I don't see any reason why an automatic firearm wouldn't cycle just fine in a vacuum. The pressure of the gas in the action of a gas operated weapon is something like a thousand atmospheres, so the missing 1 atm shouldn't make a big difference. The rest of the action is powered by spring tension, which doesn't care if its in a vacuum or not. Also, dry lubricants like molybdenum disulfide could be used to prevent any loss (or freezing for that matter).
It's interesting to note that guns work fine underwater as well, although in that case they would not cycle correctly as the viscosity of the water prevents the parts of the action from moving at the right speed.
Well my comment was in response to the original quote: "One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented." I was saying that hunger back thousands of years ago was due to a lack of human development, while hunger today is due to malignant political forces that are essentially preventable, if we had the will to do so. I wasn't referring to times in between (e.g. pre-industrial and medieval times).
This is a horrible idea. The entire point of insurance is that everyone pays a more-or-less baseline amount and some people don't realize any of that value and some people realize more than they put in. Of course, now that Americans expect to realize 100% of any tax or insurance payments, and if even one penny goes to someone else, well, that's socialism! Insurance is inherently socialist. That's why it's called INSURANCE. If you're expected to pay an equal amount to what you receive, you don't really have insurance, you're paying as you go.
That is an interesting take. If you logically extrapolate charging high-risk people more for insurance, you could come to the end result of charging zero for people that will never claim any benefits and charging the actual amount you would pay anyway for those that do claim benefits, effectively negating the purpose of insurance in the first place.
I believe a situation like this already exists in New Jersey, which has a law that states no one can be denied insurance even if they have pre-existing conditions. Natually, a large number of people simply do not buy insurance until they are sick!
Encouraging Americans to be healthy is great. I don't really have a problem with charging those who smoke more, for instance. But high blood pressure? Come on, that's hereditary. Once you start discriminating against people for their genetic makeup, you're on a slope that is not just slippery, but frictionless.
I do have a problem with insurance companies charging more for smokers. Smokers already pay a 100-200% tax on cigarettes. Further more, state governments have billions of dollars of income from big tobacco lawsuit settlements, which was supposed to be used to supplement health care costs (but was squandered on pork).
In the stone age, people were hungry because they lacked the social structure (markets, banks, etc) and technology required to have a surplus of food. They had to spend their entire lives just just sustain themselves, leaving no room for development.
In the modern age, people are hungry because of failed communist regimes (Cuba, North Korea, et al) and political conflicts (Somalia, Ethiopia, et al).
The moisture in his mouth was boiling, but it's not like his mouth was 212 F. The boiling point of water in a vacuum is lower then the temperature of your mouth, so it evaporates. I imagine the feeling would be something akin to drinking a carbonated beverage.
You actually only have 10-15 seconds of consciousness though. Once your lungs are exposed to a vacuum, the oxygen in your blood is released, and after so many seconds when the deoxygenated blood reaches your brain it's sleepy time.
There was an accident where divers in a decompression chamber were explosively decompressed from EIGHT atmospheres. Their bodies literally did explode, killing them instantly.
Maybe we can't adversely affect the entire planet, but what about earthquakes caused by hot-dry-rock geothermal plants? I would think this would be enough to put a damper on the idea of powering the entire planet with geothermal energy.
That is an interesting point about morality. What if a non-corporeal alien race is on a holy crusade to free our imprisoned souls from our physical forms? They might see themselves as a force of good, trying to help us to an end which they see as righteous, to us it is genocide.
Horse race announcer: It's a quantum finish! And the winner is... Harry Trotter! Professor Farnsworth: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
Just like how Peter in family guy practiced his knowledge of braille by conversing with a blind guy at a bus stop. "Bump, bump, bump, no bump, straight line, bump."
The ones that 'never make it out' are the ones that are tragically flawed and you don't want, anyhow. Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.
On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.
Liquid LCD's impractical? But imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
I thought it was the allies capturing enigma machines which allowed us access to coded German transmissions. Isn't this the same situation with DRM? You can't be secure when the enemy (the consumer) has physical access to the encoding/decoding machine.
I think you can simplify the laws of thermodynamics and why they are uncompromisable using common experience. For example, a mug of hot coffee in a room-temperature environment will never absorb heat from its cooler surroundings and become even hotter. Or, if you place a waterwheel half way down a waterfall, you can only extract at most half of the gravitational potential energy. I get the impression that the so-called inventors of perpetual motion machines look at the equations and say to themselves "oh that is just meaningless math mumbo-jumbo, I can find a physical means around them! After all, scientists have been wrong about stuff in the past!"
Plame herself lied under oath, maliciously, claiming that she had no part in Joe Wilson's assignment in Niger, just weeks after Libby was sentenced. So Libby gets convicted of perjury because he couldn't remember some vague conservation from 2 years ago precisely, is sentenced above and beyond what the law requires "because outing a CIA agent is serious business", even though he was not convicted of outing a CIA agent and it was Richard Armitage who originally leaked her name. All the while, Plame lies intentionally and knowingly, under oath, to save her own skin, and is given a pass.
Phase 1: 1992: Berate Bush Sr. for not toppling Saddam even though he clearly posed a danger to the US. Phase 2: 1998: Sign bill calling for regime change/democratization of Iraq. Phase 3: Vote for war in Iraq based on worldwide support. Phase 4: Report every single death, car bombing, and terrorist act 24/7/365 for 4 years straight and keep a running DEATH-O-METER count on US troop deaths. Phase 5: Claim you never voted for the war and that the war was based on a lie. Phase 6: ?? Phase 7: Profit!
A good example of what the parent is describing is in the move The Prestige (some spoilers ahead). When the magician Angiers uses Tesla's teleportation machine, it creates an exact copy of Angiers a short distance away. Each time he uses the machine, he murders the clone by drowning him in a water-filled sealed box, which he later disposes of. At the conclusion of the movie, Angiers reveals that he was terrified every time he used the machine, because he never knew whether "he" would be the applause-receiving prestige or the drowned clone.
This is why I never trust reviews that receive free hardware from companies. Just the act of getting free hardware to review constitutes payola in my opinion. The only reviews you can really trust are the independents that buy their own hardware from the same outlets as everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see any reason why an automatic firearm wouldn't cycle just fine in a vacuum. The pressure of the gas in the action of a gas operated weapon is something like a thousand atmospheres, so the missing 1 atm shouldn't make a big difference. The rest of the action is powered by spring tension, which doesn't care if its in a vacuum or not. Also, dry lubricants like molybdenum disulfide could be used to prevent any loss (or freezing for that matter).
It's interesting to note that guns work fine underwater as well, although in that case they would not cycle correctly as the viscosity of the water prevents the parts of the action from moving at the right speed.
Speaking of flux capacitors, when can I get my hands on a 1.21 jiggobyte drive for my delorian?
Maybe it's not a planet, but a cloud of gas, or a loose collection of pebbles, or some other form of proto-planet.
Well my comment was in response to the original quote: "One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented." I was saying that hunger back thousands of years ago was due to a lack of human development, while hunger today is due to malignant political forces that are essentially preventable, if we had the will to do so. I wasn't referring to times in between (e.g. pre-industrial and medieval times).
That is an interesting take. If you logically extrapolate charging high-risk people more for insurance, you could come to the end result of charging zero for people that will never claim any benefits and charging the actual amount you would pay anyway for those that do claim benefits, effectively negating the purpose of insurance in the first place.
I believe a situation like this already exists in New Jersey, which has a law that states no one can be denied insurance even if they have pre-existing conditions. Natually, a large number of people simply do not buy insurance until they are sick!
I do have a problem with insurance companies charging more for smokers. Smokers already pay a 100-200% tax on cigarettes. Further more, state governments have billions of dollars of income from big tobacco lawsuit settlements, which was supposed to be used to supplement health care costs (but was squandered on pork).
That is unless the insurance company is the government.
Ever hear of this town called New York?
You are comparing apples to oranges here.
In the stone age, people were hungry because they lacked the social structure (markets, banks, etc) and technology required to have a surplus of food. They had to spend their entire lives just just sustain themselves, leaving no room for development.
In the modern age, people are hungry because of failed communist regimes (Cuba, North Korea, et al) and political conflicts (Somalia, Ethiopia, et al).
The moisture in his mouth was boiling, but it's not like his mouth was 212 F. The boiling point of water in a vacuum is lower then the temperature of your mouth, so it evaporates. I imagine the feeling would be something akin to drinking a carbonated beverage.
You actually only have 10-15 seconds of consciousness though. Once your lungs are exposed to a vacuum, the oxygen in your blood is released, and after so many seconds when the deoxygenated blood reaches your brain it's sleepy time.
There was an accident where divers in a decompression chamber were explosively decompressed from EIGHT atmospheres. Their bodies literally did explode, killing them instantly.
Maybe we can't adversely affect the entire planet, but what about earthquakes caused by hot-dry-rock geothermal plants? I would think this would be enough to put a damper on the idea of powering the entire planet with geothermal energy.
That is an interesting point about morality. What if a non-corporeal alien race is on a holy crusade to free our imprisoned souls from our physical forms? They might see themselves as a force of good, trying to help us to an end which they see as righteous, to us it is genocide.
I'm curious as to why they didn't just call it slashdigg.
Another one of my favorites:
Horse race announcer: It's a quantum finish! And the winner is... Harry Trotter!
Professor Farnsworth: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
Where can I nominate this for funniest comment of the year?
Just like how Peter in family guy practiced his knowledge of braille by conversing with a blind guy at a bus stop. "Bump, bump, bump, no bump, straight line, bump."
I thought it was the allies capturing enigma machines which allowed us access to coded German transmissions. Isn't this the same situation with DRM? You can't be secure when the enemy (the consumer) has physical access to the encoding/decoding machine.
AMD and Intel are CPU manufacturers, not sports teams. Buy the product that is the best performing at the lowest price.
I think you can simplify the laws of thermodynamics and why they are uncompromisable using common experience. For example, a mug of hot coffee in a room-temperature environment will never absorb heat from its cooler surroundings and become even hotter. Or, if you place a waterwheel half way down a waterfall, you can only extract at most half of the gravitational potential energy. I get the impression that the so-called inventors of perpetual motion machines look at the equations and say to themselves "oh that is just meaningless math mumbo-jumbo, I can find a physical means around them! After all, scientists have been wrong about stuff in the past!"
Plame herself lied under oath, maliciously, claiming that she had no part in Joe Wilson's assignment in Niger, just weeks after Libby was sentenced. So Libby gets convicted of perjury because he couldn't remember some vague conservation from 2 years ago precisely, is sentenced above and beyond what the law requires "because outing a CIA agent is serious business", even though he was not convicted of outing a CIA agent and it was Richard Armitage who originally leaked her name. All the while, Plame lies intentionally and knowingly, under oath, to save her own skin, and is given a pass.
Democrat's Strategy
Phase 1: 1992: Berate Bush Sr. for not toppling Saddam even though he clearly posed a danger to the US.
Phase 2: 1998: Sign bill calling for regime change/democratization of Iraq.
Phase 3: Vote for war in Iraq based on worldwide support.
Phase 4: Report every single death, car bombing, and terrorist act 24/7/365 for 4 years straight and keep a running DEATH-O-METER count on US troop deaths.
Phase 5: Claim you never voted for the war and that the war was based on a lie.
Phase 6: ??
Phase 7: Profit!
A good example of what the parent is describing is in the move The Prestige (some spoilers ahead). When the magician Angiers uses Tesla's teleportation machine, it creates an exact copy of Angiers a short distance away. Each time he uses the machine, he murders the clone by drowning him in a water-filled sealed box, which he later disposes of. At the conclusion of the movie, Angiers reveals that he was terrified every time he used the machine, because he never knew whether "he" would be the applause-receiving prestige or the drowned clone.
This is why I never trust reviews that receive free hardware from companies. Just the act of getting free hardware to review constitutes payola in my opinion. The only reviews you can really trust are the independents that buy their own hardware from the same outlets as everyone else.