Interesting article, but I don't understand why the conveyor belt problem (as described) is unsolved. Start with one pulley. Obviously a band around it works. Assume a solution exists for some finite number of pulleys, N. Since the support of the pulley locations is compact, one can always and uniquely determine the exterior of the spanning belt. Place an additional pulley exterior to this belt. There are only three topologically relevant cases -- (an pair of in the case of more than two of) the "nearest neighbor" exterior pulleys carry a belt that is "convex" (outside both), "concave" (inside both), or "mixed" (inside one, outside the other). In all three cases it can be shown that one can add the pulley and still satisfy the conditions of the problem. Hence one has 1, N and N+1, a proof by topological induction. The only additional bit of work on the proof is to note that one can avoid problems with pathological interior loopings (if necessary -- I don't really think that it is) or adding the N+1 pulley INSIDE the belt by simply reordering the inductive process for any given pattern to maintain the belt in a maximally convex state as one proceeds, that is starting with any belt and then adding the pulleys ordered by their distance from the original pulley. Not only is there "a" spanning belt, but there will be in most cases an enormous permutation of spanning belts. As in, all of the permutations one can construct by adding pulleys in circular distance order from any pulley treated as the original pulley until they are all entrained.

You think a few grow lights are going to significantly warm the earth?

By your logic geo thermal cooling and heating wouldn't work.

Yet they do... People run air through the ground to cool it... and it stays cool all year round even if you run the system 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

In a battle between your petty heating system and the planet... the planet wins.

A wiser move would be kicking your moronic politicians out of office.

They did this and they'll do it again or something just as bad until you clean house.

So long as you tolerate bad politicians you're partially responsible and your tax money is forfeit.

Your post is a tribute to misunderstanding (or trolling?) and bad moderation. There are detrimental effects from Snowden's leaks. I don't know how you think I said there wasn't.* It is entirely logical that they are spending money to repair the damage caused Snowden's leaks. The mess was caused by Snowden, and you are paying for the clean up. The US will be vulnerable for years or decades to come.

* Well, maybe I do know how you managed to achieve such a "misunderstanding" based on your sig: Fanboy .... Ron Paul.

The only reason that they have the money to spend is because they made a case to Congress, demonstrated the damage, and had their appropriation increased to recover from the damage. They don't get to spend whatever money they want to "just because."

The "many benefits" you see are only the places you look in your narrow view. You aren't looking anywhere near the national security landscape, only the "security landscape" comprised of internet programmers and activists. You avert your eyes from the real damage and see what you choose to. Your view is uninformed and stunted.

The militia laws reflect potential military requirements not social engineering goals. So yes, there are reasons for it, good ones. You could get a hint about some of that if you search your memory for the number of female infantry regiments in the service of Russia or Ukraine at present. I'm pretty sure the number will be close to zero.

By the way, that reply you made to me about Castro not being a communist at the beginning is essentially irrelevant. Castro apparently spoke out against capitalism and for collectivization while in school. After school he used his legal training to defend communists. He also took part in revolutionary activities overseas years before he did in Cuba. This was all before Batista returned to power, and before he met up with Guevara. He may not have been a communist by membership, but the handwriting was on the wall.

It is pretty unlikely that women would be excluded from 2nd Amendment rights since the trend has been broadening the rights and clarifying that it is an individual right.

The militia clause isn't equal because the demands of the military aren't equal. That has been tested in court and upheld many times.

> CANNOT use solar OR wind power as your baseline power source. They aren't dependable sources

Sure they are, they just have lower capacity factors. Right now the Ontario wind fleet is running at about 30% CF, while the CANDUs are around 85. That means you need to build three times as many wind turbines and nukes. Thing is, wind turbines cost about 1/3rd of nukes, so economically it's a wash.

What would be really nice would be a storage system that can outlast any possible wind outage. You know, like this:

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/the-energy-storage-myth/

> Nuclear IS a dependable, steady source that infrastructure engineers can PLAN for.

Infrastructure engineers can plan for wind and solar just fine, thanks for asking. After all, those are the two fastest growing power sources in the world.

What engineers, and everyone else, finds very difficult indeed is figuring out which of these technologies will be the "winners" 12 years from now. That's about how long it takes to start up a new nuclear plant, end to end, a period of time during which wind power declined in price about 2 times, and PV about 5. Given this, a wait-and-see attitude seems very much warranted, which is precisely what we're seeing.

They were all linked to the federal system which itself failed... so its largely irrelevant.

The point remains that I'd hardly blame Oracle because another ACA exchange failed. You say some of them didn't fail?... Fine... what does that prove?

It was mostly a disaster.

And that isn't even addressing the law, its effect on the healthcare system, the millions of people that were inconvenienced, the probably hundreds to thousands that will have shorter lives or die because it... we won't get into that. Just on the website roll out and the exchanges... you're looking at a systemic failure. Driven by the knowledge that if the law were subjected to proper democratic procedure it would die.

That's why the democrat's rushed it. Because they knew they had a window where they could get away with anything and they wanted to exploit it. They knew that window was closing so they jammed everything through as fast as they could...

And that meant proper planning etc didn't happen... and that meant that most of the exchanges failed and the federal exchange failed.

And again... that's not getting into the millions of people this hurt, the violation of civil rights, etc.

Except for many of them work just fine.

Oracle does not have a reputation for being shit no matter what you think. And that reputation is largely a product of their successful track record with many customers.

Obviously some people aren't going to be happy for legitimate and illegitimate reasons.

That's normal.

But on balance, Oracle provides a good product.

the primary complaint i hear about them is that they're so expensive.

They are expensive. I completely agree. i wouldn't buy their stuff either because its just not cost effective.

That said, when you're rolling out an enterprise database... you might not care about that price in the scheme of things which is I suspect how they justify the price in the first place.

> Reprocessing has not been done because Peanuthead declared it to be illegal

That's right, because we all know all politicians are idiots who make snap decisions that can't possibly be correct. In fact, Carter stopped re-processing for very good reasons, after listening to advice from some of the smartest people on the planet. You might not agree with the decision, but saying it was his, and then simply saying that was bad because it was his, is precisely the sort of BS argument that has to be expunged from these debates as rapidly and strongly as possible.

India exploded a nuclear bomb in 1974. They said they were doing it to use nuclear weapons for large construction processes, which they said was within the terms of their agreement with Canada about the peaceful use of nuclear technology. That December the specific wording of the agreement was changed so that no nuclear explosives were allowed, even "peaceful" ones. Canada then withdrew all support and flew all their engineers home.

Much of the CIRUS effort had been supported by the US, and they were very much aware that their hands were dirty in this affair. This led to an extensive series of studies on the potential fuel flows and routes to weaponized material. The US had tested a "reactor grade" weapon, which worked fine, and spent considerable time examining the reprocessing cycles. This led to the clear conclusion that reprocessing is a very real proliferation risk. And I should point out this was not under Carter, but Johnson.

So then, that left the US in the position of either deploying reprocessing and demanding no one else do it, or not doing it themselves. That one was a simple and obvious answer. The fact that it hasn't been taken up since isn't Carter's fault, it's not like that law is part of the constitution. If there was any real support for it, it would happen. But there isn't. There's even less support for reprocessing than there is for new reactors, and they aren't exactly popping up all over the place.

> because they had no computers and human calculations powering a finite element method is expensive to say the least

That's right, because we know computer simulations by super-smart people never ever fail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASNEX

If you think that the US hasn't been a close ally of the UK then you are either uninformed or misinformed, or perhaps simply wrongheaded. Do you realize that the US and UK cooperated on some of the programs that were leaked? Do you realize that Snowden was leaking GCQH material?

Snowden could have gone to Congress, or in UK terms to Parliament. Surely you can imagine that it would be preferable in a disagreement over defense plans that it would be better for the country if the dissident goes to Parliament instead of stealing millions of documents of whatever sort he can get his hands on and flees to China to publish them under questionable circumstances?

Even if you assume he wasn't a spy, the problem isn't that he didn't have a chance to do the right thing, but that he made an anti-democratic decision against public policy.

Your grateful that he damaged the security of your country, the UK? Sad.

Putin admits Crimea involvement

No, as far as I know the only Russian ground combat forces stationed in Crimea prior tot he crisis were a regiment of marines, only about 2,000 men. The Russians moved in attack helicopters, airborne infantry, spetsnaz commando units, and possibly others.

The interesting question will be GPL viral. So far, Monsanto et. al. have invoked a viral clause to protect the genes of their products that are literally carried by the wind to non-purchaser's fields who happen to grow their own seed crop. Imagine the impact of having genes carried the other way! Sorry Monsanto, the hybrid crop is now GPL, unless you take steps to prevent e.g. corn pollen from blowing in the wind.

Never work, of course, but it is a nice fantasy.

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