If this were true, then you could stimulate the economy by giving everyone a $10 tax break on the condition that they give that money to someone else.

The only way it works, is if rather than giving the money, they use it to purchase some good or service-- that is, value added to the economy. Simply moving money around doesnt cut it, there has to be something that you're exchanging the money for.

Otherwise, we would have our ditch diggers use spoons, and have workmen build highrises without the assistance of cranes. Sure, it would take them forever to put a building up, but think of the employment opportunities! Except that the actual goods produced by our economy would drastically fall if we approached industry in this way and we would cease to be economically competitive with other countries.

The problem is that you are assuming that you can have an economy just by shuffling money around, whereas I had always understood it revolved around the creation (not destruction!) of value.

Seems like we should start paying kids to break store windows so that more glaziers can be employed, and more repairmen, and so on through the economy.

If Microsoft abandons Powershell, Im switching to Mac.

Its right there in the article....

Note: I was wrong re soldering iron; soldering irons are generally 100watts, this is 25x more powerful.

The mirror would last fractions of a second.

I've never seen anyone agree with this assessment who has professed knowledge of the subject. The issue is that lasers still dump a lot of energy, which starts to mar the mirror really incredibly fast. 2.5kW of energy is like applying a soldering iron tip to the mirror, which rapidly (1s) causes it to mar and become useless. Not only that, atmospheric pollutants, water droplets, grease-- anything-- will make that part of the mirror useless. Applying mirrors to your turrets? Good luck keeping them clean with all of the gunsmoke coming out of them.

Meanwhile the defender has the burden of carrying all of this extra weight (not really feasible with aircraft, seacraft, or missiles) and trying desperately to keep it clean in battlefield conditions, plus all of the added expense for an armor that is, at best, marginally useful.

If your enemy is having to adopt incredibly expensive, incredibly hard to maintain, and marginally effective countermeasures to your weapon, then your weapon is doing its job. It really doesnt matter whether you blow up 10 of the enemy's ships, or whether their countermeasures have meant they could build 10 fewer ships; the outcome is the same.

Its possible that its your expectations that are off, rather than the functionality.

You could always take slashcode and make your own site if you arent happy with the service your money gets you here.

Because a 2.5kW laser is still sufficient to burn things, and once the mirror starts to lose reflectance it will start down a path of exponentially reducing reflectance.

That is,
0.0s - 0.1s: 95% reflectance
0.1s - 0.2s: 90% reflectance
0.2s - 0.3s: 80% reflectance
0.3s - 0.4s: 60%
0.4s - 0.5s: 20%

Etc. Source: Numbers are made up and hypothetical.

I would be in favor of even harsher punishments for those in authority than those not.

I guess you're so unwilling to understand the opposing view point that you're perfectly ready to believe in a caricature of it. The person you responded to is an AC, clearly setting up a strawman, and has baited several of you into attacking it.

Congrats to the AC, you've successfully trolled several people in this thread.

PSSST, hes playing the part of straw man. Dont feed the trolls.

If he were correct, then the thing he did would not be a wrong.

Obviously we believe he is incorrect, and that what he did WAS wrong, and as justice relies on a concept of proportionality, death seems like the appropriate response.

Society imposing a proportional punishment on one who has inflicted wrong on another is commonly called "justice", not "two wrongs".

I would contend that less than the death penalty here would be to de-value the lives of those he killed. Taking another's life is too serious of a crime to punish by any lesser measure.

You might recall that we have a justice system, and that justice is generally defined by punishments meted out in proprotion to their crime. What punishment would be more just than death for one who has killed many?