As a followup it was a wonderful flight, and a great view of the fireworks!:-) We were by no means alone up there -- the most dangerous aspect of the flight wasn't the city lights going out (they didn't), the bullets from the southside (they missed), or the fireworks themselves, but the dozens of other aircraft and helicopters flying around in the same airspace!
Thanks for the link. The one in my bookmarks was no longer valid, and I couldn't find it on the new livid sight.
You give those countries too little credit
on
Apocalypse Not
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· Score: 2
Actually, those countries were doing quite a bit to prepare, all soundbites and hysterical news reporting aside. But the reality is that less developed countries had less code to wade through, and therefor less to do, not to mention less exposure to Y2K issues if something had been overlooked, than countries like the US, France, Germany, and Japan, where you can't even sneeze without a computer, much less spend a quarter on a pack of chewing gum.
If the world had done nothing, and some 20% of the infrastructure had had glitches (or whatever the prediction was), it wouldn't have mattered much to someone trekking in the Annapurnas or on safari in Africa. On the other hand, in London, Paris, Tokyo, or New York the impact would probably have been quite significant. This is not to say less developed countries would have been immune, merely much more resistent.
Yes, there were fearmongers and fools, both probably still cowering in their bunkers waiting for the Last Days. You are right, the true fearmongers (particularly those hyping the Y2K issue in the last couple of months when it served absolutely no constructive purpose) deserve to be smacked up side the head, financially as well as literally. But that didn't make the warning being given one, two, or five years ago any less timely or apropos. The irony is, we heeded those warnings, fixed our code, and prevented allot of difficulties as a result. Those with the foresight to warn us will get little if any credit, those of us who lost weekend after weekend getting things in shape in time for the new year will hardly be remembered either, but, luckilly for all of us, Y2K itself will go down in history as a non-event and be forgotten as well, which sure beats the alternatives.
One thing Y2K does demonstrate is than an ounce of prevention was worth many pounds of cure. As one of the ones who spent most of the weekend in the office making sure our trading systems were up to the task, I can tell you there were problems (not just with our stuff, but with data from the clearing firms, exchanges, etc.). Those problems were resolved and business was normal Monday morning, but had we treated this year like we have every other new year's weekend the story would have been very different.
He would only be eligable if he were to have subsequently removed his genitalia (local anesthesia not required), recognizing that any furtherance of his genetic lineage would be a disservice to the species as a whole.
Contrary to popular myth, you can survive an act of collassal stupidity and be eligable for the darwin awards, provided you are no longer capable of pro-creating.
1) It's gone from a "wouldn't it be nice" status to quite usable, though not ready for mom just yet (one still has to tweak the software by hand).
2) The project is of great importance to Linux as a desktop os, as DVD playability is becoming more and more a requirement by end users
3) The project is under more or less continuous legal attack by the DVD Forum, and could use the money to help in legal defenses and challenges to the Consortiums heavy-handed tactics.
The reason we had so few problems was that an unprecedented amount of effort was put forward to proactively fix the problem before it could become catastrophic. Clearly underdeveloped nations are less computerized and were therefor less vulnerable, but in the developed world this had the potential to really be unpleasant.
The irony is that, were it not for those dire warnings early on that got us all off of our asses and fixing our code for the new century, we probably would not be sitting so happy today. Some of the people enduring the greatest mockery (no, not the idiots sitting in their bunkers) are in many cases the most unsung hero's of 1999. We used a few ounces of prevention in '99 and cured a whole lot of poundage of difficulties for 2000, and it shows with how smoothly the new year actually went.
As it was, when I went to get my usual $200 for the weekend from the ATM, the bank limited me to $60, obviously fearing a run on their cash reserves. Irritating, but not a real issue (I'll get more out today to last the rest of the week). I'm sure there will be other minor irritants as the new year drags on, but the major issues appear to have been identified, addressed, and successfully resolved.
Just because we managed to hit the breaks in time to avoid going over the cliff doesn't mean the cliff wasn't there.
I didn't nominate too many categories, but the following rationale applies three of those I did:
Most Improved OS Project: Livid (the Linux DVD Project) - Not only has playing DVDs under Linux gone from a pipe-dream to reality (if still a little rough around the edges) in a very short time, but with the help of DeCSS/css-auth it could be ready for prime time in the very near future. Additonally, the project is very important for the consumer/desktop usability of Linux, and could use the $10k cash to fend off additional legal thuggary from the DVD Forum.
Best UNIX desktop earcandy: xmms - the audio app I use more often than my television or stereo. (Though Myth2 Soul Blighter was a temptation)
Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism: Declan McCullagh of Wired -- not only did this person's poor reporting precipitate serious legal troubles for developers of css-auth (the Linux DVD css component), but he remained unapologetic throughout and, even worse, followed up with even more damaging FUD after having been informed of the errors in his reporting. His behavior on the livid development mailing list was unprofessional and reprehensibe, where he even went so far as to flame Livid developers without provocation. I only wish the archives were still up to link to here...
Deliberately denying users of alternative, non-windoze operating systems access to a web page is both an economic and political attack on the free software community. If we cannot do our on-line banking online, what is next? On-line purchasing via SSL. Online viewing of streaming video? Online viewing of XML (the purported replacement for HTML)? This is an economic and political battle which, if unfought, will result in all of us being coerced by simple necessity into using a platform we despise.
It is not only appropriate, it is essential that we respond in kind. Boycotting is just one means of doing this (close your citibank accounts, and make sure they know why you have done so). Educating your friends as to why this is matters is equally important -- and if you can talk them into voicing similar concerns to organizations which behave like this, so much the better.
Checkfree, for example, works flawlessly with 128 bit encryption under Linux and is "bank independent" though it does cost $10/month for the service. Still, it is one of many alternatives which are friendly (or at least not aggressively hostile) toward alternative platforms (Northern Trust of Chicago has free online banking which also works fine under Linux, and I suspect if you look around one or more of your local banks will be similar). I would suggest anyone interested in having Linux, *BSD, or any other non-Microsoft platform usable on the web of the future put their money where their mouths are and support companies which allow us to conduct our business on the platforms of our choice, using open standards with the tools of our choice. Any other approach means sacrificing your options for someone elses bottom line (guess who's in this case).
This doesn't make us "html" or "web" police, it makes us concerned consumers who won't allow our vendors to use coercive tactics in order to force us into using their strategic partners' inferior products in order to gain the "privelege" of using their services. Without us (the customers) they do not make money, and we should not be at all shy in using that leverage to our advantage.
Now everyone will blame those Blue Screens of Death and random system crashes they are so used to on the year 2000, rather than Microsoft's abject software engineering practices. This has to be the best PR move by Microsoft since their proclimation of Windows NT being the "most popular UNIX" in the world.
As for your web page, yup, as of 8:40 AM CDT it is still down. Before blaming Y2K or the apacolypse, may I suggest a good, hard look at the underlying system. After all, you did say IE, right?
Please consider demanding a public apology to Etoys as well. It is important that they be held accountable for what they've done and not just be able to slink anonymously away, only to come back and do something equally reprehensible another day.
I am making my position to them (politely)clear in another window as I type this.
I have one nefew and four nieces aged 2 through 10, for which I buy xmas presents every year. Etoys would have been the first place I would have checked, had it not been for their reprehensible behavior. Then there are 5 birthdays spaced throughout the year.
As it is, they lost some $300 in xmas revinue from me alone. Add to that an additonal $400-$600 in birthday revinue in 2000. Multiply the resulting value by at least another 8-10 years, as in light of their most recent actions will never shop there, ever.
Now, ask yourself: how many people in the artistic and technical communites either have children of their own, or siblings who do, who fall into the same category? The effect is magnified, inasmuch as geeks are significantly more likely than Joe Average to actually spend money online. It was incredibly stupid, indeed bordering on fiscal negligence if not outright self-sabatage, for etoys.com to alienate one of their most promising customer bases in the way that they have.
With any luck both their financial report and stock value will reflect this for a long time to come.
There is neither a legal nor moral obligation to point someone to a similar sight, because they are confused. It is a nice thing to do, and some sights chose to voluntarilly do so. I'm sure, had etoys.com politely made such a request to etoy.com, rather than resort to judicial thuggary, the artists at Etoy would have at least given the request consideration.
However, now that etoys.com have done what they've done, I suspect there will be an ice age in hell before any such link is created, and that is as it should be. We should continue the boycott, and do everything (legal) in our power to put those pricks out of business for good.
The only NOTAM is for a laser light show near Aarora (169 radial of the DPA VOR, 8.6 nm from 0400 - 0800 zulu - 10:00pm to 2:00 am local time). Fireworks will not be a factor, as they go nowhere near high enough to be a factor (we can circle at 500 feet AGL and watch them if we like). Of course, bullets and amateur rockets are not NOTAMed. My biggest fear, though, is that the forecast will change for the worst and we'll have to cancel the flight because of low ceiling. So far it looks promising, though.
The ATC systems all rollover at 6:00 PM Chicago time (0000 01/01/2000 zulu time). If that jetliner starts falling my way ATC *should* be able give me a traffic advisory, assuming they are still operating. If they aren't, I'll have 6 hours warning -- unless of course the power drops, in which case I'll have instantaneous warning by looking out the window.
The plane has a landing light (like a huge floodlight). I've landed at small country airfields (grass strips and the like) at night with no runway lights -- it really isn't too difficult. If the city goes dark we plan to head south-west, to a particular airfield we know quite well with a very large runway (LOT, Lewis University), 7000'. This assumes total power outage everywhere -- if power outages do occur but are limited in scope, finding an area of lights and landing at a nearby, well-lit field will be a non-issue.
Areas of firework activity are NOTAMed (NOtices To AirMen) and temporarilly prohibited. 1000' above the ground is plenty hight to avoid fireworks. Avoiding bullets is a non-issue. We will avoid clusters of such activity, such as Cabrini Green and parts of the South side, but even if we did not, 1000-1500' AGL is high enough rob all but long range rifle bullets of nearly all of their energy. That danger is not too significant, and we will be avoiding the areas of greatest gunfire activity. As for big geek rockets going off, it is possible, though it would be extremely illegal to do so without NOTAMing the airspace ahead of time (if they go higher than a couple hundred feet, and the FAA does go after people who do that sort of thing unannounced and thereby endanger air traffic, especially in the vicinity of large airports such as Midway and O'Hare). The likelihood of that is very, very small. Being anyplace on New Year's Eve (Y2K or not) is a calculated risk, butIMHO hanging out in the average big crowd is much more risky than our little jaunt over the city will be.
A friend of mine and I are going to take our planes up and be airborn over Chicago at midnight, simply to mock all the Y2K-panic stricken people afraid to fly. Of course, both our planes have gyroscope-driven instrumentation and radios from the 1970's, none of which have ever cared about the date. A 777 with a glass cockpit might be a little more exposed to potential Y2K issues...
Still, it will be fun to thumb our noses at Y2K, and who knows -- if the airports are as quiet as everyone is predicting, maybe O'Hare will finally let us into their airspace and do some low passes over that huge runway! Plus, if all the lights in the city go out all at once, what better place to watch that than from 1500 feet overhead?:-)
The person you responded to will never be troubled by anything. Or, more accuratly, he will never trouble himself to do anything. Some people wear apathy as a badge of honor, just like many teenagers go to allot of trouble to appear less smart than they are for social acceptance while in high school here in the USA. Of course, given the poster's comments insinuating all germans were/are nazis, perhaps in his case he didn't need to pretend stupidity. Next he'll probably be insinuating that all Americans are capitalists, all Russians communists, all Arabs terrorists, all blacks criminals, all whites devils, and so on.
In any event, I doubt the person you responded to will even be troubled when they do kick in his door and take him away (a la' Brazil[1]). After all, chances are the same television shows filling up his empty life will be viewable from within his prison cell, albeit in a smaller format. And should they kill him instead, the world will be as apathetic about his death as he pretends to be about his life.
It's a little late to be replying I guess. I agree with you completely that regulatory oversight of medication and its distribution is in general a necessary and even good thing. I only wished to point out that:
(1) Just because regulation at first glance looks like a good thing doesn't necessarilly mean it is, either in practice or in theory (when looked at more closely).
(2) Any regulation, no matter how useful or necessary, carries with it a significant price tag which all too often is not even considered, much less taken into account. With respect to regulating medicine (and food quality, for that matter) our society has (IMHO correctly) decided that that price is well worth paying.
First, they haven't said "dropping" the lawsuite, they've said "not pressing it." There may be a difference, legally speaking. Since I'm obviously not a lawyer, I'll let someone more in the know comment. In the meantime a measure of skepticism is called for.
Second, even if they are actually dropping the lawsuite, that may very well have been been their strategy from the start: get etoy.com taken off the internet during the busy xmas season, then drop a costly lawsuite they can't win anyway after the holiday is over. By next year they would (hopefully) have enough name recognition for it not to be as big an issue, they may have acquired the name, or chosen some other tactic to address the issue.
The other possibility is, of course, that they have wisely caved in to widespread outrage among both the artistic and technical communities and have found their legal tactics to have backfired in a business sense, costing them allot of money. That may or may not indirectly be related to their stock price falling, though of course those of us who boycotted them would like to believe it to be so.
Either way, the only reward they may have earned is an end to a boycott, not active support from those they harmed (and that group includes IMHO the entire internet community). However, until I see them actually make good (a public apology at the very least, more preferably paying etoy.com's legal expenses), I will continue to withhold my money from their pockets.
Be sure to include, in the "bound book", all of human-readable the articles about DVD encryption, how it works and how it may be defeated, that the DVD Forum is also trying to suppress.
No offense meant, but haven't you been paying the least bit attention to stories posted to slashdot? After etoys.com used judicial thugery to get etoy.com (an articstic sight in France operating since 1994) shut down, how could you possibly give them your business in good conscience? My gut reaction (no flame intended) upon reading your comments was (and, truth be told, remains) "you deserved not to get those gifts in time!"
Karma (the metaphysical stuff, not the slashdot numerical kind) in action, I would say.
I vehemently oppose regulation of speech, etc., but I fail to see the terrible harm that would come of safeguarding against bad medicines.
Consider the folowing scenerio:
Tribal lore in an undisclosed State, on an undisclosed Indian Reservation, has managed to preserve a remarkably effective treatment for [insert your favorite ailment here] in the face of several hundred years of seige to their culture by European settler's.
A large pharmaceutical company "discover's" the tribes technique, finds it to be useful, and co-opts the idea. Perhaps they are granted a patent, or perhaps merely FDA approval. Either way, the regulartory apparatus of our government will always work in favor of the drug pusher^H^H^H^H^H^H company and against the folk doctors in question. The result? It will probably be unlawful for the tribe to continue practicing medicine in the way they have for thousands of years, while the drug company will likely get exclusive rights to market their treatment, probably at a much inflated price.
This is an example where "safeguarding against bad medicines" does indeed do immediate and ongoing harm.
Real world examples? Synthetic THC vs. Marijuana for glaucoma and nausea treatment, for one. Numerous other examples exist -- check out some of the patents granted to the pharmeceutical industry recently, based on folk-cures from Indonesia to Brazil which have (had?) been in use for thousands of years, and are now the sole intellectual property of various drug companies, who will let you use it, for a monopolistically high price.
Regulation can be a good thing and is sometimes necessary, but it has a side which grows ever uglier the greater corporate influence comes to dominate the regulating institution, namely our state and federal governments, and (even when justified and necessary) regulation always carries a heavy price.
Is that slashdot keeps giving this fool airtime! I am not one to normally criticize slashdot's choices of articles to link to, but links to this guy's idiocy show up here on a fairly regular basis. I've yet to see any content in a single Dvorak column to justify this, particularly in light of slashdot's open-source emphesis.
If slashdot feels the need to have an anti-opensource antagonist, they should at least find an intelligent one to link to (if there is such a thing). The last thing an open-source forum should be doing is encouraging this sort of vapid tripe by increasing its undeserved readership even further by giving it broader exposure.
Slashdot Mirror
As a followup it was a wonderful flight, and a great view of the fireworks! :-) We were by no means alone up there -- the most dangerous aspect of the flight wasn't the city lights going out (they didn't), the bullets from the southside (they missed), or the fireworks themselves, but the dozens of other aircraft and helicopters flying around in the same airspace!
(Posted Jan 03, 2000)
Thanks for the link. The one in my bookmarks was no longer valid, and I couldn't find it on the new livid sight.
Actually, those countries were doing quite a bit to prepare, all soundbites and hysterical news reporting aside. But the reality is that less developed countries had less code to wade through, and therefor less to do, not to mention less exposure to Y2K issues if something had been overlooked, than countries like the US, France, Germany, and Japan, where you can't even sneeze without a computer, much less spend a quarter on a pack of chewing gum.
If the world had done nothing, and some 20% of the infrastructure had had glitches (or whatever the prediction was), it wouldn't have mattered much to someone trekking in the Annapurnas or on safari in Africa. On the other hand, in London, Paris, Tokyo, or New York the impact would probably have been quite significant. This is not to say less developed countries would have been immune, merely much more resistent.
Yes, there were fearmongers and fools, both probably still cowering in their bunkers waiting for the Last Days. You are right, the true fearmongers (particularly those hyping the Y2K issue in the last couple of months when it served absolutely no constructive purpose) deserve to be smacked up side the head, financially as well as literally. But that didn't make the warning being given one, two, or five years ago any less timely or apropos. The irony is, we heeded those warnings, fixed our code, and prevented allot of difficulties as a result. Those with the foresight to warn us will get little if any credit, those of us who lost weekend after weekend getting things in shape in time for the new year will hardly be remembered either, but, luckilly for all of us, Y2K itself will go down in history as a non-event and be forgotten as well, which sure beats the alternatives.
One thing Y2K does demonstrate is than an ounce of prevention was worth many pounds of cure. As one of the ones who spent most of the weekend in the office making sure our trading systems were up to the task, I can tell you there were problems (not just with our stuff, but with data from the clearing firms, exchanges, etc.). Those problems were resolved and business was normal Monday morning, but had we treated this year like we have every other new year's weekend the story would have been very different.
He would only be eligable if he were to have subsequently removed his genitalia (local anesthesia not required), recognizing that any furtherance of his genetic lineage would be a disservice to the species as a whole.
Contrary to popular myth, you can survive an act of collassal stupidity and be eligable for the darwin awards, provided you are no longer capable of pro-creating.
A shameless plug here for my nomination.
1) It's gone from a "wouldn't it be nice" status to quite usable, though not ready for mom just yet (one still has to tweak the software by hand).
2) The project is of great importance to Linux as a desktop os, as DVD playability is becoming more and more a requirement by end users
3) The project is under more or less continuous legal attack by the DVD Forum, and could use the money to help in legal defenses and challenges to the Consortiums heavy-handed tactics.
The reason we had so few problems was that an unprecedented amount of effort was put forward to proactively fix the problem before it could become catastrophic. Clearly underdeveloped nations are less computerized and were therefor less vulnerable, but in the developed world this had the potential to really be unpleasant.
The irony is that, were it not for those dire warnings early on that got us all off of our asses and fixing our code for the new century, we probably would not be sitting so happy today. Some of the people enduring the greatest mockery (no, not the idiots sitting in their bunkers) are in many cases the most unsung hero's of 1999. We used a few ounces of prevention in '99 and cured a whole lot of poundage of difficulties for 2000, and it shows with how smoothly the new year actually went.
As it was, when I went to get my usual $200 for the weekend from the ATM, the bank limited me to $60, obviously fearing a run on their cash reserves. Irritating, but not a real issue (I'll get more out today to last the rest of the week). I'm sure there will be other minor irritants as the new year drags on, but the major issues appear to have been identified, addressed, and successfully resolved.
Just because we managed to hit the breaks in time to avoid going over the cliff doesn't mean the cliff wasn't there.
I didn't nominate too many categories, but the following rationale applies three of those I did:
...
Most Improved OS Project: Livid (the Linux DVD Project) - Not only has playing DVDs under Linux gone from a pipe-dream to reality (if still a little rough around the edges) in a very short time, but with the help of DeCSS/css-auth it could be ready for prime time in the very near future. Additonally, the project is very important for the consumer/desktop usability of Linux, and could use the $10k cash to fend off additional legal thuggary from the DVD Forum.
Best UNIX desktop earcandy: xmms - the audio app I use more often than my television or stereo. (Though Myth2 Soul Blighter was a temptation)
Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism: Declan McCullagh of Wired -- not only did this person's poor reporting precipitate serious legal troubles for developers of css-auth (the Linux DVD css component), but he remained unapologetic throughout and, even worse, followed up with even more damaging FUD after having been informed of the errors in his reporting. His behavior on the livid development mailing list was unprofessional and reprehensibe, where he even went so far as to flame Livid developers without provocation. I only wish the archives were still up to link to here
Deliberately denying users of alternative, non-windoze operating systems access to a web page is both an economic and political attack on the free software community. If we cannot do our on-line banking online, what is next? On-line purchasing via SSL. Online viewing of streaming video? Online viewing of XML (the purported replacement for HTML)? This is an economic and political battle which, if unfought, will result in all of us being coerced by simple necessity into using a platform we despise.
It is not only appropriate, it is essential that we respond in kind. Boycotting is just one means of doing this (close your citibank accounts, and make sure they know why you have done so). Educating your friends as to why this is matters is equally important -- and if you can talk them into voicing similar concerns to organizations which behave like this, so much the better.
Checkfree, for example, works flawlessly with 128 bit encryption under Linux and is "bank independent" though it does cost $10/month for the service. Still, it is one of many alternatives which are friendly (or at least not aggressively hostile) toward alternative platforms (Northern Trust of Chicago has free online banking which also works fine under Linux, and I suspect if you look around one or more of your local banks will be similar). I would suggest anyone interested in having Linux, *BSD, or any other non-Microsoft platform usable on the web of the future put their money where their mouths are and support companies which allow us to conduct our business on the platforms of our choice, using open standards with the tools of our choice. Any other approach means sacrificing your options for someone elses bottom line (guess who's in this case).
This doesn't make us "html" or "web" police, it makes us concerned consumers who won't allow our vendors to use coercive tactics in order to force us into using their strategic partners' inferior products in order to gain the "privelege" of using their services. Without us (the customers) they do not make money, and we should not be at all shy in using that leverage to our advantage.
Now everyone will blame those Blue Screens of Death and random system crashes they are so used to on the year 2000, rather than Microsoft's abject software engineering practices. This has to be the best PR move by Microsoft since their proclimation of Windows NT being the "most popular UNIX" in the world.
As for your web page, yup, as of 8:40 AM CDT it is still down. Before blaming Y2K or the apacolypse, may I suggest a good, hard look at the underlying system. After all, you did say IE, right?
:-)
of course, that to shoud be a from.
Please consider demanding a public apology from Etoys as well.
Please consider demanding a public apology to Etoys as well. It is important that they be held accountable for what they've done and not just be able to slink anonymously away, only to come back and do something equally reprehensible another day.
I am making my position to them (politely)clear in another window as I type this.
I have one nefew and four nieces aged 2 through 10, for which I buy xmas presents every year. Etoys would have been the first place I would have checked, had it not been for their reprehensible behavior. Then there are 5 birthdays spaced throughout the year.
As it is, they lost some $300 in xmas revinue from me alone. Add to that an additonal $400-$600 in birthday revinue in 2000. Multiply the resulting value by at least another 8-10 years, as in light of their most recent actions will never shop there, ever.
Now, ask yourself: how many people in the artistic and technical communites either have children of their own, or siblings who do, who fall into the same category? The effect is magnified, inasmuch as geeks are significantly more likely than Joe Average to actually spend money online. It was incredibly stupid, indeed bordering on fiscal negligence if not outright self-sabatage, for etoys.com to alienate one of their most promising customer bases in the way that they have.
With any luck both their financial report and stock value will reflect this for a long time to come.
Why not just re-register etoy.com with a competing DNS registration service?
There is neither a legal nor moral obligation to point someone to a similar sight, because they are confused. It is a nice thing to do, and some sights chose to voluntarilly do so. I'm sure, had etoys.com politely made such a request to etoy.com, rather than resort to judicial thuggary, the artists at Etoy would have at least given the request consideration.
However, now that etoys.com have done what they've done, I suspect there will be an ice age in hell before any such link is created, and that is as it should be. We should continue the boycott, and do everything (legal) in our power to put those pricks out of business for good.
The only NOTAM is for a laser light show near Aarora (169 radial of the DPA VOR, 8.6 nm from 0400 - 0800 zulu - 10:00pm to 2:00 am local time). Fireworks will not be a factor, as they go nowhere near high enough to be a factor (we can circle at 500 feet AGL and watch them if we like). Of course, bullets and amateur rockets are not NOTAMed. My biggest fear, though, is that the forecast will change for the worst and we'll have to cancel the flight because of low ceiling. So far it looks promising, though.
The ATC systems all rollover at 6:00 PM Chicago time (0000 01/01/2000 zulu time). If that jetliner starts falling my way ATC *should* be able give me a traffic advisory, assuming they are still operating. If they aren't, I'll have 6 hours warning -- unless of course the power drops, in which case I'll have instantaneous warning by looking out the window.
What's life without a little risk? *grin*
It only takes a couple of minutes to paint "death to the infidel!" on it. Who knows, you might even hit me. :-)
The plane has a landing light (like a huge floodlight). I've landed at small country airfields (grass strips and the like) at night with no runway lights -- it really isn't too difficult. If the city goes dark we plan to head south-west, to a particular airfield we know quite well with a very large runway (LOT, Lewis University), 7000'. This assumes total power outage everywhere -- if power outages do occur but are limited in scope, finding an area of lights and landing at a nearby, well-lit field will be a non-issue.
Areas of firework activity are NOTAMed (NOtices To AirMen) and temporarilly prohibited. 1000' above the ground is plenty hight to avoid fireworks. Avoiding bullets is a non-issue. We will avoid clusters of such activity, such as Cabrini Green and parts of the South side, but even if we did not, 1000-1500' AGL is high enough rob all but long range rifle bullets of nearly all of their energy. That danger is not too significant, and we will be avoiding the areas of greatest gunfire activity. As for big geek rockets going off, it is possible, though it would be extremely illegal to do so without NOTAMing the airspace ahead of time (if they go higher than a couple hundred feet, and the FAA does go after people who do that sort of thing unannounced and thereby endanger air traffic, especially in the vicinity of large airports such as Midway and O'Hare). The likelihood of that is very, very small. Being anyplace on New Year's Eve (Y2K or not) is a calculated risk, butIMHO hanging out in the average big crowd is much more risky than our little jaunt over the city will be.
A friend of mine and I are going to take our planes up and be airborn over Chicago at midnight, simply to mock all the Y2K-panic stricken people afraid to fly. Of course, both our planes have gyroscope-driven instrumentation and radios from the 1970's, none of which have ever cared about the date. A 777 with a glass cockpit might be a little more exposed to potential Y2K issues...
:-)
Still, it will be fun to thumb our noses at Y2K, and who knows -- if the airports are as quiet as everyone is predicting, maybe O'Hare will finally let us into their airspace and do some low passes over that huge runway! Plus, if all the lights in the city go out all at once, what better place to watch that than from 1500 feet overhead?
The person you responded to will never be troubled by anything. Or, more accuratly, he will never trouble himself to do anything. Some people wear apathy as a badge of honor, just like many teenagers go to allot of trouble to appear less smart than they are for social acceptance while in high school here in the USA. Of course, given the poster's comments insinuating all germans were/are nazis, perhaps in his case he didn't need to pretend stupidity. Next he'll probably be insinuating that all Americans are capitalists, all Russians communists, all Arabs terrorists, all blacks criminals, all whites devils, and so on.
:-)
In any event, I doubt the person you responded to will even be troubled when they do kick in his door and take him away (a la' Brazil[1]). After all, chances are the same television shows filling up his empty life will be viewable from within his prison cell, albeit in a smaller format. And should they kill him instead, the world will be as apathetic about his death as he pretends to be about his life.
[1]The best movie ever made.
It's a little late to be replying I guess. I agree with you completely that regulatory oversight of medication and its distribution is in general a necessary and even good thing. I only wished to point out that:
(1) Just because regulation at first glance looks like a good thing doesn't necessarilly mean it is, either in practice or in theory (when looked at more closely).
(2) Any regulation, no matter how useful or necessary, carries with it a significant price tag which all too often is not even considered, much less taken into account. With respect to regulating medicine (and food quality, for that matter) our society has (IMHO correctly) decided that that price is well worth paying.
I sincerely hope you are joking.
First, they haven't said "dropping" the lawsuite, they've said "not pressing it." There may be a difference, legally speaking. Since I'm obviously not a lawyer, I'll let someone more in the know comment. In the meantime a measure of skepticism is called for.
Second, even if they are actually dropping the lawsuite, that may very well have been been their strategy from the start: get etoy.com taken off the internet during the busy xmas season, then drop a costly lawsuite they can't win anyway after the holiday is over. By next year they would (hopefully) have enough name recognition for it not to be as big an issue, they may have acquired the name, or chosen some other tactic to address the issue.
The other possibility is, of course, that they have wisely caved in to widespread outrage among both the artistic and technical communities and have found their legal tactics to have backfired in a business sense, costing them allot of money. That may or may not indirectly be related to their stock price falling, though of course those of us who boycotted them would like to believe it to be so.
Either way, the only reward they may have earned is an end to a boycott, not active support from those they harmed (and that group includes IMHO the entire internet community). However, until I see them actually make good (a public apology at the very least, more preferably paying etoy.com's legal expenses), I will continue to withhold my money from their pockets.
Be sure to include, in the "bound book", all of human-readable the articles about DVD encryption, how it works and how it may be defeated, that the DVD Forum is also trying to suppress.
No offense meant, but haven't you been paying the least bit attention to stories posted to slashdot? After etoys.com used judicial thugery to get etoy.com (an articstic sight in France operating since 1994) shut down, how could you possibly give them your business in good conscience? My gut reaction (no flame intended) upon reading your comments was (and, truth be told, remains) "you deserved not to get those gifts in time!"
Karma (the metaphysical stuff, not the slashdot numerical kind) in action, I would say.
I vehemently oppose regulation of speech, etc., but I fail to see the terrible harm that would come of safeguarding against bad medicines.
Consider the folowing scenerio:
Tribal lore in an undisclosed State, on an undisclosed Indian Reservation, has managed to preserve a remarkably effective treatment for [insert your favorite ailment here] in the face of several hundred years of seige to their culture by European settler's.
A large pharmaceutical company "discover's" the tribes technique, finds it to be useful, and co-opts the idea. Perhaps they are granted a patent, or perhaps merely FDA approval. Either way, the regulartory apparatus of our government will always work in favor of the drug pusher^H^H^H^H^H^H company and against the folk doctors in question. The result? It will probably be unlawful for the tribe to continue practicing medicine in the way they have for thousands of years, while the drug company will likely get exclusive rights to market their treatment, probably at a much inflated price.
This is an example where "safeguarding against bad medicines" does indeed do immediate and ongoing harm.
Real world examples? Synthetic THC vs. Marijuana for glaucoma and nausea treatment, for one. Numerous other examples exist -- check out some of the patents granted to the pharmeceutical industry recently, based on folk-cures from Indonesia to Brazil which have (had?) been in use for thousands of years, and are now the sole intellectual property of various drug companies, who will let you use it, for a monopolistically high price.
Regulation can be a good thing and is sometimes necessary, but it has a side which grows ever uglier the greater corporate influence comes to dominate the regulating institution, namely our state and federal governments, and (even when justified and necessary) regulation always carries a heavy price.
Is that slashdot keeps giving this fool airtime! I am not one to normally criticize slashdot's choices of articles to link to, but links to this guy's idiocy show up here on a fairly regular basis. I've yet to see any content in a single Dvorak column to justify this, particularly in light of slashdot's open-source emphesis.
If slashdot feels the need to have an anti-opensource antagonist, they should at least find an intelligent one to link to (if there is such a thing). The last thing an open-source forum should be doing is encouraging this sort of vapid tripe by increasing its undeserved readership even further by giving it broader exposure.