I believe the primary potential advantage of railguns is that they allow for a higher number of rounds to be carried and potentially fired at a higher rate, and have the defensive aspect of removing a critical vulnerability aboard ship. Its a significant advantage if, as you imply, the enemy will have a hard time sinking you because you don't have a magazine to detonate.

On the subject of ammunition, railguns are probably less efficient in general, but its probably a lot easier to store more fuel and less intrinsically explosive ordinance. Its not just that your ammunition is smaller because it doesn't need propellant, its likely the lower safety requirements would allow you to store your rounds at a higher space density over all. Naval vessels that are already nuclear don't need to even worry about higher fuel requirements, but even diesel ships are probably easier to design as carrying more fuel than more ammunition.

Thinking about efficiency, I wonder how much conventional ammunition is destroyed when it is not used for a significant length of time? I would imagine naval artillery shells have a "best used by" date of some kind, and their propellant and/or warheads don't have infinite shelf stable lifetimes. A railgun bullet could last a lot longer without degrading, and if your propellant is fundamentally diesel fuel (indirectly converted to electricity) then your diesel fuel remains constantly refreshed whether you fire your weapons or not. In terms of energy density cordite might be more efficient than railgun power, but the actual logistics of having a single fuel and using electricity might be in the long run cheaper than building and periodically recycling old ammunition.

It can be. But "improperly" requires context. Its not improper for the police to search servers. It is illegal for them to search servers in violation of fourth amendment protections. But the fourth amendment only applies when the search violates your rights. You have no right to prevent the police from searching property that is not yours.

No, he can't. In the first case, the defendant can claim the drugs were not his but *the house* was his and his privacy rights *to his home* were violated by the illegal search of his home.

But if the cops break into the house across the street and find drugs there and claim its yours, you cannot simultaneously claim the house and its contents are not yours *and* your right to privacy in that house was violated by an illegal search. You have no such right to have other people's houses not searched. *The owner* would have some legal recourse, but even then if the drugs were not used against him, he would not have a fourth amendment challenge because nothing is being used against him. He would have the right to sue for illegal trespass only.

What you're asserting is precisely why you should generally take advice of legal counsel rather than try to defend yourself based on incomplete knowledge of the law. The average person's actual understanding of the law tends to be woefully incomplete and inaccurate, because the law tends to be misrepresented in popular discussion. For example, the belief that the US Constitution grants the right to free speech, when it actually only asserts a right for speech to be free from government restrictions (and implicitly only unreasonable ones that do not prevent other Constitutional duties from being executed) is probably the most commonly misrepresented element of US law.

The answer to many questions about the defense strategy during the trial seem to be that either Ulbricht or his attorney or both thought they were engaged in an internet debate and not a criminal trial. His lawyer repeatedly failed to follow proper procedure during the trial that every trial lawyer knows, and used legal strategies that weirdly precluded them from offering certain lines of defense. For example, a critical defense assertion seems to have been that many of the pieces of evidence the prosecution used against Ulbricht were not owned by him or not his property. By making that assertion, he couldn't simultaneously assert that his rights were violated when they were acquired because he claimed they were not his in the first place. When his lawyer tried to do so, he was explicitly told he couldn't do that, as if he didn't even know.

Its almost as if the defense believed that since the prosecution bears the burden of proof, anything that had *any* alternative explanation, no matter how unlikely or illogical, automatically prevented proof beyond reasonable doubt. Which is ridiculous. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of this strategy was forced upon defense counsel by Ulbricht himself. It looks from the outside less like something an (even incompetent) attorney would do, and more like someone used to internet board sparring would think should work.

If Scott Adams thinks Science has failed him because of all the weird diet experts in the world, he probably thinks Medicine has failed him because of Doctor Oz, Psychology has failed him because of Dr. Phil, and the US Justice system has failed him because of Judge Judy.

I don't have a problem with the credibility of Science. On the other hand, I don't think Scott Adams career as a cartoonist grants a lot of credibility speaking about Science.

Most GRBs have a signal that's inconsistent with that scenario because of the size of the black holes: basically most GRBs have signals consistent with much smaller objects than galactic black holes.

The original theory, and one which still explains some GRBs, are the gamma ray emissions from two neutron stars merging. Binary stars are common, and in some cases both stars eventually become neutron stars. When their orbits decay, they can merge to form black holes and in the process convert a huge amount of mass into gamma ray energy. But the prevailing theory that best explains the majority of the rest of them are a special class of supernova that emits a huge amount of its energy in two narrow jets. When those jets happen to be pointed in our general direction, they appear to be a GRB.

Some GRBs emit so much energy that for a while astronomers couldn't reconcile their energy output with the limits on their size: even total conversion of all the matter in an object of that size into energy seemed to be insufficient to generate the kind of energy a GRB produces. When it was discovered that supernova can sometimes emit jets rather than explode outward equally in all directions, that provided a way for something of that size to appear to emit more energy than possible. Astronomers were calculating the energy reaching us from the GRBs, and assuming the object sent that much energy in all directions. Astronomers now think we only see a small fraction of all GRBs that detonate, and most jet their energy in directions we can't see.

No, you would not. The problem with this is that the whole point of the paper was to analyze ways to improve the reliability of disk arrays. You can do what you're describing if there was no specific timeframe in which hard drives need to be replaced: you just replace them whenever you get around to it, rather than soon after they fail. But that only works in environments where actual disk reliability is not important. In environments where actual array reliability is important, delaying the swapping of drives widens the window of vulnerability for an array, even one with hot spares, because of the need to survive the rare cases of multiple drives failing in a short span. That isn't likely, but when you're dealing with five nines of uptime requirement, those unlikely events have to be accounted for.

I'm also trying to imagine implementing a system whereby a $30/hr tech just walks down aisles and pulls blinking drives and replaces them, and I'm thinking anyone who does that deserves the uptime they get.

Or we're just the oldest in the neighborhood. The really cool kids might simply be too far away for us to have met them yet.

On the subject of books, Stephen Baxter wrote a series of fiction novels designed to tackle the Fermi Paradox, each one of which containing similar characters but set in a different universe with a different answer to the paradox. In Manifold Time, the answer to the Fermi Paradox is basically "we were the first, and because we take over the universe quickly enough we also become the only." In Manifold Space, the answer to the Fermi Paradox is comparable to the subject being discussed: advanced civilizations pop up all the time but they get wiped out by massive cosmic disasters repeatedly throughout the history of the universe. Manifold Origin is a bit harder to summarize, but I guess the best way to put it is that the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that evolution to advanced civilizations is contrary to our guesses so improbable, even we shouldn't be here but we didn't arrive by chance, we were "shepherded" into being here.

Yeah, its a statistical thing. The point isn't that GRBs obliterate all technological civilzations. Its that by reducing the odds of a planet achieving a technological civilization capable of surviving GRBs to very low levels, the odds of us having ever encountered one drop for very likely to extremely unlikely. And that's all that's necessary to resolve Fermi's Paradox.

Let me know when you can find a way to dispatch a tech to swap a hard drive in a tier 1 datacenter for a buck.

Well, first I think you're underestimating Apple's marketshare. If you measure Apple's marketshare relative to all smartphones everywhere on Earth, its marketshare could be that low. But Apple doesn't directly compete with most of those smartphones: it competes in the high-end smartphone market where it still has substantial marketshare. Supposedly, Apple shipped more phones in China last quarter than any other smartphone manufacturer, which means its marketshare is not insubstantial.

But I think more importantly, people - especially within the technology space - tend to look at Apple as a vanilla consumer tech company, when it is anything but. Asking why people are willing to pay so much for Apple when at best their products are marginally better is like asking why people pay so much for Air Jordans which are marginally better, or why people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for dresses that have no practical benefit over a $79 dress from Target. It comes down to brand loyalty and brand consciousness.

People keep saying Apple was going to fail in China because their phones were twice as expensive as the competition; that if they didn't make a budget priced phone Apple would be irrelevant in China. What those people are completely clueless about is that much of the sales of Apple iPhones in China were *because* its the expensive phone, not *in spite of* the fact its the most expensive phone. Its the Cadillac of phones, the Ferrari of phones. But as expensive as an iPhone is, its a lot easier to buy than a Cadillac, and far more useful day to day.

People have been misunderstanding Apple's strategy for years now, and show no signs of learning their lesson. The correct way to look at Apple is not to compare them to Samsung or Microsoft or Dell. Rather, its to compare them to Michael Kors or Calvin Klein or Nike. Imagine if Nike was the *only* company making shoes with celebrity athletes endorsing the product, and *everyone else* was marketing budget sneakers. They would probably never sell as much shoes as the budget sneaker companies, but think of the stranglehold Nike would have on the high-end shoe market, on mindshare, and most importantly on profits. Now look at Apple, saying "we're stylish and pricey" and everyone else, for the most part, saying "we are just as good but a lot cheaper." In the traditional tech space, Apple would be doomed. But in the high-end shoe market, they would be King. Apple isn't winning because they are playing the game better, Apple is winning because they are playing a completely different game and no one else is even bothering to suit up and play them.

This is somewhat misleading. The US is special in that its the only country that actually taxes income that isn't even earned in the country. Most countries will tax someone on the income generated in the country, but not tax income generated outside the country. That includes both corporations and *people*. If you are a US citizen and you go outside the country and earn income, you're required to pay US income tax on that income, even though it was earned entirely outside the country. To repeat: that's something practically unique to the US.

The US does provide an exception: if that income was already taxed by another country, you're allowed to declare that because you already paid taxes on that money to someone else, you don't have to *also* pay taxes to the US. Again: that's not just for corporations like Apple, but also for individuals.

Apple is required to, and does pay US income taxes on net income it earns in the US: it cannot simply "funnel" the income to another country to dodge taxes, and everyone saying that simply is confused or mistaken. If that was possible every corporation would do it and no one would pay any taxes. What companies like Apple *can* do, however, is a) pay taxes on that income in another country, particularly one with a much lower tax rate and b) don't bring the money back to the US, where they would then have to pay US tax on it.

Is this "dodging taxes?" Yes. But not really *US* taxes. The countries with the biggest beef with Apple are really European countries for whom Apple doesn't pay taxes on income generated in those countries because that revenue is funneled into Ireland. But that money would *not* be "taxed at around 40% in the US" because if Apple didn't funnel that income to Ireland (where it has special sweetheart deals that Ireland gave to many companies, to the chagrin of many other EU countries), it would then be taxed in the individual countries it was earned, and the US would still not see a dime of it.

As to dodging taxes by not explicitly transferring that money earned overseas back to the US? It has yet to be explained why a company that earns money overseas has an obligation to transfer that money to the US explicitly for the sole purpose of paying US taxes on it, and for no other reason. That's simply illogical.

But as to the income Apple generates in the US by its business operations in the US: for the most part, it pays taxes on that income just like every other corporation.

Who said its hard to figure out who is making robocalls? Its not difficult to figure that out. The problem is that it is not illegal to make robocalls. The concern is that some robocalls violate the law by calling people that are registered on do not call lists and do not have a valid legal reason for calling, and other robocalls are perfectly legal but the recipient doesn't want to answer them anyway. Services like nomorobo and others are intended for people who want to control the kinds of telemarketing and other robocalls they receive.

I use nomorobo myself, and given that its a free service I don't have to maintain myself, I think it works very well. It doesn't catch and block everything, but it blocks a surprising number of them and every one it blocks is a call I don't have to answer or alternatively listen to ring the phone over and over until voicemail picks it up. It doesn't block all robocalls, but its not supposed to. When my drugstore calls to tell me my prescriptions are ready for pickup, that's a robocall but not one I want blocked. If the service just blocks the worst offenders, that's still plenty valuable just as anti-spam filters don't have to block 100% of all email spam to still be worthwhile.

The Fermi paradox basically states that if life on Earth is the typical result of similar conditions, the probability is far higher that there are older, more advanced civilizations, and eventually on timescales far smaller than the universe has existed we should eventually have bumped into one of them as they spread throughout the galaxy, even the universe.

The paper suggests two effects of gamma ray bursts that alter that calculation. First, a given location was more likely to be exposed to a gamma ray burst at earlier times in the universe, when the population of large hot stars was higher and overall density of the universe was higher. Therefore, its possible that even though the universe is 14 billion years old during a significant percentage of that time the universe was too dense and the frequency of gamma ray bursts too high to allow a sufficiently high technological civilization to arise. That's why there aren't any really old civilizations, or alternatively why there are so few that they tend to be very far away statistically. Second, even after the universe had expanded enough to make gamma ray bursts less likely to completely sterilize all planets everywhere its still the case that most parts of most galaxies are still too dense to avoid getting hit by them.

So its possible the reason why we have not yet seen a very old highly advanced civilization is that the actual probability of one being old enough, and close enough, for us to have bumped into (or rather for them to have bumped into us) is a lot lower than we might assume, even if the conditions to initiate life are pretty common. Nearly all of them have been wiped out before they could advance to the point of being able to colonize on an interstellar level and avoid being driven to extinction by gamma ray bursts.

We dealt with cholera for even longer without all this public sanitation bling.