Inside the archway, an inflatable cuff tightens around the arm, holding it in place and restricting blood flow to make the veins easier to see.
So far so goo, standard procedure... but wait, a few lines later:
The vein is examined with ultrasound to confirm that it is large enough and has sufficient blood flowing through it.
How much blood do they expect to flow through veins that have been blocked by external pressure? I hope it's just a problem with the article, not with the actual design.
Even deeper than you think. It probably started with no one ever doing a hazard analysis on the design, which lead to no one ever realizing that the machine can and will kill people, given the wrong kind of malfunction.
If no one ever says "Hey, this thing can kill people, what do we do to prevent that?", then no prevention is ever going to take place.
... thank the backers for the gratuitous funding, come up with a reasonable scope for the game, and promise to use the rest of the money for funding the next game and/or for unforseen expenses that pop up during development?
I have often pondered this as well... if there are another civilization out there. Advanced enough to build interstellar transport. Would they by their advanced technology be benevolent?
Or would they be desperately looking for any habitable planet that had the capacity to support life?
If they're advanced enough to build interstellar transport, they should have become used to living in space.
From what I can tell, our Earth is a veritable jewel in the vastness of space. Our water is abundant, yet we have land, a stable orbit, a stable Sun. And a rich assortment of mineral elements.
Water is abundant in the universe. And earth is nothing special in terms of mineral composition. Additionally, all of Earths mineral abundance is stuck in a nasty gravity well.
I don't think the aliens, even if they're looking for resources, would bother coming to Earth. They'll probably strip-mine the entire solar system without ever bothering with those four specks of dust closest to the sun.
There are generally two reasons anything would want to attack Earth: 1) we're a threat. 2) we have resources not more easily obtained elsewhere
You forgot 3) we're not a threat (and therefore lots of fun to push around). Don't tell me you're excluding the possibility that the aliens might be acting like school bullies.
... big-ass magnetic fields around a spaceship, could the same magnetic fields be used for propulsion (by interacting with the magnetic field of the sun or another nearby celestial body, or with the solar wind)? Would be nice to move around without having to carry reaction mass...
I suggest storing it molecular form by pairs of four different bases (guanine, thymine, adenine, cytosine) combined in an aesthetically pleasing, double helical molecule!
This way you have a stream of inventions on-going and no issues with losing the ideas to secrecy.
How does this system prevent abuse, e.g. by people receiving funds without ever planning to invent anything?
Or, if inventions are funded retroactively, how does this system determine the financial worth of an invention?
How does this system reward alternative approaches that might lead to even more inventions? If you can use any patent, you'll never have to strain your brain to devise a way to get around existing patents or come up with something that's better than existing patents.
No patent protection: Everyone tries to keep their innovations secret. Innovations get lost because they're kept secret and are forgotten at some point. Inventors are kept from inventing things because it's hard to profit from their inventions, either because they're immediately copied or because of all the effort to keep them secret.
Tons of patent protection: Great, invent something once and you and your descendants are set for life (just like copyright works today). Invention is stifled because inventors have no motivation to keep inventing after their first breakthrough - they're too busy throwing money out the window.
So the sensible level of patent protection needs to be between those two extremes. Allow inventors to profit from the publication of their inventions, but keep the protection short enough to motivate an ongoing process of new inventions.
... that there's no market for the mined resources in space, and it's too expensive to transport them back to earth.
It's the main problem of private sector space exploration - the companies need to make their money "on earth", but mine the resources "off earth".
Of course, if you had another company with assets in space that you could sell your stuff too, the problem would be greatly diminished. That would require a criticial mass of private space activites that would sustain an exchange of resources "off earth" while conducting the payments "on earth".
While legally correct, the short response does not provide anything for the public good, while the long response provided me with a few good laughs, which is definitelty good.
But "the letter of the law" has no real legal foundation.
Yes it does. It provides a limit to interpretation. If the letter of the law says you're getting up to 40 years for murder, and you're sentenced to 45 years, then quite certainly this would be grounds for an appeal.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to break it to you ... but do you believe in pink unicorns, too?
That all depends on your, err, preferences.
The right programming could turn it into a fine torturebot, too.
Inside the archway, an inflatable cuff tightens around the arm, holding it in place and restricting blood flow to make the veins easier to see.
So far so goo, standard procedure ... but wait, a few lines later:
The vein is examined with ultrasound to confirm that it is large enough and has sufficient blood flowing through it.
How much blood do they expect to flow through veins that have been blocked by external pressure? I hope it's just a problem with the article, not with the actual design.
Even deeper than you think. It probably started with no one ever doing a hazard analysis on the design, which lead to no one ever realizing that the machine can and will kill people, given the wrong kind of malfunction.
If no one ever says "Hey, this thing can kill people, what do we do to prevent that?", then no prevention is ever going to take place.
... the consumption of leaded gasoline skyrocketed, dropping the average IQ by another 20 points and causing more people to become violent criminals.
... to the age of being "tough-ass" on crime. With equal parts of both.
2. You can sue facebook without fear of being turned down due to "national security".
Sometimes Therac-style, sometimes WoW-style ...
... where they hide the kangaroo really well?
... thank the backers for the gratuitous funding, come up with a reasonable scope for the game, and promise to use the rest of the money for funding the next game and/or for unforseen expenses that pop up during development?
Computer science as much about coding as astronomy is about building telescopes ...
Or would they be desperately looking for any habitable planet that had the capacity to support life?
If they're advanced enough to build interstellar transport, they should have become used to living in space.
From what I can tell, our Earth is a veritable jewel in the vastness of space. Our water is abundant, yet we have land, a stable orbit, a stable Sun. And a rich assortment of mineral elements.
Water is abundant in the universe. And earth is nothing special in terms of mineral composition. Additionally, all of Earths mineral abundance is stuck in a nasty gravity well.
I don't think the aliens, even if they're looking for resources, would bother coming to Earth. They'll probably strip-mine the entire solar system without ever bothering with those four specks of dust closest to the sun.
Religion. Don't forget religion. The aliens might be a bunch of religious whackos worse than anything you can find on Earth.
You forgot 3) we're not a threat (and therefore lots of fun to push around). Don't tell me you're excluding the possibility that the aliens might be acting like school bullies.
They're merely feigning incompetence. Demonstrating a working package tracking system would be delivering proof that they're tracking everything.
Oh, and can't we keep it Roman in this Solar System? We still need the Greek names for the next system.
This is now considered a right of US citizens, not a human right in general? I think I need to change my travel plans...
(What's a 'free' trial anyway? Is that 'free' as in 'beer', or some other type of 'free'?)
Energy-wise a single hurricane can easily dissipate hundreds of thousands of times as much energy as our largest nukes.
I have yet to see a hurricane sterilize and vitrify an area a few kilometers across.
... big-ass magnetic fields around a spaceship, could the same magnetic fields be used for propulsion (by interacting with the magnetic field of the sun or another nearby celestial body, or with the solar wind)? Would be nice to move around without having to carry reaction mass ...
I suggest storing it molecular form by pairs of four different bases (guanine, thymine, adenine, cytosine) combined in an aesthetically pleasing, double helical molecule!
How does this system prevent abuse, e.g. by people receiving funds without ever planning to invent anything?
Or, if inventions are funded retroactively, how does this system determine the financial worth of an invention?
How does this system reward alternative approaches that might lead to even more inventions? If you can use any patent, you'll never have to strain your brain to devise a way to get around existing patents or come up with something that's better than existing patents.
No patent protection: Everyone tries to keep their innovations secret. Innovations get lost because they're kept secret and are forgotten at some point. Inventors are kept from inventing things because it's hard to profit from their inventions, either because they're immediately copied or because of all the effort to keep them secret.
Tons of patent protection: Great, invent something once and you and your descendants are set for life (just like copyright works today). Invention is stifled because inventors have no motivation to keep inventing after their first breakthrough - they're too busy throwing money out the window.
So the sensible level of patent protection needs to be between those two extremes. Allow inventors to profit from the publication of their inventions, but keep the protection short enough to motivate an ongoing process of new inventions.
It's the main problem of private sector space exploration - the companies need to make their money "on earth", but mine the resources "off earth".
Of course, if you had another company with assets in space that you could sell your stuff too, the problem would be greatly diminished. That would require a criticial mass of private space activites that would sustain an exchange of resources "off earth" while conducting the payments "on earth".
While legally correct, the short response does not provide anything for the public good, while the long response provided me with a few good laughs, which is definitelty good.
Yes it does. It provides a limit to interpretation. If the letter of the law says you're getting up to 40 years for murder, and you're sentenced to 45 years, then quite certainly this would be grounds for an appeal.