Key fobs??
What use does a prisoner have for a key fob anyway?
Anyway I suggest that many mobile phones can be fitted inside a 'Chatham Pocket"; tablets perhaps not.
Icon - In case the batteries have a problem
1344 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Apr 2010
Several studies have shown that coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste, so in normal operation
(barring Chernobyl style accidents) your coal burning plant is the radiation risk
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045.short
icon - for the stupidity of burning coal
It is somewhat like an antarctic winter stay. Only a few people can take the being cooped up and lack of change of scenery. Stay indoors or die.
Perhaps they should do a try-out there. The temperatures are pretty similar to a lot of Mars, and if you don't like it or shit happens TOUGH LUCK.
I also would also suggest that anyone under 25 is too immature to make a one-way trip decision
Barclays group
ABSA (the local part in South Africa) are contending for the title of worst!
http://www.fin24.com/MyFin24/Detained-over-fraudulent-debit-card-20130613
A man shopping was detained for hours because his card was declared fraudulent by the system; they were waiting for the ABSA fraud check expert to come along
" He proceeded to ask me four or five questions to verify that I was the account holder. That was done in under a minute and I was told everything is fine.
I asked what the problem was and why my family and I were subjected to this. He proceeded to tell me that it was simply an Absa system error and also told us that if he had not come through to verify my identity, I would have spent the remainder of the weekend in jail."
Yes the Ping time will be huge, but you always have that in space communications. I wonder about tracking the earth base from the moon. Earth-Moon should be simple enough but who sets up and checks alignment from the Moon side.
Do we have contact with extraterrestrial network engineers?
Clearly this all these references to the Roman Empire are ringing true.
Can I quote Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire':
But its fall was announced by a clearer omen than the flight of vultures: the Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects.
For 'subjects' read 'users' in this case
I was having a discussion a while ago about why an advanced civilization would want to broadcast large amounts of radio power; the best answer we could think of was asteroid radar.(http://http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/)
Keeping track of them as a spacefaring species would be as vital as nautical charts to seafarers.
I don't know about the TV in every country, but most of the TV that I have seen (terrestrial and other) is utter crap, so I really don't know if it would be seriously missed.
The search for market share has driven down quality standards a lot, and most of the what remains of intelligent and interesting content left is spoilt by gimmicky camera work and irritating hype.