Hah- what I've learned after 25 years of driving, is that your punishment for driving more than 1 car-length back from the guy in front of you, is someone else slips in.
Tailgaters are just protecting themselves from cut-off-assholes. I wish the cops would bust these jerks. There'd be a whole lot less tailgating if people weren't constantly afraid someone was going to slip into the 15 feet between them and the guy in front of them.
It happens every fucking time. They speed up to slip into the gap, and once they're in front of you, they slow down. Fuck. That. Shit.
. . . yeah, and when they finally DO pass you, THEN they slow down. They didn't need to get where they're going any faster - they just want to be IN FRONT. That REALLY pisses me off, because if you pass them, then they tailgate you again, so you're almost compelled to drive 20 over for an extended period, or stop and eat lunch, just to lose the bastard.
Or, how about the asshole that's driving 10 under in the left lane, and when an extra lane opens up, SPEEDS UP!
If I ever end up in a road-rage incident, surely it will be because of one of these jackasses.
(In any case, this Hanlon fellow sounds like a big, gullible sucker. Scam artists thrive on people who attribute their malice to incompetence/stupidity.)
Especially if the system is involved with exchange of weather data. (which really shouldn't be classified, IMO - anyone can lick their finger and hold it up inthe air).
NASA's weather systems exchange data with all kinds of other government agencies, Dept of Fish and Game, National Weather Service, etc. They have accepted ways of exchanging data, and holding all of these to tight information protection standards is kind of impractical.
Well, there's also the issue of the people who USE the system, not being properly trained on Information Protection. Quite often they'll raise a big stink about "secret" information, that's really just "proprietary" to a contractor (FOUO). Such information is under administrative control, and when it's compromised, the contractors will scream holy hell, because that's their trade secrets. But it's often mixed in carelessly with other data that's not FOUO, and it's often hosted on systems that are not designed to be all that secure.
However, there's a recent DoD NOTAM that says all these internet-facing machines are going to have to get PKI, (ie. smartcard login required) - so, the hackers' jobs are going to get a lot more difficult. In about 20 years when these systems can all be upgraded.:)
Okay - this article's a dupe - but really, we can't talk enough about this subject. Blackbox voting really needs to go. It doesn't take a NIST scientist to see that.
One of the main binding factors of ancient Egyptian civilization was the common religion. And an interesting point about the religion, is that they (the priesthood) exercised very strict controls on everything related to the religion, including artistic style (and techniques), monumental architecture, funerary rituals and rites, language, etc. It was this cultural inertia that bound the Egyptian civilization together across thousands of years, dozens of dynasties, even through foreign invasions and occupations.
The very fabric of the civilization was guided by the notion that CHANGE IS BAD. Pharoh is God. As long as we follow our religion and keep God happy, and make sure God's remains are preserved FOREVER, then Egypt will continue forever.
By that notion alone, it seems unlikely that there was a vibrant experimentation going on.
From the art historian perspective, you can compare the stylistic qualities of sculpture over thousands of years, and the features remain virtually unchanged (except for the Armana period, which really only lasted a couple of decades). During Akhenaten's reign, this changed, because he ousted the priesthood, and introduced his own religion - and during this brief period, the art style changed dramatically. Then the priesthood regained control, and used his son, Tutenkamen, as a puppet, to restore the previous order, and the old art style returned, though it was never again as static - and began taking influence from other medeterranean cultures with which the Egyptians traded (ie. Greek, Persian, etc.)
I'm not saying that they did not discover the perfect concrete formula through experimentation (and it's pretty clear that there WAS a process of improvement in their embalming process over the centuries)- but what I'm saying is that taking 500 years of Roman history, and mapping that over to 7000 years of Egyptian history is like comparing apples to oranges. Egyptian progress most likely moved VERY slowly, in comparison. But they did have a lot of time to work at it.
"Won't somebody PLEASE think of my property values?!"
In Suburban US, this is what it's all about. The tax exemption for home loans, driving appreciating values, a lot of people have their nest-eggs tied up in real estate. They will kill or die to protect their equity. If that means paying association fees to ensure nobody puts up drapes more than two-shades out of beige, or nobody parks their old beater car on the street, then so be it.
I tend to think that in 100-200 years, when US population density starts to approach that of europe, and all these suburbs begin to age and lose their vinyl-siding lustre, things will start to change.
Of course, by then, global warming will have eliminated about 90% of our settled coastlines, and made 90% of our arable land into desert, so by then, we'll probably just be fighting over stacks of human skulls in the town square.
You cruel bastard, I live in Miami. They concept of "city planning" is foreign to them. All the regulators are in the pockets of the developers. The developers get to build houses without taking into account the corresponding traffic (or locality of schools, businesses, grocery stores, highway access ramps, etc.).
Welcome to America.
Stop your bitching. It's exactly the same everywhere.
Call me when that little plastic/glass doorstop with wheels can: 1) Pack my sportbike to the track.
In a trailer.
2) Pack my ATV into the woods... and back out again.
In a trailer.
3) Pack 1/2 ton of landscaping bricks home.
In a trailer. (as I said before - I was inconvenienced when I had to make 3 trips for 2000lbs of flagstone. Wah)
4) Pull my boat out of the lake (no boat ramp).
How big a boat? I put my boatS on my roof-rack.
5) Pack a bunch of sheets of drywall/2x4's/plywood...
In my 4x8 trailer.
6) Can make it to the drugstore when my grandma forgot a perscription... in 18" of snow.
Okay - got me there. But I live in California. No snow. (and - I'll out myself; my wife drives a Toyota 4Runner - but she does not commute daily).
My point is - we're confusing WANT with NEED again. Most of these items can be dealt with with a reasonable compact car, and a trailer. If I were a contractor, and needed to do this stuff every day, I'd think it was a matter of efficient business operation to own a big truck instead of a compact with a trailer. But I'm not a contractor. I'm a programmer and weekend warrior. If I had a big boat, or camper trailer, I'd just use the wife's 4Runner to tow it. But I sure as hell wouldn't do my daily commute lugging around an extra 2000lbs of steel, pumping air and gas through an extra 4 cylinders I don't need to maintain 75mph of highway cruising.
Incidentally, while we didn't NEED a pickup truck, it did make sense for us since we're remodeling our house and landscaping during the summer. We tend to haul something at least a few times a month.
My Jetta w/trailer fulfills that need. At 46 mpg (diesel) highway. Sure - I commute 40 miles a day for work - and I'm not going to move closer. Last time I moved closer to work, the company got bought out and shut down. Not moving again. No spank you.
Plus, I lend out my trailer all the time; it's a little flatbed 4x8 - but since it's not a pickup-truck, I don't get stuck helping people move, or lose my own transportation on Sunday afternoons.
Can I haul 2000 lbs of flagstones? Okay - got me there, I had to take 3 trips.:)
Under my insurance, I had to wait 6 months with severe back pain before my symptoms were "bad enough" for their spreadsheet jockeys to consider approving an MRI.
I don't see how a single-payer system could be worse than what we have.
Risk is for enterpreneurs and eXtreme sportsmen. Not ordinary folks with ordinary health problems.
A while back there was a major crisis in emergency rooms. Not enough doctors, not enough beds, and at one point people were actually dying while waiting.
Guy died last week waiting for treatment at our local trauma center for his broken neck. This problem is not unique to Canada, or the UK.
Market solutions do not serve medical treatment well. There's always going to be a demand for lifesaving procedures, no matter how high someone decides to jack up the price.
On a side note, my son ended up with cerebral palsy, possibly due to decisions made by our doctor and his team.
Apples and oranges, I know - but I have a friend whose daughter was diagnosed with CP, (about 19 years ago now) - and she got into a special program at Loyola hospital, and they paid out a bunch of money for therapy - by age 5, the baby was not perceptably "different" from any other kids, and she's now in her second year of college with a 3.5 average.
Me personally? I lucked out. My wife wasn't covered under my employer's insurance (1993) - but my wife's rich uncle gave us $5000 to cover the birth - which was mostly uncomplicated (though she had to be induced) - she and the baby only spent one night in the hospital. We were able to pay him back over 3 years - he didn't ask for the money back, but when presented with the check, he didn't turn it down.
I am healthy, I have a good job, and it provides health insurance.
In the past 5 years, over 70% of the doctors in my county have left the insurance plan. Additionaly, they have raised premiums and cut what is covered, and made some smarmy fine-print changes to the policies that make them almost useless. The problem was bad in the 1990's, and has only gotten worse. Major employers (example: GM) are laying off hundreds of thousands, because they can't afford these healthcare costs.
This will become an important issue in the US, and soon. Our broken healthcare system is crippling our economy.
I thank you for your candor. And I thank you for your vote on Nov 11 to rescue our nation from the neocon cabal.
I, myself, bought into the war idea, until after Colin Powell's absolutely ridiculous presentation to the UN. I gave them the chance to state their case, and they failed to state their case. Why nobody else saw through the charade, I have no idea.
They completely glazed over the much more important social/ethnic/religious problems Iraq has, and how difficult any occupation would ultimately be.
I'm a tad older than you, so I am old enough to remember hearing this very subject debated on television IN GREAT DEPTH back in 1992, when Bush41 decided not to push forward into Baghdad. The conclusion was: Saddam is a bastard, but any alternative is certainly much worse. Nobody was ignorant to the dangers of sectarian strife, or other Baathist strongmen stepping in to replace Saddam, or the possibility of regional conflicts, including Iranian influence, if we sided with the Shiites.
Bush41 even encouraged a Shiite revolt - but then Saddam took them out with helicopter gunships, which was the main reason we established the no-fly zones in the first place. It was viewed as a backstabbing betrayal by Bush41 (that he did not provide support to the Shia rebels) - and was a large part of the reason Bush41's popularity plummetted after it's peak during Gulf War 1.
Speaking as an American (and a Christian); This is not to scold - this is to plead - We are not all Crusaders. Some of us still appreciate Turkey's role in helping America fight the Soviets.
Turkey is a crucial strategic ally of the United States.
I would hope that enough Americans still remember that.
I would hope that if Turkey were ever attacked, that the US would come to Turkey's aid.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah- what I've learned after 25 years of driving, is that your punishment for driving more than 1 car-length back from the guy in front of you, is someone else slips in.
Tailgaters are just protecting themselves from cut-off-assholes. I wish the cops would bust these jerks. There'd be a whole lot less tailgating if people weren't constantly afraid someone was going to slip into the 15 feet between them and the guy in front of them.
It happens every fucking time. They speed up to slip into the gap, and once they're in front of you, they slow down. Fuck. That. Shit.
. . . yeah, and when they finally DO pass you, THEN they slow down. They didn't need to get where they're going any faster - they just want to be IN FRONT. That REALLY pisses me off, because if you pass them, then they tailgate you again, so you're almost compelled to drive 20 over for an extended period, or stop and eat lunch, just to lose the bastard.
Or, how about the asshole that's driving 10 under in the left lane, and when an extra lane opens up, SPEEDS UP!
If I ever end up in a road-rage incident, surely it will be because of one of these jackasses.
Heh, I pay cash for my tires through a swap-meet vendor. Track THIS motherfuckers!
Brass-mesh baggie - NO OPENINGS, must be GROUNDED.
capiche?
Don't you mean; Hanlon's RAZR?
(In any case, this Hanlon fellow sounds like a big, gullible sucker. Scam artists thrive on people who attribute their malice to incompetence/stupidity.)
Right you are.
Especially if the system is involved with exchange of weather data.
(which really shouldn't be classified, IMO - anyone can lick their finger and hold it up inthe air).
NASA's weather systems exchange data with all kinds of other government agencies, Dept of Fish and Game, National Weather Service, etc. They have accepted ways of exchanging data, and holding all of these to tight information protection standards is kind of impractical.
Well, there's also the issue of the people who USE the system, not being properly trained on Information Protection. Quite often they'll raise a big stink about "secret" information, that's really just "proprietary" to a contractor (FOUO). Such information is under administrative control, and when it's compromised, the contractors will scream holy hell, because that's their trade secrets. But it's often mixed in carelessly with other data that's not FOUO, and it's often hosted on systems that are not designed to be all that secure.
:)
However, there's a recent DoD NOTAM that says all these internet-facing machines are going to have to get PKI, (ie. smartcard login required) - so, the hackers' jobs are going to get a lot more difficult. In about 20 years when these systems can all be upgraded.
Presumably this protein catalyst can be manufactured on a much larger scale than solar cells.
.. as "free" as the square-footage of land on which you situate your collectors) - but solar CELLS aren't free.
Solar energy is free (well.
We'll need one of these that can split Oxygen and Carbon.
(ie - remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere, and plant the Carbon somewhere safe - like maybe in empty petroleum resevoirs, where it came from).
Okay - this article's a dupe - but really, we can't talk enough about this subject. Blackbox voting really needs to go. It doesn't take a NIST scientist to see that.
indeed.
heh.
Now that I think of it - the Romans actually DID build pyramids out of concrete, and there's one example in a graveyard in Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Cestius
You can't go too much farther back without running up against the Etruscan civilization, which was a different racial stock and a different culture.
...what does Vista do that XP doesn't?
Eliminates the incredibly annoying SPACE in the user's home-directory path:
C:\Documents and Settings\jafac -> c:\users\jafac
At long last.
For me, this is worth the price of the upgrade.
Interesting line of thought -
One of the main binding factors of ancient Egyptian civilization was the common religion. And an interesting point about the religion, is that they (the priesthood) exercised very strict controls on everything related to the religion, including artistic style (and techniques), monumental architecture, funerary rituals and rites, language, etc. It was this cultural inertia that bound the Egyptian civilization together across thousands of years, dozens of dynasties, even through foreign invasions and occupations.
The very fabric of the civilization was guided by the notion that CHANGE IS BAD. Pharoh is God. As long as we follow our religion and keep God happy, and make sure God's remains are preserved FOREVER, then Egypt will continue forever.
By that notion alone, it seems unlikely that there was a vibrant experimentation going on.
From the art historian perspective, you can compare the stylistic qualities of sculpture over thousands of years, and the features remain virtually unchanged (except for the Armana period, which really only lasted a couple of decades). During Akhenaten's reign, this changed, because he ousted the priesthood, and introduced his own religion - and during this brief period, the art style changed dramatically. Then the priesthood regained control, and used his son, Tutenkamen, as a puppet, to restore the previous order, and the old art style returned, though it was never again as static - and began taking influence from other medeterranean cultures with which the Egyptians traded (ie. Greek, Persian, etc.)
I'm not saying that they did not discover the perfect concrete formula through experimentation (and it's pretty clear that there WAS a process of improvement in their embalming process over the centuries)- but what I'm saying is that taking 500 years of Roman history, and mapping that over to 7000 years of Egyptian history is like comparing apples to oranges. Egyptian progress most likely moved VERY slowly, in comparison. But they did have a lot of time to work at it.
#1 concern:
"Won't somebody PLEASE think of my property values?!"
In Suburban US, this is what it's all about. The tax exemption for home loans, driving appreciating values, a lot of people have their nest-eggs tied up in real estate. They will kill or die to protect their equity. If that means paying association fees to ensure nobody puts up drapes more than two-shades out of beige, or nobody parks their old beater car on the street, then so be it.
I tend to think that in 100-200 years, when US population density starts to approach that of europe, and all these suburbs begin to age and lose their vinyl-siding lustre, things will start to change.
Of course, by then, global warming will have eliminated about 90% of our settled coastlines, and made 90% of our arable land into desert, so by then, we'll probably just be fighting over stacks of human skulls in the town square.
You cruel bastard, I live in Miami. They concept of "city planning" is foreign to them. All the regulators are in the pockets of the developers. The developers get to build houses without taking into account the corresponding traffic (or locality of schools, businesses, grocery stores, highway access ramps, etc.).
Welcome to America.
Stop your bitching. It's exactly the same everywhere.
Call me when that little plastic/glass doorstop with wheels can:
... and back out again.
...
... in 18" of snow.
1) Pack my sportbike to the track.
In a trailer.
2) Pack my ATV into the woods
In a trailer.
3) Pack 1/2 ton of landscaping bricks home.
In a trailer.
(as I said before - I was inconvenienced when I had to make 3 trips for 2000lbs of flagstone. Wah)
4) Pull my boat out of the lake (no boat ramp).
How big a boat? I put my boatS on my roof-rack.
5) Pack a bunch of sheets of drywall/2x4's/plywood
In my 4x8 trailer.
6) Can make it to the drugstore when my grandma forgot a perscription
Okay - got me there. But I live in California. No snow.
(and - I'll out myself; my wife drives a Toyota 4Runner - but she does not commute daily).
My point is - we're confusing WANT with NEED again. Most of these items can be dealt with with a reasonable compact car, and a trailer. If I were a contractor, and needed to do this stuff every day, I'd think it was a matter of efficient business operation to own a big truck instead of a compact with a trailer. But I'm not a contractor. I'm a programmer and weekend warrior. If I had a big boat, or camper trailer, I'd just use the wife's 4Runner to tow it. But I sure as hell wouldn't do my daily commute lugging around an extra 2000lbs of steel, pumping air and gas through an extra 4 cylinders I don't need to maintain 75mph of highway cruising.
Incidentally, while we didn't NEED a pickup truck, it did make sense for us since we're remodeling our house and landscaping during the summer. We tend to haul something at least a few times a month.
:)
My Jetta w/trailer fulfills that need. At 46 mpg (diesel) highway.
Sure - I commute 40 miles a day for work - and I'm not going to move closer. Last time I moved closer to work, the company got bought out and shut down. Not moving again. No spank you.
Plus, I lend out my trailer all the time; it's a little flatbed 4x8 - but since it's not a pickup-truck, I don't get stuck helping people move, or lose my own transportation on Sunday afternoons.
Can I haul 2000 lbs of flagstones? Okay - got me there, I had to take 3 trips.
Under my insurance, I had to wait 6 months with severe back pain before my symptoms were "bad enough" for their spreadsheet jockeys to consider approving an MRI.
I don't see how a single-payer system could be worse than what we have.
Risk is for enterpreneurs and eXtreme sportsmen.
Not ordinary folks with ordinary health problems.
A while back there was a major crisis in emergency rooms. Not enough doctors, not enough beds, and at one point people were actually dying while waiting.
Guy died last week waiting for treatment at our local trauma center for his broken neck. This problem is not unique to Canada, or the UK.
Market solutions do not serve medical treatment well. There's always going to be a demand for lifesaving procedures, no matter how high someone decides to jack up the price.
On a side note, my son ended up with cerebral palsy, possibly due to decisions made by our doctor and his team.
Apples and oranges, I know - but I have a friend whose daughter was diagnosed with CP, (about 19 years ago now) - and she got into a special program at Loyola hospital, and they paid out a bunch of money for therapy - by age 5, the baby was not perceptably "different" from any other kids, and she's now in her second year of college with a 3.5 average.
Me personally? I lucked out. My wife wasn't covered under my employer's insurance (1993) - but my wife's rich uncle gave us $5000 to cover the birth - which was mostly uncomplicated (though she had to be induced) - she and the baby only spent one night in the hospital. We were able to pay him back over 3 years - he didn't ask for the money back, but when presented with the check, he didn't turn it down.
I am healthy, I have a good job, and it provides health insurance.
In the past 5 years, over 70% of the doctors in my county have left the insurance plan. Additionaly, they have raised premiums and cut what is covered, and made some smarmy fine-print changes to the policies that make them almost useless. The problem was bad in the 1990's, and has only gotten worse. Major employers (example: GM) are laying off hundreds of thousands, because they can't afford these healthcare costs.
This will become an important issue in the US, and soon. Our broken healthcare system is crippling our economy.
Move to a moder, civilized country like Canada, where there is public health insurance.
I thank you for your candor.
And I thank you for your vote on Nov 11 to rescue our nation from the neocon cabal.
I, myself, bought into the war idea, until after Colin Powell's absolutely ridiculous presentation to the UN. I gave them the chance to state their case, and they failed to state their case. Why nobody else saw through the charade, I have no idea.
They completely glazed over the much more important social/ethnic/religious problems Iraq has, and how difficult any occupation would ultimately be.
I'm a tad older than you, so I am old enough to remember hearing this very subject debated on television IN GREAT DEPTH back in 1992, when Bush41 decided not to push forward into Baghdad. The conclusion was: Saddam is a bastard, but any alternative is certainly much worse. Nobody was ignorant to the dangers of sectarian strife, or other Baathist strongmen stepping in to replace Saddam, or the possibility of regional conflicts, including Iranian influence, if we sided with the Shiites.
Bush41 even encouraged a Shiite revolt - but then Saddam took them out with helicopter gunships, which was the main reason we established the no-fly zones in the first place. It was viewed as a backstabbing betrayal by Bush41 (that he did not provide support to the Shia rebels) - and was a large part of the reason Bush41's popularity plummetted after it's peak during Gulf War 1.
Speaking as an American (and a Christian);
This is not to scold - this is to plead -
We are not all Crusaders.
Some of us still appreciate Turkey's role in helping America fight the Soviets.
Turkey is a crucial strategic ally of the United States.
I would hope that enough Americans still remember that.
I would hope that if Turkey were ever attacked, that the US would come to Turkey's aid.