It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth,' he said yesterday. 'The US was lagging behind in the space race.'
I highly doubt there would have been a mushroom cloud on the moon. If I remember correctly a mushrom cloud is formed because the slight decrease in air pressure going up makes it a lot easier for the shockwave to move in that direction. At a certain point this effect becomes less important and the cloud becomes more or less spherical, hence the mushroom. On the moon there is no atmosphere to speak of, so I would expect a more spherical cloud.
It still only takes one person to do enough damage to ruin the lives of dozens, if not more.
That is true. However you too are a potential threat. Who knows if someday you go nuts and shoot somebody? So how do we stop this from happening. It's easy, install camera's in all houses. Have echelon like computers analyse everything that is said and done. If you say the wrong thing you are automatically electrocuted via the chip in your brain. It sounds extreme, but severely reduces crime rates and will make productive citizens out of us all.
Easiest way to be safe is to just shoot all criminals (cheap too).
Agreed. This would result in a drastic decrease in crime, which would benefit everybody. I don't see how you can argue against it really - after all, the only people being harmed are those that have done something wrong. And prevention is better than a cure - this would be a great way to prevent people from commiting criminal acts - certainly better than the threat of "community service". And prisons take up a lot of money we could use in better ways - why should honest people pay for criminals to live in luxury?
The simplest argument that is irrefutable is that the justice system is fallable. Would you like to live in a society, where if you are accidently accused, you get shot? Furthermore societies differ, what is a crime in one country is not in another and for each country this also changes in time. Where do you draw the line? What you are proposing is a scary kind of society, where extreme measures are used to creat a false sense of securty. Btw, If you believe prisoners live in luxury, why don't you commit a crime and do the same?
Grt, Arnaud
P.S. Don't mind my spelling. P.P.S. In my opinion a punishment should serve to rehabilitate the punished.
And as for "bettering themselves", once a criminal, always a criminal. Scientific studies have shown that convicted criminals are more likely to commit a crime than people without any convictions, so the "bettering yourself" argument seems to fall flat on its face.
This a a silly abuse of statistics. Say there is a chance that 5% of someone is will commit a criminal act, and a chance of 6% if that person already has a conviction on his/her name. That means that 94% of convicted criminals do better them selves. Ofcourse these numbers are not correct, but what are the odds of a criminal bettering him/herself without being given a chance by society.
If you've been convicted in a court of law, you are guilty. This is not something you can just shrug off five years down the line, it is a part of who that person is. It's always better to be safe than sorry.
Easiest way to be safe is to just shoot all criminals (cheap too). Btw it is even safer to have a chip implanted in everyone at birth that monitors what they do and reports it. No I think that in this instance I am rather sorry than safe. (Do you live in a bunker defended by a minefield etc?. That is safer:)
But then I also believe that if someone served their time, they have payed their debt to society and should be given another chance.
downloading - yes, althou my school is on t3, it wont go more thean 14k/s (on any of the sites...)
Just tested it on sunsite.uio.no. I got a transfer rate of 380kb(yte)/s. They have iso images of Corel, LinuxPPC, Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, Trustix (don't know that one) and debian.
(Sunsite is one of my favorite ftp sites, because of good speed).
Dunno if it would work in the US. But here in Holland you can get standard stickers wich can say: YES YES (junk mail and free local newspapers) NO YES (You get free newspapers, no junkmail) NO NO (you guessed it, you get neither).
I think people are obliged by law to adhere to your wishes on this matter. The amazing thing is that it actually works, maybe because more than half the mailboxes have a sticker.
If I don't want junk snail mail I don't get any. I just put a sticker on my mail box and lo and behold: no more junk mail.
It isn't the same with my email, I can't stop the spam coming in. Here at the university I am constantly online, this means that if I get an email my computer does a little bleep. I can't help myself but to stop and see what I've got. (Okay Okay, it is just a little frm command, but still). So this spam may not cost me money, but it does interrupt my work. (I don't mind being interrupted by a mail from a friend)
On a side note, junk mail can sometimes be interresting, but I have never ever recieved interresting spam.
Perhaps the most obvious observation is that there are really four different sets of characters in the message: right-side-up UPPER CASE right-side-up lower case up-side-down UPPER CASE up-side-down lower case
Actually there are more letters than that: I presume that with upside down you mean rotated 180 degrees. So that leaves us with: -The four you mention -small UPPERCASE -Also possible is upside down
This last one is especially sneaky with symmetric letters, but you may notice that in for example in the letter A the right leg is thicker than the left leg. I haven't found any upside down letters that are non symmetric, but there are some A's that could be upside down
On a different note, what also strikes me is that only capitols (small and large) are used in the To Edgar part. Maybe this is a clue?
Full screen and that's it. alt+tab if I need to escape the game.
But isn't that possible? I have Civ CTP and play it full screen. If I want to change to the top part of my virtual desktop I press F1 (and F2 to get back to the game). (The window manager I use is tvtwm).
Not quite. By the time you see cherinkov radiation you've already had it. You might as well stick around and try to shut the reaction down to save other people.
Not quite. I have seen Chenrenkov radiation and am alive and well. There was about 3 meters of water between me and the reaction. The reaction took place in a (low power) research reactor in an open vat of water. You could look from above down into the reactor and see the Cherenkov radiation. The radiation levels where I was standing were normal.
Slashdot Mirror
It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth,' he said yesterday. 'The US was lagging behind in the space race.'
I highly doubt there would have been a mushroom cloud on the moon. If I remember correctly a mushrom cloud is formed because the slight decrease in air pressure going up makes it a lot easier for the shockwave to move in that direction. At a certain point this effect becomes less important and the cloud becomes more or less spherical, hence the mushroom. On the moon there is no atmosphere to speak of, so I would expect a more spherical cloud.
It still only takes one person to do enough damage to ruin the lives of dozens, if not more.
That is true. However you too are a potential threat. Who knows if someday you go nuts and shoot somebody? So how do we stop this from happening. It's easy, install camera's in all houses. Have echelon like computers analyse everything that is said and done. If you say the wrong thing you are automatically electrocuted via the chip in your brain. It sounds extreme, but severely reduces crime rates and will make productive citizens out of us all.
Easiest way to be safe is to just shoot all criminals (cheap too).
Agreed. This would result in a drastic decrease in crime, which would benefit everybody. I don't see how you can argue against it really - after all, the only people being harmed are those that have done something wrong. And prevention is better than a cure - this would be a great way to prevent people from commiting criminal acts - certainly better than the threat of "community service". And prisons take up a lot of money we could use in better ways - why should honest people pay for criminals to live in luxury?
The simplest argument that is irrefutable is that the justice system is fallable. Would you like to live in a society, where if you are accidently accused, you get shot? Furthermore societies differ, what is a crime in one country is not in another and for each country this also changes in time. Where do you draw the line?
What you are proposing is a scary kind of society, where extreme measures are used to creat a false sense of securty.
Btw, If you believe prisoners live in luxury, why don't you commit a crime and do the same?
Grt,
Arnaud
P.S. Don't mind my spelling.
P.P.S. In my opinion a punishment should serve to rehabilitate the punished.
And as for "bettering themselves", once a criminal, always a criminal. Scientific studies have shown that convicted criminals are more likely to commit a crime than people without any convictions, so the "bettering yourself" argument seems to fall flat on its face.
This a a silly abuse of statistics. Say there is a chance that 5% of someone is will commit a criminal act, and a chance of 6% if that person already has a conviction on his/her name. That means that 94% of convicted criminals do better them selves. Ofcourse these numbers are not correct, but what are the odds of a criminal bettering him/herself without being given a chance by society.
If you've been convicted in a court of law, you are guilty. This is not something you can just shrug off five years down the line, it is a part of who that person is. It's always better to be safe than sorry.
Easiest way to be safe is to just shoot all criminals (cheap too). Btw it is even safer to have a chip implanted in everyone at birth that monitors what they do and reports it. No I think that in this instance I am rather sorry than safe. (Do you live in a bunker defended by a minefield etc?. That is safer:)
But then I also believe that if someone served their time, they have payed their debt to society and should be given another chance.
Grt,
Arnaud.
downloading - yes, althou my school is on t3, it wont go more thean 14k/s (on any of the sites...)
Just tested it on sunsite.uio.no. I got a transfer rate of 380kb(yte)/s.
They have iso images of Corel, LinuxPPC, Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, Trustix (don't know that one) and debian.
(Sunsite is one of my favorite ftp sites, because of good speed).
Dunno if it would work in the US. But here in Holland you can get standard stickers wich can say:
YES YES (junk mail and free local newspapers)
NO YES (You get free newspapers, no junkmail)
NO NO (you guessed it, you get neither).
I think people are obliged by law to adhere to your wishes on this matter. The amazing thing is that it actually works, maybe because more than half the mailboxes have a sticker.
If I don't want junk snail mail I don't get any. I just put a sticker on my mail box and lo and behold: no more junk mail.
It isn't the same with my email, I can't stop the spam coming in. Here at the university I am constantly online, this means that if I get an email my computer does a little bleep. I can't help myself but to stop and see what I've got. (Okay Okay, it is just a little frm command, but still). So this spam may not cost me money, but it does interrupt my work. (I don't mind being interrupted by a mail from a friend)
On a side note, junk mail can sometimes be interresting, but I have never ever recieved interresting spam.
Perhaps the most obvious observation is that there are really four different sets of characters in the message:
right-side-up UPPER CASE
right-side-up lower case
up-side-down UPPER CASE
up-side-down lower case
Actually there are more letters than that:
I presume that with upside down you mean rotated 180 degrees. So that leaves us with:
-The four you mention
-small UPPERCASE
-Also possible is upside down
This last one is especially sneaky with symmetric letters, but you may notice that in for example in the letter A the right leg is thicker than the left leg. I haven't found any upside down letters that are non symmetric, but there are some A's that could be upside down
On a different note, what also strikes me is that only capitols (small and large) are used in the To Edgar part. Maybe this is a clue?
Grt,
Arnaud.
Full screen and that's it. alt+tab if I need to escape the game.
But isn't that possible? I have Civ CTP and play it full screen. If I want to change to the top part of my virtual desktop I press F1 (and F2 to get back to the game). (The window manager I use is tvtwm).
Not quite. By the time you see cherinkov radiation you've already had it. You might as well stick around and try to shut the reaction down to save other people.
Not quite. I have seen Chenrenkov radiation and am alive and well. There was about 3 meters of water between me and the reaction. The reaction took place in a (low power) research reactor in an open vat of water. You could look from above down into the reactor and see the Cherenkov radiation. The radiation levels where I was standing were normal.