The classic example of this is Lemelson and his many machine vision patents. Typically he would file a vague patent application and then over decades keep it open by amending it to reflect new technologies and applications. When the technology was established in the business world, he would let the patent finally be issued and try to collect royalties. This was possible due to a legal loophole in the patent process where the patent clock did not begin until the patent was actually granted. Luckily some companies are finally fighting his 'submarine' patents. You can find more information here.
All these idiotic standards movements have done is make sure children spend all their time preparing themselves for tests. Of course they do better at the tests, but they don't learn anything else.
There's nothing wrong with testing, and a well designed test is in fact a pretty reliable indicator of someone's knowledge in a subject. It would be hard to imagine a halfway decent stanardized algebra test that wouldn't require at least learning some basic algebra skills in order to do well on it. Algebra isn't that broad.
Back when I was teaching math in college I was always shocked at the number of students who had passed Algebra in high school yet were unable to solve simple equations or graph functions. I don't know what they were doing during the year they took the algebra course, but it certainly wasn't learning the skills they needed. A standardized test would have at least ensured that they got the core knowledge they would need for higher math classes.
Or you could pull an Andy Kaufman and plant an actor in the audience whose cell phone would go off right at the beginning of the show. One of the stage actors would jump down and proceed to 'beat' the hell out of the offendor until security arrives. Afterwards refuse to talk about the incident. Word would soon get around that this theatre is serious about cell phones being off.
Zimbabwe would love to accept the food. But just as Zimbabwe must feed its population, it must also protect its income and if a single farmer anywhere plants this corn it could destroy what remains of the country. If it sacrifices future earning potential in return for food then it has no chance of getting out of the third world ever.
I think not.
First let's review some facts abou the possible scenario:
The corn being sent to Zimbabwe by USAID is a mixture of corn seed from the U.S. which may contain some percentage of GM corn. Since the U.S. doesn't normally segregate GM corn, this is exactly the same seed that's available on the open market in the U.S.. Some of this corn might be planted by people, and the resulting plants could possibly cross-pollinate with local crops. If this happened, the resulting hybrid might be fertile and may carry enough of the GM markers that the patent holders might try and collect royalties (through Zimbabwean courts - lots of luck) and Europe would not buy their corn exports (assuming they're even producing any).
I'm sorry, but this is a pretty tenuous line of reasoning to condemn people to death by stavation on.
I'm also not at all convinced that Zimbabwe (i.e. Mugabe) would "love to accept" the food. The truth is that the famine serves several useful purposes for him. He can use starvation to control areas of the country hostile to him. He also gets a lot of no-strings-attached aid from western countries and the UN. A famine would also make it politically unfeasible for the the EU and other countries to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe no matter what Mugabe does.
The truth is that starving Zimbabweans are more useful to Mugabe than fed ones are.
But wheat is, and it could become supplanted by non-fertile corn if it's the only seed available...
Actually wheat was developed from natural grasses in the middle east and asia minor regions. Central africa never had very good native sources of carbohydrates which is one reason that large populations and major cities didn't occur there until recently.
Besides they're in a famine which means that all their crops currently are being supplanted by nothing. Worrying that non-fertile corn will disrupt the natural crop mixture is sort of like worrying that giving a life preserver to a drowning man will aggravate his allergies. It's not that it is not a valid concern, but it's swamped by much, much, much more immediate concerns.
The problem here is not about patents - it's about Europe's refusal to import genetically modified food.
The real problem is that Zimbabwe is currently run by an incompetent kleptocrat. For the last few decades all modern famines have been man-made, in that sufficient food was available to feed the starving populations but was prevented from reaching them for political reasons q.v. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, etc..
The current food crisis in Zimbabwe is especially ironic given that it has some of the most fertile land in Africa, and used to be known as the breadbasket of the continent. It takes a unique kind of government to run a country like that into the ground. Turning down free food as people in the country starve due to IMO purely hypothetical concerns about contamination would seem to be the height of poor governance.
Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts
on
Copyright as Cudgel
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· Score: 1
I didn't realize John Katz was posting under a pseudonym nowadays.
Given that the locals describe Boulder as a dead spot (for WWV I assume), case B seems more likely. Looking on a map, Boulder is about 50 miles from Fort Collins. So it's certainly plausible that the ground wave is being screened off by local mountains and that due to the take off angle of their antenna, the first ionospheric bounce is coming down somewhere beyond a 50 mile radius. Having a few dead spots in central Colorado is a small price to pay if it gives them better domestic (and worldwide) coverage.
Re:Its cool, its cool unless dumbasses control it
on
Spy Fly
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
But why should intelligent enlightened people create technologies which dumbass hawks in government will use irresponsibly, to spy on people, harrass, control, and kill people with?
Spying on, harassing, controlling, and killing people is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on who it's been done to e.g. Al Quaeda, Nazis.
Oh and lets not forget it will eventually spread to people like bin laden, and the next hitler.
Unfortunately it probably will eventually regardless of what the U.S. does. After all there are other countries in the world capable of developing new technologies.
Look, geeks in slashdot may be intelligent enough to handle these technologies, but the average idiot, would destroy the world with it.
Care to be more condescending and elitist. Somehow the world has survived through 50+ years of the Cold War and associated nuclear arms race despite the non-existence of Slashdot and the fact that most leaders were not geek-types.
Governments invest hundreds of billions in weapons, but next to nothing in education, the US government spends less than japan in educating the masses yet spends 350-400 billion on its military.
Gee, where to start with this.
First of all the U.S. is a very wealthy nation - we can afford guns, butter, AND a health plan for the elderly. The U.S. spends a lot on defense and a lot on education. In fact I believe the per pupil expenditure in the U.S. is greater than most western countries. It's also not clear that education spending beyond a certain level even correlates with better educational achievement. Here in the U.S. it's generally true that the school districts that spend the most per student typically have the worst academic performance.
Secondly, choosing to spend more on defense is not as irrational as you make it sound. After all the consequences of having a deficient military defense include the deaths of millions of fellow citizens and the destruction of your country. Compared to this, the price of having a less than perfect educational system seems very minor.
Furthermore, U.S. defense spending also has beneficial effects for the world at large. For instance the U.S. military pretty much guarantees the Freedom of the Seas for the rest of the world and keeps piracy to a minimum. Global trade could not exist without this quiet protection. It also has a dampening effect on regional rivalries and allows other countries (such as Japan) to get by with minimal defense spending since they're under the U.S. protection umbrella.
Terrorism is caused by ignorance, Hate is caused by ignorance, and both of these are usually results of poor education, lack of knowledge, low intelligence, etc.
Wrong. Terrorism (and hate) may have several causes, but it's doubtful that ignorance and lack of education is among them. After all most of the senior leadership of Al Queda is well educated and familiar with western society. Bin Laden himself actually lived in Europe for a while, and several of the 9/11 hijackers had advanced degrees and had lived in the U.S. and Europe for years. They may hate the U.S. (and western society in general) but it's certainly not because they're ignorant of it or uneducated in general. Sometimes it's intimate familiarity that breeds the most murdurous kind of hate - e.g. Hutus/Tutsis in Rwanda, Serbs/Croats/Bosnians in Yugoslavia.
Knowledge and education are great things, but they're no panacea for all human woes.
He committed a crime while in the presence of a public official. It DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER what his "intent" was.
Actually for many crimes having a criminal intent is required to be convicted for the crime. In this case, it could be argued that if the county official that was present knew that Mr. Puffer was going to break into the system and didn't object, that Mr. Puffer had de facto permission to test the security.
In any case he's being charged for an intrusion on Mar. 8th, not the demonstration on Mar. 18th.
The purpose of your war in Afghanistan was meant to oust the Taliban and disrupt Al Quaida, only it's ended up killing more innocent civilians than were murdered on Sept 11th.
First of all, this is factually untrue. Marc Herold's civilian casualty figures have been widely debunked. I'll just point to one such article - here.
Even if these numbers were correct, you're falling into the fallacy that war is some kind of sporting event where civilian casualties are moral points for the opposition. By this logic, the U.S. should have ceased fighting the Japanese as soon the number of Japanese civilians killed exceeded the number of the American civilian casualties at Pearl Harbor. As if national security and continuing military threats have nothing to do with war.
p.s. The Taliban have been ousted and Al Quaeda has been disrupted.
US officials last year arrested a Russian hacker, apparently because he broke an American law in Russia.
No, it was because he broke an American law in America by selling his product through a U.S. distributor. In some countries it's not against the law to make and sell opium. However if you were to sell it in the U.S. through a distributor, you would be breaking U.S. law and could expect to be arrested if you ever stepped foot in the U.S.. Skylarov's situation is basically similar to the opium example.
The Court's aim is not to get between relatively petty arguments between the standards of two different countries. Instead, it's designed to prosecute those who commit serious crimes such as genocide in cases where countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute the criminals.
That may be the Court's aim, but in practice given the way it's set up and the judges are appointed, it's likely to become just as politicized as the UN and the International Olympic Committee. Currently the Sudan, Uganda, and Syria (!) are members of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights while the U.S. is not. Yep, just the countries we can count on to get to the bottom of any human rights abuses.
However, the Court only steps in when a citizen of a country is not properly prosecuted by their home country.
True, but the key point is that the Court gets to decide whether someone has been properly prosecuted - not the country involved. Furthermore the Court claims jurisdiction over countries that have never signed or ratified the ICC treaty - something unprecedented in international relations.
The US, in effect, used legal pretense to abduct a visiting foreign national for breaking our laws while living and and a citizen of another country.
It's called being arrested and it happens everyday to citizens and non-citizens alike. It's legal and there are restrictions on how loing someone can be detained without being formally charged and getting access to an attorney. Furthermore Skylarov was not 'abducted' - he came to the U.S. on his own accord to attend a conference. His company was doing business in the U.S. through a distributor and he was also an officer of the company. Now I think the whole Skylarov affair is a unjust travesty, but as far as I can tell it's all being handled legally. It's just that Adobe is taking advantage of a very bad law.
If another country, say Iran, had imprisoned a US citizen for speaking his mind while living in the US, the Marine Corps battle flag would be flying over the rubble of Teheran by now.
You might want to check out what happened to this guy who was imprisoned in Iran for teaching dancing in the U.S.. It's not clear if he was a U.S. citizen or just a permanent resident, but so far no Marine Corp flag over the rubble of Teheran.
As, then, will this concept of having your travel restricted by exercising your (US) rights.
Well no one is preventing you from travelling where ever you want to, but it may not be 'prudent' to travel to certain countries. For example, if you've ever been a citizen of China, you might want to think twice before criticizing the Chinese government here in the U.S., that is, if you ever want to visit there (and leave) in the future.
Seriously, your friend should just quit and get a different job. The end results will be the same either way; he'll no longer be working at Starbucks and so he won't have to listen to their crappy music anymore.
Yeah, but sometimes the hack is the fun part. Check out what this guy has done at Java City. Eventually management did catch on, but they had a sense of humor and admired his wit.
However, apart from the story there is no corroborating evidence to back it up. Right?
Nope. But the details and real world factors in the story he describes are enough to make it plausible that it (or something close to it) really did happen. Certainly it's more credible than the tooth fairy or santa claus which could never exist in the real world.
If you choose not to believe the story, simply view as a very entertaining piece of fiction about a kid in the desert, living next to a junkyard, with colorful friends who comes across a rocket motor.
4) Everyone in Slashdot knows the story and knows that it is an urban legend (U) for untrue.
Or is it?
This guy makes a strong case that he helped spark the story by crashing a empty chevy into a mine entrance back in 1978. They did use a JATO unit but the car actually ran on an old railroad line spur. Personally I tend to believe him.
You're referring to the Project Manhigh program run by the Air Force back in the late fifties. In 1960 Captain Joseph Kittinger jumped from a balloon at 102,800 feet. During the fall he actually exceeded the speed of sound (estimated speed 714 mph). Later he was shot down in Vietnam and spent a year in solitary confinement. There was a good article on Manhigh a couple of years back in National Geographic with some amazing pictures taken automatically as he jumped from the gondola. Unfortunately the only one I could find on the web is this one.
Yep, those early MiGs that outperformed our own fighters were still using vacuum tubes, a technology ten years out of date; our fighter electronics had long been transistor based.
However, vacuum tubes are highly resistant to the effects of a nuclear EMP which would have been a big concern in the 60's. The irony is that had there been a nuclear exchange the tube-based MIGs would likely have still been flyable while the 'better' American planes would have had their electronics fried.
So, given the inclination and funds, I could, as an american, obtain things like rocket launchers, and RPGs?
What's the stance in the U.S. on privately owned nuclear ICBM's?
Privately owned ICBMs are probably forbidden as unlicensed destructive devices. However, you could build your own breeder reactor as one enterprising teenager did in Detroit in 1995. As far as I could tell from the article having your own reactor per se is not illegal. He got into trouble for contaminating the neighborhood and not handling the waste properly. Kids, definitely do not try this at home or in the backyard.
Yup, you are right. There is no such thing as a scripting language in the land of Windows.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. In case you're serious, I'd like to point out the following: 1) Windows has VbScript built in. This plus WMI allows you to do many things. If the application you want to use has a CLI, your problem may already be solved. 2) Perl and TCL are available for windows as well. 3) There are many keyboard/mouse macro recording utilities available (Aldo's Macro Recorder for example).
And this is just a small sample of what's available.
Slashdot Mirror
A guy could have a pretty good time in Vegas with that kit.
The classic example of this is Lemelson and his many machine vision patents. Typically he would file a vague patent application and then over decades keep it open by amending it to reflect new technologies and applications. When the technology was established in the business world, he would let the patent finally be issued and try to collect royalties. This was possible due to a legal loophole in the patent process where the patent clock did not begin until the patent was actually granted. Luckily some companies are finally fighting his 'submarine' patents. You can find more information here.
All these idiotic standards movements have done is make sure children spend all their time preparing themselves for tests. Of course they do better at the tests, but they don't learn anything else.
There's nothing wrong with testing, and a well designed test is in fact a pretty reliable indicator of someone's knowledge in a subject. It would be hard to imagine a halfway decent stanardized algebra test that wouldn't require at least learning some basic algebra skills in order to do well on it. Algebra isn't that broad.
Back when I was teaching math in college I was always shocked at the number of students who had passed Algebra in high school yet were unable to solve simple equations or graph functions. I don't know what they were doing during the year they took the algebra course, but it certainly wasn't learning the skills they needed. A standardized test would have at least ensured that they got the core knowledge they would need for higher math classes.
Or you could pull an Andy Kaufman and plant an actor in the audience whose cell phone would go off right at the beginning of the show. One of the stage actors would jump down and proceed to 'beat' the hell out of the offendor until security arrives. Afterwards refuse to talk about the incident. Word would soon get around that this theatre is serious about cell phones being off.
Zimbabwe would love to accept the food. But just as Zimbabwe must feed its population, it must also protect its income and if a single farmer anywhere plants this corn it could destroy what remains of the country. If it sacrifices future earning potential in return for food then it has no chance of getting out of the third world ever.
I think not.
First let's review some facts abou the possible scenario:
The corn being sent to Zimbabwe by USAID is a mixture of corn seed from the U.S. which may contain some percentage of GM corn. Since the U.S. doesn't normally segregate GM corn, this is exactly the same seed that's available on the open market in the U.S.. Some of this corn might be planted by people, and the resulting plants could possibly cross-pollinate with local crops. If this happened, the resulting hybrid might be fertile and may carry enough of the GM markers that the patent holders might try and collect royalties (through Zimbabwean courts - lots of luck) and Europe would not buy their corn exports (assuming they're even producing any).
I'm sorry, but this is a pretty tenuous line of reasoning to condemn people to death by stavation on.
I'm also not at all convinced that Zimbabwe (i.e. Mugabe) would "love to accept" the food. The truth is that the famine serves several useful purposes for him. He can use starvation to control areas of the country hostile to him. He also gets a lot of no-strings-attached aid from western countries and the UN. A famine would also make it politically unfeasible for the the EU and other countries to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe no matter what Mugabe does.
The truth is that starving Zimbabweans are more useful to Mugabe than fed ones are.
But wheat is, and it could become supplanted by non-fertile corn if it's the only seed available...
Actually wheat was developed from natural grasses in the middle east and asia minor regions. Central africa never had very good native sources of carbohydrates which is one reason that large populations and major cities didn't occur there until recently.
Besides they're in a famine which means that all their crops currently are being supplanted by nothing. Worrying that non-fertile corn will disrupt the natural crop mixture is sort of like worrying that giving a life preserver to a drowning man will aggravate his allergies. It's not that it is not a valid concern, but it's swamped by much, much, much more immediate concerns.
So the G7/8 governments conspire to destroy a native crop in an African country at the behest of Western-world-agri-business-interests.
Corn is not a native crop of Africa. It was developed in central america through selective breeding over several thousand years.
The problem here is not about patents - it's about Europe's refusal to import genetically modified food.
The real problem is that Zimbabwe is currently run by an incompetent kleptocrat. For the last few decades all modern famines have been man-made, in that sufficient food was available to feed the starving populations but was prevented from reaching them for political reasons q.v. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, etc..
The current food crisis in Zimbabwe is especially ironic given that it has some of the most fertile land in Africa, and used to be known as the breadbasket of the continent. It takes a unique kind of government to run a country like that into the ground. Turning down free food as people in the country starve due to IMO purely hypothetical concerns about contamination would seem to be the height of poor governance.
I didn't realize John Katz was posting under a pseudonym nowadays.
Am I a rare mosquito-human hybrid that is set to take over the world...
Yep, from now on you're known as MosquitoBoy. Now you need a costume to match your superpowers.
Given that the locals describe Boulder as a dead spot (for WWV I assume), case B seems more likely.
Looking on a map, Boulder is about 50 miles from Fort Collins. So it's certainly plausible that the ground wave is being screened off by local mountains and that due to the take off angle of their antenna, the first ionospheric bounce is coming down somewhere beyond a 50 mile radius. Having a few dead spots in central Colorado is a small price to pay if it gives them better domestic (and worldwide) coverage.
But why should intelligent enlightened people create technologies which dumbass hawks in government will use irresponsibly, to spy on people, harrass, control, and kill people with?
Spying on, harassing, controlling, and killing people is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on who it's been done to e.g. Al Quaeda, Nazis.
Oh and lets not forget it will eventually spread to people like bin laden, and the next hitler.
Unfortunately it probably will eventually regardless of what the U.S. does. After all there are other countries in the world capable of developing new technologies.
Look, geeks in slashdot may be intelligent enough to handle these technologies, but the average idiot, would destroy the world with it.
Care to be more condescending and elitist. Somehow the world has survived through 50+ years of the Cold War and associated nuclear arms race despite the non-existence of Slashdot and the fact that most leaders were not geek-types.
Governments invest hundreds of billions in weapons, but next to nothing in education, the US government spends less than japan in educating the masses yet spends 350-400 billion on its military.
Gee, where to start with this.
First of all the U.S. is a very wealthy nation - we can afford guns, butter, AND a health plan for the elderly. The U.S. spends a lot on defense and a lot on education. In fact I believe the per pupil expenditure in the U.S. is greater than most western countries. It's also not clear that education spending beyond a certain level even correlates with better educational achievement. Here in the U.S. it's generally true that the school districts that spend the most per student typically have the worst academic performance.
Secondly, choosing to spend more on defense is not as irrational as you make it sound. After all the consequences of having a deficient military defense include the deaths of millions of fellow citizens and the destruction of your country. Compared to this, the price of having a less than perfect educational system seems very minor.
Furthermore, U.S. defense spending also has beneficial effects for the world at large. For instance the U.S. military pretty much guarantees the Freedom of the Seas for the rest of the world and keeps piracy to a minimum. Global trade could not exist without this quiet protection. It also has a dampening effect on regional rivalries and allows other countries (such as Japan) to get by with minimal defense spending since they're under the U.S. protection umbrella.
Terrorism is caused by ignorance, Hate is caused by ignorance, and both of these are usually results of poor education, lack of knowledge, low intelligence, etc.
Wrong. Terrorism (and hate) may have several causes, but it's doubtful that ignorance and lack of education is among them. After all most of the senior leadership of Al Queda is well educated and familiar with western society. Bin Laden himself actually lived in Europe for a while, and several of the 9/11 hijackers had advanced degrees and had lived in the U.S. and Europe for years. They may hate the U.S. (and western society in general) but it's certainly not because they're ignorant of it or uneducated in general. Sometimes it's intimate familiarity that breeds the most murdurous kind of hate - e.g. Hutus/Tutsis in Rwanda, Serbs/Croats/Bosnians in Yugoslavia.
Knowledge and education are great things, but they're no panacea for all human woes.
He committed a crime while in the presence of a public official. It DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER what his "intent" was.
Actually for many crimes having a criminal intent is required to be convicted for the crime. In this case, it could be argued that if the county official that was present knew that Mr. Puffer was going to break into the system and didn't object, that Mr. Puffer had de facto permission to test the security.
In any case he's being charged for an intrusion on Mar. 8th, not the demonstration on Mar. 18th.
The purpose of your war in Afghanistan was meant to oust the Taliban and disrupt Al Quaida, only it's ended up killing more innocent civilians than were murdered on Sept 11th.
First of all, this is factually untrue. Marc Herold's civilian casualty figures have been widely debunked. I'll just point to one such article - here.
Even if these numbers were correct, you're falling into the fallacy that war is some kind of sporting event where civilian casualties are moral points for the opposition. By this logic, the U.S. should have ceased fighting the Japanese as soon the number of Japanese civilians killed exceeded the number of the American civilian casualties at Pearl Harbor. As if national security and continuing military threats have nothing to do with war.
p.s. The Taliban have been ousted and Al Quaeda has been disrupted.
And on a related note Slashdot poster continuously notes that he doesn't own a televison.
US officials last year arrested a Russian hacker, apparently because he broke an American law in Russia.
No, it was because he broke an American law in America by selling his product through a U.S. distributor. In some countries it's not against the law to make and sell opium. However if you were to sell it in the U.S. through a distributor, you would be breaking U.S. law and could expect to be arrested if you ever stepped foot in the U.S.. Skylarov's situation is basically similar to the opium example.
And yeah, the DMCA (and Adobe) suck.
The Court's aim is not to get between relatively petty arguments between the standards of two different countries. Instead, it's designed to prosecute those who commit serious crimes such as genocide in cases where countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute the criminals.
That may be the Court's aim, but in practice given the way it's set up and the judges are appointed, it's likely to become just as politicized as the UN and the International Olympic Committee. Currently the Sudan, Uganda, and Syria (!) are members of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights while the U.S. is not. Yep, just the countries we can count on to get to the bottom of any human rights abuses.
However, the Court only steps in when a citizen of a country is not properly prosecuted by their home country.
True, but the key point is that the Court gets to decide whether someone has been properly prosecuted - not the country involved. Furthermore the Court claims jurisdiction over countries that have never signed or ratified the ICC treaty - something unprecedented in international relations.
The US, in effect, used legal pretense to abduct a visiting foreign national for breaking our laws while living and and a citizen of another country.
It's called being arrested and it happens everyday to citizens and non-citizens alike. It's legal and there are restrictions on how loing someone can be detained without being formally charged and getting access to an attorney. Furthermore Skylarov was not 'abducted' - he came to the U.S. on his own accord to attend a conference. His company was doing business in the U.S. through a distributor and he was also an officer of the company. Now I think the whole Skylarov affair is a unjust travesty, but as far as I can tell it's all being handled legally. It's just that Adobe is taking advantage of a very bad law.
If another country, say Iran, had imprisoned a US citizen for speaking his mind while living in the US, the Marine Corps battle flag would be flying over the rubble of Teheran by now.
You might want to check out what happened to this guy who was imprisoned in Iran for teaching dancing in the U.S.. It's not clear if he was a U.S. citizen or just a permanent resident, but so far no Marine Corp flag over the rubble of Teheran.
As, then, will this concept of having your travel restricted by exercising your (US) rights.
Well no one is preventing you from travelling where ever you want to, but it may not be 'prudent' to travel to certain countries. For example, if you've ever been a citizen of China, you might want to think twice before criticizing the Chinese government here in the U.S., that is, if you ever want to visit there (and leave) in the future.
Seriously, your friend should just quit and get a different job. The end results will be the same either way; he'll no longer be working at Starbucks and so he won't have to listen to their crappy music anymore.
Yeah, but sometimes the hack is the fun part. Check out what this guy has done at Java City. Eventually management did catch on, but they had a sense of humor and admired his wit.
However, apart from the story there is no corroborating evidence to back it up. Right?
Nope. But the details and real world factors in the story he describes are enough to make it plausible that it (or something close to it) really did happen. Certainly it's more credible than the tooth fairy or santa claus which could never exist in the real world.
If you choose not to believe the story, simply view as a very entertaining piece of fiction about a kid in the desert, living next to a junkyard, with colorful friends who comes across a rocket motor.
4) Everyone in Slashdot knows the story and knows that it is an urban legend (U) for untrue.
Or is it?
This guy makes a strong case that he helped spark the story by crashing a empty chevy into a mine entrance back in 1978. They did use a JATO unit but the car actually ran on an old railroad line spur. Personally I tend to believe him.
You're referring to the Project Manhigh program run by the Air Force back in the late fifties. In 1960 Captain Joseph Kittinger jumped from a balloon at 102,800 feet. During the fall he actually exceeded the speed of sound (estimated speed 714 mph). Later he was shot down in Vietnam and spent a year in solitary confinement. There was a good article on Manhigh a couple of years back in National Geographic with some amazing pictures taken automatically as he jumped from the gondola. Unfortunately the only one I could find on the web is this one.
Yep, those early MiGs that outperformed our own fighters were still using vacuum tubes, a technology ten years out of date; our fighter electronics had long been transistor based.
However, vacuum tubes are highly resistant to the effects of a nuclear EMP which would have been a big concern in the 60's. The irony is that had there been a nuclear exchange the tube-based MIGs would likely have still been flyable while the 'better' American planes would have had their electronics fried.
So, given the inclination and funds, I could, as an american, obtain things like rocket launchers, and RPGs?
What's the stance in the U.S. on privately owned nuclear ICBM's?
Privately owned ICBMs are probably forbidden as unlicensed destructive devices. However, you could build your own breeder reactor as one enterprising teenager did in Detroit in 1995. As far as I could tell from the article having your own reactor per se is not illegal. He got into trouble for contaminating the neighborhood and not handling the waste properly. Kids, definitely do not try this at home or in the backyard.
Yup, you are right. There is no such thing as a scripting language in the land of Windows.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. In case you're serious, I'd like to point out the following:
1) Windows has VbScript built in. This plus WMI allows you to do many things. If the application you want to use has a CLI, your problem may already be solved.
2) Perl and TCL are available for windows as well.
3) There are many keyboard/mouse macro recording utilities available (Aldo's Macro Recorder for example).
And this is just a small sample of what's available.