At least, they have dropped support for the 8 and 16 bit stuff.
Not so. Basically all consumer desktops are shipping 64-bit by default, but Windows 7, and even Windows 8 come with 32-bit editions that still include the 16-bit emulators to run legacy software.
Great, thanks for ruining the next episode of CSI...
"It's a two car collision, where's the other car?"
"No sign of it anywhere, just a mess of Lego bricks..."
Tune in Wednesday to see the mystery unfold!
One of the most blatant examples of foolish political ideas by science fiction authors is Gene Roddenberry's idea that advanced civilizations would have no money.
I'm not so sure Gene was that far off the mark. If you think about it money is basically a bartering tool to assist with the distribution of scarce resources. If you reach a point where resources are no longer scarce (sometimes called a post-scarcity society) then what would be the point of money? You want a mansion, order it up! You want a rocket ship to fly to Mars? Submit the requisition and the machines build it out for you. Too crowded on Earth? Grab a new residence on the ring-world being built around Alpha Centauri. And on and on. The Culture series of novels by Iain Banks envisions such a society, and I have to say it makes a lot of sense.
The part where Roddenberry's idealism got ahead of reason was in thinking it would happen that soon. I get the sense that we're still at least 1000+ years away from getting rid of money entirely. But if we don't blow ourselves up and we keep on developing tech at the current breakneck pace, I would say we will definitely eventually reach a point where money is no longer a necessary concept.
Yes and no. The 90% are only valid if the laser beam hits the object nearly at 90 degrees. Then indeed, the reflection will cause 90% of the energy to be reflected and 10% will be heating the surface. But still, this means we need to have a 10 times larger laser to have the same effect than on a non reflective (black) object.
I suppose that would depend on how well your reflective surface withstands the raise in temperature. Even if only 10% of the energy is absorbed it can pretty quickly cause a cascading effect of reducing the reflectivity of the device until the whole reflective layer ablates away. With mylar this would hardly take any time at all, with highly polished mirrors the first tiny scorch marks would melt the glass away in seconds. The laser doesn't have to be 10x as strong, it just has to be strong enough to wreck the reflective armor and still punch through the vitals before the payload can get to the target. When you're playing with 10's of thousands of watts, this is not a huge bar to meet.
He can't do it with that dragnet, either. All this NSA dragnet shit was in place for YEARS at the time of the Boston Marathon bombing, and it wasn't worth shit.
But let's say it prevented 100+ Boston Marathon-esque bombings, because the government stopped it before it got too far. Would it be an acceptable risk then?
No. Millions have fought and died for our freedoms. I would not be willing to give them up for a couple of thousands civilians who tragically died. And in following your hyperbole to the end - if we were having 100+ similar bombings a year we would be drone striking the ever loving fuck out of whatever country we remotely thought was behind them. I'm not saying rollover and take it, I am saying don't let them wipe their asses with the constitution and tell us it's okay because their shit smells like roses.
The second option is up to the said residents themselves (that's you and me) — whose representatives in Congress can tell the Admiral just that, if they want to. But, as long as he has that job, he sees no other way to do it, but to collect the metadata. Do you?
None of the angry comments in this thread so far are offering a viable alternative — maybe, we really ought to stop trying to prevent a terrorist act and try to build up instead the perception, that punishment will be inevitable afterwards, for example. But NSA are currently charged with prevention...
I don't need to put forth an alternative. Boo-fucking-hoo if he thinks he needs this to prevent the next terrorist attack. If it's outside the bounds of the constitution as myself and many like minded individuals believe, then he is not allowed to fucking do it. I don't care if it could've prevented an attack. The odds of an attack happening are fairly slim to begin with, and even if attacks increase 1000% (to what, like 1-2 major incidents a year?) then it's worth it to keep our essential liberties intact. The things people freak out about boggle the mind. Hundreds of *THOUSANDS* of people dead to heart attacks and cancer each year, tens of thousands dead in automobile accidents, and maybe on average a couple of hundred *MAX* to terrorist attacks. Talk about disproportionate response.
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss