>I almost fell on my butt when I saw the giant >elephants in Return Of The King. "You mean >Lucas stole the AT-ATs from Tolkien??" I had >always thought the idea of elephant-like >walking tanks was brilliant, turns out he stole >that too.
Tolkein didn't exactly come up with it himself, either....
A couple links from google for your reading pleasure:
>The cockpit of a plane should be inaccessible >via the cabin. An airplane should carry two >pilots and two co-pilots, and they would board >the aircraft from a different hatch than >everyone else; a hatch which only opens into >the cockpit. Hijacking problem averted.
Why is this modded funny? Mods, can we have a +5, Insightful, please?
Having the cockpit be physically inaccessible from the passenger cabin sounds like a really good idea to me...
You might be able to do some conventional hijacking ("fly me to destination X") by taking the stewardesses and passengers hostage and communicating with the pilot, but no way are you going to be able to pull off a suicide attack if you can't get into the cockpit.
I don't understand why this option isn't being pursued seriously (or even talked about). With all the money that's been thrown around to bail out the airlines and impose new "security" measures, I know cost can't be the reason...
Responding to my own post because I can't respond to the moderation directly...
I'd really like to know how a message can be modded "overrated" when it hasn't been modded ("rated") by anyone else yet.
If you are modding down because you disagree with the theory that I proposed, you are an idiot. The appropriate thing to do if you think my idea is bullshit is to REPLY to the post and explain why you think so... That is how/. is supposed to work, isn't it?
Figuring out the average for a die is pretty damn easy. Assuming "straight" dice (x-sided die with exactly one of each number 1 through x, and each face being identical), the average is always going to be:
(1 + x) / 2
For combinations of dice, the rolls are going to follow a textbook bell curve (on two six-sided dice, there is only one combination that adds up to 12, but there are six combinations that add up to 7).
Figuring out the averages for your entire dice bag shouln't take more than a few minutes, let alone multiple Friday nights..
>>I don't fly unless absolutely positively there >>is no other way to get to there from here in a >>reasonable time frame.
>Hehehe. Go Brother!. I'm also against the >killing of dolphins by tuna fishermen, so I >absolutely refuse to eat tuna. Unless i'm like, >REALLY in the mood for it.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be "I'm against the killing of dolphins by tuna fishermen, so I'm going to boycott it unless I'm dying of starvation and it is the only food available."
He didn't say he would fly if he was in the mood, he said he would fly if it was NECESSARY.
(Still not a true boycott, though - there's always another way).
Simple.. just explain the concept of free software = more money in the budget for other things...
The masses may be dumb, but they've got an ok grasp on basic economics.. just target your campaign statements toward the folks that are complaining about not enough money for "x" in the budget.. show them with pie charts and bar graphs how the actual dollars saved will be actually spent to improve the community..
Ok, this is probably redundant, and might even be flame bait, but having separate Smoking & Non-Smoking sections doesn't work too well, for the simple reason that while you may be able to keep *people* on one side of the imaginary smoking line, you can't easily keep the *smoke* on it's side. Back before the smoking ban in California, I recall a number of times sitting in the non-smoking section of restaurants and having the smoke from the people on the other side of the imaginary line waft over into my area noticably. By having people in the same room as you smoking, they have chosen for you to smoke. You don't have a say in it, other than leaving the restaurant alltogether, and finding exactly the same problem at the next restaurant.
Now, don't get me wrong, while not a smoker myself, I am an advocate of smoker's rights. I propose that if a restaurant wishes to have a smoking section, they can do so, but it needs to be a *separate* *enclosed* room, where the smoke won't get out into the area with the people that don't like it. Provide adequate ventilation to the outside from this room, to avoid that total smoky haze that is produced in smoking lounges at airports and the like. I also think it would be reasonable to give the waitstaff required to work this room hazard pay. I don't think this solution is too unreasonable, as long as the designated smoking area is large enough to accomodate the number of smokers that a restaurant normally attracts.
Those of us that CHOOSE not to smoke should have our rights respected, too. But, admittedly, California has shortsightedly gone a little too far.
Ok, I worked for the Census in 2000 as an enumerator. I can say with certainty that you have nothing to fear because the incompetency level of the people running the show almost guarantees that there is little if any accurate information that was collected. *Many* houses were missed, or the information was fudged or just plain made up to accomodate deadlines. I also know that the machines they used to read all of the forms had terrible recognition of what was written on them, and a huge pile of forms was lost due to a flooded basement in D.C. Not to mention the amount of people that just plain lied in answer to the questions. (Which, btw, is the smart thing to do if you don't want to participate; lie! They have no way of knowing that you're lying. Hell, tell them it's a summer home and they leave you alone real fast.. Trust me, I know how the procedures work(ed)). If you refuse to cooperate, they will continue to come to your door and harass you several times. If you lie, they never bother you again.
Oh, and all that anyone was actually required to answer was "how many people live here". It doesn't matter if they're voting age or not. And the only reason they need that tidbit is to determine seats in Congress. The rest of the questions, however, it doesn't really hurt to ask. They look at those figures of how long it takes you to drive to work, and how many children you have, and road construction and schools get more funding because of it. If you refuse to cooperate, and you've got kids, that's money the school district doesn't get for *10 years*. Answer their silly questions. Honestly, how could that information really be used against you? Any information that can be used against you is already in the hands of the telemarketers anyway, and they got it by legitimate means, not by reverse-engineering publicly released general census data. And besides, the information that they asked isn't really that hard to dig up from sources that are already publicly available, or that your neighbors know about you (you'd be surprised how much your next door neighbor knows about your life....) I know we used the Post Office, County Records, School Records, Fire Department Records, Realtor's Records etc., etc., to answer the "tough cases."
Oh, and the Census did *not* cover every house in America. I might believe that they did in cities, but in the rural areas their coverage was shitty at best. I personally know of at least a dozen or so residences out in the boonies here that not only weren't counted, but the roads that they're on aren't even on the census maps! I also know of an entire suburban subdivision that, according to the Census, doesn't exist. (Oh, and with this in mind, I have Zero faith in any mapping software that uses Census maps as it's source information. The maps were *hideously terrible*. Don't use MapQuest.)
Yes. Like any new technology, when it first comes out it will be used to insulate the already wealthy. The time that the engineered food will become useful to the people that need it is about 10-30 years after it is developed, once the technology has been refined and mass-produced to become incredibly cheap and widespread. Of course, by then there will be new technologies that assist only the rich, but this has always been the way of things.
Think about it. We're just now getting to the point where personal computers are starting to become cheap enough for even low-income families to have one. I recall an article on/. a while back about how Brazil (I think it was Brazil) was manufacturing super-cheap computers so that everyone could have one. PCs have been around for a good 20 years in a form recognizable to us now, and just now is the technology trickling down to the common man.
TV was the same way. When it first came out, only the super-rich could afford one. A few years later, most every middle- to high-income family had *one*. Then, a few scant decades later, there's an average of like 3 per household in the U.S.::shrug::/s
In counterpoint, how many of us are reading Slashdot, or are on IRC, or whatever in a little minimized window or in a window on a different part of our desktop while we are at work? Are we really in a position to judge?
Also, they get coffee breaks and lunch breaks too, and I don't see why CIA would have a right to get mad if they were using *that* time to be in a chatroom..
I recall reading a Scientific American article in which it was explained that bumblebees do not fly in a normal manner; through some quirk of physics that will only apply at their size level, they gain lift on the *upstroke* of their wings (rather than the downstroke, as everything else does).. it has to do with a pressure differential or something..
Slashdot Mirror
>I almost fell on my butt when I saw the giant
>elephants in Return Of The King. "You mean
>Lucas stole the AT-ATs from Tolkien??" I had
>always thought the idea of elephant-like
>walking tanks was brilliant, turns out he stole
>that too.
Tolkein didn't exactly come up with it himself, either....
A couple links from google for your reading pleasure:
http://www.pass.to/HannaVisioN/hannibal.htm
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0770041.html
>The cockpit of a plane should be inaccessible
>via the cabin. An airplane should carry two
>pilots and two co-pilots, and they would board
>the aircraft from a different hatch than
>everyone else; a hatch which only opens into
>the cockpit. Hijacking problem averted.
Why is this modded funny? Mods, can we have a +5, Insightful, please?
Having the cockpit be physically inaccessible from the passenger cabin sounds like a really good idea to me...
You might be able to do some conventional hijacking ("fly me to destination X") by taking the stewardesses and passengers hostage and communicating with the pilot, but no way are you going to be able to pull off a suicide attack if you can't get into the cockpit.
I don't understand why this option isn't being pursued seriously (or even talked about). With all the money that's been thrown around to bail out the airlines and impose new "security" measures, I know cost can't be the reason...
Responding to my own post because I can't respond to the moderation directly...
/. is supposed to work, isn't it?
I'd really like to know how a message can be modded "overrated" when it hasn't been modded ("rated") by anyone else yet.
If you are modding down because you disagree with the theory that I proposed, you are an idiot. The appropriate thing to do if you think my idea is bullshit is to REPLY to the post and explain why you think so... That is how
Let's assume for the sake of argument for a second that gravity is a wave...
Could this be constructive interference caused by the collision of the gravity wavefronts from the sun and the moon when they are lined up just right?
Just a thought, the real explanation is probably much crazier.
Ok, maybe this is nitpicking, but:
Figuring out the average for a die is pretty damn easy. Assuming "straight" dice (x-sided die with exactly one of each number 1 through x, and each face being identical), the average is always going to be:
(1 + x) / 2
For combinations of dice, the rolls are going to follow a textbook bell curve (on two six-sided dice, there is only one combination that adds up to 12, but there are six combinations that add up to 7).
Figuring out the averages for your entire dice bag shouln't take more than a few minutes, let alone multiple Friday nights..
This reminds me of some lingustic confusion I have had with a friend of mine who was raised in Brazil...
Apparently, in Brazil, the little green ones are called "limon" and the fat yellow ones are "lima".
He's been living in the US for over 10 years now, and he still mixes them up from time to time...
>>I don't fly unless absolutely positively there
>>is no other way to get to there from here in a
>>reasonable time frame.
>Hehehe. Go Brother!. I'm also against the
>killing of dolphins by tuna fishermen, so I
>absolutely refuse to eat tuna. Unless i'm like,
>REALLY in the mood for it.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be "I'm against the killing of dolphins by tuna fishermen, so I'm going to boycott it unless I'm dying of starvation and it is the only food available."
He didn't say he would fly if he was in the mood, he said he would fly if it was NECESSARY.
(Still not a true boycott, though - there's always another way).
It would appear you missed the point.
The main idea of the novel is that war is horrific and pointless. It seems that this is the one thing that the movie actually managed to get right...
Other than that, the movie was complete crap.
(Ok, the propaganda commercials were fun. And no complaints on Denise Richards', uh, assets. But other than that, it was crap.)
Wouldn't this be more properly referred to as a Gatling Gun?
Simple.. just explain the concept of free software = more money in the budget for other things...
The masses may be dumb, but they've got an ok grasp on basic economics.. just target your campaign statements toward the folks that are complaining about not enough money for "x" in the budget.. show them with pie charts and bar graphs how the actual dollars saved will be actually spent to improve the community..
Ok, this is probably redundant, and might even be flame bait, but having separate Smoking & Non-Smoking sections doesn't work too well, for the simple reason that while you may be able to keep *people* on one side of the imaginary smoking line, you can't easily keep the *smoke* on it's side. Back before the smoking ban in California, I recall a number of times sitting in the non-smoking section of restaurants and having the smoke from the people on the other side of the imaginary line waft over into my area noticably. By having people in the same room as you smoking, they have chosen for you to smoke. You don't have a say in it, other than leaving the restaurant alltogether, and finding exactly the same problem at the next restaurant.
Now, don't get me wrong, while not a smoker myself, I am an advocate of smoker's rights. I propose that if a restaurant wishes to have a smoking section, they can do so, but it needs to be a *separate* *enclosed* room, where the smoke won't get out into the area with the people that don't like it. Provide adequate ventilation to the outside from this room, to avoid that total smoky haze that is produced in smoking lounges at airports and the like. I also think it would be reasonable to give the waitstaff required to work this room hazard pay. I don't think this solution is too unreasonable, as long as the designated smoking area is large enough to accomodate the number of smokers that a restaurant normally attracts.
Those of us that CHOOSE not to smoke should have our rights respected, too. But, admittedly, California has shortsightedly gone a little too far.
::shrug::
Ok, I worked for the Census in 2000 as an enumerator. I can say with certainty that you have nothing to fear because the incompetency level of the people running the show almost guarantees that there is little if any accurate information that was collected. *Many* houses were missed, or the information was fudged or just plain made up to accomodate deadlines. I also know that the machines they used to read all of the forms had terrible recognition of what was written on them, and a huge pile of forms was lost due to a flooded basement in D.C. Not to mention the amount of people that just plain lied in answer to the questions. (Which, btw, is the smart thing to do if you don't want to participate; lie! They have no way of knowing that you're lying. Hell, tell them it's a summer home and they leave you alone real fast.. Trust me, I know how the procedures work(ed)). If you refuse to cooperate, they will continue to come to your door and harass you several times. If you lie, they never bother you again.
Oh, and all that anyone was actually required to answer was "how many people live here". It doesn't matter if they're voting age or not. And the only reason they need that tidbit is to determine seats in Congress. The rest of the questions, however, it doesn't really hurt to ask. They look at those figures of how long it takes you to drive to work, and how many children you have, and road construction and schools get more funding because of it. If you refuse to cooperate, and you've got kids, that's money the school district doesn't get for *10 years*. Answer their silly questions. Honestly, how could that information really be used against you? Any information that can be used against you is already in the hands of the telemarketers anyway, and they got it by legitimate means, not by reverse-engineering publicly released general census data. And besides, the information that they asked isn't really that hard to dig up from sources that are already publicly available, or that your neighbors know about you (you'd be surprised how much your next door neighbor knows about your life....) I know we used the Post Office, County Records, School Records, Fire Department Records, Realtor's Records etc., etc., to answer the "tough cases."
Oh, and the Census did *not* cover every house in America. I might believe that they did in cities, but in the rural areas their coverage was shitty at best. I personally know of at least a dozen or so residences out in the boonies here that not only weren't counted, but the roads that they're on aren't even on the census maps! I also know of an entire suburban subdivision that, according to the Census, doesn't exist. (Oh, and with this in mind, I have Zero faith in any mapping software that uses Census maps as it's source information. The maps were *hideously terrible*. Don't use MapQuest.)
/rant
Yes. Like any new technology, when it first comes out it will be used to insulate the already wealthy. The time that the engineered food will become useful to the people that need it is about 10-30 years after it is developed, once the technology has been refined and mass-produced to become incredibly cheap and widespread. Of course, by then there will be new technologies that assist only the rich, but this has always been the way of things. Think about it. We're just now getting to the point where personal computers are starting to become cheap enough for even low-income families to have one. I recall an article on /. a while back about how Brazil (I think it was Brazil) was manufacturing super-cheap computers so that everyone could have one. PCs have been around for a good 20 years in a form recognizable to us now, and just now is the technology trickling down to the common man.
TV was the same way. When it first came out, only the super-rich could afford one. A few years later, most every middle- to high-income family had *one*. Then, a few scant decades later, there's an average of like 3 per household in the U.S. ::shrug:: /s
In counterpoint, how many of us are reading Slashdot, or are on IRC, or whatever in a little minimized window or in a window on a different part of our desktop while we are at work? Are we really in a position to judge? Also, they get coffee breaks and lunch breaks too, and I don't see why CIA would have a right to get mad if they were using *that* time to be in a chatroom..
I recall reading a Scientific American article in which it was explained that bumblebees do not fly in a normal manner; through some quirk of physics that will only apply at their size level, they gain lift on the *upstroke* of their wings (rather than the downstroke, as everything else does).. it has to do with a pressure differential or something..