AMEN! Anyone who ever spent any length of time in the Security or Intelligence professions can't help but sneer when they witness the TSA's circus, or, as Bruce Schneier puts it, security theatre.
It's all a ridiculous sham, and its only purpose is to keep the bleating herd happy with its big, elaborate homage to the herd's one true god: Security.
Bah.
General Eisenhower said it best:
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
What scares me isn't Obama or his campaign promises. What scares me is the mob that hangs on his every word, and is seemingly convinced that he can Do No Wrong. I watched the inauguration, and the mob started chanting Obama! Obama!
It terrified me, because my family remembers another politician who also had a mob. A mob who also hung on the politician's every word, and also believed he could Do No Wrong.
Only the chant was different: It wasn't Obama, it was Sieg heil.
The surviving rail lines are all owned by heavy freight, with the few passenger trains repeatedly being sidetracked for those heavy freights, which have priority and will continue to do so as long as the freight companies own the lines. And now you wish to increase passenger traffic back up to, say, pre-1945 levels? Can you say 'scalability problems?'
So, fine: Build more rails. But where? Most of the surviving lines were laid 'way back when land was far cheaper, the legal load was far less, and you could fill-in a frog pond without having to file a 150-page Environmental Impact study three years in advance.
Forget it: Unless you just happen to have a few dozen trillion smackers in your hip pocket, we're stuck with what we've built-up over the past sixty years, usually at the destructive expense of the rail lines. In other words, ROADS. Embed guidance wires in the pavement and aim for flow-controlled car and bus traffic (hm; wheeled bus/trains?), perhaps install LIGHT rail in the existing carpool lanes, and slowly squeeze petrol-based propulsion out of existence in favor of electric-hybrid followed by purely electric. Try anything else, and people will freak at the up-front price tag, and NOTHING will get done.
Both DOD (Dear Old Dad) and my wife wanted their own computers. Neither has the foggiest idea as to how they work. When I asked them what they were going to use them for (always important), the answer was the same: surfing, email, and maybe the occasional document.
So, I gave them a pair of older machines, both with SuSE loaded and the Gnome desktop set. Result: I haven't received a trouble call from DOD in years, and my wife won't even let me TOUCH hers ("Because it works!").
Nothing ticks me off more than some back-to-the-trees naysayer who spends all their time nit-picking every proposal to death, while offering NO viable alternatives.
Do you have a BETTER idea, other than your usual draw-out-the-death-throes conservation crap? Then SPEAK UP! Otherwise, SHUT UP!!!
....Just look under the hood of one of DoD's tactical military vehicles. You'll find a turbocharged, multi-fuel Diesel, capable of burning anything from LH to bear grease.
Excellent analysis of the situation. The "egg against a rock" appraisal is pretty-much the universal conclusion of most people who don't fall prey to the "counting noses" fallacy (i.e.: First Persian Gulf War).
I wonder, however, if this research on the part of the Red Chinese also includes an unbiased analysis of the impact of IW upon their military's own, highly-rigid C3I infrastructure and whether they will dare an attempt to fix it, given the typical totalitarian state's paranoia toward its own armed forces.
Finally, just for the heck of it, I'd like to point out that IW has actually been around for a while, just not recognized as a distinct discipline. As evidence of this, I'd like to submit two items: the writings of Sun Tsu, and the typical military sniper's targeting priorities (shoot the guy with the radio FIRST).
....Making drugs illegal hinges on a fatally false assumption - that making something illegal actually reduces it's occurrence. This was obviously not true with alcohol, and is obviously not true for any other drug out there. Given that basic economic forces will happen any time there is a demand for something, we, as society, have a very important choice to make: "Who do we want to produce the supply that will inevitably meet the ever-present demand"....
Amen.
Myself and a whole bunch of other guys left over from the Cold War turned our attention to the so-called War on Drugs a number of years ago. We spent years down south, hunting druggies. Compared to the Russian Bear, these guys were pussies, and we took them down in droves.
But it didn't do any damned good. For every goon we took out, there were a hundred more, literally murdering each other to take their place. There was just TOO DAMNED MUCH MONEY INVOLVED.
We were up against classic Capitalist economics: if there is a demand, there WILL be a supply. Nothing we did touched the demand, and so, in the end, we were going to lose.
You want to fix this? I'll give you two options. Option One: Five years hard labor for possession of any amount, and TWENTY at hard labor for dealing of any amount. If you don't have the stomach for that, than you better go for Option Two: Legalize the whole damned mess, then tax the crap out of it.
A good chunk of Central and South America has been turned into a bloody hellhole because we can't bring ourselves to deal with this garbage.
Hey, how about this: We deduct the points that all those nasty over-achiever students make above the student average, and award them to the lazy^h^h^h^h proud future members of the Proletariat! It that not even more Progressive?
....The "Internationale" plays softly in the background....
. . . . and will wait 4 more years to hope a great man does appear (with a backbone and conviction) that wants to try to run the country. Things might be bad enough then.
You might have a point, there.
The only reason A. Lincoln ever made it to the White House was because all the career politicians were too busy jumping ship.
This is all very nice, but it's been my own experience that not only can caps charge at a rate much higher than a battery, they can also discharge at a rate much higher than a battery.
As in instantaneous.
So; are there any ideas as to how to keep such a super-cap's discharge rate down to a less-than-catastrophic rate when a failure mode is encountered?
"The same tree-huggers telling me gasoline is bad are telling me that batteries are bad too."
Yes; and anything *else* that even remotely hints of technology will automatically be bad as well, to those fruitcakes.
Trust me; the only thing the tree-huggers will be satisfied with is you squatting naked on a tree branch, listening to the wolves singing in the night.
I've seen unions, and I've seen what they do. Maybe once upon a time they actually gave a damn about their members, but now they're just another bloated, bureaucratic monopoly. A monopoly on labor. Ever seen the Teamster's board room? How about the NEA's HQ in DC? Think they managed to get stuff like that by giving a flipping fart about the rank and file? Suckers, the lot of them.
Garbage argument. It's like saying that just because that red car over 'yonder can do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, painting it red makes a car go faster.
See; I can easily stand your argument on its head: how do you know that California's economy wouldn't rank even *higher* if it *weren't* for the meddling of the Socialist State?
Try again. And, please, *try* to keep your knee from jerking so much next time.
Slashdot Mirror
AMEN!
Anyone who ever spent any length of time in the Security or Intelligence professions can't help but sneer when they witness the TSA's circus, or, as Bruce Schneier puts it, security theatre.
It's all a ridiculous sham, and its only purpose is to keep the bleating herd happy with its big, elaborate homage to the herd's one true god: Security.
Bah.
General Eisenhower said it best:
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
What scares me isn't Obama or his campaign promises. What scares me is the mob that hangs on his every word, and is seemingly convinced that he can Do No Wrong. I watched the inauguration, and the mob started chanting Obama! Obama!
It terrified me, because my family remembers another politician who also had a mob. A mob who also hung on the politician's every word, and also believed he could Do No Wrong.
Only the chant was different: It wasn't Obama, it was Sieg heil.
Arrest Congressmen, arrest Supreme Court Justices.... Who do you think we elected, Adolf Hitler?
We elected a president, not a dictator, you ignorant moron.
....And where are you going to put the rails?
The surviving rail lines are all owned by heavy freight, with the few passenger trains repeatedly being sidetracked for those heavy freights, which have priority and will continue to do so as long as the freight companies own the lines. And now you wish to increase passenger traffic back up to, say, pre-1945 levels? Can you say 'scalability problems?'
So, fine: Build more rails. But where? Most of the surviving lines were laid 'way back when land was far cheaper, the legal load was far less, and you could fill-in a frog pond without having to file a 150-page Environmental Impact study three years in advance.
Forget it: Unless you just happen to have a few dozen trillion smackers in your hip pocket, we're stuck with what we've built-up over the past sixty years, usually at the destructive expense of the rail lines. In other words, ROADS. Embed guidance wires in the pavement and aim for flow-controlled car and bus traffic (hm; wheeled bus/trains?), perhaps install LIGHT rail in the existing carpool lanes, and slowly squeeze petrol-based propulsion out of existence in favor of electric-hybrid followed by purely electric. Try anything else, and people will freak at the up-front price tag, and NOTHING will get done.
Both DOD (Dear Old Dad) and my wife wanted their own computers. Neither has the foggiest idea as to how they work. When I asked them what they were going to use them for (always important), the answer was the same: surfing, email, and maybe the occasional document.
So, I gave them a pair of older machines, both with SuSE loaded and the Gnome desktop set. Result: I haven't received a trouble call from DOD in years, and my wife won't even let me TOUCH hers ("Because it works!").
'Nuff said.
....But please, don't call me until I can justify plugging them into my SANs. That means, versus mechanical:
1) Far better price per GB.
2) Monster MTBFs.
3) Far less power dissipation and HVAC loading.
Until these criteria are met, I'm sorry but as far as I'm concerned they're little more than CEO toys.
https://www.jagcnet.army.mil/
Nothing ticks me off more than some back-to-the-trees naysayer who spends all their time nit-picking every proposal to death, while offering NO viable alternatives.
Do you have a BETTER idea, other than your usual draw-out-the-death-throes conservation crap? Then SPEAK UP! Otherwise, SHUT UP!!!
. . . and it's a black one: They do *exactly* what we tell them to do.
....Just look under the hood of one of DoD's tactical military vehicles. You'll find a turbocharged, multi-fuel Diesel, capable of burning anything from LH to bear grease.
Or, another Stalin, or another Mugabe, or . . . .
. . . . You *have* read at least a little history, haven't you?
Nope; probably not. Just another "useful idiot."
Excellent analysis of the situation. The "egg against a rock" appraisal is pretty-much the universal conclusion of most people who don't fall prey to the "counting noses" fallacy (i.e.: First Persian Gulf War).
I wonder, however, if this research on the part of the Red Chinese also includes an unbiased analysis of the impact of IW upon their military's own, highly-rigid C3I infrastructure and whether they will dare an attempt to fix it, given the typical totalitarian state's paranoia toward its own armed forces.
Finally, just for the heck of it, I'd like to point out that IW has actually been around for a while, just not recognized as a distinct discipline. As evidence of this, I'd like to submit two items: the writings of Sun Tsu, and the typical military sniper's targeting priorities (shoot the guy with the radio FIRST).
];)
"In a revolution is it better to have guns, or to have the knowledge to make guns?"
It depends upon whether or not you have access to a machine shop.
];)
Looks to me like the spammers think Obama supporters are more gullible than McCain supporters. . . .
. . . . Either that, or McCain supporters are less apt to have email accounts. . . .
There; I've been an equal-opportunity insulter, don't you think?
];)
....Making drugs illegal hinges on a fatally false assumption - that making something illegal actually reduces it's occurrence. This was obviously not true with alcohol, and is obviously not true for any other drug out there. Given that basic economic forces will happen any time there is a demand for something, we, as society, have a very important choice to make: "Who do we want to produce the supply that will inevitably meet the ever-present demand"....
Amen.
Myself and a whole bunch of other guys left over from the Cold War turned our attention to the so-called War on Drugs a number of years ago. We spent years down south, hunting druggies. Compared to the Russian Bear, these guys were pussies, and we took them down in droves.
But it didn't do any damned good. For every goon we took out, there were a hundred more, literally murdering each other to take their place. There was just TOO DAMNED MUCH MONEY INVOLVED.
We were up against classic Capitalist economics: if there is a demand, there WILL be a supply. Nothing we did touched the demand, and so, in the end, we were going to lose.
You want to fix this? I'll give you two options. Option One: Five years hard labor for possession of any amount, and TWENTY at hard labor for dealing of any amount. If you don't have the stomach for that, than you better go for Option Two: Legalize the whole damned mess, then tax the crap out of it.
A good chunk of Central and South America has been turned into a bloody hellhole because we can't bring ourselves to deal with this garbage.
FIX IT. NOW.
....I thought that was the philosophy behind AppArmor (http://en.opensuse.org/Apparmor).
It's been deployed in SuSE products for years.
Hey, how about this: We deduct the points that all those nasty over-achiever students make above the student average, and award them to the lazy^h^h^h^h proud future members of the Proletariat! It that not even more Progressive?
. . . . and will wait 4 more years to hope a great man does appear (with a backbone and conviction) that wants to try to run the country. Things might be bad enough then.
You might have a point, there.
The only reason A. Lincoln ever made it to the White House was because all the career politicians were too busy jumping ship.
....Then you don't pay much long-term attention to American politics.
I was wondering when B.O.'s new "handler" would quietly start pulling him into line. Stay tuned for more, especially after the election.
This is all very nice, but it's been my own experience that not only can caps charge at a rate much higher than a battery, they can also discharge at a rate much higher than a battery.
As in instantaneous.
So; are there any ideas as to how to keep such a super-cap's discharge rate down to a less-than-catastrophic rate when a failure mode is encountered?
Actually, it was a Netware server, and it was seven or eight years. Novell even used to hold competitions for the longest-running server.
];)
http://www.networkcomputing.com/1119/1119f1products_2.html
. . . . Yeah; this'll bring the Luddites out in droves. As usual.
"The same tree-huggers telling me gasoline is bad are telling me that batteries are bad too."
Yes; and anything *else* that even remotely hints of technology will automatically be bad as well, to those fruitcakes.
Trust me; the only thing the tree-huggers will be satisfied with is you squatting naked on a tree branch, listening to the wolves singing in the night.
...are the lame and the lazy.
I've seen unions, and I've seen what they do. Maybe once upon a time they actually gave a damn about their members, but now they're just another bloated, bureaucratic monopoly. A monopoly on labor. Ever seen the Teamster's board room? How about the NEA's HQ in DC? Think they managed to get stuff like that by giving a flipping fart about the rank and file? Suckers, the lot of them.
Garbage argument. It's like saying that just because that red car over 'yonder can do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, painting it red makes a car go faster.
See; I can easily stand your argument on its head: how do you know that California's economy wouldn't rank even *higher* if it *weren't* for the meddling of the Socialist State?
Try again. And, please, *try* to keep your knee from jerking so much next time.