Is she still packing? Last I heard, she was still packed with explosives and back in February I think it was, a veteran ordnance disposal guy said it'd cost over £30 million to make it safe... which the Government wanted happening anyway because it's in the way of the new London Airport they've got planned though nobody's asked for (there's already four, how many more do they think they need??).
Why all this effort to refloat her? As has been pointed out, she's been partially and asymmetrically submerged for the better part of two years, surely it'd be easier to just send in the divers with cutting torches or shaped charges, split the hull, and float her off in sections on barges (as they ended up doing with MSC Napoli)?
Is this a dress rehearsal for RMS Titanic? If so, I've got news: she's been under for 101 years, is in far worse condition and is apparently split into at least two sections.
Is there something aboard Costa Concordia that we shouldn't know about? (yes, I'm thinking of a certain book)
Either way, I personally think the only decent thing to do here is to leave her be, apart from draining off any remaining fuel oil, as a marine grave marker, and let the seas reclaim her. What's happening right now is a desecration.
I've built workstations intended for connection to library systems, and one of the airgap security measures I've employed was to cut the data conductors behind the USB port*. OK, it's permanent unless you're really handy with a soldering iron, but you'd have to get around the keybolts holding the case together first...
*Recent innovations in workstation motherboard design have done away with PS/2 ports for keyboard/mouse, the way around that is to use a quality keyboard/mouse and hardwire those suckers.
And trust that the user isn't about to alligator the data lines on one of those...
Magna Carta was sealed by the King nearly three hundred years prior to the discovery of the Americas by European explorers. The Colonies were founded, for the most part, by people emigrating from England, for the New World in search of a better life. Those people were, until the Declaration of Independence, wholly governed by the Laws and Customs of England.
Do you get it yet?
By the way, Magna Carta is not a "British" document. It is the very foundation and basis of every Constitutional Republic on the fucking planet. INCLUDING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Assad didn't brutalise the opposition, the simple fact of the matter is that he has overwhelming majority support. The people that are fucking his country up are demonstrably foreign mercenaries in the pay of Britain, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
sources: plenty of contacts on the ground who are living it, not the BBC, Fox, CNN or Reuters. What they aren't showing is buzzcut ex-army regulars using CIA terminology and training to great effect while passing instructions to each other in English, French, and Turkish. Why? Because it not only doesn't suit the agenda (whatever that might be) of those with plausible interests in the region, it would in fact further damage already salted international relations.
However, I will absolutely and unreservedly agree that in a perfect world a peaceful solution to any crisis results in a better outcome for all concerned. Unfortunately, this is far from being a perfect world, and as a result of corporate interests and to a lesser but still significant extent, ever more demanding tribal competition for the biggest portion of a finite supply of everything, people can and do die in the most horrible ways imaginable; the truth belongs to those who shout the loudest (the facts will never be known beyond the fact that people have died as a result of the deployment of some very nasty weapons), and if history records that Assad deployed those weapons even if he didn't, tomorrow we'll have as much a distorted view of today's events as we have today of events of a mere seventy years ago in Eastern Europe.
(from what I remember in school, the oldest writings are in Mandarin and date back to what is essentially the dawn of recorded history, specific dating using current calendar system gives us a start date of January 1 4613BCE).
Failure to act on an awareness of a treasonous act is an offence, it is known as misprision. Failure to comply with an unlawful order, instruction or request is not treason. It shows the highest respect for the Law. Refusal to comply with an order from a Government agency which has time and again showed itself to be self-appointed superjudicial is entirely in keeping with one of the oldest Constitutional documents in existence, one which like it or not, citizens and Government of the United States are still subject to: Magna Carta. Specifically, clause 61, which in a small nutshell obligates any individual or group who are aware of the unlawfulness of a Law or Statute to disobey that Law or Statute and to seek redress.
Isn't the very fact of recent disclosures by the US Government (to whit; that they are giving aid and comfort to the Enemy - by their own definition, elements of al Qaeda "known" to be working alongside Syrian rebels), an overt admission of treason?
Or is that a vexation, to be ignored by the Judicial branch?
hate to tell you this, but lack of a piece of paper is no physical barrier to sitting behind a steering wheel, putting pressure on the clutch and turning the key.
in English Law, there is a common clause in most Statutes that holds company directors equally and personally liable for ANY violations that occur within or provably on behalf of the company. The situation described in this article would not serve as an example, but here's one that would:
A company has an employee who drives a company car. Said employee causes an incident while driving under the influence of a controlled substance. Said incident causes fatalities. For the sake of argument, he is charged and convicted with negligent manslaughter. Guess what? Since he did it with the company car, on company time, the Director of the company is held equally liable and is also charged and convicted with negligent manslaughter as if he himself was at the wheel. See how that works yet?
It stems from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, where the phrase "I was only following orders" didn't get SS guards or Gestapo officers - or their superiors, who may or may not have even been present at a single execution - off of death sentences.
could the parents not fucking READ?? That's called parental negligence, not some creep in a trenchcoat handing out snake egg magnets at the school gates and daring the little darlings to swallow them!
No, I'll tell you what'll follow: Colt Arms, Smith & Wesson and BSA subjected to class action lawsuits following incidents in which tools made by them have been directly implicated in fatalities. Ford Motor company, General Motors and Hyundai getting the same treatment. Cold Steel and Stanley as well following people getting shanked with Bowies and boxcutters. Stihl and McCulloch getting sued after some arse in Arkansas decides it might be a good idea to ignore the safety advice printed on the bar and attempt to stop the fucking thing with his scrotum.
This shit might sound ridiculous, but this is the way you're advocating. THAT, to me, sounds utterly fucking batshit insane.
ok, try this for a thought experiment: you can prove the Earth is round by drawing a straight chalk line behind you as you walk, Eventually you'll come across the start of your chalk line after walking some 24,859-24,901 miles.
Is the Universe flat or curved?
Take the thought experiment I described in my last post, and carry it on until you either:
- hit the edge of the Universe (you could be a while if the Universe is both flat and infinite)
or:
- meet the first point on your line.
If the second condition is met, that's proof that the Universe is both curved and finite in the same way that chalking a straight line on Earth until it meets itself describes the edge of the section, ie the circumference, proving the Earth is round.
dunno, but there is a seesaw effect still in play in Western Europe; the most dramatic effect is seen along the length of mainland Britain. While Scotland is still rising after spending a while under a couple miles of ice, the South of England is sinking as it was largely ice-free during the last big freeze. The phenomenon is slow, it's taking a few thousand years for a complete oscillation, but geological evidence suggests that prior to the last ice age, the North Sea was bone dry (being several hundred metres above sea level!). It won't be very many hundreds of years before Loch Ness is physically isolated from the sea at either end and becomes a fully enclosed high saltwater lake!
I keep forgetting to add - the regulations here require that a bus bar is equipped with overcurrent trips and ground leakage AKA Residual Current Devices, which trip in the event of a L-N or L-E short, neutralising the circuit. So if you drill a buried cable, there'll be a L-E short and the RCD will trip, killing the entire circuit. L-N shorts are more likely to occur within appliance casings, for example a transformer going into meltdown. In most cases, this will blow the appliance fuse as well as tripping the overcurrent switch, which in turn will (depending on the design, sometimes an OCD and RCD are cointegrated devices, otherwise there is just one OCD - the main bus switch) either kill just the circuit or the entire bus.
yes, wall wiring. And yes, the same gauge wire is rated differently in the US because the US doesn't usually have ring circuits in domestic situations, hence you guys rate cables at pretty much the maximum current they can handle without actually catching fire - we do it to a more arbitrary measure, that being the maximum current the wire can carry without it getting too warm to handle the insulator.
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too rich for my blood. Damn.
Is she still packing? Last I heard, she was still packed with explosives and back in February I think it was, a veteran ordnance disposal guy said it'd cost over £30 million to make it safe... which the Government wanted happening anyway because it's in the way of the new London Airport they've got planned though nobody's asked for (there's already four, how many more do they think they need??).
yeouch, 50VDC right up the caboose...
oh, yes, I'm sure they had the same concerns regarding the disposal of the MSC Napoli and its proximity to Lyme Bay. ::rolleyes::.
Why all this effort to refloat her? As has been pointed out, she's been partially and asymmetrically submerged for the better part of two years, surely it'd be easier to just send in the divers with cutting torches or shaped charges, split the hull, and float her off in sections on barges (as they ended up doing with MSC Napoli)?
Is this a dress rehearsal for RMS Titanic? If so, I've got news: she's been under for 101 years, is in far worse condition and is apparently split into at least two sections.
Is there something aboard Costa Concordia that we shouldn't know about? (yes, I'm thinking of a certain book)
Either way, I personally think the only decent thing to do here is to leave her be, apart from draining off any remaining fuel oil, as a marine grave marker, and let the seas reclaim her. What's happening right now is a desecration.
I can't believe there's been no xkcd reference yet... something about shooting a wad of electrons all over your amour's back...
I've built workstations intended for connection to library systems, and one of the airgap security measures I've employed was to cut the data conductors behind the USB port*. OK, it's permanent unless you're really handy with a soldering iron, but you'd have to get around the keybolts holding the case together first...
*Recent innovations in workstation motherboard design have done away with PS/2 ports for keyboard/mouse, the way around that is to use a quality keyboard/mouse and hardwire those suckers.
And trust that the user isn't about to alligator the data lines on one of those...
yeah, saw that. Hope you got your water wings. Or a nice boat.
Wobbly bridges, nonexistent highways, and GPS coordinate usage that looks like the clocks were off by about forty yards.
Think I'll pass.
Magna Carta was sealed by the King nearly three hundred years prior to the discovery of the Americas by European explorers.
The Colonies were founded, for the most part, by people emigrating from England, for the New World in search of a better life.
Those people were, until the Declaration of Independence, wholly governed by the Laws and Customs of England.
Do you get it yet?
By the way, Magna Carta is not a "British" document. It is the very foundation and basis of every Constitutional Republic on the fucking planet. INCLUDING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Assad didn't brutalise the opposition, the simple fact of the matter is that he has overwhelming majority support. The people that are fucking his country up are demonstrably foreign mercenaries in the pay of Britain, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
sources: plenty of contacts on the ground who are living it, not the BBC, Fox, CNN or Reuters. What they aren't showing is buzzcut ex-army regulars using CIA terminology and training to great effect while passing instructions to each other in English, French, and Turkish. Why? Because it not only doesn't suit the agenda (whatever that might be) of those with plausible interests in the region, it would in fact further damage already salted international relations.
However, I will absolutely and unreservedly agree that in a perfect world a peaceful solution to any crisis results in a better outcome for all concerned. Unfortunately, this is far from being a perfect world, and as a result of corporate interests and to a lesser but still significant extent, ever more demanding tribal competition for the biggest portion of a finite supply of everything, people can and do die in the most horrible ways imaginable; the truth belongs to those who shout the loudest (the facts will never be known beyond the fact that people have died as a result of the deployment of some very nasty weapons), and if history records that Assad deployed those weapons even if he didn't, tomorrow we'll have as much a distorted view of today's events as we have today of events of a mere seventy years ago in Eastern Europe.
two words:
Arab Spring.
Star Chambers were abolished in 1641 - in the United States as well, since at that time the United States was but a colony.
Ergo, any secret courts are unlawful and that unlawfulness predates the Constitution.
your country didn't betray you, *your Government did*.
Love your country. Fight tyranny. In all its forms.
Defend your Constitution against all enemies, *foreign and domestic*.
Try 6,627 years. But, point taken.
(from what I remember in school, the oldest writings are in Mandarin and date back to what is essentially the dawn of recorded history, specific dating using current calendar system gives us a start date of January 1 4613BCE).
Failure to act on an awareness of a treasonous act is an offence, it is known as misprision.
Failure to comply with an unlawful order, instruction or request is not treason. It shows the highest respect for the Law.
Refusal to comply with an order from a Government agency which has time and again showed itself to be self-appointed superjudicial is entirely in keeping with one of the oldest Constitutional documents in existence, one which like it or not, citizens and Government of the United States are still subject to: Magna Carta. Specifically, clause 61, which in a small nutshell obligates any individual or group who are aware of the unlawfulness of a Law or Statute to disobey that Law or Statute and to seek redress.
Isn't the very fact of recent disclosures by the US Government (to whit; that they are giving aid and comfort to the Enemy - by their own definition, elements of al Qaeda "known" to be working alongside Syrian rebels), an overt admission of treason?
Or is that a vexation, to be ignored by the Judicial branch?
hate to tell you this, but lack of a piece of paper is no physical barrier to sitting behind a steering wheel, putting pressure on the clutch and turning the key.
in English Law, there is a common clause in most Statutes that holds company directors equally and personally liable for ANY violations that occur within or provably on behalf of the company. The situation described in this article would not serve as an example, but here's one that would:
A company has an employee who drives a company car. Said employee causes an incident while driving under the influence of a controlled substance. Said incident causes fatalities. For the sake of argument, he is charged and convicted with negligent manslaughter. Guess what? Since he did it with the company car, on company time, the Director of the company is held equally liable and is also charged and convicted with negligent manslaughter as if he himself was at the wheel. See how that works yet?
It stems from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, where the phrase "I was only following orders" didn't get SS guards or Gestapo officers - or their superiors, who may or may not have even been present at a single execution - off of death sentences.
oh, you're already at +5, I'd've given you all my mod points if I hadn't already commented.
could the parents not fucking READ?? That's called parental negligence, not some creep in a trenchcoat handing out snake egg magnets at the school gates and daring the little darlings to swallow them!
No, I'll tell you what'll follow: Colt Arms, Smith & Wesson and BSA subjected to class action lawsuits following incidents in which tools made by them have been directly implicated in fatalities. Ford Motor company, General Motors and Hyundai getting the same treatment. Cold Steel and Stanley as well following people getting shanked with Bowies and boxcutters. Stihl and McCulloch getting sued after some arse in Arkansas decides it might be a good idea to ignore the safety advice printed on the bar and attempt to stop the fucking thing with his scrotum.
This shit might sound ridiculous, but this is the way you're advocating. THAT, to me, sounds utterly fucking batshit insane.
ok, try this for a thought experiment: you can prove the Earth is round by drawing a straight chalk line behind you as you walk, Eventually you'll come across the start of your chalk line after walking some 24,859-24,901 miles.
Is the Universe flat or curved?
Take the thought experiment I described in my last post, and carry it on until you either:
- hit the edge of the Universe (you could be a while if the Universe is both flat and infinite)
or:
- meet the first point on your line.
If the second condition is met, that's proof that the Universe is both curved and finite in the same way that chalking a straight line on Earth until it meets itself describes the edge of the section, ie the circumference, proving the Earth is round.
dunno, but there is a seesaw effect still in play in Western Europe; the most dramatic effect is seen along the length of mainland Britain. While Scotland is still rising after spending a while under a couple miles of ice, the South of England is sinking as it was largely ice-free during the last big freeze. The phenomenon is slow, it's taking a few thousand years for a complete oscillation, but geological evidence suggests that prior to the last ice age, the North Sea was bone dry (being several hundred metres above sea level!). It won't be very many hundreds of years before Loch Ness is physically isolated from the sea at either end and becomes a fully enclosed high saltwater lake!
I keep forgetting to add - the regulations here require that a bus bar is equipped with overcurrent trips and ground leakage AKA Residual Current Devices, which trip in the event of a L-N or L-E short, neutralising the circuit. So if you drill a buried cable, there'll be a L-E short and the RCD will trip, killing the entire circuit. L-N shorts are more likely to occur within appliance casings, for example a transformer going into meltdown. In most cases, this will blow the appliance fuse as well as tripping the overcurrent switch, which in turn will (depending on the design, sometimes an OCD and RCD are cointegrated devices, otherwise there is just one OCD - the main bus switch) either kill just the circuit or the entire bus.
yes, wall wiring. And yes, the same gauge wire is rated differently in the US because the US doesn't usually have ring circuits in domestic situations, hence you guys rate cables at pretty much the maximum current they can handle without actually catching fire - we do it to a more arbitrary measure, that being the maximum current the wire can carry without it getting too warm to handle the insulator.