Well, if the bill has been "tabled" that essentially stops that option. At least, that's my understanding of it. It COULD be brought back, but not quietly.
Of course, the best prescription for those attacks of late night bill passing that Congress occasionally has are frequent purges of sitting politicians and regular ingestion of fresh people committed to smaller, more limited government. And now I'll stop with the medical analogy because it's beginning to get gross.
Re:Internet wins...
on
House Kills SOPA
·
· Score: 5, Informative
But not in the way many slashdotters might think.
Little appreciated here on Slashdot is the fact that SOPA was as unpopular on the right side of the spectrum as it was on the left. Many conservatives and libertarians rightly see SOPA has a HUGE power grab, and massive step towards an even more centralized government.
Eric Cantor is very tied in with the Conservative Blogosphere and with conservative internet "consciousness". As such he promised early on to do his best to kill SOPA.
It appears that he has kept his promise. Well Done Mr. Cantor. Well Done.
- You seem to be assuming that I want a war in Korea. trust me, I want nothing of the sort. I just don't see reunification happening without one.
- You are taking the nuke capability of NK far more seriously than most world leaders do. Having a nuke warhead is one thing. Reliably being able to deliver it to your enemy is something else entirely. So far the Norks have failed to show a reliable delivery system, and the Soks know this.
- My comment was oriented towards debunking the false idea that communist and authoritarian societies will automatically collapse without violence once western influences creep in. This is clearly untrue, and China itself is the prime example of this.
Agreed. There is really no way to tell from here whether it is real, or really well faked, undercover videos notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, there are always a certain percentage that "Drink the Koolaid" and absolutely believe. These ones are often the ones with their hand on or close to the reins of power. ipod clones won't do diddly for them, and the rest of the Norks are either in the military (but I repeat myself) or too poor and half-starved to care about ipod clones.
The fall of the Soviet Union would seem to disprove this notion.
No, it would not at all.
Note that what happened to the Soviets was NOTHING like what happened in China. In the Soviet model, (Perestroika) over a century of oppression was simply dropped and a totally closed society was suddenly and without warning thrown open to the world. The ensuing reaction was almost predictable; Complete chaos and collapse of the Soviet regime.
Let us not forget that there WAS some violence that followed. Unfortunately for the soviets, their military decided to side with the people over the government. Tanks showing up at the gates of the Kremlin to close down the government rather than defend it ended the revolution with a victory for Freedom rather quickly and mostly bloodlessly.
The Chinese noted these events and decided that they wanted nothing to do with it. Remember that the Tienanmen Square incident was right around the same time. For a short time it appeared that Communism was collapsing all over the world all at once. (it was a great moment to live in, let me tell you.)
Sadly, the Chicoms had no intention to go quietly. They had a very different relationship with their military, and the military rolled Tanks into the square to defend the government and drive out the protestors. The crackdown afterwards was BRUTAL.
I had a college roommate who was in Tienanmen Square that day. Afterwards he fled China and was accepted into the US under political asylum. He told me how many of his friends "disappeared" before they could escape. That's how bad it was in those days.
The Chinese later began to loosen things up, but only incrementally, and ALWAYS under government control. Even after foreign companies were allowed in China, it was always under very strict rules. If you didn't play along, they booted you out. (even McDonalds got kicked out.) Over time these rules have loosened, but control has always been in the governments hands.
What westernization they have allowed has always been with a single goal: To keep the people COMPLACENT. Give them minor luxuries, allow them to keep a small modicum of their natural freedoms and let them get comfortable and lazy. Otherwise, keep them too busy working and living their lives to have time for revolution. (Why do you think they have essentially created an "Island" Internet via the "Great Firewall of China"? To keep revolutionary ideas out while still allowing controlled financial interaction with the rest of the world.)
It's an ingenious formula and has worked very well to keep the Chicoms in power. If NK decides to follow this model, don't expect a revolution.
We still see video of people falling over themselves weeping when Kim-Jong "mentally" ill dies. Not to say that those videos aren't at least partially staged, but some "undercover" video has leaked out of NK showing that at least some of the weeping, wailing and carrying on was genuine. (I apologize for not having a link ATM. Search on YouTube. It's there.)
Not to say that the new regime isn't weak, it certainly is. But not so weak that ipod clones are going to topple them anytime soon. We see how well "westernization" has "toppled" the communist Chinese government. (IE: Not at all) If Kim-Jong Un decides to modernize and westernize following the Chinese model, Korea isn't likely to see unification anytime in the next century.
Sadly, there really is only ONE way to absolutely topple a government of any stripe. That's with violent revolution. The only way that Korea will unify is if SK invades and defeats NK. With NK's recent round of sabre-rattling, that's looking more and more likely every day.
Fancy machines don't help when a problem is structurally inherent.
Communism's primary issue is not that it scales poorly, although it does. Communism's primary issue is that it works against basic human nature. It failed even in villiage-sized experiments back in the early colonization days of America. The Pilgrims tried their own brand of it and it failed miserably. And they had religious pressure to help the system along! IE: It was God's Will, they were building a new Jerusalem. WAY more pressure for them to work together and make it work than your average modern communist society. It still fell apart. Behold the writing of William Bradford, one of the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower: (emphasis mine)
All this while no supplies were heard of, nor did they know when they might expect any. So they began to consider how to raise more corn, and obtain a better crop than they had done, so that they might not continue to endure the misery of want. At length after much debate, the Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household, and to trust to themselves for that; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. So every family was assigned a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number with that in view, â" for present purposes only, and making no division for inheritance, â" all boys and children being included under some family.
This was very successful. It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The failure of the experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times, - that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.
For in this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort. For the young men who were most able and fit for service objected to being forced to spend their time and strength in working for other men's wives and children, without any recompense. The strong man or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, etc., than the weak man who was not able to do a quarter the other could. This was thought injustice. The aged and graver men, who were ranked and equalized in labour, food, clothes, etc., with the humbler and younger ones, thought it some indignity and disrespect to them. As for men's wives who were obliged to do service for other men, such as cooking, washing their clothes, etc., they considered it a kind of slavery, and many husbands would not brook it.
This feature of it would have been worse still, if they had been men of an inferior class. If (it was thought) all were to share alike, and all were to do alike, then all were on an equality throughout, and one was as good as another; and so, if it did not actually abolish those very relations which God himself has set among men, it did at least greatly diminish the mutual respect that is so important should be preserved amongst them. Let none argue that this is due to human failing, rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself. I answer, seeing that all men have this failing in them, that God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them.
These matters premised, I will now proceed with my account of affairs here. But before I come
As another poster noted, the Japanese are hunting Minke whales, of which there is a large and stable population. The most reliable numbers we have put their population in the multiple thousands. Literally more die of natural causes each year than the Japanese take. It's not like they are hunting down Blues or Humpbacks.
Also, that vaunted efficiency also means that less of the whale is wasted. The Japanese are well known for making use of almost all of the whale, much like the Inuit. The only difference is that the Japanese are even more efficient with much less waste, thus they need to hunt fewer whales than they would if they were using more traditional processing techniques.
The point being that the entire battle here is little more than an ideological one. The Minke whale doesn't need any additional protection from anyone, very little of the whale is going to waste and the Sea shepherd people are out risking their lives and the lives of the fishermen on what amounts to little more than a "Gaian" religious war. It's stupid and pointless.
Except that "process" in the patent system refers to manufacturing processes. Still tied intrinsically to the physical world. Modern lawyers have shoehorned written software into the patent world by calling it "A system or method or process".
I'm saying we should disallow this and eliminate all software patents.
You say the software world has done pretty well under patents, I say that so few companies were writing software until the last 10 years that almost nobody ran into issues with it. Back in the '60's when software was first allowed to be patentable they were still using PUNCH CARDS and computers filled whole rooms! Maybe 100 people on the PLANET could write software, and most of them knew each other, so patents weren't an issue.
Now that software is everywhere we are running into the hard limits of the patent system and innovation by anyone other than the giants is suffering.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, so believe me, my opinion is not formed from some communistic desire to eliminate profit. My desire is to unlock the potential of software and software writers to bring us new and innovative ideas and allow the little guy some room to join in without the big guys monopolizing the market.
I want everyone to have a chance to maximize their profit through honest marketplace competition, and to stop the minimizing of that marketplace by the artifice of patents.
Why allowing Software Patents is foolish. It destroys innovation and rewards established players and those with deep pockets. (It also allows the established players to pick the pockets of others, whether they are deep or not.)
Abolish software patents. Software should be covered under copyright as it is written material. Patents are for physical objects. Not the written word (or code).
Well, yes. IF you could somehow find a way to move an entire moon from the grip of a gas giant, then you could do that.
Some of us prefer more practical methods though. Simply bulking Mars up with a steady diet of asteroids gravity tractor-ed in using robotic spacecraft is a FAR more practical method, and much less risky than attempting to move a body as large as Titan all in one go.
Not only do you get the advantage of adding all those variable content asteroids, the bombardment heats the planet up creating that lovely convection dynamo AND you up the planet's mass by several trillion kg, thus enabling it to hold onto that heat and maintain the dynamo for much longer.
I prefer my Sci-fi to have an edge of the possible.
Just took the time to put in in decimal, just for fun.
In decimal notation that's as follows.
Mars + all of the Asteroid belt = 645,050,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
Earth = 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
So, as you can see, Mars would still be an order of magnitude smaller than Earth, but MUCH larger than it's current size if we were to bombard it with the contents of the asteroid belt, thus adding to it's mass.
Well, the difficulties of boring large holes down the center of Mars to set off the nukes (doesn't do any good to nuke the surface) do present some problems.
And the fact that Mars simply isn't massive enough to maintain that heat anyway. Any terraforming project would be short-term as Mars would rapidly cool off and lose it's magnetic shield again.
Seems to me Mars needs to bulk up. Using spacecraft to redirect large asteroids into Mars using the gravity tractor method seems like a viable way to bulk it up AND heat it up. I don't know if there is enough material available in the Asteroid belt, but it seems more technically feasible than drilling into Mars' core to set nukes off.
I just did a bit of quick math, and if you add the estimated total mass of the Asteroid belt to the estimated mass of Mars you get 6.4505 x (10^23) kilograms. The Earth is 5.9736 x (10 ^24) kilograms. Mars would still be smaller than Earth, but would be far more likely to be able to hold onto a magnetic field (after it cooled from the bombardment, of course.)
By definition, every act of government is a political act, therefore all content censored by them was censored for political reasons and thus is political content.
All speech is political.
Both of these statements are, though well intentioned, patently false.
There are many instances of government censoring types of speech that has nothing whatsoever to do with the politics of the day. Almost all of these revolve around "non protected" speech such as suborning perjury, inciting to violence, or other criminal acts such as illegal drug use, human and weapons trafficking, sex crimes and of course, terrorism.
The US government "censors" thousands of such websites and internet-based information on a daily basis. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with "politics". The enforcement arm of the government is merely doing it's job.
Now, that's not to say that legitimate sites are not erroneously taken offline from time to time, that mistakes aren't made, and that nobody in government ever has a less than honest agenda. You would have to be a fool to believe that. But it is equally foolish to think that every single incidence of the US government censoring websites is politically motivated.
Also, Iran's government sucks (generally speaking) and I'm forever ashamed that we did not support the Green Revolution when we had the chance. It was a once in a lifetime moment, and we waved as it went by.
Except most cannons are mounted on the side, not front of ships... which means your actually firing this as you take over / turn.... not from behind:)
Most British (and American) Ships of the Line from the late 17th and 18th centuries had long range forward facing guns called "Long Nines". These were cast iron, "9 pound" guns usually 8 or 9 feet in length used as a "chase gun" firing from the bow or stern of the ship. On the larger ships such as the classic British "Man of War", often entire broadside batteries were "long nines".
This was part of the reason why the British fleet ruled the seas for so long. They could take out an enemy from a range so far the enemy could not shoot back.
FHSS radios are HORRIBLE for transmitting video. Not only is the bandwidth not nearly enough, but the 2.4Ghz range sucks, and the frequency hopping absolutely hoses up the video recording back at the base station. And those radios you linked to are WAAAAY to bulky and power-sucking for use in an FPV craft of hobbyist size. Maybe in a Giant Scale craft, but that's not going to be hovering over your protest without being noticed rather quickly.
Spend some time over on the FPV boards at RCGroups. They will tell you: You don't use Frequency Hopping radios for Video transmission.
Much cheaper to buy existing fpv class vtx radios. They are far enough out of the range of most standard cell jammers that you are unlikely to be jammed by the police.
but take a look at Switchblade, smaller than the RC plane you can get at your hobby shop, faster too
Hate to break it to you, but Hobbyist FPV (First Person View) RC pilots have been building and flying planes that are smaller AND faster than that, with greater range.
From the spec sheet:
Size: Unlisted. but from the picture it appears to be roughly 2 feet long, with a 1.5 foot wing span.
Weight: 5kg!! This is VERY heavy for a UAS of this size. Most short range FPV birds clock in less than 4kg, preferably closer to 2 or 3. Long range birds weight more, mostly due to larger batteries.
Speed: 55knots (a bit over 63mph) about average for a UAS of this size, there are MANY very cheap foamy planes in use right now as FPV platforms that will easily crest 100mph. (Stryker, Funjet)
Range: 5KM Again, fairly average for a plane this size. For FPV round trips, that's 2.5km out and back. Many FPV planes can go 5 out and back, 10 out and back and more. So 5km one way isn't impressive.
So it's not faster, not smaller, and yes, not cheaper. Mostly because it's a flying bomb, NOT the type of plane we are likely to see used for reconnaissance. Don't get me wrong, it's a great tool. Just not what you thought it was for.
In truth, the private sector is very far ahead of the military in regards to small UAS craft. Mostly due to hobbyists pursuing it on their own. If you see a drone up in the sky, you can bet it isn't big brother, it's probably your neighbor from down the street.
Slashdot Mirror
Well stated.
I was all happy with Mr. Cantor the other day, and now this. Apparently he didn't get the message hard enough.
Mr. Marco Rubio (R, Florida) DOES seem to have gotten the message though. he was one of the SPONSORS of PIPA and he has withdrawn his support from the bill and asked Speaker Reid to withdraw the bill entirely.
So keep the pressure on people! It's working!
Why would the US want to do something about Pipa? I mean, she was so hot at the royal wedding in that dress and... Oh... You meant the BILL..
Nevermind.
Well, if the bill has been "tabled" that essentially stops that option. At least, that's my understanding of it. It COULD be brought back, but not quietly.
Of course, the best prescription for those attacks of late night bill passing that Congress occasionally has are frequent purges of sitting politicians and regular ingestion of fresh people committed to smaller, more limited government. And now I'll stop with the medical analogy because it's beginning to get gross.
But not in the way many slashdotters might think.
Little appreciated here on Slashdot is the fact that SOPA was as unpopular on the right side of the spectrum as it was on the left. Many conservatives and libertarians rightly see SOPA has a HUGE power grab, and massive step towards an even more centralized government.
Eric Cantor is very tied in with the Conservative Blogosphere and with conservative internet "consciousness". As such he promised early on to do his best to kill SOPA.
It appears that he has kept his promise. Well Done Mr. Cantor. Well Done.
Ok,
First of all, Calm down.
Secondly, you seem to be making some assumptions.
- You seem to be assuming that I want a war in Korea. trust me, I want nothing of the sort. I just don't see reunification happening without one.
- You are taking the nuke capability of NK far more seriously than most world leaders do. Having a nuke warhead is one thing. Reliably being able to deliver it to your enemy is something else entirely. So far the Norks have failed to show a reliable delivery system, and the Soks know this.
- My comment was oriented towards debunking the false idea that communist and authoritarian societies will automatically collapse without violence once western influences creep in. This is clearly untrue, and China itself is the prime example of this.
Regarding the Soviet Union, see my comment below.
Agreed. There is really no way to tell from here whether it is real, or really well faked, undercover videos notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, there are always a certain percentage that "Drink the Koolaid" and absolutely believe. These ones are often the ones with their hand on or close to the reins of power. ipod clones won't do diddly for them, and the rest of the Norks are either in the military (but I repeat myself) or too poor and half-starved to care about ipod clones.
No, it would not at all.
Note that what happened to the Soviets was NOTHING like what happened in China. In the Soviet model, (Perestroika) over a century of oppression was simply dropped and a totally closed society was suddenly and without warning thrown open to the world. The ensuing reaction was almost predictable; Complete chaos and collapse of the Soviet regime.
Let us not forget that there WAS some violence that followed. Unfortunately for the soviets, their military decided to side with the people over the government. Tanks showing up at the gates of the Kremlin to close down the government rather than defend it ended the revolution with a victory for Freedom rather quickly and mostly bloodlessly.
The Chinese noted these events and decided that they wanted nothing to do with it. Remember that the Tienanmen Square incident was right around the same time. For a short time it appeared that Communism was collapsing all over the world all at once. (it was a great moment to live in, let me tell you.)
Sadly, the Chicoms had no intention to go quietly. They had a very different relationship with their military, and the military rolled Tanks into the square to defend the government and drive out the protestors. The crackdown afterwards was BRUTAL.
I had a college roommate who was in Tienanmen Square that day. Afterwards he fled China and was accepted into the US under political asylum. He told me how many of his friends "disappeared" before they could escape. That's how bad it was in those days.
The Chinese later began to loosen things up, but only incrementally, and ALWAYS under government control. Even after foreign companies were allowed in China, it was always under very strict rules. If you didn't play along, they booted you out. (even McDonalds got kicked out.) Over time these rules have loosened, but control has always been in the governments hands.
What westernization they have allowed has always been with a single goal: To keep the people COMPLACENT. Give them minor luxuries, allow them to keep a small modicum of their natural freedoms and let them get comfortable and lazy. Otherwise, keep them too busy working and living their lives to have time for revolution. (Why do you think they have essentially created an "Island" Internet via the "Great Firewall of China"? To keep revolutionary ideas out while still allowing controlled financial interaction with the rest of the world.)
It's an ingenious formula and has worked very well to keep the Chicoms in power. If NK decides to follow this model, don't expect a revolution.
We still see video of people falling over themselves weeping when Kim-Jong "mentally" ill dies. Not to say that those videos aren't at least partially staged, but some "undercover" video has leaked out of NK showing that at least some of the weeping, wailing and carrying on was genuine. (I apologize for not having a link ATM. Search on YouTube. It's there.)
Not to say that the new regime isn't weak, it certainly is. But not so weak that ipod clones are going to topple them anytime soon. We see how well "westernization" has "toppled" the communist Chinese government. (IE: Not at all) If Kim-Jong Un decides to modernize and westernize following the Chinese model, Korea isn't likely to see unification anytime in the next century.
Sadly, there really is only ONE way to absolutely topple a government of any stripe. That's with violent revolution. The only way that Korea will unify is if SK invades and defeats NK. With NK's recent round of sabre-rattling, that's looking more and more likely every day.
Turns up lots of tiny little "backwater" sites run by small businesses. Not surprising they would get nailed, they are the most vulnerable.
But...
Do I see ITT Tech in there as a victim?
Ouch!
Fancy machines don't help when a problem is structurally inherent.
Communism's primary issue is not that it scales poorly, although it does. Communism's primary issue is that it works against basic human nature. It failed even in villiage-sized experiments back in the early colonization days of America. The Pilgrims tried their own brand of it and it failed miserably. And they had religious pressure to help the system along! IE: It was God's Will, they were building a new Jerusalem. WAY more pressure for them to work together and make it work than your average modern communist society. It still fell apart. Behold the writing of William Bradford, one of the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower: (emphasis mine)
Just a comment on your last paragraph;
As another poster noted, the Japanese are hunting Minke whales, of which there is a large and stable population. The most reliable numbers we have put their population in the multiple thousands. Literally more die of natural causes each year than the Japanese take. It's not like they are hunting down Blues or Humpbacks.
Also, that vaunted efficiency also means that less of the whale is wasted. The Japanese are well known for making use of almost all of the whale, much like the Inuit. The only difference is that the Japanese are even more efficient with much less waste, thus they need to hunt fewer whales than they would if they were using more traditional processing techniques.
The point being that the entire battle here is little more than an ideological one. The Minke whale doesn't need any additional protection from anyone, very little of the whale is going to waste and the Sea shepherd people are out risking their lives and the lives of the fishermen on what amounts to little more than a "Gaian" religious war. It's stupid and pointless.
Except that "process" in the patent system refers to manufacturing processes. Still tied intrinsically to the physical world. Modern lawyers have shoehorned written software into the patent world by calling it "A system or method or process".
I'm saying we should disallow this and eliminate all software patents.
You say the software world has done pretty well under patents, I say that so few companies were writing software until the last 10 years that almost nobody ran into issues with it. Back in the '60's when software was first allowed to be patentable they were still using PUNCH CARDS and computers filled whole rooms! Maybe 100 people on the PLANET could write software, and most of them knew each other, so patents weren't an issue.
Now that software is everywhere we are running into the hard limits of the patent system and innovation by anyone other than the giants is suffering.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, so believe me, my opinion is not formed from some communistic desire to eliminate profit. My desire is to unlock the potential of software and software writers to bring us new and innovative ideas and allow the little guy some room to join in without the big guys monopolizing the market.
I want everyone to have a chance to maximize their profit through honest marketplace competition, and to stop the minimizing of that marketplace by the artifice of patents.
Why allowing Software Patents is foolish. It destroys innovation and rewards established players and those with deep pockets. (It also allows the established players to pick the pockets of others, whether they are deep or not.)
Abolish software patents. Software should be covered under copyright as it is written material. Patents are for physical objects. Not the written word (or code).
Well, yes. IF you could somehow find a way to move an entire moon from the grip of a gas giant, then you could do that.
Some of us prefer more practical methods though. Simply bulking Mars up with a steady diet of asteroids gravity tractor-ed in using robotic spacecraft is a FAR more practical method, and much less risky than attempting to move a body as large as Titan all in one go.
Not only do you get the advantage of adding all those variable content asteroids, the bombardment heats the planet up creating that lovely convection dynamo AND you up the planet's mass by several trillion kg, thus enabling it to hold onto that heat and maintain the dynamo for much longer.
I prefer my Sci-fi to have an edge of the possible.
Just took the time to put in in decimal, just for fun.
In decimal notation that's as follows.
Mars + all of the Asteroid belt = 645,050,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
Earth = 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
So, as you can see, Mars would still be an order of magnitude smaller than Earth, but MUCH larger than it's current size if we were to bombard it with the contents of the asteroid belt, thus adding to it's mass.
Well, the difficulties of boring large holes down the center of Mars to set off the nukes (doesn't do any good to nuke the surface) do present some problems.
And the fact that Mars simply isn't massive enough to maintain that heat anyway. Any terraforming project would be short-term as Mars would rapidly cool off and lose it's magnetic shield again.
Seems to me Mars needs to bulk up. Using spacecraft to redirect large asteroids into Mars using the gravity tractor method seems like a viable way to bulk it up AND heat it up. I don't know if there is enough material available in the Asteroid belt, but it seems more technically feasible than drilling into Mars' core to set nukes off.
I just did a bit of quick math, and if you add the estimated total mass of the Asteroid belt to the estimated mass of Mars you get 6.4505 x (10^23) kilograms. The Earth is 5.9736 x (10 ^24) kilograms. Mars would still be smaller than Earth, but would be far more likely to be able to hold onto a magnetic field (after it cooled from the bombardment, of course.)
Both of these statements are, though well intentioned, patently false.
There are many instances of government censoring types of speech that has nothing whatsoever to do with the politics of the day. Almost all of these revolve around "non protected" speech such as suborning perjury, inciting to violence, or other criminal acts such as illegal drug use, human and weapons trafficking, sex crimes and of course, terrorism.
The US government "censors" thousands of such websites and internet-based information on a daily basis. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with "politics". The enforcement arm of the government is merely doing it's job.
Now, that's not to say that legitimate sites are not erroneously taken offline from time to time, that mistakes aren't made, and that nobody in government ever has a less than honest agenda. You would have to be a fool to believe that. But it is equally foolish to think that every single incidence of the US government censoring websites is politically motivated.
Also, Iran's government sucks (generally speaking) and I'm forever ashamed that we did not support the Green Revolution when we had the chance. It was a once in a lifetime moment, and we waved as it went by.
Most British (and American) Ships of the Line from the late 17th and 18th centuries had long range forward facing guns called "Long Nines". These were cast iron, "9 pound" guns usually 8 or 9 feet in length used as a "chase gun" firing from the bow or stern of the ship. On the larger ships such as the classic British "Man of War", often entire broadside batteries were "long nines".
This was part of the reason why the British fleet ruled the seas for so long. They could take out an enemy from a range so far the enemy could not shoot back.
Heh. Spoken by a true non-parent.
It's called: "baby asleep in the crib, Parents having nookie very quietly in the bed." Many many parents have done it.
Unless, of course, we have a night-shift worker parent and a very tired child care parent. Which also makes sense.
Sometimes you sleep when the baby does.
Isn't this the same model that was featured on the Mythbusters episode about escaping from Alcatraz?
It's the "Hanz and Franz" climate theory. They not only make your planet warmer, they are here to PUMP! *doublehandclap* YOUR PLANET UP! *flex*
However, all species of Microchiroptera are insetivorous
Not Desmodontidae.
They just drink the blood of birds and mammals. So let's not release tons of those, please.
Fruit bats CAN see. Quite well in fact. As the GP pointed out, they navigate by sight. Not echolocation.
FHSS radios are HORRIBLE for transmitting video. Not only is the bandwidth not nearly enough, but the 2.4Ghz range sucks, and the frequency hopping absolutely hoses up the video recording back at the base station. And those radios you linked to are WAAAAY to bulky and power-sucking for use in an FPV craft of hobbyist size. Maybe in a Giant Scale craft, but that's not going to be hovering over your protest without being noticed rather quickly.
Spend some time over on the FPV boards at RCGroups. They will tell you: You don't use Frequency Hopping radios for Video transmission.
Much cheaper to buy existing fpv class vtx radios. They are far enough out of the range of most standard cell jammers that you are unlikely to be jammed by the police.
Hate to break it to you, but Hobbyist FPV (First Person View) RC pilots have been building and flying planes that are smaller AND faster than that, with greater range.
From the spec sheet:
Size: Unlisted. but from the picture it appears to be roughly 2 feet long, with a 1.5 foot wing span.
Weight: 5kg!! This is VERY heavy for a UAS of this size. Most short range FPV birds clock in less than 4kg, preferably closer to 2 or 3. Long range birds weight more, mostly due to larger batteries.
Speed: 55knots (a bit over 63mph) about average for a UAS of this size, there are MANY very cheap foamy planes in use right now as FPV platforms that will easily crest 100mph. (Stryker, Funjet)
Range: 5KM Again, fairly average for a plane this size. For FPV round trips, that's 2.5km out and back. Many FPV planes can go 5 out and back, 10 out and back and more. So 5km one way isn't impressive.
So it's not faster, not smaller, and yes, not cheaper. Mostly because it's a flying bomb, NOT the type of plane we are likely to see used for reconnaissance. Don't get me wrong, it's a great tool. Just not what you thought it was for.
In truth, the private sector is very far ahead of the military in regards to small UAS craft. Mostly due to hobbyists pursuing it on their own. If you see a drone up in the sky, you can bet it isn't big brother, it's probably your neighbor from down the street.