Humans make the results more accurate.

Consider the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, Manson, the guy known as BTK (for "bind, torture, kill"), the Fort Hood shooter, and those guys that raped girls in Connecticut and then burned down the house with them inside. There are enough awful people that we have no shortage of humans for medical experiments.

I would have no qualms about performing the experiments. We can implant wires into their brains, give them harmful drugs, whatever... Except for the Fort Hood shooter, we can use these prisoners to test for methods to treat spinal injury. (we break their neck, wait the average amount of time it takes to reach a hospital, then try the experimental treatment) We can use them to test saving people who fall through ice. (dump them in, wait, attempt treatment) We can use them to test treatments for severe burns. (burn them, wait, attempt treatment)

Want to test something less serious, like household products? Sure, we can do that too. Strap them down, pin back their eyelids, and spray away. Whatever you like: perfume, ant spray, truck bed paint, engine degreaser, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, oven cleaner, drain unclogger, etc.

You need a localized description of things. This could be just a book, or it could be something in the editor. It would help to have tooltip-style explanations of keywords and library functions. It would help to have a localized menu showing things that make sense in the current context. Go beyond the supposed English. Explain the operators. For example, the '*' as a pointer reference is surely not English.

I can think of several reasons. The first is that the pointer usage operator and the pointer generation operator go on the opposite side relative to the array usage operator and the function usage operator. That is, '*' and '&' are prefix operators but '[]' and '()' are postfix operators. (BTW, casting also ought to match)

The stack is kind of cruel. You can take the address of a stack item, save it away, and then later find that bad stuff happens when you use the pointer. You never called free() on the pointer, but it was sort of deallocated when the function returned.

The other reasons all have to do with convenience "feaures" in the language. This makes the language inconsistant.

To take the address of a variable, "void *foo = &an_int_var;" will do. To take the address of a function or array or string literal, you can leave off the '&'. You can use it, but most people leave it off. The '&' operator starts to look arbitrary and confusing. Sometimes the compiler demands it, sometimes the compiler prohibits it, and sometimes the compiler doesn't care.

Pointer arithmetic is a nice shorthand notation. You can do "ptr++" instead of "ptr += sizeof *ptr". We now have trouble: we say that some object is 42 bytes in size, yet adding 42 doesn't get us to the next item.

Either you are misrepresenting Bringhurst, or he really doesn't have a clue about readability. Listen to some not-so-great readers while they read out loud. You'll hear them stumble when they hit a hyphen and even when a sentence is split.

Ever ask yourself why Computer Modern hasn't become the standard outside of the TeX world? It's free to use, but nobody wants it. Hmmm...

Hyphens and perfect justification are great when you want to replicate the unreadability of a newspaper from a century ago.

When you actually want something readable that doesn't look like shit, you need to stop it with the stupid stunts. Screwing with the kerning is not acceptable. Splitting words is not acceptable. You shouldn't even be splitting phrases or clauses onto different lines, and preferably not even sentences.

Yes, I'm sure you can disable the hyphenation and justification crap. (right...?) You shouldn't be able to enable it. These "features" are one of two major reasons why TeX documents normally look like crap, the other reason being the horrible Computer Modern font.

I might make it to 15. I'm getting close. My "car" has enough seats. Somebody has to prevent nerd extinction!

A typical grocery trip involves 3 or 4 gallons of milk, 3 or 4 large hands of bananas, several other very full bags of fruit, several very full bags of vegatables, a couple loaves of sourdough, some sort of meat, etc. We can just about finish off a large turkey or a pair of chickens in one meal.

Getting groceries without a car would be insane.

Even if you have a family of one, there are still huge problems. Frozen things melt. Each time you change trains or busses, you waste roughly... most of an hour in a typical city. Multi-hour trips are not uncommon. You'll also be walking in the rain or snow at both ends. Screw that.

You don't want to drive to pick up groceries. OK, so how do you get them home? Horse? Somebody else drives? You just don't, because you eat out all the time?

I fill shopping carts top and bottom. I need about 4 overfilled carts per week. Even living right next door to a supermarket would be painful without a car. (outside the city, we can afford to have families)

Chickens would be sweet. They eat garden bugs and fertilize the plants. (outside your city, plants are not made of plastic, so they need a bit more care)

I commute less than a mile. It's easy: if you live in a suburb (or suburb-like tiny city) then you should work there. If you work there, then you should live there. Houses can be had for $60 thousand, maybe $400 thousand if you want half an acre in a super-nice (wealthy to be honest) neighborhood or 5 acres on the edge of town. Gridlock just doesn't exist; there aren't enough cars.

I agree about the revenge, and it is enjoyable, but I prefer to be a bit colder.

Ask a simple question: is this person, when all aspects of their life are considered, a net positive for society? We count expected violence, taxes paid, welfare consumed... EVERYTHING. If the person is not a net positive, they need to die.

The method of death should be that which is most beneficial to society. If the person is healthy, we take out their organs and give them to people in need of transplants. (removing them while living) If the person is unhealthy, we use them to train medical students until beginner mistakes get the job done. The remains can become diesel fuel and compost.

That said, there is something to be said for letting the victim dish out justice. I'd probably kill the criminal with a staple gun or a belt sander. It's not the most beneficial for society, so I'd try to resist.

www.malegislature.gov/Bills/188/House/H331

We always thought they were malicious.

In the UK, a libel suit is the easiest thing to win. Anytime somebody says anything bad about a UK person or corporation, they go to court and win.

Telsa is not a UK company. They were suing a UK quasi-governmental entity. They lost.

Weight in the middle is excellent. Weight at one end means that the other will tend to lose traction, possibly causing a deadly spin. (pick-up trucks suffer from this when the bed is empty or overloaded) Weight at both ends is kind of like weight in the middle, but with a higher moment of inertia. It's harder to turn, and thus more likely to lose grip (leading to deadly spin) when you do.

Batteries are usually mounted low, which is even better. The center of gravity drops, making the car less likely to tip.

BTW, hydrogen was Bush's way to distract voters while divirting money to near-pointless research. It's not going to happen.

Well... it's war.

History has numerous cases of countries that destroyed their own stuff to deny something to an enemy. Crops have been burned, bridges have been blown up...

I could see a country willingly accept EMP damage to stop a foe. More likely, the satellites will be hit as they cross the equator over the open ocean. (depends on orbit of course)

Even ignoring the satellite issue, I could see a country willingly accept EMP damage to stop a foe. If the enemy is even just slightly less EMP-resistant, an EMP will adjust the situation in one's favor.

War is really really horrible, and also inevitable. When the next big one happens, peacetime concerns won't be a consideration. Also note that the Geneva Convention is a luxury; nobody follows it when they truly fear destruction. The environment will be trashed. Unrelated third-party countries will be wiped out in order to gain advantage. Afterward, people will give feel-good speeches about ending war forever.

Shoulder launched missiles are easy to avoid; fly higher.

Drones stop working when the satellites get blown to bits.

Cruise missles are an expensive way to hit ground targets. They don't hit planes. The cheap way to hit ground targets is a bomber. Cruise missles are nice for hitting the more serious anti-air defenses so that you can more safely send in the planes.

The drone will be in fail-safe mode due to loss of communication link. The satellites go bye-bye the instant World War II starts. The drone might not even come home successfully without GPS.