We already only fire at guys who fire back at us*. Guys who don't fire at us, we have no reason to shoot at all, be it lethally or non-lethally.
* "We" = guys following the rules. Jackasses who kick in doors in search of revenge who then gun down an unarmed family, they're shitheads who need to break rocks at Leavenworth for the rest of their lives.
Oh I saw your point. I was just pointing out that the training soldiers get is pretty intense, and while yes they do make mistakes, giving them a non lethal option isn't necessarily a bad thing.
No, it's a bad thing. It simply doesn't fit with the job description. Soldiers kill. People are always trying to turn soldiers into cops. We aren't that. We're trained killers. We're a tool for a very specific job: killing people and breaking their shit. It would be wise if people (particularly politicians) would keep that in mind.
Am I hopelessly old fashioned, or are there other people still alive who feel that there's something morally suspect about intending to kill people in the first place?
Sorry, I'm not familiar with the period in history to which you refer. Exactly when was it that guns weren't for killing people? There's nothing new about people killing each other. Morality is a whole 'nother issue.
This could prove interesting for various sports that use guns such as trap shooting, skeet and general target practice. Because a slower bullet could mean less accidents, for example, if you somehow managed to shoot your foot you would only suffer a small fracture rather than having a broken busted-up foot.
Has there been a tremendous upswing in shot feet a shooting sport events? This "solution" is like swatting flies with a 4x8 sheet of plywood... or like solving the pollution problem by replacing car engines with pedals...
It's even reflected in operation names. Used to be operation names were designed to mislead (or not lead, at least) the enemy should the enemy become aware of them - Operation Market Garden, Operation Overlord. The point was that the operation name was chosen with its impact on the target of that operation in mind.
Now we have names like "Operation Enduring Freedom."
Just who is the target of that name? Just who is it intended to mislead?
Actually, the names are chosen by PR jackasses to "sell" the operation to the american public (and, to a lesser degree, encourage the participating servicemembers to be more enthusiastic about the op). I was with the 7th Light Infantry Division in December 1989. Most of us were sitting around planning for xmas leave, when we were put on alert. We packed our gear, drew weapons, ammo, bayonets, and E-tools*, and sat around in the assembly area waiting for something to happen. After 36 hours or so of being "ready" , we were trucked over to the air force (to wait AGAIN), and flown in to Panama to back up the initial assault force for what we had been told was operation BLUE SPOON. But a funny thing happened on the way to the air force base--- it had suddenly become operation JUST CAUSE. I can tell you that we, the grunts with the rifles, had a serious case of the eye-rolls when we heard about that. Fucking stupid-ass political hack generals.
* the infantry was sometimes a rough place, even in the all-volunteer 80's. Bayonets had been taken away from the infantry after a few incidents of them killing one another in drunken altercations. Infantrymen, being a strange combination of thickheaded and resourceful, switched to fighting each other with E-tools (entrenching tool = folding army shovel, with a serrated edge). This prompted them to confiscate the E-tools and lock them up with the bayonets and rifles. I'm not sure if all this helped, as guys just resorted to whatever deadly personal items they had handy, but at least it introduced some variety to the infantry murder rolls.
Well, I did think the big evil plot was a bit silly.
Yeah, I recall having a serious eyeroll moment when the Big Plot was revealed. It was a hell of a long way to go for an effect which could have been achieved at a fraction of the cost and effort any number of simpler ways. I liked that Dr Manhattan was the sole element of "weird science" in an otherwise mundane world. The Big Plot kinda spoiled that by being itself based on a number of convenient "weird sciences" (teleportation, psychic powers, extreme genetic engineering). Even though they were all explained as being partly inspired by Dr Manhattan's powers in the "monologue" at the end, I felt they "cheapened" the universe a little.
No, Danny Elfman cribs off Danny Elfman:) just listen to the last half dozen Tim Burton films..
Well yeah, that was kinda my point. I was just adding that between him and Joe LoDuca there appears to be a sum total of approximately 0.75 composers, and this fractional composer always sounds the same.
I'm watching a Simpsons rerun right now... that theme song sounds familiar.... am I watching Edward ScissorBat?
They show Nite Owl doing a jump kick to some prisoners face.
I just re-watched the trailer. It's a pretty understated one-footed kick, and it's to the guy's chest, not his face. Even a Fat Nite Owl could manage that.
The sad fact is that authors rarely have any input in the film-ification of their work.
Indeed, Ms Le Guin has it spot-on. Having been involved with writing a few screenplays, I can tell everyone who's never been there, You Have No Idea. Seriously, on a project that makes it to the screen, there are a dozen or so self-important hacks between the writer and the final edit, all trying to "exercise their creativity" on the work. And the less clout you have as an established writer, the more talentless hacks will screw it up. It used to be that producers and other studio execs would take care of the business side and leave the filmmaking to the filmmakers. The modern studio system is rife with slick dolts who got into the business because their fathers, uncles, or other relatives "handed down" the job to them. These guys don't understand that it's not their job to "reimagine" your script. I've actually had these morons interrupt my pitch to to interject their "creative input". One instance: a story about a group of adventurers led by an old, but very wise and experienced man. One of the party is a young, good-looking, braggart prick. They're intentional polar opposites. The guy I was pitching to said "I think it'd be better if you got rid of the old guy and made the young guy the leader". His own assistant tried to explain why that'd be dumb, but the guy just kept basically saying "young heroes market better". What he was suggesting was the equivalent of getting rid of Picard and replacing him with Wesley or Barkley! In the end, he offered to buy the script outright--- which means he'd get some hack to rewrite the script with the young guy as the leader, and I'd see it on the USA Network at 3am and have to shoot myself over how bad it was. My co-writer and I insisted on full control, though, so (like all our projects) they option it for a nominal sum and it will never see the screen unless they get really desperate. S'ok. We get those option checks every year, and that's better than a single lump sum and an embarrassment on the screen. That was the last thing we pitched. We have better things to do with our time.
Not to say this is or isn't one, but the movie is likely to follow the comic in having flashbacks to the forming of the Watchmen, at the time of which he just so happened to be younger than he would be at a later point in time. Doubly so because they can't just give us textual files of the character's past.
Granted, but if you remember the original material, you know that he wasn't the "young Night Owl" when he was breaking into the prison...
I still think he could pull off a kick like that, even at a slightly pudgy 40-something.
Joe LoDuca and Danny Elfman do the same thing, even to the point where I swear they crib off each other. As for outright reuse, I've heard parts of the Army of Darkness sountrack in at least two other movies.
They could take off the critic's hat and -fix- the things that they complain about.
Right, because being able to identify deficiencies in operation magically turn you into a competent and experienced coder.
One of the things the Linux nerd crowd is going to have to accept before Linux can become seriously mainstream is than not all Linux users are coders anymore.
I believe that's properly spelled "boof babes" to get across the common pronunciation.
The last E3 I went to was in 2001. I can't imagine an E3 without boof babes. Really, it's not just the babes, it's the aspect of spectacle. Waiting in line for a chance to see the beta of that MS WW2 FPS game was like a day at disneyland. And across the street, from E3, in the GodGames "promised lot", where they served booze and fired T-shirts out of a shirt cannon before showing a VERY early demo of GTA III on a big screen. Jump forward to today. They throw a dull business seminar instead of a wild party and they wonder why E3 is all but ignored now?
if they can't strain hard enough naturally without having a stroke while pulling 9 Gs for 30 seconds, then they should get out of the cockpit.
Well, it certainly keeps you out of the Blue Angels.
No it doesn't. Blue Angels don't wear G suits, but they are limited to no more than 4G's. Really, there's no such thing as being in good enough shape to pull 9G's without a suit and not graying out.
Waste, Fraud, and Abuse is rampant in the larger commands, and the Air Force is the worst of the services. Its bases are nothing but manicured lawns, its offices full of leather chairs, hell their barracks in Qatar were practically 4-star hotels. Having lived in condemned WWII barracks in the states, I just find it all appalling.
Don't forget Air Force mess halls, with carpeted floors, upholstered booths, and actual choices when you get your food. My favorite was the people they hired to bus the tables. In the Army and Marines, you dump your tray and hand it to the dish washer. AF personnel are apparently too delicate to participate in that process, so they just get to leave their stuff on the table and walk away. Pansies!:)
Honestly, the s/n ratio keeps getting worse and worse here. News flash: government wastes money. Next.
What's really stupid here is that this isn't a waste of money. You think general staff and VIP politicos are going to ride down in the slings with the infantry? Fuck no! They're going to make the Air Force fly them around in C-40's or the like. Ponying up $1.5M for a box they can load on a C-17 is much cheaper. On top of that, when you look at the Air Force's budget, a few million is chump change. The only part of this that's even remotely dodgy is them trying to pay for it with "anti-terrorism" money. It hardly rates. All the money they spend comes from our pockets, regardless of what it's earmarked for, so what's the difference?
When I was in the army (early 80's) we flew on an air force C-130 from Frankfurt to Crete.
The 'seats' were just web straps.
The 'facilities' was a small, rectangular urinal
C-130's haven't changed at all, of course. They're still the 1950's cracker boxes they've always been. I flew 14 hours on a C-141 to Saudi back in 1990 for Desert Storm. Sling seats, sitting with your knees interlocked with the person across from you... nightmare. In 2001 I got to make almost the same flight on a C-17... quite a difference. You can walk down the center! It has a real aircraft lavatory! The seats... well, the seats are still sling seats, but they're much better designed with a more sophisticated frame. Less like a cargo net and more like a beach chair.
Even easier to believe that they didn't know this was the case, or knew but did not understand.
This doesn't sound reasonable. If management behaved like this they would have been fired...
Hah! You clearly have never worked for the government. It may not sound reasonable, but bureaucrats are almost always some combination of ignorant and oblivious. I mean, part of the reason they put this guy in charge is that he's probably the only person who knew how to do anything. And you have to ask yourself, who's going to fire these marginally competent managers? Their marginally competent bosses? People who know what they're doing are unfortunately the exception in government. Most competent folks find work that rewards them on the merits of abilities, rather than their seniority and butt-kissing ability.
I'd really like to hear a Republican explain how the Republican party is "conservative"?
Whether they are or not is largely irrelevant at present. They still claim to be conservative, and conservative voters accept that claim to a such a degree that they vote for them. That's all.
The problem is that we have disallowed ourselves from further refining it to make it useful through the treaties meant to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
And to top it all off, the mix of plutonium isotopes produced by a fuel reprocessing reactor is unusable as nuclear weapons fuel. Warheads require minimum 93% pure Pu-239, which is produced by short-cycling uranium in a certain configuration of fission reactor. It was completely unnecessary to put a blanket ban on breeder reactors, as all that was necessary was to ban a certain type of breeder reactor. Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer, knew the difference but decided to appease the ignorant luddite anti-nuke crowd that made no distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. By perpetuating the myth of "breeder reactor = nuclear warheads" from the executive office, he essentially saddled us with 30 years worth of dangerous nuclear "waste" that is really just nuclear fuel that's 90% unused.
I know individuals with a hell of a lot of sense who would give their real names in such a situation.
So? Part of the reason for that is that full names in and of themselves are not really a security risk. I walk around all day in public with an ID badge that gives my first and last name. Big deal. Our names are our public identifiers.
I do think the Army should shitcan the Key West agreement and get its own smaller CAS/BAS birds
I have no doubt they would, if they could. Unfortunately, Key West is essentially an iron collar on the Army's neck, and the Air Force holds the leash.
"Personally, I think the Air Force should turn over the A-10 and AC-130 assets to the Army and let us do our own close air support
Get leaders who want that
Easier said than done. You'd need leaders in the Air Force willing to "sell themselves down the river" by giving up big swath of their responsibility--- and budget. It'll never happen.
and also buy some propeller-driven attack aircraft so you get better loiter time and combat performance at cheaper flight hour cost than helos. The Army should never have dumped the Mohawk.
Damn straight. The Mowhawk was the Army's first attempt to take back CAS, but the Air Force cried and had it relegated to corps or higher use, where it was essentially unusable for anything but observation duties. The Air Force, of course, didn't fill in the gap it created by neutering the Mowhawk. Just another case of petty politics trumping military need. The AF is famous for its dog-in-the-manger approach the CAS, much to the dismay of those who depend upon timely CAS to survive...
I would also like to add the following advice: it is not enough to check the "post anonymously" box. Your "flamebait" mod disappeared when you posted, regardless. You need to actually log out to leave your mods in place and post too.
Full size satellite dishes are still the best way to receive free television content, despite what the cable / pay satellite providers may imply in their advertising. If you don't have any place to put it yourself, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone who would be willing to buy it.
After five years of dissatisfaction with Dish Network, my mother has asked my brother and me to get the big ugly dish that came with the house working. The "$0 for cable channels" thing is pretty enticing.
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We already only fire at guys who fire back at us*. Guys who don't fire at us, we have no reason to shoot at all, be it lethally or non-lethally.
* "We" = guys following the rules. Jackasses who kick in doors in search of revenge who then gun down an unarmed family, they're shitheads who need to break rocks at Leavenworth for the rest of their lives.
Oh I saw your point. I was just pointing out that the training soldiers get is pretty intense, and while yes they do make mistakes, giving them a non lethal option isn't necessarily a bad thing.
No, it's a bad thing. It simply doesn't fit with the job description. Soldiers kill. People are always trying to turn soldiers into cops. We aren't that. We're trained killers. We're a tool for a very specific job: killing people and breaking their shit. It would be wise if people (particularly politicians) would keep that in mind.
Am I hopelessly old fashioned, or are there other people still alive who feel that there's something morally suspect about intending to kill people in the first place?
Sorry, I'm not familiar with the period in history to which you refer. Exactly when was it that guns weren't for killing people? There's nothing new about people killing each other. Morality is a whole 'nother issue.
This could prove interesting for various sports that use guns such as trap shooting, skeet and general target practice. Because a slower bullet could mean less accidents, for example, if you somehow managed to shoot your foot you would only suffer a small fracture rather than having a broken busted-up foot.
Has there been a tremendous upswing in shot feet a shooting sport events? This "solution" is like swatting flies with a 4x8 sheet of plywood... or like solving the pollution problem by replacing car engines with pedals...
It's even reflected in operation names. Used to be operation names were designed to mislead (or not lead, at least) the enemy should the enemy become aware of them - Operation Market Garden, Operation Overlord. The point was that the operation name was chosen with its impact on the target of that operation in mind.
Now we have names like "Operation Enduring Freedom."
Just who is the target of that name? Just who is it intended to mislead?
Actually, the names are chosen by PR jackasses to "sell" the operation to the american public (and, to a lesser degree, encourage the participating servicemembers to be more enthusiastic about the op). I was with the 7th Light Infantry Division in December 1989. Most of us were sitting around planning for xmas leave, when we were put on alert. We packed our gear, drew weapons, ammo, bayonets, and E-tools*, and sat around in the assembly area waiting for something to happen. After 36 hours or so of being "ready" , we were trucked over to the air force (to wait AGAIN), and flown in to Panama to back up the initial assault force for what we had been told was operation BLUE SPOON. But a funny thing happened on the way to the air force base--- it had suddenly become operation JUST CAUSE. I can tell you that we, the grunts with the rifles, had a serious case of the eye-rolls when we heard about that. Fucking stupid-ass political hack generals.
* the infantry was sometimes a rough place, even in the all-volunteer 80's. Bayonets had been taken away from the infantry after a few incidents of them killing one another in drunken altercations. Infantrymen, being a strange combination of thickheaded and resourceful, switched to fighting each other with E-tools (entrenching tool = folding army shovel, with a serrated edge). This prompted them to confiscate the E-tools and lock them up with the bayonets and rifles. I'm not sure if all this helped, as guys just resorted to whatever deadly personal items they had handy, but at least it introduced some variety to the infantry murder rolls.
Well, I did think the big evil plot was a bit silly.
Yeah, I recall having a serious eyeroll moment when the Big Plot was revealed. It was a hell of a long way to go for an effect which could have been achieved at a fraction of the cost and effort any number of simpler ways. I liked that Dr Manhattan was the sole element of "weird science" in an otherwise mundane world. The Big Plot kinda spoiled that by being itself based on a number of convenient "weird sciences" (teleportation, psychic powers, extreme genetic engineering). Even though they were all explained as being partly inspired by Dr Manhattan's powers in the "monologue" at the end, I felt they "cheapened" the universe a little.
No, Danny Elfman cribs off Danny Elfman :) just listen to the last half dozen Tim Burton films..
Well yeah, that was kinda my point. I was just adding that between him and Joe LoDuca there appears to be a sum total of approximately 0.75 composers, and this fractional composer always sounds the same.
I'm watching a Simpsons rerun right now... that theme song sounds familiar.... am I watching Edward ScissorBat?
They show Nite Owl doing a jump kick to some prisoners face.
I just re-watched the trailer. It's a pretty understated one-footed kick, and it's to the guy's chest, not his face. Even a Fat Nite Owl could manage that.
The sad fact is that authors rarely have any input in the film-ification of their work.
Indeed, Ms Le Guin has it spot-on. Having been involved with writing a few screenplays, I can tell everyone who's never been there, You Have No Idea. Seriously, on a project that makes it to the screen, there are a dozen or so self-important hacks between the writer and the final edit, all trying to "exercise their creativity" on the work. And the less clout you have as an established writer, the more talentless hacks will screw it up. It used to be that producers and other studio execs would take care of the business side and leave the filmmaking to the filmmakers. The modern studio system is rife with slick dolts who got into the business because their fathers, uncles, or other relatives "handed down" the job to them. These guys don't understand that it's not their job to "reimagine" your script. I've actually had these morons interrupt my pitch to to interject their "creative input". One instance: a story about a group of adventurers led by an old, but very wise and experienced man. One of the party is a young, good-looking, braggart prick. They're intentional polar opposites. The guy I was pitching to said "I think it'd be better if you got rid of the old guy and made the young guy the leader". His own assistant tried to explain why that'd be dumb, but the guy just kept basically saying "young heroes market better". What he was suggesting was the equivalent of getting rid of Picard and replacing him with Wesley or Barkley! In the end, he offered to buy the script outright--- which means he'd get some hack to rewrite the script with the young guy as the leader, and I'd see it on the USA Network at 3am and have to shoot myself over how bad it was. My co-writer and I insisted on full control, though, so (like all our projects) they option it for a nominal sum and it will never see the screen unless they get really desperate. S'ok. We get those option checks every year, and that's better than a single lump sum and an embarrassment on the screen. That was the last thing we pitched. We have better things to do with our time.
Not to say this is or isn't one, but the movie is likely to follow the comic in having flashbacks to the forming of the Watchmen, at the time of which he just so happened to be younger than he would be at a later point in time. Doubly so because they can't just give us textual files of the character's past.
Granted, but if you remember the original material, you know that he wasn't the "young Night Owl" when he was breaking into the prison...
I still think he could pull off a kick like that, even at a slightly pudgy 40-something.
Joe LoDuca and Danny Elfman do the same thing, even to the point where I swear they crib off each other. As for outright reuse, I've heard parts of the Army of Darkness sountrack in at least two other movies.
They could take off the critic's hat and -fix- the things that they complain about.
Right, because being able to identify deficiencies in operation magically turn you into a competent and experienced coder.
One of the things the Linux nerd crowd is going to have to accept before Linux can become seriously mainstream is than not all Linux users are coders anymore.
Worse yet, the full name is now "E3 Media & Business Summit."
My god, I swear a necktie appeared around my neck when you said that.
Booth babes!
I believe that's properly spelled "boof babes" to get across the common pronunciation.
The last E3 I went to was in 2001. I can't imagine an E3 without boof babes. Really, it's not just the babes, it's the aspect of spectacle. Waiting in line for a chance to see the beta of that MS WW2 FPS game was like a day at disneyland. And across the street, from E3, in the GodGames "promised lot", where they served booze and fired T-shirts out of a shirt cannon before showing a VERY early demo of GTA III on a big screen. Jump forward to today. They throw a dull business seminar instead of a wild party and they wonder why E3 is all but ignored now?
Well, it certainly keeps you out of the Blue Angels.
No it doesn't. Blue Angels don't wear G suits, but they are limited to no more than 4G's. Really, there's no such thing as being in good enough shape to pull 9G's without a suit and not graying out.
Waste, Fraud, and Abuse is rampant in the larger commands, and the Air Force is the worst of the services. Its bases are nothing but manicured lawns, its offices full of leather chairs, hell their barracks in Qatar were practically 4-star hotels. Having lived in condemned WWII barracks in the states, I just find it all appalling.
Don't forget Air Force mess halls, with carpeted floors, upholstered booths, and actual choices when you get your food. My favorite was the people they hired to bus the tables. In the Army and Marines, you dump your tray and hand it to the dish washer. AF personnel are apparently too delicate to participate in that process, so they just get to leave their stuff on the table and walk away. Pansies! :)
Honestly, the s/n ratio keeps getting worse and worse here. News flash: government wastes money. Next.
What's really stupid here is that this isn't a waste of money. You think general staff and VIP politicos are going to ride down in the slings with the infantry? Fuck no! They're going to make the Air Force fly them around in C-40's or the like. Ponying up $1.5M for a box they can load on a C-17 is much cheaper. On top of that, when you look at the Air Force's budget, a few million is chump change. The only part of this that's even remotely dodgy is them trying to pay for it with "anti-terrorism" money. It hardly rates. All the money they spend comes from our pockets, regardless of what it's earmarked for, so what's the difference?
When I was in the army (early 80's) we flew on an air force C-130 from Frankfurt to Crete. The 'seats' were just web straps. The 'facilities' was a small, rectangular urinal
C-130's haven't changed at all, of course. They're still the 1950's cracker boxes they've always been. I flew 14 hours on a C-141 to Saudi back in 1990 for Desert Storm. Sling seats, sitting with your knees interlocked with the person across from you... nightmare. In 2001 I got to make almost the same flight on a C-17... quite a difference. You can walk down the center! It has a real aircraft lavatory! The seats... well, the seats are still sling seats, but they're much better designed with a more sophisticated frame. Less like a cargo net and more like a beach chair.
This doesn't sound reasonable. If management behaved like this they would have been fired ...
Hah! You clearly have never worked for the government. It may not sound reasonable, but bureaucrats are almost always some combination of ignorant and oblivious. I mean, part of the reason they put this guy in charge is that he's probably the only person who knew how to do anything. And you have to ask yourself, who's going to fire these marginally competent managers? Their marginally competent bosses? People who know what they're doing are unfortunately the exception in government. Most competent folks find work that rewards them on the merits of abilities, rather than their seniority and butt-kissing ability.
I'd really like to hear a Republican explain how the Republican party is "conservative"?
Whether they are or not is largely irrelevant at present. They still claim to be conservative, and conservative voters accept that claim to a such a degree that they vote for them. That's all.
The problem is that we have disallowed ourselves from further refining it to make it useful through the treaties meant to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
And to top it all off, the mix of plutonium isotopes produced by a fuel reprocessing reactor is unusable as nuclear weapons fuel. Warheads require minimum 93% pure Pu-239, which is produced by short-cycling uranium in a certain configuration of fission reactor. It was completely unnecessary to put a blanket ban on breeder reactors, as all that was necessary was to ban a certain type of breeder reactor. Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer, knew the difference but decided to appease the ignorant luddite anti-nuke crowd that made no distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. By perpetuating the myth of "breeder reactor = nuclear warheads" from the executive office, he essentially saddled us with 30 years worth of dangerous nuclear "waste" that is really just nuclear fuel that's 90% unused.
I know individuals with a hell of a lot of sense who would give their real names in such a situation.
So? Part of the reason for that is that full names in and of themselves are not really a security risk. I walk around all day in public with an ID badge that gives my first and last name. Big deal. Our names are our public identifiers.
I do think the Army should shitcan the Key West agreement and get its own smaller CAS/BAS birds
I have no doubt they would, if they could. Unfortunately, Key West is essentially an iron collar on the Army's neck, and the Air Force holds the leash.
"Personally, I think the Air Force should turn over the A-10 and AC-130 assets to the Army and let us do our own close air support
Get leaders who want that
Easier said than done. You'd need leaders in the Air Force willing to "sell themselves down the river" by giving up big swath of their responsibility--- and budget. It'll never happen.
and also buy some propeller-driven attack aircraft so you get better loiter time and combat performance at cheaper flight hour cost than helos. The Army should never have dumped the Mohawk.
Damn straight. The Mowhawk was the Army's first attempt to take back CAS, but the Air Force cried and had it relegated to corps or higher use, where it was essentially unusable for anything but observation duties. The Air Force, of course, didn't fill in the gap it created by neutering the Mowhawk. Just another case of petty politics trumping military need. The AF is famous for its dog-in-the-manger approach the CAS, much to the dismay of those who depend upon timely CAS to survive...
i gave you the flamebait
I would also like to add the following advice: it is not enough to check the "post anonymously" box. Your "flamebait" mod disappeared when you posted, regardless. You need to actually log out to leave your mods in place and post too.
Full size satellite dishes are still the best way to receive free television content, despite what the cable / pay satellite providers may imply in their advertising. If you don't have any place to put it yourself, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone who would be willing to buy it.
After five years of dissatisfaction with Dish Network, my mother has asked my brother and me to get the big ugly dish that came with the house working. The "$0 for cable channels" thing is pretty enticing.