It matters quite a bit how the image is produced. In fact, that's the crux of the issue. A guy who paints a picture of a child having sex isn't hurting anyone, so the law should leave him alone. The reason we have child porn laws is because the children used to make the pictures are considered victims. No victims, no crime.
Yeah, when all else fails - invoke a conspiracy theory. It relieves you of dealing with the really hard questions... Like the lack of a theoretical basis for cold fusion.
I don't find the lack of a theoretical basis to be very troubling. As Asimov said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'". The question I have is whether or not there's really anything out of the ordinary happening. Every discovery of something genuinely new can lead to great discoveries once it's truly understood.
If we already had it all figured out, it would get pretty boring very quickly.
Sure, but the discoveries seem to be much less... interesting. I'm sure for particle physicists this is earth-shattering stuff, but the discovery of Y(1440) just doesn't grip me the way, say, splitting the atom would, or the discovery of DNA.
A vote doesn't imply your endorsement for the candidate. All it means, at a minimum, is you think this guy isn't as bad as the other one. "I didn't see a candidate I could conscionably vote for" is a cop out. This is one of those cases where perfect is the enemy of good. I'm not one of those who thinks you have no right to complain if you didn't vote, but if enough people do what you're doing a small, motivated segment of the electorate can get wacky people into positions of power.
That may not mean what you seem to be implying. It could mean they really didn't have anything to arrest him on. More likely it means there were so many different possible charges they didn't know where to start. In those cases they usually just kind of pick the most egregious thing and let the DA draw up the complete list once the suspect is in custody.
I have a friend in Japan who carries two mobiles - the iPhone, which he wears where people can see it, and a Japanese phone that he actually uses for his day-to-day communications. He claims most Japanese iPhone users do the same. Apparently you can buy things with your phone in Japan (like train tickets), and not having this capability is a show-stopper for Japanese consumers.
The majority of nuclear plants that have been canceled over the past 20 years have been canceled not because of environmentalist pressure, but simply because the ROI wasn't there.
Yes, and the ROI wasn't there because of all the extra cost and delays put in place... by the anti-nuclear lobby. Why is it the Europeans seem to be able to do this but in the US the ROI isn't there?
No, actually the problem is the "eco lobby". When you go to get a permit to site or operate a nuclear power plant droves of lawyers descend like locusts to gum up the works. In the end most of the lawyering is frivolous, but it drives the cost up to the point that you're better off using coal.
Yep. The first administration to wiretap international calls was Carter's. And there isn't a president since then that hasn't done it. FISA was put in place to deal with taps on domestic calls, which the Bush people supposedly didn't tap without a warrant. Now that Obama's been elected we can all admit this and go about our business.
You have just ruined my day. The only way I can envision them screwing this up more than putting Canoe in the role of Spike is to put him behind the camera. I go now to gouge out my eyes.
You guys are approaching this totally wrong. When we had 9/80 at my work the people who opted for the alternate schedule pretty much put in eight hour days and took every other Friday off. Of course, eventually they decided everyone had to come in every day...
Sure, but what is the unemployment rate for people with technical skills? In the decade or so I've been where I am, unemployment for IT people and programmers has never gone above 2% in my area. Even after the.com bubble burst. You can't compare people with a valuable skill to a population that includes people with no skills at all. It's just not a valid comparison.
Some contractors in my company recently timed out (thank you, litigious Microsoft contractors!) and had to be let go. they were all working within a week or two.
It takes one man with a fucking match to burn down a house.
Oh, that's true. Problem is, someone has to approach that man to convince him to do the deed. And when a house burns down there's an arson investigation, so there's probably three or four other people that have to be paid off or silenced. Someone is going to have to contact them to pay them off, which means family, friends, and coworkers now have potentially incriminating evidence. And so on.
Then there's always the possibility someone with knowledge of the plot is gonna get busted for offing his ex. A few days later his lawyer goes to the prosecutor and says "my client has some information for you in exchange for leniency..."
The government can't keep top secret CIA operations out of the NYT. It's not impossible this wasn't an accident, but in the absence of actual evidence to the contrary I'm prepared to believe the FAA report.
Yeah, gas plants are quite a bit cheaper than solar. The solar tower SCE set up in the Mohave desert would have had to charge $275,000 per household per year to break even. Now, granted the technology was in its infancy, and I'm sure it's cheaper now, but you're not gonna get as cheap as a boiler attached to a turbine.
This, incidentally, is the reason nuclear power will probably never be cheap, even though the $/KWH of fuel is tiny. If it takes you four billion dollars and a decade to build a plant you're never gonna make money.
I didn't see much mention of economics in the article. If there's one thing I would have thought environmentalists had learned by now it is that no matter what the politicians say, nothing is going to happen if the finances don't work out. From what I can tell wind and solar are still a ways from being competitive with oil and gas even though the $/KWH cost is very close. The real problem is you have to put all the money in up front with wind and solar, whereas gas plants are cheap, and a gas plant can start generating revenue with its first drop of fuel. So a fossil-fuel plant carries less debt and less risk for the power company.
Also there's the problem of reliability. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. So you either need lots of excess power generation capability, or you need to burn something. And yes, I know Germany has this tri-mode system with wind, solar, and biofuel. But the Germans couldn't keep the lights on without French nuclear power.
In addition to the acceleration problems others have mentioned there is another. Even assuming you were lofting "indestructable" supplies like water and iron, you have a real problem with air resistance. A normal orbital flight profile uses about 10% of the rocket's fuel getting out of the atmosphere and the rest accelerating to orbital speeds. For a gun like this to be useful you'd need to fire the payload directly into a circular-ish orbit, which means going through a whole lot more air.
So the container for your supplies needs to be either ridiculously expensive (covered in high-tech ceramics) or ablative. The problem with ablative coatings is so much of it ends up getting ablating away your projectile doesn't maintain a stable, aerodynamic shape and is basically gone before it gets into orbit.
In any event, even if you could solve the friction problem I don't think a gun is the right technology for this concept. Much of the research in this area is now focusing on chemical rams, which are sort of a cross between a rocket and a gun. Think of a tube filled with gaseous rocket fuel with a projectile that uses the fuel in the tube to accelerate the entire length. It gets around lots of problems you normally have with large guns - excessive breach pressure, excessive wear (or liners), an uneven acceleration. It also allows you to build launchers that would be impractically long for for a gun, so you wouldn't need to subject the payload to hundreds of G's.
You can say it's not "linux's fault" but, why in the hell aren't the people who got rich off Linux, also sitting on the boards of some of these companies
Eh? Who's gotten rich off Linux? From what I can see most of these companies are barely hanging on.
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It matters quite a bit how the image is produced. In fact, that's the crux of the issue. A guy who paints a picture of a child having sex isn't hurting anyone, so the law should leave him alone. The reason we have child porn laws is because the children used to make the pictures are considered victims. No victims, no crime.
I wonder if high frequency gravity waves already exist, and if not, what they would do to the earth and its inhabitants. Even at very low power.
Yeah, when all else fails - invoke a conspiracy theory. It relieves you of dealing with the really hard questions... Like the lack of a theoretical basis for cold fusion.
I don't find the lack of a theoretical basis to be very troubling. As Asimov said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'". The question I have is whether or not there's really anything out of the ordinary happening. Every discovery of something genuinely new can lead to great discoveries once it's truly understood.
If we already had it all figured out, it would get pretty boring very quickly.
Sure, but the discoveries seem to be much less... interesting. I'm sure for particle physicists this is earth-shattering stuff, but the discovery of Y(1440) just doesn't grip me the way, say, splitting the atom would, or the discovery of DNA.
A vote doesn't imply your endorsement for the candidate. All it means, at a minimum, is you think this guy isn't as bad as the other one. "I didn't see a candidate I could conscionably vote for" is a cop out. This is one of those cases where perfect is the enemy of good. I'm not one of those who thinks you have no right to complain if you didn't vote, but if enough people do what you're doing a small, motivated segment of the electorate can get wacky people into positions of power.
Bah. The Secret Service has a pretty easy job for the next four years. The president has the ultimate assassination insurance - Joe Biden.
That may not mean what you seem to be implying. It could mean they really didn't have anything to arrest him on. More likely it means there were so many different possible charges they didn't know where to start. In those cases they usually just kind of pick the most egregious thing and let the DA draw up the complete list once the suspect is in custody.
I have a friend in Japan who carries two mobiles - the iPhone, which he wears where people can see it, and a Japanese phone that he actually uses for his day-to-day communications. He claims most Japanese iPhone users do the same. Apparently you can buy things with your phone in Japan (like train tickets), and not having this capability is a show-stopper for Japanese consumers.
This is cool and all, but what advantage does it have over, say, a 15 meter mast (with a ladder) in the boat?
The majority of nuclear plants that have been canceled over the past 20 years have been canceled not because of environmentalist pressure, but simply because the ROI wasn't there. Yes, and the ROI wasn't there because of all the extra cost and delays put in place... by the anti-nuclear lobby. Why is it the Europeans seem to be able to do this but in the US the ROI isn't there?
No, actually the problem is the "eco lobby". When you go to get a permit to site or operate a nuclear power plant droves of lawyers descend like locusts to gum up the works. In the end most of the lawyering is frivolous, but it drives the cost up to the point that you're better off using coal.
Yep. The first administration to wiretap international calls was Carter's. And there isn't a president since then that hasn't done it. FISA was put in place to deal with taps on domestic calls, which the Bush people supposedly didn't tap without a warrant. Now that Obama's been elected we can all admit this and go about our business.
I believe this is out of date. From what I understand private medical care is legal in Canada now.
You have just ruined my day. The only way I can envision them screwing this up more than putting Canoe in the role of Spike is to put him behind the camera. I go now to gouge out my eyes.
The AIDS tag? Seriously? I've never heard anyone shopping around a rumor that Jobs has AIDS.
You guys are approaching this totally wrong. When we had 9/80 at my work the people who opted for the alternate schedule pretty much put in eight hour days and took every other Friday off. Of course, eventually they decided everyone had to come in every day...
Sure, but what is the unemployment rate for people with technical skills? In the decade or so I've been where I am, unemployment for IT people and programmers has never gone above 2% in my area. Even after the .com bubble burst. You can't compare people with a valuable skill to a population that includes people with no skills at all. It's just not a valid comparison.
Some contractors in my company recently timed out (thank you, litigious Microsoft contractors!) and had to be let go. they were all working within a week or two.
It takes one man with a fucking match to burn down a house.
Oh, that's true. Problem is, someone has to approach that man to convince him to do the deed. And when a house burns down there's an arson investigation, so there's probably three or four other people that have to be paid off or silenced. Someone is going to have to contact them to pay them off, which means family, friends, and coworkers now have potentially incriminating evidence. And so on.
Then there's always the possibility someone with knowledge of the plot is gonna get busted for offing his ex. A few days later his lawyer goes to the prosecutor and says "my client has some information for you in exchange for leniency..."
The government can't keep top secret CIA operations out of the NYT. It's not impossible this wasn't an accident, but in the absence of actual evidence to the contrary I'm prepared to believe the FAA report.
Yes, and your tap would show up on the Optical Time Domain Reflectometer other people have mentioned.
You must be joking. Code takes easily twice as long to write in C++.
Yeah, gas plants are quite a bit cheaper than solar. The solar tower SCE set up in the Mohave desert would have had to charge $275,000 per household per year to break even. Now, granted the technology was in its infancy, and I'm sure it's cheaper now, but you're not gonna get as cheap as a boiler attached to a turbine.
This, incidentally, is the reason nuclear power will probably never be cheap, even though the $/KWH of fuel is tiny. If it takes you four billion dollars and a decade to build a plant you're never gonna make money.
I didn't see much mention of economics in the article. If there's one thing I would have thought environmentalists had learned by now it is that no matter what the politicians say, nothing is going to happen if the finances don't work out. From what I can tell wind and solar are still a ways from being competitive with oil and gas even though the $/KWH cost is very close. The real problem is you have to put all the money in up front with wind and solar, whereas gas plants are cheap, and a gas plant can start generating revenue with its first drop of fuel. So a fossil-fuel plant carries less debt and less risk for the power company.
Also there's the problem of reliability. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. So you either need lots of excess power generation capability, or you need to burn something. And yes, I know Germany has this tri-mode system with wind, solar, and biofuel. But the Germans couldn't keep the lights on without French nuclear power.
In addition to the acceleration problems others have mentioned there is another. Even assuming you were lofting "indestructable" supplies like water and iron, you have a real problem with air resistance. A normal orbital flight profile uses about 10% of the rocket's fuel getting out of the atmosphere and the rest accelerating to orbital speeds. For a gun like this to be useful you'd need to fire the payload directly into a circular-ish orbit, which means going through a whole lot more air.
So the container for your supplies needs to be either ridiculously expensive (covered in high-tech ceramics) or ablative. The problem with ablative coatings is so much of it ends up getting ablating away your projectile doesn't maintain a stable, aerodynamic shape and is basically gone before it gets into orbit.
In any event, even if you could solve the friction problem I don't think a gun is the right technology for this concept. Much of the research in this area is now focusing on chemical rams, which are sort of a cross between a rocket and a gun. Think of a tube filled with gaseous rocket fuel with a projectile that uses the fuel in the tube to accelerate the entire length. It gets around lots of problems you normally have with large guns - excessive breach pressure, excessive wear (or liners), an uneven acceleration. It also allows you to build launchers that would be impractically long for for a gun, so you wouldn't need to subject the payload to hundreds of G's.
You can say it's not "linux's fault" but, why in the hell aren't the people who got rich off Linux, also sitting on the boards of some of these companies
Eh? Who's gotten rich off Linux? From what I can see most of these companies are barely hanging on.
This is wrong. In fact the research shows exactly the opposite.