land based MIRVs were banned with START-II from early 90s.

Scratch that, I guess it never went into effect and Russia still has some, though the US did get rid of theirs. Doesn't make much difference as the US still uses them on sub launched stuff anyway.

The US had a similar program, but it never got as much use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Could be. I know in Canada pennies are^Wwere only legal tender in groups of less than 25. (so you can't pay your income tax or parking tickets in pennies). I'm unsure if the US has a similar restriction?

It's a two stroke from the 50s. Not sure how that reflects on communism (apart from them making them mostly unchanged for 40 years..). A DKW from the other side of the wall had just as brutal emissions.

The fact that it is only nine fold is pretty impressive, really.

To keep all the Ukrainians out, away from the jobs and higher wages?

25 years later and there are still American bases in Germany. So there can't be that much resentment - not enough to force change anyway.

You'd think resentment would be much higher now, when there isn't even an illusion of requirement of american 'protection'.

Yeah, certainly the way to stop the decline is to say "oh, it was/is way worse somewhere else", put your head in the sand and do nothing.

frei is generally of the unrestrained variety

free stuff is usually said to be kostenlos (without cost).

Where do you come up with this? Russia spans UTC +2 to UTC +12. (or Moscow time -1 to +8).

Do you really think people in Vladivostok get up at midnight and go to bed at 4pm?

Presumably he is going for worst case of injustice within the danish legal system in recent years. I imagine it's still a bit of a hyperbole though.

Denmark isn't some backwater where they execute people with room temperature IQ, or put them in jail for life for stealing three chocolate bars though, so maybe it isn't.

-1, bullshit. How does FUD like this get modded to +5?

Lead free solder had some process related growing pains and is slightly more difficult to use, but that's about it.

I suppose my 6 year old lead free cell phone should have died from microfractures by now huh. or my motherboard. or my TV. or dishwasher. or basically anything electronic made in the last decade.

"They don't make 'em like they used to" is generally a fallacy. Survivor bias. (and I love old stuff).

My NES still works as poorly as it did 25 years ago.

The licenses are transferable, and give the right to use the spectrum. How is that different than the spectrum itself? It's a fiction so of course it's a license and not the 'physical' aether.

The problem for me is, instead of a lease going back to the state, which then leases the spectrum to someone else... some firm profits handsomely from selling a license for a fictional monopoly on a common good. That's kinda fucked.

I absolutely understand the need for licensing, else there would be mayhem. But it could be done in a better way. I guess it's the same idea as $1M taxi medallions. Those should be leased and non-transferable too.

there is a standard. CDC.

ftdi stuff oddly mostly doesn't use it. But the other common ones (PL2303, CP210x, CH340, etc) do. I've wrote programs for AVR and STM32 that support it as well, plug and play in linux. I think windows still needs an inf, which is sort of counter productive though...

The 100s are physically smaller than 500s, so mass should be somewhat less than 5x, too.

I was thinking more in terms of replacing simple electro-mechanical systems with more complicated transistorized ones. Not adding excessive touch logic BS to stoves :)

For example, prior to the early 60s, cars had generators. No silicon in them at all. The voltage regulator was basically two relays, and a bit of electro-mechanical trickery. very simple. If one contact failed, stuck on, a parked car would kill it's battery, if the other stuck on it would overcharge the battery when running.

Generator output had to go through the brushes, as there were no diodes available, so the commutator was used instead. In an alternator, only the exciter current goes through the brushes, which ride on sliprings and wear substantially less. (both because there are no gaps in a slipring, and because the current is minuscule compared to output current).

The cost to this was 6 diodes for the output, and a few transistors worth of voltage regulator. More complicated... but the result is greatly increased power for the same size, greatly reduced service interval, etc.