well, your phone being bulletproof could be useful. most people keep them in their pockets. which are typically right over top of a major artery. we've already got bullet-stopping laptops.
After the damage has been done, sure. It is too bad that people are proposing legislation to 'fix' something that, as far as I'm concerned, isn't even a problem.
it isn't a problem yet because we still have network neutrality. ISPs (DSL specifically) have previously been classified as a" telecommunications service". since the courts have ruled they are classified as an "information service", subject to fewer restrictions (such as local loop unbunbling, which is a Good Thing for competition, which is necessary for your free market to work), net neutrality wants to reapply the old rules across the board to all internet services.
If your network provider is giving you crappy service to the sites you care about, then find a new provider or pay for better access. What ever happened to capitalism in America? This whole 'Net Neutrality' stinks of over-regulation. Giving it a friendly name doesn't make it a good idea.
without the local-loop-unbundling requirement, there won't be another provider to switch to (as they could hold a monopoly on their lines and not allow competition), leaving you with the 2nd option, which is paying them more money, thus allowing them to gouge with impunity, which would be a likely reason why ISPs are jumping all over this.
capitalism cannot work without competition, which is basically what net neutrality provides for. most services need to be regulated in some manner or another in order for capitalism to work. they are not mutually exclusive concepts.
1. not per se. both compete as office suites, but they're in differant classes of office suites.
2. access an office apps on any computer with a net connection, anywhere, no need to have the applications installed on the computer itself. handy if you don't carry a laptop and you need to work on something somwhere other than work/home, like at a public library or something. just pull up one of these online office suites, have your file (thumbdrive, online storage, etc.) and whomp away at it.
ok, i must've missed it when they made online gambling illegal in austrailia, but the whole concept still seems ridiculus to me.
but even assuming the law is applicable, they never could have broken it, as they had resigned from the company before that law even came into effect. the only relationship with the company since them is that they are shareholders, each holding about a 5% stake in the company.
if you think an identity theft victum doesn't lose anything, you evidently don't know one.
-loss of money (temporarily til you get things fixed) -loss of credit rating (significantly dificult to fix, or it was at the time) -loss of time (used to try to fix the previous 2 things)
Suppose you sat north of the US Canadian border and started launching RPGs into the US? Don't you think that it would pretty reasonable for the US to figure that you have violated US laws by that action even though you have not entered the US?
the RPG firing would be illegal in Canada too. I'm pretty sure online gambling is only illegal in the US so far.
Or suppose I shipped food into Canada labelled as baby formula when it contained Botulitis toxin? Wouldn't you think that Canada would figure that I had violated Canadian law?
you'd be violating US law too i believe, so again, irrelevant to this case.
Why we're so upset about the bird flu and what makes it special, I don't know,
because something very similar happened back in 1918. the "spanish flu" epidemic was actually an avian flu that came from china which mutated into a human-to-human transmissable form.
combine a similarly deadly virus with modern transportation and our higher population density, and we would have one hell of a mess on our hands.
it has happened before, so it is completely probable that it can happen again.
while i do think the tamiflu thing is a possible conflict-of-interest situation in the government, i also think that we shouldn't just stick our heads in the sand and ignore the danger, and that the money spent on tamiflu should have been put into research.
yes, but those are supposed to make a mess out of where they're landing, so that won't particularly work unless we want hundred ton slugs of titanium to be the next-gen strategic weapon.
in regards to the other guy who replied, a nuclear reactor would be fine
final gun is planned as 64-megajoules. i'm gonna assume this is the kinetic energy of the projectile and that the input energy is about 10x larger, so 640 megajoules of energy needed to shoot the thing.
shaft power output of a A4W reactor (used in Nimitz-class carriers): 104 megawatts for each of the two reactors. a watt is 1 joule per second, so 208 megajoules per second. enough power generated in about 3 seconds. even if you figure that only one reactor is running, the reactor is running at half-power, and half of that goes to normal stuff (lights, etc.), that's still only 24 seconds to charge.
hmm. good question. hitting the ground with it would make craters and atmospheric dust, dropping it in the ocean would make tidal waves.
about the only ideas i can think of are decelerate it somehow before impact (big ass expendable rocket or something), send it in smaller chunks, or if you're really careful with your numbers, shoot it from railgun to railgun, using one of them as an brake (dunno if this is possible).
Also, most things you want to put into orbit (satellites or meatbags) require gradual accelleration because they cannot tolerate sudden high G-forces associated with most railguns. Going from 0 to 3000 feet/sec in 1 second is really hard on your internal organs. May as well get hit by a car.
the obvious solution to that being spread out the acceleration more (more distance, long time), like with that ring railgun that came up here awhile ago.
as for the wear issue, i have no idea aside from putting people to work on highly wear-resistant materials and frequent maintainance until a major breakthrough in said work.
it's not the speed or the distance, but the acceleration that breaks stuff. if i'm thinking right, the advantage of the railgun would be that you could spread the acceleration over a longer distance (like that ring railgun idea that came up here awhile ago) rather than the large BANG from a conventional gun.
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well, your phone being bulletproof could be useful. most people keep them in their pockets. which are typically right over top of a major artery. we've already got bullet-stopping laptops.
Why not just make it available to any company that wants to see it?
stop tryin' to use that logic stuff here, boy. we don't work that way 'round here.
it isn't a problem yet because we still have network neutrality. ISPs (DSL specifically) have previously been classified as a" telecommunications service". since the courts have ruled they are classified as an "information service", subject to fewer restrictions (such as local loop unbunbling, which is a Good Thing for competition, which is necessary for your free market to work), net neutrality wants to reapply the old rules across the board to all internet services.
without the local-loop-unbundling requirement, there won't be another provider to switch to (as they could hold a monopoly on their lines and not allow competition), leaving you with the 2nd option, which is paying them more money, thus allowing them to gouge with impunity, which would be a likely reason why ISPs are jumping all over this.
capitalism cannot work without competition, which is basically what net neutrality provides for. most services need to be regulated in some manner or another in order for capitalism to work. they are not mutually exclusive concepts.
the obvious problem being is that most of the public access computers i've found have USB disabled, presumable for security or something.
1. not per se. both compete as office suites, but they're in differant classes of office suites.
2. access an office apps on any computer with a net connection, anywhere, no need to have the applications installed on the computer itself. handy if you don't carry a laptop and you need to work on something somwhere other than work/home, like at a public library or something. just pull up one of these online office suites, have your file (thumbdrive, online storage, etc.) and whomp away at it.
3. maybe.
4. depends on what you would use each for.
ok, i must've missed it when they made online gambling illegal in austrailia, but the whole concept still seems ridiculus to me.
but even assuming the law is applicable, they never could have broken it, as they had resigned from the company before that law even came into effect. the only relationship with the company since them is that they are shareholders, each holding about a 5% stake in the company.
Theft implies that the victim lost something
if you think an identity theft victum doesn't lose anything, you evidently don't know one.
-loss of money (temporarily til you get things fixed)
-loss of credit rating (significantly dificult to fix, or it was at the time)
-loss of time (used to try to fix the previous 2 things)
Suppose you sat north of the US Canadian border and started launching RPGs into the US? Don't you think that it would pretty reasonable for the US to figure that you have violated US laws by that action even though you have not entered the US?
the RPG firing would be illegal in Canada too. I'm pretty sure online gambling is only illegal in the US so far.
Or suppose I shipped food into Canada labelled as baby formula when it contained Botulitis toxin? Wouldn't you think that Canada would figure that I had violated Canadian law?
you'd be violating US law too i believe, so again, irrelevant to this case.
Why we're so upset about the bird flu and what makes it special, I don't know,
because something very similar happened back in 1918. the "spanish flu" epidemic was actually an avian flu that came from china which mutated into a human-to-human transmissable form.
combine a similarly deadly virus with modern transportation and our higher population density, and we would have one hell of a mess on our hands.
it has happened before, so it is completely probable that it can happen again.
while i do think the tamiflu thing is a possible conflict-of-interest situation in the government, i also think that we shouldn't just stick our heads in the sand and ignore the danger, and that the money spent on tamiflu should have been put into research.
rattlesnake venom appearently doesn't hurt the rattlesnakes any either.
who the hell modded this troll? it's fact, though that "window's users" part wasn't really nessesary.
yes, but those are supposed to make a mess out of where they're landing, so that won't particularly work unless we want hundred ton slugs of titanium to be the next-gen strategic weapon.
oh yes. pressure from the expanding gasses.
Dammit Jim, I'm a technologist, not a gunsmith!
you might wanna cut that by a factor of 1000. the calories listed on the lable are kilocalories, so you need about a gallon and a half.
in regards to the other guy who replied, a nuclear reactor would be fine
final gun is planned as 64-megajoules. i'm gonna assume this is the kinetic energy of the projectile and that the input energy is about 10x larger, so 640 megajoules of energy needed to shoot the thing.
shaft power output of a A4W reactor (used in Nimitz-class carriers): 104 megawatts for each of the two reactors. a watt is 1 joule per second, so 208 megajoules per second. enough power generated in about 3 seconds. even if you figure that only one reactor is running, the reactor is running at half-power, and half of that goes to normal stuff (lights, etc.), that's still only 24 seconds to charge.
you're gonna have to be real careful with your numbers if you want to hit something a few hundred miles away with a lump of metal.
hmm. good question. hitting the ground with it would make craters and atmospheric dust, dropping it in the ocean would make tidal waves.
about the only ideas i can think of are decelerate it somehow before impact (big ass expendable rocket or something), send it in smaller chunks, or if you're really careful with your numbers, shoot it from railgun to railgun, using one of them as an brake (dunno if this is possible).
the obvious solution to that being spread out the acceleration more (more distance, long time), like with that ring railgun that came up here awhile ago.
as for the wear issue, i have no idea aside from putting people to work on highly wear-resistant materials and frequent maintainance until a major breakthrough in said work.
it's not the speed or the distance, but the acceleration that breaks stuff. if i'm thinking right, the advantage of the railgun would be that you could spread the acceleration over a longer distance (like that ring railgun idea that came up here awhile ago) rather than the large BANG from a conventional gun.
The treaty should be changed if it hampers the progress of our species.
substantially altering something is significantly more difficult/time-consuming than it was to make the thing in the first place.
how many years of talking and head-bashing do you think it took to make said treaties? it will take a lot more to change them.
I'm not saying that the treaties shouldn't be changed, but it will take time.
it all depends on who he's selling it to.
firefox 1.5.0.x doesn't force an upgrade to 2.0, which would be comparable to going from IE6 to IE7.
firefox does push point updates though, as does IE.
And your "clients" are pretty stupid. As in dumb, unintelligent, etc, if they "couldn't get their heads around the layout".
well, the new IE7 interface is pretty differant from IE6/firefox/most other browsers. some people (me included) do not like it.
and nowdays every site out there works on almost every browser.
you're kidding, right? why do you think so many firefox users need to use IEtab?
or there are more than a few malicious assholes who test in firefox to make sure that it doesn't work.