Firefox opens much faster than chrome because it only loads the active tab initially.

Yeah, what's with this anyway? This is the most brain-dead thing I've seen in Chrome. The Firefox way is smart because it recalls all your tabs, but doesn't slow your computer to a crawl for a minute or two by trying to load everything at once.

I will say I haven't seen FF crash in quite a while now; I'm using 36 on Linux. A couple years or so ago, it was pretty bad, but lately I haven't had any trouble at all, though I do have to restart it every other week like you say.

The surface of the craft can be a mirror.

No useful cooling? At hundreds of miles per hour of atmospheric passage? Hmmm. Not sure I can buy that. A few fins collinear with the forward-back axis of the craft and you'd have quite a bit of cooling.

You are making a LOT of assumptions. All of these matter: Ability of the mirror to dissipate energy prior to ablation or meaningful distortion. Collimation of the beam. Reflectivity of the mirror at the laser frequency. Ability of the laser to stay on target, and for how long. Distance from the laser. Atmospheric clarity and particulate density. Atmospheric turbulence. Disruption from atmospheric heating.

It's just not as simple as you paint it.

CIWS targeting is, as the acronym hints, "close in." You should think of the distance between the shooter (of anything) and the target as a lever. A tiny pivot at one end of the lever (the weapon's aim) translates to a "much" larger motion at the end of the lever (the point of impact.) Tolerances that will work at 100 yards aren't anywhere near close enough to work at many miles, or hundreds of miles in the case of missiles not aimed particularly at you (so you can be sure they will get close enough to hit.)

There are other issues. That truck was relatively close, between 1 and 2 miles ("more than a mile away"). To hit an ICBM at apogee, even it it goes right over you, you are going to have to spend a lot of energy on atmospheric heating, and you'll lose even more to atmospheric distortion. We're talking 300 to 700 times the distance, depending on exactly what "more than a mile away" actually means. But it is certain that 30 kw at the source will not equate to 30 kw at the target at those distances. So now the problem becomes more than "hit the target", it is also "stay on target for X time", and that assumes that enough energy can be delivered to overcome the missile skin's ability to dissipate it. Because if you can't do all those things, you can't hurt the missile.

Also, the odds of it going right over you kind of suck.

I"m pretty sure a regular mirror would not be employed.

But here's some hand-wavy math.

If a mirror reflects 99% of the light that hits it at the laser frequency (remember, there's only one frequency to be covered), and the light that hits it can heat proportional to 30 kw (however one figures that), then the mirror is absorbing a 300 watt equivalent and reflecting the rest unless the reflective surface fails.

If the reflective surface is highly heat conductive and the beam isn't all that tightly collimated, likely it won't flinch at all. Like any impact, the effect is all about how much energy you can shoehorn into the smallest possible area. If the beam is ~1/3 of an inch on target, then given 99% reflectivity, it's effectively 1 kw / square inch. If the beam is 1/30th of a square inch on target, it's 30 kw/square inch absorption after reflection. So it makes quite a difference. I think.

Anyone who works with lasers and mirrors, feel free to step in and correct or expand.

I don't have a firm opinion yet on the internals and suitability of systemd, or whether its improvements are worth the thrash. Having been burned by a number of changes (including, notably, init -> upstart), I'm likely to be a hard sell on the cost-benefit tradeoff of "fixing'' what it purports to fix.

But the discussion around it makes it remind me of a movie "character":

The Master Control Program in Tron.

1) is if the laser is in visible light or not. If you can't see the red dot source a mile off, you can't evade it.

Pretty sure if you "see the red dot a mile off", the location where your eye was is just the steaming, goo-surrounded beginning of a well-cauterized hole that completely transits your head. Assuming tight collimation. With a broader 30 kw beam, your head would explode (steam pressure), and with a really broad beam, you'd turn into a human crisp before you had time to think "Hey! Las..."

Who said science and math cant be fun?

Congress comes to mind.

For regulation to work... You have to not poke the bear.

If you only have a "right" while nobody exercises it, and it goes away as soon as a few people do, did you actually have it? Hardly!

Rights unused can be silently abrogated. You have to use them occasionally, to test whether this has happened, so you can take corrective action if it has.

(If nothing else, it's easy for law enforcement personnel to start assuming that something that doesn't occur often is actually banned. So important things like carrying guns need to be done occasionally, just to keep them aware that it's really OK.)

Provocation like open carry "just because" is why we don't have open carry in most states.

If you can't do something "just because", it's not a right.

In fact its open carry demonstrations that have eduated police forces in many areas, bringing peace between law enforcement personnel and gun-toting ordinary citizens in many places where open carry was legal but had fallen out of use. It also brings the issue to visibility and educates others, especially those who grew up when it was rare, that they DO have these rights, when they hadn't been taught they did. It is a fine icebreaker for bringing out related facts - like the actual numbers on safety and the effect of gun carry on crime and injury rates.

Yes, "Poking the Bear" can also have bad effects: For instance, California's draconin gun bans got started largely when the Black Panthers carried rifles into the gallery of the State Legislature, back during the period of the Civil Rights riots when it was legal. But black people at the time were de-facto banned from carrying guns (which was much of why they could be oppressed). The legislature just made that unconstitutional infrigemet de-jure.

If anyone did this nowadays they'd be facing 20 years minimum.

I miss Google Maps. The laggy pile of trash they have now makes me go to Bing when I want to map things out now.

We all have a timeline already. Acxiom has been tracking electronic spending and any other records they can get a hold of since 1969. Every adult in a first world country who isn't living off grid is tracked. Your profile is meticulously maintained and sold off to whoever wants it. They can infer women's menstrual cycles and let marketers know the best time to send targeted ads when they are most likely to have success. That is just the tip of the iceberg of the way these big data companies can influence your life.

Wow, what the hell do you take us for? Aluminum foil? Aluminum foil?! The shit you put on your TV antenna to get better reception? Yeah, yeah, that's really going to block the government mind control rays.

Jesus. Tinfoil man. Tinfoil.

Yeah, but when the robot uprising begins, they've already got you.

"Doors locked. New destination: processing plant. Have a nice day..."