Not sure I would take the word of an aerospace engineer that graduated from Perdue....

Nope. It's an important part of academic research. It serves multiple purposes. It puts the work in perspective for the reader, that isn't necessarily up to speed on that particular area. It demonstrates that you've done your homework when you claim that this work is new and an improvement on previous work (that's why its called "previous work"), and it helps to put your work in perspective; i.e. is it a major step, or a small incremental one. None of these are strictly necessary to "support your hypothesis", that's much too narrow.

That's why its academia and not just engineering, for example. We don't just want to know that you did something or learned something new about the world. We want to also know how it fits into the bigger picture, and that's where presenting what has gone before and how compares is necessary.

It's even worse than that. When you shoot at distances or situations where more advanced ballistics figure, a "numerical" mindset really helps.

It's not for nothing that electronic computers were developed to calculate better ballistics tables.

No disagreement there. There are of course also people who are in the wrong line of work. Don't get me wrong.

Or that you're overworked, stressed out, or haven't had enough sleep.

Shit happens. Sometimes more than once. If the same shit keeps happening more than once, then maybe something else is wrong...

That's an oversimplification. While a true conscript army with distributed hardware (like we had in Sweden) would be much better from that standpoint; if the army is the populace, then they cannot by definition be put to the task of quelling the people, armed resistance from the population is not without effect.

Now, exactly how useful an armed populace would be against a professional army in a civil war setting is a more complex issue than what you make it out to be. While a a populace armed with handguns and rifles is no panacea, many guerillas have been successful with a similar level of armaments. Especially initially. You need to be able to resist from the outset if you're going to be able to mount an effective resistance at all.

To this you have to add the motivation of the army you're up against. Killing your own people is hard. Adding armed resistance makes it harder, psychologically speaking. If people are shooting back, that makes it clear you're not popular. And while it may not do much in the situation at hand (i.e. make soldiers lay down their arms), it will give them pause later. (If history is anything to go by.)

But that's not to say that lightly armed guerillas are usually effective in the common military sense of the word. Not without outside support (c.f. Mujahedin in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion), esp. in unfavourable terrain. However, for outside support to be effective in the first place there has to be an organisation available to use it. Hence the CIA-sponsored "stay behind" organisations that sprung up in secret in Europe after the war. Note that much of the physical support to those organisation was in the form of preplaced caches of weapons, ammunition, explosives and communications gear.

Its also not for nothing that the previous Swedish handling of firearm licenses was distributed to the local police and a purely paper based system. This so that the records could be burned on short notice, to deny an occupier knowledge of who had firearm. This in addition to the cached military arms. One would hardly come up with such a costly and less secure scheme, in a country with traditionally strict firearms legislation, if fire arms in the hands of civilians were of no, to little value in resisting a large, well armed, trained, and regulated (invasion) force.

That's not to disparage other tools, such as explosives, and above all: organisation, communication, and leadership. (In fact, in order to avoid a secret state-within-the-state that's all that the Swedish stay behind movement organised in peace time. Leadership cadre and comms people. That's all that needs to be in place to get a head start.) However, firearms have their place. You for instance shoot collaborators, you don't blow them up. That's far too messy and runs the risk of collateral damage. Something that an organisation relying on popular support can ill afford. Same with isolated soldiers on a break. Now of course, an regular ambush starts best with a big bang, but there are lots and lots of other operations that aren't regular ambushes. (You'll for example be shooting a lot of collaborators. Easily ten times as many as the enemy...)

After all, one must never forget that the reason COIN (COunter INsurgency) operations are so notoriously difficult is that in order to succeed, the army needs to win. The guerilla need only not lose. And not losing, i.e. being able to continue carrying out operations, is much easier than winning; aka rendering your enemy completely ineffective and unable to conduct any operation at all.

It basically comes down to popular support and motivation. Those who have it will in the end win. Those who don't will lose. Guns can be substantial motivator, and communicator.

No, that's not really true. The peace prize is one of the original prizes set forth in Nobel's will. It further stipulates that it should be awarded by the parliament of Norway. So it's legitimate.

If you're looking for "fake" prizes, it's the economics prize "in memory of Alfred Nobel" that's the smoking gun. That was put in place by the Swedish central bank in the sixties (1968).

So, even though I as a swede wouldn't miss an opportunity to take the piss out of the Norwegians, this isn't one such opportunity.

But that's not necessarily an unreasonable position. With a two party system such as yours, and especially given the current political climate, it could be argued that it doesn't really matter which of the two you vote for. You'll end up in the same place anyway.

This is of course supported by the observations of the low voter turnout, liberal usage of terms such as "republicrats" etc.

These larger questions are also not necessarily in the hands of the politicians in any case; questions regarding the economy etc.

However the question of whether, and how, people should be allowed to own and shoot guns, is one of those few questions that is solely within the political domain. So if you feel that your vote doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things anyway, voting single issue becomes the rational choice. If you feel you'll be shafted anyway, you might as well use your vote for something you care about.

And then you of course also have to take into account that laws regarding weapons ownership is only a very small piece of the puzzle. We have traditionally had much stricter gun control laws in Sweden, and also a lot less violent crime than the US. However, that has recently changed significantly. When it comes to firearms violence we have to now go to southern Italy to find similar figures (and if we compare explosive/grenade violence, we have to go to Mexico).

Our firearm laws have not changed one iota during this period. The changes in violence are all due to social ills, with criminal gangs gaining a foothold (for lots of reasons) and illegal arms being smuggled here from south east Europe. (It's also the first time that firearms violence hasn't given rise to yet shriller cries for more strict licensing laws, as the AKMs and hand grenades that are used, obviously were never legally owned here in Sweden to begin with.) So restricting licensing further, would obviously not do anything to help the problem. Legally owned guns simply does not figure into this particular equation.

No. He's not forcing anyone to do anything. International law in the form of the Berne convention is the only force at work.

In the situation at hand the solution is simple. Stop using other peoples' code! It's not yours to do with as you please. In this case the author himself agrees that readline is not an integral part of the programme and could be left out without any trouble.

But he doesn't want to, and that's why he decided that he'd rather relicense his own code than do without readline. As is his right.

The GPL is the most inspired and intelligent development in the area in the last century, and probably this too. There can be no freedom if slavery is allowed. Hence the system that puts limits on others attempts to limit your freedom are more free. Not less. Freedom doesn't mean freedom from necessary rules. An absence of rules is not freedom, that's anarchy.

But the pressure in tires in the main landing gear (at sea level) of a 747 is ca 13 bar. Not 2... And that's just to begin with.

Again look at France. Cheaper electricity than Germany and 75% of it from nuclear. And that's beating coal economically. So how much nuclear is too much then?

Now, of course you want to run your expensive plants flat out. That delivers the best economy. But that's not to say that its "uneconomical" to run them a bit below max some of the time. There is a lot of middle ground between most profitable and won't-make-back-what-they-cost.

In fact. That argument is one that's better applied to wind+solar. Since they are so unreliable, you have to really go to town when speccing out your reserves. They have to be able to cover the whole load, while still not making any money when the wind does blow. Which it does most of the time. That's uneconomical in the extreme.

And that's why neither you nor Germany could exist in isolation. Without us, Norway, France etc. to shore up your grid, you'd end up with brownouts, blackouts etc. You couldn't run a stable grid.

No-one is saying that nuclear is perfect in ever way. Far from it. I am saying that its the best available. All things considered.

Nope. Swedish nuclear has regulatory problems. That's why we have a low capacity factor. But that's not inherent. In fact nuclear has the highest capacity factor of all energy sources. It's the most reliable of all electric energy sources.

And nuclear isn't expensive if you factor in the capacity factor. I have no idea where you get the "they have to be able to ramp down at night" spiel from. If you have any shred of a reference to that I'd like to see it. It's patently untrue. The only way wind, solar, etc. looks cheaper is because of subsidies and not taking capacity factor into account.

And no, it's not because we have hydro that nuclear works for us. Look at France. Plenty of cheap electricity (compared to you and Germany) and they produce 3/4 of their electricity with nuclear. With hydro a very small part.

And hydro electric isn't storage, in that it can't store electricity already generated. Following your argument then an oil or coal fired plant provides for electricity storage, as you can build as large a fuel tank, or coal heap, next to it as you please.

No, it's renewables that are expensive. It's not for nothing that electricity prices are the highest in Germany and Denmark. Germany is more expensive than France, even if you remove taxes and other levies. And the price in Germany is kept down by coal. So, nuclear is not the problem price-wise. Quite the contrary.

I'm not sure I follow when you say that nuclear can't supply more in winter when demand is highest.

In Sweden we have our peak demand on a cold clear winter day. The "clear" is operative here as that means a high pressure area, which means no to little wind. That's when we need the power, and wind can't deliver. (Hydro can though).

And wind isn't cheaper than nuclear, as it's unreliable. Nuclear can and does deliver reliably and predictably, wind doesn't. That's the problem. If we only had a way to store energy then by all means. I'd be the first to vote for nuclear removal. But since we can't, and there isn't really anything realistic on the horizon. Reliability is a major factor.

Why not? Like I said, in the Swedish example, if they've been built they'll be running "forever". Even if the decision to close them down has been taken. (German craziness notwithstanding).

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And this for many of the same reasons that the Germans will not close down their coal fired plants in the foreseeable future. There aren't any realistic alternatives.

And given that there aren't, I prefer the alternative that will not dump giga-tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. For, what should be, obvious reasons.

And the reason for this is that "green" energy, namely wind and solar, is eating its lunch. We demand that wind+solar be sold, at all cost, to the detriment of nuclear, and when they don't deliver (as they won't, because wind+solar is fickle) nuclear is left without the income to support itself.

You Danes do the same thing, you dump your wind surplus on us when you have too much, and buy from us when you don't have enough. Then you don't have a problem with nuclear...

And Germany should be so lucky that France is willing to sell them their "nighttime surplus". With Germany on wind + solar there wouldn't be any nighttime surplus...

And France does run some of its nuclear in a load following manner. Even quickly enough to do regulation. It's expensive to run that way though, as it thermally cycles the reactor tanks, to the detriment of their longevity. As part of a mix with i.e. hyrdo electricity, they work very well though. Just witness Sweden. I pay a third to a quarter for my electricity compared to you...