No grudge. All I'm saying is that if I can think of this stuff, surely they can too. These Al-Qaeda guys aren't stupid (well maybe some of them are). Since I fired off my first post, I've thought about it and none of the end game, as I see it, is good. In my estimation, it boils down to three options:
A) Do what A Beautiful Mind says, "Or we finally get the media to drop the "zomg terrorism" stuff and let terrorism become another statistic like automobile accidents." So basically just put up with it.
B) Engage with these people and find out what they want, negotiate or (very likely in this case) capitulate.
C) Find them and kill them all no matter what the cost, no matter how much is destroyed, no matter how many are killed.
None of these are very enticing options, but traditionally the Western World has gotten its way with option C. Problem is, the Western World doesn't seem to have the stomach anymore for C, so we're probably going to have to settle for A or B.
The permutations of terror of this kind are endless because there are so many points of failure in airport security. These are just off the top of my head:
- A big fat bomb in your checked luggage. Set to go off say 15 minutes after they check it (bad guy flicks a little switch or something). Would totally bring an airport to a halt.
- Since you are committed to die for Allah anyway, why not stride into the lobby of an airport with an AK and as much ammo as you can carry and just start shooting until they get you?
- Car bomb in front of terminal. It's not hard to make a stupid pile of ANFO and cram it into the back of a stolen taxi.
- Rent a small plane at a regional airport, fly it to a big airport and crash the bugger into a terminal.
- Drive a truck chock full of explosives on to one of the runways and blow it up. Now you can't land planes on that. Hell, you might even be able to escape from that one with your life.
I'm not even a terrorist and I can dream up shit like this in a few minutes. Imagine what the actual terrorists are hatching.
They're setting their sights too high. Stopping all air flight in the Western world is easy. You don't even need to get on the plane. Walk into an airport with a few pounds of explosives strapped on under your coat. Think of how many people tend to get queued up at those checkpoints.
When they stop you at the security checkpoint, go boom. It'll only have to happen a few times before air flight is completely stopped indefinitely.
Back when I used to code a lot my preferred way of working was in complete silence. I did a lot of my stuff at home and I would get up in the middle of the night to do work because the city I lived in was mostly quiet at 3am. I find the jarring blasts of sirens, cars accelerating and people talking incredibly annoying. Going deep into a thick wood would be an excellent place to code, if it weren't for the lack of power.
But certain noises don't bug me. I can work happily all day listening to the regular drone of a computer's fan or the splashing of the ocean. Its human noises that bug me, I think.
What do they do if they lose radio contact with the drone? I've often wondered this. It's probably not much of a risk with the Taliban, but one would think a much more technologically advanced enemy would develop some kind of radio jammers that work on these things.
It's also difficult to describe to another person on the phone. That can matter because some of us poor suckers have to provide telephone tech support to people and stuff.
At least with a classic text menu you can say, "See the menu bar? Now click on File, then Print, etc.." Its a whole lot easier with words up there.
Here's what I do for ants, works better than any of those nerve agent poisons. Plain old diatomaceous earth (diatomite, silica powder, kisselgur, etc...) Some farmers use it to protect grain and stuff, but it works on ants and other crawly pests too. You put it in places where ants like to run around, like say, the base of a door, along a foundation or on top of an anthill. It kills some of them, injures others but they seem to hate it so much eventually the colony gives up and moves away from your house.
Part of the problem is they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a 'real' economy without all of the baggage of a real economy. In a criminal fantasy world like EVE you would think one of the most important aspects of dealing with people is the fear of getting whacked because you pissed someone off. But that's not really a problem in EVE (or any MMO). The worst that can really happen is you get podded. Oh well. You pull out a clone, buy some new implants, get a new starship and you're back in business. No one is truly in fear for their life and as a result, no one acts that way.
When I first looked at the headline I thought it said "Archon". Then I wanted to go back in time so I could play it in my mom's basement again. Ah, those were the days.
For the most part, we have a prohibitive system of law. This means that if society says something is illegal, then it is, but everything else is fair game. The problem with the "you damn well should do it" argument is it assumes the law is perfectly crafted and has thought of everything, so you don't have to, a clear lack of responsibility.
I'll use a fanciful example to try to further my point. I've been trying to build an inter-dimensional cravenlator in my backyard for some time and it is nearing completion. The law in Canada, where I live, only covers nuclear devices but not inter-dimensional ones, so I've been proceeding without any government oversight at all, save for the 'power generation permit' I paid $150 for over at the county offices. I'm pretty certain I've got everything worked out properly and there is a 49% chance that I'll solve the world's energy problems with a flick of a switch, a 49% chance that it won't work at all... and maybe a 2 percent chance it will create an unstable inter-dimensional inversion but I don't know what that does exactly. Maybe swallow the Earth, but the math is inconclusive.
Do I turn on that switch? I've met all the legal requirements and I'm not in violation of any law. Why shouldn't I light that sucker up? It's my chance to take my place in history! Or, do I have a responsibility to the people around me to reconsider, at least until the inversion problem is better understood?
Now in the real world, I'm a computer technician, not a mad scientist, but even in my simple job I've probably seen enough information over the years to complicate or even ruin the lives of dozens of people. They aren't doing anything illegal, nor would I wouldn't be doing anything illegal by blogging about it. Do I blog about it? No. As I said before, just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should.
Yeah, but just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should.
People go on and on about the rights their society gives them without bothering to mention the responsibilities. It's not that far a stretch to say that you have a responsibility to not wander around the President with a loaded gun or put the lives of the families of peace officers in danger. Even if you knew for certain a cop was crooked, posting pictures of his house strikes me not only as obsessive, but also retributive without any court oversight, which is not what is supposed to happen in a society with the rule of law.
"Congress established a scheme to allow copyright holders to elect to receive statutory damages for copyright infringement instead of actual damages and profits because of the difficulty of calculating and proving actual damages."
You have to wonder about a statement like that. It's basically an admission that they have no way of knowing how much 'theft' has occurred, if any, so they arbitrarily assign a value based on, what, a guess? Even if this dude somehow managed to serve up 5000 complete songs to others, the real 'damages' are an order of magnitude lower than this 1.92M judgment.
Like people in other Western nations, 95% of Canadians have no idea how to live in the wild, or even without a grocery store close by. Which is one of the reasons why that wilderness is mostly empty.
I've always been turned off by MMOs because of all the grindage they seem to make you do alone. After the one thousandth time, running around in the sticks looking for beasties to kill gets very old. I always thought grouping was the whole point of these games, but pretty well everyone I know who plays them spends most of their time doing solo stuff because they are looking to level.
I've always wondered if a game that had no leveling system might be more interesting and encourage more team play.
Maybe not on eBay, but the ISS is already up there, I'm pretty sure it was designed to last longer than 16 years, why not sell it to at least cover some of the costs? I personally don't think it would be a good investment, but people pay lots of money for the weirdest stuff.
I know! The Chinese. They've got money. If we sold it to them cheap, they would be ever so grateful. They might even keep letting us use it from time to time.
They seem to be offering the classic mechs rather than trying to re-invent things which is a good thing. Pilot in the video needs his head read tho. Been a while since I played, but last time I checked it was suicide to go toe to toe with an Atlas driving a Warhammer. Isn't that like a 30 ton mass difference? If my lance couldn't help me, I'd be running away.
You're probably right about the nostalgia thing, especially since this Epson thing is really just a clone box.
Having said that though, over the last few years I've pieced together a working Commodore 64 system with all the fixings (I even have a tape drive, lol). It was the first computer system I ever owned. Nostalgia, definitely, but I gotta say, after all these years, some of those games are still fun as hell. Remember stuff like Jumpman? Or Raid on Bungling Bay? Great stuff.
When I'm playing around with the thing in the shop, my 8 year old kid is completely entranced by those primitive games. Even more interesting, he was fascinated by me using Buttermon to enter in machine code instructions to make a little program to put a bunch of dots on the screen. Maybe these old machines with their simple operating environments could find new life teaching kids stuff about the insides of the computers they take for granted these days.
"The pair offers an alternative design fueled by mice."
That's so cool and so wrong at the same time. Because if you can feed it mice, then why not cats and dogs, or maybe a couple of humans...? The last thing I want is people to figure out that other people are useful as fuel. Too many humans on the Earth, looming energy crisis... could be more brutal than a George Romero movie.
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No grudge. All I'm saying is that if I can think of this stuff, surely they can too. These Al-Qaeda guys aren't stupid (well maybe some of them are). Since I fired off my first post, I've thought about it and none of the end game, as I see it, is good. In my estimation, it boils down to three options:
A) Do what A Beautiful Mind says, "Or we finally get the media to drop the "zomg terrorism" stuff and let terrorism become another statistic like automobile accidents." So basically just put up with it.
B) Engage with these people and find out what they want, negotiate or (very likely in this case) capitulate.
C) Find them and kill them all no matter what the cost, no matter how much is destroyed, no matter how many are killed.
None of these are very enticing options, but traditionally the Western World has gotten its way with option C. Problem is, the Western World doesn't seem to have the stomach anymore for C, so we're probably going to have to settle for A or B.
The permutations of terror of this kind are endless because there are so many points of failure in airport security. These are just off the top of my head:
- A big fat bomb in your checked luggage. Set to go off say 15 minutes after they check it (bad guy flicks a little switch or something). Would totally bring an airport to a halt.
- Since you are committed to die for Allah anyway, why not stride into the lobby of an airport with an AK and as much ammo as you can carry and just start shooting until they get you?
- Car bomb in front of terminal. It's not hard to make a stupid pile of ANFO and cram it into the back of a stolen taxi.
- Rent a small plane at a regional airport, fly it to a big airport and crash the bugger into a terminal.
- Drive a truck chock full of explosives on to one of the runways and blow it up. Now you can't land planes on that. Hell, you might even be able to escape from that one with your life.
I'm not even a terrorist and I can dream up shit like this in a few minutes. Imagine what the actual terrorists are hatching.
The terrorists aren't even trying that hard.
They're setting their sights too high. Stopping all air flight in the Western world is easy. You don't even need to get on the plane. Walk into an airport with a few pounds of explosives strapped on under your coat. Think of how many people tend to get queued up at those checkpoints.
When they stop you at the security checkpoint, go boom. It'll only have to happen a few times before air flight is completely stopped indefinitely.
I'll second you on both points.
Back when I used to code a lot my preferred way of working was in complete silence. I did a lot of my stuff at home and I would get up in the middle of the night to do work because the city I lived in was mostly quiet at 3am. I find the jarring blasts of sirens, cars accelerating and people talking incredibly annoying. Going deep into a thick wood would be an excellent place to code, if it weren't for the lack of power.
But certain noises don't bug me. I can work happily all day listening to the regular drone of a computer's fan or the splashing of the ocean. Its human noises that bug me, I think.
You forgot:
3. People mostly suck.
It seems to be the leading source of the world's problems.
What do they do if they lose radio contact with the drone? I've often wondered this. It's probably not much of a risk with the Taliban, but one would think a much more technologically advanced enemy would develop some kind of radio jammers that work on these things.
It's also difficult to describe to another person on the phone. That can matter because some of us poor suckers have to provide telephone tech support to people and stuff.
At least with a classic text menu you can say, "See the menu bar? Now click on File, then Print, etc.." Its a whole lot easier with words up there.
Here's what I do for ants, works better than any of those nerve agent poisons. Plain old diatomaceous earth (diatomite, silica powder, kisselgur, etc...) Some farmers use it to protect grain and stuff, but it works on ants and other crawly pests too. You put it in places where ants like to run around, like say, the base of a door, along a foundation or on top of an anthill. It kills some of them, injures others but they seem to hate it so much eventually the colony gives up and moves away from your house.
Bittorrent can do it! We just need enough seeders.
Part of the problem is they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a 'real' economy without all of the baggage of a real economy. In a criminal fantasy world like EVE you would think one of the most important aspects of dealing with people is the fear of getting whacked because you pissed someone off. But that's not really a problem in EVE (or any MMO). The worst that can really happen is you get podded. Oh well. You pull out a clone, buy some new implants, get a new starship and you're back in business. No one is truly in fear for their life and as a result, no one acts that way.
When I first looked at the headline I thought it said "Archon". Then I wanted to go back in time so I could play it in my mom's basement again. Ah, those were the days.
For the most part, we have a prohibitive system of law. This means that if society says something is illegal, then it is, but everything else is fair game. The problem with the "you damn well should do it" argument is it assumes the law is perfectly crafted and has thought of everything, so you don't have to, a clear lack of responsibility.
I'll use a fanciful example to try to further my point. I've been trying to build an inter-dimensional cravenlator in my backyard for some time and it is nearing completion. The law in Canada, where I live, only covers nuclear devices but not inter-dimensional ones, so I've been proceeding without any government oversight at all, save for the 'power generation permit' I paid $150 for over at the county offices. I'm pretty certain I've got everything worked out properly and there is a 49% chance that I'll solve the world's energy problems with a flick of a switch, a 49% chance that it won't work at all... and maybe a 2 percent chance it will create an unstable inter-dimensional inversion but I don't know what that does exactly. Maybe swallow the Earth, but the math is inconclusive.
Do I turn on that switch? I've met all the legal requirements and I'm not in violation of any law. Why shouldn't I light that sucker up? It's my chance to take my place in history! Or, do I have a responsibility to the people around me to reconsider, at least until the inversion problem is better understood?
Now in the real world, I'm a computer technician, not a mad scientist, but even in my simple job I've probably seen enough information over the years to complicate or even ruin the lives of dozens of people. They aren't doing anything illegal, nor would I wouldn't be doing anything illegal by blogging about it. Do I blog about it? No. As I said before, just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should.
Yeah, but just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should. People go on and on about the rights their society gives them without bothering to mention the responsibilities. It's not that far a stretch to say that you have a responsibility to not wander around the President with a loaded gun or put the lives of the families of peace officers in danger. Even if you knew for certain a cop was crooked, posting pictures of his house strikes me not only as obsessive, but also retributive without any court oversight, which is not what is supposed to happen in a society with the rule of law.
"Congress established a scheme to allow copyright holders to elect to receive statutory damages for copyright infringement instead of actual damages and profits because of the difficulty of calculating and proving actual damages."
You have to wonder about a statement like that. It's basically an admission that they have no way of knowing how much 'theft' has occurred, if any, so they arbitrarily assign a value based on, what, a guess? Even if this dude somehow managed to serve up 5000 complete songs to others, the real 'damages' are an order of magnitude lower than this 1.92M judgment.
Me too. You'd think the word would get around that your flying taxi was a death trap, but yet the fares still lined up anyway.
I wonder what the insurance rates on a space taxi would be? Probably astronomical...
Why would we want to? There is already an excess of human brains available on the planet. What purpose would it serve to build more?
Like people in other Western nations, 95% of Canadians have no idea how to live in the wild, or even without a grocery store close by. Which is one of the reasons why that wilderness is mostly empty.
Well, the thing is called a 'kindle'.
What if someone hacks their way into the Kindle system and deletes all the e-books just for laughs? Gonna be a lot of pissed off customers...
I've always been turned off by MMOs because of all the grindage they seem to make you do alone. After the one thousandth time, running around in the sticks looking for beasties to kill gets very old. I always thought grouping was the whole point of these games, but pretty well everyone I know who plays them spends most of their time doing solo stuff because they are looking to level.
I've always wondered if a game that had no leveling system might be more interesting and encourage more team play.
Maybe not on eBay, but the ISS is already up there, I'm pretty sure it was designed to last longer than 16 years, why not sell it to at least cover some of the costs? I personally don't think it would be a good investment, but people pay lots of money for the weirdest stuff.
I know! The Chinese. They've got money. If we sold it to them cheap, they would be ever so grateful. They might even keep letting us use it from time to time.
They seem to be offering the classic mechs rather than trying to re-invent things which is a good thing. Pilot in the video needs his head read tho. Been a while since I played, but last time I checked it was suicide to go toe to toe with an Atlas driving a Warhammer. Isn't that like a 30 ton mass difference? If my lance couldn't help me, I'd be running away.
You're probably right about the nostalgia thing, especially since this Epson thing is really just a clone box.
Having said that though, over the last few years I've pieced together a working Commodore 64 system with all the fixings (I even have a tape drive, lol). It was the first computer system I ever owned. Nostalgia, definitely, but I gotta say, after all these years, some of those games are still fun as hell. Remember stuff like Jumpman? Or Raid on Bungling Bay? Great stuff.
When I'm playing around with the thing in the shop, my 8 year old kid is completely entranced by those primitive games. Even more interesting, he was fascinated by me using Buttermon to enter in machine code instructions to make a little program to put a bunch of dots on the screen. Maybe these old machines with their simple operating environments could find new life teaching kids stuff about the insides of the computers they take for granted these days.
Yeah, conservatives just have the goons kick the door in to make sure your aren't doing anything un-American.
Oh snap! That sounded like flamebait.
"The pair offers an alternative design fueled by mice."
That's so cool and so wrong at the same time. Because if you can feed it mice, then why not cats and dogs, or maybe a couple of humans...? The last thing I want is people to figure out that other people are useful as fuel. Too many humans on the Earth, looming energy crisis... could be more brutal than a George Romero movie.