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Comment Re:EPA has exceeded safe limits, needs curbing (Score 0) 355

ut it is to almost everyone who has actually looked at it with a scientific eye.

So then, forcing the EPA to base that decision on publicly available science (actual peer reviewed papers and such), is fine then, right?

I don't think this bill is anything to do with global warming - the EPA has over the years pissed off many, many people by telling them they can't build on their own land "because reasons". It's one thing for the EPA to tell you the land you own is nearly worthless because "here's the established science that says your land use would hurt everyone else", most people are fine with that, but when they say "we're not even going to tell you why, we're basing it on secret stuff" is seriously not the kind of government America should have.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

Hell, I'm not even sure we're screwed. I believe that the most probable future is the return of glaciation in the ongoing Quaternary Ice Age, and we'll be glad of all our CO2 to keep the glaciers out of Central Europe and the US for another century or two once it starts. One things for sure: the economic damage from a significant drop in temp (which we're 10k years overdue for) is worse than the equivalent rise in temp. For all that rising sea levels will suck, glaciers covering most of the temperate zones is worse.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

That's not even the right question. The right question is: how much money will we save by reducing CO2 emissions by X, to at least 1 significant figure of accuracy? How much will it cost to make that reduction, to at least 1 significant figure of accuracy?

We don't know shit when it comes to that sort of prediction, and without that, policy is pure fashion statement and political posturing, not science-informed.

Comment Re:Nonsense (Score 1) 125

Right, it's the kind of immersion that matters. Now if we could only get movies where the characters weren't 2-dimensional. "The goggles, they do nothing!"

I don't need peripheral vision to feel part of a game world, as long as I can look around the world from a first-person or over-the-shoulder view (it would help a lot in racing games, since there your too busy with other controls to also look around with your hands). It's been ambient noise, clever soundtrack, and attention to detail (so that you can guess what the place smells like, and are happy not to much of the time) that provide immersion of any sort- I'm not just my eyes.

Comment Re:1D compression, AKA "Serialization" (Score 1) 129

But what the in-falling observer sees as the spatial axis, the distant observer sees as the time axis. And special relativity means distance is a matter of perception, and all of this must vary smoothly. There's no way to make stacked cubes work with those requirements - it's bad enough to allow for smooth rotation of axes in Euclidean space, but with the continuously varying metric of GR it's right out.

Comment Re:1D compression, AKA "Serialization" (Score 1) 129

The sibling post is on the right track. Informaton density requires mass density, and mass density distorts space, putting limits on what's possible. The whole idea of the Planck length comes from that in the first place.

Because of the way black hole formation works, if you have a fixed density in a small region of space, with no black hole, if you extend that density to a large enough region of space you get a black hole - exactly according to surface are being the limit.

Comment Re: danger vs taste (Score 1) 630

It's just semantics, I think. If you want to lose weight, the kind of food you eat will determine your likely success in that endeavor, because it will affect both the amount of calories your body burns, and the difficulty of sticking to your diet. Saying "it's just in vs out" oversimplifies to the point of misleading.

The Military

US Successfully Tests Self-Steering Bullets 216

mpicpp sends this report from The Independent: The United States Department of Defense has carried out what it says is its most successful test yet of a bullet that can steer itself towards moving targets. Experienced testers have used the technology to hit targets that were actively evading the shot, and even novices that were using the system for the first time were able to hit moving targets. The project, which is known as Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance weapon, or Exacto, is being made for the American government's military research agency, DARPA. It is thought to use small fins that shoot out of the bullet and re-direct its path, but the U.S. has not disclosed how it works. Technology in the bullet allows it to compensate for weather and wind, as well as the movement of people it is being fired at, and curve itself in the air as it heads towards its target.

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