Yes, you are. People get to vote on stuff. That's democracy. There are different types of democracies that are defined by what exactly "stuff" is. If stuff is "bills/laws/etc", then you're a direct democracy, if stuff is "people who will then vote on things for me", then you're an indirect/representative democracy.
We are a republic and too few people realize this.
Yes, you're a republic, too. The position of "head honcho" isn't inherited (well, at least not on paper. Things might be a bit different in practice). Otherwise you'd be a monarchy.
There can be perfectly undemocractic republics (here's a hint: They usually mention "people" or "public" more than once in their name, usually in Latin and Greek) and democratic monarchies.
The movie Gattica illustrates the problem quite well.
There's no "i" in the name of the movie. Just like there's no nucleobase in DNA that starts with "i". Cytosine, guanine, thymine, adenine - see, none of these starts with an "i".
You should know that the pilots of these craft are actually subject to a lot more stress from the job, because they actually watch the missiles fired from the point of launch to the impact and they are forced to see exactly what they're doing to the people they're attacking.
Well, in that case, they should make "being a zero-empathy sociopath" part of the necessary qualifications for becoming a drone operator. That way, the extra stress doesn't appear, and the kill rate might actually go up a bit.
Heck, anyone who has to see what dropping a couple of hundred pounds of explosives on a bunch of people will do in order to be somewhat distressed by doing that almost qualifies already.
You can't sign a contract that allows another party to do something to you that is against the law. You can't, for instance, sign a contract, even knowingly and willfully, that allows someone else to shoot you in the leg. That person will still get tried for assault.
Yet, you can (and probably will at some point) sign contracts that allow someone else to inject you with toxic substances, cut holes into you, cut pieces off your body, drain significant amounts of blood from your body, and/or hit you with enough ionizing radiation to cause significant radiation burns.
Two good outcomes or one good outcome? Tough choice, huh?
*sarcasm*
You forgot all those precious seconds of your life wasted putting on and removing seatbelts, as well the the occasional unlucky person who can't get their seatbelt off fast enough to escape from a burning/sinking vehicle, or the dude who claims that if he hadn't been thrown out of the car, he would have plunged down the 300 ft gorge along with it.
By touching a fingerprint reader, you're picking up traces of whatever the person(s) fingerprinted before you have touched.
Remember this simple fact if you're not a US citizen and travel to the States next time. Have you ever wondered what all those people who were fingerprinted before you touched ?
A lot of times in school, I was told viruses aren't alive because they can't reproduce.
Well, then you've been given the wrong argument on why viruses can't be considered alive. Viruses _do_ reproduce, in fact, their only purpose is to do that. They are missing other characteristics of life, namely a metabolism and, connected to that, homeostasis and reaction to (most) external stimuli. Viruses don't use energy to alter their internal or external environment to their benefit, and the only stimulus they react to is contact with a suitable host cell.
Encryption is especially going to work when the data is only crossing electronically. They can keep it as long as they want, and it won't do them any harm.
And that's exactly what they'll do - keep it as long as they want. Who said they want your data ? Maybe they're just after your shiny new laptop/camera/iPod/etc.
So if there's life on Mars, it's breathing perchlorate.
It could get its oxygen from the perchlorate, and use methane from the Martian atmosphere for food. Kind of strange how that would be the inverse of the situation on Earth, where life gets its oxygen from the atmosphere and takes up food in solid form...
Do we have any extremophiles that life in a highly oxidizing environment?
Yes. Most of it likes its oxygen as a gas, though, and not as part of a solid compound. Compared to what Earth was like when life began, it is a highly oxidizing environment now. Life hasn't just adapted to cope with it, it has literally become addicted to the stuff.
If fate of humanity depended on it, I bet we could ramp up production and start launching a rocket per day very fast. I mean "do you want to do everything you can to help this effort for a few years, or do you want that all you love will disapper in a firestorm in a few years" is kind of motivational question;-)
You're being very optimistic. I would assume that your proposal will have to struggle with lots and lots of opposition from religious whackos ($DEITY will protect us / it's all $DEITY's will / it's gonna be the end of the world and that's exactly what we want, because we're gonna meet $DEITY then), people who will scream about how this will destroy the economy, people who will scream about how this will destroy the environment, incoming-asteroid deniers, conspiracy nutjobs, people who want to see more data before they're going to do anything at all, people who want to keep the government(s) out of this and let the invisible hand of the market solve the problem, people who will claim that this isn't a man-made problem and that we shouldn't do anything about it, people who will assert that other planets get hit by rocks and they're doing just fine, etc, etc.
If they do prove the oxidizer, would that rule out all life on mars?
No. It would rule out Earth-like life close to the surface. There could still be life underground, or extremophiles that have adapted to the chemical composition of the surface. Heck, an oxidizer is a dangerous, but also highly useful material. Get something that you can oxidize, and you've got an energy source.
Have you noticed that Mars does not have the right gravity for humans nor atmosphere, right?
Too little gravity is better than no gravity at all. With too little gravity, you can put the right load on your bones to keep them from decalcifying by just carrying some weight. You don't get that option in zero-G - even if you strap 100 kg of lead to your body, you'll still weigh 0 N.
Not to mention all the other mundane things known from Earth that will work if there's a little bit of gravity, but not in zero-G. Like toilets, showers, kitchens, beds, sinks, swimming pools, plumbing, etc.
Matter, when subjected to extreme conditions, behaves in ways that simple models will fail to predict. See also: Plasma, superconductivity, superfluidity, metallic hydrogen, neutron star, black hole.
Chemistry is a very simplified, yet extremely useful (since the circumstances where it fails are usually not encountered very often) model of a part of physics.
We had a friendly chat while he was surfing my machine, and he at one point mentioned that I was getting a "quickie" and that sometimes they will take a laptop for 4 or 5 hours.
I wonder if they say something along the same lines to people who are about to get a full cavity search... ?
Slashdot Mirror
We could probably detect it if we were lucky enough to see the inner planets transiting, but we'd probably miss all of the four outer planets.
Yes, you are. People get to vote on stuff. That's democracy. There are different types of democracies that are defined by what exactly "stuff" is. If stuff is "bills/laws/etc", then you're a direct democracy, if stuff is "people who will then vote on things for me", then you're an indirect/representative democracy.
We are a republic and too few people realize this.
Yes, you're a republic, too. The position of "head honcho" isn't inherited (well, at least not on paper. Things might be a bit different in practice). Otherwise you'd be a monarchy.
There can be perfectly undemocractic republics (here's a hint: They usually mention "people" or "public" more than once in their name, usually in Latin and Greek) and democratic monarchies.
Exactly. Even a VP usually can't hire or fire someone without HR approving the decision.
But what if he wants to fire HR ... ?
It would only be like that, if the punishment for stealing a car was less than the purchase price of that car.
If you don't get caught, there's no punishment.
The movie Gattica illustrates the problem quite well.
There's no "i" in the name of the movie. Just like there's no nucleobase in DNA that starts with "i". Cytosine, guanine, thymine, adenine - see, none of these starts with an "i".
You should know that the pilots of these craft are actually subject to a lot more stress from the job, because they actually watch the missiles fired from the point of launch to the impact and they are forced to see exactly what they're doing to the people they're attacking.
Well, in that case, they should make "being a zero-empathy sociopath" part of the necessary qualifications for becoming a drone operator. That way, the extra stress doesn't appear, and the kill rate might actually go up a bit.
Heck, anyone who has to see what dropping a couple of hundred pounds of explosives on a bunch of people will do in order to be somewhat distressed by doing that almost qualifies already.
You can't sign a contract that allows another party to do something to you that is against the law. You can't, for instance, sign a contract, even knowingly and willfully, that allows someone else to shoot you in the leg. That person will still get tried for assault.
Yet, you can (and probably will at some point) sign contracts that allow someone else to inject you with toxic substances, cut holes into you, cut pieces off your body, drain significant amounts of blood from your body, and/or hit you with enough ionizing radiation to cause significant radiation burns.
Two good outcomes or one good outcome? Tough choice, huh?
*sarcasm*
You forgot all those precious seconds of your life wasted putting on and removing seatbelts, as well the the occasional unlucky person who can't get their seatbelt off fast enough to escape from a burning/sinking vehicle, or the dude who claims that if he hadn't been thrown out of the car, he would have plunged down the 300 ft gorge along with it.
*/sarcasm*
Remember this simple fact if you're not a US citizen and travel to the States next time. Have you ever wondered what all those people who were fingerprinted before you touched ?
LHC isn't even located in the USA for christ sakes.
Why would it matter where it is if it destroys the whole world anyway ?
A lot of times in school, I was told viruses aren't alive because they can't reproduce.
Well, then you've been given the wrong argument on why viruses can't be considered alive. Viruses _do_ reproduce, in fact, their only purpose is to do that. They are missing other characteristics of life, namely a metabolism and, connected to that, homeostasis and reaction to (most) external stimuli. Viruses don't use energy to alter their internal or external environment to their benefit, and the only stimulus they react to is contact with a suitable host cell.
Ok, tree-dude, let's take your oxygen away and see how you fare at night.
You might have a point with anything that lives in water, though, and anything that likes anaerobic conditions.
You haven't been reading the other /. articles today, have you ?
And that's exactly what they'll do - keep it as long as they want. Who said they want your data ? Maybe they're just after your shiny new laptop/camera/iPod/etc.
What Would Jesus Think Was Unreasonable?
"And if they take your laptop, give them your digital camera, iPod and cellphone, too." (Mt 5,40, paraphrased)
It could get its oxygen from the perchlorate, and use methane from the Martian atmosphere for food. Kind of strange how that would be the inverse of the situation on Earth, where life gets its oxygen from the atmosphere and takes up food in solid form ...
Don't they use some kind of airbag to land the phoenix safely?
Nope, they absolutely did not use any airbags to land Phoenix. It used a combination of parachutes and hydrazine-fueled thrusters to land.
Do we have any extremophiles that life in a highly oxidizing environment?
Yes. Most of it likes its oxygen as a gas, though, and not as part of a solid compound. Compared to what Earth was like when life began, it is a highly oxidizing environment now. Life hasn't just adapted to cope with it, it has literally become addicted to the stuff.
If fate of humanity depended on it, I bet we could ramp up production and start launching a rocket per day very fast. I mean "do you want to do everything you can to help this effort for a few years, or do you want that all you love will disapper in a firestorm in a few years" is kind of motivational question ;-)
You're being very optimistic. I would assume that your proposal will have to struggle with lots and lots of opposition from religious whackos ($DEITY will protect us / it's all $DEITY's will / it's gonna be the end of the world and that's exactly what we want, because we're gonna meet $DEITY then), people who will scream about how this will destroy the economy, people who will scream about how this will destroy the environment, incoming-asteroid deniers, conspiracy nutjobs, people who want to see more data before they're going to do anything at all, people who want to keep the government(s) out of this and let the invisible hand of the market solve the problem, people who will claim that this isn't a man-made problem and that we shouldn't do anything about it, people who will assert that other planets get hit by rocks and they're doing just fine, etc, etc.
If they do prove the oxidizer, would that rule out all life on mars?
No. It would rule out Earth-like life close to the surface. There could still be life underground, or extremophiles that have adapted to the chemical composition of the surface. Heck, an oxidizer is a dangerous, but also highly useful material. Get something that you can oxidize, and you've got an energy source.
There is no life on Mars because life would effect the atmosphere in ways discernible to us.
So where'd all the methane come from ?
Have you noticed that Mars does not have the right gravity for humans nor atmosphere, right?
Too little gravity is better than no gravity at all. With too little gravity, you can put the right load on your bones to keep them from decalcifying by just carrying some weight. You don't get that option in zero-G - even if you strap 100 kg of lead to your body, you'll still weigh 0 N.
Not to mention all the other mundane things known from Earth that will work if there's a little bit of gravity, but not in zero-G. Like toilets, showers, kitchens, beds, sinks, swimming pools, plumbing, etc.
Chemistry is a very simplified, yet extremely useful (since the circumstances where it fails are usually not encountered very often) model of a part of physics.
I wonder if they say something along the same lines to people who are about to get a full cavity search ... ?
No way. Vista doesn't even _try_ to run fast on any hardware.