Slashdot Mirror

Condolences to those who knew the pilots. Fortunately no victims on the ground.

Its too soon to say what caused this tragedy. Weather? Package? Other?

Whatever it was, the plane appears to have suddenly gone from a mile high to ground impact in about 10 seconds.

https://www.flightradar24.com/...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/2...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.click2houston.com/...

https://www.flightglobal.com/n...

Would shooting someone who may have been a hostage without taking the time to find out who he was constitute gross misconduct?

You're joking, right? The FBI does it all the time.

https://www.click2houston.com/...

Continuing on this thread (at least, in my mind) is the lack of focus on betterment as a whole. Our society idolizes movie stars, musicians and athletes... None of which are known to focus on making the world a better place. The general public knows "that guy from the Fast & Furious movie", not that Paul Walker bought a miitary couples engagement ring. Or the NFL player that takes kids on a shopping spree. No, the general public is too concerned about who plays the Super Bowl halftime show, and who is in the game.

As long as the media spends 3 weeks overanalyzing Kim Kardashians red carpet attire and not the newest life-saving tech/medicine/advancements, this trend will keep going.

He said he has trouble getting the images out of his mind. "I haven't been sleeping really good," Ariaca said. "It's been hard because I have kids, too."

http://www.click2houston.com/news/driver-in-fort-bend-county-is-10th-us-death-from-takata-air-bags

You seem to agree with everything I said but want the hassle of the warrant in situations that you agree are nearly 100% likely to get one.

...

An arrest means enough evidence to be strongly considered to being charged with a crime, not just casually annoying some guy who a cop wrote a parking ticket.

Because cops are never mistaken, of course, right?

Man who gave homeless man 75 cents gets pulled over by police

Of course he made the mistake of agreeing to them searching his car, but I can understand why, he probably thought they were "likely to do more than just cuff/detain him" if he refused. And obviously because they saw him give 'something' (75-cents) to a homeless guy, he "obviously" was a drug dealer - because nobody gives spare change to the homeless anymore, right?

So why not skip all the bullcrud and use common sense and let cops do their job.

See, that's funny... because, correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that the cops job was to follow and enforce the laws of the land, of which, unless I am mistaken, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are the law of the land? Therefore, according to the 4th Amendment, which is the law, their job is to get a warrant in order to search my effects, papers, etc. I'm not sure why expecting them to follow the law they purport to uphold is "bullcrud", seems like common sense to me that they should be following the Amendments set down in law to regulate what they can and cannot do. Seems to me to be greatly lacking in common sense to allow them to violate the 4th Amendment, whether it be 100% certain, "nearly" so (whatever that is, is 90% "nearly"? 80%? 50%? Who decides what "nearly" is?), or whatever - that is a Judges job to decide whether the evidence they have is certain/sufficient enough to give them a warrant to search, not the police's.

Unless you want to make all the police into Judges, and maybe we can find some guy named "Dredd" to be the best of them? Is that really the picture of society you want in our country?

You mean like this? http://www.click2houston.com/image/view/-/14428030/medRes/1/-/maxh/360/maxw/640/-/vrhrx6/-/shuttle54-jpg.jpg

Houston seems to have managed to get their replica to it's new home safely. Someone dropped the ball, you always factor in wind when on the water, always

As of earlier today, the law's main sponsor, Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the law is dead after support for the law collapsed.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/28032459/detail.html

Wow...this story became a non-story tout suite!

"Tout Suite"?! Yer, one of dem for-aners, aren't yeew?!

Yer have no biz-niss commenting on Amerikan matters, kah-peesh?!

As of earlier today, the law's main sponsor, Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the law is dead after support for the law collapsed.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/28032459/detail.html

Wow...this story became a non-story tout suite!

As of earlier today, the law's main sponsor, Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the law is dead after support for the law collapsed.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/28032459/detail.html

Actually, illegal immigrants are just like the rest of us.

They commit real crimes (such as: theft, murder, etc.)

They are just like us. Except they are in the U.S. illegally.

Heheh, I wonder if that would really work?

It worked in Texas, in prison.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/20301265/detail.html

Then the greedy-ass city council wanted more revenue, so they shortened the yellow-light timing. They now have yellow-light times that are around 2 seconds on most of the camera-watched intersections.

Do you have anything to back that up?

This report suggests that rumour isn't true, and the Texas Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices defines 3 to 6 seconds for the yellow light. ftp://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/trf/final_report_rlc_1008.pdf (last page).

Meanwhile, OUR wonderful governments here can not secure the voting rights against the scammers...

Dead people voting? No computers raising alarms...

From the NRDC: the cost of setting up new nuclear reactors makes them *economically non-viable*. Granted that their opinion should be taken with a grain of salt, but there is a legitimate argument against nuclear energy outside of a fear of mutants.

That's because of all those pesky regulations that try to keep companies from blowing their own shit up and ruining everyone's day. Without them, companies would just push the lawsuits and damage costs back onto the customers, with them, companies still just push the costs back onto the customers.

The public is pretty much fucked either way, but at least with the regulations we only get one BP Amoco every couple of years. Can't imagine what life'd be like if the companies couldn't be fined a few thousand bucks for their screwups before they start killing and poisoning people.

So after hearing about Clinton winning Texas and Ohio (and Rhode Island, for that matter), the second thing I read about the crazy pre-election election that seems so popular in the US right now was this article:
http://www.click2houston.com/news/15492166/detail.html

Seems that someone "helped" seniors register to vote, and then filed absentee ballots in their names.

Thing is, every election, every vote, every ballot that happens in the US seems to be tainted by fraud of some sort. Identity theft, ballot stuffing, turning away voters, rigged machines, middle-of-the-night changes to the law, you name it--it's all going on, and seems to be going on all the time. The worst part is that it hardly ever raises an eyebrow from the voting public or the media. In this example, there is solid evidence of election fraud, and it's getting a few column-inches on a local website. Why isn't this on the front page of the Houston Chronicle?

Don't you people even CARE about the failure of your democracy anymore?

Instrument flight rules (IFR) vs visual flight rules. I should have said class E airspace. Anything over 10k' requires oxygen, so yes... technically you could get something up that high, 10,000 feet is a practical limit. Odds are, if something has O2 or a pressurized cabin, it will have an electrical system.

I'm thinking of the Police drones rather than the version (and activities) they use on the non-civilian side. A prop based drone like they are playing with in Houston would probably fly in my airspace.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

You just don't realize the demographic they are targeting. Just take a look at their news line-up: Lauren Freeman, Daniella Guzmán, Rachel McNeill, Mariza Reyes, Dominique Sachse, Courtney Zavala, and my personal favorite Jennifer Reyna. I watch KHOU for my morning news but switch to channel 2 during commercials. I saw the report on the unmanned tests and given HPD's reputation of late I don't doubt for a minute they may have tried to cover up their tests. Heck HPD reported a guys death a suicide even though he was shot in the back of the head.

...Oh, good readers, you SO have to read this story out of Houston about police doing a secret test/demonstration of those unmanned military spy drones for use in civilian policing. Not only did the Houston Police Department try to keep the media from finding out about the big shindig, but they surrounded the test areas with cop cars; and when they realized that a news team was filming the whole thing from a helicopter, they even lied through their teeth that the FAA had restricted the flight area. (Knowingly misrepresenting a federal rule is, by the way, not only stupid, it's unlawful; so here we have a police department of a major American city willfully breaking federal law.)

...Just read the article. By the end, you'll see the Houston police representatives dancing all around, doing everything they can to avoid admitting to what this latest militarization of civilian law enforcement is all about. And once you've finished reading the article, ask yourself which candidates for local, state, and/or national office are promising that they'll stop this whole, Orwellian madness right in its tracks. (PREDICTION: I'll bet you end up saying, "None that I can recall.")

...Insitu's people and products bring unique capabilities and benefits to our customers:

Experience--Over 60,000 ScanEagle(TM)UAV flight hours in theater since 2004

Service--Our growing team is experienced, seasoned, innovative, and responsive like no other

Endurance--Over 20 hours possible per flight, day & night

Low Cost--Economical operations and systems permit selective expendability

Persistence--Insitu's inertially stabilized camera turret, plus endurance, plus Insitu's ObjectTracker target tracking technology, keep objects of interest in view

Weather--Wide envelope. Reliable operations in winds over 35 knots, through significant precipitation, and beneath clouds

Crosswind--Good. Operates in crosswinds that ground other UAVs, needs no runway

Runway--None. Unprepared terrain or shipboard operations made easy with Insitu's SuperWedge(TM) Launcher and SkyHook(TM) Retrieval System

Stealthy--Nearly impossible to hear or see an Insitu UAV even at close range

Modular--Modular design means components are easily replaced in the field

Lean--Small, light weight UAV, compact ground support equipment, no runway, and autonomous operations mean low personnel requirements and very small footprint

Expandable--Avionics bay has available slot for easy integration of new UAV payloads...

...Oh, good readers, you SO have to read this story out of Houston about police doing a secret test/demonstration of those unmanned military spy drones for use in civilian policing. Not only did the Houston Police Department try to keep the media from finding out about the big shindig, but they surrounded the test areas with cop cars; and when they realized that a news team was filming the whole thing from a helicopter, they even lied through their teeth that the FAA had restricted the flight area. (Knowingly misrepresenting a federal rule is, by the way, not only stupid, it's unlawful; so here we have a police department of a major American city willfully breaking federal law.)

...Just read the article. By the end, you'll see the Houston police representatives dancing all around, doing everything they can to avoid admitting to what this latest militarization of civilian law enforcement is all about. And once you've finished reading the article, ask yourself which candidates for local, state, and/or national office are promising that they'll stop this whole, Orwellian madness right in its tracks. (PREDICTION: I'll bet you end up saying, "None that I can recall.")

...Insitu's people and products bring unique capabilities and benefits to our customers:

Experience--Over 60,000 ScanEagle(TM)UAV flight hours in theater since 2004

Service--Our growing team is experienced, seasoned, innovative, and responsive like no other

Endurance--Over 20 hours possible per flight, day & night

Low Cost--Economical operations and systems permit selective expendability

Persistence--Insitu's inertially stabilized camera turret, plus endurance, plus Insitu's ObjectTracker target tracking technology, keep objects of interest in view

Weather--Wide envelope. Reliable operations in winds over 35 knots, through significant precipitation, and beneath clouds

Crosswind--Good. Operates in crosswinds that ground other UAVs, needs no runway

Runway--None. Unprepared terrain or shipboard operations made easy with Insitu's SuperWedge(TM) Launcher and SkyHook(TM) Retrieval System

Stealthy--Nearly impossible to hear or see an Insitu UAV even at close range

Modular--Modular design means components are easily replaced in the field

Lean--Small, light weight UAV, compact ground support equipment, no runway, and autonomous operations mean low personnel requirements and very small footprint

Expandable--Avionics bay has available slot for easy integration of new UAV payloads...

I think we will all agree that such links are tenuous at best. For example, we only need to burn out finger to learn that fire hurts. We are capable of realizing cause and effect without any direct experience. Most of us go through our entire lives without putting a baby in he microwave, or shooing our playmate. I certainly believe that kids burned down their houses and mutilated frogs even before Beavis and Butthead. In fact these las two are probably so common they aren't even news.

So what makes science any different. At least in the US I suppose it is a matter of magical thinking. Science is based on cause and effect. It is based on the functional form that the given a set of inputs results in predictable outputs. Scientists are not going to sit there running the same experience, with the same parameters, and expect widely different results. They are not going to pray for better result any more than they most devout person choose to pray for the lights to come rather than flipping the switch.

Certainly such magical thinking is to be expected in children, and children's movies take advantage of that wonderful innocence. As the child grows up, however, the child is suppose to understand cause and effect, gain experience, and therefore movies become increasing based in reality, with a continued healthy dose of imagination that still requires a suspension of belief. It is, however, understood that reality is what one lives, not what is in a book or what is on the screen. The unfortunate truth is that many people never maure out of magical thinking, and in the extreme these people do bad things to themselves and others, and in minor cases they simply never fully comprehend cause and effect, and continue to believe the childhood stories are true, and this has been the unfortunate situation long before movies existed. It likely has gotten no worse. Just look at the people who wished to kill Galileo, for simply stated what he believed his experiments showed was reality. People are stupid and prefer to live in the security of their mythology rather than face the harsh reality. This is even true for smart people, the people who say they are doing something because they believe in it, rather than because they have evidence of the truth, even if the result of the actions are devastating.

What about vigilante sites like http://platewire.com, as reported in this article, or www.womansavers.com. These sights tend to encourage posts which on the face of it are libelous if unfounded, if not a whole lot more (IANAL).

It seems to me that sights like these should not only be ethically bound but legally bound to provide an active means to challenge and remove posts which contain false or misleading statements since they more or less directly identify individuals involved. At the very least, they should not benefit from a ruling like because they encouraged the behavior from the start.

It's not the same as a craiglist here there is no such vigalante intention. Even they have rules and systems to challenge defamatory posts.

This is really a problem in houston. The police union is fighting for the chiefs removal. While the officers may have some valid concerns, others feel that that the chiefs problems stem from him trying to clean up the force. Things that the police officers in the area do is use excessive force, hang in strip clubs during duty time, shoot suspects in the back, shoot neighbors, etc.

These are events in which officers have been tried, and either received a minimal sentence or cleared due to justifiable force. Certainly these are isolated incidents, and one has to have sympathy for the men and women who go through the stress of having thugs taunt them day in and day out. This does not mean that the common rules of civilization can be ignored. After all, if mere taunting and stress can justify excessive force, then the devout men who are daily taunted by the scantily clad women, could be argued as having some justification to take action.

I kind of feel like our problems stem from a lack of civility, and more importantly a feeling of invulnerability. For instance the US has apprehended, often without significant cause, countless individuals and then tortured a number of them. A rational person would expect some consequence for this behavior. None of use go out and kidnap a kid and think that there will be no consequences. Yet when an american is tortured, beheaded, or mutilated, we are surprised, and think that such actions are without motive. Police safety, much like the safety of troops, depends on them holding the high ground. If surrender guarantees a reasonable level of safety, if the police are merely enforcing the rule of law, then most will submit. If not, if a jail cell means having a broom stick shoved up your ass, then the rational person will choose to fight instead of submit. I mean if you are going to die anyway.

Interesting that a game store got robbed and the clerk was shot in chest: http://www.click2houston.com/news/9275077/detail.h tml

Right, that's my point, the part about cameras in homes was only mentioned to sensationalize the story. Who gives a rats ass if there are cameras in crime ridden parts of the city and apartment complexes. I see the news every morning and evening and there are murders in apartment complexes almost every day.

If Hurtt or anyone else had mentioned cameras in private homes, the local TV news would have gone nuts. They're so goofy about sensationalizing "The Danger lurking in your home that could KILL YOU at any moment" which is your gas stove if the knob gets turned accidently or something silly like that. This they would have jumped on, there would be no love lost between the cops & news in this town.

Right, that's my point, the part about cameras in homes was only mentioned to sensationalize the story. Who gives a rats ass if there are cameras in crime ridden parts of the city and apartment complexes. I see the news every morning and evening and there are murders in apartment complexes almost every day.

If Hurtt or anyone else had mentioned cameras in private homes, the local TV news would have gone nuts. They're so goofy about sensationalizing "The Danger lurking in your home that could KILL YOU at any moment" which is your gas stove if the knob gets turned accidently or something silly like that. This they would have jumped on, there would be no love lost between the cops & news in this town.

Right, that's my point, the part about cameras in homes was only mentioned to sensationalize the story. Who gives a rats ass if there are cameras in crime ridden parts of the city and apartment complexes. I see the news every morning and evening and there are murders in apartment complexes almost every day.

If Hurtt or anyone else had mentioned cameras in private homes, the local TV news would have gone nuts. They're so goofy about sensationalizing "The Danger lurking in your home that could KILL YOU at any moment" which is your gas stove if the knob gets turned accidently or something silly like that. This they would have jumped on, there would be no love lost between the cops & news in this town.

I don't know that I'd agree. That Mr MacDonald was recently arrested, don't you know.

Since Bush has been in power the Geneva convention is more or less void

Well, considering that the Geneva conventions are limits of wartime behaviour, they have been more or less void since December 1941, which is the last time congress declared war.

a country has been overrun

Overrun by what?

the country is spending billions (more) on weapons

Wrong. Defense Spending is significantly lower than previous times of conflict, which is impressive considering that we are not fighting any single nation, but rather a philosophy that is present in many parts of the world.

Israel gets a "do whatever you like" card

US policy regarding Israel hasn't changed over the past 30 years. Why would you blame Bush for this?

rights have been taken away from citizens

And what "rights" would those be? The right to know if a Cell Phone network went down? (Hint: If your phone loses service, there is a good chance the network went down)

corporate america has been placed above the law

Besides the crooks who broke the law.

the VN was almost invalidated

The UN was invalidated because they failed to enforce their own resolutions for 13 years.

money for good causes is being withdrawn

Let me guess, a "good cause" is something that you agree with, right?

America, get yourself another president, _please_.

owlstead, get yourself an educated argument, _please_.

Bush's Justice Dept. doesn't go after his buddies.

Are you sure about that?

So was she.

That wasn't a rigged demo. The trading operation was the one real asset they had, and UBS/Warburg bought it from them.

That's not to say that they didn't have actual trading going on too, because obviously they did. But as with everything they felt the need to "cook the books".

sPh

Mass transit isn't as safe as you'd think.

Cars kill fewer people at once.

I guess if something happens while you are on some mass transit you can at least expect it to be on the world news (small comfort).

>It's a pitty that the US government so heavily subsidizes automobiles and gives other forms of transit the shaft

As a Canadian who has been to the states often enough to understand mass transit in both countries, I quickly realised that mass transit ONLY works in huge cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta, Detriot, New York, for example. And since a large amount of the population in both countries lives in cities where ANYTHING and EVERYTHING (especially work) takes a minimum of a 15 minute drive (often 1/2 hour) mass transit is NOT a viable choice. I refuse to wait an hour (each way) to get my groceries by bus. Heck, where I live I have to drive 20 minutes just to pick up groceries, and I'm only 5 minutes out of a city of 300,000. This is normal in a not-so-big-but-growing city.

Rail: Won't work because you'd have to stop for 3 minutes every 3 rail minutes to pick people up, due to urban sprawl. It will take twice as long to get to the destination (assuming traffic on the roads isn't bad -- and in the smaller cities it usually isn't).

Bus: A better idea, but still much too slow. The amount of buses needed to take so few people ends up pumping more crap into the air than the individual cars, from what I see now.

Supersonic Transport: Great for going to other cities. But that isn't really the problem, is it?

Subway: Not unless your city population is in the millions. The price is just way too high.

Basically, these ideas work well for most other developed countries because their population in most cities is high enough to support them. The United States, and Canada (especially) don't have enough population density to make these ideas work.

I think if you want to solve the problems of the under 1/2 million population cities you need to pack people in more tightly and fix the roads so that people can get where they need to go quickly. Oh, and you need to encourage more really local business (like a 5 minute walk local), rather than have patches of houses, and (far away) patches of stores.

Just my 2 cents.