Explain to me how you will get that mortar in the second floor window of a 3 story building without demolishing the floor above it... This is a (more-or-less) direct fire weapon that does not rerquire any time to setup, does not require the soldier to take his eyes of the enemy, and can be carried by one infantryman. To me, that seems like a solid improvement over a mortar or a machinegun, provided the right situation.

Anyone care to google: Funhouse mirror p0rn? Because I sense rule 34...

Since instantaneous detection isn't relevant, one could use the consistent speed over a few minutes. If you are travelling at any appreciable speed, the displacement will be noticable, and the random jumps can be filtered out. Moreover, using a suitable model of displacement, a filtering approach (i.e. a Kalman filter) could be used to make this all work as well as needed.


Of course, the idea is ridiculous for a myriad of reasons; the primary one being: what ever happened to personal responsibility? We don't cap cars at the maximum speed so people don't speed, so why can't we just tell people not to call and just 'trust'* them. * read: have police officers enforce it.

Exactly!

Since, apparently, the only difference between a Theocracy and a Dictatorship is the motivation, we should stop calling it a theocracy (Well, unless God himself can be proven to speak directly to his people) and start calling it what it is: A religious dictatorship.

In a sense it reminds me of communism, a decent idea in theory, but all to easily abused by those willing to lie, cheat and kill to enrich themselves.

Heh, yeah, I had that too. It can be caused by combining it with the wrong kind of alcohol (in my case, red wine) or weed that is too strong.

Also, I had visuals that I could direct and felt very real (although I knew they were not). It was a nice experience, although the first time sucked badly as I did not know what was happening and I had a panick attack.

The issue with online sources, and any other sources is that they tend to be biased, and they usually only contain the records of those fitting that bias. However, as I was taught in high school (yay Dutchies!), if you are going to do something potentially dangerous and illegal, always have a babysitter, and always fess up with things go bad. No one wants to die pointlessly.

Nonsense! Case in point, the Netherlands. We have a hugely tolerant climate to all sorts of drugs, to the point where, say, a club cannot take your hard drugs away from you permanently (they have to give it back when you leave). And as a surprise, our drug usage is much lower than a lot of countries that have less tolerant attitudes towards it (like the US).

The official language of Morocce is Arabic....has been for many years.

Ha, this reminds me of a story of my own. I was flying from a small regional airport in Turkey (Kayseri) to Germany and was sitting in the boarding area, after the final safety scan. And this elderly Turkish woman next to mean takes an apple out of her bag, takes a knife out of her pocket and starts peeling it.... apparently airport security seems to vary massively on where you fly from and to.

Well, that. Also, let us assume that

1) Car theft was a legal minefield like downloading copyrighted material is.
2) The chances of getting away with it are rather good.
Now, add to that the notion that one would not deprive the previous owner of his car. Yeah...how many people would steal a car? For an example, look at the Bosten police strike:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Police_Strike#Strike

With the chances of getting caught going to zero, the incidence of crime skyrocketed.....I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

I think you have this figures messed up... condoms fail about 10-18% of the time. I believe that the 'rhythm' method is about 25% effective, now that means 75% failure rate. Also, this is not a per time figure, this is over a year of regular sex, no other contraceptives, 3 in 4 couples on the rhythm method get pregnant. Compare that to 1 in 5 couples for condoms. I know which I am using....

I think part of the reason for the cautiousness was this. In the US, everybody would be screwed (well, save a long drive), whereas Europe has an extensive railnet that is fast and efficient. Hence, we can afford to be overcautious.

Besides, I view this whole thing as an inherent risk of the flying bussiness. If the tides are too high for the ferries to go, no one compensates them either, nor do the bus companies get compensated for slippery roads, or any other transportation companies if problems arise. If everybody was going to go bankrupt over it, they might have a case (we need airlines), but they aren't.

That's complete BS. When it comes to live saving drugs, trials aren't placebo controlled for, obvious, ethical reasons. How would you like to tell the family that mommy could have lived another 10 years, but instead died in the interest of a stronger experimental procedure?

Bingo! I think most researchers are too busy with research and grant-finding to really bother...but the whole idea is insane.

Also, most people may not have the resources to do the research, nor the skills, when it comes to biochemistry. However, think of any CS field, or perhaps mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics. All you need to play along is a computer, some programming skills and the drive to read an article and study hard enough to understand it (well, brains help too). Especially in these fields, opening up science may greatly speed up the pace and scope of the science.

Finally, it has nothing to do with being able to understand it, being able to replicate it, or even being able to do anything meaningful with it.
1) The publishers cannot know whether or not I can do anything meanigful with it, I might be a major hobbyist in Biochem, and have a fully equipped lab in my basement....highly unlikely, but they cannot know that. 2) Tax dollars are involved, I want what I paid for.

I believe MechWarrior (at least 3 and 4) had this control scheme, you could pivot the arms on your mech separately from the torso.
This was advantageous because sometimes you'd hit another mech and this would prevent your torso from turning. Also, mindlessly blowing pulse lasers in some direction was occasionally useful (basically to prevent someone from standing still and lining up a shot).
In short, I can see uses for it, especially in tactical shooters with one-shot-one-kill dynamics where getting shot at is a very good reason to immediately seek cover. If we're talking UT here, yeah, the point becomes a bit moot.