Locks are just there to keep honest people honest anyway. If somebody wants to get in, there is not much you can really do to stop them, especially with a sub $10 padlock. They can brut force (bolt cutters, drill, heat, crowbar etc) or finesse it open (bump key, pick, or what this guy does) and get in, you cannot stop that.
All you can really do is to slow them down by making things difficult enough it takes a long time to break in (Drill the safe, dig though the wall of the vault, or what have you) and provide enough regular surveillance that you will catch them before they get inside. You cannot stop them from trying.
"derp, you can open a lock by hitting it friggin hard with a hammer"
Yes indeed.
No, he's not hitting it hard with a hammer. This approach is not about brute force, it's about applying a shock to over come a small spring that holds the pin that locks the shackle closed.
But everybody needs to realize that locks and keys only keep honest people honest anyway. There is not much you can do to stop somebody from breaking in if they really want to. About all you can hope for is to make it take long enough to break in that they get caught when they try.
It's incredibly hard to generate truly random numbers in software running on a machine designed to produce finite answers which are the SAME every time
Well-funded groups of researchers given years to work regularly solve "incredibly hard" problems - that's most of modern science. Since RNGs are important to crypto, this problem had a basically unlimited budget and plenty of interest from the private sector crypto guys, and it has been solved quite well.
So you want to replace a physical device which can be observed by all involved, with some unknown program buried in some black box
Unknown program? No. But well-reviewed open source is fine.
If you are looking to avoid cheating, you assume everything you've not verified is unknown... My point is it's easier to inspect a physical die than to inspect the program loaded on some electronic device. It's a whole lot easier to catch physical alterations of a die than to catch that somebody has re-flashed the electronic device we are using because some how we don't think the die is random enough..
BTW, generating random numbers in a non-deterministic way on a digital device remains a very difficult task. You can produce distributions of numbers that look random in a program, but it's *really* hard to avoid the deterministic part of the system because computers are by definition and design deterministic devices. In order to get truly random behavior you need to have something other than a deterministic hardware and software system involved. The best being using background noise of some kind and deriving your random numbers from something not deterministic.
X-Ray techs use all sorts of tables to figure out how to set their system to optimal settings, where they use the absolute minimum radiation exposure to get the imagery they need. This just allows them to judge sizes and thicknesses automatically and thus how to set up the system quicker and more accurately, reducing radiation exposure while producing the needed imagery.
So it's not about things changing during the x-ray, it's about setting up the equipment using something other than educated guesses and experience but actually measuring things using cheap, off the shelf equipment and then suggesting better estimates of the best X-Ray settings automatically. It leads to less radiation exposure, especially in the case of children where the task facing X-Ray techs is the most difficult and the net affects of X-Ray exposure the most dangerous.
Yea, let's trade physical dice with slight variations to some software based random number generator because we think it's more fair? BUZZZZ wrong answer.
It's incredibly hard to generate truly random numbers in software running on a machine designed to produce finite answers which are the SAME every time. So your electronic dice are going to be far from random under most circumstances. Many software random number generators seem random, but are really quite deterministic, meaning that the next number can usually be calculated in advance.
So you want to replace a physical device which can be observed by all involved, with some unknown program buried in some black box just because there might be slight imperfections in the randomness of the results? I think you are chasing your tail...
This poster clearly indicated "Desktop" which is totally different from "Server".
For most residential consumers, the power draw of a desktop is totally immaterial. Gamers routinely slap 1500W power supplies into desktop boxes with power hungry processors and video hardware with 10,000 RPM drives and huge fans to keep it all cool. They are not concerned that the beast is dissipating 500W of heat that they have to pay to generate, then pay again to pump outside in the summer.
As far as knowing how many cycles it can withstand, it's called a spec sheet.
Yea, it will tell you what the manufacturer claims. Of course, that's an average that is supposed to be based on testing samples which is extremely limited in consumer devices because it takes time and is expensive in a market where quicker means more profit and margins are thin to start with. The numbers *should* be close, but who really knows?
However, You did choose to miss the part where I said that you should buy drives on reputation and transfer speeds and forget testing them... No sense in wearing out your expensive hardware just to prove how durable it is or isn't. There is nothing to be gained in this case. Most disk manufacturers have already exhaustively tested every drive anyway so once you have established that your power supply and drive controller are up to par and you can communicate with the drive there is no sense in hammering the drive just to see if it works.
Think of it like buying an electric car that advertises a 150 mile range on a full charge. Are you going to take it out and drive it until the battery dies jus to prove the thing goes 150 miles when running a battery flat reduces the battery capacity? You are stupid if you do...
I think I'd avoid doing a torture test of a disk drive of any type, but especially an SSD. Technically you are wearing out the SSD which has a finite number of write cycles before it will stop working on you. Problem is, you don't really know how many cycles an SSD has, so you are just wasting your drive's life. Plus, SSD's slow down over time as they are used and the drive controller attempts to level the number of writes in each sector.
For memory, sure, test away, get the whole system good and hot, and make sure you don't see errors. But for SSD's buy them on sustained read/write rates and reputation. Also buy them bigger than you need and only use about 70% of the capacity, just don't try to exhaustively test them.
Hello "Fellow Jihadi warrior of peace"! My name is Peggy, how can I help you with your terror related problem today?
In order to better serve your Jihad needs, please make a selection from the following menu of options....
Press 1 if you would like to suggest an evil plot to frighten the world. (Note, we are not accepting ideas involving Paris at this time due to local personnel availability)
Press 2 if you need help with communications, configuring computers, finding a place to charge your phone or getting a cell signal.
Press 3 if you need help with explosive devices, destroying alarm clocks or need to schedule detonation call time.
Press 4 if you would like to enroll in Obama care, pay your IRS fines, or file your taxes.
Press 5 if you need help submitting pictures and video (staged or real) of collateral damage to Al Jazeera and other sympathetic media outlets like ABC, CBS or NBC or getting advice on how to artificially inflate casualty counts, civilian deaths or harm to women and children.
Press 6 if you would like to report a violation of sharia law, including women driving, tight fitting clothes in public, bare ankles, eating during Ramadan or desecration of the holy book by your neighbors.
Press 7 if you need the locations of your nearest Jihad training/testing facilities, schedule your next jihad certification test session or check on your certification status.
Press 8 if you need advice on how to avoid Russian, French and other country's activities including bombs, leaflets and laser designators.
Press 9 if you are a useful idiot, US citizen, or other foreign national who wants to throw their life away on a war that will never be won and save us the trouble of killing you ourselves...
Press 0 to hear this list again in Arabic, Farsi or Russian.
Or stay on the line to be connected to your nearest CIA operative acting like an agent of Jihad. Please be prepared with your exact location, including latitude and longitude good to at least 4 decimal places, full name, photo and desired emergency contact for BDA assessment purposes.
Right, like how we should give the police free passes for killing innocent civilians because ultimately they have saved more lives then they take.
You do realize that unjustified police shootings are incredibly rare. The number of police who are shot and die on duty outnumber civilians wrongfully killed by police by more than an order of magnitude.
So, where I'm not advocating we just give police a pass, there does need to be a huge burden of proof involved in finding fault with them. This means that unless there is irrefutable evidence the cop is lying about the use of force, they should be afforded both the benefit of the doubt and shielded from both criminal and civil court action. But hey, that's just me.
Even this won't help that... First, it is the City of Chicago that's collecting the fines and they won't share with the state. Second, the state claims to have the money but until the state has a budget so it can buy the blank checks, the envelope and the stamp to put on it (not to mention pay the person to print it, stuff it and drop it in the mail) NOBODY except the state legislators will a check from the state....
Oh I fully understand that Ethanol is a fools errand.. Converting food into motor fuel is just about as stupid as you can get....
NASCAR is more than just logistics and driver talent, there is a whole load of tradition to go along with all that plus a whole lot of very bright people trying to engineer their way into some legal advantage or not getting caught trying something not so legal. It's quite the engineering challenge and most teams have big budgets to hire staff to design/build/test everything from engines to brakes and come up with the right combinations for each of the venues they must operate in.
Yea, NASCAR is based in tradition and simplicity, it's kind of their thing. The got their start racing actual "stock" (meaning direct off the show room floor) cars with only a minimum amount of allowed alterations. It has had to depart from this original idea a bit, but they retain as much simplicity as they can in the car design by keeping it as simple as they can. It's part of their charm. Formula 1 and Indy are all out, make it go as fast as possible affairs with little technology that enables it off limits while NASCAR is dedicated to simplicity.
In the last decade or so though, NASCAR has had to allow some technology to creep into the car and has started to depart more and more from the "stock" part of their name. They used to run carburetors and distributers, now they run fuel injection and electronically controlled ignitions. They now have cars that have to be identical in shape, size and weight with frames that have to adhere to strict geometry and construction rules, which has taken away a lot of the meaning of what a "Toyota" or "Ford" was. They all run the same tires, same fuel, same everything else except for what color it's painted and the driver's seat they bolted into it. In the process, NASCAR has lost some of it's charm. So I'm not sure it is in their best interest to just allow unfettered access to technology in the sport because I fear it will drive away the people there to watch what can be done with the simplest of tools.
Bill doesn't seem to understand what NASCAR is, or value its traditions, which generally comes across as uppity and narcissistic. It's kind of like a food snob looking down his nose at you for enjoying that bowl of beef stew because you didn't use Kobe beef with the right kind of vegetables in a Dutch oven and cooked it the day before, but threw yours in the crock pot this morning before work. He thinks you are stupid, unrefined and don't know better, when all you really want is to enjoy your dinner of beef stew like your mom used to make.
Maybe down on the dirt tracks they drink and drive, but they most assuredly DON'T drink and drive at the top two levels in NASCAR because they drug test at that level. The fans do drink, but the teams have to wait until the race is over and the car is in the hauler unless they happen to win that week. Breaking that rule is NOT tolerated and will get your team booted off the track in a heart beat, despite what you see in the movies.
They turn right at Watkins Glenn....It's a road course you know, plus they run it backwards (clockwise looking down) so most of the turns are right handers... Of course the rest of the year, turning right would be a bad thing...
It ain't cheatn' less the rule book says it's Cheaten' . (And it's not *really* Cheaten les NASCAR catches ya.)
Look, it's generally incredibly hard to "cheat" in NASCAR on a continuing basis and get away with it. There is a reason NASCAR keeps the acceptable car design VERY simple and why they do all kinds of inspections, before, during and after the race to insure compliance with the rules. They don't always catch somebody when they are breaking the rules, but if you keep it up, eventually they will catch it.
What I find amazing is how inventive teams can be. Like putting in 100' of extra fuel line, hidden in the frame of the car to get a few extra gallons of fuel on board is a classic. Everybody is angling for that extra edge, some way to eek out a little bit of performance or shave off a 1/10th of a second a lap. They come up with some amazing tweaks at times, at least until everybody figures out the same thing or NASCAR changes their rules and inspection procedures to stop it.
Hey Bill.. You do realize that NASCAR has not burned just gasoline for a number of years now... They switched to a 15% blend of ethanol way back in 2011 as I recall...
But hey there Billy boy... It's easy to criticize something you don't really understand. Three is actually a LOT of science and technology involved in NASCAR even though the car design is deceptively kept simple. There is actually a lot of really bright folks involved in NASCAR that do some really amazing things when you dig into what is actually going on. Yes most of it is hidden behind the pit wall, but that doesn't make what these people do any less worthy of respect and admiration. They are out there engineering solutions for problems which have never been seen before, developing tools and techniques to evaluate and quantify the effectiveness of their ideas then competing with others to see who can innovate the fastest without causing catastrophic failures in one of the most demanding places you can imagine.
And that's just the engineering side.... Don't get me started on how 6 guys can change 4 tires, fill up the tank,get the driver a drink and put the car back on the road and all the tools behind the wall in less than 18 seconds, almost without fail. Or how some driver, literally going down the road at 200 MPH in a vehicle that would rather be airborne at that speed, keeps the thing pointed in the right direction though the turns in the face of buffeting winds, air that's upset by the car 2 feet in front of him, blinding sun, ever changing track conditions and 42 other guys trying to use the same bit of asphalt to get across the same line before him. And how anybody can do that for as much as 500 miles, stopping only 16 seconds at a time.
Just admit it Billy, you just don't like NASCAR so you don't go to the races or bother to understand how any of it works... But do you have to go out and insult nearly half the population of a number of pretty important states with your ignorance of things they like to do? Just because they talk differently from you, doesn't make them stupid.... Look, you are entitled to not like NASCAR if it's not your cup of tea, but you are NOT entitled to making scathing remards about the people who don't see things you way.
Full disclosure... While I'm not a die-hard NASCAR fan and I find watching most of the races a bit tedious so I don't often take the time, I've been to a number of races over the years and I can see why people can really enjoy them. In general, it's good fun with good people and where it's not my favorite cup of tea, I don't mind consuming a bit from time to time. Same with baseball, football and sometimes even golf, and NASCAR is every bit the team sport that baseball or football is... So, Billy boy, what you are really proving with your inane statements is that you have a pretty high opinion of yourself, too high for your own good, and you are intolerant of people who are different from you and look down on them out of ignorance. In the future, I suggest you keep your mouth shut and I'd recommend you stay away from the track until this blows over some, it might not be safe if somebody recognizes you...
A million people? I'm not going to argue your numbers, but you've got to realize how big this thing will have to be...
I would expect that mankind will be killing each other off long before we get to a unified enough world government to build such a thing.... But that's not a argument saying it's not technically possible, it's one that says it's not practically possible.
Yep, that reminds me of a "redundant" system we purchased once. It had two processors that ran in locked step so you could fail over seamlessly from the primary to the secondary at the slightest indication of a fault (say an ECC error, or some noise on some address line). Sounds great on paper... Problem was, when this happened, you where no longer redundant until you could reboot the system which took something like 20 min to cleanly shut down, reset the redundancy and restart everything. Starting the system in non-redundant mode took like 5 min because it didn't have to re-sync everything. The failure rate of the individual systems was such that it failed about once a quarter or so and we'd process on w/o a break, but it took us 20 min a quarter, 80 min a year to get it back into redundant mode. The thing was actually *better* availability when we didn't run it fully redundant because the amount of down time was much less to just reboot the one side... So we'd go fully redundant when we could afford the boot time, like in planned maintenance windows which where at the customer's request, but then once it failed over, we'd leave it in non-redundant mode and just boot the one side....
Sometimes redundancy is just more complicated and depending on the MTBF's involved, not a good idea...
Research has indicated that polygraphs are up to 90% accurate. Even critical research find that the test is right the majority of the time (more often than simple chance). The actual truth is someplace in between.
Polygraphs are usually never used alone and are almost always used in conjunction with other things to make life changing decisions about people. Nobody I know claims that polygraphs are 100% accurate, everybody admits they are not, some say 90%, some say less but even the worst studies admit it's better than chance. The truth is somewhere above flipping a coin and 90%. If the success rate is above about 80%, clearly poly's have viable uses in screening. If the success rate is closer to just above 50%, it's still a useful investigative tool, albeit of limited value. It all depends on how reliable or unreliable you think the test is, and that's been a subject of much debate since the polygraph was invented in 1921.
Yes there are jobs that require a "successful" polygraph to get and keep, but usually the point of the polygraph is entirely different in those situations and if you want the job you get to pass the polygraph, your choice. But the point of the polygraph in most of those cases is more about providing a deterrent effect and preventing crime than detecting or investigating them, and as such the test really isn't about finding out who's lying or telling the truth so the actual accuracy, as long as it's more than just random chance, is all that is necessary.
So.... Again, Polygraphs have their uses, and everybody understands they are an imperfect tool. But they are a useful tool in various situations...
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Locks are just there to keep honest people honest anyway. If somebody wants to get in, there is not much you can really do to stop them, especially with a sub $10 padlock. They can brut force (bolt cutters, drill, heat, crowbar etc) or finesse it open (bump key, pick, or what this guy does) and get in, you cannot stop that.
All you can really do is to slow them down by making things difficult enough it takes a long time to break in (Drill the safe, dig though the wall of the vault, or what have you) and provide enough regular surveillance that you will catch them before they get inside. You cannot stop them from trying.
technology, news for nerds, stuff that matters
"derp, you can open a lock by hitting it friggin hard with a hammer"
Yes indeed.
No, he's not hitting it hard with a hammer. This approach is not about brute force, it's about applying a shock to over come a small spring that holds the pin that locks the shackle closed.
But everybody needs to realize that locks and keys only keep honest people honest anyway. There is not much you can do to stop somebody from breaking in if they really want to. About all you can hope for is to make it take long enough to break in that they get caught when they try.
It's incredibly hard to generate truly random numbers in software running on a machine designed to produce finite answers which are the SAME every time
Well-funded groups of researchers given years to work regularly solve "incredibly hard" problems - that's most of modern science. Since RNGs are important to crypto, this problem had a basically unlimited budget and plenty of interest from the private sector crypto guys, and it has been solved quite well.
So you want to replace a physical device which can be observed by all involved, with some unknown program buried in some black box
Unknown program? No. But well-reviewed open source is fine.
If you are looking to avoid cheating, you assume everything you've not verified is unknown... My point is it's easier to inspect a physical die than to inspect the program loaded on some electronic device. It's a whole lot easier to catch physical alterations of a die than to catch that somebody has re-flashed the electronic device we are using because some how we don't think the die is random enough..
BTW, generating random numbers in a non-deterministic way on a digital device remains a very difficult task. You can produce distributions of numbers that look random in a program, but it's *really* hard to avoid the deterministic part of the system because computers are by definition and design deterministic devices. In order to get truly random behavior you need to have something other than a deterministic hardware and software system involved. The best being using background noise of some kind and deriving your random numbers from something not deterministic.
X-Ray techs use all sorts of tables to figure out how to set their system to optimal settings, where they use the absolute minimum radiation exposure to get the imagery they need. This just allows them to judge sizes and thicknesses automatically and thus how to set up the system quicker and more accurately, reducing radiation exposure while producing the needed imagery.
So it's not about things changing during the x-ray, it's about setting up the equipment using something other than educated guesses and experience but actually measuring things using cheap, off the shelf equipment and then suggesting better estimates of the best X-Ray settings automatically. It leads to less radiation exposure, especially in the case of children where the task facing X-Ray techs is the most difficult and the net affects of X-Ray exposure the most dangerous.
Yea, let's trade physical dice with slight variations to some software based random number generator because we think it's more fair? BUZZZZ wrong answer.
It's incredibly hard to generate truly random numbers in software running on a machine designed to produce finite answers which are the SAME every time. So your electronic dice are going to be far from random under most circumstances. Many software random number generators seem random, but are really quite deterministic, meaning that the next number can usually be calculated in advance.
So you want to replace a physical device which can be observed by all involved, with some unknown program buried in some black box just because there might be slight imperfections in the randomness of the results? I think you are chasing your tail...
This poster clearly indicated "Desktop" which is totally different from "Server".
For most residential consumers, the power draw of a desktop is totally immaterial. Gamers routinely slap 1500W power supplies into desktop boxes with power hungry processors and video hardware with 10,000 RPM drives and huge fans to keep it all cool. They are not concerned that the beast is dissipating 500W of heat that they have to pay to generate, then pay again to pump outside in the summer.
As far as knowing how many cycles it can withstand, it's called a spec sheet.
Yea, it will tell you what the manufacturer claims. Of course, that's an average that is supposed to be based on testing samples which is extremely limited in consumer devices because it takes time and is expensive in a market where quicker means more profit and margins are thin to start with. The numbers *should* be close, but who really knows?
However, You did choose to miss the part where I said that you should buy drives on reputation and transfer speeds and forget testing them... No sense in wearing out your expensive hardware just to prove how durable it is or isn't. There is nothing to be gained in this case. Most disk manufacturers have already exhaustively tested every drive anyway so once you have established that your power supply and drive controller are up to par and you can communicate with the drive there is no sense in hammering the drive just to see if it works.
Think of it like buying an electric car that advertises a 150 mile range on a full charge. Are you going to take it out and drive it until the battery dies jus to prove the thing goes 150 miles when running a battery flat reduces the battery capacity? You are stupid if you do...
I think I'd avoid doing a torture test of a disk drive of any type, but especially an SSD. Technically you are wearing out the SSD which has a finite number of write cycles before it will stop working on you. Problem is, you don't really know how many cycles an SSD has, so you are just wasting your drive's life. Plus, SSD's slow down over time as they are used and the drive controller attempts to level the number of writes in each sector.
For memory, sure, test away, get the whole system good and hot, and make sure you don't see errors. But for SSD's buy them on sustained read/write rates and reputation. Also buy them bigger than you need and only use about 70% of the capacity, just don't try to exhaustively test them.
Who cares? Unless you are running a rack full of these things, power consumption seems to be the least of anybody's worries....
Hello "Fellow Jihadi warrior of peace"! My name is Peggy, how can I help you with your terror related problem today?
In order to better serve your Jihad needs, please make a selection from the following menu of options....
Press 1 if you would like to suggest an evil plot to frighten the world. (Note, we are not accepting ideas involving Paris at this time due to local personnel availability)
Press 2 if you need help with communications, configuring computers, finding a place to charge your phone or getting a cell signal.
Press 3 if you need help with explosive devices, destroying alarm clocks or need to schedule detonation call time.
Press 4 if you would like to enroll in Obama care, pay your IRS fines, or file your taxes.
Press 5 if you need help submitting pictures and video (staged or real) of collateral damage to Al Jazeera and other sympathetic media outlets like ABC, CBS or NBC or getting advice on how to artificially inflate casualty counts, civilian deaths or harm to women and children.
Press 6 if you would like to report a violation of sharia law, including women driving, tight fitting clothes in public, bare ankles, eating during Ramadan or desecration of the holy book by your neighbors.
Press 7 if you need the locations of your nearest Jihad training/testing facilities, schedule your next jihad certification test session or check on your certification status.
Press 8 if you need advice on how to avoid Russian, French and other country's activities including bombs, leaflets and laser designators.
Press 9 if you are a useful idiot, US citizen, or other foreign national who wants to throw their life away on a war that will never be won and save us the trouble of killing you ourselves...
Press 0 to hear this list again in Arabic, Farsi or Russian.
Or stay on the line to be connected to your nearest CIA operative acting like an agent of Jihad. Please be prepared with your exact location, including latitude and longitude good to at least 4 decimal places, full name, photo and desired emergency contact for BDA assessment purposes.
They get free housing, food, a full on welfare system... These guys are running a solid business.
Maybe, but once you are working for them, there is no leaving. Oh, and the retirement plan sucks because it is always blowing up.
Right, like how we should give the police free passes for killing innocent civilians because ultimately they have saved more lives then they take.
You do realize that unjustified police shootings are incredibly rare. The number of police who are shot and die on duty outnumber civilians wrongfully killed by police by more than an order of magnitude.
So, where I'm not advocating we just give police a pass, there does need to be a huge burden of proof involved in finding fault with them. This means that unless there is irrefutable evidence the cop is lying about the use of force, they should be afforded both the benefit of the doubt and shielded from both criminal and civil court action. But hey, that's just me.
Even this won't help that... First, it is the City of Chicago that's collecting the fines and they won't share with the state. Second, the state claims to have the money but until the state has a budget so it can buy the blank checks, the envelope and the stamp to put on it (not to mention pay the person to print it, stuff it and drop it in the mail) NOBODY except the state legislators will a check from the state....
Oh I fully understand that Ethanol is a fools errand.. Converting food into motor fuel is just about as stupid as you can get....
NASCAR is more than just logistics and driver talent, there is a whole load of tradition to go along with all that plus a whole lot of very bright people trying to engineer their way into some legal advantage or not getting caught trying something not so legal. It's quite the engineering challenge and most teams have big budgets to hire staff to design/build/test everything from engines to brakes and come up with the right combinations for each of the venues they must operate in.
Yea, NASCAR is based in tradition and simplicity, it's kind of their thing. The got their start racing actual "stock" (meaning direct off the show room floor) cars with only a minimum amount of allowed alterations. It has had to depart from this original idea a bit, but they retain as much simplicity as they can in the car design by keeping it as simple as they can. It's part of their charm. Formula 1 and Indy are all out, make it go as fast as possible affairs with little technology that enables it off limits while NASCAR is dedicated to simplicity.
In the last decade or so though, NASCAR has had to allow some technology to creep into the car and has started to depart more and more from the "stock" part of their name. They used to run carburetors and distributers, now they run fuel injection and electronically controlled ignitions. They now have cars that have to be identical in shape, size and weight with frames that have to adhere to strict geometry and construction rules, which has taken away a lot of the meaning of what a "Toyota" or "Ford" was. They all run the same tires, same fuel, same everything else except for what color it's painted and the driver's seat they bolted into it. In the process, NASCAR has lost some of it's charm. So I'm not sure it is in their best interest to just allow unfettered access to technology in the sport because I fear it will drive away the people there to watch what can be done with the simplest of tools.
Bill doesn't seem to understand what NASCAR is, or value its traditions, which generally comes across as uppity and narcissistic. It's kind of like a food snob looking down his nose at you for enjoying that bowl of beef stew because you didn't use Kobe beef with the right kind of vegetables in a Dutch oven and cooked it the day before, but threw yours in the crock pot this morning before work. He thinks you are stupid, unrefined and don't know better, when all you really want is to enjoy your dinner of beef stew like your mom used to make.
Maybe down on the dirt tracks they drink and drive, but they most assuredly DON'T drink and drive at the top two levels in NASCAR because they drug test at that level. The fans do drink, but the teams have to wait until the race is over and the car is in the hauler unless they happen to win that week. Breaking that rule is NOT tolerated and will get your team booted off the track in a heart beat, despite what you see in the movies.
They turn right at Watkins Glenn....It's a road course you know, plus they run it backwards (clockwise looking down) so most of the turns are right handers... Of course the rest of the year, turning right would be a bad thing...
Yeah, but they waste 0.00001% of the fossil fuels on earth every year with their ridiculous engines. They're EVIL!
Oh, and don't forget that 15% of what they burn is alcohol now...
It ain't cheatn' less the rule book says it's Cheaten' . (And it's not *really* Cheaten les NASCAR catches ya.)
Look, it's generally incredibly hard to "cheat" in NASCAR on a continuing basis and get away with it. There is a reason NASCAR keeps the acceptable car design VERY simple and why they do all kinds of inspections, before, during and after the race to insure compliance with the rules. They don't always catch somebody when they are breaking the rules, but if you keep it up, eventually they will catch it.
What I find amazing is how inventive teams can be. Like putting in 100' of extra fuel line, hidden in the frame of the car to get a few extra gallons of fuel on board is a classic. Everybody is angling for that extra edge, some way to eek out a little bit of performance or shave off a 1/10th of a second a lap. They come up with some amazing tweaks at times, at least until everybody figures out the same thing or NASCAR changes their rules and inspection procedures to stop it.
Hey Bill.. You do realize that NASCAR has not burned just gasoline for a number of years now... They switched to a 15% blend of ethanol way back in 2011 as I recall...
But hey there Billy boy... It's easy to criticize something you don't really understand. Three is actually a LOT of science and technology involved in NASCAR even though the car design is deceptively kept simple. There is actually a lot of really bright folks involved in NASCAR that do some really amazing things when you dig into what is actually going on. Yes most of it is hidden behind the pit wall, but that doesn't make what these people do any less worthy of respect and admiration. They are out there engineering solutions for problems which have never been seen before, developing tools and techniques to evaluate and quantify the effectiveness of their ideas then competing with others to see who can innovate the fastest without causing catastrophic failures in one of the most demanding places you can imagine.
And that's just the engineering side.... Don't get me started on how 6 guys can change 4 tires, fill up the tank,get the driver a drink and put the car back on the road and all the tools behind the wall in less than 18 seconds, almost without fail. Or how some driver, literally going down the road at 200 MPH in a vehicle that would rather be airborne at that speed, keeps the thing pointed in the right direction though the turns in the face of buffeting winds, air that's upset by the car 2 feet in front of him, blinding sun, ever changing track conditions and 42 other guys trying to use the same bit of asphalt to get across the same line before him. And how anybody can do that for as much as 500 miles, stopping only 16 seconds at a time.
Just admit it Billy, you just don't like NASCAR so you don't go to the races or bother to understand how any of it works... But do you have to go out and insult nearly half the population of a number of pretty important states with your ignorance of things they like to do? Just because they talk differently from you, doesn't make them stupid.... Look, you are entitled to not like NASCAR if it's not your cup of tea, but you are NOT entitled to making scathing remards about the people who don't see things you way.
Full disclosure... While I'm not a die-hard NASCAR fan and I find watching most of the races a bit tedious so I don't often take the time, I've been to a number of races over the years and I can see why people can really enjoy them. In general, it's good fun with good people and where it's not my favorite cup of tea, I don't mind consuming a bit from time to time. Same with baseball, football and sometimes even golf, and NASCAR is every bit the team sport that baseball or football is... So, Billy boy, what you are really proving with your inane statements is that you have a pretty high opinion of yourself, too high for your own good, and you are intolerant of people who are different from you and look down on them out of ignorance. In the future, I suggest you keep your mouth shut and I'd recommend you stay away from the track until this blows over some, it might not be safe if somebody recognizes you...
Ready? Set? GO!
No! Don't Go!
Once you C, you will never Go back.
One for the money, Two for the show, three to get ready and four to Go.
I don't wan to Go... Well, I'll Go! I Must Go. I go where ever I want!
Make it, Go!
Go Go Google Gopher Gadget!
That's a no Go Zone...
Oh Look! Go Go boots!
Go in peace..
Let it Go... Let it Go....
Always learn as you Go..
Never Go out on a limb. Don't Go overboard either....
Go, God, Gold and Golf all start the same way...
Will she stay, or will she Go!?
Don't worry, nothing can Go wrong!
Give it a Go!
Friends don't let friends Go..
Go big or Go home..
Stop! and Go!
What's the opposite of Go? Hmmm.. Let me C."
When you got to Go, you got to Go.
Any more out there?
And the argument starts all over again..... Ah, well, this IS Slashdot...
A million people? I'm not going to argue your numbers, but you've got to realize how big this thing will have to be...
I would expect that mankind will be killing each other off long before we get to a unified enough world government to build such a thing.... But that's not a argument saying it's not technically possible, it's one that says it's not practically possible.
Yep, that reminds me of a "redundant" system we purchased once. It had two processors that ran in locked step so you could fail over seamlessly from the primary to the secondary at the slightest indication of a fault (say an ECC error, or some noise on some address line). Sounds great on paper... Problem was, when this happened, you where no longer redundant until you could reboot the system which took something like 20 min to cleanly shut down, reset the redundancy and restart everything. Starting the system in non-redundant mode took like 5 min because it didn't have to re-sync everything. The failure rate of the individual systems was such that it failed about once a quarter or so and we'd process on w/o a break, but it took us 20 min a quarter, 80 min a year to get it back into redundant mode. The thing was actually *better* availability when we didn't run it fully redundant because the amount of down time was much less to just reboot the one side... So we'd go fully redundant when we could afford the boot time, like in planned maintenance windows which where at the customer's request, but then once it failed over, we'd leave it in non-redundant mode and just boot the one side....
Sometimes redundancy is just more complicated and depending on the MTBF's involved, not a good idea...
Research has indicated that polygraphs are up to 90% accurate. Even critical research find that the test is right the majority of the time (more often than simple chance). The actual truth is someplace in between.
Polygraphs are usually never used alone and are almost always used in conjunction with other things to make life changing decisions about people. Nobody I know claims that polygraphs are 100% accurate, everybody admits they are not, some say 90%, some say less but even the worst studies admit it's better than chance. The truth is somewhere above flipping a coin and 90%. If the success rate is above about 80%, clearly poly's have viable uses in screening. If the success rate is closer to just above 50%, it's still a useful investigative tool, albeit of limited value. It all depends on how reliable or unreliable you think the test is, and that's been a subject of much debate since the polygraph was invented in 1921.
Yes there are jobs that require a "successful" polygraph to get and keep, but usually the point of the polygraph is entirely different in those situations and if you want the job you get to pass the polygraph, your choice. But the point of the polygraph in most of those cases is more about providing a deterrent effect and preventing crime than detecting or investigating them, and as such the test really isn't about finding out who's lying or telling the truth so the actual accuracy, as long as it's more than just random chance, is all that is necessary.
So.... Again, Polygraphs have their uses, and everybody understands they are an imperfect tool. But they are a useful tool in various situations...