Comment Re:Docking with the International Space Station? (Score 1) 44
You're full of shit. The ATV, Progress, and Soyuz all dock directly with the station.
Comment Re:Hormone therapy? (Score 1) 784
Oh yes we do, it is called psychotherapy.
Comment Re:Reprehensible (Score 1) 490
It depends on how you measure success. If you look at things like prison population, life expectancy, homicide rate, treatment of minorities, poverty, access to higher education, access to healthcare, work conditions, protection of civil liberties, freedom of the press, etc..., the U.S. is a shithole I wouldn't want to live in.
Comment I have a relevant equation on the topic... (Score 3, Funny) 385
...but
United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
Comment Re:Universe-wide network? Is IPv6 sufficient? (Score 1) 63
There are about 10^80 atoms in the observable universe, so we should be quite safe with 128 bits addresses.
Comment Re:A Parrot AR Drone? (Score 1) 339
It is trivial to add this capability to any RC aircraft. Just stick an ArduPilot in and you are done.
Comment Re:Radioactive material != Nuclear weapons (Score 4, Informative) 167
Neptunium-237 is weapon-usable as well.
Comment Re:Prison population (Score 1) 160
Given that inmates don't have internet access, yes.
Comment Re:Easily fixed (Score 1) 218
What makes you think China can't do the same ? They are probably the one you'll be buying the robots from anyway.
Comment Re:What could go wrong? (Score 1) 161
The problem with SDI was not the science, but the political idiocy of spending a fortune undermining deterrence instead of working toward mutual disarmament, and the economic impossibility of dealing with countermeasures.
Since you can't negotiate with an asteroid, and that they tend not to deploy decoys, this should work a lot better than SDI.
Comment Re:Once you have working code . . . (Score 1) 130
I think we could take care of the obviousness criterion with something like this:
To submit a patent you should be required to provide a spec, an implementation, and a reward. Then the spec is published and if anyone can come up with an alternate implementation within a few days (or weeks), or prove that the submitted implementation doesn't work, he gets the reward and the patent is refused, otherwise the submitter keeps the reward and the patent is granted.
In addition, every time you submit a patent that gets rejected, the reward doubles.
Comment Re:"Wantonly violated?" (Score 2) 270
Rocket technology is dual-use, it can be used to deliver warheads or launch satellites. It is quite reasonable to be interested in both applications. Just because they are emphasizing one or the other depending of the circumstances doesn't mean there is a contradiction.
Comment Re:Misguided (Score 1) 274
Or you could just use Minix 3 and let it die.
Comment Re:Bullshit. (Score 4, Insightful) 597
How does that work exactly ? You shoot at a border agent and then what ? Guns are not a solution to everything.
