If I had any intention of having children, I would consider the option of homeschooling them. As a scientist, it would be to instill the basis of clear thinking: the scientific method. To instill some independence: question authority. And to avoid ant-science: no dumbed-down evolution, just the straight facts and no bible crap thrown in as a bone to the religious wingnuts.
I would venture that, in fact, most homeschooler parents ARE religious wingnuts who have the ever-so-worshiped Mother at Home while daddy makes the bacon. They get to teach reading (the bible), writing (scripture), and arithmetic (calculating from the bible that the world is 10,000 years old) and avoid real science and literature (Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, etc). That is not to say that they are ALL that way, but I would venture that MOST are so.
What you propose is worse than the current situation. You wish to turn public schools into mere vocational training schools where the students come out more ignorant and pliable than when they went in.
LIBERAL education is more important than tech training of any kind. Students should be taught the scientific method in a way that it can apply to most everything else in life. They should be taught how to think and to question.
Very few kids really know what they want to be, fewer still actually become what they wanted when they were children or adolescents. Hell, I wanted to be a racecar driver or an astronaut (I grew up during the moon landings). Instead, I became a military officer, then a molecular biologist.
You not only seek to increase general ignorance. "Oh, don't teach about our common history, about the founding of the nation, about the good and the bad of our past, about civic responsibility, about the great thinkers of Western Civ, just teach kids how to be drones."
Real nice. Go whole hog into turning kids into wage slaves and one-thought idiots.
But those who are under the purview of secret laws themselves know what those laws are. They have to in order to be able to properly function.
I have a security clearance, by the way, and not some cheesy little secret clearance. At no point ever was I (nor anyone else I have worked with) informed of any "special laws" that apply. The only rules/laws we need to know about is that it is illegal to divulge classified material. We are also instructed (but not by law) to not divulge related, non-classified information because of the possibility of a bad actor being able to piece together a bunch of non-classified tidbits about classified X and figuring out what classified X actually is.
No secret laws, just laws that deal with secrets. It's good enough for nuke weapon handling, it's more than good enough for terrorist or "homeland security" crap (non-secret laws, that is).
Was your friend guilty of WWB? Perhaps SWB? If your friend happens to be, errm..., of the black persuasion then the mystery is solved. He was either walking while black or shopping while black or *anything* while black. This is particularly true if you are a Florida black.
If he isn't black, then perhaps he was scruffy looking in an uptight, rightwing, nutbag religious town.
NOT being a military brat, but a bona-fide military member, I do not see it as OK and normal that I should have to show ID to get around anywhere off-base.
This country (USA) is NOT a military base, in fact, I do believe that my willingness to join and fight in the military has the purpose, all told, to PREVENT such an ocurrence. If it is, in fact, the case that the entire USA has now become a military base (under the Chimp), then I have failed at my job and it is time to leave the service and hitch up with the opposition to bring back my country.
Showing your papers doesn't make your plane ride safer. That is handled by metal detectors and x-raying or chem-sniffing luggage and carry-on. Your papers are irrelevant.
This country doesn't require papers be shown at the exits/entries to each city, at the borders of each state, and only barely requires the same at the country's borders. There is NO need to show ID for a plane ride anymore than there is to ride in a car or bus. All that matters is that you have a paid-for ticket or equivalent. Beyond that, your right to anonymous in-country travel is more important than any airline's desire to make sure you are reselling your ticket (none of their business - law of first sale takes effect). It is trying to prevent you from reselling your ticket that the airlines are interested in and that's it. They know that your papers have no way of preventing a hijacking.
if this actually reaches the PCs (or what passes for PCs in distant future when this might be released) is that you'll be able to spot the losers right off the bat. They're the poor fools who took up a Security Officer character.
They're destined to die within their first hour of play.
You are hitting him up for spelling which is distinct from grammar.
Spellcheckers are also often a bane. My stepdaughter cannot spell to save her life and I blame it, to a large extent, on spellcheckers. Students write papers for school and rely upon the grammar and spellchecker components of wordprocessors instead of FIRST developing a basic understanding of the language and learning to spell.
Both tools should be an aid, something like a walking stick. Instead, too many use them as a wheelchair.
There is a very simple reason that doc compatibility fails between versions of Word, and it is very simple. It merely serves as a mechanism for FORCE users to pay again to "upgrade" to the latest doc format. Ultimately, that is what you are "upgrading". You are not getting a better wordprocessor when you go from word97 to word2000, not really. You are merely obtaining compatibility with the default doc format of word2000.
New computers come with doze preinstalled, often with word as well. More and more new computers are bought to replace older computers. Soon, many people have new versions of the doc format user/generator (word) and it is designed to not play well with old versions. It ultimately is easier for those holding back to upgrade to the latest doc format user/generator so that when they email you memos in doc format, you can open them up without a hitch rather than having to email them back and requesting that they do a special save and send for you in a previous doc format.
It is ONLY a ploy to drive unnecessary upgrading. Nothing more.
The magic moment is simply this: one moment and for eternity, by definition (so to speak), there was nothing, then BANG! Something.
This something (spacetime) then expanded at well over the speed of light (to make it fit with what is observed today), slowed down, and now is speeding up again.
Brane world theory allows for big bangs, that, incidently, to not originate from a point source, and expands without and initial inflationary period (no observational evidence to say it happened, just fitting current obvious data to some pre-historic magic time so that the point source big bang model will work) but DOES bring on a later inflationary period, which we are in now (and it IS observable).
I'll take that over mere backing in ideas to make a mathematical idea work over a mathematical idea that just so happens to match, as a matter of course, what we observe today.
Feeling fear is a prerequisite for cowardice but it is also a prequisite for bravery. Without fear, one cannot be brave, just insane or stupidly reckless. Bravery is feeling fear and yet doing what must be done IN SPITE of fear.
Thus, I would have to conclude that those with a heightened sense of empathy and fear are more disposed towards true bravery while those without these attributes are more in line with recklessness and coldness. Interestingly, this seems to describe the difference pretty completely between conservatives and liberals/progressives. The latter feels empathy for those around them, both human and nonhuman and seeks to minimize their pain and fear. They also experience fear but nonetheless are often able to dig up true bravery and stand against the cold and unfeeling robotons (conservatives) regardless of personal consequences.
Re:Those are 'prior art' pictures, to show contras
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Uhmmm...I haven't used it for a while but I believe that Enlightenment shows a very clear representation of exactly what is on different desktops. It isn't simply giving you a representation of a desktop with tiny little app window representations on it, it is giving you a realistic snapshot of the other desktops with the actual app windows displayed.
As I recall, Brane theory is consistent with all cosmological observations AND eliminates the need for expansion (as well as a need for a beginning of time). I'll take Brane over Inflation for its lack of magic moments any day.
It's not just the eclipse oddity that is in need of an explanation, it is the very real anomaly with Voyager acceleration, etc. Something ain't right...and the reason, I think, that many would love/hope that Einstein gets proven wrong is that it would imply more interesting mysteries and offer new physics horizons to approach. This is more interesting to think about and deal with than simply filling the last final holes to get a TOE. Once a TOE is done, it's all boring and done. This could mean that a TOE is farther off and that there is a goodly amount left to do that goes beyond merely filling a few gaps here and there.
So, for my part I hope that the anomaly IS real and that it does violate Einstein's Relativity, and that it is directly associated with the Voyager acceleration anomaly. MUCH more interesting than some mundane answer. Of course, I'll accept a mundane explanation if it really answers the questions but I PREFER an incredible explanation.
The statement is about everything people have altered to fit the particular situation. It is useful and valid to add or subtract from it to indicate the danger of allowing discrimination against, or legal attack on, any group or class due to political, racial, etc, membership. Basic human rights and civil liberties must not be allowed to pass, no matter how "minor" the errosion appears to be. The errosion continues and can easily spread to include YOU.
I hate to risk a divergent spate of crap spewing but that nonsense about "not enforcing gun laws already on the books" is poo-poo.
The same crackpots that say that are the same ones that, for some reason, resist criminal background checks for people seeking to purchase a gun. They basically WANT criminals to have easy, free, and protected access to guns (to what end?). This IS a fact because it is the ONLY explanation for resisting background checks at gun shows...HELLO!? That is a free ride for criminals to get around the background check to get some heavy duty firepower. Makes NO sense.
So OK, let's enforce the law entirely, consistently, and logically: background checks to buy a gun (ANY gun, ANYWHERE), period. How about that eh?
Nutcase. You would have all sorts of innocent bystanders shot and killed when all you really need is a safely isolated pilot compartment. Without access to the pilot compartment, the 9/11 attack wouldn't have been possible.
I honestly wish I could say the same. I barely use OOo at all for any professional papers - and I certainly don't use M$ Word, which would serve better than OOo for what I need. I use Lyx because I ultimately have to. The problem is CITATIONS! OOo has no way to handle entering citations in documents. With Word, or Wordperfect, you can use EndNote (third party software) to handle citations beautifully but not with OOo.
Lyx has the builtin ability (via bibtex) to handle citations itself or better still, you can use pybliographic which is very much as nice to use as EndNote.
If OOo developed the means to handle citations (its builtin bibliography app is CRAP and less than useless) as well as Lyx does or the way Word/Wordperfect does via Endnote, then I'd use it for virtually all my writing. Instead, the developers prefer to tweak it rather than actually improve it with real, practical, useful functions.
But...they are not fascists. Bush and his peeps are much closer to what the definition of fascism is than a bunch of hactivists. Fascism is a sick and wrong melding of corporations (industries) with government into an authoritarian form. What does that sound like? Hactivists or...the Bush Admin and the Repugnant Party?
'Course, the Dems aren't all that much removed from the corporatist crap - they all know where the money for their coffers is located.
Well, your point is valid: bullets flying on planes from "good guys" are no more a "good thing" than bullets flying around from bad guys. Bullets from either will hit/kill passengers and, more likely, pierce the hull of the aircraft. They will also puncture hydraulic lines and electrical lines, fuel tanks, etc. Aircraft hulls are THIN ALUMINUM, even on B-52s. Now, the minor problem with your example. At 10k feet, if the hull is merely punctured then not much will happen. 10k feet is low enough that, technically, the crew/passenger compartment doesn't even need to be pressurized. That requirement hits at 14k. Even at 14k a decompression isn't going to be catastrophic. When you start getting upwards of 20k then you start having a real issue with explosive decompression. Most transcontinental and international flights are moving along at better than 32k. THIS is a problem if the hull is punctured. There will be a blowout.
I would suggest rubber bullets and/or stun guns of some sort if pilots need to carry anything. Honestly, guns and airliners don't mix. Bullets would be barely scratched by their penetration through the very thin skin of an airliner.
Ah, so it is only for insurance and body ID after a crash? So...what's with all the law enforcement background checking bullshit? Why is there a need for CAPPSII if all the airline "needs" the identification information for is body ID and insurance?
Not good enough. If I want to travel anonymously for WHATEVER reason, then I should be able to trump the airlines desire to track me, and more importantly, to trump the government's or law enforcement's desire to track me. But, just to give you the viable desire to identify who is onboard (not assured since you can fake IDs), so what's up with the law enforcement crap? The background check? The comparing you to a list of POSSIBLE people of "interest"? How does that have anything to do with identifying your corpse in the very very rare instance that a plane crashes?
I'll say this a bazillion times: as long as each passenger is properly screened for weapons, then it's all good to go and it is irrelevant who you are. The plane is perfectly safe if it is filled with completely anonymous people, all of which have been screened for weapons. Beyond that, if the airlines want to keep a list to identify bodies when their pilot screws up or some mechanical problem brings the plane down, fine, but it should be entirely internal and strictly for that purpose. It should also be destroyed after the plane safely lands at its destination. Law enforcement screens and harrassment is totally unacceptable and uncalled for.
Everyone travels with ID on them (well, at least most of the time) so they can be identified that way after a wreck if they need to be. Of course, how often does a plane crash that this is such a burning issue? The BIGGER question is how does showing ID prevent a terrorist attack onboard an aircraft that simply screening each anonymous passenger for weapons doesn't do better? If passengers don't have weapons on-hand capable of damaging/taking over the aircraft, then it doesn't matter one whit who they are or what their desires are. You are covered by the weapons screen, NOT the ID check.
There are other ways to identify people than insist on there being an enforced showing of "your papers". This is the US, not Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia. We do NOT need internal passports or government permission to travel within our own frickin' country. It is not the airline's business, nor the government's business, where I travel to or whom I meet unless they have a valid reason to be suspicious of ME (rather than everyone in general). That is the way it works. They don't get to setup border crossings at each state line to check the papers of all motor vehicle passengers so they have no valid reason for the same with regards to aircraft, river barges, trains, camels, rollar skates, etc.
If they need to be on the lookout for a specific criminal individual, then they can put out an all points bulletin and have police at the various travel hubs and look for that person. You know, exactly the way they do on the ground in motor vehicles.
Because it really is indefensible and pointless. ALL that is necessary is that passengers be screened for weapons (like paperclips and nail clippers, bazookas, claymore mines, etc). After that, a persons identity is irrelevant. No hijacking will take place and no detonations will take place because the plane is full of rightfully anonymous individuals without any real dangerous weapons on their persons or available to them.
What possible need is there to make sure you are who you say you are? If you paid for your ticket (anonymously should be permitted) and you are not carrying weapons, that's all the airlines and the gov't needs to know. I/We have a flatout right to travel ANYWHERE in our own frickin country without being tracked and printed by the government or law enforcement. I applaud this man's fight and really hope he wins out in the end. If you have a right (and you do) to travel anywhere in the country in your car without having to pass through checkpoints to identify you, then the fact that you are traveling on an aircraft or train is irrelevant and needs no ID either.
and for possible answers as to why we haven't yet picked up any signals, I suggest a read of David Brin's 1982 article called: The 'Great Silence': The Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Life (a web-based version is available at: http://skew.ot.com/three/random/silence.html.
We have exchanged emails about its conclusions and I must say I haven't yet decided where I fall on my own...he suggests that the very fact that there has yet to be a single real signal detected is virtually immaterial. The REAL problem is the fact that we haven't found any evidence at all of alien colonization, directly or via robot proxies, within the solar system or on earth. No sign of unexplained discontinuity in the biological evolutionary history of earth suggesting a flushed alien toilet, no sign of mined asteroids, no sign whatsoever of any terraforming attempts on Mars or Venus.
The basis for the entire problem of the "silence" as he posits it in his paper, is predicated on the belief that interstellar travel is possible whether by robot or via multigeneration starship, etc. To me, it isn't a matter of if being technically possible in THEORY, the real problem is one of practicality. The one hitch is that all it takes is ONE civilization somewhere in the galaxy to beat all the odds and develop space travel and, perhaps, self-replicating surrogates (robotic craft)...after that, barring anything simply making expansion truly impossible, after a total of 6 billion years, even at no greater than 0.1 c max speed, and this civilization (or its surrogates) would expand to fill the entire galaxy. So the question is...where are they?
Ultimately, after much discussion of the Drake equation and its weaknesses, as well as discussion of all the various arguments as to why there are no aliens all around us in evidence, his argument zeros in on twoa few catastrophic scenarios: the first is based on self-replicating surrogates. All it takes is one paranoid civilization creating destructive robots (ala Gregory Benford stories) to trump all the rest. In such a case, alien civilizations are crushed/destroyed by some means before they can get very far by robotic berzerkers or some form, perhaps hurling asteroids at the fledgling civilization's planet(s). Another, somewhat related, and one I find likely due to my biology background, is that once you release ANY self-replicating system, be it nannite or macro robot probes, you lose control over them because NO replication system is 100% accurate (I say that again, NO replication system can be 100% accurate) so that once you release it on its own, it WILL evolve and you cannot control what this leads to. Perhaps destructive replicants.
The main scenario he seems to argue for suggests a series of expansions and collapses of civilizations. A planet evolves a technical civilization, which then expands and colonizes neighboring systems in an expanding sphere once each colonized planet reaches the point where it can send out further colonists. Even being conservative on the timeframe for which this would likely take, it is doable in suprizingly short (relatively) period of time. In any case, all the planets and planetary systems have limited resources. Once a system has consumed them, that's it. It either has to expand outward or collapse. Those at the core of the expanding sphere are screwed and can only make due if they expand out into already colonized space...fights over dwindling resources. Various individuals have made calculations as to how long such an expansion and collapse might take, given a few reasonable assumptions, and all the estimates fall into the 60-70 million year range. Ultimately, Brin suggests that what we may be experiencing at the moment is a recovery from the last collapse. Once such an colonization sphere collapses, with the depleted ecologies it leaves behind, it takes a good long time before evolution can produce the next batch of technically competent animals capable of space travel, etc, which then starts the cycle anew.
This gives short shrift to actually a very interesting (and entertaining) read. I encourage you all to take a look at the article. I am still mulling over his ideas and deciding what objections I have to the whole thing.
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If I had any intention of having children, I would consider the option of homeschooling them. As a scientist, it would be to instill the basis of clear thinking: the scientific method. To instill some independence: question authority. And to avoid ant-science: no dumbed-down evolution, just the straight facts and no bible crap thrown in as a bone to the religious wingnuts.
I would venture that, in fact, most homeschooler parents ARE religious wingnuts who have the ever-so-worshiped Mother at Home while daddy makes the bacon. They get to teach reading (the bible), writing (scripture), and arithmetic (calculating from the bible that the world is 10,000 years old) and avoid real science and literature (Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, etc). That is not to say that they are ALL that way, but I would venture that MOST are so.
What you propose is worse than the current situation. You wish to turn public schools into mere vocational training schools where the students come out more ignorant and pliable than when they went in.
LIBERAL education is more important than tech training of any kind. Students should be taught the scientific method in a way that it can apply to most everything else in life. They should be taught how to think and to question.
Very few kids really know what they want to be, fewer still actually become what they wanted when they were children or adolescents. Hell, I wanted to be a racecar driver or an astronaut (I grew up during the moon landings). Instead, I became a military officer, then a molecular biologist.
You not only seek to increase general ignorance. "Oh, don't teach about our common history, about the founding of the nation, about the good and the bad of our past, about civic responsibility, about the great thinkers of Western Civ, just teach kids how to be drones."
Real nice. Go whole hog into turning kids into wage slaves and one-thought idiots.
But those who are under the purview of secret laws themselves know what those laws are. They have to in order to be able to properly function.
I have a security clearance, by the way, and not some cheesy little secret clearance. At no point ever was I (nor anyone else I have worked with) informed of any "special laws" that apply. The only rules/laws we need to know about is that it is illegal to divulge classified material. We are also instructed (but not by law) to not divulge related, non-classified information because of the possibility of a bad actor being able to piece together a bunch of non-classified tidbits about classified X and figuring out what classified X actually is.
No secret laws, just laws that deal with secrets. It's good enough for nuke weapon handling, it's more than good enough for terrorist or "homeland security" crap (non-secret laws, that is).
Was your friend guilty of WWB? Perhaps SWB? If your friend happens to be, errm..., of the black persuasion then the mystery is solved. He was either walking while black or shopping while black or *anything* while black. This is particularly true if you are a Florida black.
If he isn't black, then perhaps he was scruffy looking in an uptight, rightwing, nutbag religious town.
NOT being a military brat, but a bona-fide military member, I do not see it as OK and normal that I should have to show ID to get around anywhere off-base.
This country (USA) is NOT a military base, in fact, I do believe that my willingness to join and fight in the military has the purpose, all told, to PREVENT such an ocurrence. If it is, in fact, the case that the entire USA has now become a military base (under the Chimp), then I have failed at my job and it is time to leave the service and hitch up with the opposition to bring back my country.
Showing your papers doesn't make your plane ride safer. That is handled by metal detectors and x-raying or chem-sniffing luggage and carry-on. Your papers are irrelevant.
This country doesn't require papers be shown at the exits/entries to each city, at the borders of each state, and only barely requires the same at the country's borders. There is NO need to show ID for a plane ride anymore than there is to ride in a car or bus. All that matters is that you have a paid-for ticket or equivalent. Beyond that, your right to anonymous in-country travel is more important than any airline's desire to make sure you are reselling your ticket (none of their business - law of first sale takes effect). It is trying to prevent you from reselling your ticket that the airlines are interested in and that's it. They know that your papers have no way of preventing a hijacking.
if this actually reaches the PCs (or what passes for PCs in distant future when this might be released) is that you'll be able to spot the losers right off the bat. They're the poor fools who took up a Security Officer character.
They're destined to die within their first hour of play.
You are hitting him up for spelling which is distinct from grammar.
Spellcheckers are also often a bane. My stepdaughter cannot spell to save her life and I blame it, to a large extent, on spellcheckers. Students write papers for school and rely upon the grammar and spellchecker components of wordprocessors instead of FIRST developing a basic understanding of the language and learning to spell.
Both tools should be an aid, something like a walking stick. Instead, too many use them as a wheelchair.
There is a very simple reason that doc compatibility fails between versions of Word, and it is very simple. It merely serves as a mechanism for FORCE users to pay again to "upgrade" to the latest doc format. Ultimately, that is what you are "upgrading". You are not getting a better wordprocessor when you go from word97 to word2000, not really. You are merely obtaining compatibility with the default doc format of word2000.
New computers come with doze preinstalled, often with word as well. More and more new computers are bought to replace older computers. Soon, many people have new versions of the doc format user/generator (word) and it is designed to not play well with old versions. It ultimately is easier for those holding back to upgrade to the latest doc format user/generator so that when they email you memos in doc format, you can open them up without a hitch rather than having to email them back and requesting that they do a special save and send for you in a previous doc format.
It is ONLY a ploy to drive unnecessary upgrading. Nothing more.
The magic moment is simply this: one moment and for eternity, by definition (so to speak), there was nothing, then BANG! Something.
This something (spacetime) then expanded at well over the speed of light (to make it fit with what is observed today), slowed down, and now is speeding up again.
Brane world theory allows for big bangs, that, incidently, to not originate from a point source, and expands without and initial inflationary period (no observational evidence to say it happened, just fitting current obvious data to some pre-historic magic time so that the point source big bang model will work) but DOES bring on a later inflationary period, which we are in now (and it IS observable).
I'll take that over mere backing in ideas to make a mathematical idea work over a mathematical idea that just so happens to match, as a matter of course, what we observe today.
Feeling fear is a prerequisite for cowardice but it is also a prequisite for bravery. Without fear, one cannot be brave, just insane or stupidly reckless. Bravery is feeling fear and yet doing what must be done IN SPITE of fear.
Thus, I would have to conclude that those with a heightened sense of empathy and fear are more disposed towards true bravery while those without these attributes are more in line with recklessness and coldness. Interestingly, this seems to describe the difference pretty completely between conservatives and liberals/progressives. The latter feels empathy for those around them, both human and nonhuman and seeks to minimize their pain and fear. They also experience fear but nonetheless are often able to dig up true bravery and stand against the cold and unfeeling robotons (conservatives) regardless of personal consequences.
Uhmmm...I haven't used it for a while but I believe that Enlightenment shows a very clear representation of exactly what is on different desktops. It isn't simply giving you a representation of a desktop with tiny little app window representations on it, it is giving you a realistic snapshot of the other desktops with the actual app windows displayed.
As I recall, Brane theory is consistent with all cosmological observations AND eliminates the need for expansion (as well as a need for a beginning of time). I'll take Brane over Inflation for its lack of magic moments any day.
It's not just the eclipse oddity that is in need of an explanation, it is the very real anomaly with Voyager acceleration, etc. Something ain't right...and the reason, I think, that many would love/hope that Einstein gets proven wrong is that it would imply more interesting mysteries and offer new physics horizons to approach. This is more interesting to think about and deal with than simply filling the last final holes to get a TOE. Once a TOE is done, it's all boring and done. This could mean that a TOE is farther off and that there is a goodly amount left to do that goes beyond merely filling a few gaps here and there.
So, for my part I hope that the anomaly IS real and that it does violate Einstein's Relativity, and that it is directly associated with the Voyager acceleration anomaly. MUCH more interesting than some mundane answer. Of course, I'll accept a mundane explanation if it really answers the questions but I PREFER an incredible explanation.
So? Your point being?
The statement is about everything people have altered to fit the particular situation. It is useful and valid to add or subtract from it to indicate the danger of allowing discrimination against, or legal attack on, any group or class due to political, racial, etc, membership. Basic human rights and civil liberties must not be allowed to pass, no matter how "minor" the errosion appears to be. The errosion continues and can easily spread to include YOU.
I hate to risk a divergent spate of crap spewing but that nonsense about "not enforcing gun laws already on the books" is poo-poo.
The same crackpots that say that are the same ones that, for some reason, resist criminal background checks for people seeking to purchase a gun. They basically WANT criminals to have easy, free, and protected access to guns (to what end?). This IS a fact because it is the ONLY explanation for resisting background checks at gun shows...HELLO!? That is a free ride for criminals to get around the background check to get some heavy duty firepower. Makes NO sense.
So OK, let's enforce the law entirely, consistently, and logically: background checks to buy a gun (ANY gun, ANYWHERE), period. How about that eh?
Nutcase. You would have all sorts of innocent bystanders shot and killed when all you really need is a safely isolated pilot compartment. Without access to the pilot compartment, the 9/11 attack wouldn't have been possible.
I honestly wish I could say the same. I barely use OOo at all for any professional papers - and I certainly don't use M$ Word, which would serve better than OOo for what I need. I use Lyx because I ultimately have to. The problem is CITATIONS! OOo has no way to handle entering citations in documents. With Word, or Wordperfect, you can use EndNote (third party software) to handle citations beautifully but not with OOo.
Lyx has the builtin ability (via bibtex) to handle citations itself or better still, you can use pybliographic which is very much as nice to use as EndNote.
If OOo developed the means to handle citations (its builtin bibliography app is CRAP and less than useless) as well as Lyx does or the way Word/Wordperfect does via Endnote, then I'd use it for virtually all my writing. Instead, the developers prefer to tweak it rather than actually improve it with real, practical, useful functions.
But...they are not fascists. Bush and his peeps are much closer to what the definition of fascism is than a bunch of hactivists. Fascism is a sick and wrong melding of corporations (industries) with government into an authoritarian form. What does that sound like? Hactivists or...the Bush Admin and the Repugnant Party?
'Course, the Dems aren't all that much removed from the corporatist crap - they all know where the money for their coffers is located.
Well, your point is valid: bullets flying on planes from "good guys" are no more a "good thing" than bullets flying around from bad guys. Bullets from either will hit/kill passengers and, more likely, pierce the hull of the aircraft. They will also puncture hydraulic lines and electrical lines, fuel tanks, etc. Aircraft hulls are THIN ALUMINUM, even on B-52s. Now, the minor problem with your example. At 10k feet, if the hull is merely punctured then not much will happen. 10k feet is low enough that, technically, the crew/passenger compartment doesn't even need to be pressurized. That requirement hits at 14k. Even at 14k a decompression isn't going to be catastrophic. When you start getting upwards of 20k then you start having a real issue with explosive decompression. Most transcontinental and international flights are moving along at better than 32k. THIS is a problem if the hull is punctured. There will be a blowout.
I would suggest rubber bullets and/or stun guns of some sort if pilots need to carry anything. Honestly, guns and airliners don't mix. Bullets would be barely scratched by their penetration through the very thin skin of an airliner.
Ah, so it is only for insurance and body ID after a crash? So...what's with all the law enforcement background checking bullshit? Why is there a need for CAPPSII if all the airline "needs" the identification information for is body ID and insurance?
Not good enough. If I want to travel anonymously for WHATEVER reason, then I should be able to trump the airlines desire to track me, and more importantly, to trump the government's or law enforcement's desire to track me. But, just to give you the viable desire to identify who is onboard (not assured since you can fake IDs), so what's up with the law enforcement crap? The background check? The comparing you to a list of POSSIBLE people of "interest"? How does that have anything to do with identifying your corpse in the very very rare instance that a plane crashes?
I'll say this a bazillion times: as long as each passenger is properly screened for weapons, then it's all good to go and it is irrelevant who you are. The plane is perfectly safe if it is filled with completely anonymous people, all of which have been screened for weapons. Beyond that, if the airlines want to keep a list to identify bodies when their pilot screws up or some mechanical problem brings the plane down, fine, but it should be entirely internal and strictly for that purpose. It should also be destroyed after the plane safely lands at its destination. Law enforcement screens and harrassment is totally unacceptable and uncalled for.
Everyone travels with ID on them (well, at least most of the time) so they can be identified that way after a wreck if they need to be. Of course, how often does a plane crash that this is such a burning issue? The BIGGER question is how does showing ID prevent a terrorist attack onboard an aircraft that simply screening each anonymous passenger for weapons doesn't do better? If passengers don't have weapons on-hand capable of damaging/taking over the aircraft, then it doesn't matter one whit who they are or what their desires are. You are covered by the weapons screen, NOT the ID check.
There are other ways to identify people than insist on there being an enforced showing of "your papers". This is the US, not Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia. We do NOT need internal passports or government permission to travel within our own frickin' country. It is not the airline's business, nor the government's business, where I travel to or whom I meet unless they have a valid reason to be suspicious of ME (rather than everyone in general). That is the way it works. They don't get to setup border crossings at each state line to check the papers of all motor vehicle passengers so they have no valid reason for the same with regards to aircraft, river barges, trains, camels, rollar skates, etc.
If they need to be on the lookout for a specific criminal individual, then they can put out an all points bulletin and have police at the various travel hubs and look for that person. You know, exactly the way they do on the ground in motor vehicles.
Because it really is indefensible and pointless. ALL that is necessary is that passengers be screened for weapons (like paperclips and nail clippers, bazookas, claymore mines, etc). After that, a persons identity is irrelevant. No hijacking will take place and no detonations will take place because the plane is full of rightfully anonymous individuals without any real dangerous weapons on their persons or available to them.
What possible need is there to make sure you are who you say you are? If you paid for your ticket (anonymously should be permitted) and you are not carrying weapons, that's all the airlines and the gov't needs to know. I/We have a flatout right to travel ANYWHERE in our own frickin country without being tracked and printed by the government or law enforcement. I applaud this man's fight and really hope he wins out in the end. If you have a right (and you do) to travel anywhere in the country in your car without having to pass through checkpoints to identify you, then the fact that you are traveling on an aircraft or train is irrelevant and needs no ID either.
and for possible answers as to why we haven't yet picked up any signals, I suggest a read of David Brin's 1982 article called: The 'Great Silence': The Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Life (a web-based version is available at: http://skew.ot.com/three/random/silence.html.
We have exchanged emails about its conclusions and I must say I haven't yet decided where I fall on my own...he suggests that the very fact that there has yet to be a single real signal detected is virtually immaterial. The REAL problem is the fact that we haven't found any evidence at all of alien colonization, directly or via robot proxies, within the solar system or on earth. No sign of unexplained discontinuity in the biological evolutionary history of earth suggesting a flushed alien toilet, no sign of mined asteroids, no sign whatsoever of any terraforming attempts on Mars or Venus.
The basis for the entire problem of the "silence" as he posits it in his paper, is predicated on the belief that interstellar travel is possible whether by robot or via multigeneration starship, etc. To me, it isn't a matter of if being technically possible in THEORY, the real problem is one of practicality. The one hitch is that all it takes is ONE civilization somewhere in the galaxy to beat all the odds and develop space travel and, perhaps, self-replicating surrogates (robotic craft)...after that, barring anything simply making expansion truly impossible, after a total of 6 billion years, even at no greater than 0.1 c max speed, and this civilization (or its surrogates) would expand to fill the entire galaxy. So the question is...where are they?
Ultimately, after much discussion of the Drake equation and its weaknesses, as well as discussion of all the various arguments as to why there are no aliens all around us in evidence, his argument zeros in on twoa few catastrophic scenarios: the first is based on self-replicating surrogates. All it takes is one paranoid civilization creating destructive robots (ala Gregory Benford stories) to trump all the rest. In such a case, alien civilizations are crushed/destroyed by some means before they can get very far by robotic berzerkers or some form, perhaps hurling asteroids at the fledgling civilization's planet(s). Another, somewhat related, and one I find likely due to my biology background, is that once you release ANY self-replicating system, be it nannite or macro robot probes, you lose control over them because NO replication system is 100% accurate (I say that again, NO replication system can be 100% accurate) so that once you release it on its own, it WILL evolve and you cannot control what this leads to. Perhaps destructive replicants.
The main scenario he seems to argue for suggests a series of expansions and collapses of civilizations. A planet evolves a technical civilization, which then expands and colonizes neighboring systems in an expanding sphere once each colonized planet reaches the point where it can send out further colonists. Even being conservative on the timeframe for which this would likely take, it is doable in suprizingly short (relatively) period of time. In any case, all the planets and planetary systems have limited resources. Once a system has consumed them, that's it. It either has to expand outward or collapse. Those at the core of the expanding sphere are screwed and can only make due if they expand out into already colonized space...fights over dwindling resources. Various individuals have made calculations as to how long such an expansion and collapse might take, given a few reasonable assumptions, and all the estimates fall into the 60-70 million year range. Ultimately, Brin suggests that what we may be experiencing at the moment is a recovery from the last collapse. Once such an colonization sphere collapses, with the depleted ecologies it leaves behind, it takes a good long time before evolution can produce the next batch of technically competent animals capable of space travel, etc, which then starts the cycle anew.
This gives short shrift to actually a very interesting (and entertaining) read. I encourage you all to take a look at the article. I am still mulling over his ideas and deciding what objections I have to the whole thing.