And yet we're wasting billions of dollars of our money building worthless systems on top of that. That's your money, and my money. I want it to stop. The best way to do this is to show how useless it is.
I think you misunderstand Bruce's objections. He does not simply object to the fact that the TSA is insecure. He objects to the fact that the TSA wastes huge piles of money, and those huge piles of money could be used for better things.
No no, it all makes perfect sense. It's all about behavior profiling. You see, any terrorist will take pains to hide his activities. Therefore anyone who looks like a terrorist most certainly isn't one. Anyone who carries guns, bombs, or other contraband openly is by definition safe, and so doesn't need to be searched.
People would take the Church of England if they regularly called for (and carried out!) the assassination of their enemies, instead of just suing them or whatever it was that they did. Let this be a lesson to other religions! If you want to get taken seriously by people, kill them!
And why should Slashdot care what Muslim law says about reproducing the Qu'ran? Assuming you're not Jewish, do you refrain from eating pork because it's not Kosher? (If you are Jewish, do you go to confession with your local priest?)
Practice highly visible public heresy, for example by quoting particularly unflattering passages of a particular religion's holy book.
Now: how many death threats do you receive?
If the answer is not "zero", then you can start with the snide remarks.
I can't recall ever hearing about someone who declined to publish something naughty about Christianity because they feared for their lives. But the same thing happens routinely with Islam.
There is a qualitative difference between having a small group of nutballs angry at you and having the government of a major middle-eastern power decide that you should die because you insulted their religion.
Yep, that's it exactly. I didn't want to mention the broken window fallacy directly because I think people would have a very difficult time connecting the "broken window" with war production, but you are of course correct.
Pretty much. That particular cable won't replace Target Disk Mode because it's going to require an actual OS to be up and running, whereas TDM could function with nothing but firmware. But certainly the firmware could be modified to work with that cable, or a similar one.
Non-standard A-A cables would also require non-standard electronics in the USB port itself (I think!), whereas a cable could be made to work with 100% standard USB ports, and just a bit of firmware programming to expose the drive to the port when the magic key combo is held down. I'm not sure which is the better choice but it's a viable alternative.
In such a way as to seriously injure those people, though?
I'll grant that turbulence is not nearly as rare as accidents, but it seems to me that turbulence severe enough to cause substantial injuries is rare enough that leaving your seat belt off is not spectacularly stupid.
What an asshole! Somebody asks for information, and you respond with a huge rant about how clueless Americans are. Maybe people would take you more seriously if you weren't such an elitist jerk.
Good point about the base load. However, having a bunch of electric cars charging is going to be a base load, not an intermittent load. As for running hydro plants at the limit, is that true everywhere? Seems to me like that could end up generating more electricity than could actually be used. Lastly, the grid is not as efficient at distributing load as the ocean is at distributing water. This is one of the big controversies surrounding wind generation, for example. Wind generation tends to happen far away from where it's needed, and transporting that much power over that much distance simply isn't possible. I'll grant that loads could get redistributed in something of a chain and you'll end up affecting things far away, but I still think that your local mix is going to have a big influence on the effects of your actions, even if it's not 100%.
Right, having those people working could have helped, but my point is that it would help a whole lot more to have them produce houses and automobiles and passenger airplanes instead of tanks and bombers and ammunition. Have them not only get paid but actually create wealth instead of simply destroying it. And since this doesn't require a war, the idea that the economy was screwed until 1941 when the Germans and Japanese essentially saved it for us just doesn't make sense.
The money came from massive borrowing. Not as bad as printing money, and indeed since the borrowing was from the population itself (no doubt you've heard of "war bonds") it really just helped get the existing money moving around more. It's not so much like telling your employees to work for free, but like telling your existing employees to take a voluntary pay cut to get things moving, and once the business is done expanding you'll pay them back with interest.
Electricity is fungible but not infinitely transportable. If you live in an area with a lot of hydro plants, an extra kWh pulled from the grid does not cause a bit of extra coal to go into the boilers in a coal power plant three states over, it causes a the local hydro generators to run slightly harder.
"The war saved the economy" is one of those fascinating "facts" that gets repeated constantly but which simply doesn't hold up if you look at it closely.
Consider a similar situation: the government places orders for all sorts of war supplies. Tanks, planes, food, ammo, etc. They all get loaded up on trucks and trains and taken to sea ports. At the ports they are loaded onto cargo ships. Once full, the ships leave port, sail out to sea, and shove everything into the ocean.
And just for good measure, a large fraction of the ships themselves are also sunk.
The remaining ships come back for more, and the shipyards build replacements for the sunken ships.
Economically, this situation is identical to what you experience during a major overseas war such as WWII. But somehow, shoving thousands of tanks and planes into the ocean, and tons of food and ammunition right behind it, doesn't seem like a net gain. In fact, it seems an awful lot like a net loss.
Maybe extra government spending on the war stimulated the economy. But nothing about that stimulus required a war, and indeed without the war it could have been done much better and less wastefully.
They can post where they moderated. If they post as themselves, then they undo the moderation they did. (Which would be fine by me!) They can also post anonymously without affecting their moderation.
As for me being at 5, this is not the case. When I made the above post, the original had a score of 1 and showed nothing in the moderation box but "Overrated". The only conclusion: one person had marked it Overrated from its starting score of 2.
Since then, of course, the moderation has become even more insane. Just goes to show that the moderators on this site are completely nuts.
Requiring people to take some care to make sure they don't forget the password is completely incompatible with how people actually do things, though. People forget passwords all the time. If you make this illegal then you suddenly turn an enormous number of people into criminals. Most people think that this sort of thing is a bad thing to do.
Thinner air makes a huge difference. The reason people still get ass-freezingly cold on Everest is because the temperatures are ridiculously low. But take those same ridiculously low temperatures, put them at sea-level air density, and you suddenly freeze to death twice as fast or more.
It's probably a net gain to go up a mountain, but it's not as much of a gain as you might think from simply comparing the temperatures.
Please don't make the mistake of thinking that people who make different tradeoffs than you do are stupid. Even the nose-breaker is incredibly rare, and in my opinion not defending against it is an entirely rational choice, even if it's not the one you or I would make.
That well-known online encyclopedia is wrong, then. A stall is not an event that causes the wing to lose lift suddenly. It is defined as passing the airfoil's critical angle of attack. The end result is to move from the standard negative feedback loop which keeps the airplane flying straight to a positive feedback loop which causes it to begin to drop.
You're correct that the stall is that region at the end where the lift curne drops off rapidly. However you can be right at the top of that drop-off, with the wing producing 99% of your weight in lift, and still be stalled.
Your description of what happens during a climbing stall is completely wrong. In order to cause passengers to hit their heads on the overhead bins, there would have to be a downward force on the airplane. All a stall causes is a reduction in the normal upward force. It is certaily possible that an overly aggressive stall recovery might cause people to hit their heads, but the stall itself can never do that.
I'm not sure why you think the airplane would "tumble" in a prolonged stall, but this simply isn't true. Depending on the aircraft and the situation it's possible that it will enter a spin, and spinning a large airliner is generally considered to be a Bad Move, but this is not a "tumble".
Stalls are common in some smaller aircraft and they are not the sort of violent thing you describe. In larger aircraft they are considered something to be avoided, but while I've never flown an airliner, the basic aerodynamics still work the same and still tell you what happens. A stall simply is not going to create the effects described.
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Hasn't stopped them before.
And yet we're wasting billions of dollars of our money building worthless systems on top of that. That's your money, and my money. I want it to stop. The best way to do this is to show how useless it is.
I think you misunderstand Bruce's objections. He does not simply object to the fact that the TSA is insecure. He objects to the fact that the TSA wastes huge piles of money, and those huge piles of money could be used for better things.
No no, it all makes perfect sense. It's all about behavior profiling. You see, any terrorist will take pains to hide his activities. Therefore anyone who looks like a terrorist most certainly isn't one. Anyone who carries guns, bombs, or other contraband openly is by definition safe, and so doesn't need to be searched.
I dunno about this. Everybody takes the Muslims seriously and they have no nukes. And when was the last time anybody took England or France seriously?
People would take the Church of England if they regularly called for (and carried out!) the assassination of their enemies, instead of just suing them or whatever it was that they did. Let this be a lesson to other religions! If you want to get taken seriously by people, kill them!
And why should Slashdot care what Muslim law says about reproducing the Qu'ran? Assuming you're not Jewish, do you refrain from eating pork because it's not Kosher? (If you are Jewish, do you go to confession with your local priest?)
The line can be drawn quite simply.
Practice highly visible public heresy, for example by quoting particularly unflattering passages of a particular religion's holy book.
Now: how many death threats do you receive?
If the answer is not "zero", then you can start with the snide remarks.
I can't recall ever hearing about someone who declined to publish something naughty about Christianity because they feared for their lives. But the same thing happens routinely with Islam.
There is a qualitative difference between having a small group of nutballs angry at you and having the government of a major middle-eastern power decide that you should die because you insulted their religion.
Yep, that's it exactly. I didn't want to mention the broken window fallacy directly because I think people would have a very difficult time connecting the "broken window" with war production, but you are of course correct.
Pretty much. That particular cable won't replace Target Disk Mode because it's going to require an actual OS to be up and running, whereas TDM could function with nothing but firmware. But certainly the firmware could be modified to work with that cable, or a similar one.
Non-standard A-A cables would also require non-standard electronics in the USB port itself (I think!), whereas a cable could be made to work with 100% standard USB ports, and just a bit of firmware programming to expose the drive to the port when the magic key combo is held down. I'm not sure which is the better choice but it's a viable alternative.
Or you require a special cable with some basic smarts in the middle to mediate between the two hosts without violating anything.
In such a way as to seriously injure those people, though?
I'll grant that turbulence is not nearly as rare as accidents, but it seems to me that turbulence severe enough to cause substantial injuries is rare enough that leaving your seat belt off is not spectacularly stupid.
What an asshole! Somebody asks for information, and you respond with a huge rant about how clueless Americans are. Maybe people would take you more seriously if you weren't such an elitist jerk.
Hey look, I can generalize too!
The person who mindlessly criticizes Mac fans is the same person who cannot open his mouth without looking like an ass.
Good point about the base load. However, having a bunch of electric cars charging is going to be a base load, not an intermittent load. As for running hydro plants at the limit, is that true everywhere? Seems to me like that could end up generating more electricity than could actually be used. Lastly, the grid is not as efficient at distributing load as the ocean is at distributing water. This is one of the big controversies surrounding wind generation, for example. Wind generation tends to happen far away from where it's needed, and transporting that much power over that much distance simply isn't possible. I'll grant that loads could get redistributed in something of a chain and you'll end up affecting things far away, but I still think that your local mix is going to have a big influence on the effects of your actions, even if it's not 100%.
Right, having those people working could have helped, but my point is that it would help a whole lot more to have them produce houses and automobiles and passenger airplanes instead of tanks and bombers and ammunition. Have them not only get paid but actually create wealth instead of simply destroying it. And since this doesn't require a war, the idea that the economy was screwed until 1941 when the Germans and Japanese essentially saved it for us just doesn't make sense.
The money came from massive borrowing. Not as bad as printing money, and indeed since the borrowing was from the population itself (no doubt you've heard of "war bonds") it really just helped get the existing money moving around more. It's not so much like telling your employees to work for free, but like telling your existing employees to take a voluntary pay cut to get things moving, and once the business is done expanding you'll pay them back with interest.
Electricity is fungible but not infinitely transportable. If you live in an area with a lot of hydro plants, an extra kWh pulled from the grid does not cause a bit of extra coal to go into the boilers in a coal power plant three states over, it causes a the local hydro generators to run slightly harder.
"The war saved the economy" is one of those fascinating "facts" that gets repeated constantly but which simply doesn't hold up if you look at it closely.
Consider a similar situation: the government places orders for all sorts of war supplies. Tanks, planes, food, ammo, etc. They all get loaded up on trucks and trains and taken to sea ports. At the ports they are loaded onto cargo ships. Once full, the ships leave port, sail out to sea, and shove everything into the ocean.
And just for good measure, a large fraction of the ships themselves are also sunk.
The remaining ships come back for more, and the shipyards build replacements for the sunken ships.
Economically, this situation is identical to what you experience during a major overseas war such as WWII. But somehow, shoving thousands of tanks and planes into the ocean, and tons of food and ammunition right behind it, doesn't seem like a net gain. In fact, it seems an awful lot like a net loss.
Maybe extra government spending on the war stimulated the economy. But nothing about that stimulus required a war, and indeed without the war it could have been done much better and less wastefully.
They can post where they moderated. If they post as themselves, then they undo the moderation they did. (Which would be fine by me!) They can also post anonymously without affecting their moderation.
As for me being at 5, this is not the case. When I made the above post, the original had a score of 1 and showed nothing in the moderation box but "Overrated". The only conclusion: one person had marked it Overrated from its starting score of 2.
Since then, of course, the moderation has become even more insane. Just goes to show that the moderators on this site are completely nuts.
Thanks for the support though!
Ever hear the phrase "necessary but not sufficient"?
Requiring people to take some care to make sure they don't forget the password is completely incompatible with how people actually do things, though. People forget passwords all the time. If you make this illegal then you suddenly turn an enormous number of people into criminals. Most people think that this sort of thing is a bad thing to do.
If it still neighs when they hit it (i.e. if it still makes more money than they spend) then it ain't dead, buried, or decomposed yet.
Thinner air makes a huge difference. The reason people still get ass-freezingly cold on Everest is because the temperatures are ridiculously low. But take those same ridiculously low temperatures, put them at sea-level air density, and you suddenly freeze to death twice as fast or more.
It's probably a net gain to go up a mountain, but it's not as much of a gain as you might think from simply comparing the temperatures.
Please don't make the mistake of thinking that people who make different tradeoffs than you do are stupid. Even the nose-breaker is incredibly rare, and in my opinion not defending against it is an entirely rational choice, even if it's not the one you or I would make.
That well-known online encyclopedia is wrong, then. A stall is not an event that causes the wing to lose lift suddenly. It is defined as passing the airfoil's critical angle of attack. The end result is to move from the standard negative feedback loop which keeps the airplane flying straight to a positive feedback loop which causes it to begin to drop.
You're correct that the stall is that region at the end where the lift curne drops off rapidly. However you can be right at the top of that drop-off, with the wing producing 99% of your weight in lift, and still be stalled.
Your description of what happens during a climbing stall is completely wrong. In order to cause passengers to hit their heads on the overhead bins, there would have to be a downward force on the airplane. All a stall causes is a reduction in the normal upward force. It is certaily possible that an overly aggressive stall recovery might cause people to hit their heads, but the stall itself can never do that.
I'm not sure why you think the airplane would "tumble" in a prolonged stall, but this simply isn't true. Depending on the aircraft and the situation it's possible that it will enter a spin, and spinning a large airliner is generally considered to be a Bad Move, but this is not a "tumble".
Stalls are common in some smaller aircraft and they are not the sort of violent thing you describe. In larger aircraft they are considered something to be avoided, but while I've never flown an airliner, the basic aerodynamics still work the same and still tell you what happens. A stall simply is not going to create the effects described.