Heat problem must be already solved, see the battlemaster ppc example. Also, while I can't imagine mounting an avenger cannon in a vehicle other than a warthog, I also can't imagine turning it into a giant pistol, either. I imagine that if I could do one, the other would be, if not easily achievable, at least something a good engineer skilled in the art could accomplish.

You know, I haven't had a conversation like this since rec.games.mecha died off. .. Brings back memories.

Yeah, I get the in universe explanation, what I question is why this was an issue in the first place. A mech carrying around a giant pistol should be all the inspiration you need to get from point a to point b , and it's not like it's a big engineering challenge given that you already managed to modularize the thing into a pistol form factor to begin with (especially when you civilization is keeping FTL travel going with spot and balling wire... You've got to have some seriously talented engineers).

Maybe they just had really aggressive patent attorneys in the star league era? Like "on the internet" patents turned into "on a battlemech" patents and ComStar held the IP with multi century terms, while the clans were the actual successor (no pun intended) in interest... The whole battle of Tukayyid thing was actually over who owned the omnimech rights, which is why they called it a trial. Make about as much sense as the actual storyline, I guess.

Never understood why the omnimech was supposed to be such a big deal... The battle master carried a ppc around in its hand for centuries.

You're 53 years old, posting as AC, and feel the need to announce that you're a transsexual and dare anyone to have a problem with you? FWIW, I don't think it's the world that has a problem with you--it seems like you have a problem with the world.

MS had an after-tax income of over 21 billion dollars in 2013. No idea where you're coming up with a $32B loss. Ballmer was a horrible CEO, but the biggest problem was that MS continued to make money--LOTS of money--while he was destroying the company's value, which made him look absolutely great on paper.

That actually answers something I was wondering about the other day. My company was looking at a facility in Houston and it's in a brand new industrial park that is literally across the street from some of multi-million dollar homes I was amazed that the homeowners didn't manage to kill the project, and now I understand why they couldn't.

FWIW, I think zoning is like any other form of government intervention: a necessary evil. Some is absolutely required, a little more is ok, and it's only when those in power have an axe to grind, or engage in mission creep that the problems start. I'd honestly hate to live somewhere without at least rudimentary zoning, lest someone come along and build a sewage treatment next door, or put in heavy industry across the street from your $5M house like the example above.

Prion diseases?

I disagree quite strongly with the above--text based interfaces really don't become unusable until you hit absurd latency (>2500ms). ssh/telnet are quite usable at >1000ms latency, and even high packet loss isn't really a huge concern. Even working over 110bps links, where one could actually type faster than the line rate wasn't a real problem until you filled up the buffer (I can't give you examples of what latency was like under those conditions, because I never measured it, but you've got 200ms or so built in RTT for a single byte from the bit rate alone)

The constitution, as written, is a whitelist of things the government is allowed to do. The bill of rights is a list of examples of things it is not allowed to do. This suggestion that there are exceptions has no basis in the text of either one. I'll never understand how some people can read, "congress shall make no law," "shall not be infringed," "no person shall be deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law," and other similar statements and come up with "this isn't absolute."

I wouldn't blame the submitter too quickly. I've had submissions accepted, and had my summary ripped completely out in favor of just a blurb from the article, so it's quite possible the editor did it in this case.

So apparently you CAN catch more (fruit) flies with vinegar than with honey?

Wait, what? Are you seriously suggesting that it's not a coverup because the coverup didn't start until people started asking questions?

I went to a catholic elementary school, and one of my 6th grade teachers was a nun named Sister Catherine-Joseph who taught two subjects: religion and science. Despite the obvious setup for failure, she taught both rigorously, and well. I HATED that woman with a passion, but she was, absolutely, a superior educator who would have smacked the shit out of someone with a ruler for daring to suggest that, "We all believe in Jesus, *wink wink*" was either suitable coverage or a valid refutation of evolution.

Good science fiction is (almost) ALWAYS about people, and how they react in an environment that is altered by a technology, or an event, or some other external influence that simply wasn't imaginable until our understanding of the universe progressed (the science part of the fiction). While there are some examples that differ from this, if you take a look through your favorite stories, they almost all conform to this pattern.

In this case, it's an exploration of what happens to someone who is in orbit during an event that leads to Kessler Syndrome. I'm not saying the film deserved to win, but I think complaining that "this isn't science fiction" is decidedly unwarranted.

The problem with your position is that L3's own data shows the port at over 100% utilization. They're not being throttled, they're trying to shove ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag.

Like I said, you can point fingers at whoever the peer is for letting the situation fester, but L3's own data suggests this was passive aggressive rather than active malice.