A person killed or maimed by AI or rocks and Greek fire flung from seige engines is fucked either way.
We can construct all sorts of laws for war, but war trumps law as law requires force to enforce. If instead we work to build international relationships which are cooperative and less murdery that would accomplish a lot.
It can be done. It took a couple of World Wars but Germany, France, England and the bit players have found much better things to do than butcher each other for national glory. Such a state of affairs would have been regarded as a pipe dream no so long ago.
"- we could build housing for the homeless from all those containers, and completely eliminate homelessness in this country, if only we had the land to put all those containers somewhere else."
Much love for my ISO containers, but the homeless problem isn't necessarily due to a lack of "homes". If you have "land", then the ubiquitous "single wide mobile home" is usually a better choice than the "same thing in a shipping container". By the time you turn an ISO into a lodging structure (as many firms do, check the Sea Box site for great ISO container pron) they cost more than a single-wide. Container homes are great for DIYers with a metalworking background, and they also make hip structures for the rich. They don't necessarily save much if anything in construction costs if hiring out the work, but you wouldn't know that from the many people pimping them. If you have a place to play and the inclination, grab one or more 40' High Cubes (standard height sucks for many reasons, and since 20-footers cost so close to 40's it's usually silly to get a 20. I just spend the day welding a splice strip between my roofs (use industrial roof coatings BTW, NOT the vile rust-promoting shit from chain stores!) and after coating the roofs (about a grand in materials) I'll be adding a man door and removing some of the walls between them. It's shop space but I'd live in an ISO home without hesitation. If I had to pay retail for everything, I'd go ICF (insulated concrete forms) with a slab floor instead.
Modern fighters rely on a STEADY flow of sophisticated parts from the manufacturer and subcontractors. Many of those parts must be returned to their manufacturer for repair/overhaul/upgrades which means you must buy "some" extras if you want to fly sorties. Many parts are so expensive you can't have a local Supply operation with more than a few. Even the US Air Force must monitor Supply stocks globally and have parts shipped from base to base or deployed location to maintain fleet readiness. This vital juggling act relies on Fedex, DHL and other carriers as well as USAF assets. Repair and overhaul of jet engines is especially critical. If you have a problem component, say in the hot section, which fails periodic inspections you need to pull and stuff engines quickly to maintain operations. If you don't get full tech transfer with local manufacturing you can end up with a bunch of expensive "ramp decorations" like Venezuelas F16 fleet.
"Fordâ(TM)s response to the fires â" first refusing to acknowledge that the switches posed a fire hazard, then conducting four recalls over seven years â" angered fire victims and consumer advocates. It does not hurt their cases that Ford was accused of dragging its feet in other high-profile recalls.
âoeItâ(TM)s a cultural issue within Ford Motor Company,â said Rob Ammons, a Houston lawyer who is suing Ford on behalf of an Iowa man, Earl Mohlis, whose wife, Dolly, died after their home caught fire. The lawsuit claims the manâ(TM)s 1996 Ford F-150 pickup caught fire in the garage. The blaze spread to the house, killing Mrs. Mohlis. âoeItâ(TM)s the same exact pattern,â Mr. Ammons said. âoeYou saw it with the Pinto. You saw it with the ignition fires a decade ago. You saw it with Firestone. And you see it here.â
That's why prepaid credit cards are better than debit cards if you have no regular credit card. They reduce potential damage by not being linked to your bank account. My regular card isn't paid by automatic draft either, and my PayPal account links to a small, separate bank account I keep for that purpose.
Check for forums, including propane conversion forums as many posters there have NG experience. You may be able to convert or have a kit installed. There are many outfits offering retrofit kits so with some searching you should be able to find something suitable. You might have to buy a vehicle that's supported, but that doesn't mean "new".
I'll eventually LP convert one of my trucks as it "sits" a lot and petrol turns to shit after absorbing water from the air, even with STA-BIL. If I can get CNG conveniently I may run that too. Of course older vehicles which had carbs are the simplest to convert and Impco has been making parts for that for decades.
You could also put a compressor in your garage and have an accumulator tank. Fill it, then you can immediately fill your car from it. COTS fittings so no problem.
I would NOT put a compressor in a garage. No fucking way. Please don't do that. I have many years handling welding gases etc and all my flammable gas storage, even little LP cylinders, lives outside my dwelling.
Leaks happen with any gas handling system. It's cheap enough to put that stuff on a skid (local fab shop can make one unless you are into some basic cutting and welding) in your back yard and cover that with a benign-looking and well vented shed (with proper placards for first responders!) and be safe. Running a mains-pressure (low for good reason) line from your home service to the compressor area would be far safer.
I was born in and live in the US and am in my fifties. The anti-union indoctrination is by mass media which are the real groomers of public opinion, not schools or Hollywood.
When I was growing up there was much more pro-union sentiment than today. The shift to the Right by the two US political parties has much to do with the change. It's popular now to blame unions for the collapse of incompetently run businesses such as the old auto and steel industries.
The South especially is anti-union. I live not far from the Enersys plant which closed as a famous act of union busting but is kept in use, IMO to avoid having to clean up the site. The media here are anti-union and they shape public opinion through repetition.
This sort of conduct was and is unfortunately considered acceptable and does not meet with the level of public opposition required to stop it:
"I can tell you one thing, the idea of downloading an ISO and burning it just disappears."
I downloaded plenty of.isos while on dialup. (The first was Corel Linux, it's been a while....)
Start download manager in the morning, leave for work, perhaps stop then resume the next day if I wanted to surf in the evenings. Not worse than awaiting a very slow and interrupted torrent today.
NG engines are easy to do and well understood, but the infrastructure issue means it's a fleet-use only item.
Folks who work with NG generators report very long life and low wear. If I had a convenient source of CNG I'd convert at least one of my trucks to bi-fuel as "gas and gasoline" systems can co-exist. Ford is going to offer a CNG option on the extremely successful F-150. (That would make a great option for a work truck since CNG can be used to run cutting torches, generators, and so forth. Standard hardware could easily connect them.)
Business is war, not a matter of "gratitude" because employment isn't a "gift". Collective bargaining is the only way otherwise valueless workers have leverage. One ant is nothing, but an army of ants is very different.
Americans are carefully indoctrinated nowadays to lick corporate boots, no surprise since business owns the US. Mistakes by unions (who BTW were FORCED to get in bed with the Mob back when business utterly owned the politicians and the cops leaving them zero alternative) certainly hurt them, but that in no way invalidates the utility of collective bargaining. Some of us bothered to read more labor history than is taught in school. I suggest that to others so you can draw your own conclusions. Workers are not the enemy, business is not the enemy, but to have an equitable relationship to BARGAIN each must have power. The only way workers can have power is collective bargaining unless they are specially skilled AND in short supply.
In our (real) system of economics, corporations own the government by proxy and are superior to mere "people".
We are indoctrinated to fear the government interfering in business, but not business manipulating government against us including having the government save its arse.
Business is war, so if you want to deal with business, act coldly and without compassion because amoral business has none for you.
That's why contracts and agreements should be very, very carefully drafted.
This is why I smile and torrent whatever I like. If that option goes away, back to sneakernet which worked nicely in the analog tape days before the intarwebs.
The masters have no moral obligation to me in their own eyes, so I consider none whatever to them.
In our avionics shop one prankster would set (after hooking up a concealed tweeter) the audio oscillator just above the range of normal hearing and enjoy the reactions from those who still had some of their high freq sensitivity left. His other trick was telling noobs the black plastic urinal cup on OV-10 Broncos was an "auxiliary interphone" and having them speak into it while listening for side tone.
"Most liberals don't seem to have much interest in what people in those areas think, other than making quips like that one: "We have a very very very stupid population""
Work in the education system in rural Red States and you'll KNOW they have a VSP. What's cruel is that VSP infects its children who are thereby made education-averse.
Total expropriation requires killing all who resist and taking their property by force, so that's been done. The end result of building those mechanisms for expropriation is that they redirect the path to personal security and self-advancement from capitalist property acquisition to outright power aquisition. They also require exceptionally ruthless people (yes, kids, worse than CEOs) so that is who rises to power after Communist revolts. The Bolshevik is better adapted for survival than the Menshevik so they win. In the moral context of a Communist takeover it's fine to be at the leading edge, a Commissar or NKVD man or whatever. Pacifists etc can be shot and need not be debated because the mechanism for takeover is already in place. Peaceful resistance doesn't work against Serious People. If an Aung San Suu Kyi pops up, Serious People shoot them before they gain traction. Marks and Engels were theorists unburdened by having to make their ideas work in practice (those ideas can't scale), but their theory is found delectable where Capitalism is allowed to go UNMODERATED by Socialism. Moderate Socialism, as jobs are destroyed by advancing technology, is more logical and reasonable by far than Communism or (unmoderated) Capitalism. Unfortunately extremes appeal to simpletons looking for solutions.
Give me reliable LEDs which are a form and fit and RELIABILITY replacement under all power conditions for incandescent bulbs and at the same purchse cost as incandescents before mandating my choices.
There are many GOOD reasons to commit suicide if you don't care about religious taboos designed to ensure maximum numbers of desert tribesmen at all cost.
If you have an irreversible physical condition which will mentally and/or physically incapacitate you (let's not pretend there is some obligation-as-distinguished-from-choice to hope against rational hope you are an outlier) then killing yourself before that happens is a flawlessly rational choice.
If you have TBI, and there is nothing to be done about it, and its effects are worsening, that's a case for killing yourself. It's also a case for loved ones and society at large to start talking much more about WHY we live and why we may choose not to. When there is nothing to be done about a thing, the choices are how to REACT to that reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod up for use of logic!
A person killed or maimed by AI or rocks and Greek fire flung from seige engines is fucked either way.
We can construct all sorts of laws for war, but war trumps law as law requires force to enforce. If instead we work to build international relationships which are cooperative and less murdery that would accomplish a lot.
It can be done. It took a couple of World Wars but Germany, France, England and the bit players have found much better things to do than butcher each other for national glory. Such a state of affairs would have been regarded as a pipe dream no so long ago.
"Soon we will have a world with untraceable disposable handguns."
Those already exist for those who want them, and milling machines are much less expensive than metal printers.
It's worth remembering than many classic weapon designs predate computers by a very long time.
"- we could build housing for the homeless from all those containers, and completely eliminate homelessness in this country, if only we had the land to put all those containers somewhere else."
Much love for my ISO containers, but the homeless problem isn't necessarily due to a lack of "homes".
If you have "land", then the ubiquitous "single wide mobile home" is usually a better choice than the "same thing in a shipping container". By the time you turn an ISO into a lodging structure (as many firms do, check the Sea Box site for great ISO container pron) they cost more than a single-wide.
Container homes are great for DIYers with a metalworking background, and they also make hip structures for the rich. They don't necessarily save much if anything in construction costs if hiring out the work, but you wouldn't know that from the many people pimping them.
If you have a place to play and the inclination, grab one or more 40' High Cubes (standard height sucks for many reasons, and since 20-footers cost so close to 40's it's usually silly to get a 20.
I just spend the day welding a splice strip between my roofs (use industrial roof coatings BTW, NOT the vile rust-promoting shit from chain stores!) and after coating the roofs (about a grand in materials) I'll be adding a man door and removing some of the walls between them. It's shop space but I'd live in an ISO home without hesitation. If I had to pay retail for everything, I'd go ICF (insulated concrete forms) with a slab floor instead.
From a guy who was sure he wouldn't want kids, didn't have them, and has no regrets, I hear ya!
Modern fighters rely on a STEADY flow of sophisticated parts from the manufacturer and subcontractors. Many of those parts must be returned to their manufacturer for repair/overhaul/upgrades which means you must buy "some" extras if you want to fly sorties.
Many parts are so expensive you can't have a local Supply operation with more than a few. Even the US Air Force must monitor Supply stocks globally and have parts shipped from base to base or deployed location to maintain fleet readiness. This vital juggling act relies on Fedex, DHL and other carriers as well as USAF assets. Repair and overhaul of jet engines is especially critical. If you have a problem component, say in the hot section, which fails periodic inspections you need to pull and stuff engines quickly to maintain operations.
If you don't get full tech transfer with local manufacturing you can end up with a bunch of expensive "ramp decorations" like Venezuelas F16 fleet.
If it's Tesla, it's news.
Those who followed the MANY years of Ford ignition system and later cruise control switch fires might notice a double standard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/automobiles/27FORD.html?_r=0&gwh=376B79D2A392CB21E4879B859797FE30&gwt=pay
"Fordâ(TM)s response to the fires â" first refusing to acknowledge that the switches posed a fire hazard, then conducting four recalls over seven years â" angered fire victims and consumer advocates. It does not hurt their cases that Ford was accused of dragging its feet in other high-profile recalls.
âoeItâ(TM)s a cultural issue within Ford Motor Company,â said Rob Ammons, a Houston lawyer who is suing Ford on behalf of an Iowa man, Earl Mohlis, whose wife, Dolly, died after their home caught fire. The lawsuit claims the manâ(TM)s 1996 Ford F-150 pickup caught fire in the garage. The blaze spread to the house, killing Mrs. Mohlis. âoeItâ(TM)s the same exact pattern,â Mr. Ammons said. âoeYou saw it with the Pinto. You saw it with the ignition fires a decade ago. You saw it with Firestone. And you see it here.â
Outsource NASA to Musk or someone like him.
That's not a stretch. If Lockheed and General Dynamics can build aircraft, why not sub out spacecraft too?
That's why prepaid credit cards are better than debit cards if you have no regular credit card. They reduce potential damage by not being linked to your bank account. My regular card isn't paid by automatic draft either, and my PayPal account links to a small, separate bank account I keep for that purpose.
"Luxury" funds early adoption of tech when it's expensive. The cost drops later. At one time all automobiles were luxury purchases.
A computer user above all should understand how that works.
Customers whose purchases make high performance video cards profitable to develop come to mind as examples.
Check for forums, including propane conversion forums as many posters there have NG experience. You may be able to convert or have a kit installed. There are many outfits offering retrofit kits so with some searching you should be able to find something suitable. You might have to buy a vehicle that's supported, but that doesn't mean "new".
I'll eventually LP convert one of my trucks as it "sits" a lot and petrol turns to shit after absorbing water from the air, even with STA-BIL. If I can get CNG conveniently I may run that too. Of course older vehicles which had carbs are the simplest to convert and Impco has been making parts for that for decades.
You could also put a compressor in your garage and have an accumulator tank. Fill it, then you can immediately fill your car from it. COTS fittings so no problem.
I would NOT put a compressor in a garage. No fucking way. Please don't do that. I have many years handling welding gases etc and all my flammable gas storage, even little LP cylinders, lives outside my dwelling.
Leaks happen with any gas handling system. It's cheap enough to put that stuff on a skid (local fab shop can make one unless you are into some basic cutting and welding) in your back yard and cover that with a benign-looking and well vented shed (with proper placards for first responders!) and be safe. Running a mains-pressure (low for good reason) line from your home service to the compressor area would be far safer.
"It seems we're getting closer to replacing paper once and for all."
Mod up "Funny".
I was born in and live in the US and am in my fifties. The anti-union indoctrination is by mass media which are the real groomers of public opinion, not schools or Hollywood.
When I was growing up there was much more pro-union sentiment than today. The shift to the Right by the two US political parties has much to do with the change. It's popular now to blame unions for the collapse of incompetently run businesses such as the old auto and steel industries.
The South especially is anti-union. I live not far from the Enersys plant which closed as a famous act of union busting but is kept in use, IMO to avoid having to clean up the site. The media here are anti-union and they shape public opinion through repetition.
This sort of conduct was and is unfortunately considered acceptable and does not meet with the level of public opposition required to stop it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/national/14union.html?pagewanted=print&position=&_r=0
"I can tell you one thing, the idea of downloading an ISO and burning it just disappears."
I downloaded plenty of .isos while on dialup. (The first was Corel Linux, it's been a while....)
Start download manager in the morning, leave for work, perhaps stop then resume the next day if I wanted to surf in the evenings.
Not worse than awaiting a very slow and interrupted torrent today.
NG engines are easy to do and well understood, but the infrastructure issue means it's a fleet-use only item.
Folks who work with NG generators report very long life and low wear. If I had a convenient source of CNG I'd convert at least one of my trucks to bi-fuel as "gas and gasoline" systems can co-exist. Ford is going to offer a CNG option on the extremely successful F-150. (That would make a great option for a work truck since CNG can be used to run cutting torches, generators, and so forth. Standard hardware could easily connect them.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2013/07/31/ford-f-150-to-get-natural-gas-engine-option/
Business is war, not a matter of "gratitude" because employment isn't a "gift".
Collective bargaining is the only way otherwise valueless workers have leverage. One ant is nothing, but an army of ants is very different.
Americans are carefully indoctrinated nowadays to lick corporate boots, no surprise since business owns the US. Mistakes by unions (who BTW were FORCED to get in bed with the Mob back when business utterly owned the politicians and the cops leaving them zero alternative) certainly hurt them, but that in no way invalidates the utility of collective bargaining. Some of us bothered to read more labor history than is taught in school. I suggest that to others so you can draw your own conclusions.
Workers are not the enemy, business is not the enemy, but to have an equitable relationship to BARGAIN each must have power. The only way workers can have power is collective bargaining unless they are specially skilled AND in short supply.
In our (real) system of economics, corporations own the government by proxy and are superior to mere "people".
We are indoctrinated to fear the government interfering in business, but not business manipulating government against us including having the government save its arse.
Business is war, so if you want to deal with business, act coldly and without compassion because amoral business has none for you.
That's why contracts and agreements should be very, very carefully drafted.
"million of American children ARE STARVING THIS WINTER"
Citation needed, and post with your nick, bitch.
I do and don't care who I piss off.
This is why I smile and torrent whatever I like. If that option goes away, back to sneakernet which worked nicely in the analog tape days before the intarwebs.
The masters have no moral obligation to me in their own eyes, so I consider none whatever to them.
In our avionics shop one prankster would set (after hooking up a concealed tweeter) the audio oscillator just above the range of normal hearing and enjoy the reactions from those who still had some of their high freq sensitivity left.
His other trick was telling noobs the black plastic urinal cup on OV-10 Broncos was an "auxiliary interphone" and having them speak into it while listening for side tone.
"Most liberals don't seem to have much interest in what people in those areas think, other than making quips like that one: "We have a very very very stupid population""
Work in the education system in rural Red States and you'll KNOW they have a VSP. What's cruel is that VSP infects its children who are thereby made education-averse.
Total expropriation requires killing all who resist and taking their property by force, so that's been done.
The end result of building those mechanisms for expropriation is that they redirect the path to personal security and self-advancement from capitalist property acquisition to outright power aquisition. They also require exceptionally ruthless people (yes, kids, worse than CEOs) so that is who rises to power after Communist revolts. The Bolshevik is better adapted for survival than the Menshevik so they win.
In the moral context of a Communist takeover it's fine to be at the leading edge, a Commissar or NKVD man or whatever. Pacifists etc can be shot and need not be debated because the mechanism for takeover is already in place. Peaceful resistance doesn't work against Serious People. If an Aung San Suu Kyi pops up, Serious People shoot them before they gain traction.
Marks and Engels were theorists unburdened by having to make their ideas work in practice (those ideas can't scale), but their theory is found delectable where Capitalism is allowed to go UNMODERATED by Socialism.
Moderate Socialism, as jobs are destroyed by advancing technology, is more logical and reasonable by far than Communism or (unmoderated) Capitalism.
Unfortunately extremes appeal to simpletons looking for solutions.
The poor in the US are ignorant, therefore deeply religious, therefore groomed to submit to fear and authority.
Before modding this down, consider who votes for the Tea Party, and who FUNDS the Tea Party.
China needs a benchmark and this is one. That simple.
So is the responsible politician.
Give me reliable LEDs which are a form and fit and RELIABILITY replacement under all power conditions for incandescent bulbs and at the same purchse cost as incandescents before mandating my choices.
THEN I'll gleefully be rid of them.
There are many GOOD reasons to commit suicide if you don't care about religious taboos designed to ensure maximum numbers of desert tribesmen at all cost.
If you have an irreversible physical condition which will mentally and/or physically incapacitate you (let's not pretend there is some obligation-as-distinguished-from-choice to hope against rational hope you are an outlier) then killing yourself before that happens is a flawlessly rational choice.
If you have TBI, and there is nothing to be done about it, and its effects are worsening, that's a case for killing yourself. It's also a case for loved ones and society at large to start talking much more about WHY we live and why we may choose not to. When there is nothing to be done about a thing, the choices are how to REACT to that reality.