That's what I was thinking too. But hey, what do I know, I just work computers, I'm not a mathematician.:)
The way some folks do it,
0.1 + 02 = 0 + 2 0 + 2 = 2
There was a thread on here a few weeks ago, where I explained it in the calculation of payroll. If you're calculating fractional hours, then those decimals come in handy.
1 minute = 0.0166666666666667 hours.
Depending on how many decimal points you make it, it can really mess with your pay.
For hourly folks, check your paychecks. I'd bet the company is using the most advantageous rounding for their profit rather than for accuracy.
I was recently told on a something that one interval = 0.0083333 (1/120), that it should always be simply cut off (not rounded) at 1 decimal point. I tried to explain, that would make the numbers totally wrong.
1 = 0.0 10 = 0.0
10 instances of 10 would then be 0.0, rather than 0.8. They wanted "absolute" accuracy over thousands of instances, but still insisted chopping it off to one decimal place is the way they wanted it. *sigh*
I do understand why floating point numbers can induce errors, but is it necessary to make it worse by adding in sloppy math?
Oh, I made sure the conversation didn't drift towards anything related. He started telling me about legal street car racing, and I asked questions about where it was done. He probably wanted me to come back with an admission that I've done illegal street racing, or even legal racing which would indicate my interest in speeding, but that wasn't going to happen.
I drifted the topic to his motorcycle, and ask him about it. I told him that I like motorcycles. Then it went to driving in the rain, and finally we were talking about the weather.:) "Well, it looks like rain, I should be going, and you should go find a dry spot. Have a nice day."
Really, there are lots of unrelated things they can ask about and hope to get something resembling a confession about. You have to be very careful about what you say. If they get you to open up, it's very easy to say the wrong things. If you want information, asking the right questions is a wonderful tool.
I had a PI trying to dig information out of me a while back. I didn't have much to say, because it was from years ago and I didn't remember much at all. I got friendly with them, and started asking more questions than I was vaguely answering. Instead of being interrogated, I got more out of them than anyone else who was involved. They tried a few times to bring it back to ask me questions, but I still didn't have anything to say.
It's just practice in listening and responding. Most people like to talk, and if you're good enough about it, you can get anything you want from them, even if you're on the side being interrogated. It works for interrogators, and it works for con men. Once you've dealt with enough of each, it comes pretty easily.
What did you get from that? I drive a car (or truck, or SUV). I've talked with cops, PIs, and con men. And if I don't want to, I'll never give a straight answer.
And most importantly, 95% of what I say is complete crap. It's up to anyone trying to investigate me to which parts are crap and which ones are truth, even in what I post online.:) I'm not really worried about investigators. I have a nice thick file with the FBI that contains all my interesting background information.
Do you want to hear the non-green way to deal with it?
Well tough, I'm telling you anyways. Diesel fuel and a Bic lighter. Make sure it's a calm day without any wind. Have a garden hose handy for collateral damage. Pour the fuel covering everything for a foot or two around the plant. Give it a few minutes to soak in. Take a shovel and loosen the ground up a good bit for a couple feet down (so air can get to it). Light up a piece of paper, toss it towards the circle, and watch it burn. You may not have any grass growing there for a few years, but the damned plant will go away.
It works on fire ant mounds too. They don't like it much, but they won't be there later.
Sometimes it takes a more malicious method than you'd commonly think of.:)
A lot of people don't understand that. "Grass" (the kind that grows in your yard that you have to mow on a regular basis) is technically a weed. We classify things that we like as plants, and things we don't like as weeds.
Pretty much every cultivated plant could have been considered a weed at some point in time.
I've been in quite a few large datacenters. Some have strict rules on proper utilizing their hot and cold aisles. Some could care less.
The ones with the best ventilation have the cold air coming through the raised floor, and the hot air being pulled from the ceiling. Brilliant. Actually understanding that hot air rises.:)
Most
Some I've been in had the hot air being blown from the ceiling, and the return somewhere on a vertical wall.
At one place, they worked with us on it. We had two rows in a cage. We established the center to be the cold, and the edges to be hot. It wasn't really for temperature, it was for access. We spread the rows a little extra so we could have a couple carts and two people working at the same time. In that, we couldn't load some of the longer machines in from the "hot" side if we had wanted to. So on the aisle that we worked in, they gave us more cold air outlets, and sealed off the ones on the hot side. It worked very well. The site manager was really into making everything work as well as possible. He would walk around with a non-contact IR thermometer and spot check equipment.
Separating the hot and cold aisles with plastic would probably never work. Most racks that I've seen either are open frame, or they have a vent fan in the top. The open frame ones are obviously worthless for a plastic barrier.
On #1, I was only indicating to pull over where it's safe. Going a few miles down a country road is obviously a bad thing. Turning and stopping within 2 car lengths gives you the visibility of the highway while maintaining everyone's safety. Pulling into a gas station parking lot is ideal, where there are plenty of witnesses. Leaving the officer between your car and a lane of fast moving traffic will only make him more anxious. It all depends on where you are. I was pulled over on I-10 40 miles out from Ft. Stockton, Tx. The only choice for pulling over out there is on the side of the interstate.
On point #2, I was licensed in my state for concealed carry. That license permitted me to carry in over a dozen other states in the US. To the best of my knowledge, once you have such a permit in my state, it is shown when they search for your license plate or drivers license.
My statement would usually be, "I have a concealed weapons permit. I have no weapons in the vehicle."
I never had an instance where I possessed a weapon in the vehicle and I was pulled over. Not that I didn't have one a lot. I frequently had to drive through a rough neighborhood with a history of carjackings which is why I got the permit. It was just in that time, I was never pulled over for anything.
It's safer for me to tell them, than for them to find out and think I'm hiding a weapon in the car. This statement is actually strongly recommended during the classes to obtain the permit.
I was pulled over in Los Angeles by the LAPD, and told them exactly what I stated above, and besides a funny (nonthreatening) look, nothing more was said of it.
On #4, I agree totally. They can ask. You don't have to give consent. Being pulled over for a traffic violation is not grounds for searching your vehicle without probable cause. I've simply said "I'd prefer if you didn't". That's my polite way of saying it without being confrontational. If they had probable cause, they would obtain a warrant and search. My vehicle has never been searched. In my state, anything visible from outside of the vehicle is fair game. If they see the handle of a pistol under the seat, they now have probable cause to search without a warrant.
I've only ever once given consent to search without a warrant. That was in the case of a death in my house (natural causes). The detective made it clear they only intended to search two rooms (where the death occurred, and the adjoining room). In that case, it was only a formality, since I had invited them in. We called 911. When they arrived, I yelled from the room the incident happened in for them to come to me while I was performing CPR. If we had refused, they could have easily obtained a warrant, but it wasn't worth the hassle for anyone. I actually opened up the whole house for everyone (police, detectives, first responders and paramedics). I told them to feel free to get a drink from the fridge if they were thirsty, and they were free to use the restroom next to where they were. Polite hospitality does not need to be forgotten, even in the worst of circumstances.
On #5, I don't know their rank markings, assuming I could see them. It's easier to not insult an ranking officer by saying "sir" than say "officer". Different departments frequently use different rank insignia, if that department wears it at all. It's simply a sign of respect. If you recommend and choose constable or officer, so be it. I believe there are areas in the US where the officers are known as constables.
The keyless ignition vehicles are newer than my training. I'm sure they have revised policies for that part. In reality, you could put up or toss a different set of keys. It's one step in the procedure. Not everything is fool proof. There's a reason that the police are taught offensive driving techniques too. Some people will run.
That was actually an exercise we did in training. The student playing officer was in his 20's, ex-military, and was an MP. He was real quick (and full of himself). He had a dummy pistol (bright orange plastic, no moving parts) holstered. In the use of the dummy pistols, we would just say "bang" to indicate we would take a shot. He was given the instructions that this was a random incident with a confrontational person.
The aggressor was one of the officers training us. He was not armed.
The aggressor stood about 10 feet away. The officer was to diffuse the situation, but use any force necessary including shooting the aggressor. He was already warned, "In this exercise, I will disarm you and shoot you. Try not to get killed."
The aggressor was yelling, moving around, and waiving his hands. The officer was trying to calm him down, and even had his hand on the pistol, but it remained holstered. The aggressor picked his moment, tackled the officer, pulled the weapon from the officers holster, put it to his head and said "bang". Even though he knew what was going to happen, the officer didn't have time to draw his weapon and fire. Instead, had this been a real world scenario, he would have been dead.
Always, *ALWAYS* keep your distance from a potential aggressor. Most people don't want to go to jail, and some will use any force they can to avoid it.
In a vehicle stop exercise (dummy weapons, real patrol cars), I played the part of the officer. It was a felony traffic stop (the plates matched someone with a felony warrant). The student playing the part of the aggressor was instructed to comply with just a little force, and he had a dummy weapon in the car that wasn't suppose to be drawn. He stopped the car, but wouldn't shut it off. As I stood up behind my car door, he drove off. The second time he stopped, I again used my car door as cover and instructed him in the same way as I described in the previous post. Instead of complying, he got out of the car, with one hand behind his back. I didn't know if he had his weapon or not, so I remained behind the car door with my (dummy) weapon drawn. He stepped towards me quickly and I saw the weapon being pulled from behind his back. I said "bang bang" indicating two shots fired.
The instructors bitched out the student playing the aggressor, because I was suppose to have held him at the car until backup arrived (another car was instructed to wait one minute before arriving), and then arrested him. I knew the backup car was coming, because it was established that since I knew it was a felony stop, I would have called and waited for backup. The backup car had just pulled up as I fired. They did say, if this was the real world scenario, with the dashboard camera and officers witnessing, it would have been cleared as a good shooting. It was clear that the aggressor intended to shoot me.
All of the training I received was good. Instead of working in that field, I got into IT. The pay in IT was much better, and there's less of a chance of getting shot.:)
I've questioned that action before. Basically, it's about control. It's pretty obvious if your detainee turns around in the vehicle to aim a gun. If you invite them out of the car first, it's pretty easy to get out with a gun in hand but still covered by the vehicle, and then someone's going to get dead.
From what I remember of my training, in normal vehicle stops, you should keep complete control of the situation. This is for the officers safety. A non-combative detainee should have no problem complying.
1) Instruct the driver verbally (in person or over your loudspeaker) to turn off the vehicle.
2) Instruct them to put the keys on the dash, roof, or toss them out the window (as appropriate for the level of the stop).
3) Instruct them to keep their hands on top of the steering wheel. This could be "keep your hands where I can see them", but to avoid confusion clear instructions are to be given.
When then approaching the vehicle, it is typical to have your holster unsnapped (as appropriate) and your hand on your sidearm. As walking up to the vehicle, you pay attention to things in the vehicle by looking through the rear and side windows.
You should not stand in front of the driver (like by the side view mirror), but stand at the B pillar (just behind the drivers head). Make them turn their head to look at you, which puts them off center for any sort of attacks. It's hard to draw a weapon and aim behind you very quickly.
Once satisfied with the safety of the scene, you may step forward at the officers discretion. You are opening yourself up to an unsafe position, but it may be necessary.
The detainee is to be verbally told not to proceed with any actions which could be dangerous. That includes reaching into pockets, or putting their hands into areas of the vehicle that can't be clearly seen (such as a console box).
Not every officer follows this protocol, and occasionally it turns out badly.
Since I opted to not follow that as my career path, I'm never on the more dangerous side of it. Instead, I do what I would expect to be told. In an average traffic stop, I:
1) Put on my hazard lights for my safety, and to let the officer know that I am complying with his request to stop. 2) Roll down the front windows for clear visibility into the vehicle. 3) Stop the vehicle in the safest location possible (turn down a side street and stop immediately, rather than stop on a busy road.) 4) Prepare my license, registration, and proof of insurance for inspection. 5) Shut off the engine, and place the keys on the roof. 6) Place my hands on the top of the steering wheel.
When they approach, if I am carrying a weapon (as I have been licensed for in the past), notify the officer if there are any weapons in the vehicle. I haven't been stopped when a weapon was present, but I would request to be searched and transfered to the back of their vehicle.
Any actions which may normally seem irrelevant I request explicit permission for. This includes reaching into my pockets, opening the console box for additional paperwork, or standing up out of the car.
Everything said must be calm, polite, and most importantly not a confession of anything. "Do you know why I pulled you over" should never be responded to with an answer. You may have been speeding, but they only noticed your taillight was burnt out. That would add a speeding ticket on top of a petty fix-it ticket, based on your spontaneous confession. "No sir" is the appropriate response. Answer every question with "yes sir", "no sir". As any good defense attorney will tell you, the minute you said something that you didn't need to, you fucked up. The best answer to any question is still "I have nothing to say without my attorney present." It may be silly for a traffic stop, but how do you know that they didn't get a call about
When driving remote interstate roads in the middle of the night (like when even the truckers have stopped for the night), I always sit in the left lane. Well, unless a car comes up behind me, which is very rare at those hours. It's been to my advantage quite a few times. I've seen animals wander out onto the road, and I've had more time to react because they've been more visible.
A friend of mine wasn't so lucky on a 2 lane country road years ago. A deer jumped out and landed perfectly to intersect with the nose of his car. All the body metal in front of the doors had to be changed, as well as the windshield (damaged by the hood shoving back into it).
I'd prefer to hug the center line than to actually be across it. That's all you need is a bored LEO sitting on the side of the road to see that and assume you're an easy DUI catch. At very least, you'll get ticketed. Or worse would be a driver turns out because it looks like you're in your lane, and suddenly it's a head-on accident where you're at fault.
I've looked at this for a variety of applications. I'm currently building out an RV myself, and wanted to have all the bells and whistles that you can't get anywhere else. I wanted three cameras facing forward. FLIR, light intensifying, and normal color/IR illuminated.
FLIR is simply way too expensive. I wanted it for the advantage of being able to see well beyond the illumination of the headlights for possible problems ahead. It's one thing to stop or swerve in your 3,300 pound Corvette. It's another thing to stop or swerve in my 35,000 pound RV.
Until the prices comes down, normal color/IR illuminated with IR flood lights will be used to help visibility beyond the headlights.
Down at the bottom of the story, they mentioned that they only had a 1cm square sample that worked. It's an awful long way from a HUD type display or full windshield thermal imaging.
I'm my sampling of hotels around the US, I've found the normal price to be $9.99/day. Their "day" can vary too. Sometimes it's a 24 hour period from when you first log in, and sometimes their day is from midnight to midnight. It's not always spelled out very well either. It's very annoying to show up to a hotel at 8pm, and when you get up in the morning, find out that the "day" has ended and you have to pay again.
I prefer good hotels that give free internet service, wired or wireless. At least it's not the price gouging that some airports do, at $5 to $10 per hour for amazingly slow service. On long layovers, I've had to wander through the terminals to find a place with a good cell phone signal that was capable of anything resembling decent speeds, rather than paying the outrageous rates.
Buena Vista Suites is owned by MMG Interactive of Kansas City, MO. Looking at their site, they have a lot more interests than just Disney related properties. Most likely they've licensed the name for the hotel close to Disney property. There's an awful lot of licensing that happens around there. If you've been to Disney in Florida (WDW), you'd see it all over the park.
Off the record, once they deployed, they stayed like that forever. No patches, no upgrades, nothing. The party line was "It works this way, and has worked this way, we'll keep doing it this way." That was regardless of the fact that machines got exploited. If it didn't come in on the install CD, they didn't want it. Some days I'd just sit down and cry.
Ya, that doesn't quite make sense. An RPG survives until it hits the target. While I like explosions as much as any pyromaniac, they aren't designed to be long lived items unless you never use them. What fun is a box full of RPGs when you don't use it?
You know, I've seen a lot of that in the corporate world. That's why folks have gone with RHEL rather than Fedora. They get to pay for something, so they feel better about it.
Of course, Microsoft servers are that much better, in that they can pay more for them.:)
Way back in the day, one boss was interested in going to Linux, but he couldn't find anything that satisfied his needs to pay for it. That was primarily a BSDi shop, but it switched over to Windows because we could pay. Even under BSDi, they had paid for licenses, but didn't want to pay to upgrade to current, so we had quite a few problems, including getting network and SCSI card drivers that worked. It became a quest to find new hardware that was still supported by the older version.
It was a hosting company, and it broke anyone's sites with CGI's on them, so they grudgingly allowed customers to request to be moved back over to the *nix platform machines.
{sigh} I hate it when the misguided interests of the bosses are in conflict with the customers. Needless to say quite a few customers jumped ship when their sites broke and the migration path back to a *nix platform was very slow and manual.
Another place I was at was bent on support contracts. They refused to believe that a free version of Linux could run their custom software. They still refused to believe it when I demonstrated on my Slackware workstation. When I asked how many times they had requested support, they admitted it had never happened. It's not a matter of *using* the contract, it's a matter that it's there to make them feel warm and fuzzy.
You know, that's what I was expecting when I first read the title. I assumed it was a balloon that had gone up, and when it came back down, it smacked into a car. That would have been more interesting.:) Imagine driving down a road in the middle of nowhere, and then suddenly your car is hit by a balloon.:)
It's not too hard, if you make it complicated enough.:)
They were trying to carry a heavy payload. To have enough energy to flip over a car, I'd have to assume it was very heavy.
If you watch the included video (oh my gosh, like on the link), you'll see there was already a decent crosswind. The lines from the balloon to the payload were at a 45 degree angle. This was not a "calm" launch. The crane was rotating to the left for some reason. It appeared that the payload broke away from the crane. If you watch the movement of the crane, it continued turning to the left after the payload dropped.
I'd suspect they hadn't put enough helium in the balloon yet, or the temperature and/or pressure conditions were different than originally calculated. I know they don't fully fill these balloons. They have to come to a happy medium where it will go up, but it won't overpressure and burst at the intended altitude.
Most likely if Sony loses, they'll have to pay for the difference in value.
The PS3 is a gaming console that plays games, and a seldom used portion is the "Other OS" functionality. Sure, some people used it, but the majority of consoles never used it. I wouldn't be surprised that if (big if) they lose, it'll be a check for $10, or something trivial like that.
It will probably be argued that keeping the functionality in was an undue burden due to the small number of users who actually used it. In the newest firmware there were technical reasons for not including it.
Maybe, but they had already slated Edwards AFB to be the American spaceport for commercial ventures. There's no mention of Edwards in the article nor the associated pages, so this may be yet another great waste of time, where one department didn't realize that they had set aside resources towards their goal already.
Edwards has been the defacto second space center in the US, with many space shuttle landings there. White Sands is a third US landing site, but from what I understand the dust made the shuttle rather messy.
Ya, $1 million won't buy enough land and the first construction trailer, much less a spaceport. $1 billion would be a good start, but that isn't even enough. It sounds like they're hoping to get other companies and universities to foot the bill. Good luck with that.
Correct. The ISP can't identify your traffic, but the endpoints obviously can. Otherwise, the encryption would be worthless.
That's an argument I've had with people about https:/// sites. Sure, the data is hidden in between your machine and the server, but both ends know exactly what it is. Otherwise, it just wouldn't work.
From your machine, you can see who is requesting what from you, and likewise they can see what you request from them.
It can work to blacklist known snoopy peers, but since anyone can set up their own machine to monitor, the only safe way to remain anonymous is to not do it in the first place. Well, you could do it off a stolen connection, but if the authorities are determined enough to figure out who you are, they will. It's not all that hard to identify the location of a rogue wireless client.
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That's what I was thinking too. But hey, what do I know, I just work computers, I'm not a mathematician. :)
The way some folks do it,
0.1 + 02 = 0 + 2
0 + 2 = 2
There was a thread on here a few weeks ago, where I explained it in the calculation of payroll. If you're calculating fractional hours, then those decimals come in handy.
1 minute = 0.0166666666666667 hours.
Depending on how many decimal points you make it, it can really mess with your pay.
0.01 * 60 = 0.6
0.02 * 60 = 1.2
0.0166 * 60 = 0.996
0.0167 * 60 = 1.002
For hourly folks, check your paychecks. I'd bet the company is using the most advantageous rounding for their profit rather than for accuracy.
I was recently told on a something that one interval = 0.0083333 (1/120), that it should always be simply cut off (not rounded) at 1 decimal point. I tried to explain, that would make the numbers totally wrong.
1 = 0.0
10 = 0.0
10 instances of 10 would then be 0.0, rather than 0.8. They wanted "absolute" accuracy over thousands of instances, but still insisted chopping it off to one decimal place is the way they wanted it. *sigh*
I do understand why floating point numbers can induce errors, but is it necessary to make it worse by adding in sloppy math?
Oh, I made sure the conversation didn't drift towards anything related. He started telling me about legal street car racing, and I asked questions about where it was done. He probably wanted me to come back with an admission that I've done illegal street racing, or even legal racing which would indicate my interest in speeding, but that wasn't going to happen.
I drifted the topic to his motorcycle, and ask him about it. I told him that I like motorcycles. Then it went to driving in the rain, and finally we were talking about the weather. :) "Well, it looks like rain, I should be going, and you should go find a dry spot. Have a nice day."
Really, there are lots of unrelated things they can ask about and hope to get something resembling a confession about. You have to be very careful about what you say. If they get you to open up, it's very easy to say the wrong things. If you want information, asking the right questions is a wonderful tool.
I had a PI trying to dig information out of me a while back. I didn't have much to say, because it was from years ago and I didn't remember much at all. I got friendly with them, and started asking more questions than I was vaguely answering. Instead of being interrogated, I got more out of them than anyone else who was involved. They tried a few times to bring it back to ask me questions, but I still didn't have anything to say.
It's just practice in listening and responding. Most people like to talk, and if you're good enough about it, you can get anything you want from them, even if you're on the side being interrogated. It works for interrogators, and it works for con men. Once you've dealt with enough of each, it comes pretty easily.
What did you get from that? I drive a car (or truck, or SUV). I've talked with cops, PIs, and con men. And if I don't want to, I'll never give a straight answer.
And most importantly, 95% of what I say is complete crap. It's up to anyone trying to investigate me to which parts are crap and which ones are truth, even in what I post online. :) I'm not really worried about investigators. I have a nice thick file with the FBI that contains all my interesting background information.
Do you want to hear the non-green way to deal with it?
Well tough, I'm telling you anyways. Diesel fuel and a Bic lighter. Make sure it's a calm day without any wind. Have a garden hose handy for collateral damage. Pour the fuel covering everything for a foot or two around the plant. Give it a few minutes to soak in. Take a shovel and loosen the ground up a good bit for a couple feet down (so air can get to it). Light up a piece of paper, toss it towards the circle, and watch it burn. You may not have any grass growing there for a few years, but the damned plant will go away.
It works on fire ant mounds too. They don't like it much, but they won't be there later.
Sometimes it takes a more malicious method than you'd commonly think of. :)
I already told you, shut up and go to your room. I don't care if there's no bed in there, I just don't want to see you.
A lot of people don't understand that. "Grass" (the kind that grows in your yard that you have to mow on a regular basis) is technically a weed. We classify things that we like as plants, and things we don't like as weeds.
Pretty much every cultivated plant could have been considered a weed at some point in time.
I've been in quite a few large datacenters. Some have strict rules on proper utilizing their hot and cold aisles. Some could care less.
The ones with the best ventilation have the cold air coming through the raised floor, and the hot air being pulled from the ceiling. Brilliant. Actually understanding that hot air rises. :)
Most
Some I've been in had the hot air being blown from the ceiling, and the return somewhere on a vertical wall.
At one place, they worked with us on it. We had two rows in a cage. We established the center to be the cold, and the edges to be hot. It wasn't really for temperature, it was for access. We spread the rows a little extra so we could have a couple carts and two people working at the same time. In that, we couldn't load some of the longer machines in from the "hot" side if we had wanted to. So on the aisle that we worked in, they gave us more cold air outlets, and sealed off the ones on the hot side. It worked very well. The site manager was really into making everything work as well as possible. He would walk around with a non-contact IR thermometer and spot check equipment.
Separating the hot and cold aisles with plastic would probably never work. Most racks that I've seen either are open frame, or they have a vent fan in the top. The open frame ones are obviously worthless for a plastic barrier.
On #1, I was only indicating to pull over where it's safe. Going a few miles down a country road is obviously a bad thing. Turning and stopping within 2 car lengths gives you the visibility of the highway while maintaining everyone's safety. Pulling into a gas station parking lot is ideal, where there are plenty of witnesses. Leaving the officer between your car and a lane of fast moving traffic will only make him more anxious. It all depends on where you are. I was pulled over on I-10 40 miles out from Ft. Stockton, Tx. The only choice for pulling over out there is on the side of the interstate.
Here is an example of what can happen.
On point #2, I was licensed in my state for concealed carry. That license permitted me to carry in over a dozen other states in the US. To the best of my knowledge, once you have such a permit in my state, it is shown when they search for your license plate or drivers license.
My statement would usually be, "I have a concealed weapons permit. I have no weapons in the vehicle."
I never had an instance where I possessed a weapon in the vehicle and I was pulled over. Not that I didn't have one a lot. I frequently had to drive through a rough neighborhood with a history of carjackings which is why I got the permit. It was just in that time, I was never pulled over for anything.
It's safer for me to tell them, than for them to find out and think I'm hiding a weapon in the car. This statement is actually strongly recommended during the classes to obtain the permit.
I was pulled over in Los Angeles by the LAPD, and told them exactly what I stated above, and besides a funny (nonthreatening) look, nothing more was said of it.
On #4, I agree totally. They can ask. You don't have to give consent. Being pulled over for a traffic violation is not grounds for searching your vehicle without probable cause. I've simply said "I'd prefer if you didn't". That's my polite way of saying it without being confrontational. If they had probable cause, they would obtain a warrant and search. My vehicle has never been searched. In my state, anything visible from outside of the vehicle is fair game. If they see the handle of a pistol under the seat, they now have probable cause to search without a warrant.
I've only ever once given consent to search without a warrant. That was in the case of a death in my house (natural causes). The detective made it clear they only intended to search two rooms (where the death occurred, and the adjoining room). In that case, it was only a formality, since I had invited them in. We called 911. When they arrived, I yelled from the room the incident happened in for them to come to me while I was performing CPR. If we had refused, they could have easily obtained a warrant, but it wasn't worth the hassle for anyone. I actually opened up the whole house for everyone (police, detectives, first responders and paramedics). I told them to feel free to get a drink from the fridge if they were thirsty, and they were free to use the restroom next to where they were. Polite hospitality does not need to be forgotten, even in the worst of circumstances.
On #5, I don't know their rank markings, assuming I could see them. It's easier to not insult an ranking officer by saying "sir" than say "officer". Different departments frequently use different rank insignia, if that department wears it at all. It's simply a sign of respect. If you recommend and choose constable or officer, so be it. I believe there are areas in the US where the officers are known as constables.
The keyless ignition vehicles are newer than my training. I'm sure they have revised policies for that part. In reality, you could put up or toss a different set of keys. It's one step in the procedure. Not everything is fool proof. There's a reason that the police are taught offensive driving techniques too. Some people will run.
That was actually an exercise we did in training. The student playing officer was in his 20's, ex-military, and was an MP. He was real quick (and full of himself). He had a dummy pistol (bright orange plastic, no moving parts) holstered. In the use of the dummy pistols, we would just say "bang" to indicate we would take a shot. He was given the instructions that this was a random incident with a confrontational person.
The aggressor was one of the officers training us. He was not armed.
The aggressor stood about 10 feet away. The officer was to diffuse the situation, but use any force necessary including shooting the aggressor. He was already warned, "In this exercise, I will disarm you and shoot you. Try not to get killed."
The aggressor was yelling, moving around, and waiving his hands. The officer was trying to calm him down, and even had his hand on the pistol, but it remained holstered. The aggressor picked his moment, tackled the officer, pulled the weapon from the officers holster, put it to his head and said "bang". Even though he knew what was going to happen, the officer didn't have time to draw his weapon and fire. Instead, had this been a real world scenario, he would have been dead.
Always, *ALWAYS* keep your distance from a potential aggressor. Most people don't want to go to jail, and some will use any force they can to avoid it.
In a vehicle stop exercise (dummy weapons, real patrol cars), I played the part of the officer. It was a felony traffic stop (the plates matched someone with a felony warrant). The student playing the part of the aggressor was instructed to comply with just a little force, and he had a dummy weapon in the car that wasn't suppose to be drawn. He stopped the car, but wouldn't shut it off. As I stood up behind my car door, he drove off. The second time he stopped, I again used my car door as cover and instructed him in the same way as I described in the previous post. Instead of complying, he got out of the car, with one hand behind his back. I didn't know if he had his weapon or not, so I remained behind the car door with my (dummy) weapon drawn. He stepped towards me quickly and I saw the weapon being pulled from behind his back. I said "bang bang" indicating two shots fired.
The instructors bitched out the student playing the aggressor, because I was suppose to have held him at the car until backup arrived (another car was instructed to wait one minute before arriving), and then arrested him. I knew the backup car was coming, because it was established that since I knew it was a felony stop, I would have called and waited for backup. The backup car had just pulled up as I fired. They did say, if this was the real world scenario, with the dashboard camera and officers witnessing, it would have been cleared as a good shooting. It was clear that the aggressor intended to shoot me.
All of the training I received was good. Instead of working in that field, I got into IT. The pay in IT was much better, and there's less of a chance of getting shot. :)
I've questioned that action before. Basically, it's about control. It's pretty obvious if your detainee turns around in the vehicle to aim a gun. If you invite them out of the car first, it's pretty easy to get out with a gun in hand but still covered by the vehicle, and then someone's going to get dead.
From what I remember of my training, in normal vehicle stops, you should keep complete control of the situation. This is for the officers safety. A non-combative detainee should have no problem complying.
1) Instruct the driver verbally (in person or over your loudspeaker) to turn off the vehicle.
2) Instruct them to put the keys on the dash, roof, or toss them out the window (as appropriate for the level of the stop).
3) Instruct them to keep their hands on top of the steering wheel. This could be "keep your hands where I can see them", but to avoid confusion clear instructions are to be given.
When then approaching the vehicle, it is typical to have your holster unsnapped (as appropriate) and your hand on your sidearm. As walking up to the vehicle, you pay attention to things in the vehicle by looking through the rear and side windows.
You should not stand in front of the driver (like by the side view mirror), but stand at the B pillar (just behind the drivers head). Make them turn their head to look at you, which puts them off center for any sort of attacks. It's hard to draw a weapon and aim behind you very quickly.
Once satisfied with the safety of the scene, you may step forward at the officers discretion. You are opening yourself up to an unsafe position, but it may be necessary.
The detainee is to be verbally told not to proceed with any actions which could be dangerous. That includes reaching into pockets, or putting their hands into areas of the vehicle that can't be clearly seen (such as a console box).
Not every officer follows this protocol, and occasionally it turns out badly.
Since I opted to not follow that as my career path, I'm never on the more dangerous side of it. Instead, I do what I would expect to be told. In an average traffic stop, I:
1) Put on my hazard lights for my safety, and to let the officer know that I am complying with his request to stop.
2) Roll down the front windows for clear visibility into the vehicle.
3) Stop the vehicle in the safest location possible (turn down a side street and stop immediately, rather than stop on a busy road.)
4) Prepare my license, registration, and proof of insurance for inspection.
5) Shut off the engine, and place the keys on the roof.
6) Place my hands on the top of the steering wheel.
When they approach, if I am carrying a weapon (as I have been licensed for in the past), notify the officer if there are any weapons in the vehicle. I haven't been stopped when a weapon was present, but I would request to be searched and transfered to the back of their vehicle.
Any actions which may normally seem irrelevant I request explicit permission for. This includes reaching into my pockets, opening the console box for additional paperwork, or standing up out of the car.
Everything said must be calm, polite, and most importantly not a confession of anything. "Do you know why I pulled you over" should never be responded to with an answer. You may have been speeding, but they only noticed your taillight was burnt out. That would add a speeding ticket on top of a petty fix-it ticket, based on your spontaneous confession. "No sir" is the appropriate response. Answer every question with "yes sir", "no sir". As any good defense attorney will tell you, the minute you said something that you didn't need to, you fucked up. The best answer to any question is still "I have nothing to say without my attorney present." It may be silly for a traffic stop, but how do you know that they didn't get a call about
Well?
Were there any names, or was he just pissed that people rarely show up to his meetings? :)
When driving remote interstate roads in the middle of the night (like when even the truckers have stopped for the night), I always sit in the left lane. Well, unless a car comes up behind me, which is very rare at those hours. It's been to my advantage quite a few times. I've seen animals wander out onto the road, and I've had more time to react because they've been more visible.
A friend of mine wasn't so lucky on a 2 lane country road years ago. A deer jumped out and landed perfectly to intersect with the nose of his car. All the body metal in front of the doors had to be changed, as well as the windshield (damaged by the hood shoving back into it).
I'd prefer to hug the center line than to actually be across it. That's all you need is a bored LEO sitting on the side of the road to see that and assume you're an easy DUI catch. At very least, you'll get ticketed. Or worse would be a driver turns out because it looks like you're in your lane, and suddenly it's a head-on accident where you're at fault.
I've looked at this for a variety of applications. I'm currently building out an RV myself, and wanted to have all the bells and whistles that you can't get anywhere else. I wanted three cameras facing forward. FLIR, light intensifying, and normal color/IR illuminated.
FLIR is simply way too expensive. I wanted it for the advantage of being able to see well beyond the illumination of the headlights for possible problems ahead. It's one thing to stop or swerve in your 3,300 pound Corvette. It's another thing to stop or swerve in my 35,000 pound RV.
Until the prices comes down, normal color/IR illuminated with IR flood lights will be used to help visibility beyond the headlights.
Down at the bottom of the story, they mentioned that they only had a 1cm square sample that worked. It's an awful long way from a HUD type display or full windshield thermal imaging.
I'm my sampling of hotels around the US, I've found the normal price to be $9.99/day. Their "day" can vary too. Sometimes it's a 24 hour period from when you first log in, and sometimes their day is from midnight to midnight. It's not always spelled out very well either. It's very annoying to show up to a hotel at 8pm, and when you get up in the morning, find out that the "day" has ended and you have to pay again.
I prefer good hotels that give free internet service, wired or wireless. At least it's not the price gouging that some airports do, at $5 to $10 per hour for amazingly slow service. On long layovers, I've had to wander through the terminals to find a place with a good cell phone signal that was capable of anything resembling decent speeds, rather than paying the outrageous rates.
Buena Vista Suites is owned by MMG Interactive of Kansas City, MO. Looking at their site, they have a lot more interests than just Disney related properties. Most likely they've licensed the name for the hotel close to Disney property. There's an awful lot of licensing that happens around there. If you've been to Disney in Florida (WDW), you'd see it all over the park.
Off the record, once they deployed, they stayed like that forever. No patches, no upgrades, nothing. The party line was "It works this way, and has worked this way, we'll keep doing it this way." That was regardless of the fact that machines got exploited. If it didn't come in on the install CD, they didn't want it. Some days I'd just sit down and cry.
Ya, that doesn't quite make sense. An RPG survives until it hits the target. While I like explosions as much as any pyromaniac, they aren't designed to be long lived items unless you never use them. What fun is a box full of RPGs when you don't use it?
You know, I've seen a lot of that in the corporate world. That's why folks have gone with RHEL rather than Fedora. They get to pay for something, so they feel better about it.
Of course, Microsoft servers are that much better, in that they can pay more for them. :)
Way back in the day, one boss was interested in going to Linux, but he couldn't find anything that satisfied his needs to pay for it. That was primarily a BSDi shop, but it switched over to Windows because we could pay. Even under BSDi, they had paid for licenses, but didn't want to pay to upgrade to current, so we had quite a few problems, including getting network and SCSI card drivers that worked. It became a quest to find new hardware that was still supported by the older version.
It was a hosting company, and it broke anyone's sites with CGI's on them, so they grudgingly allowed customers to request to be moved back over to the *nix platform machines.
{sigh} I hate it when the misguided interests of the bosses are in conflict with the customers. Needless to say quite a few customers jumped ship when their sites broke and the migration path back to a *nix platform was very slow and manual.
Another place I was at was bent on support contracts. They refused to believe that a free version of Linux could run their custom software. They still refused to believe it when I demonstrated on my Slackware workstation. When I asked how many times they had requested support, they admitted it had never happened. It's not a matter of *using* the contract, it's a matter that it's there to make them feel warm and fuzzy.
You know, that's what I was expecting when I first read the title. I assumed it was a balloon that had gone up, and when it came back down, it smacked into a car. That would have been more interesting. :) Imagine driving down a road in the middle of nowhere, and then suddenly your car is hit by a balloon. :)
It's not too hard, if you make it complicated enough. :)
They were trying to carry a heavy payload. To have enough energy to flip over a car, I'd have to assume it was very heavy.
If you watch the included video (oh my gosh, like on the link), you'll see there was already a decent crosswind. The lines from the balloon to the payload were at a 45 degree angle. This was not a "calm" launch. The crane was rotating to the left for some reason. It appeared that the payload broke away from the crane. If you watch the movement of the crane, it continued turning to the left after the payload dropped.
I'd suspect they hadn't put enough helium in the balloon yet, or the temperature and/or pressure conditions were different than originally calculated. I know they don't fully fill these balloons. They have to come to a happy medium where it will go up, but it won't overpressure and burst at the intended altitude.
I remember that Simpsons episode. :)
Most likely if Sony loses, they'll have to pay for the difference in value.
The PS3 is a gaming console that plays games, and a seldom used portion is the "Other OS" functionality. Sure, some people used it, but the majority of consoles never used it. I wouldn't be surprised that if (big if) they lose, it'll be a check for $10, or something trivial like that.
It will probably be argued that keeping the functionality in was an undue burden due to the small number of users who actually used it. In the newest firmware there were technical reasons for not including it.
That's what I figured the response would be. I'm going to toss it in my box of antique processors that I pull out occasionally to show people. :)
Maybe, but they had already slated Edwards AFB to be the American spaceport for commercial ventures. There's no mention of Edwards in the article nor the associated pages, so this may be yet another great waste of time, where one department didn't realize that they had set aside resources towards their goal already.
Edwards has been the defacto second space center in the US, with many space shuttle landings there. White Sands is a third US landing site, but from what I understand the dust made the shuttle rather messy.
There were a whole bunch of other emergency landing sites too.
Ya, $1 million won't buy enough land and the first construction trailer, much less a spaceport. $1 billion would be a good start, but that isn't even enough. It sounds like they're hoping to get other companies and universities to foot the bill. Good luck with that.
Correct. The ISP can't identify your traffic, but the endpoints obviously can. Otherwise, the encryption would be worthless.
That's an argument I've had with people about https:/// sites. Sure, the data is hidden in between your machine and the server, but both ends know exactly what it is. Otherwise, it just wouldn't work.
From your machine, you can see who is requesting what from you, and likewise they can see what you request from them.
It can work to blacklist known snoopy peers, but since anyone can set up their own machine to monitor, the only safe way to remain anonymous is to not do it in the first place. Well, you could do it off a stolen connection, but if the authorities are determined enough to figure out who you are, they will. It's not all that hard to identify the location of a rogue wireless client.