I wish people would stop toting out this old fallacy. Yes, it is true in a stratic sense that it is better to wound an enemy soldier than to kill him, however this was *NOT* repeat *NOT* a significant deciding factor in adopting the 5.56NATO cartridge as the primary small arms round.
The real reasons for the move to 5.56 were WEIGHT and RANGE. A smaller caliber round means a lighter weapon, which means that for the same weight a soldier can carry a LOT more ammo, or the same amount of ammo plus additional equipment.
The second reason is that they found that most targets more than 200 yards away were engaged with heavy crew-served weapons (artillery, mortar, tanks, heavy machinegun, etc) and not small arms -- therefore the standard-issue rife need only be effective out to the 200-300 yard range. Tactical doctrine is that if the target is further away than than a couple hundred yards, you call for heavy weapons support. Nowadays, an infantryman's primary weapon is his radio, not his rifle.
[...]actually analyize the sweat from the fingertip (that's what make the fingerprint) to make sure it's a real finger
Big hairy deal. So now, as well as a gelatin mold of someone's fingerprints, you also need some salt water to spoof the sensor.
Re:Someone has to...PRELIMINARY AUTOPSY RESULTS
on
Is The Lone Coder Dead?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
He had become reclusive with the shock of finding out that real, live women DIDN'T have staples in their navels.
Coulda fooled me. This summer it seemed like every other 20-something woman was wearing a shirt that let her belly button hang out -- and the majority of them had navels that were decorated with metallic devices of some kind or another. Piercing... staple... same thing.
To paraphrase: Wah, Wah, Wha. I don't like getting spam in my inbox, so Big Brother needs to do something about it.
If getting 300 offers a day for penis pills is the price I have to pay to keep the Government and it's corporate masters OUT of my computer, then that is a price I'm willing to pay. Freedom isn't free -- the price of Free Speech is having to occasionally listen to people say things you'd rather not hear. Deal with it.
Spam and script kiddies are a tolerable nuisance compared to the power of having a global communications network which is outside the control of any single government or corporation.
The problem I have with FC is that even the "minimal" install is freaking huge. I want a REAL minimal install:
Basic system utilities (cron, init, and the basic set of/bin and/sbin tools)
Basic network connectivity & security (SSH and firewall)
The Logical Volume Manager
A package management system
A system update utility
And THAT'S IT. No F'ing Xwindows or Perl or any of that other crap. If I want anything else I'll install it myself. I want something which will fit on a 210M pocket CD and which will install from bare metal to command prompt in 15 minutes or less.
There's nothing I hate worse than sitting for an hour waiting for the installer to chug through 3 dozen packages I'm going to have to manually uninstall as soon as it's done. And sorry, Gentoo doesn't cut it -- waiting for every f'ing line of code on the system to compile isn't a productive use of my time.
once ONE of your competitors out-souces their work to near slave labor (India and China) then you will be forced to as well; OR you will be put out of business soon
Slippery slope fallacy.
Your competition does something to lower their costs. Good for them. You can blindly play follow the leader, or you can actually use your grey matter and turn the situation to your advantage. If your customer is able to lower prices because they're using 3rd world sweatshop labor, don't try to compete on price -- appeal to people's patriotism (Made in the USA!), offer better customer service, etc. There are plenty of ways to differentiate yourself in the marketplace other than price.
The social security fund has billions of dollars in it, so explain how they went broke 4 days ago.
It has billions *on* *paper*. There's no *real* money there, however -- it's all IOU's and accounting games. SSA goes broke every month because everything they don't pay out in benefits goes to pay for congressional pork.
SSA collects $X per month from payroll taxes and pays out $Y in benefits. The difference ($X - $Y) between those two numbers is shrinking -- as the boomers retire, $X goes down (fewer people working) and $Y goes up (more people drawing benefits). Instead of saving that (dwindling) surplus, Congress STEALS it to pay for stuff while deducting it from the deficit to make it look like they're not running up the national debt as fast as they really are. Eventually, $X is going to be greater than $Y, and then the shit will really hit the fan -- Congress will have to start paying back the money they "borrowed", and the only way they have to get it is by raising taxes.
If you have a grandparent or an elderly family friend who lived through the Great Depression, PICK THEIR BRAINS! It might just save your life one day.
Considering that today's financial mis-management makes the excesses of the Roaring Twenties look tame by comparison, it's not unreasonable to conclude that there's the potential for a global economic crisis of the same magnitude as the Great Depression to happen within our lifetimes.
A place like Residence Suites has a kitchenette, as do many other hotels. And long-term hotels like that tend to have MUCH better rates than $58/night the guy in the FA is paying. If you're on a budget it's crucial to be someplace you can do your own cooking -- eating out is horribly expensive.
Shit, you can BUY a frigging HOUSE for what he's paying for hotels. $58 * 30 = $1740/mo, which is close to what I'm paying for a 2100ft^2 4 bedroom colonial. WTF is he thinking? Stay at a $20/nite fleabag motel if you have to save up for a security deposit, then get a short-term lease on a small apartment. Even $20/nite works out to $600/mo; you could probably find a furnished efficiency for that, depending on the city.
you don't have an oven to "bake your own bread" or "cook a roast"
Behold the wonders of the countertop breadmaker and rotisserie oven. A $~100 investment in small appliances will pay for itself in a week or two versus eating in restaraunts or getting convienience food.
It's even worse if you have to live in your car!
I lived out of the back of my pickup for about three months at one point. I was spending under $25 a week on food, and I never missed any meals. In fact, I ate quite well. Hell, with no TV, cooking becomes your primary form of entertainment.
Anything you can make in a gas/electric oven you can make in a dutch oven, it just takes a bit more skill. Practice makes perfect. A Coleman camp stove, some good cast iron cookware, and a nice big cooler will see you though in a pinch; mankind survived for milennia with less. There's a lot of good information out there on primitive cooking if you care to look... historical recreation isn't just a hobby.
Prices in my area are very high for very simple things like bread and sandwich meat,
That's your problem. Convienience foods are expensive; staple foodstuffs are cheap. If you're on a REALLY tight budget, you can't afford luxuries like that.
Don't buy bread; buy flour, eggs, and yeast and learn to bake your own bread. Don't buy pre-packaged deli meat; buy a big enconomy-size roast, cook it yourself, and slice it up. Don't buy potato chips, buy a big bag of potatos and a gallon of vegatable oil. You get the idea...
Tomatos too expensive? Plant a garden! Even an apartment dweller can raise a significant crop of fresh vegatables in big flowerpots. Go to the library and check out a book on box gardening.
Most importantly, learn how to shop! For example, every supermarket I've ever been in marks down it's meats on the sell-by date. They'll sell it for a few cents on the dollar rather than thowing it out. If you know your store's routine, you can be there waiting when they mark it down. Then, take it straight home and throw it in the freezer. The other thing is to take advantage of coupons and loss leaders! Loss leaders are great if you have the discipline to go in and ONLY buy what's on sale. You may have to go to 3 or 4 stores to get everything you need, but you save a ton of money. Clipping coupons may be a pain in the ass, but it's worth it -- my wife will routinely spend $100 at the grocery store and get $60 of it back in coupons and promotions.
Social Security has been wrecked for years. The Social Security "trust fund" has been nothing but IOUs for years. Congress looted it long ago. Money that they collect from your paycheck doesn't get invested or "put in your account" -- it goes out the same day to pay benefits.
The only thing that's kept it alive this long is that the Baby Boomers hadn't retired yet -- while they were still working, the money coming in to the "trust fund" was just about equal to what was getting paid out.
Now that the baby boomer generation is starting to retire, there are going to be A LOT MORE people drawing Social Security benefits and A LOT LESS money going in to the system. Can you say "negative cash flow"?
The money Congress stole is going to have to be repaid or else people are going to wake up and realize it's all been a big Ponzi scheme. You think Bush's Billionare Buddies are going to let him raise *their* taxes? You've gotta be kidding me. It's us -- the middle class who works for a living -- who are going to have to pay more taxes to cover the shortfall.
The issue is concealed (or open) carry. Carrying a pistol in a holster, or a rifle/shotgun on a sling, dose not constitute "waving it around". The act to which you refer is known as BRANDISHING a firearm; doing so without cause is a criminal act, and is legal grounds to have your CCW permit revoked (if you are fortunate enough to live in a shall-issue state).
Baring it in an open carry fashion *IS* recklessly endangering the lives of innocent bystanders, given our population density here.
Bullshit
Virginia is a shall-issue state: if you apply for a CCW permit, the burden of proof is on the state to show just cause why you should be denied this RIGHT. Northern Virginia is just as densly-populated as New York. Walking around Crystal City, for example, is no different than walking around downtown Manhattan. Yet amazingly, despite VA's liberal concealed-carry laws, it has not been magically transformed into Dodge City, and the Beltway does not transform into the shootout at the OK Corral at rush hour.
The people in NoVA aren't being recklessly endangered by their discretely armed neighbors, so what's so special about New York that makes it exempt to the laws of common sense as well as the Constitution? Could it be that those new yorkers just start pissing themselves and rioting in the street if they happen see someone walking around with a holstered pistol, or god forbid, a rifle slung over their shoulder? Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria...
getting in packed subway cars where they can be grabbed away
Your ignorance (lack of knowledge) is showing. Do you have any idea how difficult it is for someone other than the bearer to grab a pistol out of a properly-designed holster? It's orders of magnitude more difficult than it is to lift someone's wallet. Even a small gun tucked in your waistband is very difficult for someone to take without you knowing it. Besides, the WHOLE POINT of concealed carry is so that RANDOM STRANGERS DON'T KNOW THAT YOU ARE ARMED.
I have to ask you if you think it would be a good idea to encourage the residents of Baltimore to all carry around handguns on their persons
The drug dealers and steet thugs ALREADY DO carry on a routine basis. Given the 80%+ recidivism rate, it's safe to say that the majority of them are already convicted felons who have been barred (via due process) from owning firearms under federal law. Indeed, real-world experience demonstrates the exact opposite: (AFIK) in EVERY state which has adopted liberal concealed-carry laws, the rate of violent crime has dropped faster than in states which have not. Correlation may not imply causation, but it definately DISproves the Democrat-party-line myth that guns in the hands of honest citizens encourages more violent crime.
The Democrat-controlled state legislature has been trying to address this problem for years by passing ever more draconian gun laws, but they miss the simple point that CRIMINALS DO NOT OBEY THE LAW. Having properly trained, contientious, law-abiding armed citizens on the street cannot be any worse than a city where only the criminals are running around armed to the teeth.
Citzens who have proven their compentency with their arms and who have demonstrated their understand how and when (and when not!) to use deadly force absolutely, constitute a well-regulated militia BY DEFINITION, in the exact sense the founding fathers intended. A periodic examination to demonstrate a minimal level of compentancy is precisely what Hamilton was talking about in the passage of Federalist #29 cited earlier. [Actually, Hamilton's idea was that ALL the members of the militia should turn out once a year to PROVE that they possessed a working firearm and basic competancy with it! Serving in the militia was seen as a civic DUTY and obligation held by all able-bodied men.]
I'm sure my CC company loves me. I've used hundreds of dollars in rewards and never payed a penny in interest. But for every person like myself, there are probably a hundred consumer droids.
Your credit card company *does* love you. Credit cards are quite possibly the GREATEST financial scam ever invented.
Not only do they charge *YOU* for using it, they charge the *RETAILER* a fee just to accept the card in the first place, and more fees for each transaction. Of course you wind up paying for it in the end, because the retailers add the credit-card fees into their prices. You paid fees for those "reward points" -- you just paid them to a middleman (the retail shop) instead of directly to the bank.
Of course nobody can agree on what "well regulated Militia" means.... but that's another story
The only people who disagree about what the militia is, or what it means to be "well regulated", are revisionists who willfully ignore Federalist #29 and Title 10 of the US Code.
What is the militia? As defined by Title 10 of the US Code:
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
The classes of the militia are--
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
So what did the Founding Fathers have in mind by the phrase "well-regulate"? Federalist #29 has the answer:
``The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution.
A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
To put it simply, "well-regulated" is another way of saying "properly trained and disciplined". To infer that "well-regulated" means "buried under a mass of beaurocratic regulations and restrictions" is pure revisionism.
"keep and bear Arms" doesn't imply that you have the right to carry a concealed weapon down Times Square at rush-hour
Yes, it does. Last time I checked, the Constitution applies equally to all citizens, regardless of whether they live in New York City or in rural Nebraska. A citizen has just as much right to exercise his 2nd amendment rights at 5pm in NY,NY as he does at midnight in Lincoln, NE, Refer again to the 14th Amendment. Using that weapon in an unsafe or irresponsible fashion, or recklessly endangering the lives of innocent bystanders, is entirely different matter.
You can always just download the first CD in the set, select the minimal install option, and then use yum or up2date to get everything else you need. As of last time I checked, the minimal install only needs disk 1.
And what exactly is wrong with the states having the right to regulate it
The 14th amendment, section one:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
I don't see any clause in the 2nd amendment that says you have the right to carry a concealed weapon
The right to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Carrying a weapon on one's person, concealed or otherwise, constitutes bearing arms. This is a Constitutionally-protected LIBERTY of which no state can deprive any citizen without due process of law.
Most of the Democratic establishment is sick of fighting (and losing) campaigns on guns and would be only too happy to return the issue to the states
If you can't abolish the Second Amendment at the Federal level, do it on a state-by-state basis. Face it, the Democratic party (at both the fedral and state level) is opposed to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The strategy they use to carry out their unconstitutional goals is irrelevant, the salient point is that they are pandering to the illogical rantings of a vocal minority pressure group in order to get more votes.
The republicans pander to the fundimentalist whackjobs because it's a good way for them to get re-elected. The democrats pander to the gun-grabbing wackjobs because it's a good way for THEM to get re-elected. Different symptoms, same disease.
Yes, there is difference between the two parties. That does not make either one of them right, nor does it make either one of them less evil.
The Republican party consistantly panders to far-right Theocratic causes and attempts to ram the tenents of a particular religion down everyone's throat in violation of the First Amendment. They also consistantly support legislation which erodes the protections granted under the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth amendments. The only part of the Constitution which the Republicans consistantly defend is the Second Amendment.
The Democratic party, on the other hand, typically attacks an entirely different set of freedoms. In particular, they consistantly give their support to legislation which erodes the protections of the Second amendment.
Both parties also routinely ignore the Ninth and Tenth amendments and assume powers not explicitly granted to the Federal government.
Chosing between the Democrats and the Republicans is chosing which part of the Constitution you want to gut.
Slashdot Mirror
The real reasons for the move to 5.56 were WEIGHT and RANGE. A smaller caliber round means a lighter weapon, which means that for the same weight a soldier can carry a LOT more ammo, or the same amount of ammo plus additional equipment.
The second reason is that they found that most targets more than 200 yards away were engaged with heavy crew-served weapons (artillery, mortar, tanks, heavy machinegun, etc) and not small arms -- therefore the standard-issue rife need only be effective out to the 200-300 yard range. Tactical doctrine is that if the target is further away than than a couple hundred yards, you call for heavy weapons support. Nowadays, an infantryman's primary weapon is his radio, not his rifle.
Ha. He probably secretly uses Postfix on FreeBSD :-)
Sheesh, kids these days :-)
If getting 300 offers a day for penis pills is the price I have to pay to keep the Government and it's corporate masters OUT of my computer, then that is a price I'm willing to pay. Freedom isn't free -- the price of Free Speech is having to occasionally listen to people say things you'd rather not hear. Deal with it.
Spam and script kiddies are a tolerable nuisance compared to the power of having a global communications network which is outside the control of any single government or corporation.
- Basic system utilities (cron, init, and the basic set of
/bin and /sbin tools)
- Basic network connectivity & security (SSH and firewall)
- The Logical Volume Manager
- A package management system
- A system update utility
And THAT'S IT. No F'ing Xwindows or Perl or any of that other crap. If I want anything else I'll install it myself. I want something which will fit on a 210M pocket CD and which will install from bare metal to command prompt in 15 minutes or less.There's nothing I hate worse than sitting for an hour waiting for the installer to chug through 3 dozen packages I'm going to have to manually uninstall as soon as it's done. And sorry, Gentoo doesn't cut it -- waiting for every f'ing line of code on the system to compile isn't a productive use of my time.
Your competition does something to lower their costs. Good for them. You can blindly play follow the leader, or you can actually use your grey matter and turn the situation to your advantage. If your customer is able to lower prices because they're using 3rd world sweatshop labor, don't try to compete on price -- appeal to people's patriotism (Made in the USA!), offer better customer service, etc. There are plenty of ways to differentiate yourself in the marketplace other than price.
SSA collects $X per month from payroll taxes and pays out $Y in benefits. The difference ($X - $Y) between those two numbers is shrinking -- as the boomers retire, $X goes down (fewer people working) and $Y goes up (more people drawing benefits). Instead of saving that (dwindling) surplus, Congress STEALS it to pay for stuff while deducting it from the deficit to make it look like they're not running up the national debt as fast as they really are. Eventually, $X is going to be greater than $Y, and then the shit will really hit the fan -- Congress will have to start paying back the money they "borrowed", and the only way they have to get it is by raising taxes.
Considering that today's financial mis-management makes the excesses of the Roaring Twenties look tame by comparison, it's not unreasonable to conclude that there's the potential for a global economic crisis of the same magnitude as the Great Depression to happen within our lifetimes.
A place like Residence Suites has a kitchenette, as do many other hotels. And long-term hotels like that tend to have MUCH better rates than $58/night the guy in the FA is paying. If you're on a budget it's crucial to be someplace you can do your own cooking -- eating out is horribly expensive.
Shit, you can BUY a frigging HOUSE for what he's paying for hotels. $58 * 30 = $1740/mo, which is close to what I'm paying for a 2100ft^2 4 bedroom colonial. WTF is he thinking? Stay at a $20/nite fleabag motel if you have to save up for a security deposit, then get a short-term lease on a small apartment. Even $20/nite works out to $600/mo; you could probably find a furnished efficiency for that, depending on the city.
Behold the wonders of the countertop breadmaker and rotisserie oven. A $~100 investment in small appliances will pay for itself in a week or two versus eating in restaraunts or getting convienience food. I lived out of the back of my pickup for about three months at one point. I was spending under $25 a week on food, and I never missed any meals. In fact, I ate quite well. Hell, with no TV, cooking becomes your primary form of entertainment.Anything you can make in a gas/electric oven you can make in a dutch oven, it just takes a bit more skill. Practice makes perfect. A Coleman camp stove, some good cast iron cookware, and a nice big cooler will see you though in a pinch; mankind survived for milennia with less. There's a lot of good information out there on primitive cooking if you care to look... historical recreation isn't just a hobby.
All the stores we shop at are within a 1/2 mile of our house. Call it a 2 mile round trip to hit them all.
Don't buy bread; buy flour, eggs, and yeast and learn to bake your own bread. Don't buy pre-packaged deli meat; buy a big enconomy-size roast, cook it yourself, and slice it up. Don't buy potato chips, buy a big bag of potatos and a gallon of vegatable oil. You get the idea...
Tomatos too expensive? Plant a garden! Even an apartment dweller can raise a significant crop of fresh vegatables in big flowerpots. Go to the library and check out a book on box gardening.
Most importantly, learn how to shop! For example, every supermarket I've ever been in marks down it's meats on the sell-by date. They'll sell it for a few cents on the dollar rather than thowing it out. If you know your store's routine, you can be there waiting when they mark it down. Then, take it straight home and throw it in the freezer. The other thing is to take advantage of coupons and loss leaders! Loss leaders are great if you have the discipline to go in and ONLY buy what's on sale. You may have to go to 3 or 4 stores to get everything you need, but you save a ton of money. Clipping coupons may be a pain in the ass, but it's worth it -- my wife will routinely spend $100 at the grocery store and get $60 of it back in coupons and promotions.
The only thing that's kept it alive this long is that the Baby Boomers hadn't retired yet -- while they were still working, the money coming in to the "trust fund" was just about equal to what was getting paid out.
Now that the baby boomer generation is starting to retire, there are going to be A LOT MORE people drawing Social Security benefits and A LOT LESS money going in to the system. Can you say "negative cash flow"?
The money Congress stole is going to have to be repaid or else people are going to wake up and realize it's all been a big Ponzi scheme. You think Bush's Billionare Buddies are going to let him raise *their* taxes? You've gotta be kidding me. It's us -- the middle class who works for a living -- who are going to have to pay more taxes to cover the shortfall.
- Ministry of Truth
- Ministry of Plenty
- Minstry of Peace
- Ministry of Love
And they'll put big posters of Steve Case up everywhere, as well as webcams in every roomHeh, my little guy would probably intentionally set it off and try and catch the disks :-) The kid is totally fearless...
Not only do they charge *YOU* for using it, they charge the *RETAILER* a fee just to accept the card in the first place, and more fees for each transaction. Of course you wind up paying for it in the end, because the retailers add the credit-card fees into their prices. You paid fees for those "reward points" -- you just paid them to a middleman (the retail shop) instead of directly to the bank.
Will it be possible to distinguish Perl6 code from line noise?
What is the militia? As defined by Title 10 of the US Code:
So what did the Founding Fathers have in mind by the phrase "well-regulate"? Federalist #29 has the answer: To put it simply, "well-regulated" is another way of saying "properly trained and disciplined". To infer that "well-regulated" means "buried under a mass of beaurocratic regulations and restrictions" is pure revisionism. Yes, it does. Last time I checked, the Constitution applies equally to all citizens, regardless of whether they live in New York City or in rural Nebraska. A citizen has just as much right to exercise his 2nd amendment rights at 5pm in NY,NY as he does at midnight in Lincoln, NE, Refer again to the 14th Amendment. Using that weapon in an unsafe or irresponsible fashion, or recklessly endangering the lives of innocent bystanders, is entirely different matter.You can always just download the first CD in the set, select the minimal install option, and then use yum or up2date to get everything else you need. As of last time I checked, the minimal install only needs disk 1.
The republicans pander to the fundimentalist whackjobs because it's a good way for them to get re-elected. The democrats pander to the gun-grabbing wackjobs because it's a good way for THEM to get re-elected. Different symptoms, same disease.
The Republican party consistantly panders to far-right Theocratic causes and attempts to ram the tenents of a particular religion down everyone's throat in violation of the First Amendment. They also consistantly support legislation which erodes the protections granted under the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth amendments. The only part of the Constitution which the Republicans consistantly defend is the Second Amendment.
The Democratic party, on the other hand, typically attacks an entirely different set of freedoms. In particular, they consistantly give their support to legislation which erodes the protections of the Second amendment.
Both parties also routinely ignore the Ninth and Tenth amendments and assume powers not explicitly granted to the Federal government.
Chosing between the Democrats and the Republicans is chosing which part of the Constitution you want to gut.