I actually recently had an economics professor explain to me why a college degree is worth something. I know that if I really wanted to understand a subject, I probably wouldn't go to a school of any kind to learn about it. I would buy a bunch of books, sit down, and read until I understood it. If it was something like programming I would code until I got it, if it was physics I'd build catapults and other toys to figure it all out.
I would probably end up understanding my subject really well, but no one else would know that. My degree is going to say that Mellon believes I know enough about ECE to set me lose upon the world with its reputation attached to my name. So a potential employer knows that CMU trusts my skills, and he will too. While I don't know much about IT certification, I'll assume it has a similar idea behind it.
Basically, a college degree is the economic equivalent of a warranty for a car. The university loses something (its reputation) if the produce (me) doesn't perform as expected. Is the reputation of a IT institute worth much? Probably not. That means that the warranty (the degree) is probably worth about the same.
I always thought of IT institutes as a kind of community college for CS students. I would say that if you have no work record, no college degree, and a passion for CS, the IT institutes sound like a good idea. If you have a strong work record or good degree, just look for an employer who knows what to look for.
The military has a few "nonlethal" weapons in use already, mostly rubber bullets/foam tipped bullets. The only place I've ever actually heard of them being used is in roit or crowd control situations. If you're trying to give out food at an aid station in Afganistan, and suddenly the crowd turns ugly, opening fire with nonletahl rounds restores order without causing loss of life.
The lightning gun's lack of accuracy could actually be an aid in that sort of situation. It becomes a sort of non lethal shotgun, stopping several people each time it's fired. The article said that they had a general ability to aim it (based on ionizing air in a certain direction.) As long as it shocks the roiting crowd instead of the other soilders, this sort of weapon can but used for crowd control.
There's a ban on federal funding for stem cell research
There is a ban of federal funding for stem cell research that involves killing a human fetus. The government funds over 60 different stem cell resreach groups, they just all get their cells from other sources. (ambilical cords, bady teeth.)
From what I've read about Chernobyl, it was cooled by water. Water flowed through the reactor, collecting energy and moving heat away from the fuel. The fuel rods were tipped with graphite (I haven't found a good reason for this, and maybe there isn't. Graphite doesn't absorb neutrons, so it doesn't work as a moderator...)
The people running the reactor wanted to set what would happen in a kind of worst case condition. There was an tank full of extra water in case of emergencies, but it required power off the grid to run it, so they decided to see if the reactor itself could provide the power if there was a problem and they were cut off from the gird.
Long story short, the water in the reactor began boiling off too quickly to effectively cool the reaction, which cause it to over heat, which DID NOT lead to a meltdown, the pressure built so high that there was a steam explosion before it was hot enough for a meltdown. Of couse, the steam explosion set of a graphite explosion... and between the two a bunch of radiation was released into the surrounding area.
As far as I know, the second explosion was the only part of Chernobyl where the presence of graphite played a major role, but I could be wrong, this is mostly on the spot research off Google...
young, college educated Chinese like their access to information, albeit san porn, Taiwan, etc. To restrict their information flow even more would cause an outcry.
I thought the point of the authoritarian state was that there was no OPTION of public outcry. Not to sound like a capitalist dog, decrying the glorious of our wonderful communist state, but what medium would this outcry be in? On the internet, where the government shuts down any site it dislikes? In the state controlled media? In protests that are forcably put down by the government?
Filtering out everything but chinese characters, while a technical possibility, is simple improbable.
The real problem with communism is that things that should be improbable actually happen. The Soviets had their economy so f**d up that they we telling people that "Bananas are a luxury we can do without." Authoritarian != logical.
Let's just hope that when it was annouced to everyone that their IDs had been comprimised they changed their passwords. At Mellon it only takes about 30sec to change your password. Unless someone else already changed it, you shouldn't have any problems fixing it. I don't know about what its like at other colleges though...
Almost 300 Million Americans, and 6 Million are in an car crash ever year. Do the math. About 2% of Americans are involved in a car accident EACH YEAR.
I wrote that as a joke, but thinking about it, it's true. SUVs are today's form of conspicuous consumption. "Look, I can afford to buy a huge, expesive, gas guzzling car! Look at Me!!" Its just the same as the European old school upper class who would eat until they threw up and then eat again. Vans have more cargo space than SUVs, and no one ever uses them to offroad. SUVs are all about the statement: I'm cool, I drive a big expensive car.
Lets face it. The space shuttle is dangerous, very.
I'm no expert on space travel, so I'm sure someone more informed than I can fix the numbers, but a little research has told me that there have been between 2 and 9 shuttle missions a year between 1981 and now, with a 2 year hiatus after Challenger. Assume, the average is 4 per year, for 22 years, that means that there have been 88 shuttle flights. I'm fairly young, so I don't remember most of the space program, but I can only think of two Shuttle disasters, Challenger and Columbia. That gives the shuttle a success rate of 97.7%. That doesn't sound all that dangerous to me...
Of course, each failure is by definition fatal and expensive, but I wouldn't call the space program a failure or overly dangerous.
The Saturn I, IB, and V boosters all had a 100 percent success rate during launch. There have really only been 4 major disasters in the nearly 50 year history of spaceflight, and only three of them fatal (Apollo 1, and the two shuttles. Apollo 13 being the 4th, and nonfatal disaster)
They can mitigate the risks involved but never even come close to eliminating them all.
That statment applies to LIFE. The same can be said of cars, airplanes, boats... horses... Life is risky. Period. the question is, do the benifits outweigh the risks. I'd say yes, but I'm sure there are those that disagree.
I read an article in the Wall St. Journal today (right next to the one on hibrination, oddly enough) about how in many cases, genes actually take a back seat to envoirnment.
Example: There is a "violent gene" that was discovered, and linked to agression and crime. Looking at it more closely, biologists realized that it is only a factor in PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN ABUSED. If someone had the "violent gene" and was abused as a child, they were twice as likely to commit violent crime as someone without the gene. But looking at those without a history of abuse, the statistics for those with and without the gene were identical.
Social Eugenics is pretty much dead. Every day there is another nail in the coffin. Genes mean very little in the grand scheme of things.
Cultural evolution, though, may have an interesting future. During the cold war, the US had a certain culture, as defined by our economy, values,, beliefs etc, that was at war with the USSR. This kind of struggle exists today, though not on the same kind of epic, end of the world scale as before. What makes a culture strong? How do cultures change? This is an area for future study.
birthrate PLUMET when the pill was introduced
Of course. My arguement wasn't against contraceptives. It was against the idea that contraceptives were the magic answer to overpopulation. I would argue that the pill is a symptom of our advancing society, not a cause of it. Meaning we aren't advanced because we have the pill, because we made progress, we introduced the pill.
The jist of my idea was this, fix how f*ed up the economies are in 3rd world nations, and overpopulation will stop. Empowerment of women is a natural part of that. Most economically stable nations treat women well (none of them are perfect, but...).
And one of the best ways to lower birth rates is to raise living standards and give people access to modern medical care (including contraceptives). When the mortality rate drops to some reasonable level and half the family isn't sick from malaria, you don't need to overproduce children just to make sure you'll have enough healthy members in the family.
I agree, although for different reasons. Concraception is not the reason that most postindustrial countries have low birth rates. For the most part, it is just more economically efficent to have many children in poor countries and less efficent to have children at all in wealthy countries.
If you live on a subsistence level, every child is another pair or hands to work the farm, or help out however. In the US, Europe, etc, a child is a drain on your resources for 18+ years. So you have fewer.
We do need to give access to concraceptives to deal with overpoplation, but if we just raise the standard of living, contraceptives, and economical pressure to use them, will follow.
Sony isn't selling items. You buy items from other characters.
Most players play for fun.
With those two in mind, it makes sense that buying/selling would not be too central to the game. You can still use EQ $$ to buy other in game stuff, and most players don't have the real cash to buy themselves to victory. Buying/selling w/ USD (or the Euro, or whatever.) won't necessarily dominate most players lives.
BUT:
There are going to be people who go NUTS over this. You all know the type, it's the player who is convinced that his success in the game is the justification of his otherwise completely unjustifiable high opinion of himself. That guy is going to center his life around getting real money out of EQ, and he stands a pretty good chance of ruining this for everyone.
put more coherently:
Since you have to buy from other players, there shouldn't be an overabundance of high end items for sale. (if you get something cool, you want to use it.) BUT some people are just asses, and this will only give them one more excuse and one more outlet. They will ruin it, not by buying their way to victory, but by (insert unfair way that jerks can acquire high end items) in order to sell them for real $$.
Almost every scientific discovery is met with religous opposition
... I'd argue that most of the more *recent* scientific advances have been well recieved. I mean, yah, you got excommunicated for saying the earth was flat 3 centuries ago, but the last two Popes (I guess three now) have said that evolution is a perfectly ok beleif, and that the Big Bang is fine as long as you throw that God guy in there somewhere. Some things (human cloning) have been issues, but I'd say those are legitimate ethical questions, and not simply questioning anything science says. Most great Scientists are religious in some way or another.
But more relevant to the question, I'd say no, alien life would not present a problem for the religious (though I'll admit that I am not a Church going Bible stomper, just someone tired of seeing +5 Insightful on anything anti-Christian)
We're supposed to be God's Children, so maybe we have a little larger family than we thought...
The article states that encouraging truckers to stop to use the internet would make the roads safer, since
fatigue is a factor in 1.5 percent of all crashes, anything we can do to get people to pull off the road and take a break is going to make our highways safer.
Now if we could just deal with the 98.5% of crashes that are beer induced....
Not true. Even Microsoft makes its products backward compatible. (One might say they make their products backwards, but that is another story).
...
I thought that was the author's point. It was saying that MS word is a standard, and if you write a word-type program that isn't compatable, you're screwed. When MS releases a new MS word, there is a short time when ONLY other MS products are compatable with it. So every time MS updates word everyone else has to go back and change stuff, giving MS an advantage.
Software patents are evil. Full stop. It has nothing to do with standards.
Does this mean that copywrite laws are evil too? I can just quote entire Washington Post articles without giving credit? Its the same basic idea. Patents laws may be written poorly, but I wonder what you would say if it was all of your code being stolen... or what Dan Brown would say if I tried to reproduce "The Da Vinci Code" w/o his permission....
None of these are "personal itches," these are profit, profit, survival. Until putting people in space MAKES MONEY it won't really be common. The whole space race came under the survial heading because we thought the commies would have a tactical advantage if they dominated space. If we could find another planet (insert miricle here) that was more or less like earth, you could make money off sending people there (a la America as the "New World") but, other than that I don't see a lot of obvious money in colonization. "Because its there" only really works if you have a lot of cash just sitting around...
Re:I, for one, welcome our new Exoskeleton Overlor
on
Commercial Exoskeletons
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'll go a load less sci fi than the parent, and try too put this in prespective:
Why isn't every Marine in Iraq, etc not wrapped in 6 inches of Kevlar from head to toe? Because Kevlar is HEAVY. The real advantage of a Mech type suit is that you can make the average Soldier harder to kill. You don't need to make it superhuman strong, and able to punch through walls, just make it able to handle a normal range of motion / speed, and then wrap enough Kevlar on it to make a person immune to small arms fire.
They said in the article that the HAL 5 would be smaller (about 11lbs lighter, bringing it to about 37 lbs) and that it could be used to pick up nearly 90 extra lbs. That's pretty decent, that shouldn't have too much bulk to it. The problem now isn't hardware (though power will be an issue...) its going to be programming it to be able to move around like a normal person (right now it only stands, walks, and does stairs.)
This is very doable, and certainly in the near future (Marines are already working on a set of legs to help them carry more, further.) but it won't be like the anime you're used to, and it won't be replacing tanks any time soon. What it will do, is make the life of the average Army grunt a lot better. The USA is way ahead in terms of Air Force and Navy tech, (think aircraft carriers... No one else has even close to 12 fully functional aircraft carriers.) But on the infantry side, we don't have nearly the same kind of lead. With all the tech money out there, some of it should go to the "grunts".
The problem was we only had two bombs operational, and they were damn costly to make (both in $$ and TIME). If we dropped one in demonstration, we would only have one more to use when Japan didn't give in. As it was, we bluffed. We dropped everything we had, and made as if we would just continue on destroying cities until they gave up.
Remote-control sounds fine, but automatically? Do we have software capable of reliably distingushing between a civilian and an enemy combatant (at least as well as a human soldier can, anyway...)?
Doesn't sound like the best of ideas
From what I've heard about the DMZ in Korea, there aren't any civilians. Most S. Koreans don't want to live that close to where the invasion will come from (if/when it comes) and the N. Koreans aren't allowed to live that close to anywhere where they could escape. National Georaphic actually did a report about how this made the DMZ in Korea one of the worlds most impressive wildlife reserves...
...there are no electric fences, nor electronic sensors and surveillance cameras.
Seems to me that the South Koreans might be better off upgrading their fences and perimeters (proven technology) than putting their faith in autonomous killer robots (unproven, scary, incredibly risky sci-fi technology).
Eletric fences may work great against crime etc, but as a military option... a fence isn't going to stop a tank, or even a really determined group of foot soldiers. The Atomic Bomb was unproven, scary, risky and sci-fi, but it saved the lives of an estimated 1 Million Marines/U.S. Army, and an untold number of Japanese.
(Yes, I would argue that it saved Japanese lives, based on Iwo Jimi, Okinawa, etc, Japanese soilders would have fought for every inch of Japan, and likely would have destroyed the country in the process, but this is an arguement for another post...)
The point is, that this would take soldiers (some of them American, as we have promised to protect S. Korea, and have troops stationed there.) out of harms way. Automated defences are replacable, but our military men and women are not.
So I make $100, and the government taxes 37%, and I only end up with 100-37= $63. So, in order to avoid taxes (to make more money) I lower my salary to $1. This is genius. I lose $62, but pay no taxes. Brilliant!
CEOs used to cut their salaries during hard times to leave more for their employees. Back when CEOs were decent people... I'm glad that Google has some good people at the helm.
The yesterday's news guy has a link with more info. His site says it had about an hour and forty-five minute fly time. I just skimmed the article, so I didn't see any info on range, but if its got a GPS it'll probably be able to go a decent distance. I'm not a radio expert, but I'd bet that as long as you build a big enough transmitter it'll be able to go as far as just under 2 hours of flight will take it.
research that is being cut in favor of military research or moved into weapons research
NASA was (basically) military research. We went into space because the USSR was. It's not an accident that most of our astronauts were (and still are) Navy or Air Force aviators. It was not in the name of "Basic Science," that we went into space, but in the name of national defense.
Without basic science research, we would not have the Internet
Or, put correctly: Without military research we would not have the Internet.
To meet this need, ARPA established the IPTO in 1962 with a mandate to build a survivable computer network to interconnect the DoD's main computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and SAC HQ. As described in the following pages, this initiative led to the development of the ARPANET seven years later, and then to the NSFNET and the Internet we know today.http://livinginternet.com/i/ii_darpa.htm
Cutting NASAs budget makes me angry too, but military spending does not kill intellectual growth. Don't kid yourself, military research = science research.
Slashdot Mirror
I would probably end up understanding my subject really well, but no one else would know that. My degree is going to say that Mellon believes I know enough about ECE to set me lose upon the world with its reputation attached to my name. So a potential employer knows that CMU trusts my skills, and he will too. While I don't know much about IT certification, I'll assume it has a similar idea behind it.
Basically, a college degree is the economic equivalent of a warranty for a car. The university loses something (its reputation) if the produce (me) doesn't perform as expected. Is the reputation of a IT institute worth much? Probably not. That means that the warranty (the degree) is probably worth about the same.
I always thought of IT institutes as a kind of community college for CS students. I would say that if you have no work record, no college degree, and a passion for CS, the IT institutes sound like a good idea. If you have a strong work record or good degree, just look for an employer who knows what to look for.
Just my thoughts.
The lightning gun's lack of accuracy could actually be an aid in that sort of situation. It becomes a sort of non lethal shotgun, stopping several people each time it's fired. The article said that they had a general ability to aim it (based on ionizing air in a certain direction.) As long as it shocks the roiting crowd instead of the other soilders, this sort of weapon can but used for crowd control.
There is a ban of federal funding for stem cell research that involves killing a human fetus. The government funds over 60 different stem cell resreach groups, they just all get their cells from other sources. (ambilical cords, bady teeth.)
Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20 010809-1.html
The people running the reactor wanted to set what would happen in a kind of worst case condition. There was an tank full of extra water in case of emergencies, but it required power off the grid to run it, so they decided to see if the reactor itself could provide the power if there was a problem and they were cut off from the gird.
Long story short, the water in the reactor began boiling off too quickly to effectively cool the reaction, which cause it to over heat, which DID NOT lead to a meltdown, the pressure built so high that there was a steam explosion before it was hot enough for a meltdown. Of couse, the steam explosion set of a graphite explosion... and between the two a bunch of radiation was released into the surrounding area.
As far as I know, the second explosion was the only part of Chernobyl where the presence of graphite played a major role, but I could be wrong, this is mostly on the spot research off Google...
I thought the point of the authoritarian state was that there was no OPTION of public outcry. Not to sound like a capitalist dog, decrying the glorious of our wonderful communist state, but what medium would this outcry be in? On the internet, where the government shuts down any site it dislikes? In the state controlled media? In protests that are forcably put down by the government?
Filtering out everything but chinese characters, while a technical possibility, is simple improbable.
The real problem with communism is that things that should be improbable actually happen. The Soviets had their economy so f**d up that they we telling people that "Bananas are a luxury we can do without." Authoritarian != logical.
Let's just hope that when it was annouced to everyone that their IDs had been comprimised they changed their passwords. At Mellon it only takes about 30sec to change your password. Unless someone else already changed it, you shouldn't have any problems fixing it. I don't know about what its like at other colleges though...
Almost 300 Million Americans, and 6 Million are in an car crash ever year. Do the math. About 2% of Americans are involved in a car accident EACH YEAR.
Life is dangerous. Period.
I wrote that as a joke, but thinking about it, it's true. SUVs are today's form of conspicuous consumption. "Look, I can afford to buy a huge, expesive, gas guzzling car! Look at Me!!" Its just the same as the European old school upper class who would eat until they threw up and then eat again. Vans have more cargo space than SUVs, and no one ever uses them to offroad. SUVs are all about the statement: I'm cool, I drive a big expensive car.
But Walmart... now that's one hell of a Mart!
I'm no expert on space travel, so I'm sure someone more informed than I can fix the numbers, but a little research has told me that there have been between 2 and 9 shuttle missions a year between 1981 and now, with a 2 year hiatus after Challenger. Assume, the average is 4 per year, for 22 years, that means that there have been 88 shuttle flights. I'm fairly young, so I don't remember most of the space program, but I can only think of two Shuttle disasters, Challenger and Columbia. That gives the shuttle a success rate of 97.7%. That doesn't sound all that dangerous to me...
Of course, each failure is by definition fatal and expensive, but I wouldn't call the space program a failure or overly dangerous.
The Saturn I, IB, and V boosters all had a 100 percent success rate during launch. There have really only been 4 major disasters in the nearly 50 year history of spaceflight, and only three of them fatal (Apollo 1, and the two shuttles. Apollo 13 being the 4th, and nonfatal disaster)
They can mitigate the risks involved but never even come close to eliminating them all.
That statment applies to LIFE. The same can be said of cars, airplanes, boats... horses... Life is risky. Period. the question is, do the benifits outweigh the risks. I'd say yes, but I'm sure there are those that disagree.
I read an article in the Wall St. Journal today (right next to the one on hibrination, oddly enough) about how in many cases, genes actually take a back seat to envoirnment.
Example: There is a "violent gene" that was discovered, and linked to agression and crime. Looking at it more closely, biologists realized that it is only a factor in PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN ABUSED. If someone had the "violent gene" and was abused as a child, they were twice as likely to commit violent crime as someone without the gene. But looking at those without a history of abuse, the statistics for those with and without the gene were identical.
Social Eugenics is pretty much dead. Every day there is another nail in the coffin. Genes mean very little in the grand scheme of things.
Cultural evolution, though, may have an interesting future. During the cold war, the US had a certain culture, as defined by our economy, values,, beliefs etc, that was at war with the USSR. This kind of struggle exists today, though not on the same kind of epic, end of the world scale as before. What makes a culture strong? How do cultures change? This is an area for future study.
The jist of my idea was this, fix how f*ed up the economies are in 3rd world nations, and overpopulation will stop. Empowerment of women is a natural part of that. Most economically stable nations treat women well (none of them are perfect, but...).
I agree, although for different reasons. Concraception is not the reason that most postindustrial countries have low birth rates. For the most part, it is just more economically efficent to have many children in poor countries and less efficent to have children at all in wealthy countries.
If you live on a subsistence level, every child is another pair or hands to work the farm, or help out however. In the US, Europe, etc, a child is a drain on your resources for 18+ years. So you have fewer.
We do need to give access to concraceptives to deal with overpoplation, but if we just raise the standard of living, contraceptives, and economical pressure to use them, will follow.
Based on the /. reaction to the article, open source users LOVE gay rights.
Any attempted boycott of MS by the crazy minister guy would have, then, gotten MS GOOD PRESS with the ONE GROUP that doesn't use MS products.
MS could have actually made money off the attempted boycott, but that's what you get when timid beurocrats are making all the decisions...
Just food for thought.
Sony isn't selling items. You buy items from other characters.
Most players play for fun.
With those two in mind, it makes sense that buying/selling would not be too central to the game. You can still use EQ $$ to buy other in game stuff, and most players don't have the real cash to buy themselves to victory. Buying/selling w/ USD (or the Euro, or whatever.) won't necessarily dominate most players lives.
BUT:
There are going to be people who go NUTS over this. You all know the type, it's the player who is convinced that his success in the game is the justification of his otherwise completely unjustifiable high opinion of himself. That guy is going to center his life around getting real money out of EQ, and he stands a pretty good chance of ruining this for everyone.
put more coherently:
Since you have to buy from other players, there shouldn't be an overabundance of high end items for sale. (if you get something cool, you want to use it.) BUT some people are just asses, and this will only give them one more excuse and one more outlet. They will ruin it, not by buying their way to victory, but by (insert unfair way that jerks can acquire high end items) in order to sell them for real $$.
But more relevant to the question, I'd say no, alien life would not present a problem for the religious (though I'll admit that I am not a Church going Bible stomper, just someone tired of seeing +5 Insightful on anything anti-Christian)
We're supposed to be God's Children, so maybe we have a little larger family than we thought...
50,000 * 2,000 = 100 M
50,000 * 20,000 = 1 B
20,000 is still in the "Thousands" range, though I'm unsure how to convert "a couple" into metric.
Can you put it in terms of Libraries of Congress?
fatigue is a factor in 1.5 percent of all crashes, anything we can do to get people to pull off the road and take a break is going to make our highways safer.
Now if we could just deal with the 98.5% of crashes that are beer induced....
I thought that was the author's point. It was saying that MS word is a standard, and if you write a word-type program that isn't compatable, you're screwed. When MS releases a new MS word, there is a short time when ONLY other MS products are compatable with it. So every time MS updates word everyone else has to go back and change stuff, giving MS an advantage.
Software patents are evil. Full stop. It has nothing to do with standards.
Does this mean that copywrite laws are evil too? I can just quote entire Washington Post articles without giving credit? Its the same basic idea. Patents laws may be written poorly, but I wonder what you would say if it was all of your code being stolen... or what Dan Brown would say if I tried to reproduce "The Da Vinci Code" w/o his permission....
None of these are "personal itches," these are profit, profit, survival. Until putting people in space MAKES MONEY it won't really be common. The whole space race came under the survial heading because we thought the commies would have a tactical advantage if they dominated space. If we could find another planet (insert miricle here) that was more or less like earth, you could make money off sending people there (a la America as the "New World") but, other than that I don't see a lot of obvious money in colonization. "Because its there" only really works if you have a lot of cash just sitting around...
Why isn't every Marine in Iraq, etc not wrapped in 6 inches of Kevlar from head to toe? Because Kevlar is HEAVY. The real advantage of a Mech type suit is that you can make the average Soldier harder to kill. You don't need to make it superhuman strong, and able to punch through walls, just make it able to handle a normal range of motion / speed, and then wrap enough Kevlar on it to make a person immune to small arms fire.
They said in the article that the HAL 5 would be smaller (about 11lbs lighter, bringing it to about 37 lbs) and that it could be used to pick up nearly 90 extra lbs. That's pretty decent, that shouldn't have too much bulk to it. The problem now isn't hardware (though power will be an issue...) its going to be programming it to be able to move around like a normal person (right now it only stands, walks, and does stairs.)
This is very doable, and certainly in the near future (Marines are already working on a set of legs to help them carry more, further.) but it won't be like the anime you're used to, and it won't be replacing tanks any time soon. What it will do, is make the life of the average Army grunt a lot better. The USA is way ahead in terms of Air Force and Navy tech, (think aircraft carriers... No one else has even close to 12 fully functional aircraft carriers.) But on the infantry side, we don't have nearly the same kind of lead. With all the tech money out there, some of it should go to the "grunts".
The problem was we only had two bombs operational, and they were damn costly to make (both in $$ and TIME). If we dropped one in demonstration, we would only have one more to use when Japan didn't give in. As it was, we bluffed. We dropped everything we had, and made as if we would just continue on destroying cities until they gave up.
From what I've heard about the DMZ in Korea, there aren't any civilians. Most S. Koreans don't want to live that close to where the invasion will come from (if/when it comes) and the N. Koreans aren't allowed to live that close to anywhere where they could escape. National Georaphic actually did a report about how this made the DMZ in Korea one of the worlds most impressive wildlife reserves...
Eletric fences may work great against crime etc, but as a military option... a fence isn't going to stop a tank, or even a really determined group of foot soldiers. The Atomic Bomb was unproven, scary, risky and sci-fi, but it saved the lives of an estimated 1 Million Marines/U.S. Army, and an untold number of Japanese.
(Yes, I would argue that it saved Japanese lives, based on Iwo Jimi, Okinawa, etc, Japanese soilders would have fought for every inch of Japan, and likely would have destroyed the country in the process, but this is an arguement for another post...)
The point is, that this would take soldiers (some of them American, as we have promised to protect S. Korea, and have troops stationed there.) out of harms way. Automated defences are replacable, but our military men and women are not.
CEOs used to cut their salaries during hard times to leave more for their employees. Back when CEOs were decent people... I'm glad that Google has some good people at the helm.
The yesterday's news guy has a link with more info. His site says it had about an hour and forty-five minute fly time. I just skimmed the article, so I didn't see any info on range, but if its got a GPS it'll probably be able to go a decent distance. I'm not a radio expert, but I'd bet that as long as you build a big enough transmitter it'll be able to go as far as just under 2 hours of flight will take it.
NASA was (basically) military research. We went into space because the USSR was. It's not an accident that most of our astronauts were (and still are) Navy or Air Force aviators. It was not in the name of "Basic Science," that we went into space, but in the name of national defense.
Without basic science research, we would not have the Internet
Or, put correctly: Without military research we would not have the Internet.
To meet this need, ARPA established the IPTO in 1962 with a mandate to build a survivable computer network to interconnect the DoD's main computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and SAC HQ. As described in the following pages, this initiative led to the development of the ARPANET seven years later, and then to the NSFNET and the Internet we know today. http://livinginternet.com/i/ii_darpa.htm
Cutting NASAs budget makes me angry too, but military spending does not kill intellectual growth. Don't kid yourself, military research = science research.