"Wouldn't a bunch of crazy incompetents do a better job than the current batch of well connected thieves?"
The "crazy incompetents" are FUNDED BY the well-connected thieves who have decisively demonstrated their intelligence dwarfs that of their pawns! (Sourcewatch makes for entertaining reading.) The "crazy incompetents" will get affirmation. Their backers will get power, which is different.
It doesn't matter what you, personally, are "not", for you are a soldier for something else. That "something else" has destroyed most campaign finance accountability and dumps millions of dollars into TP candidates. Altruism it ain't! They aren't trying to buy more influence for the public good:
The Koch brothers and the like will get what they want, TP partisans have no choice but to give it to them, and TP adherents will never be interested in changing that relationship because their binary choice is Republican/Teapublican or Democrat. The game was over before it started. Sucks, too bad, so sad.
That's the beauty (and it IS beautiful, a work of political art) of the strategy. The UNWITTING participation of the well-intentioned in a movement that affirms them (and caters to _some_ of their genuine, reasonable concerns!) makes them an effective political weapon. The Christian Dominionists so grossly outnumber the secularists that it makes the secular Libertarians an ornamental joke.
I live in the heart of Tea Party country, and this is dead accurate:
The smart place to plink an aircraft by using a Strela or Stinger would be on landing or takeoff, thereby to get bonus points from "collateral damage".
No software needed, just a dumpster with a plastic lid (pop, plink, slam), or a convenient rooftop hide with an expedient "hunters blind", or a box van ("room for the exhaust plume") with a sunroof, or a truck carrying a rolloff container covered with a tarp, or do a ghillie-suited crawl through the vegetation surrounding many airports...
"How do you make modifications to the vehicle to increase performance / increase gas mileage ? Answer... you have to rip out all the un-necessary junk the manufacture put in it."
Computers allow plenty of performance modification, and there is a thriving aftermarket for gasoline and diesel performance computer mods and related parts.
Computerized vehicles are different, but have been hotrodded for decades. Retrofitting computerized systems has big driveability benefits, which is why EFI is common on offroad trucks. I'm in the process of raping a TBI 350 from a wreck to stuff into my Chevy C-30 because I'm tired of fucking with carbs and want a clean idle for running my winch. If it were for speed I'd go TPI, but the donor truck was 400 bucks and TBI is adequate for the job.
Time to have loaded, tested spare backup systems for anything that matters. That's why my friends machine shop systematically accumulates old PCs and parts.
They had to understand most of it to operate it properly.
Back in The Day, when Popular Mechanics literally MEANT "popular mechanics", machines didn't stay functional without understanding operators and frequent maintenance.
Get the spark advance and throttle wrong on a Model T Ford and it won't start, or won't run properly if it does start. Changing transmission bands was routine, as was carrying spares. The reason old machines had LOTS of CONVENIENT access covers was that they were necessary.
If you drove a car, you were expected to be able to not only swap a spare wheel when you got a flat, but be able to repair the flat by patching the tube. Materials wore quickly and lubricants weren't very good, so a "grease pit" was a common feature of HOME garages. Brakes were trash by modern standards, so DIY brake jobs were very common for many decades.
High personal involvement with what one used and drove was standard through the 1950s.
Chemical pleasure interferes with worshipping Jesus. Any pleasure religion cannot control is bad and must be punished, hence the War on Some Drugs, and the war on commercial hemp cultivation.
"The religious nuts are pushing out the libertarians and are ruining something that had a lot of potential."
WHAT Libertarians? All two or three of them? There have never been any secular rightists in the US who matter, sad to say.
Anyone awake knew the Tea Party was a front group for the rich, whose foot soldiers are the Religious Right. That was never in question.
"Value Voters", my happy ass! Bible Nazis in a Rovian Rerun (and mostly minus Rove) with a massive money infusion from the Koch Brothers is what they are.
Why is that a Troll? Bitches with mod points should answer that argument instead of getting their panties wedged.
When you have an enemy that merits attack, laws and convention and all the "civilized" nonsense that is LESS important than "not being put to the sword" goes out the window as it should.
Conventional "morality" is a luxury of those who are protected by overwhelming force. Israel is surrounded by religious enemies, and won't get a second chance to lose a war.
Knowing G.I.s, they'd likely take turns playing Taliban while on actual deployment, since a shitload of G.I.s are avid gamers and have been since PCs were first available.
I suspect (lacking polling data) that given the typical military mind-set, most G.I.s would see the censorship reflecting complete pussification.
As for AAFES, they are at the mercy of every sensitive cunt who wants to turn their stores into a walled garden. Back in The Day, we could buy fap fodder like Penthouse on base. With the rise of Bible Thumpers and PC housecunts in the new corporate military, that went away.
The hassle of dealing with frothers makes it easier to just cave to them on non-mission-related issues, and G.I.s don't need AAFES for anything but food and booze.
I miss the days of the more isolated military when civilians left us the fuck alone, and our fun was our business. Booze and whores ARE fun when you are deployed to some foreign shithole, and none of that mattered outside the military for about two hundred years. Change is not always progress.
In the '70s everyone I knew smoked massively. It was perfectly normal, and "head shops" were common even in expensive suburbs. If weed had any important nasty effects we'd be WELL aware of it after hundreds of millions of smokers worldwide.
"Google can greatly reduce this kind of piracy by working out pricing deals with the carriers to allow charges to appear on phone bills. How else would the ringtone industry thrive as it has? Verizon certainly doesn't offer a direct-bill Android Market option. Maybe this is already the case on other carriers? How does piracy compare in those cases?"
"this type of crap scares me because i'm not confident that the US infrastructure is hardened enough o protect against malicious cyber attacks."
Nor will it be unless it is attacked. End Lusers don't care about security until their system is broken. That cannot change due to human nature, so if we are to have some immunity we need coercive damage to force change.
"Let's see... The US exports Arms, Telecomm gear, and a host of other modern technology to intermediaries that in turn end up selling said products to entities we, the US, consider our enemies."
Slashdot Mirror
"There's this fellow Jefferson at the door. Says he'd like to have a word with you."
I was speaking in the present tense. Jefferson is dead.
The Tea Party is observably of the Religous Right.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130013275
"Wouldn't a bunch of crazy incompetents do a better job than the current batch of well connected thieves?"
The "crazy incompetents" are FUNDED BY the well-connected thieves who have decisively demonstrated their intelligence dwarfs that of their pawns! (Sourcewatch makes for entertaining reading.) The "crazy incompetents" will get affirmation. Their backers will get power, which is different.
It doesn't matter what you, personally, are "not", for you are a soldier for something else. That "something else" has destroyed most campaign finance accountability and dumps millions of dollars into TP candidates. Altruism it ain't! They aren't trying to buy more influence for the public good:
LOVE the background painting!:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
The Koch brothers and the like will get what they want, TP partisans have no choice but to give it to them, and TP adherents will never be interested in changing that relationship because their binary choice is Republican/Teapublican or Democrat. The game was over before it started. Sucks, too bad, so sad.
That's the beauty (and it IS beautiful, a work of political art) of the strategy. The UNWITTING participation of the well-intentioned in a movement that affirms them (and caters to _some_ of their genuine, reasonable concerns!) makes them an effective political weapon. The Christian Dominionists so grossly outnumber the secularists that it makes the secular Libertarians an ornamental joke.
I live in the heart of Tea Party country, and this is dead accurate:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904
The smart place to plink an aircraft by using a Strela or Stinger would be on landing or takeoff, thereby to get bonus points from "collateral damage".
No software needed, just a dumpster with a plastic lid (pop, plink, slam), or a convenient rooftop hide with an expedient "hunters blind", or a box van ("room for the exhaust plume") with a sunroof, or a truck carrying a rolloff container covered with a tarp, or do a ghillie-suited crawl through the vegetation surrounding many airports...
Teenage boys are still car geeks, if car forums are to be believed.
They grew up with EFI and don't know they shouldn't be able to understand it.
"How do you make modifications to the vehicle to increase performance / increase gas mileage ? Answer ... you have to rip out all the un-necessary junk the manufacture put in it."
Computers allow plenty of performance modification, and there is a thriving aftermarket for gasoline and diesel performance computer mods and related parts.
Computerized vehicles are different, but have been hotrodded for decades. Retrofitting computerized systems has big driveability benefits, which is why EFI is common on offroad trucks. I'm in the process of raping a TBI 350 from a wreck to stuff into my Chevy C-30 because I'm tired of fucking with carbs and want a clean idle for running my winch. If it were for speed I'd go TPI, but the donor truck was 400 bucks and TBI is adequate for the job.
Portable VirtualBox lets you build a VM, then archive a copy. If it breaks, delete the VM and extract a new one.
The backup can of course be burned to DVD etc, and used elsewhere if you like.
Time to have loaded, tested spare backup systems for anything that matters. That's why my friends machine shop systematically accumulates old PCs and parts.
They had to understand most of it to operate it properly.
Back in The Day, when Popular Mechanics literally MEANT "popular mechanics", machines didn't stay functional without understanding operators and frequent maintenance.
Get the spark advance and throttle wrong on a Model T Ford and it won't start, or won't run properly if it does start. Changing transmission bands was routine, as was carrying spares. The reason old machines had LOTS of CONVENIENT access covers was that they were necessary.
http://www.cimorelli.com/projects/relining_transmission_bands/relining_model_t_transmission_bands.htm
If you drove a car, you were expected to be able to not only swap a spare wheel when you got a flat, but be able to repair the flat by patching the tube. Materials wore quickly and lubricants weren't very good, so a "grease pit" was a common feature of HOME garages. Brakes were trash by modern standards, so DIY brake jobs were very common for many decades.
High personal involvement with what one used and drove was standard through the 1950s.
"unless the fire fighter in question is chewing on an exposed cable while simultaneously rubbing his dick on the road..."
This thread is worthless without pics!
Chemical pleasure interferes with worshipping Jesus. Any pleasure religion cannot control is bad and must be punished, hence the War on Some Drugs, and the war on commercial hemp cultivation.
"The religious nuts are pushing out the libertarians and are ruining something that had a lot of potential."
WHAT Libertarians? All two or three of them? There have never been any secular rightists in the US who matter, sad to say.
Anyone awake knew the Tea Party was a front group for the rich, whose foot soldiers are the Religious Right. That was never in question.
"Value Voters", my happy ass! Bible Nazis in a Rovian Rerun (and mostly minus Rove) with a massive money infusion from the Koch Brothers is what they are.
"No one does."
Never underestimate human stupidity. If they weren't spies, they should have been shot for being idiots.
No USian not on government or military business has any reason to be where they were.
Why is that a Troll? Bitches with mod points should answer that argument instead of getting their panties wedged.
When you have an enemy that merits attack, laws and convention and all the "civilized" nonsense that is LESS important than "not being put to the sword" goes out the window as it should.
Conventional "morality" is a luxury of those who are protected by overwhelming force. Israel is surrounded by religious enemies, and won't get a second chance to lose a war.
Knowing G.I.s, they'd likely take turns playing Taliban while on actual deployment, since a shitload of G.I.s are avid gamers and have been since PCs were first available.
I suspect (lacking polling data) that given the typical military mind-set, most G.I.s would see the censorship reflecting complete pussification.
As for AAFES, they are at the mercy of every sensitive cunt who wants to turn their stores into a walled garden. Back in The Day, we could buy fap fodder like Penthouse on base. With the rise of Bible Thumpers and PC housecunts in the new corporate military, that went away.
The hassle of dealing with frothers makes it easier to just cave to them on non-mission-related issues, and G.I.s don't need AAFES for anything but food and booze.
I miss the days of the more isolated military when civilians left us the fuck alone, and our fun was our business. Booze and whores ARE fun when you are deployed to some foreign shithole, and none of that mattered outside the military for about two hundred years. Change is not always progress.
"the more we can watch the US slip further and further into the dark ages..."
The Dark Ages had religion. Science won't hep us get to Hebbin'.
In the '70s everyone I knew smoked massively. It was perfectly normal, and "head shops" were common even in expensive suburbs.
If weed had any important nasty effects we'd be WELL aware of it after hundreds of millions of smokers worldwide.
"Please go back to 4th grade civics."
Not available in the US since time out of mind.
We rely on Glenn Beck to interpret such ancient mysteries for us.
"I think it's because the short ones are usually zesty packets of spunk"
Don't use that complement in the UK.
"If not, that monkey is not a security officer in any reasonable sense of the word."
The TSA uniform sure fooled me!
That's a user issue.
If I choose to wear a gasoline-soaked jockstrap while toasting marshmallows, I should expect toasted yarbles as well.
"Google can greatly reduce this kind of piracy by working out pricing deals with the carriers to allow charges to appear on phone bills. How else would the ringtone industry thrive as it has? Verizon certainly doesn't offer a direct-bill Android Market option. Maybe this is already the case on other carriers? How does piracy compare in those cases?"
Mod Up "Insightful as Fuck!" Easy money.
"this type of crap scares me because i'm not confident that the US infrastructure is hardened enough o protect against malicious cyber attacks."
Nor will it be unless it is attacked. End Lusers don't care about security until their system is broken. That cannot change due to human nature, so if we are to have some immunity we need coercive damage to force change.
"Would you like to live beside an expansionist who didn't think you were anything more than an animal?"
Iran isn't beside Israel.
Getting technical information from Debka is like getting your foreign affairs info from the New York Daily News.
"Let's see... The US exports Arms, Telecomm gear, and a host of other modern technology to intermediaries that in turn end up selling said products to entities we, the US, consider our enemies."
That's one way to keep tabs on them.