I am not involved in anything dodgy, but I keep a set of very clean social media accounts just for purposes of job interview, security checks and because some people I really don't want to interact with and the best way to avoid them is just give them my "clean" social media identity which I almost never use. update them maybe once every few months.
why do it? well I like to have open and honest discussions with friends as well as joke around and I want to do that without having to be concerned that something politically incorrect said or posted by me or a friend is taken out of context or used against me at a later date. Once it is posted under your name it is near impossible to remove it.
My social media account, officer? Uh, leatherbumfreak @ prodigy.net.....
That's true, but the chances of being able to "take in the views" in China and actually see something (other than smog) are next to zero as well.
there was just a piece on bbc tv about china's national parks. apparently they have more acreage in national parks than the US does at this point. and being largely new, they're all cutting edge ecologically preserved, walkways over the dunes to prevent footprints, etc. and lots of tourist amenities. Honestly, they looked really appealing.
submersible ships are just as stupid as the "bank vault" idea.
too much added weight, added complexity, no real gain.
you also make loading/unloading an inefficient nightmare compared to the current system of gantries and cranes.
really though, the entire idea of entirely unmanned cargo ships is foolish anyway. they are already highly automated with the crew only there for emergencies and tasks that cannot be automated. it's why they already operate with typical crews (note difference from max crew) of 4-15 people depending on ship size/type.
the place the real unmanned advances are being made is at the loading/unloading area, with the gantries also being more and more automated. with computer databases and preplanning of loading so that multiple container shipments are stacked together in order of delivery and location (rather than being spread out randomly among the 14,000+ containers, at different locations and depths within the stacks on ship) it's all very close to maximum efficiency.
all cargo will be carried on automated or semiautomated ships which will also serve as cruise ships which are only chartered by NRA tour groups.
Killing pirates has been one of the primary duties of navies pretty much since there's been such a thing as navies. It's kind of in the job description.
For centuries, pirates were considered hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race, and any ship could arrest pirates on the high seas, try them, and execute them. A trial was required (if at all possible) because pirate ships often included people who were kidnapped or otherwise coerced to join the crew. Still today, on the high seas any nation may arrest and try pirates, but certain human rights protections have been added by treaty.
International piracy law in general refers to piracy on the high seas (international waters). Most modern piracy occurs in territorial waters, though. In territorial waters, the nation who controls that territoy has jurisdiction and has the option to authorize any action. An exception is Somalia, which has a bad problem with piracy. Treaties allow signatory nations to take "all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia for the purpose of suppressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea". "All necessary measures" is generally thought to mean that unless lethal force is NECESSARY, it's not allowed. However, pirates shoot at people trying to arrest them, so lethal force is often necessary.
"The violent crime rate related to fishing boats is easily 20 times that of crimes involving tankers, cargo ships or passenger ships, said Charles N. Dragonette, who tracked seafaring attacks globally for the United States Office of Naval Intelligence until 2012. “So long as the victims were Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Filipino, just not European or American, the story never resonated,” he said.
Prosecutions for crimes at sea are rare — one former United States Coast Guard official put it at “less than 1 percent” — because many ships lack insurance and captains are averse to the delays and prying that can come with a police investigation. The few military and law enforcement ships that patrol international waters are usually forbidden from boarding ships flying another country’s flag unless given permission. Witnesses willing to speak up are scarce; so is physical evidence."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/middleeast/murder-at-sea-captured-on-video-but-killers-go-free.html?_r=0
I doubt that the customers would want poison gas seeping into their products during shipping, even if Loyd's was up for the idea; but it wouldn't be a complete surprise to hear of an unmanned bulk carrier of some sort being flushed with dry nitrogen as a preservative; and some idiots encountering inert gas asphyxiation.
if leonardo and kate can have sex in some guy's car on the Titanic, i don't see why filling it with nitrogen would be an objectionable alternative.
Shipping companies did employ armed security that did indeed fire on pirates when the Somali problem was at its peak. You can find video on the web.
The big problem is the weapons you're carrying have to be legal in both the country you're shipping from and the country you're shipping to. Since so much of it was destined for Europe, where almost every weapon is illegal, your options are limited. Most of the security companies operating in that region had their own boats to move guards - they would board with their weapons in international waters and debark with their weapons in international waters.
They solved that problem by just throwing the weapons overboard. Half a dozen AR-15s, a couple rifles in.308 or 30-06 and 1k rounds for each is two day's pay for the guys doing security. A trivial extra cost.
Anyway, this is a self-inflicted problem. Africans are going to do that stuff. Letting it continue caused it to continue. Had they shot at the first dozen attempts there wouldn't be a problem at all.
alternately, if the big factory fishing fleets hadn't overfished the waters off somalia which had been the foundation of the region's economy for hundreds of years, thereby forcing the seagoing population into other lines of work there wouldn't be a problem either.
Isn't it a good way to get killed by drones or poisonous gas or something like that if 100% of the people on board are certifiable bad guys?
cover the entire ship inside and out with something emitting hard radiation when it leaves port. not sure how to unload it when it gets where it's going though
What is the point to dial a number to find out the time when you can just look at the screen first and see the time? They need an app for that. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" "U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock. At the tone, the Eastern daylight time - 14 hours, 20 minutes exactly."
my apartment building has a clock built in. I just pound on the wall and a voice from the wall says "It's 4 in the morning, dammit!"
Smart phones do not use NTP, although perhaps they should: It's computationally almost free, and can be very data-efficient, and works great even in free-running mode.
Cellular network time isn't always accurate. I can put a few devices together from different carriers, and they're within a minute or two. But right now, in fact, I have two Verizon devices in front of me: One is 16 seconds fast, and the other is 1 second slow, compared to NIST -- even though they have the same exact time source.
Maybe a minute or two is good enough, but it's not anything approaching high-accuracy. If I cared about time enough to have a high-quality wristwatch, I would not set it from the time displayed on my phone.
Meanwhile, IIRC, CID time did not include seconds in the timestamp. So it was only accurate within a minute, too.
I have this mental image of the trains actually running on time, but nobody knows what time it actually is so they all miss them anyway.
right! that's what i was talking about upthread a bit, how is it possible for these hyper precise items to all be so reliably out of synch? wtf?
GSM network time can be wrong, though. A month or two ago O2 Germany had a problem with the network time so many phones all around Germany were set to 10 minutes earlier. Missed my train that way. Was very surprised comparing the phone clock with the railway station clock.
I had a few VCRs that could find time signals impressed on some of the TV station signals (via cable, when it was still analog); i think most US PBS stations IIRC, and also what time zone, so would update DST for you automatically.
NTP is internet based, read: requires an internet connection to retrieve the time.
Yet when I boot my Android phone after its battery runs empty, with Wi-Fi and mobile data disabled, it still retrieves the time just fine. Unlike say, a PC or Raspberry Pi when it relies solely on NTP for timekeeping.
Read: yes, your phone uses 'the network' to retrieve the time (the mobile network, that is). No, not NTP or mobile data services. My PC relies on a CR2032-backed hardware clock (manually adjusted once or twice a year), with the OS handling daylight saving changes. No network access needed to keep the correct time.
in case young folks don't know, we used to have phones which were wired to a central phone switching system; and if you had one of those that displayed the time or stamped it on voicemail or somesuch, when you disconnected it and reconnected, it wouldn't know the time until somebody called.
And we were grateful! we loved it!
my phone (verizon) and my cable (comcast) do not quite match on the time.
and of course, the individual channels clearly run on variously different clocks than comcast does, as trying to DVR programs on different networks proves. which is presumably why they provide the option of lengthening the start and end times of the recording.
why?
We still call the time all the time to get the time, it doesn't take much time and it's a simple way to set the time on all your devices that have a way to set the time to any particular time, some of them are even set to UTC time, because internet time is cool time.
What I want to know is...
What are some number annunciator phone numbers we can call?
You know, you call it, it tells you the number you're calling from.
just pick up your phone and don't dial anybody. just ask the friendly NSA eavesdropper.
And who among us does not fondly remember scouring the instructions for how to get the VCR to flash "1:00" after the daylight savings time changeover?
I feel sorry that you didn't have a young child in your household who could figure out to change the time on the VCR without ever looking at the instructions. IIRC, the instructions were crap — if you find the English version among the half-dozen languages.
the wonderful part of that particular user interface was that most of them only had increment buttons, not decrement, so if you overshot, you had to go around the clock again. because subtracting 1 from whatever number was on the display would be just too damn hard to program.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not involved in anything dodgy, but I keep a set of very clean social media accounts just for purposes of job interview, security checks and because some people I really don't want to interact with and the best way to avoid them is just give them my "clean" social media identity which I almost never use. update them maybe once every few months. why do it? well I like to have open and honest discussions with friends as well as joke around and I want to do that without having to be concerned that something politically incorrect said or posted by me or a friend is taken out of context or used against me at a later date. Once it is posted under your name it is near impossible to remove it.
My social media account, officer? Uh, leatherbumfreak @ prodigy.net.....
That's true, but the chances of being able to "take in the views" in China and actually see something (other than smog) are next to zero as well.
there was just a piece on bbc tv about china's national parks. apparently they have more acreage in national parks than the US does at this point. and being largely new, they're all cutting edge ecologically preserved, walkways over the dunes to prevent footprints, etc. and lots of tourist amenities. Honestly, they looked really appealing.
There are still many of us around that have low slashdot ID.
oh, ID. i have low slashdot IQ.
I rather suspect they've spent more on PR about the project than in R&D if that's all they're actually investment.
I wouldn't call that a "strong move" on their part, not by a longshot. What's that, .001% of their non-automotive, non-nuclear, market cap?
RR R&D PR
submersible ships are just as stupid as the "bank vault" idea.
too much added weight, added complexity, no real gain. you also make loading/unloading an inefficient nightmare compared to the current system of gantries and cranes.
really though, the entire idea of entirely unmanned cargo ships is foolish anyway. they are already highly automated with the crew only there for emergencies and tasks that cannot be automated. it's why they already operate with typical crews (note difference from max crew) of 4-15 people depending on ship size/type.
the place the real unmanned advances are being made is at the loading/unloading area, with the gantries also being more and more automated. with computer databases and preplanning of loading so that multiple container shipments are stacked together in order of delivery and location (rather than being spread out randomly among the 14,000+ containers, at different locations and depths within the stacks on ship) it's all very close to maximum efficiency.
all cargo will be carried on automated or semiautomated ships which will also serve as cruise ships which are only chartered by NRA tour groups.
Killing pirates has been one of the primary duties of navies pretty much since there's been such a thing as navies. It's kind of in the job description.
that's why i purchase my music from Itunes.
If it is unmanned. It would not even neeed to have a "deck"
" I hereby christen this ship the SS Deckless Wonder"
Its unmanned. Vhy would it need to float?
now we're talking. undersea railroads. nuclear powered and unmanned.
I would love your thoughts on making a practical intermodal container ship which is fully sealed to the outside.
inertia drive. (not a real thing)
For centuries, pirates were considered hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race, and any ship could arrest pirates on the high seas, try them, and execute them. A trial was required (if at all possible) because pirate ships often included people who were kidnapped or otherwise coerced to join the crew. Still today, on the high seas any nation may arrest and try pirates, but certain human rights protections have been added by treaty.
International piracy law in general refers to piracy on the high seas (international waters). Most modern piracy occurs in territorial waters, though. In territorial waters, the nation who controls that territoy has jurisdiction and has the option to authorize any action. An exception is Somalia, which has a bad problem with piracy. Treaties allow signatory nations to take "all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia for the purpose of suppressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea". "All necessary measures" is generally thought to mean that unless lethal force is NECESSARY, it's not allowed. However, pirates shoot at people trying to arrest them, so lethal force is often necessary.
"The violent crime rate related to fishing boats is easily 20 times that of crimes involving tankers, cargo ships or passenger ships, said Charles N. Dragonette, who tracked seafaring attacks globally for the United States Office of Naval Intelligence until 2012. “So long as the victims were Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Filipino, just not European or American, the story never resonated,” he said.
Prosecutions for crimes at sea are rare — one former United States Coast Guard official put it at “less than 1 percent” — because many ships lack insurance and captains are averse to the delays and prying that can come with a police investigation. The few military and law enforcement ships that patrol international waters are usually forbidden from boarding ships flying another country’s flag unless given permission. Witnesses willing to speak up are scarce; so is physical evidence."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/middleeast/murder-at-sea-captured-on-video-but-killers-go-free.html?_r=0
I doubt that the customers would want poison gas seeping into their products during shipping, even if Loyd's was up for the idea; but it wouldn't be a complete surprise to hear of an unmanned bulk carrier of some sort being flushed with dry nitrogen as a preservative; and some idiots encountering inert gas asphyxiation.
if leonardo and kate can have sex in some guy's car on the Titanic, i don't see why filling it with nitrogen would be an objectionable alternative.
Shipping companies did employ armed security that did indeed fire on pirates when the Somali problem was at its peak. You can find video on the web.
The big problem is the weapons you're carrying have to be legal in both the country you're shipping from and the country you're shipping to. Since so much of it was destined for Europe, where almost every weapon is illegal, your options are limited. Most of the security companies operating in that region had their own boats to move guards - they would board with their weapons in international waters and debark with their weapons in international waters.
They solved that problem by just throwing the weapons overboard. Half a dozen AR-15s, a couple rifles in .308 or 30-06 and 1k rounds for each is two day's pay for the guys doing security. A trivial extra cost.
Anyway, this is a self-inflicted problem. Africans are going to do that stuff. Letting it continue caused it to continue. Had they shot at the first dozen attempts there wouldn't be a problem at all.
alternately, if the big factory fishing fleets hadn't overfished the waters off somalia which had been the foundation of the region's economy for hundreds of years, thereby forcing the seagoing population into other lines of work there wouldn't be a problem either.
Isn't it a good way to get killed by drones or poisonous gas or something like that if 100% of the people on board are certifiable bad guys?
cover the entire ship inside and out with something emitting hard radiation when it leaves port. not sure how to unload it when it gets where it's going though
Or the pirates find a way to cut the data link (likely just need to due some rain fade / knock the dish out of alignment).
or the pirates hack into the system and sit there in china or russia and steer the ships into their dock in somalia.
What is the point to dial a number to find out the time when you can just look at the screen first and see the time? They need an app for that. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" "U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock. At the tone, the Eastern daylight time - 14 hours, 20 minutes exactly."
my apartment building has a clock built in. I just pound on the wall and a voice from the wall says "It's 4 in the morning, dammit!"
To check if a phone was working, there used to be a number you could call and hang-up. Then the phone would be called back.
and a voice would say "the caller is in the house!!!"
Smart phones do not use NTP, although perhaps they should: It's computationally almost free, and can be very data-efficient, and works great even in free-running mode.
Cellular network time isn't always accurate. I can put a few devices together from different carriers, and they're within a minute or two. But right now, in fact, I have two Verizon devices in front of me: One is 16 seconds fast, and the other is 1 second slow, compared to NIST -- even though they have the same exact time source.
Maybe a minute or two is good enough, but it's not anything approaching high-accuracy. If I cared about time enough to have a high-quality wristwatch, I would not set it from the time displayed on my phone.
Meanwhile, IIRC, CID time did not include seconds in the timestamp. So it was only accurate within a minute, too.
I have this mental image of the trains actually running on time, but nobody knows what time it actually is so they all miss them anyway.
right! that's what i was talking about upthread a bit, how is it possible for these hyper precise items to all be so reliably out of synch? wtf?
GSM network time can be wrong, though. A month or two ago O2 Germany had a problem with the network time so many phones all around Germany were set to 10 minutes earlier. Missed my train that way. Was very surprised comparing the phone clock with the railway station clock.
I had a few VCRs that could find time signals impressed on some of the TV station signals (via cable, when it was still analog); i think most US PBS stations IIRC, and also what time zone, so would update DST for you automatically.
NTP is internet based, read: requires an internet connection to retrieve the time.
Yet when I boot my Android phone after its battery runs empty, with Wi-Fi and mobile data disabled, it still retrieves the time just fine. Unlike say, a PC or Raspberry Pi when it relies solely on NTP for timekeeping.
Read: yes, your phone uses 'the network' to retrieve the time (the mobile network, that is). No, not NTP or mobile data services. My PC relies on a CR2032-backed hardware clock (manually adjusted once or twice a year), with the OS handling daylight saving changes. No network access needed to keep the correct time.
in case young folks don't know, we used to have phones which were wired to a central phone switching system; and if you had one of those that displayed the time or stamped it on voicemail or somesuch, when you disconnected it and reconnected, it wouldn't know the time until somebody called.
And we were grateful! we loved it!
my phone (verizon) and my cable (comcast) do not quite match on the time.
and of course, the individual channels clearly run on variously different clocks than comcast does, as trying to DVR programs on different networks proves. which is presumably why they provide the option of lengthening the start and end times of the recording.
why?
I bet it never get Chinese callers since 4 is an unlucky # for death. ;)
that would be a good number for the one run by the funeral parlor that the guy posted upthread, then.
We still call the time all the time to get the time, it doesn't take much time and it's a simple way to set the time on all your devices that have a way to set the time to any particular time, some of them are even set to UTC time, because internet time is cool time.
What I want to know is...
What are some number annunciator phone numbers we can call? You know, you call it, it tells you the number you're calling from.
just pick up your phone and don't dial anybody. just ask the friendly NSA eavesdropper.
dial a dirty joke still going strong: (516) 922-WINE
And who among us does not fondly remember scouring the instructions for how to get the VCR to flash "1:00" after the daylight savings time changeover?
I feel sorry that you didn't have a young child in your household who could figure out to change the time on the VCR without ever looking at the instructions. IIRC, the instructions were crap — if you find the English version among the half-dozen languages.
the wonderful part of that particular user interface was that most of them only had increment buttons, not decrement, so if you overshot, you had to go around the clock again. because subtracting 1 from whatever number was on the display would be just too damn hard to program.
Let's take back Murica like the British people did with their country last night!
get the US out of the EU!!!