its a small price to pay for the knowledge that a free election has infact taken place
As if our Republican overlords and their corporate buddies have any interest whatsoever in free elections.
I wouldn't trust a Diebold voting machine any further than I could throw it. Until the auditing and security requirements for electronic voting machines are stricter than those required for electronic gambling machines, they have no place whatsoever in the polling place.
Manslaughter is still manslaughter. Negligence is still negligence. Careless driving is still careless driving
And an election year is still an election year. Dollars to doughnuts says that this is all about some over-eager DA grabbing some headlines to help increase his chances of getting (re)elected.
On a more basic level, you are correct. There is a tendancy among lawmakers to pass a new law for every new social ill which comes down the pike, even when there's a perfectly good existing law to cover it. Look at the whole terrorist panic: it's already illegal to hijack airliners; it's already illegal to conspire to kill people. We don't need special laws to cover things which are already illegal. In fact, passing special anti-terrorist laws is the worst thing you can do, because it gives the terrorists special legal status. Remember that these people WANT to be martyrs. The best way to deal with terrorists is to treat them like ordinary street criminals; giving them a special label only helps to legitimize their actions and give them and their cause the attention they crave.
Unfortunately, our political system is rigged so that it works this way. The only things a congresscritter can do is spend money and make new laws. If spending money and making laws doesn't solve the problem, their only response is to spend MORE money and pass MORE laws. Doing nothing wins no votes and generates no headlines.
The teeming masses of sheeple out there demand that their congresscritters "do something" about the crisis du jure. So, in order to insure that they can continue to feed at the public trough, the politicians oblige them by passing redundant laws. Doing nothing, while it's usually the correct thing to do, generally does not win a politician any points with Joe Sixpack.
Pilots aren't perfect. No one says they are. What it does do is put a person who's been trained to make split-second, life-or-death decisions in the loop to make the final decision to shoot or not. It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do and still accomplish the mission.
If you look at the friendly fire incidents in Gulf War I and II, they boil down to two scenerios:
There were a whole string of errors made outside the cockpit leading up to the incident (EG, controllers put plane in wrong airspace, target in a free-fire zone, etc)
The pilot willfully disregarded his rules of engagement.
You have to trust your pilots to follow orders. If they don't, you take away their wings -- having known a couple fighter pilots, they consider this a fate worse than death. Contrary to the Hollywood "cowboy" image of fighter pilots, in the real world they're almost always disciplined and methodical to the point of anal-retentiveness.
If 3000 lines of dense mathematically rich C were checked in and a dozen lines acted in concert to create a miscalculation, how much expertise would be needed to catch that?
Not much. Ever hear of black box testing? I don't need to know HOW code works to be able to tell IF it works according to specification. It would be a trivial programming exercise to write a test harness for a math library that would run a series of calculations and compare the actual results against an independently calculated and verified list of expected results.
If there are any descrepancies between the two lists and you start digging. Even if the code were sabotaged, it is a trivial matter to go into the revision control system and get the last known good version (or, if you suspect the master repository has been tampered with, get it from your trusted off-site backup).
You persist in demonstrating your total ignorance of military service, don't you?
Soldiers are taught to break down their equipment into different categories and pack it according to how badly they need it and how bad it would hurt them to drop it. There are a lot of different systems but the one I learned is that your survival load goes in your cargo pockets, so that even if you lose the rest of your gear you still have something to eat and some basic tools. Your weapons and ammo go on your web gear where you can get to them in a hurry. Excess food and equipment beyond what's needed for immediate survival goes in your backpack, so you can drop it if necessary when the shit hits the fan -- the idea being that you can come back later to pick it up if you're still alive.
If he followed his training, a soldier who's vehicle was destroyed would indeed have a few MREs, a weapon, and some basic survival gear.
Here's a piece of advice: if you don't know what you are talking about, shut the fuck up.
So why not condense the 8 gallons of water you create from every gallon of gas you burn?
Yeah, that works really well when your vehicle is a burning pile of wreckage. It also does the infantry grunt a whole lot of good.
News flash, moron: if a soldier has access to a vehicle and gasoline, what's the probability he's NOT going to have access to fresh water? The gas is going to run out long before the water does.
Notice how most of the people who's said this is a good idea have mentioned that they're veterans, and the ones who're saying "eeew yuck" have not?
News flash, people: if you haven't served, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Do the rest of us a favor and STFU. If you're in combat or other life-or-death situation, you do whatever is necessary to survive, or you fucking DIE. Even us chAir Force wimps know that much:-)
Even working within the bounds of those "best estimates", you can get anything from under ten to over ten thousand communicating civilizations in our galaxy. Let's say there are 1000 technological civilizations currently active in the Milky Way. A very rough estimate of the size of the galaxy is 1000 cubic kiloparsecs (1 parsec = 3.2 lightyears), so on average there's one civilization per cubic kiloparsec. The odds are that there is anyone close enough for us to hear them are pretty damn slim.
This spells a desolate future for AT&T residential subscribers
Well, maybe not for CURRENT subscribers, but it's great news for FORMER subscribers. Now maybe the bastards will stop calling me at dinner using that convient "existing business relationship" loophole in the do-not-call law.
how would you go about doing that when you're backing the files up on a Linux system for future use on Windows
Easy. Linux will format and mount a vfat partition, which can be read by just about any version of Windows. With the new harddrive being/dev/hdc (secondary master IDE), do:
the seller mentioned in this slashdot article would not accept credit card payments / paypal
And that should have been a HUGE RED FLAG to tell him not to buy from the yutz.
The "online fraud protection" offered by credit cards generally supplements the automatic fraud protection that they are required by law to provide. You already have the right under federal law to dispute any charges on your credit card, which is a major reason why you should use a credit card for online purchases in the first place -- even when dealing with reputable vendors. I forget the maximum liability you can be legally charged for fraudulent charges on your card, but IIRC it is $50. At least on the cards that I have, the Online Fraud Protection kicks in to cover the difference, so you don't lose anything.
I think the poster was trying to ask whether congresscritters can make a similar law and grant Unisys control again.
No. Congress cannot make a law which retroactively re-activates an expired patent; the Constitution explicitly forbids them from doing so:
Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
"ex post facto" is Latin for "after the fact". When a copyright or patent expires, the work goes into the public domain, making it legal for everyone to use or copy it without restriction. That legal right cannot be retroactively revoked one it has been given. However, according to Eldred v. Ashcroft, an UNexpired patent or copyright can have it's term extended an unlimited number of times. Despite the fact that the Founding Fathers unambiguously declared that patents & copyrights shall have a limited term, the Rhenquist court has ruled that an infinite term is Constitutional as long as you get it on an installment plan.
"That Sonny Bono thingy", properly known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, extends the duration of copyrights, not patents. If you're unsure of the difference, do some research.
Since it's a duplicate patent and should never have been issued in the first place, IBM would be idiotic to let it get anywhere near a courtroom.
Yeah - it's really fun when a stoned pilot decides to visit your BBQ by crashing in your yard.
Except the parent wasn't talking about people who are abusing narcotics, he was talking about people who are taking the prescribed amounts of ANTIDEPRESSANTS. AFIK you cannot get stoned on a mild antidepressant like Zoloft or Wellbutrin, and they have no/negligible effect on your reaction speed, attention span, or any other physical skill you need to operate a plane (or car).
In fact, expect a lot of kit plane manufacturer's to target this specification.
That's exactly the first thing I thought of when I saw this. For those who didn't RTFA, the specifications for aircraft under these rules are:
Maximum weight of 1,320 lbs. [I'm unsure if this is dry weight or maximum takeoff weight]
Maximum of two occupants
Single non-turbine engine
Stall speed of 45 knots [I assume this is the maximum allowed stall speed, lower should be OK]
Maximum airspeed of 120 knots
Fixed landing gear
Not a helicopter or powered lift aircraft
The maximum weight rule is the real big question here. If it's dry weight then it'll be a lot easier to build one that can carry a useful cargo say 500 lbs of people + luggage. If the weight allowance has to include fuel + payload, then you're going to have a lot harder time building something which looks like a real airplane instead of a kite with a leafblower strapped to it.
I'm waiting to see what Burt Ruttan comes up with in this category -- if anyone can design a practical aircraft to these specs, he can.
Trying to fly an ultralight F22 would be just as suicidal as an ultralight X-Wing. It just wouldn't work as an ultralight -- the wing geometry alone is going to give it too high a stall speed and insufficient lift to work in an ultralight design.
On a happier note, an ultralight P-51 Mustang (or other WWII warbird) might actually be possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't trust a Diebold voting machine any further than I could throw it. Until the auditing and security requirements for electronic voting machines are stricter than those required for electronic gambling machines, they have no place whatsoever in the polling place.
On a more basic level, you are correct. There is a tendancy among lawmakers to pass a new law for every new social ill which comes down the pike, even when there's a perfectly good existing law to cover it. Look at the whole terrorist panic: it's already illegal to hijack airliners; it's already illegal to conspire to kill people. We don't need special laws to cover things which are already illegal. In fact, passing special anti-terrorist laws is the worst thing you can do, because it gives the terrorists special legal status. Remember that these people WANT to be martyrs. The best way to deal with terrorists is to treat them like ordinary street criminals; giving them a special label only helps to legitimize their actions and give them and their cause the attention they crave.
Unfortunately, our political system is rigged so that it works this way. The only things a congresscritter can do is spend money and make new laws. If spending money and making laws doesn't solve the problem, their only response is to spend MORE money and pass MORE laws. Doing nothing wins no votes and generates no headlines.
The teeming masses of sheeple out there demand that their congresscritters "do something" about the crisis du jure. So, in order to insure that they can continue to feed at the public trough, the politicians oblige them by passing redundant laws. Doing nothing, while it's usually the correct thing to do, generally does not win a politician any points with Joe Sixpack.
If you look at the friendly fire incidents in Gulf War I and II, they boil down to two scenerios:
- There were a whole string of errors made outside the cockpit leading up to the incident (EG, controllers put plane in wrong airspace, target in a free-fire zone, etc)
- The pilot willfully disregarded his rules of engagement.
You have to trust your pilots to follow orders. If they don't, you take away their wings -- having known a couple fighter pilots, they consider this a fate worse than death. Contrary to the Hollywood "cowboy" image of fighter pilots, in the real world they're almost always disciplined and methodical to the point of anal-retentiveness.If there are any descrepancies between the two lists and you start digging. Even if the code were sabotaged, it is a trivial matter to go into the revision control system and get the last known good version (or, if you suspect the master repository has been tampered with, get it from your trusted off-site backup).
Soldiers are taught to break down their equipment into different categories and pack it according to how badly they need it and how bad it would hurt them to drop it. There are a lot of different systems but the one I learned is that your survival load goes in your cargo pockets, so that even if you lose the rest of your gear you still have something to eat and some basic tools. Your weapons and ammo go on your web gear where you can get to them in a hurry. Excess food and equipment beyond what's needed for immediate survival goes in your backpack, so you can drop it if necessary when the shit hits the fan -- the idea being that you can come back later to pick it up if you're still alive.
If he followed his training, a soldier who's vehicle was destroyed would indeed have a few MREs, a weapon, and some basic survival gear.
Here's a piece of advice: if you don't know what you are talking about, shut the fuck up.
News flash, moron: if a soldier has access to a vehicle and gasoline, what's the probability he's NOT going to have access to fresh water? The gas is going to run out long before the water does.
Wow, there's actually someone on /. who can recognize irony that isn't inside a set of <irony> tags. I'm amazed
There are no SCOX shares available to be shorted. Even if there were any available, the price isn't high enough to make the risk worthwhile.
News flash, people: if you haven't served, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Do the rest of us a favor and STFU. If you're in combat or other life-or-death situation, you do whatever is necessary to survive, or you fucking DIE. Even us chAir Force wimps know that much :-)
Even working within the bounds of those "best estimates", you can get anything from under ten to over ten thousand communicating civilizations in our galaxy. Let's say there are 1000 technological civilizations currently active in the Milky Way. A very rough estimate of the size of the galaxy is 1000 cubic kiloparsecs (1 parsec = 3.2 lightyears), so on average there's one civilization per cubic kiloparsec. The odds are that there is anyone close enough for us to hear them are pretty damn slim.
Thank you *SO* much for making diet coke shoot out of my nose.
Fines, nah. I vote for public flogging.
The "online fraud protection" offered by credit cards generally supplements the automatic fraud protection that they are required by law to provide. You already have the right under federal law to dispute any charges on your credit card, which is a major reason why you should use a credit card for online purchases in the first place -- even when dealing with reputable vendors. I forget the maximum liability you can be legally charged for fraudulent charges on your card, but IIRC it is $50. At least on the cards that I have, the Online Fraud Protection kicks in to cover the difference, so you don't lose anything.
Read your card holder agreement and know the law!
Good grief... now that's a picture that lets you know just how insignificant you really are. Still, I'm kind of fond of this one
Since it's a duplicate patent and should never have been issued in the first place, IBM would be idiotic to let it get anywhere near a courtroom.
Mod parent up: +1, voice of reason.
Sweet. Homebuilt's not a problem for me -- in fact I'd prefer to trust my life to an aircraft that I know inside and out.
- Maximum weight of 1,320 lbs. [I'm unsure if this is dry weight or maximum takeoff weight]
- Maximum of two occupants
- Single non-turbine engine
- Stall speed of 45 knots [I assume this is the maximum allowed stall speed, lower should be OK]
- Maximum airspeed of 120 knots
- Fixed landing gear
- Not a helicopter or powered lift aircraft
The maximum weight rule is the real big question here. If it's dry weight then it'll be a lot easier to build one that can carry a useful cargo say 500 lbs of people + luggage. If the weight allowance has to include fuel + payload, then you're going to have a lot harder time building something which looks like a real airplane instead of a kite with a leafblower strapped to it.I'm waiting to see what Burt Ruttan comes up with in this category -- if anyone can design a practical aircraft to these specs, he can.
On a happier note, an ultralight P-51 Mustang (or other WWII warbird) might actually be possible.