It was a copy of the NASA shuttle in concept and substantially in design. It had the same design criteria and mission goals. It flew one flight, unmanned and without cargo. Whether it was better or worse than the Shuttle at its intended tasks is pure speculation, as it never attempted any of them. And it was demonstrably less cost-effective than the Shuttle...unlike the Shuttle program, it ran out of money after one flight.
You're talking about easy access to explicit content anyway. If a kid's going to go through all the trouble of finding, downloading, and implementing an easter egg patch or a mod, why wouldn't he just surf over to the BangBus for some XXX action and skip all the hard work?
This has worked for me a number of times. It is based on the psychology of a traffic stop. Almost nothing is more scary or dangerous to a cop than a traffic stop--until they get to your window they have no idea if you have a gun, or are planning to back over them or drive away. So cops don't like traffic stops, especially at night. Putting them at ease goes a long way toward getting them in a mood to let you off.
If you're pulled over (assuming at night for worst case):
1) Turn off your engine and your lights. 2) Turn ON your interior light, so the cop can see into the car. 3) Place your keys on the dashboard where the cop can see them as he walks up to the car. 4) Place your hands on the steering wheel where the cop can see them and don't move them. If you didn't roll down your window right away, don't do so until the cop is right there with the flashlight on your hands. 5) Pre-narrate every movement. E.g. "My license is in my back pocket." [reach] or "My registration is in my glove box." [reach] Reach slowly and let the officer see what you're doing. Keep hands in sight as much as possible. 6) Admit no wrongdoing...but don't tell lies or make excuses, and be polite. "Flow of traffic" or "keeping up with traffic" is good if there's traffic, if not, you don't know how fast you were going. 7) If you're going to get a ticket, ask for a warning or a lesser fine. It doesn't hurt to ask, if it's done calmly and nicely.
To most cops, traffic stops are about safety -- making them feel safe, and emphasizing your safe driving record (assuming you have one!) can go a long way to getting a warning or a reduced fine.
Perhaps we should set caps on the amount of money that people can sue doctors for, which will cause the doctors' insurance premiums to go down...
Nope. In a free market system, companies charge what the market will bear. Insurance companies will keep raising their prices until doctors stop buying their product. Reducing their costs by limiting payouts will not change that. Huge share-holder driven insurance companies are in favor of limiting malpractice payouts--it's not because it will reduce their prices.
In addition to the costs of obtaining fissible nuclear fuel (which others have mentioned), you must consider the costs of managing the reators and the spent fuel if you are looking at the entire system of a particular fuel (as the original story does with ethanol).
While nuclear fuel is far and away the champion of energy density, by mass or by volume, it is also far and away the champion of associated costs. It's expensive to get nuclear fuel, expensive to manage reactors, and very expensive to deal with nuclear waste. In fact because spent fuel remains so toxic for so long, one can consider the cost of managing it to approach infinity from the perspective of human cultures.
Also consider the costs of an accident. Accidents WILL happen--these are human systems after all, and we've never yet created a mechanical system that is completely failure-proof (and never will). If an ethanol plant or gasoline plant experiences a leak or a catastrophic failure, it is a tragedy, but nowhere near the long-term health costs of a nuclear accident.
You also have to consider operating costs-- managing a nuclear system to the level of reliability required is much more expensive than managing a biofuel or even an oil system (since the required reliability is lower). Nuclear installations must operate perfectly all the time...you're basically talking about providing almost "infinite 9's" reliability...anyone who's sourced high-nines electric power knows how quickly cost escalates with reliability.
American cities are not static objects, they are in flux constantly. Designing or redesigning a city doesn't really imply ceasing one product and replacing it with another (like, say, redesigning a car or stereo). Rather it's more a statement of in which direction the constant flux should be influenced. Influence can exerted by tax incentives, zoning laws, public/private partnerships, and public works projects.
The point is lower power. Since signal decreases as a square of distance, even small reductions in transmit power will have a dramatic difference in the noise signature of the Earth at multi-light-year distances. Ultra wideband allows lower power.
As an aside, the transition to heavily encoded packet RF also reduces our signature to ET. Anyone with a long enough wire and a speaker can pick up analog TV or radio and recognize it as synthetic. Can the same be said for highly dense encrypted digital traffic? Even my 56k modem sounds like white noise to me.
Just because you're not under attack on home ground and don't hear people running and screaming is no reason to get so content that you call the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil.
Calling Bush "evil" is a bit much, but let's not go too far in the opposite direction either. On September 11, 2001, Bush had been president for almost 8 full months. He may have done OK responding to the terrorist attacks, but he certainly did not keep them from happening.
In the book "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," Marlin Eller, one of the original Windows programmers, describes in great detail how Microsoft developed their Pen Windows product. It includes such happy little details as a Microsoft employee surreptitiously taping a GO demo, with Microsoft then creating a *fake demo* that purported to show their software doing the exact same things (when in fact it could not).
The chapter ends with Marlin lamenting the poor product that was Pen Windows, and its poor market performance. I'll paraphrase the response he got from a fellow MSer:
Don't you get it? This was all about defense. We blocked that kick.
Because you are fixated on the concept of property. All of your examples rely on real property for the analogies, but radio signals are not private property. They are public property, regulated by the FCC. By virtue of broadcasting them you are making them available for public consumption. Federal law is quite clear about this.
In addition your Internet connection is not property, it is a service. Theft of service laws might apply, but property or trespass laws do not.
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It was a copy of the NASA shuttle in concept and substantially in design. It had the same design criteria and mission goals. It flew one flight, unmanned and without cargo. Whether it was better or worse than the Shuttle at its intended tasks is pure speculation, as it never attempted any of them. And it was demonstrably less cost-effective than the Shuttle...unlike the Shuttle program, it ran out of money after one flight.
The value of the tort system is not in the amount of the awards, but in their inability to be predicted.
You're talking about easy access to explicit content anyway. If a kid's going to go through all the trouble of finding, downloading, and implementing an easter egg patch or a mod, why wouldn't he just surf over to the BangBus for some XXX action and skip all the hard work?
This has worked for me a number of times. It is based on the psychology of a traffic stop. Almost nothing is more scary or dangerous to a cop than a traffic stop--until they get to your window they have no idea if you have a gun, or are planning to back over them or drive away. So cops don't like traffic stops, especially at night. Putting them at ease goes a long way toward getting them in a mood to let you off.
If you're pulled over (assuming at night for worst case):
1) Turn off your engine and your lights.
2) Turn ON your interior light, so the cop can see into the car.
3) Place your keys on the dashboard where the cop can see them as he walks up to the car.
4) Place your hands on the steering wheel where the cop can see them and don't move them. If you didn't roll down your window right away, don't do so until the cop is right there with the flashlight on your hands.
5) Pre-narrate every movement. E.g. "My license is in my back pocket." [reach] or "My registration is in my glove box." [reach] Reach slowly and let the officer see what you're doing. Keep hands in sight as much as possible.
6) Admit no wrongdoing...but don't tell lies or make excuses, and be polite. "Flow of traffic" or "keeping up with traffic" is good if there's traffic, if not, you don't know how fast you were going.
7) If you're going to get a ticket, ask for a warning or a lesser fine. It doesn't hurt to ask, if it's done calmly and nicely.
To most cops, traffic stops are about safety -- making them feel safe, and emphasizing your safe driving record (assuming you have one!) can go a long way to getting a warning or a reduced fine.
Perhaps we should set caps on the amount of money that people can sue doctors for, which will cause the doctors' insurance premiums to go down...
Nope. In a free market system, companies charge what the market will bear. Insurance companies will keep raising their prices until doctors stop buying their product. Reducing their costs by limiting payouts will not change that. Huge share-holder driven insurance companies are in favor of limiting malpractice payouts--it's not because it will reduce their prices.
In addition to the costs of obtaining fissible nuclear fuel (which others have mentioned), you must consider the costs of managing the reators and the spent fuel if you are looking at the entire system of a particular fuel (as the original story does with ethanol).
While nuclear fuel is far and away the champion of energy density, by mass or by volume, it is also far and away the champion of associated costs. It's expensive to get nuclear fuel, expensive to manage reactors, and very expensive to deal with nuclear waste. In fact because spent fuel remains so toxic for so long, one can consider the cost of managing it to approach infinity from the perspective of human cultures.
Also consider the costs of an accident. Accidents WILL happen--these are human systems after all, and we've never yet created a mechanical system that is completely failure-proof (and never will). If an ethanol plant or gasoline plant experiences a leak or a catastrophic failure, it is a tragedy, but nowhere near the long-term health costs of a nuclear accident.
You also have to consider operating costs-- managing a nuclear system to the level of reliability required is much more expensive than managing a biofuel or even an oil system (since the required reliability is lower). Nuclear installations must operate perfectly all the time...you're basically talking about providing almost "infinite 9's" reliability...anyone who's sourced high-nines electric power knows how quickly cost escalates with reliability.
American cities are not static objects, they are in flux constantly. Designing or redesigning a city doesn't really imply ceasing one product and replacing it with another (like, say, redesigning a car or stereo). Rather it's more a statement of in which direction the constant flux should be influenced. Influence can exerted by tax incentives, zoning laws, public/private partnerships, and public works projects.
The Supreme Court has ROUNDLY REJECTED prior restraint!
The point is lower power. Since signal decreases as a square of distance, even small reductions in transmit power will have a dramatic difference in the noise signature of the Earth at multi-light-year distances. Ultra wideband allows lower power.
As an aside, the transition to heavily encoded packet RF also reduces our signature to ET. Anyone with a long enough wire and a speaker can pick up analog TV or radio and recognize it as synthetic. Can the same be said for highly dense encrypted digital traffic? Even my 56k modem sounds like white noise to me.
There is one in DC about a mile from my office, the installation was subsidized by (IIRC) GM.
Just because you're not under attack on home ground and don't hear people running and screaming is no reason to get so content that you call the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil.
Calling Bush "evil" is a bit much, but let's not go too far in the opposite direction either. On September 11, 2001, Bush had been president for almost 8 full months. He may have done OK responding to the terrorist attacks, but he certainly did not keep them from happening.
In the book "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," Marlin Eller, one of the original Windows programmers, describes in great detail how Microsoft developed their Pen Windows product. It includes such happy little details as a Microsoft employee surreptitiously taping a GO demo, with Microsoft then creating a *fake demo* that purported to show their software doing the exact same things (when in fact it could not).
The chapter ends with Marlin lamenting the poor product that was Pen Windows, and its poor market performance. I'll paraphrase the response he got from a fellow MSer:
Don't you get it? This was all about defense. We blocked that kick.
Because you are fixated on the concept of property. All of your examples rely on real property for the analogies, but radio signals are not private property. They are public property, regulated by the FCC. By virtue of broadcasting them you are making them available for public consumption. Federal law is quite clear about this.
In addition your Internet connection is not property, it is a service. Theft of service laws might apply, but property or trespass laws do not.