That's an interesting idea. Let's look it over. We have an imaginary, very short two-paragraph document. (You can generalize this to more than two paragraphs and more than two clients... I'm just describing the nature of an impasse I imagine will occur if your scenario is accurate.)
I search for "phrase 2". Presumably, Google shows me this in context, in paragraph two.
You search for "phrase 1" but this is in paragraph one. Google doesn't expose the entire document, according to your theory, so... it shows you paragraph two, where the quote isn't? You now get to trudge through the result and not find your phrase?
How, exactly, is this supposed to be useful? I mean, if they're not going to return the context, they might as well just return the title and maybe the page-number, no?
Even if they do this, it seems to me that they are still going to have to purchase the rights to store the work in a retrieval system and use them for profit. They're not acting as a library here, they're a business in pursuit of income. The law seems pretty clear on this point.
First of all, the fact that a work is in a library does not mean that its copyright is expired, invalid, or compromised. Libraries have to buy books, just like you and I. And Google, I might add.
Secondly, the loaning of a work from a library is not done for profit, which is quite distinct from Google's planned use.
Third, related to the first point, when you borrow a work, you're not allowed to copy it. Google is "borrowing" books from libraries, copying them without recompense to the rights-holders, and then using them to generate income.
I have to think that any court in the land will squash them like a bug. But I, thank goodness, am not a lawyer. We will see how this goes. I am almost certain it will be vigorously opposed.
If you'll re-read my post, you'll see that I am of a similar mind. However, copyright law does not "have" to change. It will only stand a chance of changing if certain pressure is applied; but breaking the law is the wrong kind of pressure. That is almost always seen as disrespect, not legitimate protest — and it will result in pain for the lawbreaker.
Write your congresscritter or join/initiate a PAC. Those are your options. I recommend the latter, the former is, IMHO, naive.
google is cutting publishers in on the advertising for the pages their book is displayed on.
The other points have been addressed already (see my other replies) but this one is interesting.
Here's the thing about those ad revenues. Google doesn't have the right to earn revenues based on those works, because those rights are reserved unless specifically assigned. It doesn't matter if they want to hand some of the earnings over, unless they have a contract stating that this is agreeable to the rights-holder and subsequently (and specifically) delivering those rights over for that purpose, they're like a bank robber saying they're going to give some money back. They don't have a right to any of the money. There can be no exoneration to be found in sharing it.
There's no two ways about this. Either the laws have to be changed, or Google is in the wrong.
I didn't make the laws (and I think they're far too strict and far too biased in favor of the copyright holder) so please, don't kick me around for it. Talk to your congress-critter if you're a believer in the political system. Or fund a PAC (that might actually work — talking to a congress-critter probably won't.)
Is that so? Then tell me, either precisely or generally, under what set of legal rules Google is allowed to take entire works it hasn't purchased, does not own any rights to, and copy them? Libraries can't do that. You can't do that. I can't do that. Businesses can't do that. Why can Google do that?
Tell me, under what set of rules is Google allowed not only to do this, but do it to generate a profit? No one else can do it, why can Google?
Tell me also, under what set of rules is Google permitted to facilitate re-assembly of copyrighted works?
I'm willing to be wrong, but I really don't think I am.
I do, in fact, know a fair bit of the law in this area. It is my business to do so.
Now, since you say I'm wrong, how about you explain where I'm wrong?
My position is based upon the fact that when a work is published, only rights as stipulated are given to a particular publisher in a particular venue, and any other rights are almost inevitably reserved. The contracts are written so as to reserve any right not explicitly described in the contract. For instance, if we sell the right to publish a work as a book to a book publisher, we reserve the rights for film, performance and so on (unless the book publisher wants to buy them, in which case, things may be a little different... typically that's not the case, though) and we also reserve the rights for performance by a cyborg in a bathtub by saying that any rights not mentioned are also reserved. It is legal boilerplate, and very solid, precedents all nailed down, etc.
Now, copyright law says that a small portion of a work may be copied — for instance, for use as a quote in a review. But it also explicitly forbids copying the entire work without permission... which is precisely what Google is doing. That's problem number one, and it is legally rock-solid. They don't have the right to make that copy without (A) permission from the publisher, or (B) purchase of each individual work. Copying from a library doesn't count as purchase. Should they purchase each work, they'd have the right to store those works in a retrival system under very limited conditions, conditions that I assure you do not apply to re-publishing (serving various, eventually all, parts of the work back to the public.)
Problem number two is that on reproduction, that is, when serving results, they aren't proposing to present the same snippet from the work to each user, which is the specific type of use that has been approved for use in a review, for instance. What they're proposing to do is publishing to you one area of the work, and publishing to me another. This means that the entire work can be served to (various) users, and that in turn would publish the entire work in a form that can be trivially reassembled, thereby clearly putting the rights of the copyright holder at risk of infringement by re-assembly.
This has been specifically established by the courts saying that if you have 1/2 a song, and Fred over there has 1/2 that same song, you and Fred are not allowed to serve those to the net, and I in turn am not allowed to re-assemble the song.
Now, if Google is given permission (note that this is not the same as "assuming they have permission if the publisher doesn't give them the name on a list") then they can do this. This would require a contract that allows both stages; copying into their computer system to use as lookup fodder, and publishing fragments on demand in response to search queries.
But that is not the case, and that is why I say that they can't do this without the explicit permission of the copyright holders.
I should add to this that I'm posting about US law only. YMWCV otherwise.
False reasoning: The automobile doesn't use the buggy whip to be of value. There is no legal basis for such a complaint in terms of protection afforded by the law. Unlike the situation with Google.
Google is using other people's intellectual property to create new publisher's value. That's not the same as creating something entirely new that obsoletes something that previously exists — and what Google is doing is forbidden by law.
If we don't like copyright law, then it needs to be changed. In the interim, Google is clearly in the wrong if they publish anything without the explicit permission of any rights-holders in the domain of said publishing. I fully expect them to get burned by this.
Copyrights exist for a reason. Current copyright law is in my opinion excessively biased in favor of the rights-holders, but we need to change that, not break the law. If we don't want copyright at all, again, the law needs to be changed. Nothing about the current situation makes what Google is doing right.
you can kill a child if it is going to inconvenience your life
An early fetus is no more a child than a baby is a scientist.
Having said that, there is obviously some kind of fuzzy line, somewhere between two divided cells and a whole pile of specialized cells, where the fetus becomes more of a child than merely the potential for a child.
The tragedy of today's laws is that the line is drawn far too late. Legislators and courts have, in their usual incompetent manner, conflated "birth" with the "irrelevant hunk-o-cells" to "child" transition. They did this, as far as I can tell, because they're stupid.
I'm not saying we know exactly where to draw the line. We don't. But we do know when the fetus begins to show emotion, move around, and so on. That (to me) means the line needs to be drawn at least earlier than that.
But there does need to be a line. A sperm intercepting an egg does not a child define, nor does a few weeks of busy cell division. There's more to it; we should figure out how much more, and then make some law. That's asking a lot of our legislators, who have a miserable track record of making good law, but still, that's what we should do.
You also have to look at those situations where the mother's life is at risk, and when the pregnancy was involuntary (rape caused, for example.) That's a whole different set of issues. Can someone who has consented (presumably) to carrying a child also be presumed to have consented to die to bring that child into the world?
It's all very well to jump up and down and scream "what about the children!" but if you want to solve the issue I'm afraid you're going to have to think, and think hard. You're also probably going to have to get rid of the current crop of legislators and courtroom drones -- they've already shown they can't handle the job.
Re:Treo 670 / asian language devices?
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The End of PalmOS?
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last i checked, korean used an alphabet and rarely used Chinese characters. I dont think it is as prominent as Kanji is in Japanese.
The Korean phonetic alphabet is "hangul." Korean ideographic writing is "hanja."
Hanja is not, by any means, "rarely used" unless you would say that capital letters and punctuation in English are "rarely used."
In South Korea, Hanja is found in signs, newspapers, and other common public venues. It is quite often used for specialized vocabularies (martial arts is one I can personally vouch for, but there certainly are others.) Hanja is used for personal names as well.
In North Korea, as one might expect from a dictatorship, a hard line has been drawn and the citizens are not allowed to use hanja; hangul is "it." However, North Korea is not definitive here — South Korea has far more interaction with the world, for one thing, and is unlikely to ever be as hardline about this as North Korea has been. They value their history, for one thing. They educate better, for another.
There is no way, at this point in time, one could do without hanja and make do with hangul in South Korea unless one wanted to be regarded as an illiterate. I'm talking about current use; if you want to consider historical use, then it just gets deeper; the vocabulary gets broader, the usage gets more involved.
While hanja characters, in many cases, mean the same thing (or similar) to what they mean when they are used in other asian languages (Japanese, Chinese, etc. — the character for "rice" means "rice" in all three languages), the pronunciation of the character is almost always "other." Makes it a little easier to navigate asian menus, though. "Point and Pick.";-)
HTML will remain more important than CSS until the day that CSS behaves as well (meaning, consistently) as HTML does.
If that day ever comes.
It doesn't do as much good as you think to jump thru CSS hoops if it only works on some browsers, and it does no good at ALL if you code it so that it works on Explorer, which is outright broken and sucks with regard to CSS. At this point in time.
So while you were trying to be funny, the fact is, you weren't funny. Because your base assumptions were incorrect.
You have no rights within a group that you dont have alone.
With a co-operating group, you have a right to lift heavy loads you can't lift by yourself. Within a group, you have the right to pursue one craft to perfection (woodworking, programming, whatever) that otherwise would be compromised (or eliminated) by the requirement that you till your soil. With a group, a majority of you can agree to do (X), where (X) is any job that takes more than one person, or (X) is any consenual activity that takes more than one person (determining group opinions, for instance, so as to come to consensus rules.
Rights, per se, are useless without the ability to pursue that right. What good is the right to pursue happiness if your ass is locked in prison, away from your loved ones? What good is the right to freedom of (not to mention from) religion when some choad prints "In Allah We Trust" all over your money, requires you to put your hand on the Koran to become trusted in a courtroom, requires that everyone faces west for 1 minute in school each morning, hangs selected passages from the Koran in government buildings, builds and houses monuments to Allah with taxpayer money, allows Imams to pursue life tax free while YOU have to pay taxes on your income, decides all marriages have to be on the terms of the Koran (hello, polygamy, goodbye, clitoris!)...
...oh, wait... that's gawd and the bible and priests and so on, and it's already here. That is what happens when you allow "good ole boys" to be elected and have dinner with the PACs and the corporate weasels. Your elected representatives SHIT on you.
You assume that a real democracy could not have just as strong (or stronger) foundation elements underlying it than does our current brittle, broken mess. Well, let me clue you in, son, you're wrong. You could empower such a group just the way it is done now --- with a base constitution --- and require a more than 1/2 vote to adjust the constitution (97.5% feels about right to me, once the thing is crafted.) Or you could do something else, maybe even more clever and foresightful. You don't have to walk into it as ignorant as a homeopath. You don't have to have 50.001% as the "we accept" threshold, either.
There is a bunch wrong with our current constitution --- from misogyny to allowing religion to weasle its way into government and education to allowing the government to assume debt and tax the citizens to any degree it decides is convenient and so on --- lots and lots could be fixed, and then people -- not some bought-and-paid-for representative, but people, you know, the ones who have to obey the laws, could vote on them.
Every time I hear some lamer make the assumption that direct voting involves worse consequences than our current system I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You are so bloody ignorant. THINK, would you???
And how free are you now? Have any covenants? Can you fly a flag? Can you put up an antenna? A tower? Can you put up a fence, install a pool, build new construction without a permit, play rock and roll late at night, roll naked on your lawn, smoke pot on your porch, fuck your spouse blind on your roof? Well? Can you smack your kid if they misbehave, or will you go to jail? Can you own an assault rifle, and more to the point, can you set up a 100% safe firing range in your yard? If you're in a home "zoned" area, can you move a trailer onto your land? If you're in a home zoned area, can you set up a business? Can you sell food off your porch? Can you go out and buy the services of a prostitute, or bring five or six of them home and throw a party? You think you're safe from your neighbor(s)? You think you're free? You're out of your tiny little mind. The powers that be have already decided on what your lifestyle will be. Your neighbors are 100% ready to rat on your sorry ass the second you step out of line. Sucks to be you.
Those who will not fight (or even argue) for improvement deserve what they get.
Insightful, my aching ass. Where do the moderators get their crack?
First of all, I refer you to the pledge of allegiance: "To the republic for which it stands." You're not pledging to a democracy, because we don't have one.
An indirect, vaguely democratic representative system where corporations and PACs are the primary "voters" is what we have. If you think otherwise, you're sadly mistaken.
Secondly, even an actual indirect democracy (assuming we had one, which we definitely do not) is so incredibly different from a "direct" one that it still needs to be pointed out, especially in the case we have here, where the post I was replying to was inferring that citizens have choice in what goes on. They don't. Period.
In an "indirect democracy", the citizens have no choice in what goes on, all they can do is after the fact fail to re-elect someone based on actions that have already screwed up the country. The unspoken, but implied, message is that "someone better" can then be elected. But that's an illusion; all you can do is elect the next political hack the party puts up for your rubber-stamping, and they, sure as the sun will shine, will up and behave just like the last hack.
"Indirect democracy" implies that the representatives are doing things on the citizen's behalf. They're not. They're doing things on the PAC and corporation's behalf; since the general idea we elected the official for and the actions they take are, these days, just about 100% divorced from each other, you'll have to look with a bloody microscope to find any vestige of "democracy" of any kind in the system, unless you consider corporations and PACs citizens in a degree equal to their ability to grease politi-critter palms, leaving the rank and file residents of the country out of it completely.
In a direct democracy, what goes on is a direct consequence of the citizen's current majority opinion, which is so far removed from the whim of an elected, party-picked and citizen-rubber-stamped hack that it should hardly be called by any name that uses the same letters, never mind the same words, as a direct democracy.
So please don't get all self-congratulatory quoting the Romans and hand-waving about the ancient Greeks. They aren't here. We are. The fact of the matter is that our votes don't mean squat. No matter what you want to call it.
No, sorry, not a democracy. A republic. Your representatives decide what laws you "agree" to. You get to vote for a choice of A or B representative (after they've been handpicked by the political parties, of course.) Then they figure out the legislation, and most definitely without consulting you or me. Unless you own a PAC or a large corporation, of course, in which case you can have a say.
If you don't like it, talk to your congress/senate-critter or write them, or found/join some kind of revolutionary thing. But don't go around thinking this is a democracy. It truly isn't.
Strange...I am both atheist and conservative (I voted for Bush even, and would do it again given the chance)...I don't seem to be in any danger.
However, below, you say you don't speak out. That alleviates the problem. If you do speak out, especially in small-town America, where I live, I think you are indeed in danger.
I guess what sets me apart from other atheists is that I never feel it necessary to just arbitrarily attack religion.
Hmm. Not sure where that "arbitrary" came from; I don't arbitrarily attack religion. I do it with specific motivation. Just FYI.
The fact is that, try as you might, the existence of a god can neither be proven nor disproven.
That is correct as far as it goes, but you don't complete your thinking. The existence of a spectral pink unicorn that causes earthquakes by running upside down along earthquake faults cannot be proved or disproved, either, and for the same reason: There is no evidence for such an extraordinary claim. Would you be content that the schools were seriously trying to teach your child that the earthquake-causing pink unicorn is real, and that they (your children, remember) are socially, ethically and morally bound to modify their behaviors accordingly? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing you'd object basically because there is no evidence, although like most people, you'd probably say "that's ridiculous" rather than going into any analysis as to what is actually wrong. In precisely the same vein, there is zero evidence to support belief in a god or gods (and zero support for the consequences that such beliefs bring to society.) It is not reasonable to believe in something for which there is no evidence. It is even less reasonable to build those beliefs into a social force that warps the legal, political and day to day venues citizens must move through. It is no more reasonable to kowtow to any religious idea than it is to stop traffic on thursday afternoon to lay dyed-pink eggs on the centerline of the highway to appease the "earthquake unicorn." I observe that you seem to be OK with it. That's fine, for you... but I'm not.
I don't know why most people can't just leave it at that and look at it as a simple difference of oppinion instead of bickering about it all day long.
If you don't know, you're not thinking about it very carefully. My reasons, a few of them, are above. I'd be interested to hear your objections, if any, to them.
In the USA, for instance, Christian belief organizations infiltrate society to a huge degree. They are currently working to damage the educational process ("creationism"), dictate sexual and marriage conditions and permissibility, keep stores closed 1/7th of the time... I think you catch the drift. There is much more. And of course, they have a history of inflicting other dogmatic injuries on society: witch burnings, scientist burnings, book burnings. These acts come from religious dogma; there is no comparable "secular dogma" that leads the atheist to this kind of disruption. That makes religion a problem above and beyond any comparable problem atheists, as a group, can be said to pose. Finally -- and most bothersome -- religion encourages one to believe propositions without evidence, a process that I maintain is extremely harmful to the ability to reason. The religious routinely inflict this upon children. Personally, I think that should be one of the textbook definitions of "child abuse."
In case you haven't noticed, even most self proclaimed atheist scientists even have wildly varying differences of oppinion.
And... ???
And no, I am not an agnostic. Agnostics aren't sure whether or not there's a god. An true atheist is somebody who simply lacks the belief of there being a god. Most poeple who call themselves atheist are actually anti-theist.
Let's start off by observing that you made no case for your beliefs. You're just talking about how you feel about the fact that your beliefs are not respected. That's fine. I'll respond to that. But first, I'll make my case. It's very simple:
My current position is simply that there is no reason to bring belief into being for a postulate for which there is no evidence. I don't believe in a god or gods because there is no reason whatsoever for me to do so. I don't say there aren't any, because there is no reason for me to say that, either, and it appears that the universe is very, very large -- I don't know what is in it, or not (which puts me in the same boat as every other human being, as far as I can tell.) Should a god make themselves known, I'd be delighted to learn of it. Until then, though, god is maximally unlikely due to no evidence, precisely like pink earth-dwelling unicorns, with no credibility gained by the concept just because it is something one can imagine. I -- and anyone else with a nominally healthy mind -- can imagine a lot of things. That in itself in no way makes them likely to be real.
This is what bothers me most about a lot of atheists. They believe that everyone is an atheist at heart and just afraid to come out and admit it.
I didn't say that. I am talking about highly intelligent people, scientists. They are a tiny minority. The IQ curve has 100 in the middle; mean and median. The low side of the curve is where religion carries the day. Not that smart(er) people don't reason poorly from time to time; they certainly do. But they have the tools to weed out what is wrong with many a religious argument, should they take the time to consider them in any depth.
Did it ever occur to you that quite a few(majority possibly) of scientists are actually deeply religious, and not just pretending? I have a professor who is a preacher, several more who have leading roles in their churches and respective religions.
Certainly it is possible. I allowed for that, if you'll recall; I stated that such a person would damage their scientific credibility with me. My position is that a smart person will consider a proposition with no evidence and reject it as unimportant in the factual sense. Religion is important in a social sense because it is pervasive and it has many effects upon individuals. That does not make it based on reality, it just makes it unavoidable, socially speaking.
I am also quite bugged by the idea that atheism is the 'smart' choice. How is being atheist any more logical than being religious?
Simple: It is logical to not waste conviction upon ideas that have no evidence. An atheist is a person who holds no belief in a god or gods. Like one who holds no belief in pink unicorns. This is a perfectly logical position to take. There is no evidence for pink unicorns, other than we can conceive of them. That, in and of itself, is worth nothing in terms of providing a foundation for belief. It is not logical at all to presume that pink unicorns exist, and by the same token, it is not logical to assume that a god or gods exists. One, or both, in fact may exist, but why would I take the time to hold such a belief without any evidence? That is why atheism is logical; that is why it is the smart choice.
We believe a god exists, you believe one doesn't.
No. You hold a belief god exists. I don't hold such a belief. I don't make any claims that god doesn't exist. I simply find no reason to believe god does exist. That's not the same thing at all as claiming "there is no god or gods." There may be. I'm open to the idea, just as I am open to the idea of pink unicorns. Just show me one, that's all. Claiming there is one and then failing to support your claims doesn't count.
The most logical of the groups would probably be the agnostic
You're looking to explain something we already have a decent grip on with a cause not in evidence, further, a cause for which there is no evidence. Were quantum conditions to combine to produce a macroscopic anomaly, while an observer might be nonplussed, at this point in time there is no reason to invoke a deeper cause. Quantum fluctuations appear to be normal and natural events by all the evidence and workable theory that is in thus far, and that's actually quite a lot. Enough, in fact, that we can actually predict that there is a potential for anomolies. No entity need juggle quantum states; they juggle themselves, as it were.
Where that leaves us:
Just because you can imagine something doesn't put it into the running as a reasonable contender to explain facts in evidence (quantum fluctuations, in this case.) In order to do that, you need to be able to predict, and be right, and have the predictions bear out your idea. At that point, if other people can reproduce your results, we're getting somewhere. Otherwise, your prediction has the same value as saying there's a pink unicorn kicking quantum states around with tiny quantum hooves -- with precisely the same impetus towards belief. Which is to say, none.
I see your post as emphasizing my point. Here's my paragraph for you:
You say you consider yourself logical; yet you brought no logical framework to the table. You say "I believe" and then without engaging logic in any way, you make the specific claim that "finding out" must wait until death. You offer no justification for that claim, any more than you did for your stated belief in God, you simply throw it down as if it was supposed to mean something -- but, without some rationale behind it, what could I possibly be expected to make of it? Why dead? Why both of us? Says who, or implies what, or inevitably due to what force or manifestation? Why do you believe that death is the arbiter of your beliefs? Where, to be specific, is the logic behind the conditions you describe? How is your claim any different, in any way at all, from another individual's claim that something else otherwise not in evidence (unicorns, etc.) exists and that we will know the truth of that claim at death?
Which puts us here:
Do you think your presentation qualifies as "debate"? Or as a reasonable substitute for debate? I don't see it, myself.
If you'd like to engage on the issues, explaining what your logical approach is, and how your logical approach leads to belief in God and revelation of truth at such time as we are both dead, I'm certainly paying attention. Otherwise, thanks for responding, no problem.
It's not about passion, or attack, or defense. It's about the power of reason, replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity, and learning what appropriate levels of confidence are.
I suspect that the majority of scientists that say they believe in a God or Gods are just feeding back what they expect the left half of the IQ bell curve wants to hear so they'll go away and let them do real work.
I have yet to encounter a good argument for the existence of a god. Nary a one. If you think you have one, go ahead and try; I expect I'll eat you for lunch, and generally speaking, it'll take about one average size paragraph. Nor have I ever encountered any person, regardless of how educated and/or intelligent, who can do anything but fall back to an utterly lame and unconvincing "well, I have faith it is so" in the face of moderately informed counter questioning and observation-sharing from me. And I'm not even all that smart. I know I'm not; I have very smart people who work for me, it's quite humbling.:-)
I agree entirely with the upstream comment that any scientist who seriously claims he "believes" in God, Santa, or the Easter Bunny is going to go to the bottom of my credibility index, and right quickly. If you can't think clearly about abstracts, if you accept propositions without evidence, if you are willing to accept one unanswerable and untestable proposition as the solution and/or explanation for another unanswerable and untestable proposition, then you have demonstrated that you don't understand scientific method and that should be (is, for me) a death blow to credibility in science.
What these survey readers (and givers) need to realize is that it is not "OK" to be an atheist in this country; it is a conservative, dangerous environment within which to choose to come out for atheism and it is also time-consuming -- should a person designated as a scientist make such a claim they'll likely end up spending a lot of time defending said claim to people they really don't need to be spending time with. Now, some of us -- like me -- have the time and there is no particular loss to society if I spend my time that way. Perhaps there is even a benefit; some people are just confused and will immediately understand when presented (finally) with reason over religion. But I'd hate for a scientist to spend a lot of time doing so. I'm much more interested in our learning how the world actually works than I am in hearing a scientist try to debunk the myth-makers. For these reasons, surveys that claim real, productive scientists are "religious" feel dubious to me. I'd actually be fascinated to meet one who could back up their belief system with other than the usual easily defeated lines of rubbish; but it's not happened as yet, and I'm not exactly holding my breath. I think it'd be a good use of their time, though, as it'd keep them away from the beakers, chalkboard and animal cages for a while.:-)
So. Here we have a maneuvering jet. Or pair of them, one's the shooter, the other's the target. The jets are moving, the laser mount is moving, the skin of the target jet is vibrating.
Let's say that the jets are moving at 300 mph relative to each other -- that's about 5 inches per millisecond. They could be moving a lot faster, especially if they're head to head, but let's just call it 300, as that is trivial for fighter aircraft, only requiring 300 and a stall, or 150 head to head.
Now consider that for the highest energy density, the laser spot has to be as small as possible.
Here's what it boils down to: How difficult will it be to keep that laser on the precise same location for the few milliseconds required to make that dust collect enough energy burn off the mirroring?
The laser has to track at five inches per millisecond. In any direction. Specifically at 300 mph the targeting mechanism has to be able to traverse the spot 5.28 inches on the target in 1 millisecond to keep it precisely on the same location -- or else it'll distribute the energy over a much greater area and that will prevent it from heating the target. This problem is alleviated to the degree that the spot size overlaps the target area -- the larger the spot, the more movement it'll be able to tolerate, assuming they can keep the energy density even over the entire spot. For example, if the spot is five inches in diameter, then in one millisecond, it'll hit at least part of the same area on the target at 300 mph. On the other hand, if the spot is 5 inches in diameter, the energy density will be reduced significantly.
You're also assuming that you can get dust to stick on a mirrored finish at 300 mph, which I'm a little dubious about. Most dust probably is picked up on landing when the aircraft skin is experiencing a lot less force orthogonal to the skin.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but I am saying I don't think it is likely in the near future.
The higher the energy density, the better it will work, of course. And if the target is oblivious and maintaining straight and level flight, that'll make it easier too. But if the target is oblivious, it's probably pretty far off in the distance, and that brings its own problems for lasers.:-)
But it's worth bringing distance into this anyway. Having determined that the laser needs to track 5 inches in a millisecond, we have to look at what that means to the laser mechanism. The further away the target is, the more precise the targeting has to be. If you're 10 miles away, and trying to point the laser with a precision of perhaps 1/8th of an inch while tracking the target's movements well enough to keep that spot on target at 5 inches per milliseconds at 10 miles... I dunno, maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the engineers involved, but this problem isn't an easy one, to say the least.
It's worse for a missiles. Missiles are fast. They have to be to catch fighters, obviously. They also can bleed some of that speed to continually maneuver at rates that put a jet to shame, because there's no pilot to worry about -- as long as the missile's control surfaces don't succumb to the g-forces and dynamic pressure, and given that it can keep up enough speed to gain on the target and hit it within the range of its fuel load, it can basically go nuts... If it turns out that lasers are a threat to missiles, you can bet the very next thing you'll see is prophylactic maneuvering on the part of an attacking missile.
And of course, we can consider the problem when the jets are moving at 1000 mph each, or 2000 mph relative. Not unlikely, those are reasonable speeds for fighters (though missiles are faster.) Now you've got a much worse tracking problem -- the target area could be moving as fast as 35 inches in a millisecond. A laser spot of 35 inch diameter is going to have about as much effect as a suntan even when driven by 150 kw, so tracking at 35 inches/ms is the only option. How's your dust heating going to work now?
Umph. Laser cannons to shoot down missles, ait-to-air, eh?.
Harry, bring out the reflective surface treatment gear, would ya? Yeah, we're gonna want a nice mirror finish, but let a fraction of a percent through the nose, a laser spot'll make a great tracking datum.
Or maybe we can reflect and redirect it well enough to drill a hole in the jet that's generating it...
Oh, wait a minute, jets with reflective surfaces.
Crap.
Another billion down the drain. And I needed a new yacht, too!
Sure they can. They're called "agents of the government" and they come in all kinds of uniforms, and also sometimes suits and "robes." Some carry guns and handcuffs, others keys and gavels, and these people are known to dole out everything from public ridicule to jail time to death sentences.
Any half-knowledgable person can set up their own website, and fill it with all sorts of porn. If I was to put up such a site today, how long do you think it would be available for young people before these "enforcers" stumbled accross it, a week, a month, a year? heck.. I can register a new domain hours after they find my site & "force" me on a.xxx domain.
Sure. And they can throw said person in jail, which will kind of put a kink in your righteous fight against the powers that be. Don't doubt it for a second. They can, and they will, if you simply let them get in a position where they can make these assignments. They're a little psychotic; they think they're your mama, or worse. Seriously. And they don't think anything of making law that is unconstitutional. The system is biased so they can; making law is very easy (just pop a rider on something), yet unmaking it is like walking uphill through burning lava while making a path out of paper currency.
That's why we call these laws "mommy laws", and that's why allowing congress to continue to evade the intent of the constitution will continue to erode the value of what the constitution describes.
It's pretty clear: If it doesn't take something directly out of your pocket, or cause you direct physical harm, then it's not unconstitutional unless there is a constitutional amendment that says otherwise (and that takes ratification by many states and isn't all that easy to arrange.)
Slashdot Mirror
I search for "phrase 2". Presumably, Google shows me this in context, in paragraph two.
You search for "phrase 1" but this is in paragraph one. Google doesn't expose the entire document, according to your theory, so... it shows you paragraph two, where the quote isn't? You now get to trudge through the result and not find your phrase?
How, exactly, is this supposed to be useful? I mean, if they're not going to return the context, they might as well just return the title and maybe the page-number, no?
Even if they do this, it seems to me that they are still going to have to purchase the rights to store the work in a retrieval system and use them for profit. They're not acting as a library here, they're a business in pursuit of income. The law seems pretty clear on this point.
First of all, the fact that a work is in a library does not mean that its copyright is expired, invalid, or compromised. Libraries have to buy books, just like you and I. And Google, I might add.
Secondly, the loaning of a work from a library is not done for profit, which is quite distinct from Google's planned use.
Third, related to the first point, when you borrow a work, you're not allowed to copy it. Google is "borrowing" books from libraries, copying them without recompense to the rights-holders, and then using them to generate income.
I have to think that any court in the land will squash them like a bug. But I, thank goodness, am not a lawyer. We will see how this goes. I am almost certain it will be vigorously opposed.
I don't disagree at all. But I wasn't talking about how things "ought to be", I was talking about how things are.
If you'll re-read my post, you'll see that I am of a similar mind. However, copyright law does not "have" to change. It will only stand a chance of changing if certain pressure is applied; but breaking the law is the wrong kind of pressure. That is almost always seen as disrespect, not legitimate protest — and it will result in pain for the lawbreaker.
Write your congresscritter or join/initiate a PAC. Those are your options. I recommend the latter, the former is, IMHO, naive.
Here's the thing about those ad revenues. Google doesn't have the right to earn revenues based on those works, because those rights are reserved unless specifically assigned. It doesn't matter if they want to hand some of the earnings over, unless they have a contract stating that this is agreeable to the rights-holder and subsequently (and specifically) delivering those rights over for that purpose, they're like a bank robber saying they're going to give some money back. They don't have a right to any of the money. There can be no exoneration to be found in sharing it.
There's no two ways about this. Either the laws have to be changed, or Google is in the wrong.
I didn't make the laws (and I think they're far too strict and far too biased in favor of the copyright holder) so please, don't kick me around for it. Talk to your congress-critter if you're a believer in the political system. Or fund a PAC (that might actually work — talking to a congress-critter probably won't.)
Is that so? Then tell me, either precisely or generally, under what set of legal rules Google is allowed to take entire works it hasn't purchased, does not own any rights to, and copy them? Libraries can't do that. You can't do that. I can't do that. Businesses can't do that. Why can Google do that?
Tell me, under what set of rules is Google allowed not only to do this, but do it to generate a profit? No one else can do it, why can Google?
Tell me also, under what set of rules is Google permitted to facilitate re-assembly of copyrighted works?
I'm willing to be wrong, but I really don't think I am.
Now, since you say I'm wrong, how about you explain where I'm wrong?
My position is based upon the fact that when a work is published, only rights as stipulated are given to a particular publisher in a particular venue, and any other rights are almost inevitably reserved. The contracts are written so as to reserve any right not explicitly described in the contract. For instance, if we sell the right to publish a work as a book to a book publisher, we reserve the rights for film, performance and so on (unless the book publisher wants to buy them, in which case, things may be a little different... typically that's not the case, though) and we also reserve the rights for performance by a cyborg in a bathtub by saying that any rights not mentioned are also reserved. It is legal boilerplate, and very solid, precedents all nailed down, etc.
Now, copyright law says that a small portion of a work may be copied — for instance, for use as a quote in a review. But it also explicitly forbids copying the entire work without permission... which is precisely what Google is doing. That's problem number one, and it is legally rock-solid. They don't have the right to make that copy without (A) permission from the publisher, or (B) purchase of each individual work. Copying from a library doesn't count as purchase. Should they purchase each work, they'd have the right to store those works in a retrival system under very limited conditions, conditions that I assure you do not apply to re-publishing (serving various, eventually all, parts of the work back to the public.)
Problem number two is that on reproduction, that is, when serving results, they aren't proposing to present the same snippet from the work to each user, which is the specific type of use that has been approved for use in a review, for instance. What they're proposing to do is publishing to you one area of the work, and publishing to me another. This means that the entire work can be served to (various) users, and that in turn would publish the entire work in a form that can be trivially reassembled, thereby clearly putting the rights of the copyright holder at risk of infringement by re-assembly.
This has been specifically established by the courts saying that if you have 1/2 a song, and Fred over there has 1/2 that same song, you and Fred are not allowed to serve those to the net, and I in turn am not allowed to re-assemble the song.
Now, if Google is given permission (note that this is not the same as "assuming they have permission if the publisher doesn't give them the name on a list") then they can do this. This would require a contract that allows both stages; copying into their computer system to use as lookup fodder, and publishing fragments on demand in response to search queries.
But that is not the case, and that is why I say that they can't do this without the explicit permission of the copyright holders.
I should add to this that I'm posting about US law only. YMWCV otherwise.
And you say?
Google is using other people's intellectual property to create new publisher's value. That's not the same as creating something entirely new that obsoletes something that previously exists — and what Google is doing is forbidden by law.
If we don't like copyright law, then it needs to be changed. In the interim, Google is clearly in the wrong if they publish anything without the explicit permission of any rights-holders in the domain of said publishing. I fully expect them to get burned by this.
Copyrights exist for a reason. Current copyright law is in my opinion excessively biased in favor of the rights-holders, but we need to change that, not break the law. If we don't want copyright at all, again, the law needs to be changed. Nothing about the current situation makes what Google is doing right.
Disclosure: I own a literary agency.
An early fetus is no more a child than a baby is a scientist.
Having said that, there is obviously some kind of fuzzy line, somewhere between two divided cells and a whole pile of specialized cells, where the fetus becomes more of a child than merely the potential for a child.
The tragedy of today's laws is that the line is drawn far too late. Legislators and courts have, in their usual incompetent manner, conflated "birth" with the "irrelevant hunk-o-cells" to "child" transition. They did this, as far as I can tell, because they're stupid.
I'm not saying we know exactly where to draw the line. We don't. But we do know when the fetus begins to show emotion, move around, and so on. That (to me) means the line needs to be drawn at least earlier than that.
But there does need to be a line. A sperm intercepting an egg does not a child define, nor does a few weeks of busy cell division. There's more to it; we should figure out how much more, and then make some law. That's asking a lot of our legislators, who have a miserable track record of making good law, but still, that's what we should do.
You also have to look at those situations where the mother's life is at risk, and when the pregnancy was involuntary (rape caused, for example.) That's a whole different set of issues. Can someone who has consented (presumably) to carrying a child also be presumed to have consented to die to bring that child into the world?
It's all very well to jump up and down and scream "what about the children!" but if you want to solve the issue I'm afraid you're going to have to think, and think hard. You're also probably going to have to get rid of the current crop of legislators and courtroom drones -- they've already shown they can't handle the job.
The Korean phonetic alphabet is "hangul." Korean ideographic writing is "hanja."
Hanja is not, by any means, "rarely used" unless you would say that capital letters and punctuation in English are "rarely used."
In South Korea, Hanja is found in signs, newspapers, and other common public venues. It is quite often used for specialized vocabularies (martial arts is one I can personally vouch for, but there certainly are others.) Hanja is used for personal names as well.
In North Korea, as one might expect from a dictatorship, a hard line has been drawn and the citizens are not allowed to use hanja; hangul is "it." However, North Korea is not definitive here — South Korea has far more interaction with the world, for one thing, and is unlikely to ever be as hardline about this as North Korea has been. They value their history, for one thing. They educate better, for another.
There is no way, at this point in time, one could do without hanja and make do with hangul in South Korea unless one wanted to be regarded as an illiterate. I'm talking about current use; if you want to consider historical use, then it just gets deeper; the vocabulary gets broader, the usage gets more involved.
While hanja characters, in many cases, mean the same thing (or similar) to what they mean when they are used in other asian languages (Japanese, Chinese, etc. — the character for "rice" means "rice" in all three languages), the pronunciation of the character is almost always "other." Makes it a little easier to navigate asian menus, though. "Point and Pick." ;-)
If that day ever comes.
It doesn't do as much good as you think to jump thru CSS hoops if it only works on some browsers, and it does no good at ALL if you code it so that it works on Explorer, which is outright broken and sucks with regard to CSS. At this point in time.
So while you were trying to be funny, the fact is, you weren't funny. Because your base assumptions were incorrect.
It's a bell curve. see this reference
BB radiation is quite different
With a co-operating group, you have a right to lift heavy loads you can't lift by yourself. Within a group, you have the right to pursue one craft to perfection (woodworking, programming, whatever) that otherwise would be compromised (or eliminated) by the requirement that you till your soil. With a group, a majority of you can agree to do (X), where (X) is any job that takes more than one person, or (X) is any consenual activity that takes more than one person (determining group opinions, for instance, so as to come to consensus rules.
Rights, per se, are useless without the ability to pursue that right. What good is the right to pursue happiness if your ass is locked in prison, away from your loved ones? What good is the right to freedom of (not to mention from) religion when some choad prints "In Allah We Trust" all over your money, requires you to put your hand on the Koran to become trusted in a courtroom, requires that everyone faces west for 1 minute in school each morning, hangs selected passages from the Koran in government buildings, builds and houses monuments to Allah with taxpayer money, allows Imams to pursue life tax free while YOU have to pay taxes on your income, decides all marriages have to be on the terms of the Koran (hello, polygamy, goodbye, clitoris!)...
You assume that a real democracy could not have just as strong (or stronger) foundation elements underlying it than does our current brittle, broken mess. Well, let me clue you in, son, you're wrong. You could empower such a group just the way it is done now --- with a base constitution --- and require a more than 1/2 vote to adjust the constitution (97.5% feels about right to me, once the thing is crafted.) Or you could do something else, maybe even more clever and foresightful. You don't have to walk into it as ignorant as a homeopath. You don't have to have 50.001% as the "we accept" threshold, either.
There is a bunch wrong with our current constitution --- from misogyny to allowing religion to weasle its way into government and education to allowing the government to assume debt and tax the citizens to any degree it decides is convenient and so on --- lots and lots could be fixed, and then people -- not some bought-and-paid-for representative, but people, you know, the ones who have to obey the laws, could vote on them.
Every time I hear some lamer make the assumption that direct voting involves worse consequences than our current system I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You are so bloody ignorant. THINK, would you???
And how free are you now? Have any covenants? Can you fly a flag? Can you put up an antenna? A tower? Can you put up a fence, install a pool, build new construction without a permit, play rock and roll late at night, roll naked on your lawn, smoke pot on your porch, fuck your spouse blind on your roof? Well? Can you smack your kid if they misbehave, or will you go to jail? Can you own an assault rifle, and more to the point, can you set up a 100% safe firing range in your yard? If you're in a home "zoned" area, can you move a trailer onto your land? If you're in a home zoned area, can you set up a business? Can you sell food off your porch? Can you go out and buy the services of a prostitute, or bring five or six of them home and throw a party? You think you're safe from your neighbor(s)? You think you're free? You're out of your tiny little mind. The powers that be have already decided on what your lifestyle will be. Your neighbors are 100% ready to rat on your sorry ass the second you step out of line. Sucks to be you.
Those who will not fight (or even argue) for improvement deserve what they get.
First of all, I refer you to the pledge of allegiance: "To the republic for which it stands." You're not pledging to a democracy, because we don't have one.
An indirect, vaguely democratic representative system where corporations and PACs are the primary "voters" is what we have. If you think otherwise, you're sadly mistaken.
Secondly, even an actual indirect democracy (assuming we had one, which we definitely do not) is so incredibly different from a "direct" one that it still needs to be pointed out, especially in the case we have here, where the post I was replying to was inferring that citizens have choice in what goes on. They don't. Period.
In an "indirect democracy", the citizens have no choice in what goes on, all they can do is after the fact fail to re-elect someone based on actions that have already screwed up the country. The unspoken, but implied, message is that "someone better" can then be elected. But that's an illusion; all you can do is elect the next political hack the party puts up for your rubber-stamping, and they, sure as the sun will shine, will up and behave just like the last hack.
"Indirect democracy" implies that the representatives are doing things on the citizen's behalf. They're not. They're doing things on the PAC and corporation's behalf; since the general idea we elected the official for and the actions they take are, these days, just about 100% divorced from each other, you'll have to look with a bloody microscope to find any vestige of "democracy" of any kind in the system, unless you consider corporations and PACs citizens in a degree equal to their ability to grease politi-critter palms, leaving the rank and file residents of the country out of it completely.
In a direct democracy, what goes on is a direct consequence of the citizen's current majority opinion, which is so far removed from the whim of an elected, party-picked and citizen-rubber-stamped hack that it should hardly be called by any name that uses the same letters, never mind the same words, as a direct democracy.
So please don't get all self-congratulatory quoting the Romans and hand-waving about the ancient Greeks. They aren't here. We are. The fact of the matter is that our votes don't mean squat. No matter what you want to call it.
Welcome to the republic, Mr. A.C.
If you don't like it, talk to your congress/senate-critter or write them, or found/join some kind of revolutionary thing. But don't go around thinking this is a democracy. It truly isn't.
However, below, you say you don't speak out. That alleviates the problem. If you do speak out, especially in small-town America, where I live, I think you are indeed in danger.
Hmm. Not sure where that "arbitrary" came from; I don't arbitrarily attack religion. I do it with specific motivation. Just FYI.
That is correct as far as it goes, but you don't complete your thinking. The existence of a spectral pink unicorn that causes earthquakes by running upside down along earthquake faults cannot be proved or disproved, either, and for the same reason: There is no evidence for such an extraordinary claim. Would you be content that the schools were seriously trying to teach your child that the earthquake-causing pink unicorn is real, and that they (your children, remember) are socially, ethically and morally bound to modify their behaviors accordingly? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing you'd object basically because there is no evidence, although like most people, you'd probably say "that's ridiculous" rather than going into any analysis as to what is actually wrong. In precisely the same vein, there is zero evidence to support belief in a god or gods (and zero support for the consequences that such beliefs bring to society.) It is not reasonable to believe in something for which there is no evidence. It is even less reasonable to build those beliefs into a social force that warps the legal, political and day to day venues citizens must move through. It is no more reasonable to kowtow to any religious idea than it is to stop traffic on thursday afternoon to lay dyed-pink eggs on the centerline of the highway to appease the "earthquake unicorn." I observe that you seem to be OK with it. That's fine, for you... but I'm not.
If you don't know, you're not thinking about it very carefully. My reasons, a few of them, are above. I'd be interested to hear your objections, if any, to them.
In the USA, for instance, Christian belief organizations infiltrate society to a huge degree. They are currently working to damage the educational process ("creationism"), dictate sexual and marriage conditions and permissibility, keep stores closed 1/7th of the time... I think you catch the drift. There is much more. And of course, they have a history of inflicting other dogmatic injuries on society: witch burnings, scientist burnings, book burnings. These acts come from religious dogma; there is no comparable "secular dogma" that leads the atheist to this kind of disruption. That makes religion a problem above and beyond any comparable problem atheists, as a group, can be said to pose. Finally -- and most bothersome -- religion encourages one to believe propositions without evidence, a process that I maintain is extremely harmful to the ability to reason. The religious routinely inflict this upon children. Personally, I think that should be one of the textbook definitions of "child abuse."
And... ???
My current position is simply that there is no reason to bring belief into being for a postulate for which there is no evidence. I don't believe in a god or gods because there is no reason whatsoever for me to do so. I don't say there aren't any, because there is no reason for me to say that, either, and it appears that the universe is very, very large -- I don't know what is in it, or not (which puts me in the same boat as every other human being, as far as I can tell.) Should a god make themselves known, I'd be delighted to learn of it. Until then, though, god is maximally unlikely due to no evidence, precisely like pink earth-dwelling unicorns, with no credibility gained by the concept just because it is something one can imagine. I -- and anyone else with a nominally healthy mind -- can imagine a lot of things. That in itself in no way makes them likely to be real.
I didn't say that. I am talking about highly intelligent people, scientists. They are a tiny minority. The IQ curve has 100 in the middle; mean and median. The low side of the curve is where religion carries the day. Not that smart(er) people don't reason poorly from time to time; they certainly do. But they have the tools to weed out what is wrong with many a religious argument, should they take the time to consider them in any depth.
Certainly it is possible. I allowed for that, if you'll recall; I stated that such a person would damage their scientific credibility with me. My position is that a smart person will consider a proposition with no evidence and reject it as unimportant in the factual sense. Religion is important in a social sense because it is pervasive and it has many effects upon individuals. That does not make it based on reality, it just makes it unavoidable, socially speaking.
Simple: It is logical to not waste conviction upon ideas that have no evidence. An atheist is a person who holds no belief in a god or gods. Like one who holds no belief in pink unicorns. This is a perfectly logical position to take. There is no evidence for pink unicorns, other than we can conceive of them. That, in and of itself, is worth nothing in terms of providing a foundation for belief. It is not logical at all to presume that pink unicorns exist, and by the same token, it is not logical to assume that a god or gods exists. One, or both, in fact may exist, but why would I take the time to hold such a belief without any evidence? That is why atheism is logical; that is why it is the smart choice.
No. You hold a belief god exists. I don't hold such a belief. I don't make any claims that god doesn't exist. I simply find no reason to believe god does exist. That's not the same thing at all as claiming "there is no god or gods." There may be. I'm open to the idea, just as I am open to the idea of pink unicorns. Just show me one, that's all. Claiming there is one and then failing to support your claims doesn't count.
You're looking to explain something we already have a decent grip on with a cause not in evidence, further, a cause for which there is no evidence. Were quantum conditions to combine to produce a macroscopic anomaly, while an observer might be nonplussed, at this point in time there is no reason to invoke a deeper cause. Quantum fluctuations appear to be normal and natural events by all the evidence and workable theory that is in thus far, and that's actually quite a lot. Enough, in fact, that we can actually predict that there is a potential for anomolies. No entity need juggle quantum states; they juggle themselves, as it were.
Where that leaves us:
Just because you can imagine something doesn't put it into the running as a reasonable contender to explain facts in evidence (quantum fluctuations, in this case.) In order to do that, you need to be able to predict, and be right, and have the predictions bear out your idea. At that point, if other people can reproduce your results, we're getting somewhere. Otherwise, your prediction has the same value as saying there's a pink unicorn kicking quantum states around with tiny quantum hooves -- with precisely the same impetus towards belief. Which is to say, none.
You say you consider yourself logical; yet you brought no logical framework to the table. You say "I believe" and then without engaging logic in any way, you make the specific claim that "finding out" must wait until death. You offer no justification for that claim, any more than you did for your stated belief in God, you simply throw it down as if it was supposed to mean something -- but, without some rationale behind it, what could I possibly be expected to make of it? Why dead? Why both of us? Says who, or implies what, or inevitably due to what force or manifestation? Why do you believe that death is the arbiter of your beliefs? Where, to be specific, is the logic behind the conditions you describe? How is your claim any different, in any way at all, from another individual's claim that something else otherwise not in evidence (unicorns, etc.) exists and that we will know the truth of that claim at death?
Which puts us here:
Do you think your presentation qualifies as "debate"? Or as a reasonable substitute for debate? I don't see it, myself.
If you'd like to engage on the issues, explaining what your logical approach is, and how your logical approach leads to belief in God and revelation of truth at such time as we are both dead, I'm certainly paying attention. Otherwise, thanks for responding, no problem.
It's not about passion, or attack, or defense. It's about the power of reason, replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity, and learning what appropriate levels of confidence are.
I suspect that the majority of scientists that say they believe in a God or Gods are just feeding back what they expect the left half of the IQ bell curve wants to hear so they'll go away and let them do real work.
I have yet to encounter a good argument for the existence of a god. Nary a one. If you think you have one, go ahead and try; I expect I'll eat you for lunch, and generally speaking, it'll take about one average size paragraph. Nor have I ever encountered any person, regardless of how educated and/or intelligent, who can do anything but fall back to an utterly lame and unconvincing "well, I have faith it is so" in the face of moderately informed counter questioning and observation-sharing from me. And I'm not even all that smart. I know I'm not; I have very smart people who work for me, it's quite humbling. :-)
I agree entirely with the upstream comment that any scientist who seriously claims he "believes" in God, Santa, or the Easter Bunny is going to go to the bottom of my credibility index, and right quickly. If you can't think clearly about abstracts, if you accept propositions without evidence, if you are willing to accept one unanswerable and untestable proposition as the solution and/or explanation for another unanswerable and untestable proposition, then you have demonstrated that you don't understand scientific method and that should be (is, for me) a death blow to credibility in science.
What these survey readers (and givers) need to realize is that it is not "OK" to be an atheist in this country; it is a conservative, dangerous environment within which to choose to come out for atheism and it is also time-consuming -- should a person designated as a scientist make such a claim they'll likely end up spending a lot of time defending said claim to people they really don't need to be spending time with. Now, some of us -- like me -- have the time and there is no particular loss to society if I spend my time that way. Perhaps there is even a benefit; some people are just confused and will immediately understand when presented (finally) with reason over religion. But I'd hate for a scientist to spend a lot of time doing so. I'm much more interested in our learning how the world actually works than I am in hearing a scientist try to debunk the myth-makers. For these reasons, surveys that claim real, productive scientists are "religious" feel dubious to me. I'd actually be fascinated to meet one who could back up their belief system with other than the usual easily defeated lines of rubbish; but it's not happened as yet, and I'm not exactly holding my breath. I think it'd be a good use of their time, though, as it'd keep them away from the beakers, chalkboard and animal cages for a while. :-)
Let's say that the jets are moving at 300 mph relative to each other -- that's about 5 inches per millisecond. They could be moving a lot faster, especially if they're head to head, but let's just call it 300, as that is trivial for fighter aircraft, only requiring 300 and a stall, or 150 head to head.
Now consider that for the highest energy density, the laser spot has to be as small as possible.
Here's what it boils down to: How difficult will it be to keep that laser on the precise same location for the few milliseconds required to make that dust collect enough energy burn off the mirroring?
The laser has to track at five inches per millisecond. In any direction. Specifically at 300 mph the targeting mechanism has to be able to traverse the spot 5.28 inches on the target in 1 millisecond to keep it precisely on the same location -- or else it'll distribute the energy over a much greater area and that will prevent it from heating the target. This problem is alleviated to the degree that the spot size overlaps the target area -- the larger the spot, the more movement it'll be able to tolerate, assuming they can keep the energy density even over the entire spot. For example, if the spot is five inches in diameter, then in one millisecond, it'll hit at least part of the same area on the target at 300 mph. On the other hand, if the spot is 5 inches in diameter, the energy density will be reduced significantly.
You're also assuming that you can get dust to stick on a mirrored finish at 300 mph, which I'm a little dubious about. Most dust probably is picked up on landing when the aircraft skin is experiencing a lot less force orthogonal to the skin.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but I am saying I don't think it is likely in the near future.
The higher the energy density, the better it will work, of course. And if the target is oblivious and maintaining straight and level flight, that'll make it easier too. But if the target is oblivious, it's probably pretty far off in the distance, and that brings its own problems for lasers. :-)
But it's worth bringing distance into this anyway. Having determined that the laser needs to track 5 inches in a millisecond, we have to look at what that means to the laser mechanism. The further away the target is, the more precise the targeting has to be. If you're 10 miles away, and trying to point the laser with a precision of perhaps 1/8th of an inch while tracking the target's movements well enough to keep that spot on target at 5 inches per milliseconds at 10 miles... I dunno, maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the engineers involved, but this problem isn't an easy one, to say the least.
It's worse for a missiles. Missiles are fast. They have to be to catch fighters, obviously. They also can bleed some of that speed to continually maneuver at rates that put a jet to shame, because there's no pilot to worry about -- as long as the missile's control surfaces don't succumb to the g-forces and dynamic pressure, and given that it can keep up enough speed to gain on the target and hit it within the range of its fuel load, it can basically go nuts... If it turns out that lasers are a threat to missiles, you can bet the very next thing you'll see is prophylactic maneuvering on the part of an attacking missile.
And of course, we can consider the problem when the jets are moving at 1000 mph each, or 2000 mph relative. Not unlikely, those are reasonable speeds for fighters (though missiles are faster.) Now you've got a much worse tracking problem -- the target area could be moving as fast as 35 inches in a millisecond. A laser spot of 35 inch diameter is going to have about as much effect as a suntan even when driven by 150 kw, so tracking at 35 inches/ms is the only option. How's your dust heating going to work now?
Harry, bring out the reflective surface treatment gear, would ya? Yeah, we're gonna want a nice mirror finish, but let a fraction of a percent through the nose, a laser spot'll make a great tracking datum.
Or maybe we can reflect and redirect it well enough to drill a hole in the jet that's generating it...
Oh, wait a minute, jets with reflective surfaces.
Crap.
Another billion down the drain. And I needed a new yacht, too!
Try it, you might like it. :-)
Sure they can. They're called "agents of the government" and they come in all kinds of uniforms, and also sometimes suits and "robes." Some carry guns and handcuffs, others keys and gavels, and these people are known to dole out everything from public ridicule to jail time to death sentences.
Sure. And they can throw said person in jail, which will kind of put a kink in your righteous fight against the powers that be. Don't doubt it for a second. They can, and they will, if you simply let them get in a position where they can make these assignments. They're a little psychotic; they think they're your mama, or worse. Seriously. And they don't think anything of making law that is unconstitutional. The system is biased so they can; making law is very easy (just pop a rider on something), yet unmaking it is like walking uphill through burning lava while making a path out of paper currency.
That's why we call these laws "mommy laws", and that's why allowing congress to continue to evade the intent of the constitution will continue to erode the value of what the constitution describes.
It's pretty clear: If it doesn't take something directly out of your pocket, or cause you direct physical harm, then it's not unconstitutional unless there is a constitutional amendment that says otherwise (and that takes ratification by many states and isn't all that easy to arrange.)
Why, certainly. They're either stupid, or neurotic.
Any other questions?