Here's something. It isn't exactly what you wanted though... not fanless, and I think they are all ATX supplies so they won't work on that 486. But it's a start.
They better not try to put their pet black hole in a bag of holding.
Re:Change the rules, be realistic about conflict
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But if we simply step back and change our behavior, the terrorists will see that by using a bigger bomb they finally got a response out of us. And so if they ever want anything else from us or ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD they will know how to get it: by blowing something up that's even bigger.
That's it exactly, well put.
Luckily, SecState or SecDef has said something to the effect of "we're not just going after the people that did THIS. We're going after all terrorist havens." I have high hopes that NATO will do its best to purge the earth of those bastards. I want to see months of warfare, followed up by our entire allied intel community rooting out the remnants wherever they hide.
(I'm sure they won't be bombing Sinn Fein of course, I think they meant "the kind of terrorists that are harbored by unfriendly nations, and blow up planes and buildings in our allied nations.")
A militant response is most definitely called for in my opinion, but we also desperately need to look at what we're doing and maybe stop the hatred and terrorism before it stops.
I can get behind that, as long as we don't "wuss out" on the very necessary immediate messy part. There's no harm in looking at the whole situation with an open mind once we have made our country as safe as we reasonably can.
Personally, I think (and have for a while now) that we should cut off aid to Israel. I don't want to get into the Israel/Palestine political stuff... my reasoning is actually quite simple: Israel is a big boy and it can take care of itself. Would they really crumble away without our money and weapons? Doubtful. If they want weapons, they can BUY them from us. They can also build them themselves; they have a very capable industry there.
I think that our support of them is largely symbolic, not practical, and it's a symbol that has probably cost us a lot of lives now. That kind of support is more justified if Israel is in imminent danger of destruction. I DO believe in the US supporting its allies, with blood if needed, but I am not convinced that Israel's plight is that dire yet.
(If anyone wants to counter my perception of US aid to Israel, please post. If we stopped payments, would they just wither away?)
If the cause of the 9/11 attacks is precisely traced to our support of Israel, I would like to point out that Israel owes us one, and I would like them never to forget that.
The really hard part of all this is we have to develop the guts to take the passengers out of the equation. A plane turned into a missile can take out 10,000 people. Can -- HAS, I guess we could now say. In future hijackings we have to assume the worst intentions, and if that means forfeiting the lives of the passengers, then that is how it has to be.
The pilots must not have the ability to regain control of the plane once it's established that the bad guys are on board. Human weakness, or short-sighted compassion, can all too easily let them concede to the hijackers' demands if they have the ability to.
It's a terrible thing to throw lives away even in order to save others. But once the prospective hijackers see how things play out, they will have less incentive to try anything. (Plane starts to land, hijackers kill passengers in order to get their way, it doesn't happen, and then guys with guns kill them all.)
We CAN rig things so that hijackers can't take control of the plane... question is, will we have the guts to do so? We'll have a few planeloads of dead people until our resolve is obvious to the world.
Re:After all, sheep will be sheep
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No, I'd probably crap myself! You're really on the spot in the situation you have proposed. But give the choice between fighting and giving up -- like in a bank robbery, or a hijacking where someone's talking crazy and waving a weapon -- you have to fight. There, you have a chance. It's not instant death, as if a gun was already to your head.
I'm not saying it would be easy to jump a guy with a weapon. One's nerve could fail. But if more people were willing to fight the wolf, we'd all be better off as a society.
Re:After all, sheep will be sheep
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What bank customer would be willing to confront an armed gunman?
Me. I carry a gun, legally, and I am a very good shot. A damn good shot. If some headcase starts waving a gun around threatening people and I am nearby, I'm going to do what I have to in order to protect the people around me.
More people need to adopt that attitude. Society would be better off if more people were selfless and willing to defend the public and themselves.
Like you said, people are sheep. I hope that recent events will get some of the sheep thinking critically about their role in society.
Re: Change the rules, be realistic about conflict
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Violence begets violence.
Pacifism begets slavery.
(I think I have to give credit to anther/.er for that one.)
Re:Change the rules, be realistic about conflict
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How do you fight someone who is not afraid to die and is not afraid to use the innocents around him?
You can only fight that battle on the enemy's terms. Mark my words, to end this we will have to sink to their level and end some. We will be the terrorists in the end -- but it be over someday, and it will be worth it, compared to what we would get by pussyfooting around "establishing dialogues."
Like others have been saying, all the civilized nations need to declare war on terrorism and those nations that harbor terrorists. If that doesn't work, then ultimately the rule of law is in danger, GLOBALLY.
If the world's greatest powers can't prevent commonplace terrorism, everyone's screwed, even the silly peaceniks in their little bitty countries posting on here about how awful America is. Those people better wise up, because if we go down, their time will come too.
An isolated cockpit is probably the best idea. Armed guards too. But short of that...
The cockpit should have some kind of emergency status transponder in it. OK, it already does. But check this out: every 15 minutes, ATC transmits a code to the pilot. "Are you still OK?" Actually the plane's own computer should probably do this.
The pilot pulls out his codebook. In response to challenge code 12345, he has 5 possible responses: 11111, 22222, 33333, 44444, 55555. Only ONE of those, arranged BEFORE the flight, is the "I'm OK" code. Say that Column C, "33333," is the pre-arranged "I'm OK" code for that flight. If there is a terrorist in the cockpit, the bad guy can force the pilot to put in the right code. The pilot bravely puts in the WRONG code though, since the attacker won't know he's being duped.
The system still shows a green light, but on the ground ATC now knows that something's up on that plane -- the plane can be put into some automated emergency landing mode that the pilot cannot interfere with.
However we do it, we need to remove the ability for a bad guy to drive that plane into something. Any kind of remote control is scary, it can be cracked... seems like all the smarts will have to be *in* the plane.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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I think that you have some good ideas on cutting off the financial support.
I still support military action. Rather than rehashing my own words for the nth time, I will readers to my hopefully non-ranting essay.
The trick is to let the pilots give the illusion of cooperation, in order to buy more time.
An isolated cockpit is probably the best idea. But short of that...
The cockpit should have some kind of emergency status transponder in it. OK, it already does. But check this out: every 15 minutes, ATC transmits a code to the pilot. "Are you still OK?" Actually the plane's own computer should probably do this.
The pilot pulls out his codebook. In response to challenge code 12345, he has 5 possible responses: 11111, 22222, 33333, 44444, 55555. Only ONE of those, arranged BEFORE the flight, is the "I'm OK" code. Say that Column C, "33333," is the pre-arranged "I'm OK" code for that flight. If there is a terrorist in the cockpit, he can force the pilot to put in the right code. The pilot bravely puts in the WRONG code though. The system still shows a green light, but on the ground ATC now knows that something's up on that plane -- the plane can be put into some automated emergency landing mode that the pilot cannot interfere with.
However we do it, we need to remove the ability for a bad guy to drive that plane into something. Any kind of remote control is scary, it can be cracked... seems like all the smarts will have to be *in* the plane though.
Glaser "safety slugs" are a wacky frangible ammunition, reputedly designed for use on airplanes. They definitely have less energy than a tradtional round. I'm sure similar ammo has been designed. El Al supposedly has an undercover armed guard on all flights, so they must have a solution for guns on planes.
Safer ammo is important but the best thing is still training. If you shoot at someone on a plane -- well, try to hit them. Their body is the best backstop.
I haven't noticed that crime rates are way down in the US because so many people have guns.
I don't have the links handy, but most places that have implemented easy acess to concealed weapons permits HAVE seen such a decrease. And in the other places there is no statistically significant change. And, overall, crime has been down over the last decade. (some categories have been up... I think juvenile crime has been up, though overall violent crime is down.)
The evidence really does show that more concealed weapons leads to less crime. It IS a deterrent, and your fellow citizens are largely competent and capable of carrying responsibly. It IS a shocking concept! I don't trust people to make my hamburger at McDonald's. But by dog, the Average Joe CAN manage to carry a gun without making some horrible mistake with it.
*Most* states in the US now have easy access to concealed weapons permits. Have you heard of any related bloodbaths in places like Washington state, Florida or Vermont? Nope. I live in Seattle where anyone WITH $60 and WITHOUT a record as a criminal or whacko can get a gun permit. And we're famous for rain and high-tech companies... not Old West shootouts.
(A load of foreigners were getting robbed and shot in Florida a while back... Foreigners. People that could not get permits. Defenseless people. Easy targets.)
The physical weapons these guys had were insignificant. Their real weapon was their willingness to kill.
So true. Their will combined with the LACK of will on the passengers' part was a lethal combination.
I want Americans to get some backbone. Maybe now that everything is different they will... they won't assume that they'll get out of a hostage situation. Always fight; never give up.
I have had a gun pointed at me in anger/fear before. I did not ward off any shotgun pellets with my backpack, but I did come away from the situation with... something. I definitely changed that day. Not sure how yet; I guess I will find out the next time someone points a weapon at me.
As others have said, the passengers probably believed that it was a typical ransom thing, and that they were safest cooperating.
(then again others have said that passengers were allowed to make goodbye phone calls; have to wait a few days and see what the truth is.)
After today, no hostage on a plane will assume that their safety is in any way likely. I look forward to a swarm of Average Citizens overpowering the next idiot who tries to hijack a plane.
Considering the fanatical, underground nature of such terrorists, the only way to get them is to play their game. You'll need to bomb the cities of those that shelter them, killing innocents yourself. And so you lose there, to a degree, because you are "stooping to their level."
But you know what? Let's get down to that level and get it over with. Let's kill as many people as we have to in order to secure our future safety. Because the other option is to pussyfoot around acting "civilized," and "establishing dialogues," and that is the death of spirit -- a far worse tragedy for our society.
I'd far rather perform some atrocities as a nation and consequently survive as a nation than do nothing. Both are obviously bad choices. But you can recover from the first one, whereas the other is a real death sentance.
Slashdot clearly needs to add a -1, Pansy moderation option.
"Appeasement" only opens the door for more demands. It would be the foot in the door, the camel's nose in the tent... The only rational course of action is to make them fear us so that this doesn't happen again.
I appreciate your desire to avoid more bloodshed, in an abstract sort of way. But I truly believe that more blood will have to be spilled to resolve this matter.
Unfortunately, as terrorists are not countries with easy to find capitals and bridges and factories to bomb, this will be a difficult war to fight. And to fight it, we will need to lower ourselves to their level -- and maybe even then some.
No matter what we do, we lose in one way or another. I fully realize that. But if we are destined to lose, I say we lose with a whole lot of them dead rather then with them still alive and us trying to "appease" them. That is the death of spirit, and that is intolerable.
I think that Free Republic post is giving the bad guys too much credit. It seems much more likely to me that they simply decided "lets cause as much damage as possible to the WTC... I think planes will be our best bet." But doing calculations for an implosion? I doubt it.
I was amazed that the towers didn't go right over. When the second plane hit the tower didn't seem to move an inch. Remarkable that they stood for as long as they did.
Not only should they be rebuilt, they should be made into a monument of all that is American, a thorn in the side of all the nuts who hate us. The new towers should be much bigger... plated in gold... with a giant stock ticker across the sides, so big and bright that you can see it from space.
The new towers should be bristling with lasers and radar. They should have a 150-plex movie theater inside, and a professional wrestling stadium on the top, just to annoy the rest of the world with our strange taste in "sports."
OK, so I am being a little ridiculous. But yes... rebuild. No placid memorial parks... we need a monument that honors the TRUE spirit of what was lost. Working buildings are the best way to do that.
He may have screwed up the Mecca thing but there is some truth to his words. The BBC recently ran a spot on the international news show about a school that trained Arab kids to be suicide bombers. They showed 12 year old kids drawing pictures of themselves with bombs strapped to them... the poor kids were being brainwashed into blowing themselves up. The school has since been shut down under international pressure, but it has probably just gone underground.
I realize that this is not typical of all Muslims, of course. Chilling nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't really followed the state of crypto freeware in years. Last package I used was PGP, which now seems to be commercial (www.pgp.com).
Time to get familiar with the free stuff again, I think. What's good and reputable? I have no idea where to start.
(Looking for Mac/Win desktop stuff, but wouldn't mind looking at Unix stuff too.)
Here's something. It isn't exactly what you wanted though... not fanless, and I think they are all ATX supplies so they won't work on that 486. But it's a start.
I hear these are good, but caveat emptor.
But you also need to know OpenBSD. People who are not interested in being sysadmins have a right to NAT too!
There are also people who do not want to, or do not know HOW to assemble a cheap PC from parts. There is no shame in a "black box" solution.
They better not try to put their pet black hole in a bag of holding.
But if we simply step back and change our behavior, the terrorists will see that by using a bigger bomb they finally got a response out of us. And so if they ever want anything else from us or ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD they will know how to get it: by blowing something up that's even bigger.
That's it exactly, well put.
Luckily, SecState or SecDef has said something to the effect of "we're not just going after the people that did THIS. We're going after all terrorist havens." I have high hopes that NATO will do its best to purge the earth of those bastards. I want to see months of warfare, followed up by our entire allied intel community rooting out the remnants wherever they hide.
(I'm sure they won't be bombing Sinn Fein of course, I think they meant "the kind of terrorists that are harbored by unfriendly nations, and blow up planes and buildings in our allied nations.")
A militant response is most definitely called for in my opinion, but we also desperately need to look at what we're doing and maybe stop the hatred and terrorism before it stops.
I can get behind that, as long as we don't "wuss out" on the very necessary immediate messy part. There's no harm in looking at the whole situation with an open mind once we have made our country as safe as we reasonably can.
Personally, I think (and have for a while now) that we should cut off aid to Israel. I don't want to get into the Israel/Palestine political stuff... my reasoning is actually quite simple: Israel is a big boy and it can take care of itself. Would they really crumble away without our money and weapons? Doubtful. If they want weapons, they can BUY them from us. They can also build them themselves; they have a very capable industry there.
I think that our support of them is largely symbolic, not practical, and it's a symbol that has probably cost us a lot of lives now. That kind of support is more justified if Israel is in imminent danger of destruction. I DO believe in the US supporting its allies, with blood if needed, but I am not convinced that Israel's plight is that dire yet.
(If anyone wants to counter my perception of US aid to Israel, please post. If we stopped payments, would they just wither away?)
If the cause of the 9/11 attacks is precisely traced to our support of Israel, I would like to point out that Israel owes us one, and I would like them never to forget that.
The really hard part of all this is we have to develop the guts to take the passengers out of the equation. A plane turned into a missile can take out 10,000 people. Can -- HAS, I guess we could now say. In future hijackings we have to assume the worst intentions, and if that means forfeiting the lives of the passengers, then that is how it has to be.
The pilots must not have the ability to regain control of the plane once it's established that the bad guys are on board. Human weakness, or short-sighted compassion, can all too easily let them concede to the hijackers' demands if they have the ability to.
It's a terrible thing to throw lives away even in order to save others. But once the prospective hijackers see how things play out, they will have less incentive to try anything. (Plane starts to land, hijackers kill passengers in order to get their way, it doesn't happen, and then guys with guns kill them all.)
We CAN rig things so that hijackers can't take control of the plane... question is, will we have the guts to do so? We'll have a few planeloads of dead people until our resolve is obvious to the world.
No, I'd probably crap myself! You're really on the spot in the situation you have proposed. But give the choice between fighting and giving up -- like in a bank robbery, or a hijacking where someone's talking crazy and waving a weapon -- you have to fight. There, you have a chance. It's not instant death, as if a gun was already to your head.
I'm not saying it would be easy to jump a guy with a weapon. One's nerve could fail. But if more people were willing to fight the wolf, we'd all be better off as a society.
What bank customer would be willing to confront an armed gunman?
Me. I carry a gun, legally, and I am a very good shot. A damn good shot. If some headcase starts waving a gun around threatening people and I am nearby, I'm going to do what I have to in order to protect the people around me.
More people need to adopt that attitude. Society would be better off if more people were selfless and willing to defend the public and themselves.
Like you said, people are sheep. I hope that recent events will get some of the sheep thinking critically about their role in society.
Violence begets violence.
Pacifism begets slavery.
(I think I have to give credit to anther
How do you fight someone who is not afraid to die and is not afraid to use the innocents around him?
You can only fight that battle on the enemy's terms. Mark my words, to end this we will have to sink to their level and end some. We will be the terrorists in the end -- but it be over someday, and it will be worth it, compared to what we would get by pussyfooting around "establishing dialogues."
Like others have been saying, all the civilized nations need to declare war on terrorism and those nations that harbor terrorists. If that doesn't work, then ultimately the rule of law is in danger, GLOBALLY.
If the world's greatest powers can't prevent commonplace terrorism, everyone's screwed, even the silly peaceniks in their little bitty countries posting on here about how awful America is. Those people better wise up, because if we go down, their time will come too.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. I'm going to Starbucks now. Continue with your hand-wringing, you poor thing.
An isolated cockpit is probably the best idea. Armed guards too. But short of that...
The cockpit should have some kind of emergency status transponder in it. OK, it already does. But check this out: every 15 minutes, ATC transmits a code to the pilot. "Are you still OK?" Actually the plane's own computer should probably do this.
The pilot pulls out his codebook. In response to challenge code 12345, he has 5 possible responses: 11111, 22222, 33333, 44444, 55555. Only ONE of those, arranged BEFORE the flight, is the "I'm OK" code. Say that Column C, "33333," is the pre-arranged "I'm OK" code for that flight. If there is a terrorist in the cockpit, the bad guy can force the pilot to put in the right code. The pilot bravely puts in the WRONG code though, since the attacker won't know he's being duped.
The system still shows a green light, but on the ground ATC now knows that something's up on that plane -- the plane can be put into some automated emergency landing mode that the pilot cannot interfere with.
However we do it, we need to remove the ability for a bad guy to drive that plane into something. Any kind of remote control is scary, it can be cracked... seems like all the smarts will have to be *in* the plane.
I think that you have some good ideas on cutting off the financial support.
I still support military action. Rather than rehashing my own words for the nth time, I will readers to my hopefully non-ranting essay.
The trick is to let the pilots give the illusion of cooperation, in order to buy more time.
An isolated cockpit is probably the best idea. But short of that...
The cockpit should have some kind of emergency status transponder in it. OK, it already does. But check this out: every 15 minutes, ATC transmits a code to the pilot. "Are you still OK?" Actually the plane's own computer should probably do this.
The pilot pulls out his codebook. In response to challenge code 12345, he has 5 possible responses: 11111, 22222, 33333, 44444, 55555. Only ONE of those, arranged BEFORE the flight, is the "I'm OK" code. Say that Column C, "33333," is the pre-arranged "I'm OK" code for that flight. If there is a terrorist in the cockpit, he can force the pilot to put in the right code. The pilot bravely puts in the WRONG code though. The system still shows a green light, but on the ground ATC now knows that something's up on that plane -- the plane can be put into some automated emergency landing mode that the pilot cannot interfere with.
However we do it, we need to remove the ability for a bad guy to drive that plane into something. Any kind of remote control is scary, it can be cracked... seems like all the smarts will have to be *in* the plane though.
Glaser "safety slugs" are a wacky frangible ammunition, reputedly designed for use on airplanes. They definitely have less energy than a tradtional round. I'm sure similar ammo has been designed. El Al supposedly has an undercover armed guard on all flights, so they must have a solution for guns on planes.
Safer ammo is important but the best thing is still training. If you shoot at someone on a plane -- well, try to hit them. Their body is the best backstop.
I haven't noticed that crime rates are way down in the US because so many people have guns.
I don't have the links handy, but most places that have implemented easy acess to concealed weapons permits HAVE seen such a decrease. And in the other places there is no statistically significant change. And, overall, crime has been down over the last decade. (some categories have been up... I think juvenile crime has been up, though overall violent crime is down.)
The evidence really does show that more concealed weapons leads to less crime. It IS a deterrent, and your fellow citizens are largely competent and capable of carrying responsibly. It IS a shocking concept! I don't trust people to make my hamburger at McDonald's. But by dog, the Average Joe CAN manage to carry a gun without making some horrible mistake with it.
*Most* states in the US now have easy access to concealed weapons permits. Have you heard of any related bloodbaths in places like Washington state, Florida or Vermont? Nope. I live in Seattle where anyone WITH $60 and WITHOUT a record as a criminal or whacko can get a gun permit. And we're famous for rain and high-tech companies... not Old West shootouts.
(A load of foreigners were getting robbed and shot in Florida a while back... Foreigners. People that could not get permits. Defenseless people. Easy targets.)
The physical weapons these guys had were insignificant. Their real weapon was their willingness to kill.
So true. Their will combined with the LACK of will on the passengers' part was a lethal combination.
I want Americans to get some backbone. Maybe now that everything is different they will... they won't assume that they'll get out of a hostage situation. Always fight; never give up.
I have had a gun pointed at me in anger/fear before. I did not ward off any shotgun pellets with my backpack, but I did come away from the situation with... something. I definitely changed that day. Not sure how yet; I guess I will find out the next time someone points a weapon at me.
As others have said, the passengers probably believed that it was a typical ransom thing, and that they were safest cooperating.
(then again others have said that passengers were allowed to make goodbye phone calls; have to wait a few days and see what the truth is.)
After today, no hostage on a plane will assume that their safety is in any way likely. I look forward to a swarm of Average Citizens overpowering the next idiot who tries to hijack a plane.
Always fight, never give up.
Considering the fanatical, underground nature of such terrorists, the only way to get them is to play their game. You'll need to bomb the cities of those that shelter them, killing innocents yourself. And so you lose there, to a degree, because you are "stooping to their level."
But you know what? Let's get down to that level and get it over with. Let's kill as many people as we have to in order to secure our future safety. Because the other option is to pussyfoot around acting "civilized," and "establishing dialogues," and that is the death of spirit -- a far worse tragedy for our society.
I'd far rather perform some atrocities as a nation and consequently survive as a nation than do nothing. Both are obviously bad choices. But you can recover from the first one, whereas the other is a real death sentance.
Were we just in killing hundreds of thousands in Japan with nuclear bombs? No, because killing is always wrong (especially against civilians).
If we invaded Japan, which was the other option besides the nukes, it was estimated that it might cost a million allied lives.
One million of us... or a couple hundred thousand of them. Hmm. Let me think about that.
I vote for us.
...and appease their demands if it's reasonable.
Slashdot clearly needs to add a -1, Pansy moderation option.
"Appeasement" only opens the door for more demands. It would be the foot in the door, the camel's nose in the tent... The only rational course of action is to make them fear us so that this doesn't happen again.
I appreciate your desire to avoid more bloodshed, in an abstract sort of way. But I truly believe that more blood will have to be spilled to resolve this matter.
Unfortunately, as terrorists are not countries with easy to find capitals and bridges and factories to bomb, this will be a difficult war to fight. And to fight it, we will need to lower ourselves to their level -- and maybe even then some.
No matter what we do, we lose in one way or another. I fully realize that. But if we are destined to lose, I say we lose with a whole lot of them dead rather then with them still alive and us trying to "appease" them. That is the death of spirit, and that is intolerable.
I think that Free Republic post is giving the bad guys too much credit. It seems much more likely to me that they simply decided "lets cause as much damage as possible to the WTC... I think planes will be our best bet." But doing calculations for an implosion? I doubt it.
I was amazed that the towers didn't go right over. When the second plane hit the tower didn't seem to move an inch. Remarkable that they stood for as long as they did.
If we retaliate, will it spawn more violence?
Maybe.
If we fail to retaliate, do we invite more terrorism?
Definitely.
And, when faced with such a choice, I'll gamble on the "maybe." Bombs away.
Not only should they be rebuilt, they should be made into a monument of all that is American, a thorn in the side of all the nuts who hate us. The new towers should be much bigger... plated in gold... with a giant stock ticker across the sides, so big and bright that you can see it from space.
The new towers should be bristling with lasers and radar. They should have a 150-plex movie theater inside, and a professional wrestling stadium on the top, just to annoy the rest of the world with our strange taste in "sports."
OK, so I am being a little ridiculous. But yes... rebuild. No placid memorial parks... we need a monument that honors the TRUE spirit of what was lost. Working buildings are the best way to do that.
He may have screwed up the Mecca thing but there is some truth to his words. The BBC recently ran a spot on the international news show about a school that trained Arab kids to be suicide bombers. They showed 12 year old kids drawing pictures of themselves with bombs strapped to them... the poor kids were being brainwashed into blowing themselves up. The school has since been shut down under international pressure, but it has probably just gone underground.
I realize that this is not typical of all Muslims, of course. Chilling nonetheless.