If smart guns take hold... could you imagine legislation coming down that requires smart guns to be disabled on demand by the police/military? This sounds "great": police roll in to a hostage situation and disable the guns of the assailants and then storm in.
And what's worse, that ability won't stay limited to the government. When (not "if") the mechanism for disabling firearms in an area is compromised... well, say hello to on-demand "gun-free zones" for whatever malicious actor wants to do evil there.
You're perfectly welcome to legally drive an unregistered, uninsured vehicle from coast to coast without a license. Just stay on private property.
Oh, that's too much trouble? Well, there are public roads, but driving on them IS a privilege - and always has been, and for the safety of everyone else using them with you, there are a few conditions you need to meet before you can use them.
Just because it's relatively cheap to use Space X, if I have a 50-50 ( better or worse) chance that my $100 million satellite that took several years to design and build is going to get blown up, I'll pass.
Well, it kind of depends on your mission and payload. If you have a really expensive one-of-a-kind payload, I'm sure you can still specify you want a new boost stage. It will cost more, but since it can be recovered, probably still not as much as a throw-away one.
On the other hand, say you're someone like, oh, Orbcomm, that's launching tons of tiny satellites in multiple launches. Over several launches required to get a constellation into orbit, the cost of a single lost payload might actually be less than saving $30 million or whatever on each of five launches.
That said I don't think the barge was ever the target landing location. I think the barge was necessary to get regulatory approval to come in over the land. Prove you can hit your target first where you won't hurt / destroy anything then you can try it here.
I read some comments by Elon from earlier today that mentioned the F9 could get the payload/2nd stage to 100km and 5000m/s and land back at the launch site, OR to 100km and 8000m/s and land on a sea platform. So it sounds like the barge/platform might still be in the cards at some point.
I wonder how much of this was due to learning from the past misses and updating to version 1.1, and how much was from deciding to land on the ground and not on a barge at sea. Hell, learning from past misses and deciding not to land on a barge might be the same thing.
Landing on the barge the first few times was a good idea in spite of the wiggly landing pad in case they were way off target - they wouldn't hit anything but water.
They showed they could get it within the radius of the barge consistently, so now it makes sense to land it on a solid platform where it's easy to go get it.
I think the key is to make sure your kids understand that even though they love their media properties, they need to remain skeptical of marketing. I'm completely unaffected by advertising, but I am seeing that my 5 year old is now starting to inquire about add-ons to "free to play" apps. I don't love the fact that the marketers are manipulating his brain, but it's a fact of life. I've explained to him (in 5 year old terms) that things cost money, that parents have to work for money, that advertisers are only trying to get you to spend more money on their product and that he shouldn't believe everything they say. It's semi-effective. We don't let them sit in front of the TV, computer or iPad forever, and don't expose them to a million commercials.
It's fine to let kids and adults enjoy Disney or whatever -- they're an entertainment business, it makes sense that people enjoy their output. The problem comes when people shut off their brains and let the advertisers in.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s (I'm two years younger than you), my parents got me a subscription to Penny Power (later Zillions) magazine, which was published by Consumers Union as a kid-focused Consumer Reports, and taught pretty much exactly what you're talking about. I think that's mainly responsible for turning me into the anti-marketing cynic I am today. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything similar currently avialable (Zillions went online-only in 2000, I think). That's assuming you could pull the kids away from their electronic devices long enough to actually read it...
Except that the cars would mostly be charged when power is cheap (= plentiful, with little chance of brownouts). With a proper smart grid, that should actually improve the situation. If a demand peak comes along that would cause a brownout, just pull a small amount of power from a few thousand electric cars in the area.
Doesn't the UK have some pretty nasty defamation-type laws? I would think a single mistake that results in such a suit (win or lose) would cost a retailer decades worth of "shrinkage."
Please, please don't judge North Carolina by these rubes. This dumb little town is about 100 miles from Research Triangle Park, the largest concentration of PhDs in the world.
Obviously, Research Triangle Park has sucked up all the intelligence from the surrounding area. Definitely don't want one of those in my backyard, either.
How is airbnb or many of these other startups tech companies?
Sure they use technology, but so does the grocery store down the street.
They're a tech company because that's what they do: provide technology to facilitate the people actually doing the renting.
The company I work for is similar. We provide SaaS/IaaS for a specific industry (real estate/multi-family rental), but we don't participate directly in that industry. So, we're a tech company, not a real estate company.
(The C-130 should probably be included too, and would be much easier, since it is still in active production.)
Speaking of the C-130, if an AC-130 has a max T/O weight of 155,000 lbs and is as bad ass as it is, imagine what a gunship variant of a B-52, with a max T/O weight of 488,000 lbs, would be like. That thing would be a flying battleship. It probably can't get down to a slow enough cruising speed without stalling to be useful, but a plane packing 3 times the firepower of an AC-130 would have to be a beautiful sight.
Yes, I think the B-52 would be well suited to flying over and dropping 35 tons of shells out the bottom...:P As a bonus, you don't have to haul the propellant or casings all the way up there.
That idea may have worked out in the relatively lazy days of WWII, but even that is an aversion. Most of the best projects that were designed for WWII like your Tigers and your P-51 Mustangs were the result of programs that had started before the war, and in fullest anticipation of an upcoming major war with a known enemy. And they still took a couple of years to be produced, even with their programs working in overdrive on a Total War footing.
Lazy?? They were popping out one B-24 EVERY HOUR AND A HALF at one point during WW II...
And they were constantly popping out new variants of aircraft throughout the war, too, just as fast as they could figure out the improvements.
" help shift ownership of weather satellites from government to private ownership"
How is that a good thing that needs "help"?
Yeah... for all the things the US govt. sucks at, I don't think most people realize just how much they use and depend on the ubiquitous, free data generated by NOAA and NWS.
But, since accurate weather data is essential to any kind of military operation, don't expect the government to stop any time soon, whatever the private sector does.
Hell, I'd show my SO what the PD is doing, and we'd get in the car together and go trolling for letters. Then it can "ruin our marriage," or whatever, and we can see if we can get a nice chunk of money.
1. Note license plates in the LAPD employee parking lot, and around city hall 2. Make license plate-sized signs with the numbers 3. Hold them up in front of the ANPR cameras on these streets 4. ????
Besides all that, does anyone really think that, once it's technologically possible, the super-rich will NOT spend whatever it takes to have "perfect" children, whether it's legal where they currently live or not? It's not like you could prove anything once someone's pregnant.
Of course, since it's hereditary, maybe we should just look at it as the next stage of human evolution.
I think they really missed a trick with the ACA. What they should have done was figure out how much the Medicare tax would have to be if everyone was covered under Medicare. I'm guessing the increase would be less than what people have to pay for private insurance, given that Medicare currently covers only the absolute most expensive possible demographic for healthcare. Then give people the option of using Medicare just by increasing their tax to the calculated amount. If it's cheaper, there would be a stampede away from private insurers, and we'd basically have our national healthcare without people feeling as if they'd been forced into it. Hopefully getting some extra money in the system would also make it possible to compensate providers better.
It's not just medical devices. Anything reasonably proprietary has historically had the security by obscurity defense and that hasn't changed. Why do you think manufacturers of SCADA gear, connected sensors, etc. beg customers to put them on their own disconnected network?
Putting systems that could cause death or widespread mayhem on isolated networks is a good idea regardless of the security of the applications. It's one more layer an attacker has to bypass.
The problem is that doing so has become an excuse to NOT secure the applications.
So how do I skew the evidence? I chose my nickname in 1986 when I was young, and I still use it today. Since it hasn't changed at all I wonder how they presume to associate any "age" data with that.
Well, if you had chosen a childishly obscene user name back then, and still considered it appropriate to use, that could still provide some insight into your potential behavior today.
Is it a good game? Sure, but people never seem to learn that you should always wait a few months for modders to fix any Fallout or TES game.
Yes, Bethesda does seem to have a habit of letting their customers do all the bug-fixing work. They seem to have realized that they can get away with it, because my experience is that they never bother to fix much of anything. F3:NV was un-playable without a stack of mods, so I didn't even bother with F4.
I've found that a good rule of thumb for me is just not to ever spend more than about $20 on a game, because there seems to be an inverse relationship between cost and quality these days.
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If smart guns take hold... could you imagine legislation coming down that requires smart guns to be disabled on demand by the police/military? This sounds "great": police roll in to a hostage situation and disable the guns of the assailants and then storm in.
And what's worse, that ability won't stay limited to the government. When (not "if") the mechanism for disabling firearms in an area is compromised... well, say hello to on-demand "gun-free zones" for whatever malicious actor wants to do evil there.
They are only gaining some critical time at launch
Copied, yes, but potentially not played, if they hold it hostage to connectivity requirements back to the mother ship.
Then how did driving get turned into a privilege?
It didn't.
You're perfectly welcome to legally drive an unregistered, uninsured vehicle from coast to coast without a license. Just stay on private property.
Oh, that's too much trouble? Well, there are public roads, but driving on them IS a privilege - and always has been, and for the safety of everyone else using them with you, there are a few conditions you need to meet before you can use them.
Just because it's relatively cheap to use Space X, if I have a 50-50 ( better or worse) chance that my $100 million satellite that took several years to design and build is going to get blown up, I'll pass.
Well, it kind of depends on your mission and payload. If you have a really expensive one-of-a-kind payload, I'm sure you can still specify you want a new boost stage. It will cost more, but since it can be recovered, probably still not as much as a throw-away one.
On the other hand, say you're someone like, oh, Orbcomm, that's launching tons of tiny satellites in multiple launches. Over several launches required to get a constellation into orbit, the cost of a single lost payload might actually be less than saving $30 million or whatever on each of five launches.
I wonder if they pay good money for the generator to be "really" random, not like the pseudo-random crap you usually get with one-liners...
They're paying someone to run a lava lamp and webcam in their closet 24/7.
That said I don't think the barge was ever the target landing location. I think the barge was necessary to get regulatory approval to come in over the land. Prove you can hit your target first where you won't hurt / destroy anything then you can try it here.
I read some comments by Elon from earlier today that mentioned the F9 could get the payload/2nd stage to 100km and 5000m/s and land back at the launch site, OR to 100km and 8000m/s and land on a sea platform. So it sounds like the barge/platform might still be in the cards at some point.
I wonder how much of this was due to learning from the past misses and updating to version 1.1, and how much was from deciding to land on the ground and not on a barge at sea. Hell, learning from past misses and deciding not to land on a barge might be the same thing.
Landing on the barge the first few times was a good idea in spite of the wiggly landing pad in case they were way off target - they wouldn't hit anything but water.
They showed they could get it within the radius of the barge consistently, so now it makes sense to land it on a solid platform where it's easy to go get it.
I think the key is to make sure your kids understand that even though they love their media properties, they need to remain skeptical of marketing. I'm completely unaffected by advertising, but I am seeing that my 5 year old is now starting to inquire about add-ons to "free to play" apps. I don't love the fact that the marketers are manipulating his brain, but it's a fact of life. I've explained to him (in 5 year old terms) that things cost money, that parents have to work for money, that advertisers are only trying to get you to spend more money on their product and that he shouldn't believe everything they say. It's semi-effective. We don't let them sit in front of the TV, computer or iPad forever, and don't expose them to a million commercials.
It's fine to let kids and adults enjoy Disney or whatever -- they're an entertainment business, it makes sense that people enjoy their output. The problem comes when people shut off their brains and let the advertisers in.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s (I'm two years younger than you), my parents got me a subscription to Penny Power (later Zillions) magazine, which was published by Consumers Union as a kid-focused Consumer Reports, and taught pretty much exactly what you're talking about. I think that's mainly responsible for turning me into the anti-marketing cynic I am today. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything similar currently avialable (Zillions went online-only in 2000, I think). That's assuming you could pull the kids away from their electronic devices long enough to actually read it...
Except that the cars would mostly be charged when power is cheap (= plentiful, with little chance of brownouts). With a proper smart grid, that should actually improve the situation. If a demand peak comes along that would cause a brownout, just pull a small amount of power from a few thousand electric cars in the area.
Doesn't the UK have some pretty nasty defamation-type laws? I would think a single mistake that results in such a suit (win or lose) would cost a retailer decades worth of "shrinkage."
Please, please don't judge North Carolina by these rubes. This dumb little town is about 100 miles from Research Triangle Park, the largest concentration of PhDs in the world.
Obviously, Research Triangle Park has sucked up all the intelligence from the surrounding area. Definitely don't want one of those in my backyard, either.
How is airbnb or many of these other startups tech companies?
Sure they use technology, but so does the grocery store down the street.
They're a tech company because that's what they do: provide technology to facilitate the people actually doing the renting.
The company I work for is similar. We provide SaaS/IaaS for a specific industry (real estate/multi-family rental), but we don't participate directly in that industry. So, we're a tech company, not a real estate company.
(The C-130 should probably be included too, and would be much easier, since it is still in active production.)
Speaking of the C-130, if an AC-130 has a max T/O weight of 155,000 lbs and is as bad ass as it is, imagine what a gunship variant of a B-52, with a max T/O weight of 488,000 lbs, would be like. That thing would be a flying battleship. It probably can't get down to a slow enough cruising speed without stalling to be useful, but a plane packing 3 times the firepower of an AC-130 would have to be a beautiful sight.
Yes, I think the B-52 would be well suited to flying over and dropping 35 tons of shells out the bottom... :P As a bonus, you don't have to haul the propellant or casings all the way up there.
That idea may have worked out in the relatively lazy days of WWII, but even that is an aversion. Most of the best projects that were designed for WWII like your Tigers and your P-51 Mustangs were the result of programs that had started before the war, and in fullest anticipation of an upcoming major war with a known enemy. And they still took a couple of years to be produced, even with their programs working in overdrive on a Total War footing.
Lazy?? They were popping out one B-24 EVERY HOUR AND A HALF at one point during WW II...
And they were constantly popping out new variants of aircraft throughout the war, too, just as fast as they could figure out the improvements.
" help shift ownership of weather satellites from government to private ownership"
How is that a good thing that needs "help"?
Yeah... for all the things the US govt. sucks at, I don't think most people realize just how much they use and depend on the ubiquitous, free data generated by NOAA and NWS.
But, since accurate weather data is essential to any kind of military operation, don't expect the government to stop any time soon, whatever the private sector does.
Hell, I'd show my SO what the PD is doing, and we'd get in the car together and go trolling for letters. Then it can "ruin our marriage," or whatever, and we can see if we can get a nice chunk of money.
1. Note license plates in the LAPD employee parking lot, and around city hall
2. Make license plate-sized signs with the numbers
3. Hold them up in front of the ANPR cameras on these streets
4. ????
Besides all that, does anyone really think that, once it's technologically possible, the super-rich will NOT spend whatever it takes to have "perfect" children, whether it's legal where they currently live or not? It's not like you could prove anything once someone's pregnant.
Of course, since it's hereditary, maybe we should just look at it as the next stage of human evolution.
They're not stupid, they just want the ability to throw anyone they want in prison for 14 years just by emailing them a file.
I think they really missed a trick with the ACA. What they should have done was figure out how much the Medicare tax would have to be if everyone was covered under Medicare. I'm guessing the increase would be less than what people have to pay for private insurance, given that Medicare currently covers only the absolute most expensive possible demographic for healthcare. Then give people the option of using Medicare just by increasing their tax to the calculated amount. If it's cheaper, there would be a stampede away from private insurers, and we'd basically have our national healthcare without people feeling as if they'd been forced into it. Hopefully getting some extra money in the system would also make it possible to compensate providers better.
Time for a new hardware-based ad blocker...
It's not just medical devices. Anything reasonably proprietary has historically had the security by obscurity defense and that hasn't changed. Why do you think manufacturers of SCADA gear, connected sensors, etc. beg customers to put them on their own disconnected network?
Putting systems that could cause death or widespread mayhem on isolated networks is a good idea regardless of the security of the applications. It's one more layer an attacker has to bypass.
The problem is that doing so has become an excuse to NOT secure the applications.
So how do I skew the evidence? I chose my nickname in 1986 when I was young, and I still use it today. Since it hasn't changed at all I wonder how they presume to associate any "age" data with that.
Well, if you had chosen a childishly obscene user name back then, and still considered it appropriate to use, that could still provide some insight into your potential behavior today.
Because microwaves inducing currents in unknown explosive devices is a wonderful idea?
Is it a good game? Sure, but people never seem to learn that you should always wait a few months for modders to fix any Fallout or TES game.
Yes, Bethesda does seem to have a habit of letting their customers do all the bug-fixing work. They seem to have realized that they can get away with it, because my experience is that they never bother to fix much of anything. F3:NV was un-playable without a stack of mods, so I didn't even bother with F4.
I've found that a good rule of thumb for me is just not to ever spend more than about $20 on a game, because there seems to be an inverse relationship between cost and quality these days.