As a prelude to this they've been buying up both ships and ship plans from Western navies. I think their plan is to use these to learn how to build and operate carriers before they start making them at home.
They do this with watches too, but in my experience, they break the day after you buy them.
I can imagine that autistic kids would be less likely to ignore a piece of hardware strapped to them.
It would be difficult/impossible to ignore, so a different strategy is in order.
My credentials:
My autistic son has something similar - http://www.projectlifesaver.org/ - and the trick was to get him to look forward to having it on. A week or so before we received the bracelet, we started talking about how he was getting a special watch. He shows it off to basically anybody who will talk to him now, which may be a bit annoying, but is worth the peace of mind should he ever wander off.
I can make the same argument for my luggage.
Wait - is the combination 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?
Here's the reality of the situation: we do not know the effect of mankind on the climate and the ecology. However, we do know that certain activities *have* an impact.
Is that a positive or a negative impact? If we don't know the effect, then how can we possibly say whether it is for our benefit or to our detriment?
Do not mess with the ecology of the planet without understanding the consequences.
Yes. Let's roll back the last 10,000 years or so of agriculture, as it "messes" with ecology. I'm not so sure the ~7 billion people on Earth today would be sustained by this, but it's more ecologically sound not to farm, so let's do it. Those whose childrens' children who manage to survive will thank us for our sacrifice.
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for not taking more than what I need in the interest of sustainability for others or eating fish without toxic levels of mercury, but inconvenient half-truths deserve to be called out as such.
Ecology is about the relationship of organisms to the environment. Do humans have an effect? Of course, so do koala bears. My point is that it's impossible not to mess with the ecosystem in which you live. Living implies having an impact on said ecosystem. Understanding that impact won't prevent it. It is a cold, hard fact that a population cannot outgrow its food supply.
It's probably safe to say we're headed towards a mass extinction event, and none of the previous ones (generally believed to be 5 of them, AFAIK) weren't caused by humans, as humans hadn't existed yet. That leaves external stimuli, such as the Sun as a strong potential contributor to climate change. Forgetting that humans have never caused a mass extinction before, let's entertain the idea that we have the ability to cause one. How long can the current rate of consumption of resources & population growth continue before something bad happens? Do we have levers that can effectively extend that time? What if Canada and Siberia warm up enough to support even MORE farming than we can today? Perhaps the food supply can grow enough that the population explosion can be supported.
We would have been on Mars if we never wasted all that money on these useless shuttles.
Useless?
Hubble
ISS
30 years of research
You are assuming without lack of new stimuli in the closed environment of a space craft that humans would still evolve. There have been reports that humans are no longer evolving even here on earth, since at least the last few thousand years.
Lack of new stimuli? How about an entire society living in microgravity for a couple of hundred millenia? Assuming members of the million mile high club can reproduce successfully, competitive advantages are going to be significantly different. Have you seen WALL-E? If reproduction doesn't work, or we want to be fit to inhabit a planet where gravity exists, we'll probably be stuck with trusting HAL9000.
I thought I read somewhere that Osama was killed a week ago, not on Sunday. They were waiting for official confirmation before releasing the information that he was killed....
I think the confusion here is that the operation was authorized a week ago. It didn't happen immediately. I believe I saw/heard a report that there was a rehearsal done by the team before the actual op.
You do realize that you are asking the SAME legislative body that than passed the DMCA, and COPA to write a law regulating the internet?
I think you're giving Congress a bit more credit than they deserve. Lobbyists write the laws, and members of Congress add riders to the laws appropriating money for some project in their district in order to get reelected by a populace that they failed to represent when they introduced the lobbyists' handiwork.
It's working perfectly, just like the Framers intended.
Yep. Everywhere else they are entirely unregulated, and they will definitely want it to stay that way for as long as they can get away with it.
Well, not exactly unregulated, but unless you're specific about what sort of regulations you feel are missing, the rest of this is purely pedantic. It's much more of a clusterfuck than that. For instance, I count 42 states (well, 41 + a District) here. As a former employee of PayPal's AML Compliance department, I can tell you that paypal is regulated (AML/CTF - not consumer protection regulations which is probably what you're bitching about) in the US (FinCEN), Canada (FinTRAC), Australia (AusTRAC), China (HK Police) the EU (CSSF) and anywhere outside of that in Singapore (MAS). A year ago when I left, there was talk of adding legal entities in 4 or 5 other countries, primarily in Asia and Latin America.
To the GP's point about why PayPal is not a bank (in the US anyhow), is that US banks issue credit and US money service businesses merely move money. I would certainly concede that the Bill Me Later unit of PayPal is operates purely on the technicality of the laws and/or regulations that separate banks from MSBs (BML makes a decision on whether to extend credit, then a bank issues the credit with the understanding that BML will buy the debt a few days later). There was often talk of becoming a bank, or at least chartering a subsidiary bank in order to allow the credit issuing to move completely in house. Ebay divesting Skype was supposedly a part of that plan, although I never understood why, nor can I say whether PayPal is any closer to becoming (or more likely starting) a bank. More of what PayPal does falls under the EU's legal definition of a bank, so PayPal is a bank there.
I'm also going to say, the whole "RF/Secretgovernment testing/out to destroy us all" conspiracy theories have once again proven to what they are. Bullshit.
Are you kidding? This so-called "paper" was "co-written" by some Army chemists. If anything, it PROVES the conspiracy theories!
*adds yet another layer of tinfoil to an already heavy hat*
That said, I'd like to have a bluetooth remote for my (future) HTPC... Can you get anything like it, I searched a bit but didn't find anything. Most seems to be infra-red and using a cellphone isn't ideal.
Check out the snapstream firefly . It's RF (not bluetooth), but if avoiding line of sight is your objective, then it will fit the bill. Works quite well with MythTV, and I've messed about with it on Windows (but not MCE) as well. My one complaint (and a fundamental one that I should have considered first) is that I can't control my tv with it. Next time, I'll get a single, converged remote.
Boeing's Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 can hold seven crew and will be bigger than Apollo
I guess it's sort of nice that they can stick this nose cone on different rockets, but as far as American innovation goes...yawn.
If the OP had mentioned Oracle, then I would have recommend the whole book. Nonetheless, the first chapter might prove a beneficial read.
Absolutely. Excellent suggestion to check out chapter 1 for free.
I'm an avid Tom Kyte reader, and I probably should have attributed my post as a paraphrase of that chapter. I sidestepped it simply because Oracle was not on the list of technologies the OP is interested in. I sincerely hope there are analogous books for other RDBMS's. That book sits on my desk, yet gathers very little dust.
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
