people unrealistic ideas about sex" to be actual harm. Romance movies probably do vastly more harm to developing adolescents by giving them unrealistic expectations of what real romantic relationships are like. Having a grossly distorted "Hollywood" view of romance is probably going to be substantially more problematic to a teenager/young adult than being disappointed that your girlfriend doesn't want to do something kinky that you saw in a porn movie.
It seems like the government should have to produce some evidence that it's actual dangerous before they ban/censor it.
Once we took a screen shot of the windows desktop on a friend's computer via the "Print Screen" key , then made it the background and stacked all the desktop icons on top of each other so that only the top one was visible. We also hid the star button and the associated bar that shows your open programs. The poor computer owner thought that his computer "froze" every time he turned it on - all of his icons and the start button were there, but nothing happened when he clicked on them. He could only open anything by using the "start button" key on the keyboard. It took him quite a while to figure it out...
Sigh. I get tired of people who hold strong opinions on things that they clearly know nothing about.
Get this straight, "You DON'T hold hot coffee between your legs to add sugar while driving a car." She wasn't driving the car, she was a passenger. And the car was parked.
Sears knowingly sells tablesaws that have been known to cut off hands and fingers. Yet they continue to sell them just because people keep buying them. If you told Sears that people have been injured with the saws, I'm sure their response would be along the lines of, "Yeah. So?" So, should someone sue Sears for selling a known potentially harmful item? If Sears was knowingly selling table saws that were substantially more likely to cut off a user's fingers than the table saws of other companies, and continued doing so even after having been warned by experts that their table saws were less safe than ordinary tables saws, then yes - they most certainly WOULD be vulnerable to a lawsuit.
Ultimately, the problem lied with the neighbor, who harassed a teenager until she committed suicide. Although the behavior of the neighbors was despicable, I can't believe that any 13 year-old girl would commit suicide because of something as trivial as internet harassment unless she already had very severe emotional and psychological problems. "The problem" was the girl's underlying psychological dysfunction, not the internet harassmanet. This situation is almost exactly analogous to accidentally causing a heartattack by shouting "Boo!" at someone.
The first thing that came to mind for me is that this is even more evidence that eye-witness testimony isn't a reliable source of information in criminal trials. If I was ever serving on a jury and the only evidence was someone's eye-witness testemony, I'm not sure I could ever consider that proof "beyond a reasonable doubt."
"Expensive" doesn't even begin to cover it. A subscription to the Journal of the American Chemical Society - which you pretty much must have if you want to do serious chemistry research - was $3165 last time I checked. And that was for online access only! These prices aren't "expensive," they're insane. Especially when you consider that the journals don't pay anything for the papers that they publish.
It's hard to be a "bad buyer", either you pay the amount, either you don't. No? The problem is that many buyers are stupid, and they often leave negative feedback simply because they didn't read the auction terms or item description carefully. I've seen negative feedback complaining about items not being new when they were clearly described as used in the auction, negative feedback because of damage to items that was explicitly described in the auction (with pictures of the damage even!), and complaining about missing manuals/documentation when it was clearly stated that these would not be included. So, yeah, if a buyer leaves me negative feedback because I sold him exactly what was described in the auction, I'm probably going to leave him negative feedback in tern.
Because, hey, if three guys with a $500 telescope, some lawn chairs, a six-pack of beer and nothing else to do on a Friday night don't do it, maybe hostile foreign governments won't either! Riiiiight.
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I have never seen a serious design for a closed-cycle gas core nuclear rocket engine that has a thrust/weight ratio greater than one. All that specific impulse is useless if it can't get off the ground. In the essay you link to, the author seems to simply assume that it's possible to build a nuclear lightbulb engine with 1.2 million lb of thrust that masses 60 ton. If you have any sort of reference to a source that indicates this is possible, I would be very interested to see it. But this seems badly out of line with what most experts believe is possible.
They can battle each other for our amusement, of course!
In my city people commonly drive very dangerously - not signaling when they turn, aggressively weaving around in lanes so they can get to the red light 3 seconds before everyone else, running red light/stop signs, pulling out in front of traffic so that everyone else has to stop briefly to avoid hitting you - but the cops never seem to give a damn. Go more than 6 mph over the speed limit, though, and they pounce on you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people should speed - but the amount of enforcement effort that goes into speeding seems vastly excessive compared to the relative danger it poses.
Exactly. If anyone knew how to design this sort of 100+ MPG, four-passenger, highway-capable fantasy car *they would already be selling it*.
People always argue that we shouldn't be able to buy and sell organs because it gives the rich an unfair advantage over the poor when they need an organ transplant - but this viewpoint ignores the fact that being able to pay for organs actually increases the supply of organs. I guarantee you that many, many more people would check the "I want to donate my organs if I die" box if they knew that their surviving family would be gettings some money for it. Likewise, people would be much more likely to allow the organs of their deceased family members to be harvested if they received money for it. In the end, allowing people to pay for organs results in more people getting transplants and surviving.
Which of course brings us back to the original question about how the airforce plans to attract older computer scientists, if they want to actually employ computer security experts - which the general didn't even attempt to answer.
Your point about protecting the species from extinction is arguably a good one, by it's silly to suggest that it might alleviate population issues. Our population is growing by more that 200k people/day. Even in the most ambitious programs imaginable, where we are constantly shipping loads of people up and away in multiple space elevators, I don't think anyone expects to ever send people into space *that* rapidly.
People finding out that it happened is bad, yes, but people finding out that it happened and that you tried to cover it up is much worse.
The ironic thing there is that you could easily answer this objection by pointing out that the "designer" might not have been perfect, and perhaps did an imperfect job of designing...but no proponent of ID would ever say that, because "designer" is just a code word for their god (who is supposed to be perfect).
Has anyone ever actually demonstrated that looking at porn is harmful to children/teens? Everyone seems to be taking it as a forgone conclusion, but I've never seen any scientific evidence in a psychology journal. If looking at porn is really as dangerous as many people like to believe, it should be very easy to demonstrate the harm - but so far as I know, nobody has ever done that.
And no, I don't consider "It gives people unrealistic ideas about sex" to be actual harm. Romance movies probably do vastly more harm to developing adolescents by giving them unrealistic expectations of what real romantic relationships are like. Having a grossly distorted "Hollywood" view of romance is probably going to be substantially more problematic to a teenager/young adult than being disappointed that your girlfriend doesn't want to do something kinky that you saw in a porn movie.
It seems like the government should have to produce some evidence that it's actual dangerous before they ban/censor it.
Once we took a screen shot of the windows desktop on a friend's computer via the "Print Screen" key , then made it the background and stacked all the desktop icons on top of each other so that only the top one was visible. We also hid the star button and the associated bar that shows your open programs. The poor computer owner thought that his computer "froze" every time he turned it on - all of his icons and the start button were there, but nothing happened when he clicked on them. He could only open anything by using the "start button" key on the keyboard. It took him quite a while to figure it out...
The first thing that came to mind for me is that this is even more evidence that eye-witness testimony isn't a reliable source of information in criminal trials. If I was ever serving on a jury and the only evidence was someone's eye-witness testemony, I'm not sure I could ever consider that proof "beyond a reasonable doubt."
I have always been curious about the legality of children and EULAs. Is it technically illegal for a child to purchase and install a computer game?
"Expensive" doesn't even begin to cover it. A subscription to the Journal of the American Chemical Society - which you pretty much must have if you want to do serious chemistry research - was $3165 last time I checked. And that was for online access only! These prices aren't "expensive," they're insane. Especially when you consider that the journals don't pay anything for the papers that they publish.
Because, hey, if three guys with a $500 telescope, some lawn chairs, a six-pack of beer and nothing else to do on a Friday night don't do it, maybe hostile foreign governments won't either! Riiiiight.