No. It's not rare. It's not inconsequential, either.
In this context, SCOTUS has, over and over, gone directly against the constitution. Almost the entire bill of rights has been violated by congress and the courts (amendment three remains unsullied as far as I know); the outright inversion of the commerce clause is right there for anyone to see; blatantly ex post facto laws (both state and federal) have arisen and been confirmed; and in the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), they arrogated article five powers to themselves not authorized by article three, which is the cause of the problem at the SCOTUS level. Congress has a similar, though related, problem. Both are violating their oaths any time this sort of thing is made law, or rubber stamped by SCOTUS in any sense one might imagine they can do so, including the pretense they maintain that they actually have such authority legitimately.
There are now many thousands of laws in abject violation, all of which have enjoyed SCOTUS's blessing. Many more exist which have yet to be tested at that level, but precedent tells us what is most likely to happen.
When the constitution says "shall make no law", that's the end of it. No law is not "some law" or "lots of law."
When the constitution says "shall not infringe", that's the end of it. "Shall not" is not "shall."
When the constitution says "interstate commerce", that's the end of it. "Interstate" is not "intrastate."
When the constitution says "no ex post facto law", that's the end of it. Among other things, it quite specifically means that punishment cannot be increased retroactively after sentencing. Yet there are many laws that do so, some of which have that coveted SCOTUS rubber stamp, and in that condition, encourage legislators to keep doing that very thing.
And so on. For quite some length.
Yes, the system works the way they want it to work, and that's what lawyers are taught to deal with from day one. Lawyers saying things are working properly is nothing less than a form of Stockholm syndrome with the added benefit of self-enrichment in almost every instance.
No, it's not working as designed, intended, and constitutionally authorized. It is fundamentally corrupt. Unfortunately, that puts every member of the legal system in the position of also being fundamentally corrupt -- no matter what their intent is -- unless they stand against these types of exercises of government.
They've ABDICATED that authority because nobody is demanding it these days.
No. Article three does not provide article five powers in any sense. Period. SCOTUS arrogated that power to themselves in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
Article three specifies the cases in which SCOTUS has the judicial authority, which is: guilty, not guilty under the law, etc. Not "never mind this law, ignore congress." It specifies some specific areas where SCOTUS is to exercise this authority as a final matter: treaties, constitutional cases. So, for instance, when a constitutional case comes up, the question is, was the constitution violated. If so, the violator is guilty and can be punished. If a treaty is made and broken, same thing. They don't get to rewrite the law, or the treaty.
The "authority" they claim to have is the same authority you would have if you suddenly decided you could declare a law unconstitutional on your own. There is no constitutional authority for you, or for them, to do this.
The way it was intended to work was congress would obey their oaths, and no unconstitutional law would issue. That was obviously optimistic (to say the least), but still, that was clearly the intent.
If any judge (at any level, top or otherwise) could override any law, then of what possible use is the constitution as "the highest law in the land"? What need to amend, if a judge can just decide whatever way they want?
The power to amend was not given as "the judicial power." It was taken. And it has been used repeatedly to allow gross constitutional violation (interestingly, the nature of the problem is the same as the one congress indulges in: abject violation of their oaths of office.) Of course, congress hasn't seen fit to legislate a penalty for such things. Punish them? Oh my, no.
I have a few libertarian bones in my body, and my view on a win here for transparency is that it brings the government back a bit towards being compliant with the constitution; as the constitution is the only thing that authorizes its existence, all in all, this is a good thing.
Who can take most advantage of this specific bit of transparency, should it actually come about, isn't my primary concern. Government compliance with the constitution is. If something in the constitution isn't working out, article five is right there so the country can change it in a constitutionally compliant fashion. Fiat law, which this is an example of, and which is also SOP for congress and the courts these days, is, as far as I'm concerned, illegal on first principles and should never have been squeezed out of the ass of congress.
In the oligarchy that runs the show today, the constitution is a mostly ignored footnote. I don't see any real serious fixes coming; but any step in the right direction is still welcome in my book.
it's time for the government to step up and respect the Constitution
Yes, these people are really late to the party. But at least they (finally) showed up.
The problem we have is that the congress, which takes an oath WRT making constitutionally compliant law, consistently ignores that oath. This is compounded by the fact that the courts, which are charged (by themselves, but that's a different problem of very long standing) with making sure that laws that are not compliant with the constitution are struck down, consistently do not do so.
It remains to be seen if this will be yet another instance of congress and the courts working together to do what they want, rather than what they are actually authorized to do. But I wouldn't get my hopes up.
You didn't address my idea, though. There's only one ball in it. By accelerating it into the triangle (using magnetism, whatever, but the force is exerted on the structure no matter what it is) the ball goes into the triangle, and the triangle moves away from the ball, both with equal momentum. The ball then imparts momentum to the surfaces it hits; but they are at an angle, so that momentum is not on the same axis as the original impetus. Some of that energy is spent at an angle not equal to the original. Therefore, it seems to me, there is a difference in the momentum exerted upon the triangle.
If that's not so (and it probably isn't), I would like to know why.
I had this (probably completely wrongheaded) thought:
In 2d, imagine a triangle. Shoot momentum-having things out of base with impulse T at a perfect perpendicular (for purpose of thought experiment), so base is pushed away from direction of shot with impulse -T. Say one hits mid-left-edge. Imparts some of its momentum, T, to the left/forward as U/V. then, because pool table, bounces to right edge in straight line. Hits, imparts some of its remaining momentum (T-(U+V), as W/X, to the right/forward. Then, again because of pool table, bounces back towards base, imparting some of its remaining momentum, now reversed, -(T - (U+W)), which we'll call Y. V and X cancel out because they are in the T direction. Total base momentum for this pass of momentum-having thing is then -T + -Y. The new bounce is the new T, and the cycle repeats. This can continue (in a vacuum) for as long as thing has momentum left to deliver and can follow these, or similar, paths.
A cone is just a 3D triangle in this model. More area, same concept.
Bottom line is that equal amounts of momentum against the sides (because of shots from everywhere on base, should average out) are lost, so momentum delivered to the back (the base) is always higher than momentum delivered to the frontal direction, as some is always lost to the side. So the device should move towards the direction the base is facing.
I will now wait patiently for someone to explain what I missed, of which I am quite sure there is something, because otherwise it wouldn't be me saying this.
obviously does not violate the law of conservation of momentum either (or it would not work, see a)
That's not what "law" means in the context of science. We probably should never use that word in that context at all, but hey, "3D TV", "AI"... not much hope for rigorous speech, I'm afraid.
I don't think e-ink will supplant paper books entirely; there are whole classes of books that it doesn't really work for. Things that need maps suck on an ebook reader (historical, fantasy); manuals are much better on paper;
I think this is simply because e-book formats are immature. There's no technical reason an e-book / reader combo couldn't present you with fabulous, full color maps and illustrations, plus links to more, etc. It's just that the current formats are crippled, and also, that some conversions from print to e are done, really, really poorly. B&W readers could do very nice, multiple mode conversions to B&W. High resolution of on-off displays allows for dithering tech that is really quite formidable. This is an area I am very familiar with.
So when I open a book and the images will not scale, don't re-flow with the text, and lack detail -- I don't blame e-books as a "thing." I blame the nascent-ness, if you will, of the tech. I fully expect it to improve. It already has to some extent, and we're only a few years in.
Like anything new and really different, there is always resistance, and progress; resistance will always lose in the face of superior tech, and that's definitely something we can apply to e-books. Far, far superior in concept. Flawed only in execution. But the latter can change, will change, and in fact, is already changing.
Sixty-five percent of adults in the United States said they had read a printed book in the past year, the same percentage that said so in 2012.
"A book in the past year"? And this measures "enthusiasm" for books of any kind?
Hilarious.
People who buy a book a year are not those who drive the market for books. Period.
Furthermore, I've read (reluctantly) printed books in the past year, the main reason for which is because there was no electronic version of that particular volume.
These people are counting teeth to see how many toes there are.
If you mean the constitutional republic, you're well behind the curve. Long dead. Arguable that it was stillborn.
However, if you mean the nation, then, no. The oligarchy is running just fine. And your implication that it is in place to benefit the people in general, and that defines its life or death is adorable, truly.
A computer with a full-bore group of legacy-to-modern interfaces. Video, VGA, displayport, Serial, ethernet, parallel, firewire, USB of every flavor, 8" and 5" floppy controller and bays, stiffies, all sizes of hard drive bays, various card slot types, and so on. Something I could plug damn near anything into and pull up legacy data, operate legacy devices, etc.
Not going to get it, of course -- it'd be expensive, and the market would be minimal... but that's what I'd like to have.
LInux will probably run on it eventually if not immediately, at which point, you can install the open source Mycroft system and skip the whole corporate privacy vacuum. Of course, that won't help with governmental privacy issues, but it's probably the best you can do if you want Echo-style interaction.
Until someone manages to do non-cloud speech recognition, anyway. That's the holy grail for this tech as far as the ability to control information distribution goes. Nothing worthy out there yet, though. Tough problem.
While there may be no mass escaping from this device, it absolutely is consuming energy. Where does that go?
In most of the mundane pursuits we understand, it goes to producing heat. In physics, one fairly valid viewpoint is that heat is motion, in that a "hotter" result has more motion activity going on at the particle level.
One of the reasons that perpetual motion is impossible is that within a closed system, we can't make anything 100% efficient. Typically the lost percentage wanders off in some fairly easily identifiable thermal guise.
The first thing to keep in mind is that not all energy expended does useful work.
But that's not really the problem here. the problem is that motion in space, as we understand it, depends entirely on imparting momentum to something. The only way we have practically been able to do that is to send stuff out one end of a spacecraft, which causes, due to the equal and opposite rule of newtonian physics, the spacecraft to go in the opposite direction.
But it's not really about "where does the energy go." This thing is being sold as "doesn't send stuff out one end of spacecraft" and "imparts momentum." The physics folks are looking at that claim very dubiously, because so far, there's no generally accepted science that could account for such a thing.
If it turns out to be a real effect (and I'm not saying it will), then we're going to have some new science to learn.
...science fiction I read when I was young... violates laws of physics big-time.
Then you were reading (very likely mislabeled) fantasy. The whole point of science fiction is to embed a story within the context of plausible science. Nothing wrong with fantasy, but it isn't, and never has been, science fiction.
Between the "speculative fiction" rendering down of that specific distinction, and the marketing-driven labeling of fantasy as science fiction, and the tendency of bookstores for decades to lump fantasy and science fiction together, your experience is the rule, rather than the exception.
But there's still science fiction being written. The trick is finding it.
Slashdot Mirror
No. It's not rare. It's not inconsequential, either.
In this context, SCOTUS has, over and over, gone directly against the constitution. Almost the entire bill of rights has been violated by congress and the courts (amendment three remains unsullied as far as I know); the outright inversion of the commerce clause is right there for anyone to see; blatantly ex post facto laws (both state and federal) have arisen and been confirmed; and in the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), they arrogated article five powers to themselves not authorized by article three, which is the cause of the problem at the SCOTUS level. Congress has a similar, though related, problem. Both are violating their oaths any time this sort of thing is made law, or rubber stamped by SCOTUS in any sense one might imagine they can do so, including the pretense they maintain that they actually have such authority legitimately.
There are now many thousands of laws in abject violation, all of which have enjoyed SCOTUS's blessing. Many more exist which have yet to be tested at that level, but precedent tells us what is most likely to happen.
When the constitution says "shall make no law", that's the end of it. No law is not "some law" or "lots of law."
When the constitution says "shall not infringe", that's the end of it. "Shall not" is not "shall."
When the constitution says "interstate commerce", that's the end of it. "Interstate" is not "intrastate."
When the constitution says "no ex post facto law", that's the end of it. Among other things, it quite specifically means that punishment cannot be increased retroactively after sentencing. Yet there are many laws that do so, some of which have that coveted SCOTUS rubber stamp, and in that condition, encourage legislators to keep doing that very thing.
And so on. For quite some length.
Yes, the system works the way they want it to work, and that's what lawyers are taught to deal with from day one. Lawyers saying things are working properly is nothing less than a form of Stockholm syndrome with the added benefit of self-enrichment in almost every instance.
No, it's not working as designed, intended, and constitutionally authorized. It is fundamentally corrupt. Unfortunately, that puts every member of the legal system in the position of also being fundamentally corrupt -- no matter what their intent is -- unless they stand against these types of exercises of government.
No. Article three does not provide article five powers in any sense. Period. SCOTUS arrogated that power to themselves in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
Article three specifies the cases in which SCOTUS has the judicial authority, which is: guilty, not guilty under the law, etc. Not "never mind this law, ignore congress." It specifies some specific areas where SCOTUS is to exercise this authority as a final matter: treaties, constitutional cases. So, for instance, when a constitutional case comes up, the question is, was the constitution violated. If so, the violator is guilty and can be punished. If a treaty is made and broken, same thing. They don't get to rewrite the law, or the treaty.
The "authority" they claim to have is the same authority you would have if you suddenly decided you could declare a law unconstitutional on your own. There is no constitutional authority for you, or for them, to do this.
The way it was intended to work was congress would obey their oaths, and no unconstitutional law would issue. That was obviously optimistic (to say the least), but still, that was clearly the intent.
If any judge (at any level, top or otherwise) could override any law, then of what possible use is the constitution as "the highest law in the land"? What need to amend, if a judge can just decide whatever way they want?
The power to amend was not given as "the judicial power." It was taken. And it has been used repeatedly to allow gross constitutional violation (interestingly, the nature of the problem is the same as the one congress indulges in: abject violation of their oaths of office.) Of course, congress hasn't seen fit to legislate a penalty for such things. Punish them? Oh my, no.
I have a few libertarian bones in my body, and my view on a win here for transparency is that it brings the government back a bit towards being compliant with the constitution; as the constitution is the only thing that authorizes its existence, all in all, this is a good thing.
Who can take most advantage of this specific bit of transparency, should it actually come about, isn't my primary concern. Government compliance with the constitution is. If something in the constitution isn't working out, article five is right there so the country can change it in a constitutionally compliant fashion. Fiat law, which this is an example of, and which is also SOP for congress and the courts these days, is, as far as I'm concerned, illegal on first principles and should never have been squeezed out of the ass of congress.
In the oligarchy that runs the show today, the constitution is a mostly ignored footnote. I don't see any real serious fixes coming; but any step in the right direction is still welcome in my book.
From TFS:
Yes, these people are really late to the party. But at least they (finally) showed up.
The problem we have is that the congress, which takes an oath WRT making constitutionally compliant law, consistently ignores that oath. This is compounded by the fact that the courts, which are charged (by themselves, but that's a different problem of very long standing) with making sure that laws that are not compliant with the constitution are struck down, consistently do not do so.
It remains to be seen if this will be yet another instance of congress and the courts working together to do what they want, rather than what they are actually authorized to do. But I wouldn't get my hopes up.
You didn't address my idea, though. There's only one ball in it. By accelerating it into the triangle (using magnetism, whatever, but the force is exerted on the structure no matter what it is) the ball goes into the triangle, and the triangle moves away from the ball, both with equal momentum. The ball then imparts momentum to the surfaces it hits; but they are at an angle, so that momentum is not on the same axis as the original impetus. Some of that energy is spent at an angle not equal to the original. Therefore, it seems to me, there is a difference in the momentum exerted upon the triangle.
If that's not so (and it probably isn't), I would like to know why.
I had this (probably completely wrongheaded) thought:
In 2d, imagine a triangle. Shoot momentum-having things out of base with impulse T at a perfect perpendicular (for purpose of thought experiment), so base is pushed away from direction of shot with impulse -T. Say one hits mid-left-edge. Imparts some of its momentum, T, to the left/forward as U/V. then, because pool table, bounces to right edge in straight line. Hits, imparts some of its remaining momentum (T-(U+V), as W/X, to the right/forward. Then, again because of pool table, bounces back towards base, imparting some of its remaining momentum, now reversed, -(T - (U+W)), which we'll call Y. V and X cancel out because they are in the T direction. Total base momentum for this pass of momentum-having thing is then -T + -Y. The new bounce is the new T, and the cycle repeats. This can continue (in a vacuum) for as long as thing has momentum left to deliver and can follow these, or similar, paths.
A cone is just a 3D triangle in this model. More area, same concept.
Bottom line is that equal amounts of momentum against the sides (because of shots from everywhere on base, should average out) are lost, so momentum delivered to the back (the base) is always higher than momentum delivered to the frontal direction, as some is always lost to the side. So the device should move towards the direction the base is facing.
I will now wait patiently for someone to explain what I missed, of which I am quite sure there is something, because otherwise it wouldn't be me saying this.
In regards to b:
That's not what "law" means in the context of science. We probably should never use that word in that context at all, but hey, "3D TV", "AI"... not much hope for rigorous speech, I'm afraid.
An ion! AN ION! AN ION!
...nope, doesn't work.
...and:
3) The period goes inside the closing parenthesis.
Because pedantry can be stacked like Jenga blocks. :)
I think this is simply because e-book formats are immature. There's no technical reason an e-book / reader combo couldn't present you with fabulous, full color maps and illustrations, plus links to more, etc. It's just that the current formats are crippled, and also, that some conversions from print to e are done, really, really poorly. B&W readers could do very nice, multiple mode conversions to B&W. High resolution of on-off displays allows for dithering tech that is really quite formidable. This is an area I am very familiar with.
So when I open a book and the images will not scale, don't re-flow with the text, and lack detail -- I don't blame e-books as a "thing." I blame the nascent-ness, if you will, of the tech. I fully expect it to improve. It already has to some extent, and we're only a few years in.
Like anything new and really different, there is always resistance, and progress; resistance will always lose in the face of superior tech, and that's definitely something we can apply to e-books. Far, far superior in concept. Flawed only in execution. But the latter can change, will change, and in fact, is already changing.
"A book in the past year"? And this measures "enthusiasm" for books of any kind?
Hilarious.
People who buy a book a year are not those who drive the market for books. Period.
Furthermore, I've read (reluctantly) printed books in the past year, the main reason for which is because there was no electronic version of that particular volume.
These people are counting teeth to see how many toes there are.
Hey! Leave him alone. He's spacesick!
My experience with USB has been almost uniformly poor.
Maybe it's just OS X.
If you mean the constitutional republic, you're well behind the curve. Long dead. Arguable that it was stillborn.
However, if you mean the nation, then, no. The oligarchy is running just fine. And your implication that it is in place to benefit the people in general, and that defines its life or death is adorable, truly.
If a man with five dollars gives a dollar to a starving man, he's being generous.
If a man with a billion dollars gives a dollar to a starving man, he's being a dick.
Point being, Apple's taxes should be proportional to what they make, rather than measured in "more than your company made" dollars.
Know what I'd like to have?
A computer with a full-bore group of legacy-to-modern interfaces. Video, VGA, displayport, Serial, ethernet, parallel, firewire, USB of every flavor, 8" and 5" floppy controller and bays, stiffies, all sizes of hard drive bays, various card slot types, and so on. Something I could plug damn near anything into and pull up legacy data, operate legacy devices, etc.
Not going to get it, of course -- it'd be expensive, and the market would be minimal... but that's what I'd like to have.
LInux will probably run on it eventually if not immediately, at which point, you can install the open source Mycroft system and skip the whole corporate privacy vacuum. Of course, that won't help with governmental privacy issues, but it's probably the best you can do if you want Echo-style interaction.
Until someone manages to do non-cloud speech recognition, anyway. That's the holy grail for this tech as far as the ability to control information distribution goes. Nothing worthy out there yet, though. Tough problem.
Go ahead, amp it, up, fella. And I have no reluctance in saying that, either. So don't feel impeded. Go right ahead, hell bent for electron.
How about: live by the cloud, die by the cloud. Or, trust someone else with your data, and just consider it pre-shared.
Wait, the VICTIMS lost money? Because the BANK'S security was compromised???
WTF do you keep your money in a bank for if they're not making certain it's safe???
JFC, time to go back to buried coffee cans. It's not like you can earn interest worth a shit anymore in a bank account anyway.
In most of the mundane pursuits we understand, it goes to producing heat. In physics, one fairly valid viewpoint is that heat is motion, in that a "hotter" result has more motion activity going on at the particle level.
One of the reasons that perpetual motion is impossible is that within a closed system, we can't make anything 100% efficient. Typically the lost percentage wanders off in some fairly easily identifiable thermal guise.
The first thing to keep in mind is that not all energy expended does useful work.
But that's not really the problem here. the problem is that motion in space, as we understand it, depends entirely on imparting momentum to something. The only way we have practically been able to do that is to send stuff out one end of a spacecraft, which causes, due to the equal and opposite rule of newtonian physics, the spacecraft to go in the opposite direction.
But it's not really about "where does the energy go." This thing is being sold as "doesn't send stuff out one end of spacecraft" and "imparts momentum." The physics folks are looking at that claim very dubiously, because so far, there's no generally accepted science that could account for such a thing.
If it turns out to be a real effect (and I'm not saying it will), then we're going to have some new science to learn.
Then you were reading (very likely mislabeled) fantasy. The whole point of science fiction is to embed a story within the context of plausible science. Nothing wrong with fantasy, but it isn't, and never has been, science fiction.
Between the "speculative fiction" rendering down of that specific distinction, and the marketing-driven labeling of fantasy as science fiction, and the tendency of bookstores for decades to lump fantasy and science fiction together, your experience is the rule, rather than the exception.
But there's still science fiction being written. The trick is finding it.
...but the lenses, man, the lenses... once you have a collection of lenses, they've got ya. And I do have such a collection.
So have a heart. :)
They have laws against estigation, in or out. Watch yourself, primitive bag-of-mostly-water.
What? No flies? You would take their only form of nutrition from them?
IT'S WAR