I used to hunt with a .303 rifle. Single shot bolt action, precise headspacing, accurate as anything and lots of stopping power. You wont get that from a gas operated system with an automatic bolt. If you really do need that fast a rate of fire then you are using a 223 for birds, and a shotgun is a much better bet...

Sitting from the other side of the pond I wonder the same. We've slid down the same path in the UK and everyone is scared of terrorists, despite the fact we've had the IRA for 40 years, and they killed a lot more people over a lot longer time period than the current mob did.

I've never figured out why we stood up and gave the Irish the finger and refused to be cowed by them as much as they do with the current mob.

You need to keep the neutron count down in a fissile mass being compressed, to prevent premature detonation and a resulting fizzle. (which is why weapons grade Pu keeps the 240 percentage small, to keep teh background neutron flux down.)

Now imagine tossing that warhead into an evironment just after a nuke has gone off. There is a lot of background neutrons from the fission products and fallout. If you implode the next warhead too soon it'll fizzle from this external increase in the neutron flux. Hence the need to seperate them in time to give the active decay products chance to also decay and get the neutron flux down,

The British police did just that, except they lied from the start and said they were destroying the records. Several years later they had a huge illegal database, so got the law changed to make it legal.

IF the police want your DNA, do your level best not to give it them. Once given you won't get it back.

Or the British way..

1. Ask for DNA samples to clear people from the investigation
2. Routinely sample DNA from people arrested.
3. Lie about keeping the samples.
4. Wait a few years
5. When get caught with a huge, illegally colelcted database whine it's useful and get the law changed so it's legal

Never trust the police. They have a binary few, Policeman, and guilty perps. If you are not a copper you are guilty, of something, and if not then we can find something.

If it costs that much in downtime you don't put it all on one server. Warm standbys or a failover cluster please....

I'd have to disagree. I've got just under a third of a million tapes in library and these problems simply don't occur. What you are describing is a mangement issue, not a technology issue.

Are they garuanteed to start up again in six years time? No stuck spindles? How about in 20 years? Tapes are. I've yet to see a drive that is.

Learn how modern tape catalogs work then - you can seek with a tape to any position you want you know and then you start reading. you dont have to read the first file before you can read the end...

LTO3 is 57 seconds to pony up and find the data from a cold start, and in my library that includes the time for the robot to find the tape, and load the drive. 15 minute seeks just don't occur anymore with LTO drives.

The police could find someone standing over a dead body spattered in blood holding the hammer that fits the divot marks in the victims head, freely confessing to it and they would *still* be a suspect and no more.

They don't become a culprit, or rather a convict until the courts have had their say. Sadly there are too many coppers in the UK who think they are the law. They are the police - it's the magistrates and judges who are the law.

Since I never use my phone's data connection, and am so quaint that all I have on it is my phonebook there is mischeif to be had. Easily possible to build a 300V flyback converter inside the case of an extended battery, and use that to provide +/- 300V on alternate output pins on the data connector. I defy the machine to cope with that.

When asked I'll tell them it's a security feature, and knowing the woodentops if you tell them before it won't work that'll make them more determined than ever yo pulg it in and extract the data....at which point you've divulged your legal responsibility to warn them.

Sympathetic to whom? The police or the public?

Over here we have something called the Levenson enquiry into press standards and next up the entirely nasty world of the police tipping off and getting too cozy with the media. I'd much rather the two didn;t cooperate - we see enough perp-walks here already, but you never seem to see them when the police realise they made a mistake and quietly let them out the side door so the police don't get embarrassed.

Wireless Telegrapy acts from 1949 on and the successive Communcations Acts have made the mere possession of devices for wireless telegraphy illegal unless you have a licence.

Some licences are held by the Govt on behalf of the people, like CB radio licences, and a broadcast receiver licence, others like amateur radio licences you have to get yourself after paying the fee/exams etc. There is no licence that you can get to allow you have communcations equipment for TETRA, unless you happen to be a licencend amateur and they are using some of the amateur allocations (as will happen for the Olympics)

Already been done...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8249792.stm

"Gordon Brown has said he is sorry for the "appalling" way World War II code-breaker Alan Turing was treated for being gay."