Most of the radioactive waste is actually not waste and can be reused, and sequestering waste in old salt mines is really safe. Kind of a SciFi alternative would be to launch it into the sun, but I don't know if that is possible.
Possible, yes. Economical, no (at this point in time).
The US unemployment rate is based on the percentage of the work-eligible population that is receiving unemployment benefits. There are plenty of unemployed Americans who are not receiving such benefits and as such are not counted as being unemployed.
I don't know how the German government defines its unemployment rate, but, unless it does it in the the same way as the US, it is pointless to draw conclusions from a simple comparison of the two figures by themselves.
I have heard that in WWII the Allies had chemical weapons ready to deploy to the European front in case the Germans used chemical weapons. I am not aware of any instance where these weapons were used on the battlefield in WWII by either side.
Note: Unfortunately, I have not found a reference to support this statement, so if someone has a source which confirms or refutes this statement, I'm all ears.
Rather than altering the original series, I think a better move would be to start a new Star Trek from ground zero, with nothing retained from any previous series (it could start with Kirk's arrival on the Enterprise as its new captain).
Rather than altering the original series, I think a better move would be to start a new science fiction series from ground zero, with nothing retained from any previous series, and call it something other than Star Trek.
Why is BCC so bad? Because someone else makes a unilateral decision to make you a *secret* recipient of an email. I never know if it's ok to acknowledge that I got to email or do I have to play dumb if one of the *real* recipients talks to me about it.
My rule about acknowledging being a recipient via BCC: I am under no obligation to play dumb if I was simply BCC'ed, and it is my right to use my judgement when to divulge that fact that I was BCC'ed. There may be reasons to keep my mouth shut about such emails altogether, but that's something that should be requested explicitly of me.
Note that I am assuming trade secrets and national security secrets are not at stake.
I think the point the parent to your comment was trying to get at was that you need to use each number from 1 to 8 at least once. Putting the same number in each cell would violate that rule.
Skiing along like that might allow them to expend less battery power on locomotion, and move from place to place much faster.
That might be true as long as you only need to go downhill. Of course, unless someone puts a ski lift at the bottom of every crater, you might have a reasonably exhausting walk upslope.
this whole 100 dollar laptop thing is kind of like "let them have cake."
Maybe, maybe not. Schools in developing countries may not have libraries or access to teaching materials, and a set of classroom computers with an internet connection could be of benefit to students.
Of course, the usefulness of such computers depends on the availability of low-bandwidth web resources provided in local languages. An English-only online textbook which requires a broadband connection isn't going to be useful to a Swahilli-speaking school connected via modems.
Consider this: according to my calculations, there would need to be at LEAST a few million terawatts of power hitting the Earth's surface, averaged over a year, for any of what we see now to have happened.
Would you care to show your calculations? Please define your variables and state your assumptions in such a way as to allow review of your work by others.
Every journey begins with a first step. A resource like this could be useful to help guide newbies in their initial encounters with *NIX and provide a basis from which they can later expand their knowledge.
So the next question is, is taking up some small amount of your time really theft of property or trespassing? There are already laws on the books that say that you can't market using media where the very act of sending that advertisement forces the receiver to pay - cell phone calls, text messages, fax, etc.
My time has value to me. My privacy has value to me. I expect privacy when I'm inside my home. Except in extreme cases, no one has the right to to take *any* of my time when I am in a private setting without my consent. I don't care if it's 10 seconds or 10 hours.
A do not call list is a different beast, because it applies to land lines where you do't have to pay for incoming calls. So really all you can claim is that they took some of your time, and maybe annoyed you a bit.
That argument is immaterial. When I had a landline, I paid for the phone and the service. The phone was in a private apartment that I rented. As long as the telemarketer was on the line, I was deprived of the ability to use the phone and the service I paid for. Sometimes, I'd hang up, immediately try to call someone, and find that the telemarketer was *still* on the line. No one should expect to have right to use my property without my consent except under extreme circumstances. Period.
You are at liberty to hang up, so you can't hold any time past what it took to find out that this is a telemarketer call against them.
True, and when I received these calls I always did so... usually after saying "I'm not interested. Take this number off your list." And I would do it with the next telemarketer... and the next... and the next... ad nauseum.
Imagine someone dealing with a never ending stream of door-to-door salespeople knocking at his/her door. The resident can tell each salesperson to go away, but another one could simply knock on the door a few minutes later. At least with door-to-door salespeople, one can post "No solicitation" and "No trespassing" signs. Unfortunately, I simply was unable to post a "No solicitors" notice that telemarketers could be aware of without calling me first until the Do-Not-Call list came into being.
Like the Libertarian said, "Your rights stop at my nose."
But if calling your house is 'invading your property,' and I don't have the right to do so, aren't you implying that nobody has the right to telephone you without your express permission?
I'm not the parent commenter, and I'm not a Libertarian, but I would say the answer to that question is "yes." No one has the right to call me without my permission. If I give my phone number to someone else, that may be reasonably construed as my granting permission for that individual to call me. If someone gets my number by looking it up in a book, they have no right to call me as I never granted permission. If a person calls me on the phone that I bought and my answering the phone results in airtime charges, I feel I'm within my rights to demand that the person pay me for the use of my property, airtime and personal time to talk to me (although I've never actually done that... but that's because I rarely answer calls which originate at a number I don't recognize).
Again, speaking as a non-libertarian, my understanding of libertarianism is that laws should be passed to protect people's personal and property rights as well as privacy. This means that libertarians can support laws which make theft and burglary illegal. I think a law that creates a do-not-call list which makes it illegal for people to use my property without my permission is completely consistent with that view.
they wouldn't have the knowledge and resources to perpetrate the scams (e.g. speaking English and having enough money for Internet access)
Considering that English is Nigeria's official language, I don't think English speaking skills is necessarily a good metric with which to judge the education of Nigerians.
You may have a valid point about Internet access, though.
Several people have mentioned the effects of slamming an impactor with a lot of kinetic energy inot a target, so I won't comment further on that issue.
However, I do have issues with the phrase "city-sized crater" as used in the article. The comet has dimensions of only 5 km by 7 km (as seen from the point of view of the impactor), so the crater can't be any bigger than that. The actual crater is probably much smaller. For example, this image shows that the impact, while spectacular, hadn't disrupted the entire comet. Given those measurements, "city-sized" seems to be a bit of an exageration to me.
Some people used to think that making ICBM's reflective, or twirl in flight, would solve things...but it's kind of like pirouetting in front of a 50 caliber rifle.
Did you lift that analogy from Tom Clancy's book Cardinal of the Kremlin? Or did he lift it from the same source you did?
Getting people to Mars would solve the population problem for at least the next eon.
And how will sending people to Mars solve Earth's population problem?
There are more than 6.4 billion people in the world today. This year, the world population is expected to increase by roughly 75 million people. Granted, by 2050 the annual population growth rate is expected to drop to roughly 40 million people per year, but that's still alot.
That means that in 2050, if the assumptions behind the estimates above hold up, we would need to send 40 million people per year to Mars in order to keep zero-population growth on Earth. That's alot of people to be sending to a planet that currently cannot support human life. More to the point, even if we were to build spacecraft that could hold ~1000 (more people than are held by any passenger plane today), we'd need to build 40000 such craft to carry 40 million people. Unless there are major advances in propulsion technology, mower energy launch windows to Mars only occur once every 2 years, so you'd need to send 80 million people (or 80000 ships at 1000 person capacity) during that launch window.
I want to see humans settling Mars. However, the argument that martian settlement will solve population problems on Earth is fallacious.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine said it best when he said his biggest problem with Ep I was the "Trek-ification of the Force."
Why was the previous comment modded as a troll? I don't entirely agree with it, but it is an expression of a defendible viewpoint.
Apparently, wikipedia doesn't like trailing slashes at the end of URLs. Try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky.
Most of the radioactive waste is actually not waste and can be reused, and sequestering waste in old salt mines is really safe. Kind of a SciFi alternative would be to launch it into the sun, but I don't know if that is possible.
Possible, yes. Economical, no (at this point in time).
The US unemployment rate is based on the percentage of the work-eligible population that is receiving unemployment benefits. There are plenty of unemployed Americans who are not receiving such benefits and as such are not counted as being unemployed. I don't know how the German government defines its unemployment rate, but, unless it does it in the the same way as the US, it is pointless to draw conclusions from a simple comparison of the two figures by themselves.
I have heard that in WWII the Allies had chemical weapons ready to deploy to the European front in case the Germans used chemical weapons. I am not aware of any instance where these weapons were used on the battlefield in WWII by either side. Note: Unfortunately, I have not found a reference to support this statement, so if someone has a source which confirms or refutes this statement, I'm all ears.
I don't follow that logic. Wouldn't a saboteur simply set up a televsion or radio and watch/listen to a station to determine if it goes off the air?
Rather than altering the original series, I think a better move would be to start a new science fiction series from ground zero, with nothing retained from any previous series, and call it something other than Star Trek.
Kilograms are units of mass, not force. Newton is the SI unit of force. (1 N = force required to accelerate a 1 kg mass at 1 m/s^2)
Why is BCC so bad? Because someone else makes a unilateral decision to make you a *secret* recipient of an email. I never know if it's ok to acknowledge that I got to email or do I have to play dumb if one of the *real* recipients talks to me about it.
My rule about acknowledging being a recipient via BCC: I am under no obligation to play dumb if I was simply BCC'ed, and it is my right to use my judgement when to divulge that fact that I was BCC'ed. There may be reasons to keep my mouth shut about such emails altogether, but that's something that should be requested explicitly of me.
Note that I am assuming trade secrets and national security secrets are not at stake.
I think the point the parent to your comment was trying to get at was that you need to use each number from 1 to 8 at least once. Putting the same number in each cell would violate that rule.
Skiing along like that might allow them to expend less battery power on locomotion, and move from place to place much faster.
That might be true as long as you only need to go downhill. Of course, unless someone puts a ski lift at the bottom of every crater, you might have a reasonably exhausting walk upslope.
Articles about the UK are always introduced with adjectives: "The Prime Minister of the UK".
The only word in that sentence I see being used as an adjective is "Prime."
Has anyone heard or read of any new technologies to replace the current foam application completely?
Yes. The form application process will be made moot by replacing the shuttle with the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
this whole 100 dollar laptop thing is kind of like "let them have cake."
Maybe, maybe not. Schools in developing countries may not have libraries or access to teaching materials, and a set of classroom computers with an internet connection could be of benefit to students.
Of course, the usefulness of such computers depends on the availability of low-bandwidth web resources provided in local languages. An English-only online textbook which requires a broadband connection isn't going to be useful to a Swahilli-speaking school connected via modems.
Consider this: according to my calculations, there would need to be at LEAST a few million terawatts of power hitting the Earth's surface, averaged over a year, for any of what we see now to have happened.
Would you care to show your calculations? Please define your variables and state your assumptions in such a way as to allow review of your work by others.
Every journey begins with a first step. A resource like this could be useful to help guide newbies in their initial encounters with *NIX and provide a basis from which they can later expand their knowledge.
That flag must be brought from sea level on Earth to the moon entirely intact
Way to discriminate against the Nepalese!
I think he either flipped the numerator and denominator or he misplaced a decimal point.
Not counting the movies:
703 episodes / $2500 = 0.28 episodes per dollar
$2500 / 703 episodes = $3.56 per episode
So the next question is, is taking up some small amount of your time really theft of property or trespassing? There are already laws on the books that say that you can't market using media where the very act of sending that advertisement forces the receiver to pay - cell phone calls, text messages, fax, etc.
My time has value to me. My privacy has value to me. I expect privacy when I'm inside my home. Except in extreme cases, no one has the right to to take *any* of my time when I am in a private setting without my consent. I don't care if it's 10 seconds or 10 hours.
A do not call list is a different beast, because it applies to land lines where you do't have to pay for incoming calls. So really all you can claim is that they took some of your time, and maybe annoyed you a bit.
That argument is immaterial. When I had a landline, I paid for the phone and the service. The phone was in a private apartment that I rented. As long as the telemarketer was on the line, I was deprived of the ability to use the phone and the service I paid for. Sometimes, I'd hang up, immediately try to call someone, and find that the telemarketer was *still* on the line. No one should expect to have right to use my property without my consent except under extreme circumstances. Period.
You are at liberty to hang up, so you can't hold any time past what it took to find out that this is a telemarketer call against them.
True, and when I received these calls I always did so... usually after saying "I'm not interested. Take this number off your list." And I would do it with the next telemarketer... and the next... and the next... ad nauseum.
Imagine someone dealing with a never ending stream of door-to-door salespeople knocking at his/her door. The resident can tell each salesperson to go away, but another one could simply knock on the door a few minutes later. At least with door-to-door salespeople, one can post "No solicitation" and "No trespassing" signs. Unfortunately, I simply was unable to post a "No solicitors" notice that telemarketers could be aware of without calling me first until the Do-Not-Call list came into being.
Like the Libertarian said, "Your rights stop at my nose."
But if calling your house is 'invading your property,' and I don't have the right to do so, aren't you implying that nobody has the right to telephone you without your express permission?
I'm not the parent commenter, and I'm not a Libertarian, but I would say the answer to that question is "yes." No one has the right to call me without my permission. If I give my phone number to someone else, that may be reasonably construed as my granting permission for that individual to call me. If someone gets my number by looking it up in a book, they have no right to call me as I never granted permission. If a person calls me on the phone that I bought and my answering the phone results in airtime charges, I feel I'm within my rights to demand that the person pay me for the use of my property, airtime and personal time to talk to me (although I've never actually done that... but that's because I rarely answer calls which originate at a number I don't recognize).
Again, speaking as a non-libertarian, my understanding of libertarianism is that laws should be passed to protect people's personal and property rights as well as privacy. This means that libertarians can support laws which make theft and burglary illegal. I think a law that creates a do-not-call list which makes it illegal for people to use my property without my permission is completely consistent with that view.
they wouldn't have the knowledge and resources to perpetrate the scams (e.g. speaking English and having enough money for Internet access)
Considering that English is Nigeria's official language, I don't think English speaking skills is necessarily a good metric with which to judge the education of Nigerians.
You may have a valid point about Internet access, though.
Several people have mentioned the effects of slamming an impactor with a lot of kinetic energy inot a target, so I won't comment further on that issue.
However, I do have issues with the phrase "city-sized crater" as used in the article. The comet has dimensions of only 5 km by 7 km (as seen from the point of view of the impactor), so the crater can't be any bigger than that. The actual crater is probably much smaller. For example, this image shows that the impact, while spectacular, hadn't disrupted the entire comet. Given those measurements, "city-sized" seems to be a bit of an exageration to me.
Some people used to think that making ICBM's reflective, or twirl in flight, would solve things...but it's kind of like pirouetting in front of a 50 caliber rifle.
Did you lift that analogy from Tom Clancy's book Cardinal of the Kremlin? Or did he lift it from the same source you did?
Getting people to Mars would solve the population problem for at least the next eon.
And how will sending people to Mars solve Earth's population problem?
There are more than 6.4 billion people in the world today. This year, the world population is expected to increase by roughly 75 million people. Granted, by 2050 the annual population growth rate is expected to drop to roughly 40 million people per year, but that's still alot.
That means that in 2050, if the assumptions behind the estimates above hold up, we would need to send 40 million people per year to Mars in order to keep zero-population growth on Earth. That's alot of people to be sending to a planet that currently cannot support human life. More to the point, even if we were to build spacecraft that could hold ~1000 (more people than are held by any passenger plane today), we'd need to build 40000 such craft to carry 40 million people. Unless there are major advances in propulsion technology, mower energy launch windows to Mars only occur once every 2 years, so you'd need to send 80 million people (or 80000 ships at 1000 person capacity) during that launch window.
I want to see humans settling Mars. However, the argument that martian settlement will solve population problems on Earth is fallacious.