I thought it was.
Because with a tracking/aiming system every weapon can hit anything which is not fast enough to escape.
Well, I think now I'm doubly-confused because I didn't see anyone posting something that disagreed with this position of yours, nor was anyone positing an argument that in some way suggested that a sophisticated tracking system wouldn't be used, at least that I've seen. I guess I just don't quite see the link between what they were saying and what you appear to be countering with.:)
So: hitting it with a laser without artificial aiming/tracking aids is impossible.
Sure, but that's not really the argument, is it? I may have missed something but I've never seen a laser system without sophisticated target tracking capabilities.
Hmm, think I might have already proven myself wrong with this 104KW polonium-210-powered laser rifle [PDF warning]. Think I've finally found what I want for my birthday!
I also suggest we have a Bank police that goes around tazing executives at random if we even think they are thinking of anything "clever"
Move to New Zealand! All our major banks are predatory Australian entities - with this as your political platform you'll be elected prime minister in no time.
Thank you for taking the time to explain, I understand your argument a little better now.
I think I need to educate myself a little further on this topic. I appreciate this is a simplified example but I'm still not getting why the pies and baskets haven't lost their value when the market was suddenly able to supply 10x the normal amount. Or am I reaching outside the metaphor?
Now Bill and Annie will both be unemployed, right? Wrong. A pie is still worth one basket. So Annie can go back to making two pies a day, and trade one for a pie, and Bill can make two baskets a day and trade one for a pie. They are no worse off then at the beginning.
I'm missing something: now that Mike's factory has changed the game, where is the market for one pie that's ten times as expensive to make as the ones Mike manufactures? An honest question, no snark intended.
(This is based on the assumption that you meant 'Bill trades one of his baskets for ten pies', please correct me if I'm wrong)
Perhaps these sinkholes are appearing due to overtesting of house atomics.
Whilst I wouldn't put it past House Putin, even without the Landsraad he'd still have some explaining to do. Could provide some interesting popcorn-munching action for those of us on the arse end of ol' Terra.:)
Joking aside and somewhat offtopic, Herbert saw the obvious outcome of using these weapons; it was scarcely twenty years into Muad'Dib's reign (when he used nukes against the shield wall) before his eyes were taken by the 'burner. Once that Pandora's Box has been opened there's no going back. The foolish notion that the use of 'limited', 'limited yield' or 'very small tactical' weapons can in any way contain the size of a nuclear engagement must also be laid to rest.
It never combusted. The permafrost melted and it all just went in the atmosphere and the loss of mass caused a sinkhole. The summary is bad. There was never a explosion besides the dust settling.
You're right, the summary could have been better, however I can say in its defence that the summary as you read it now is an awful lot better than the one I submitted.
It's quite a reasonable assumption that combustion is involved when coming across a discussion about a methane explosion, however in this situation there was no actual combustion. Despite this, the event was still quite accurately described as a methane exploding. Is there a common method of differentiating the two other than affixing a disclaimer about a "pressure explosion" versus a "combustion pressure explosion"?
Last time I checked I get to vote for the people who run the government. I don't get to vote for the CEO of the company that polluted the ground water supply that I need to get drinking water from.
Some might argue that the effectiveness of one person boycotting a company is reasonably comparable to the effectiveness of one person casting their vote.
Dyson: "theoretical physicist" who understands the movement of air well enough to make a portable cyclone you can move about your house.
Reading this I find myself wondering how well-researched are your other arguments, because it looks to me like you've conflated Freeman Dyson with a the British inventor of a vacuum-cleaner.:)
Not trying to be rude but this is something of a glaring error, unless I'm missing something myself?
Why would you want a solution to a warmer and better world? Can we currently grow food on tundra? No. But with AGW, all of Canada and Siberia come on board as farm land. So skying gets replaced by warm weather sports. Big deal.
My dog lived on the street for >1 year before we adopted her. She seemed to do ok.
Yeah, exactly, dogs are scavengers. They may have hit the evolutionary jackpot by befriending Humans but they're not going to be disastrously affected by a diet more in common with how their ancestors got by.
Cats I know less about but I suspect they'd be OK as well. They do seem to hunt small prey pretty effectively even when well-fed.
Oups, yeah you're right. I should have verified my source. I'm still quite sure about what I remember but maybe the calculation of the brightness of Betelgeuse changed over the years.
In your defence I wasn't playing by the rules when I read TFA. =)
It's just so frustrating that it causes paralysis to set in since I don't know when to trust the science and when not to trust the science.
That's a valid criticism of scientific journalism that I think many of us share to some degree.
Is this crap reporting, or just an unfortunate consequence of our rapid advance in technology perhaps? Will we look back on this period as significant due to the sheer number of postulations and subsequent harpoonings of many seemingly-valid theories? Will we see this as a great period of enlightenment?
Grandiose suppositions aside, I agree it's bloody confusing.
I don't disagree with you - I'd never get away with downing half a litre of Vodka without purging till my eyeballs bled - but there certainly have been some sad examples of this happening to kids who haven't learned their tolerances yet.
It would save an incredible amount of money, $225 billion in anti-drug enforcement in the U.S. alone
An excellent post Mr. Reaper. May I add that this money saved might do well going some small way towards the beginnings of a living wage, maybe combined with some unbiased, factual drug education?
That issue aside (and more important than the money society spends) is the premium that illegality adds to drugs. This simply railroads massive funding directly to those organisations we least want receiving money: drug lords, gangs and criminals in general.
I think most of the initial appeal of drugs for the young is down to their illegality. What better way for the stereotypical disaffected youth to raise his middle finger to The Man than by getting involved in the sale and/or consumption of drugs? Certainly once somebody is high, drugs become their own reward, which does complicate things.
That said I don't think drugs would suddenly take off in usage if they were legalised, because as you succinctly point out, anyone who feels like getting high on just about any drug can obtain it quickly and easily despite their illegality. More likely the appeal would diminish to the level of say, alcohol. That may not sound like much of a win but it would cut the life-support to one of the nastiest segments of criminality in society. That alone would be a significant win for us all.
Slashdot Mirror
those who would rather cling tenaciously to racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia
Rappers?
Oh, where are my mod points when I need them?
It always and only gets worse.
This is realism disguised as cynicism. We have the same situation in my own country.
Every English-speaking nation is suffering the same problem: those in power are terrible, those opposed are atrocious.
Perhaps it has always been this way but it has never been more visible.
I thought it was. Because with a tracking/aiming system every weapon can hit anything which is not fast enough to escape.
Well, I think now I'm doubly-confused because I didn't see anyone posting something that disagreed with this position of yours, nor was anyone positing an argument that in some way suggested that a sophisticated tracking system wouldn't be used, at least that I've seen. I guess I just don't quite see the link between what they were saying and what you appear to be countering with. :)
So: hitting it with a laser without artificial aiming/tracking aids is impossible.
Sure, but that's not really the argument, is it? I may have missed something but I've never seen a laser system without sophisticated target tracking capabilities.
Hmm, think I might have already proven myself wrong with this 104KW polonium-210-powered laser rifle [PDF warning]. Think I've finally found what I want for my birthday!
I also suggest we have a Bank police that goes around tazing executives at random if we even think they are thinking of anything "clever"
Move to New Zealand! All our major banks are predatory Australian entities - with this as your political platform you'll be elected prime minister in no time.
Tasers to maximum!
Thank you for taking the time to explain, I understand your argument a little better now.
I think I need to educate myself a little further on this topic. I appreciate this is a simplified example but I'm still not getting why the pies and baskets haven't lost their value when the market was suddenly able to supply 10x the normal amount. Or am I reaching outside the metaphor?
Now Bill and Annie will both be unemployed, right? Wrong. A pie is still worth one basket. So Annie can go back to making two pies a day, and trade one for a pie, and Bill can make two baskets a day and trade one for a pie. They are no worse off then at the beginning.
I'm missing something: now that Mike's factory has changed the game, where is the market for one pie that's ten times as expensive to make as the ones Mike manufactures? An honest question, no snark intended.
(This is based on the assumption that you meant 'Bill trades one of his baskets for ten pies', please correct me if I'm wrong)
Perhaps these sinkholes are appearing due to overtesting of house atomics.
Whilst I wouldn't put it past House Putin, even without the Landsraad he'd still have some explaining to do. Could provide some interesting popcorn-munching action for those of us on the arse end of ol' Terra. :)
Joking aside and somewhat offtopic, Herbert saw the obvious outcome of using these weapons; it was scarcely twenty years into Muad'Dib's reign (when he used nukes against the shield wall) before his eyes were taken by the 'burner. Once that Pandora's Box has been opened there's no going back. The foolish notion that the use of 'limited', 'limited yield' or 'very small tactical' weapons can in any way contain the size of a nuclear engagement must also be laid to rest.
Nice and simple, works for me. :)
It never combusted. The permafrost melted and it all just went in the atmosphere and the loss of mass caused a sinkhole. The summary is bad. There was never a explosion besides the dust settling.
You're right, the summary could have been better, however I can say in its defence that the summary as you read it now is an awful lot better than the one I submitted.
It's quite a reasonable assumption that combustion is involved when coming across a discussion about a methane explosion, however in this situation there was no actual combustion. Despite this, the event was still quite accurately described as a methane exploding. Is there a common method of differentiating the two other than affixing a disclaimer about a "pressure explosion" versus a "combustion pressure explosion"?
What good is a Doomsday device if nobody knows about?
An easy excuse to make a great documentary with reconstructions played by Peter Sellers? :)
Last time I checked I get to vote for the people who run the government. I don't get to vote for the CEO of the company that polluted the ground water supply that I need to get drinking water from.
Some might argue that the effectiveness of one person boycotting a company is reasonably comparable to the effectiveness of one person casting their vote.
Oops. Looks like I just levelled-up in Joke Whooshology again, my apologies.
Dyson: "theoretical physicist" who understands the movement of air well enough to make a portable cyclone you can move about your house.
Reading this I find myself wondering how well-researched are your other arguments, because it looks to me like you've conflated Freeman Dyson with a the British inventor of a vacuum-cleaner. :)
Not trying to be rude but this is something of a glaring error, unless I'm missing something myself?
Why would you want a solution to a warmer and better world? Can we currently grow food on tundra? No. But with AGW, all of Canada and Siberia come on board as farm land. So skying gets replaced by warm weather sports. Big deal.
Pure comedy gold, thanks for the laugh!
My dog lived on the street for >1 year before we adopted her. She seemed to do ok.
Yeah, exactly, dogs are scavengers. They may have hit the evolutionary jackpot by befriending Humans but they're not going to be disastrously affected by a diet more in common with how their ancestors got by.
Cats I know less about but I suspect they'd be OK as well. They do seem to hunt small prey pretty effectively even when well-fed.
BTW good on you for giving that stray a home.
Oups, yeah you're right. I should have verified my source. I'm still quite sure about what I remember but maybe the calculation of the brightness of Betelgeuse changed over the years.
In your defence I wasn't playing by the rules when I read TFA. =)
Betelgeuse would become so bright that it'll outshine the full moon at night....for a few month.
Not according to TFA:
...where a full moon is about -13, and:
Apparently it'll be pretty bright for a few days then fade out slowly over several weeks, not months.
Drop by my place Saturday and let's give it a good try, shall we?
I'm keen, but the stuff I got just recently is so good I've found I just can't extract my arse from the couch. :(
What hogwash.
And increasing paranoia that the tinfoil couldn't keep out.
+1 Impossibly Perfect Response To A Question On Slashdot
It's just so frustrating that it causes paralysis to set in since I don't know when to trust the science and when not to trust the science.
That's a valid criticism of scientific journalism that I think many of us share to some degree.
Is this crap reporting, or just an unfortunate consequence of our rapid advance in technology perhaps? Will we look back on this period as significant due to the sheer number of postulations and subsequent harpoonings of many seemingly-valid theories? Will we see this as a great period of enlightenment?
Grandiose suppositions aside, I agree it's bloody confusing.
Which is completely ridiculous, anyone who has ever met meth heads & pot heads can tell you that meth is far more dangerous.
Well, exactly, which leads one to conclude that the decision to leave MJ on Sched I is a purely political in nature.
I don't disagree with you - I'd never get away with downing half a litre of Vodka without purging till my eyeballs bled - but there certainly have been some sad examples of this happening to kids who haven't learned their tolerances yet.
It would save an incredible amount of money, $225 billion in anti-drug enforcement in the U.S. alone
An excellent post Mr. Reaper. May I add that this money saved might do well going some small way towards the beginnings of a living wage, maybe combined with some unbiased, factual drug education?
That issue aside (and more important than the money society spends) is the premium that illegality adds to drugs. This simply railroads massive funding directly to those organisations we least want receiving money: drug lords, gangs and criminals in general.
I think most of the initial appeal of drugs for the young is down to their illegality. What better way for the stereotypical disaffected youth to raise his middle finger to The Man than by getting involved in the sale and/or consumption of drugs? Certainly once somebody is high, drugs become their own reward, which does complicate things.
That said I don't think drugs would suddenly take off in usage if they were legalised, because as you succinctly point out, anyone who feels like getting high on just about any drug can obtain it quickly and easily despite their illegality. More likely the appeal would diminish to the level of say, alcohol. That may not sound like much of a win but it would cut the life-support to one of the nastiest segments of criminality in society. That alone would be a significant win for us all.