That's a problem, all right (and I admit I hadn't thought that far when I posted that). What's the range on a water cannon? 100 yards at best, and by that point its coherency of effect is rather compromised (water spreads) -- so it's really just a large-gauge shotgun. What's the range on even the most cheapassed rifle or handgun? at least four times that. Range trumps volume, and all you've got to do is pick off the cannon operator. Now, our beleaguered cargo ship could put him in an armored hutch or turret, but at some point that's going to compromise his ability to aim close to his own ship, as you'd need to do to repel boarders.
It's still better than nothing, if for some insane reason you're not being allowed to defend yourself with deadly force. But I don't see it as more than a casual deterrant.
And when people talk about "escalation" -- what's to prevent pirates from coming up in a turtle (covered boat) that you can't swamp or wash anyone out of?? this is Medieval Warfare 101!!
Bah. Just accept that it's necessary to go armed on the high seas, and adjust port procedures to accomodate that. It's not 1600 anymore, when a single gunboat could take out a city. And it's not like they need to carry fullscale cannons. A few serious machine guns should suffice.
Well, it depends on the pump behind the water. Fire hoses have been used for crowd control with great success, so long as the water pressure is sufficient. The force from a deck-mounted 3" hose equipped with a high-pressure pump will knock you and your 10 lineman buddies flat on your collective asses. And of course if you're pumping seawater, you won't run out of ammo any time soon.
But in my mind it's still a form of giving in, compromising by NOT hurting the poor widdle pirates, and at best it'll merely discourage them from your one ship, but leaves them free to try again on someone else's ship. Conversely if you shoot them and sink their boat, you now have that many fewer pirates.
Furthermore, I'd have reservations about a port that doesn't allow armed vessels... there are places where that's been used to ensure that visiting ships could be victimized by the local "trading consortium" or even local gov't.
US-flagged ships are already taxed, in part for this service, or at least protection is supposed to be part of the deal when you pay taxes and fees in this country.
But letting them function as a contract navy to ships under other flags -- well, sounds good to me. Yeah, so it's functioning as a mercenary. Hiring mercenaries to protect convoys, land or sea, is a time-honoured process. And if they're ships owned by U.S. companies but sailing under another flag... well, it'd get 'em to pay what they've sneaked out of.
So that's why you have gun lockers on board your ship. Your small arms, which were issued when you left your home port, get put away before you go into port, and because you know what you issued, you have an accurate count and know they're all locked up. (Presumably any port you'd voluntarily sail into is free of pirates.) Isn't that how it used to be done??
It works fine once you run OUT of people who hate their lives. Which if you shoot them, you will, since the number of people willing or able to become pirates is not infinite.
As to seizing a gunboat and making away with it, I gather this has been done -- and then along came the navy and blew 'em out of the water.
But letting them get away with it because of the drawbacks of fighting them is not a good solution.
And there can only be a finite number of pirates. Shoot them and sink their boats, and they won't be replaced, at least not in this generation.
And yeah, maybe it wasn't nice or fair that Somalia's waters got fished out by other countries, but this isn't a problem unique to Somalia, and we don't see the other coastal/fishing countries engaging in piracy. Maybe the real lesson is a warning against a monoculture economy.
Kinda like the old-style tennis shoe from before the fashionable running-shoe era -- they were light and relatively thin all over, and overall easier on the feet and legs. They also *breathed* a lot better than the newer shoes -- even the expensive ones are sweaty by comparison. They also had a flat heel, which more closely mimics walking directly on the ground. My own faves were the Red Ball deck shoes (ungrooved gum-rubber sole) sold by JC Penney -- a little heavier sole but very springy, and with way more width for the toes. My feet never got tired in those.
The old type have become hard to get, or such poor quality when you do find 'em that they're useless. I recently got a couple pair of oldies off freecycle and it's interesting how light and restful they are on the feet. Not much different from going barefoot.
You don't have to scare it shitless; in fact you don't want to scare it at all as that makes the meat gamey (and consider that deer and elk can top 40mph when panicked -- once it starts running scared, you'll never catch it; humans just aren't that fast). Just keep it moving slow and easy, and don't let it stop to eat or rest. Humans can stay awake and functional much longer than most other animals, which cease functioning entirely after about 3 days without sleep.
Wear moccasins for a while, with just that one thin layer of leather between you and the rocks. You'll soon learn to ALWAYS come down toes first, and NEVER come down on the heel -- because you can't recover from stepping on a sharp rock if you do so heel-first (all your weight lands on it, willy-nilly). But if you come down toe-first, you can change your balance and step off that sharp rock instead.
By now they're pretty much all gone from the world, but decades ago I knew American Indians who grew up in the era before their tribes had European-style hard-soled shoes, and from childhood habit, they always walked toe-heel rather than heel-toe.
Eeew, MySpace is just dreadful... naked FTP would be better!
One thing MySpace has done... is make me far LESS likely to sample a new or even known artist, if that's their distribution venue. It's just not worth the eye-bleed.
Jack Vance might start becoming practical with modern CGI, but I'm not sure how well the stories would translate otherwise. (I love Vance, myself.)
Tho for something in kinda the same "makes all sorts of unlikely shit seem perfectly ordinary to its world" vein, perhaps Neal Asher's stuff -- which might also better lend itself to a TV series, now that I think about it.
I was going to remark about that myself. I only have a moderate difference between eyes (20/40 and 20/80) and I don't normally wear any correction. But it's enough that I notice my depth perception is largely based around the better eye's view of the world. With that eye alone, I still see "depth". With just the other eye, things look "flat".
So... what happens with 3-D glasses -- do they screw up your learned view of the world?? I've never watched a 3-D movie so can't speak from experience, but I'd think there's an assumption that everyone's vision is 20/20 in both eyes (or is so, with correction) and that it's liable not to work right for anyone too far off that norm.
Yeah, I remember that -- but were the CDs actually higher quality, or just MP3s converted to WAV files? Since MP3.com didn't allow upload of large files by their artists, I'd guess most were just conversions so they'd work in a cheap CD player.
Even so, it was a good marketing tool, and you could price your CDs down as low as $5, a good starting point for an unknown artist.
Yes. In MP3.com's original incarnation, it was quite easy to find music you liked, sample large swaths of various artists, and they even mailed out a free CD of songs from across various genres. (I still have the CD.) No DRM, no BS.
The problem I see with relying on big trackers like TPB is that you're lost in the crowd. Indies need their own tracker, where label music isn't even allowed. Legaltorrents.com is a start, but it needs to be promoted in the P2P community a lot better than LT, which hardly anyone knows about. And there needs to be upfront understanding that no lawsuits will result from using it.
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That's a problem, all right (and I admit I hadn't thought that far when I posted that). What's the range on a water cannon? 100 yards at best, and by that point its coherency of effect is rather compromised (water spreads) -- so it's really just a large-gauge shotgun. What's the range on even the most cheapassed rifle or handgun? at least four times that. Range trumps volume, and all you've got to do is pick off the cannon operator. Now, our beleaguered cargo ship could put him in an armored hutch or turret, but at some point that's going to compromise his ability to aim close to his own ship, as you'd need to do to repel boarders.
It's still better than nothing, if for some insane reason you're not being allowed to defend yourself with deadly force. But I don't see it as more than a casual deterrant.
And when people talk about "escalation" -- what's to prevent pirates from coming up in a turtle (covered boat) that you can't swamp or wash anyone out of?? this is Medieval Warfare 101!!
Bah. Just accept that it's necessary to go armed on the high seas, and adjust port procedures to accomodate that. It's not 1600 anymore, when a single gunboat could take out a city. And it's not like they need to carry fullscale cannons. A few serious machine guns should suffice.
Um... read this:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1209527&cid=27690747
Well, it depends on the pump behind the water. Fire hoses have been used for crowd control with great success, so long as the water pressure is sufficient. The force from a deck-mounted 3" hose equipped with a high-pressure pump will knock you and your 10 lineman buddies flat on your collective asses. And of course if you're pumping seawater, you won't run out of ammo any time soon.
But in my mind it's still a form of giving in, compromising by NOT hurting the poor widdle pirates, and at best it'll merely discourage them from your one ship, but leaves them free to try again on someone else's ship. Conversely if you shoot them and sink their boat, you now have that many fewer pirates.
Furthermore, I'd have reservations about a port that doesn't allow armed vessels... there are places where that's been used to ensure that visiting ships could be victimized by the local "trading consortium" or even local gov't.
In that case ... I'd say there should be no more humanitarian missions to Somalia.
US-flagged ships are already taxed, in part for this service, or at least protection is supposed to be part of the deal when you pay taxes and fees in this country.
But letting them function as a contract navy to ships under other flags -- well, sounds good to me. Yeah, so it's functioning as a mercenary. Hiring mercenaries to protect convoys, land or sea, is a time-honoured process. And if they're ships owned by U.S. companies but sailing under another flag... well, it'd get 'em to pay what they've sneaked out of.
So that's why you have gun lockers on board your ship. Your small arms, which were issued when you left your home port, get put away before you go into port, and because you know what you issued, you have an accurate count and know they're all locked up. (Presumably any port you'd voluntarily sail into is free of pirates.) Isn't that how it used to be done??
It works fine once you run OUT of people who hate their lives. Which if you shoot them, you will, since the number of people willing or able to become pirates is not infinite.
As to seizing a gunboat and making away with it, I gather this has been done -- and then along came the navy and blew 'em out of the water.
But letting them get away with it because of the drawbacks of fighting them is not a good solution.
I gotta agree with that. One function of being an armed boat is to prevent piracy by OFFICIALS, like, uh, said Mexican gov't.
Yeah, sometimes it'll escalate, but sometimes that's what it takes to draw attention to the problem.
Maybe merchantmen need to be armed again.
And there can only be a finite number of pirates. Shoot them and sink their boats, and they won't be replaced, at least not in this generation.
And yeah, maybe it wasn't nice or fair that Somalia's waters got fished out by other countries, but this isn't a problem unique to Somalia, and we don't see the other coastal/fishing countries engaging in piracy. Maybe the real lesson is a warning against a monoculture economy.
Hollywood accounting would make any mobster proud of his organisation...
And you gotta wonder, if movies always lose money, why do the studios stay in business? Hmmmm???
Yikes... wasn't aware of that. Not that I'm surprised. :(
A lot more detail here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.0
Kinda like the old-style tennis shoe from before the fashionable running-shoe era -- they were light and relatively thin all over, and overall easier on the feet and legs. They also *breathed* a lot better than the newer shoes -- even the expensive ones are sweaty by comparison. They also had a flat heel, which more closely mimics walking directly on the ground. My own faves were the Red Ball deck shoes (ungrooved gum-rubber sole) sold by JC Penney -- a little heavier sole but very springy, and with way more width for the toes. My feet never got tired in those.
The old type have become hard to get, or such poor quality when you do find 'em that they're useless. I recently got a couple pair of oldies off freecycle and it's interesting how light and restful they are on the feet. Not much different from going barefoot.
You're thinking of roundworms, pinworms, and hookworms, all of which you can get off the ground, usually secondary to the presence of manure.
However tapeworms require fleas to propagate, and are not typically caught from the ground.
You don't have to scare it shitless; in fact you don't want to scare it at all as that makes the meat gamey (and consider that deer and elk can top 40mph when panicked -- once it starts running scared, you'll never catch it; humans just aren't that fast). Just keep it moving slow and easy, and don't let it stop to eat or rest. Humans can stay awake and functional much longer than most other animals, which cease functioning entirely after about 3 days without sleep.
Wear moccasins for a while, with just that one thin layer of leather between you and the rocks. You'll soon learn to ALWAYS come down toes first, and NEVER come down on the heel -- because you can't recover from stepping on a sharp rock if you do so heel-first (all your weight lands on it, willy-nilly). But if you come down toe-first, you can change your balance and step off that sharp rock instead.
By now they're pretty much all gone from the world, but decades ago I knew American Indians who grew up in the era before their tribes had European-style hard-soled shoes, and from childhood habit, they always walked toe-heel rather than heel-toe.
"...think about how much your government (applies to pretty much any western government) is prepared to bend over for the Chinese government."
Fixed that for ya :/
Eeew, MySpace is just dreadful... naked FTP would be better!
One thing MySpace has done... is make me far LESS likely to sample a new or even known artist, if that's their distribution venue. It's just not worth the eye-bleed.
Jack Vance might start becoming practical with modern CGI, but I'm not sure how well the stories would translate otherwise. (I love Vance, myself.)
Tho for something in kinda the same "makes all sorts of unlikely shit seem perfectly ordinary to its world" vein, perhaps Neal Asher's stuff -- which might also better lend itself to a TV series, now that I think about it.
I was going to remark about that myself. I only have a moderate difference between eyes (20/40 and 20/80) and I don't normally wear any correction. But it's enough that I notice my depth perception is largely based around the better eye's view of the world. With that eye alone, I still see "depth". With just the other eye, things look "flat".
So... what happens with 3-D glasses -- do they screw up your learned view of the world?? I've never watched a 3-D movie so can't speak from experience, but I'd think there's an assumption that everyone's vision is 20/20 in both eyes (or is so, with correction) and that it's liable not to work right for anyone too far off that norm.
Or maybe we could make a movie out of the book that's your namesake ;)
http://www.mjengh.com/arslan_7473.htm
Very strange book. I'm not sure if I liked it or not, but it was sure effective. :/
And doesn't that make you wonder just how many people's computers they installed this trojan on before hitting the right perp??
Yeah, I remember that -- but were the CDs actually higher quality, or just MP3s converted to WAV files? Since MP3.com didn't allow upload of large files by their artists, I'd guess most were just conversions so they'd work in a cheap CD player.
Even so, it was a good marketing tool, and you could price your CDs down as low as $5, a good starting point for an unknown artist.
Yes. In MP3.com's original incarnation, it was quite easy to find music you liked, sample large swaths of various artists, and they even mailed out a free CD of songs from across various genres. (I still have the CD.) No DRM, no BS.
You wanted an example?? Jonathan Coulton.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/primer/info/
The problem I see with relying on big trackers like TPB is that you're lost in the crowd. Indies need their own tracker, where label music isn't even allowed. Legaltorrents.com is a start, but it needs to be promoted in the P2P community a lot better than LT, which hardly anyone knows about. And there needs to be upfront understanding that no lawsuits will result from using it.