Posts by Grey Williams

Kung fu monks battle gobby net ninja

9mm over .45

I'll take your .45ACP and raise you a Beretta 9mm. Almost the same kinetic energy per round, bigger clip. So while you're reloading, I'm still firing away, 16 rounds to your 8. :D

US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beams

Mirror finish still wouldn't help

I know a gent over on another board who works with the defense dept. A similar subject came up in a discussion there awhile back and he related a story about it. Their dept was coming in under budget for the year. Now, as is typical with the government, if you don't spend all of the money they give you then you can count on not getting that amount in next year's budget. So they had to burn off some of it quickly. So one thing they did for testing was to order a mirror. Not just any mirror, but one of the absolute best that money can buy. It reflected like 99.9 someodd percent of light back. No mirror is perfect, of course, but this one was far better than most. Anyways, they aimed a high energy laser at this mirror and within a very short time (a few seconds at most, but I believe it was less than a second) the laser had destroyed the mirror and impacted the target behind it. Even though only a few hundredths of a percent of the light was absorbed, that was enough to drastically heat the material causing it to be ruined and quickly start absorbing ever more light until it was destroyed.

The same principle applies to the shells. Even if they were mirror finished, they would still absorb enough energy to destroy the finish and then they would be on the same footing as any other shell.

Judge pours generous portion of cold water on Zango

yay for sensible judges

Maybe there is hope for the US legal system yet. If we can get more sensible rulings like this one perhaps the tide will eventually turn. Now they just need to counterfile against Zango for legal fees. Make it hurt!

Top scientists list favourite gizmos

I can think of a few

Lessee. Fire, electricity, the internal combustion engine, the transistor, the microprocessor, the internet. All have drastically changed the world.

eBay, PayPal face court action

Illegal bundling

I believe that the fact that they pretty much require you to accept PayPal and the fact that if you are required to have a COMMERCIAL PayPal account may run afoul of illegal bundling laws. Ebay is basically a defacto monopoly in the online auctions business. Yes there are others but they're really bit players and Ebay has the lion's share of the market. It is illegal to use a monopoly in one area to force usage of another product or service in a different area. It might not be as much of an issue if they would allow you to use a free account but that option isn't given to you. So, basically, ebay hits you up for listing, they hit you for a percentage of what you make. Then when the person pays with PayPal they hit you up for another few percent of what you make.