Typical drivel that everyone has to be protected/informed of the risks of everything.
Water intoxication isn't "everything". It's a somewhat obscure, but very real danger that isn't immediately obvious to someone who doesn't have a basic understanding of cell physiology.
Should we warn people about excessive exercise (does your gym have liability if you die on the treadmill?), excessive sex?,
Usually, the human body has pretty good safeguards in place. If you want to kill yourself by excessive exercise/sex, you either need to have a pre-existing medical condition, or be in extremely good physical shape.
excessive eating (McD's has been sued about too many Big Macs causing some guy to be really fat...they won!)?
That should be obvious even to the dullest knife in the drawer. However, if McD advertised their products as being completely harmless in unlimited quantities (much like the tobacco industry did/does), that's another can of worms.
If you make a building really watertight you have tons of water problems related to mold and bacteria.
Eh ?
Buildings need to be quite airtight to be energy efficient. This includes being watertight, too. If you need to get excess humidity out of the interior, that's what drains, windows (and other types of intentional, controllable air exchange mechanisms) and heating/air conditioning are for.
A building that's not airtight/watertight enough - now that's a sure recipe for mold.
Most modern UK houses are built with aerated concrete (which this doesn't seem to be able to produce, from all I can tell), which makes a substantial difference to the amount of insulation you'll require.
There's no such thing as "too much insulation" on a house, within reasonable limits (shouldn't fill all the space of your property). The "requirement" is a minimum level, adding more will help reduce the need for both heating and air conditioning.
They are NOT Negligent, they did WARN the contestants,
Sorry, but what did they warn them of ? "Drinking too much water can have adverse side effects."
Haha. The average person doesn't know that drinking four liters (even less if you drink demineralized water) or more can and will kill you.
The whole idea of this contest is fscked up. Whoever came up with this sh1t needs to go to jail so their crazy ideas don't kill any more clueless people. Sheesh.
The poor people in Africa need government that will not restrict free trade. It is not technological problem, it is a political problem.
Oh yes.. free trade, the solution for everything.
I'm sure there is plenty of free trade in most of the countries there. Heck, with enough money, you can probably buy any government official, from a lowly cop up to the head honcho (if anything like that exists and the country is not in a state of civil war and/or quasi-anarchy).
Free trade doesn't stamp out corruption. And the latter is the biggest problem.
Concrete is good for tropical and warm climates where rainfall is not too high, but in the UK where humidity is high most of the year it is a recipe for damp and mould.
Actually, the recipe for mold is insufficient insulation and improper heating/ventilation habits.
None of these have particularly much to do with concrete, other than concrete requiring a few more cm of insulation on the outside than bricks.
Wrong! We live in a democracy, not a benevolent dictatorship. The purpose of the U.S. government is to do what its citizens want it to do, not what the government deems to be best.
Sorry, but still wrong. The purpose of the US government is to do what gets and keeps them elected. This includes scaring the voters into voting for them against any rationality, and make the laws that their financial supporters want, among many other things. Doing that its citizens want is only a very marginal point, which is somewhere at the bottom of the list (behind things like "Saying what the citizens want to hear.", "Appearing to do what the citizens want it do.", etc).
No. The authorities have no clue who those 22 million people are. That data never left the credit card companies.
If you know, say, 200 people, and police ask you "Have you seen this guy (who happens to be one of those 200) at that location on that day ?", did the 200 people you know suddenly become suspects ? No.
by the by, what is the German equivalent of the US's Social Security Number
The German equivalent of the SSN isn't as widely misused as a personal tracking number as the US SSN is. It's used for Social Security purposes only. Also, it's a fairly unwieldy chunk of a number (too many digits to memorize, and it's got letters in it, too), printed on a fairly unwieldy piece of paper (too stubborn to fit in a wallet), so on the rare occasions that you actually need it, you'll dig out the folder that has said piece of paper in it and copy it.
and they are going to "sift through the transactions of over 22 million customers".
Who is "they" ? Read the article. "They" are the credit card companies. The police or other authorities never had a look at all of these transactions.
It seems to me that those darn Germans are going to do it by considering half the adult population as suspects.
No. The 22 million people were never considered suspects, and the police doesn't know what most of them did. Only those who actually transferred that exact amount to that exact account are on the list of suspects that was handed to the police. And that number is only a tiny fraction of 22 million.
What heating? As I understood it, this was sound waves, not the microwaves.
In that case, you need to re-read the description of the thing.
It uses focused ultrasound to generate heat at a very specific spot inside the body. Ultrasound is just a form of energy, and some of it is absorbed (-> converted to heat) in the tissue. For "imaging" ultrasound, this heating is neglegible, but if you crank up the output volume enough and focus several ultrasound beams on one specific bit of tissue, you can generate notable heating effects - up to the point where clotting and thermal denaturation (i.e. burns) occurs. Since you are using several beams, the spot where this occurs can be deep inside the body, without leaving any burns on the paths that the individual beams travel (in that regard, it is somewhat similar to radiation therapy of cancer).
The same effect is already used to treat various types of cancer - you can overheat the tumor (which is especially good since most cancers are more susceptible to heat than health tissue) and cause it to die off.
If it works quickly enough, I'd suggest a capacitor array. Capacitors have been used for this kind of thing since the end of one-use flash bulbs in cameras.
It does not work quickly enough. This isn't a light source, but an ultrasound source (piezo crystals, mostly). Also, if you input the energy too quickly, you will leave burn marks on the paths of the individual ultrasound beams.
Except that a bullet needs you to aim, and you need line-of-sight.
For the ultrasonic thingie, you'll need skin contact, preferably improved by contact gel. It also takes a while to work, and requires the blood to be stagnant to work best (as in an internal injury. Intact veins are bad, on arteries it's pretty much impossible without frying the victim). "Hold still while I kill you." ?
Remember, this thing doesn't clot blood by ultrasound magic. It clots blood by heating it with focused ultrasound.
An ultrasonic blood-clotting weapon could surely be made to work through walls, if the army threw enough money at it.
The laws of physics say no.
And beyond the battlefield, an ultrasonic blood-clotting weapon is a great way to cause a seemingly "natural" death through stroke.
Except for the internal burns this thing would leave. If you want a seemingly natural death, bribe/blackmail the pathologist and have the body incinerated right after the autopsy.
Why ? The point of an assassination is to off the victim and prove that you can get away with it (as a warning to others). The more creative you are, the better.
Dying of a stroke because of a blood clot in the brain is much less suspicious
The heating will cause tissue denaturation. Basically, an internal burn.
How about the ability to increase the area affected fairly easily?
To increase the affected area, you either need to increase the exposure time or the power of the device. Either of the two will at some point force you to run the thing off something other than batteries.
There are plenty of reasons that this could be developed despite the existence of bullets.
There are lots and lots of other, more creative ways to kill people than bullets. I've heard that obscure radioactive isotopes are the latest big thing.
... is being able to squeeze the cust^H^H^H^Hconsumer for the maximum amount of money while getting away with being able to provide a minimum of (or no) quality, service and support (or alternatively, charge ridiculous amounts for each of those three). This is possible because the individual "consumer" has very little leverage against the "producer" ('Not gonna buy your stuff anymore!'), compared to what a corporation could muster ('Not gonna buy several megabucks worth of your stuff anymore!').
Most places I've rented from, require you to provide your own appliances....
I assume you're talking about other places than the USA, where certain appliances are mandatory (stove, I think) and the order of appliances is sort of fixed, so the apartment ads only say "4 appliances", and you'll have to know that this means (sorry, my memory is somewhat rusty) "stove, fridge, washer, dryer".
For those of you who haven't been paying attention until now, the refrigeration equipment in your home is the single largest user of electricity.
Maybe if you're living in the US. In more energy-conscious places, where energy usage is actually an advertised property of refrigerators, you'll usually get one that needs slightly less than 1 kWh per day (that's for a fridge + freezer combination). I think my computer can beat that, as can the lighting in my apartment.
But it makes more sense to launch missions of that type from an already-established colony in orbit.
Yeah right. It makes so much sense to launch a lot of stuff into orbit, just to use a small amount of that stuff to go to the moon.
There's nothing in orbit that can be used by the colony, apart from solar energy. Everything else has to be shipped up there, or generated, or simply isn't available (gravity, anyone ?).
On the moon, there's at least a chance to use some local resources (Oxygen, building material, maybe water). And gravity. There's a lot of difference between pratically zero-G and 0.16 G. In the latter, stuff will start acting somewhat like on earth (things/liquids fall on the floor, people can actually walk and distinguish between up and down). You could have an actual kitchen on a moon base - unthinkable in zero G.
Unfortunately, for many people that isn't true. A lot of employment contracts these days, particularly from big companies, seem to claim blanket IP rights to everything the employee does while employed (regardless of any connection to the employment).
Your fortune cookie for today says:
Beware of employee who writes pr0n mods for popular computer games in his spare time.
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Water intoxication isn't "everything". It's a somewhat obscure, but very real danger that isn't immediately obvious to someone who doesn't have a basic understanding of cell physiology. Should we warn people about excessive exercise (does your gym have liability if you die on the treadmill?), excessive sex?,
Usually, the human body has pretty good safeguards in place. If you want to kill yourself by excessive exercise/sex, you either need to have a pre-existing medical condition, or be in extremely good physical shape. excessive eating (McD's has been sued about too many Big Macs causing some guy to be really fat...they won!)? That should be obvious even to the dullest knife in the drawer. However, if McD advertised their products as being completely harmless in unlimited quantities (much like the tobacco industry did/does), that's another can of worms.
Eh ?
Buildings need to be quite airtight to be energy efficient. This includes being watertight, too. If you need to get excess humidity out of the interior, that's what drains, windows (and other types of intentional, controllable air exchange mechanisms) and heating/air conditioning are for.
A building that's not airtight/watertight enough - now that's a sure recipe for mold.
There's no such thing as "too much insulation" on a house, within reasonable limits (shouldn't fill all the space of your property). The "requirement" is a minimum level, adding more will help reduce the need for both heating and air conditioning.
They are NOT Negligent, they did WARN the contestants,
Sorry, but what did they warn them of ? "Drinking too much water can have adverse side effects."
Haha. The average person doesn't know that drinking four liters (even less if you drink demineralized water) or more can and will kill you.
The whole idea of this contest is fscked up. Whoever came up with this sh1t needs to go to jail so their crazy ideas don't kill any more clueless people. Sheesh.
Cheapest, fastest thing I can think of is to use a balloon inside the room. Spray your ceiling from above, then deflate it.
You did remember to file a patent for this idea, right ?
Well, the robot won't change anything about the prices for real estate (which can be up to 50% of the price of the house), so ...
Oh yes
I'm sure there is plenty of free trade in most of the countries there. Heck, with enough money, you can probably buy any government official, from a lowly cop up to the head honcho (if anything like that exists and the country is not in a state of civil war and/or quasi-anarchy).
Free trade doesn't stamp out corruption. And the latter is the biggest problem.
Actually, the recipe for mold is insufficient insulation and improper heating/ventilation habits.
None of these have particularly much to do with concrete, other than concrete requiring a few more cm of insulation on the outside than bricks.
But now, they can just have a computer give them a BSOD.
Sorry, but still wrong. The purpose of the US government is to do what gets and keeps them elected. This includes scaring the voters into voting for them against any rationality, and make the laws that their financial supporters want, among many other things. Doing that its citizens want is only a very marginal point, which is somewhere at the bottom of the list (behind things like "Saying what the citizens want to hear.", "Appearing to do what the citizens want it do.", etc).
No. The authorities have no clue who those 22 million people are. That data never left the credit card companies.
If you know, say, 200 people, and police ask you "Have you seen this guy (who happens to be one of those 200) at that location on that day ?", did the 200 people you know suddenly become suspects ? No.
The German equivalent of the SSN isn't as widely misused as a personal tracking number as the US SSN is. It's used for Social Security purposes only. Also, it's a fairly unwieldy chunk of a number (too many digits to memorize, and it's got letters in it, too), printed on a fairly unwieldy piece of paper (too stubborn to fit in a wallet), so on the rare occasions that you actually need it, you'll dig out the folder that has said piece of paper in it and copy it.
Who is "they" ? Read the article. "They" are the credit card companies. The police or other authorities never had a look at all of these transactions.
It seems to me that those darn Germans are going to do it by considering half the adult population as suspects.
No. The 22 million people were never considered suspects, and the police doesn't know what most of them did. Only those who actually transferred that exact amount to that exact account are on the list of suspects that was handed to the police. And that number is only a tiny fraction of 22 million.
Did you read the stupid questions carefully ? One of them is about fricking Nazi war crimes. Didn't the Second World War end over 60 years ago ?
What happens if anyone who's less than 60 years old checks a "yes" there ? I'm curious.
In that case, you need to re-read the description of the thing.
It uses focused ultrasound to generate heat at a very specific spot inside the body. Ultrasound is just a form of energy, and some of it is absorbed (-> converted to heat) in the tissue. For "imaging" ultrasound, this heating is neglegible, but if you crank up the output volume enough and focus several ultrasound beams on one specific bit of tissue, you can generate notable heating effects - up to the point where clotting and thermal denaturation (i.e. burns) occurs. Since you are using several beams, the spot where this occurs can be deep inside the body, without leaving any burns on the paths that the individual beams travel (in that regard, it is somewhat similar to radiation therapy of cancer).
The same effect is already used to treat various types of cancer - you can overheat the tumor (which is especially good since most cancers are more susceptible to heat than health tissue) and cause it to die off.
If it works quickly enough, I'd suggest a capacitor array. Capacitors have been used for this kind of thing since the end of one-use flash bulbs in cameras.
It does not work quickly enough. This isn't a light source, but an ultrasound source (piezo crystals, mostly). Also, if you input the energy too quickly, you will leave burn marks on the paths of the individual ultrasound beams.
Cancer chemotherapy. Brought to you by chemical warfare research.
The side that has more club-wielding people would win the war.
For the ultrasonic thingie, you'll need skin contact, preferably improved by contact gel. It also takes a while to work, and requires the blood to be stagnant to work best (as in an internal injury. Intact veins are bad, on arteries it's pretty much impossible without frying the victim). "Hold still while I kill you." ?
Remember, this thing doesn't clot blood by ultrasound magic. It clots blood by heating it with focused ultrasound.
An ultrasonic blood-clotting weapon could surely be made to work through walls, if the army threw enough money at it.
The laws of physics say no.
And beyond the battlefield, an ultrasonic blood-clotting weapon is a great way to cause a seemingly "natural" death through stroke.
Except for the internal burns this thing would leave. If you want a seemingly natural death, bribe/blackmail the pathologist and have the body incinerated right after the autopsy.
Why ? The point of an assassination is to off the victim and prove that you can get away with it (as a warning to others). The more creative you are, the better.
Dying of a stroke because of a blood clot in the brain is much less suspicious The heating will cause tissue denaturation. Basically, an internal burn.
How about the ability to increase the area affected fairly easily?
To increase the affected area, you either need to increase the exposure time or the power of the device. Either of the two will at some point force you to run the thing off something other than batteries.
There are plenty of reasons that this could be developed despite the existence of bullets.
There are lots and lots of other, more creative ways to kill people than bullets. I've heard that obscure radioactive isotopes are the latest big thing.
... is being able to squeeze the cust^H^H^H^Hconsumer for the maximum amount of money while getting away with being able to provide a minimum of (or no) quality, service and support (or alternatively, charge ridiculous amounts for each of those three). This is possible because the individual "consumer" has very little leverage against the "producer" ('Not gonna buy your stuff anymore!'), compared to what a corporation could muster ('Not gonna buy several megabucks worth of your stuff anymore!').
I assume you're talking about other places than the USA, where certain appliances are mandatory (stove, I think) and the order of appliances is sort of fixed, so the apartment ads only say "4 appliances", and you'll have to know that this means (sorry, my memory is somewhat rusty) "stove, fridge, washer, dryer".
Maybe if you're living in the US. In more energy-conscious places, where energy usage is actually an advertised property of refrigerators, you'll usually get one that needs slightly less than 1 kWh per day (that's for a fridge + freezer combination). I think my computer can beat that, as can the lighting in my apartment.
Never underestimate the determination, resourcefulness and arms' length of a toddler.
Mine's not yet 15 months old, but he can almost touch the cooking surface.
Yeah right. It makes so much sense to launch a lot of stuff into orbit, just to use a small amount of that stuff to go to the moon.
There's nothing in orbit that can be used by the colony, apart from solar energy. Everything else has to be shipped up there, or generated, or simply isn't available (gravity, anyone ?).
On the moon, there's at least a chance to use some local resources (Oxygen, building material, maybe water). And gravity. There's a lot of difference between pratically zero-G and 0.16 G. In the latter, stuff will start acting somewhat like on earth (things/liquids fall on the floor, people can actually walk and distinguish between up and down). You could have an actual kitchen on a moon base - unthinkable in zero G.
Your fortune cookie for today says:
Beware of employee who writes pr0n mods for popular computer games in his spare time.