There is a lot of QA work involved in moving a large enterprise to a new linux distribution.
In such a large instance, there is probably a change control group that approves or denies such things for going into devel, testing, and then production. They're supposed to look at the benefits of change versus cost.
I've seen places where the systems people want to leave RH completely over their new policies, change control is fighting it, and it goes up to management -- which does what it does best, playing ostrich.
So do you blame the $75,000/yr (ha!) systems admins who are trying to protect and maintain their environment?
Or do you blame the $95,000/yr chimpanzees who call themselves developers who squat over the change management system like their own personal toilet, because they're too stupid and/or lazy to switch?
Or do you blame the $200,000/yr managers who look at the problem, and decide not to make a decision in the hopes that the problem magically goes away? (and when things go horribly wrong, shoot the systems administrators...)
1) The users -- they range from completely helpless with computers to grand masters, and there isn't a system yet by which helpdesk can sort them out quickly. This is compounded by people who think that just because they can install a new mouse, they're expert level and expect to be treated so.
2) Tech support personnel -- Ummm, putting this gently, tech support is a stepping stone on the career path. Support personnel either rise out of it to developers, admins, etc; sink below it to cashier at the fast food joint; or find a new job. It's a big hole in the company into which you shovel people. So, you may get a good tech support person, who eventually might be a very good developer or sysadmin; or you might get a loser whose next job will be reading "this end towards burger" in his training manual.
3) The companies. They're half the reason tech support is a big hole in the company, into which you shovel people. They see it as a giant cost center, and continously attempt to minimize it by hiring cheaply and getting rid of more expensive people. Eventually, they're at the bottom of the barrell, and in order to use their front line people, they create scripts for them to use before escalating them to 2nd tier. Which annoys the end users and annoys the tech support personnel. Then the companies decide on ticket quotas or time limits, in which the tech's job is dependant on how many tickets they close, not how well -- which annoys customers and tech support, further contributing to the problem.
I've had hororible experiences, including one company that insisted I reinstall windows 98 on their laptop, as obviously I was too clueless to install win2k and linux -- because the onboard mouse had died! (I called back after downloading their diagnostic utils and gave them the error output)
I've also had tolerable experiences, where the tech asked a basic question, and I responded with "no, I did not try $VENDOR diag utility, but I did do $X, $Y and $Z, which if the device was working, should have given me $A, $B and $C. Instead I got $SOS". One notable one, the tech shouted over the cube wall "Anyone know what ping and tcpdump are?" and a reply came back "The router's broken".
Win2k: updates broke McAfee AV 6.0 Win2k: updates and McAfee AV ate the machine Win2k: SP3 would not install on three machines via windows update. Did it manually. WinXP: SP1 sucked. SP1a was faster. WinXP: SP1 broke PC-cillian (came with the machine)
The AK-47 military assault rifle is open source... Observe the many countries that have made duplicates without paying royalties or patent rights to Auvtomat Kalishnikov.
Also, the 7.62x39 is an open standard, so anyone with the knowhow and tools can replicate or modify it.
Thus, in the spirit of things, the MP3 player should be open source and open standards.
Too bad AK didn't include an infectious license, like GNU GPL.
Initially, you could have a case where enough tagging material got into the charge to make it a squib. In a firearm, the bullet behind a squib load will usually destroy the gun, and the shooter would not want to be there.
Eventually, it could cause the various ammo manufacturers and reloaders to 'account' for the taggant, in which case a charge that has too little tagging material could exceed the mechanical limits of the firearm in question.
The Supreme Court has ruled _consistently_ in the 2nd Amendment applying to individuals, but as is usual with anti-gunners, they would rather lie.
The last case to reach the Supreme Court was US v. Miller, 1939, about a sawed-off shotgun that Miller did not pay the appropriate taxes on (National Firearms Act of 1934 empowered treasury to tax machine guns, sawed offs, and other such devices).
It was a strange case to begin with, but in the end, the Supreme Court did nothing exciting with it. They remanded the case to the district court to figure out whether or not the _firearm_ in question had any suitability as a military weapon, not whether or not _the person_ was in the national guard.
But, as is usual with the Brady Bunch liars, a court case that mentions firearms and militia quickly gets turned into "The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the Second Amendment does not extend the right to keep and bear arms to individuals".
If there is no military use for handguns, would you care to explain the Beretta M9 (military designation for the Beretta 92FS) and the Sig M11 (I believe a P228), and why they have so many of them?
--snip-- An interesting aside, I believe (IANAL - could have my sources mixed up) that the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against the interpretation of the constitution to guarantee individuals the right to bear arms, instead affirming the view that the 2nd amendment refers to state controlled militias. Those that swear by the constitution as a defense of the right to bear arms should be aware that the Supreme Court's view is that you do not have that right in the US. --snip--
Actually, you would be incorrect.
The Supreme Court has been ducking 2nd Amendment cases for a long while, but with the 9th Circuits recent decidedly tortured ruling set against the 5th Circuit's decision in favor of an individual right, they may no longer have a choice. (Part of the reason that Ashcroft wrote in support of an individual rights interpretation of the 2nd Amendment could have been to prevent the Emerson decision from reaching the Supremes)
However, the last case that the Supreme Court heard was US v. Miller, 1939, regarding taxation of a short-barrelled shotgun. It was a rather unique case, in that Miller didn't show up for unknown reasons, and thus there being no defense!
That said, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment only governed _firearms_ suitable to the mustering of a militia, that they had no blithering idea as to whether a sawed-off shotgun was so suited, and that the Circuit Court better sit down and figure it all out. In other words, they sent the case back to the Circuit Court to investigate whether or not a sawed-off shotgun was appropriate towards military use.
Gun control proponents restate their findings as the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment applied to state militias, not individuals -- which is incorrect. By a strict interpretation of US v. Miller, weapons that would be appropriate for protection under the 2nd Amendment would include M-16s, Beretta M9s, and so forth, whereas hunting rifles and bird guns would not be protected...
The valid research on gun control is rather one-sided in favor of private ownership of firearms. In that, to date, there has not been a study supporting gun control that has survived peer review. Period.
While on the progun side, there has. Two noted works are the studies by John Lott discussed in "More Guns, Less Crime" and Gary Kleck's "Targetting Guns".
Lott's research shows that allowing civilian concealed carry of handguns drops the crime rate, that waiting periods are useless, that safe-storage laws aren't, and so forth. And he has collected available demographics from every US county that has them available.
Kleck's work is held to be the best attempt at determining how often per year firearms are used defensively. Note that a firearm does not have to be fired to be used defensively. If I recall correctly, it came up with ~2.5 million times/year.
Oh, as far as reasonable gun control -- this is something I penned for another web forum on why there is no such thing -- in a nutshell, the Brady Bunch cannot be trusted. I've heard people ask why the NRA and/or gun owners are opposed to 'sensible gun control', and figured it was worth another thread to explain.
There's no such thing as 'reasonable' or 'sensible' gun control anymore.
"What about registration?" you ask. Well, registration leads to one or all of three things: political favoritism; confiscation; or making a whole bunch of people criminals by fiat.
For example, New York City has very stringent handgun registration. Unless you have the political clout to cut through it, you need a lawyer to own a handgun, and stand about zero chance of getting a carry permit.
As another example, Chicago had handgun registration, which had to be renewed yearly. I believe they stopped taking registration renewals in the mid 1980s, which basically made everyone who registered a criminal overnight.
As another example, back to NYC. They required registration of 'ugly guns' -- what we call the so-called assault weapons. Then, by a stroke of the pen, these registered guns were made illegal to possess. People who registered were notified that they had to dispose of them and provide proof. If they failed to provide proof, NYC PD came to get them.
Or, we could use California, who did the same thing... people registered their weapons, but then the AG decided they were illegal. They can't ship them out of state, or otherwise dispose of them for cash. They're left with turning them in to the police, or waiting until the police come and get them.
So, given the anti-gun track record, we definitely oppose them taking that show country-wide.
"What about instant background checks?" someone asks. The Brady Bill provided for instant background checks, and they alse required that no records be kept by the government on the transactions (see registration, above for the reasons why).
Under Bill Clinton, NICS has failed in both areas. Instant, to the antigunners, now means 'as long as we want'. Thankfully, there was a provision that they had 3 days to respond, or else the backdoor ban would be complete.
They also kept transaction logs, and passed them out to every other government agency that asked for one. When Ashcroft shut that down, the anti-gunners in Congress promptlly used his following the _law_ as proof that he was an 'NRA shill'.
Thus, it has become apparent that anti-gunners cannot be trusted with a background check system.
"But what about training requirements?" someone asks. Maryland has training requirements. A local pro-gun activist had to sue THE STATE OF MARYLAND into complying with the requirements to provide the classes. Otherwise, it would have been a backdoor ban on handgun sales. Maryland is also not doing so well in its requirements to offer training classes, but various pro gun groups are picking up the slack. (Oh, and police/military training does not exempt you; an NRA pistol class does not exempt you... a 2 hr video tape is somehow so much better tha 16+ hrs of material from a licensed instructor).
Last year, a 'compromise' bill passed the MD legislature, that would have provided for teaching gun safety in schools. The governor vetoed it because the NRA Eddie Eagle program was listed as an option, and it provided for hunter safety courses.
So, we see clearly that we cannot let anti-gun people anywhere near training requirements.
"What about $TYPE of firearms? Shouldn't they be illegal?" asks someone. No. So far, the anti gunners have gotten machine guns, suppressors (cut down on noise pollution), semi-automatic 'ugly guns', small-caliber foreign handguns; a few types of shotguns, and a host of other things. There also have been bills floated to ban: high powered rifles (hunting rifles); rifle scopes; small-caliber domestic handguns; larger caliber domestic handguns; any semiautomatic rifle and shotguns.
I think that covers just about every type of firearm.
"What about safety requirements for firearms?" Maryland, Massachusetts and California have those standards in place. In Massachusetts, I am unaware of any firearm that can pass their standards. In California, no polymer-frame firearm can.
Maryland (big shock) is a special exception, as they have a governor-appointed board that approves or denies new handguns for sale in the state. The same governor that vetoed safety education also did not appoint people to the board for 6+ years. The only reason that this did not become a backdoor ban on new handguns is that enough appointees from the previous governor's board kept showing up to make quorum.
Thus, we see that the anti-gunners will abuse safety requirements as well.
"What about safe storage laws?" a) that defeats the purpose of a firearm carried for defensive purposes. b) Given the track record of the anti-gun movement, I sure don't want them to have the power to determine what constitutes 'safe storage' in my house.
"What about closing the gun show loophole?"... What gun show loophole? Federal law requires the same policy and proceedures from a licensed dealer, whether they're at a gun show or in their store. Right now, this includes proper ID, a form 4473 to be filled out, the transaction to be recorded in an ATF-approved bound book and a background check. Dealers also have to follow the state laws in the state the gunshow is being held.
So, there is no gun show loophole. Its a big, fat lie.
"What about ballistic fingerprinting all new firearms sold?" someone asks. Two small problems, the first being that it creates a registration database. The second, much larger problem -- it won't work.
First, to keep it simple, there are three stages to the life of a firearm, as far as 'fingerprinting' goes: new; used; and worn.
A new firearm has nice, shiny, sharp rifling in the barrel, which is worn down (we gunowners call it 'broken in') within the first few hundred rounds.
A well-used (worn) barrel suffers the same effect, but to a greater degree, years into its life.
Second, barrels, firing pins and extractors (the components that give bullets and casings their 'fingerprints') are generally designed to be replaced -- either as preventative maintenance; when they are broken or too worn to be serviceable; or to increase some performance aspects of the firearm.
Third, the breechface, the barrel, the extractor and the firing pin can all have their characteristics altered, and it is pretty trivial to do so. You could change the characteristics of a barrel with a steel wool pad, whereas the other components could be changed with a common metal file.
Fourth, some of the high-end firearms manufacturs (Beretta, H&K, Sig-Sauer) make their firearms to _very_ exacting specifications, which are close enough to the margin of error in the ballistic tests.
In short, so-called ballistic fingerprints won't work, and the anti-gun talking heads _know_ it won't work, but it _will_ serve to make legal purchase and ownership more difficult.
"What about mandating integrated safety devices, or smart guns?" someone asks.
The firearms manufacturers have been working on this for a _long_ time. Colt fielded a model in the 1960s that required a magnetic ring to operate. It was rejected by every police department that tried it as being cumbersome and unreliable.
And you have to understand, the firearms manufacturers _want_ to bring successful designs to market, as marketing research has shown that it could increase their markets by 40+%, but if there are viable designs, they're still somewhere in the R&D process.
And designs that aren't viable would be _extremely dangerous_ to bring to market, as if they either fail to function or make the gun unuseable at the wrong time, someone could very well get hurt.
There's also a large discussion to be had on engineering, useability, reliability, weight and size constraints, and so forth that impact bringing such technology to market, but I think I've made my point.
As one example, there's a video of Parris Glendenning trying to operate a Saf-T-Lok device, a device that has been mandated for Maryland Park Police. It took him over 2 minutes to clear the firearm, and that was with help.
In an emergency, a police officer or a citizen who needed that fiream could have been killed, and the perpetrator would have been long gone.
As another example, trigger locks are dangerous on loaded firearms, and ironically enough, can make some firearms into fully automatic weapons! (Really, a friend has a pistol that, when a trigger lock is installed, it violated NFA 1934). To boot, they're pretty easily circumvented.
"But if it saves just one life..." someone asks.
Any society is an incredibly complex system, where you very rarely get to make a decision with such granularity as 'just one life', or one that has no negative side effects. In a more ideal world, our politicians and policymakers would be ethical enough to quantify the negative outcomes and the costs, compare them against the positive outcomes and the gains, and make an informed decision from there.`
If we were to assign an item the negative values of 20000 killed and 550000 affected each year, but on the positive side, we can list a range from 700,000-3600000 affected, it seems to be a pretty clear decision.
So, now, let's say item=firearms. There are, on average, about 16000 murders per year, and something like 3000 fatal accidents (CDC mortality reports); whereas, according to the FBI UCR, there are about 500-550000 crimes committed where the perpetrator has a firearm, so we can assume a negative range of about 570,000.
On the positive side, we can claim, on the low end, 700,000 people who defended themselves and their families with firearms, and on the high end, 3,600,000. (The best research I've seen is from Gary Kleck, which estimates about 2,500,000 defensive uses per year).
So, we are looking at a net gain of somewhere between 130,000 and 3,030,000.
If we assume standard distribution in violent crimes committed where the perp had a firearm versus defensive gun usage, we can assume that defensive gun usage prevents somewhere between ~21000 and ~90,000 murders per year, which is a pretty substansive win
So what's left, as far as 'sensible gun control'?
Don't blame the NRA for this, nor the legal gun owners. Blame the Brady Campaign, the Million Mom March, MAHA, Charles Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Parris Glendenning, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the other anti-gunners who have twisted, bent, torqued and abused every 'compromise' we made in the past.
reisferfs doesn't have backup and restore utilities, which can make like more than... interesting.
And no, tar is not an option, no matter what some Nameless Kernel Guru says. I've found that tar and cpio are awfully fragile and resource hoggish when it comes to backing up lots of data.
Ummm... from a somewhat pendantic point of view, its a denial of service attack against the machine in question.
Whether or not such 'black ICE' measures are ethical is a long drawn out question; but as to their legality -- I would say no.
We will, of course, ignore the increases in illegal firearms ownership, crime where a firearm was involved, and the violent crime rate in the UK, since they've taken almost all of them away from the honest citizens.
But hey, why let facts stand in the way of an argument.
First, before World War I, most major European powers and the United States were engaged in rampant colonialism.
Japan narrowly avoided becoming a colony, due to some swift and decent leadership under the Tokugawa Bakufu, and the timely coming of the Meiji(spelling?) Restoration, which restored the Emporer as the civic leader of Japan, rather than the ceremonail/religious. As part of the Restoration, Japan decided it really needed to modernize quickly.
They did, with a lot of help from the British, who were sympathetic to another island-based empire.
It was primarily British built battleships that the Japanese used in the 1905 war with Russia (in which, btw, they sunk the Russian Pacific Fleet, sailing into their harbor about 5 minutes after Moscow got the declaration of war.)
Japan joined the Allies during WWI, and during/afterwards was considered to be a rising Pacific power.
I _think_ it was the Treaty of Versailles that dictated how large the major powers could keep their militaries, in a ratio with the other major powers. I seem to recall that Japan got 3 capital ships to the US, Britain, and France each getting 5.
The Japanese took this as an insult, and thus ignored it.
After WWI, the rest of the world gave up on colonialism, whereas Japan was just getting started.
There were also issues with Japan, with a military coup attempting to establish themselves as the civil authority, much like the Bakufus of previous generations.
Adding to the mess is a split within the military itself, whereas the army wanted land -- specifically China; and the Navy wanted to expand through the Indies, the Philippines, and so forth.
It was moreso the Japanese naval expansion that got on the nerves of the United States, and we applied diplomatic/economic pressure on Japan, attempting to curtail their efforts -- specifically cutting off steel and oil.
Again, Japan considered that an insult, and realised that their Pacific expansionism would cause conflict with the US.
The best Japanese admiral -- arguably the best of the war, Yamamoto was _strongly_ against going to war with the US, because he didn't see how Japan could win against the US production might.
However, he was overridden, and was forced to come up with _some_ strategic plan that might work.
His take was grabbing and establishing a defensive line in the Pacific; and dealing a knockout blow to the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The US military does keep track of 'hostile' satellites, and is practised in faking them out.
It's quite simple, actually, if you want to disappear.
You alter course before such a satellite flies overhead, and after it disappears over the horizon, you change back to your original course and float away at flank speed.
Satellites also have 'windows' -- or an amount of the earth that they can cover at any given time. And it is possible, altho' difficult, to jump between gaps in satellite coverage.
Given that a carrier battle group can do at least 35 knots, that means if you lose them for an hour, you have 1225 square nautical miles which you have to scour, to look for them. The situation deteriorates rapidly from there, the longer that you can't find them.
And that's letting alone that satellite intelligence can be mislead. The Argentinians did a very nice job of mucking our pictures in the Falklands. (Yes, the US was providing intel data to the UK).
The Argentinian military would post when a US satellite would fly over an airbase; and before the flyby, a bunch of guys would run out with dirtmovers and make bomb craters. After the satellite was over the horizon, they'd bulldoze the earth off the runway, and launch airstrikes.
The Brits kept wondering where these airstrikes were coming from, since satellite intelligence _clearly showed_ that they bombed the capable airfields into nonfunctionality!
Re:Doolittle's Raid More Important Than Many Think
on
Review: Pearl Harbor
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· Score: 1
Doolittle's raid was a nice little stunt, and it took a lot of guts to pull off.
If I recall correctly, we sent two aircraft carriers deep into Japanese-held waters, in the hopes of launching an airstrike against the Japanese isles.
Our attack fleet tripped across a Japanese fishing boat, and we didn't sink it before (we thought) it got a signal off.
1944 or 1945, we could have absorbed the loss of two carriers. 1942? We had 2-3 in the Pacific!
So, the attack fleet advanced deeper into Japanese waters, until the B24s could just _barely_ bomb Tokyo and fly to China, if everything went right, and we launched the bombers.
The rest, as they say, is history.
As for Pearl Harbor and technically inept admirals ignoring the radar:
1) radar was still very new. You didn't get much better than 'something is coming from thataway'.
2) we were expecting a wing of B17 bombers just about when the attack occured. They landed about and hour after the attacks.
1) Poking at systems that you don't own; don't have responsibility for; and aren't doing software work on can cause very serious problems for you and your company.
At worst, it can lead to a criminal investigation; and somewhere in the middle is damage to the reputation of your company.
2) It makes your company look like a sore loser, if you complain about the other companies implementations.
If you lose a contract, maybe you should follow up with an offer to do independant verification and validation, a security audit, or maintenance -- which would allow you to scan the systems for exploits.
3) That said, you may be better off sending anonymous email to them, and notifying them of the problems, or otherwise forgetting about it.
What's scary about this? Odd-numbered series are for new development, experiments, and Kernels
Guaranteed To Mess With Newbie Heads(tm).
What's scary about it is that they're diverting resources to a new, experimental kernel, right on the heels of inflicting a new, experimental kernel on the world (linux 2.4.x).
They should be concentrating on getting the current kernel to work before even thinking about what 'kewl things' they can do this time.
I used to work, maintaining a multi-terabyte diskfarm (on the order of 8 TB) using 4-8 GB scsi drives. What can I say, it was state of the art when we built the thing.
4 years later, we were getting disk failures, on average, 2-3 times a week.
So, you've been lucky, and if I were you, I wouldn't tempt fate.
I've used iptables a bit. It's even running a firewall or two here with it.
However, I have heard very good things about BSD ipfilter, of which I think iptables is a derivative work.
Plus, ipfilter has been out longer in production.
I would be curious to see a./ shoot-out between the two.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a lot of QA work involved in moving a large enterprise to a new linux distribution.
...)
In such a large instance, there is probably a change control group that approves or denies such things for going into devel, testing, and then production. They're supposed to look at the benefits of change versus cost.
I've seen places where the systems people want to leave RH completely over their new policies, change control is fighting it, and it goes up to management -- which does what it does best, playing ostrich.
So do you blame the $75,000/yr (ha!) systems admins who are trying to protect and maintain their environment?
Or do you blame the $95,000/yr chimpanzees who call themselves developers who squat over the change management system like their own personal toilet, because they're too stupid and/or lazy to switch?
Or do you blame the $200,000/yr managers who look at the problem, and decide not to make a decision in the hopes that the problem magically goes away? (and when things go horribly wrong, shoot the systems administrators
Only about 1000 times as much.
...)
Consider that you can get a 4U 24 drive array, and if you stock it full of 300GB drives, for 7.2 TB.
Now, fill up the rack. 72 TB.
Now fill up _ten_ of those racks. 720TB.
(Actually, you'd need about 14 racks, but
That would be 22 feet by 7 feet of storage -- not raided, just JBOD.
To be fair, there are multiple problems here:
1) The users -- they range from completely helpless with computers to grand masters, and there isn't a system yet by which helpdesk can sort them out quickly. This is compounded by people who think that just because they can install a new mouse, they're expert level and expect to be treated so.
2) Tech support personnel -- Ummm, putting this gently, tech support is a stepping stone on the career path. Support personnel either rise out of it to developers, admins, etc; sink below it to cashier at the fast food joint; or find a new job. It's a big hole in the company into which you shovel people. So, you may get a good tech support person, who eventually might be a very good developer or sysadmin; or you might get a loser whose next job will be reading "this end towards burger" in his training manual.
3) The companies. They're half the reason tech support is a big hole in the company, into which you shovel people. They see it as a giant cost center, and continously attempt to minimize it by hiring cheaply and getting rid of more expensive people. Eventually, they're at the bottom of the barrell, and in order to use their front line people, they create scripts for them to use before escalating them to 2nd tier. Which annoys the end users and annoys the tech support personnel. Then the companies decide on ticket quotas or time limits, in which the tech's job is dependant on how many tickets they close, not how well -- which annoys customers and tech support, further contributing to the problem.
I've had hororible experiences, including one company that insisted I reinstall windows 98 on their laptop, as obviously I was too clueless to install win2k and linux -- because the onboard mouse had died! (I called back after downloading their diagnostic utils and gave them the error output)
I've also had tolerable experiences, where the tech asked a basic question, and I responded with "no, I did not try $VENDOR diag utility, but I did do $X, $Y and $Z, which if the device was working, should have given me $A, $B and $C. Instead I got $SOS". One notable one, the tech shouted over the cube wall "Anyone know what ping and tcpdump are?" and a reply came back "The router's broken".
Win2k: updates broke McAfee AV 6.0
Win2k: updates and McAfee AV ate the machine
Win2k: SP3 would not install on three machines via windows update. Did it manually.
WinXP: SP1 sucked. SP1a was faster.
WinXP: SP1 broke PC-cillian (came with the machine)
these are just from the logs I had.
Also, the 7.62x39 is an open standard, so anyone with the knowhow and tools can replicate or modify it.
Thus, in the spirit of things, the MP3 player should be open source and open standards.
Too bad AK didn't include an infectious license, like GNU GPL.
Inconsistent results upon igniting, for one.
Initially, you could have a case where enough tagging material got into the charge to make it a squib. In a firearm, the bullet behind a squib load will usually destroy the gun, and the shooter would not want to be there.
Eventually, it could cause the various ammo manufacturers and reloaders to 'account' for the taggant, in which case a charge that has too little tagging material could exceed the mechanical limits of the firearm in question.
The Supreme Court has ruled _consistently_ in the 2nd Amendment applying to individuals, but as is usual with anti-gunners, they would rather lie.
The last case to reach the Supreme Court was US v. Miller, 1939, about a sawed-off shotgun that Miller did not pay the appropriate taxes on (National Firearms Act of 1934 empowered treasury to tax machine guns, sawed offs, and other such devices).
It was a strange case to begin with, but in the end, the Supreme Court did nothing exciting with it. They remanded the case to the district court to figure out whether or not the _firearm_ in question had any suitability as a military weapon, not whether or not _the person_ was in the national guard.
But, as is usual with the Brady Bunch liars, a court case that mentions firearms and militia quickly gets turned into "The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the Second Amendment does not extend the right to keep and bear arms to individuals".
If there is no military use for handguns, would you care to explain the Beretta M9 (military designation for the Beretta 92FS) and the Sig M11 (I believe a P228), and why they have so many of them?
--snip--
...
An interesting aside, I believe (IANAL - could have my sources mixed up) that the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against the interpretation of the constitution to guarantee individuals the right to bear arms, instead affirming the view that the 2nd amendment refers to state controlled militias. Those that swear by the constitution as a defense of the right to bear arms should be aware that the Supreme Court's view is that you do not have that right in the US.
--snip--
Actually, you would be incorrect.
The Supreme Court has been ducking 2nd Amendment cases for a long while, but with the 9th Circuits recent decidedly tortured ruling set against the 5th Circuit's decision in favor of an individual right, they may no longer have a choice. (Part of the reason that Ashcroft wrote in support of an individual rights interpretation of the 2nd Amendment could have been to prevent the Emerson decision from reaching the Supremes)
However, the last case that the Supreme Court heard was US v. Miller, 1939, regarding taxation of a short-barrelled shotgun. It was a rather unique case, in that Miller didn't show up for unknown reasons, and thus there being no defense!
That said, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment only governed _firearms_ suitable to the mustering of a militia, that they had no blithering idea as to whether a sawed-off shotgun was so suited, and that the Circuit Court better sit down and figure it all out. In other words, they sent the case back to the Circuit Court to investigate whether or not a sawed-off shotgun was appropriate towards military use.
Gun control proponents restate their findings as the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment applied to state militias, not individuals -- which is incorrect. By a strict interpretation of US v. Miller, weapons that would be appropriate for protection under the 2nd Amendment would include M-16s, Beretta M9s, and so forth, whereas hunting rifles and bird guns would not be protected
So, where do I sign up for my M-16?
The valid research on gun control is rather one-sided in favor of private ownership of firearms. In that, to date, there has not been a study supporting gun control that has survived peer review. Period.
... people registered their weapons, but then the AG decided they were illegal. They can't ship them out of state, or otherwise dispose of them for cash. They're left with turning them in to the police, or waiting until the police come and get them.
... a 2 hr video tape is somehow so much better tha 16+ hrs of material from a licensed instructor).
... What gun show loophole? Federal law requires the same policy and proceedures from a licensed dealer, whether they're at a gun show or in their store. Right now, this includes proper ID, a form 4473 to be filled out, the transaction to be recorded in an ATF-approved bound book and a background check. Dealers also have to follow the state laws in the state the gunshow is being held.
..." someone asks.
While on the progun side, there has. Two noted works are the studies by John Lott discussed in "More Guns, Less Crime" and Gary Kleck's "Targetting Guns".
Lott's research shows that allowing civilian concealed carry of handguns drops the crime rate, that waiting periods are useless, that safe-storage laws aren't, and so forth. And he has collected available demographics from every US county that has them available.
Kleck's work is held to be the best attempt at determining how often per year firearms are used defensively. Note that a firearm does not have to be fired to be used defensively. If I recall correctly, it came up with ~2.5 million times/year.
Oh, as far as reasonable gun control -- this is something I penned for another web forum on why there is no such thing -- in a nutshell, the Brady Bunch cannot be trusted.
I've heard people ask why the NRA and/or gun owners are opposed to 'sensible gun control', and figured it was worth another thread to explain.
There's no such thing as 'reasonable' or 'sensible' gun control anymore.
"What about registration?" you ask. Well, registration leads to one or all of three things: political favoritism; confiscation; or making a whole bunch of people criminals by fiat.
For example, New York City has very stringent handgun registration. Unless you have the political clout to cut through it, you need a lawyer to own a handgun, and stand about zero chance of getting a carry permit.
As another example, Chicago had handgun registration, which had to be renewed yearly. I believe they stopped taking registration renewals in the mid 1980s, which basically made everyone who registered a criminal overnight.
As another example, back to NYC. They required registration of 'ugly guns' -- what we call the so-called assault weapons. Then, by a stroke of the pen, these registered guns were made illegal to possess. People who registered were notified that they had to dispose of them and provide proof. If they failed to provide proof, NYC PD came to get them.
Or, we could use California, who did the same thing
So, given the anti-gun track record, we definitely oppose them taking that show country-wide.
"What about instant background checks?" someone asks. The Brady Bill provided for instant background checks, and they alse required that no records be kept by the government on the transactions (see registration, above for the reasons why).
Under Bill Clinton, NICS has failed in both areas. Instant, to the antigunners, now means 'as long as we want'. Thankfully, there was a provision that they had 3 days to respond, or else the backdoor ban would be complete.
They also kept transaction logs, and passed them out to every other government agency that asked for one. When Ashcroft shut that down, the anti-gunners in Congress promptlly used his following the _law_ as proof that he was an 'NRA shill'.
Thus, it has become apparent that anti-gunners cannot be trusted with a background check system.
"But what about training requirements?" someone asks. Maryland has training requirements. A local pro-gun activist had to sue THE STATE OF MARYLAND into complying with the requirements to provide the classes. Otherwise, it would have been a backdoor ban on handgun sales. Maryland is also not doing so well in its requirements to offer training classes, but various pro gun groups are picking up the slack. (Oh, and police/military training does not exempt you; an NRA pistol class does not exempt you
Last year, a 'compromise' bill passed the MD legislature, that would have provided for teaching gun safety in schools. The governor vetoed it because the NRA Eddie Eagle program was listed as an option, and it provided for hunter safety courses.
So, we see clearly that we cannot let anti-gun people anywhere near training requirements.
"What about $TYPE of firearms? Shouldn't they be illegal?" asks someone. No. So far, the anti gunners have gotten machine guns, suppressors (cut down on noise pollution), semi-automatic 'ugly guns', small-caliber foreign handguns; a few types of shotguns, and a host of other things. There also have been bills floated to ban: high powered rifles (hunting rifles); rifle scopes; small-caliber domestic handguns; larger caliber domestic handguns; any semiautomatic rifle and shotguns.
I think that covers just about every type of firearm.
"What about safety requirements for firearms?" Maryland, Massachusetts and California have those standards in place. In Massachusetts, I am unaware of any firearm that can pass their standards. In California, no polymer-frame firearm can.
Maryland (big shock) is a special exception, as they have a governor-appointed board that approves or denies new handguns for sale in the state. The same governor that vetoed safety education also did not appoint people to the board for 6+ years. The only reason that this did not become a backdoor ban on new handguns is that enough appointees from the previous governor's board kept showing up to make quorum.
Thus, we see that the anti-gunners will abuse safety requirements as well.
"What about safe storage laws?" a) that defeats the purpose of a firearm carried for defensive purposes. b) Given the track record of the anti-gun movement, I sure don't want them to have the power to determine what constitutes 'safe storage' in my house.
"What about closing the gun show loophole?"
So, there is no gun show loophole. Its a big, fat lie.
"What about ballistic fingerprinting all new firearms sold?" someone asks. Two small problems, the first being that it creates a registration database. The second, much larger problem -- it won't work.
First, to keep it simple, there are three stages to the life of a firearm, as far as 'fingerprinting' goes: new; used; and worn.
A new firearm has nice, shiny, sharp rifling in the barrel, which is worn down (we gunowners call it 'broken in') within the first few hundred rounds.
A well-used (worn) barrel suffers the same effect, but to a greater degree, years into its life.
Second, barrels, firing pins and extractors (the components that give bullets and casings their 'fingerprints') are generally designed to be replaced -- either as preventative maintenance; when they are broken or too worn to be serviceable; or to increase some performance aspects of the firearm.
Third, the breechface, the barrel, the extractor and the firing pin can all have their characteristics altered, and it is pretty trivial to do so. You could change the characteristics of a barrel with a steel wool pad, whereas the other components could be changed with a common metal file.
Fourth, some of the high-end firearms manufacturs (Beretta, H&K, Sig-Sauer) make their firearms to _very_ exacting specifications, which are close enough to the margin of error in the ballistic tests.
In short, so-called ballistic fingerprints won't work, and the anti-gun talking heads _know_ it won't work, but it _will_ serve to make legal purchase and ownership more difficult.
"What about mandating integrated safety devices, or smart guns?" someone asks.
The firearms manufacturers have been working on this for a _long_ time. Colt fielded a model in the 1960s that required a magnetic ring to operate. It was rejected by every police department that tried it as being cumbersome and unreliable.
And you have to understand, the firearms manufacturers _want_ to bring successful designs to market, as marketing research has shown that it could increase their markets by 40+%, but if there are viable designs, they're still somewhere in the R&D process.
And designs that aren't viable would be _extremely dangerous_ to bring to market, as if they either fail to function or make the gun unuseable at the wrong time, someone could very well get hurt.
There's also a large discussion to be had on engineering, useability, reliability, weight and size constraints, and so forth that impact bringing such technology to market, but I think I've made my point.
As one example, there's a video of Parris Glendenning trying to operate a Saf-T-Lok device, a device that has been mandated for Maryland Park Police. It took him over 2 minutes to clear the firearm, and that was with help.
In an emergency, a police officer or a citizen who needed that fiream could have been killed, and the perpetrator would have been long gone.
As another example, trigger locks are dangerous on loaded firearms, and ironically enough, can make some firearms into fully automatic weapons! (Really, a friend has a pistol that, when a trigger lock is installed, it violated NFA 1934). To boot, they're pretty easily circumvented.
"But if it saves just one life
Any society is an incredibly complex system, where you very rarely get to make a decision with such granularity as 'just one life', or one that has no negative side effects. In a more ideal world, our politicians and policymakers would be ethical enough to quantify the negative outcomes and the costs, compare them against the positive outcomes and the gains, and make an informed decision from there.`
If we were to assign an item the negative values of 20000 killed and 550000 affected each year, but on the positive side, we can list a range from 700,000-3600000 affected, it seems to be a pretty clear decision.
So, now, let's say item=firearms. There are, on average, about 16000 murders per year, and something like 3000 fatal accidents (CDC mortality reports); whereas, according to the FBI UCR, there are about 500-550000 crimes committed where the perpetrator has a firearm, so we can assume a negative range of about 570,000.
On the positive side, we can claim, on the low end, 700,000 people who defended themselves and their families with firearms, and on the high end, 3,600,000. (The best research I've seen is from Gary Kleck, which estimates about 2,500,000 defensive uses per year).
So, we are looking at a net gain of somewhere between 130,000 and 3,030,000.
If we assume standard distribution in violent crimes committed where the perp had a firearm versus defensive gun usage, we can assume that defensive gun usage prevents somewhere between ~21000 and ~90,000 murders per year, which is a pretty substansive win
So what's left, as far as 'sensible gun control'?
Don't blame the NRA for this, nor the legal gun owners. Blame the Brady Campaign, the Million Mom March, MAHA, Charles Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Parris Glendenning, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the other anti-gunners who have twisted, bent, torqued and abused every 'compromise' we made in the past.
So, why should we 'compromise' any more?
loop.c is easy to fix in 2.4.14. Just remove the two lines that say 'deactivate_page'
And no, tar is not an option, no matter what some Nameless Kernel Guru says. I've found that tar and cpio are awfully fragile and resource hoggish when it comes to backing up lots of data.
Ummm... from a somewhat pendantic point of view, its a denial of service attack against the machine in question. Whether or not such 'black ICE' measures are ethical is a long drawn out question; but as to their legality -- I would say no.
But hey, why let facts stand in the way of an argument.
Well, at least Sci Fi will be in a _great_ bargaining position to sell adspace to girlsgonewild.com.
Japan narrowly avoided becoming a colony, due to some swift and decent leadership under the Tokugawa Bakufu, and the timely coming of the Meiji(spelling?) Restoration, which restored the Emporer as the civic leader of Japan, rather than the ceremonail/religious. As part of the Restoration, Japan decided it really needed to modernize quickly.
They did, with a lot of help from the British, who were sympathetic to another island-based empire.
It was primarily British built battleships that the Japanese used in the 1905 war with Russia (in which, btw, they sunk the Russian Pacific Fleet, sailing into their harbor about 5 minutes after Moscow got the declaration of war.)
Japan joined the Allies during WWI, and during/afterwards was considered to be a rising Pacific power.
I _think_ it was the Treaty of Versailles that dictated how large the major powers could keep their militaries, in a ratio with the other major powers. I seem to recall that Japan got 3 capital ships to the US, Britain, and France each getting 5.
The Japanese took this as an insult, and thus ignored it.
After WWI, the rest of the world gave up on colonialism, whereas Japan was just getting started.
There were also issues with Japan, with a military coup attempting to establish themselves as the civil authority, much like the Bakufus of previous generations.
Adding to the mess is a split within the military itself, whereas the army wanted land -- specifically China; and the Navy wanted to expand through the Indies, the Philippines, and so forth.
It was moreso the Japanese naval expansion that got on the nerves of the United States, and we applied diplomatic/economic pressure on Japan, attempting to curtail their efforts -- specifically cutting off steel and oil.
Again, Japan considered that an insult, and realised that their Pacific expansionism would cause conflict with the US.
The best Japanese admiral -- arguably the best of the war, Yamamoto was _strongly_ against going to war with the US, because he didn't see how Japan could win against the US production might.
However, he was overridden, and was forced to come up with _some_ strategic plan that might work.
His take was grabbing and establishing a defensive line in the Pacific; and dealing a knockout blow to the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
And that brings us to the movie ...
5 paragraph summary concluded.
It's quite simple, actually, if you want to disappear.
You alter course before such a satellite flies overhead, and after it disappears over the horizon, you change back to your original course and float away at flank speed.
Satellites also have 'windows' -- or an amount of the earth that they can cover at any given time. And it is possible, altho' difficult, to jump between gaps in satellite coverage.
Given that a carrier battle group can do at least 35 knots, that means if you lose them for an hour, you have 1225 square nautical miles which you have to scour, to look for them. The situation deteriorates rapidly from there, the longer that you can't find them.
And that's letting alone that satellite intelligence can be mislead. The Argentinians did a very nice job of mucking our pictures in the Falklands. (Yes, the US was providing intel data to the UK).
The Argentinian military would post when a US satellite would fly over an airbase; and before the flyby, a bunch of guys would run out with dirtmovers and make bomb craters. After the satellite was over the horizon, they'd bulldoze the earth off the runway, and launch airstrikes.
The Brits kept wondering where these airstrikes were coming from, since satellite intelligence _clearly showed_ that they bombed the capable airfields into nonfunctionality!
If I recall correctly, we sent two aircraft carriers deep into Japanese-held waters, in the hopes of launching an airstrike against the Japanese isles.
Our attack fleet tripped across a Japanese fishing boat, and we didn't sink it before (we thought) it got a signal off.
1944 or 1945, we could have absorbed the loss of two carriers. 1942? We had 2-3 in the Pacific!
So, the attack fleet advanced deeper into Japanese waters, until the B24s could just _barely_ bomb Tokyo and fly to China, if everything went right, and we launched the bombers.
The rest, as they say, is history.
As for Pearl Harbor and technically inept admirals ignoring the radar:
1) radar was still very new. You didn't get much better than 'something is coming from thataway'. 2) we were expecting a wing of B17 bombers just about when the attack occured. They landed about and hour after the attacks.
At worst, it can lead to a criminal investigation; and somewhere in the middle is damage to the reputation of your company.
2) It makes your company look like a sore loser, if you complain about the other companies implementations.
If you lose a contract, maybe you should follow up with an offer to do independant verification and validation, a security audit, or maintenance -- which would allow you to scan the systems for exploits.
3) That said, you may be better off sending anonymous email to them, and notifying them of the problems, or otherwise forgetting about it.
Hello Wor^
Segmentation fault (core dump^
Segmentation fault (core du^
Segmentation faul^
Segment^
oh, fuck it ...
KERNEL PANIC
What's scary about it is that they're diverting resources to a new, experimental kernel, right on the heels of inflicting a new, experimental kernel on the world (linux 2.4.x).
They should be concentrating on getting the current kernel to work before even thinking about what 'kewl things' they can do this time.
IMNSHO, 2.4.0 should not have been a -release version.
linux 2.4.0 and 2.4.1 barely worked on some alphas (UP2000), and didn't work at all on some others (UP1100).
2.4.2 kinda worked.
2.4.0 had a lot of complaints about various IDE chipsets, et al, which has improved as the kernel's grown older.
The adaptec drivers were getting stale, and have been updated, if I recall.
The Qlogic fibre channel drivers didn't work at all, and usually took the machine with them.
Heck, they even broke loopback in 2.4.2!
Now, if they would just get memory management into some semblance of order, I might not pull my hair out as much over going to 2.4.x.
What's scary is that they're already talking about kicking off 2.5!
Most of the changes going into the test kernels seem to be focused on x86.
...
I've seen only a few for alpha, which I support at work; and even less for ppc and sparc.
It's very depressing, because 2.4.x is, at the moment, completely unuseable on one of our alpha workstations.
I can't say that its a lack of resources, especially from the questions raised in this article, so I don't know
I used to work, maintaining a multi-terabyte diskfarm (on the order of 8 TB) using 4-8 GB scsi drives. What can I say, it was state of the art when we built the thing.
4 years later, we were getting disk failures, on average, 2-3 times a week.
So, you've been lucky, and if I were you, I wouldn't tempt fate.
I've used iptables a bit. It's even running a firewall or two here with it. However, I have heard very good things about BSD ipfilter, of which I think iptables is a derivative work. Plus, ipfilter has been out longer in production. I would be curious to see a ./ shoot-out between the two.