Don't be offended by Slashdot. Be offended by Duke University. That's where the quoted text was from. There are other reasons to be offended by some members of the Slashdot crowd in the same realm.
If you read the story, women are mentioned also. It doesn't appear to be a male biased article. Most likely it wasn't heavily researched for the sake of gender bias, but more of a reflection of works that the author recognized from a big list.
There were a lot of books published, and they couldn't possibly mention them all.
It's all in where you are.:) I know people from all over, so I already know what they mean. I doubt anyone would want to bum a homosexual from me. It's not like I keep any handy.:) People who get confused about what they're asking for must already be closet homosexuals anyways.
Do they run what? Do you always aim for edge cases? Can Win7 run Win3.1 apps? Actually, I found a nice site a little while back that had old video games. I found that quite a few wouldn't run on WinXP, but would have run fine in DOS or in Win3.1. The suggested solutions on many message boards were
You'll find, if you don't make yourself totally Windows-centric, you'll find that yes, there are alternatives to the Windows world.
And, corps choose to stay with Windows, because it's what they've done for years. I'll take it that you've never tried to make a change at a corp. The chances of a 20 pound diamond meteorite crashing into the meeting room during a meeting regarding your raise (and you being allowed to keep said diamond), is much better than saying "Lets change the desktop OS across the enterprise."
It's the same reason that there are still WinNT and Win2k servers floating around, and WinXP continues to be maintained. The corps don't like change. A lot of enterprises that won't even allow windows patches to be deployed automatically without their own internal review first.
If for some strange (and statistically improbable) reason, I was in a situation like that, it wouldn't matter what they had for a weapon. Get shot and save the lives of everyone (but likely not me), or everyone including me dies? I'd opt for the good of the many.
But, that's just me. There are a lot of people who always worry about themselves first, and don't consider future consequences. Then again, I don't have 70 virgins waiting for me in heaven. I'm pretty sure I'm not headed that way anyways.:)
You'd be amazed how many people are oblivious to hand signals from other cars here. When I've been driving larger vehicles with trailers, sometimes I need them to move so I can make the turn. I've sat waving them through, and they're just staring like they're amazed there's another vehicle on the road. {sigh} Too many people are off in their own little world, as soon as they sit down behind the wheel.
I think part of it isn't just lack of education, nor rudeness. I had learned to look around, and see what other people are seeing (watch their eyes, see where they're looking). In some places, that's just not done, unless you know the person, or are about to mug them. I guess that translates well into possible road rage.
In a 3 car situation, I believe the car to the right has priority. I say believe, because it's never used in practice, so you forget little things like that. It's like remembering the allowable blood alcohol level. Who cares? We're not drinking, and measuring out blood alcohol before we drive. Either you drink and don't drive, or you don't drive and you drive home. Virtually no one stops at 1 drink if they're out somewhere.
So anyways...
In practice, the way the 4-way cluster-_uck goes is this. 4 cars come up to a stop sign. Usually the one who gets there first isn't quite sure of what to do, so they'll sit there while the other 3 drivers wait. Sometimes they'll be chattering on the cell phone, or yelling at their passengers, or even admiring the scenery. When these drivers have a situation that takes a single brain cell to negotiate (go or not go), they shut down. Oh look, pretty flowers...
So, you sit, waiting patiently. Eventually someone goes. Regardless of who moves first, someone else will always (ALWAYS) try to move at the same time. It's a given. They see motion, so some primitive thought in the back of their head says "the pack is moving, so will I." They'll both realize it about 5 feet into the intersection, and they'll both come to hard stops. This will go back and forth for a little while, until one finally moves.
I've learned to use an alternative technique to this. I stop long enough to evaluate the other drivers. This gives me a good 10 seconds to figure out the situation. Is one a teenage kid in a fast car? He's probably going to go first all on his own, like it or not. Grandpa Moses? He's going to go, very very slowly, at the least opportune time. I wait for just shy of when the above mentioned cluster-_fuck, and go. My car accelerates and brakes very well. I'm not doing drag race launches through the intersection, but I scoot through fast enough where I won't get hit. Most people in legitimately fast cars (not 4 cyl cars with a coffee can for a muffler) and/or are good drivers, actually use eye contact and hand signals to negotiate who's going first. Being that I'm in a fast car, I'm usually waved through first, regardless if I waved to them to move first.:) They know I'll get out of the way quickly so everyone else can move.
A lot of times, if I see that we're going to be in a situation like that, I slow down real early before the stop, so it's obvious that I was the *last* person there. That doesn't always help. Even adding 15+ seconds to my stop, they're still confused, and I'll frequently go first. {sigh} Stopping several car lengths before the stop sign isn't enough of a clue to those people either.
There was a recent story on here, about drivers that are jerks actually help keep traffic moving. If I scoot through the intersection safely, the car opposite me usually does them same. Now you've moved two cars through, and the other two can move safely once you're clear, and the problem is resolved. Frequently, taking that extra little bit of initiative is required to keep traffic moving. Otherwise, those 2+ minutes these 4 cars sit there trying to figure out who's moving first will cause a backup behind one or more of them.
As much of a jerk as I may sound like, I've never had a near miss or accident at a 4 way stop. I've had more problems with folks running red lights. Come on, the light has been read for over 10 seconds, don't you think you should stop? Some people only see traffic lights as an suggestion. "hey, maybe you should stop, but don't worry about it." And no, I'm not in snow country, so we don't have the problem with snow on the lights. We do have vicious thunderstorms and hurricanes, which will completely kill off the lights sometimes. And ya, if your light isn't working, it's a full stop, dammit. I do.
The "toy" I referenced was not anything to laugh at. We could throw it at plywood, and it would stick. Anything less dense, it would penetrate. Would you be willing to take on an attacker with a 6+" knife of this sort?
While armed people lose in knife fights all the time, the also win. It's the skill of those fighting.
I'm sure any explosives that could be loaded up today would be far superior to the explosives used in WWi. Besides that (without researching it), I'd be pretty sure a military craft would be loaded with use ready munitions. That would be ammunition, both the cartridge and projectile, and a terrorist craft would be loaded for yield, not spread for access to aisles between the crates.
The difference is that The Onion is a well known parody site, running news that's generally so out there you couldn't mistake it for reality.
These guys are portraying themselves as government agencies or commercial companies, and spreading potentially dangerous false information, apparently including the news report of their own demise. For the businesses involved, there could be distinguishable monetary losses because of what they do. For the government agencies, there could be a lost of trust in the state (no surprise there), or disinformation being spread by word of mouth.
I can't believe anyone is believing a press release done by a group who intentionally does bogus press releases and web sites. No one else sees the problem with this??
They're not operating very far away from the phishers. Well, except they'll accept your invitations to speak at events, and get paid for it, as if they were the real people.
They're not doing any good. They're actually very intentionally trying to pick fights with the government, and large corporations.
The only thing they're not doing quite yet is accepting the money from online places. They are still actively committing fraud, under the guise of parody.
It's folks like this that endanger free speech for everyone. I won't say to stop them, but I will strongly suggest that they shouldn't do it any more.
When I was a kid, my friend bought two "Delta Darts" knives and gave me one. They are 3 sided blades, and were made out of very plastic. They'd make it right through the metal detectors, and probably even the carry on xray.
I've long since lost mine. It's probably sitting in a landfill somewhere. If an underage kid can mail order one without his parents knowing, why would we think that a "terrorist" couldn't do the same?
I'm happy to know that I'm allowed to board flights with a weapon. I have an 8 pound laptop, and should the need arise, I'd be more than happy to use it. I'd also hope that the airline would reimburse me afterwards, but that's less questionable.
He was really correct about our security theater. There's always another way for them to do things. What would a chartered ocean going freighter full of explosives do at any major port? How about a chartered business jet?
The freighter would pack more punch, but the jet would get closer to the target. According to the wikipedia page on cargo ships, the smallest ocean going ship would be categorized as "Small Handy Size", with a capacity of over 44,800,000 pounds. Consider what happened in Oklahoma City bombing. That was only 7,000 pounds of explosives (roughly equivalent to 5,000 pounds of TNT). It virtually destroyed the Murrah Federal Building, and damaged buildings for a 16 block radius. If my math is right, and assuming the same configuration, that would make for the equivalent of 32,000,000 pound (16k tons) of TNT (think just a shade larger than Hiroshima).
Bringing that close to dock in New York, that would be catastrophic. Well, assuming it could be detonated properly. I don't know enough about such things, and I don't suspect anyone's intentionally blown up a freighter full to it's load capacity with only explosives. It's usually too difficult to move that much mass in for anything strategic. That's why we like nukes now. At least we like to have them. The biggest bomb that we drop now is the MOAB, with a yield of 11 tons. So, like 1454 MOAB's being dropped simultaneously.
Not that I'm suggesting this to anyone. It's simply an example of what could be done. There are lots and lots of ways that "bad things" could happen, beyond our control.
So, we defend against what we've seen, so those won't be repeated, and pray we catch the rest. But yes, good detective work and good intelligence would get us a lot farther than any number of TSA agents you can have cupping your nuts, and feeling up your wife's boobs. Not that it's not always good. Sometimes it's been a long lonely trip, and that warm hand in my crotch is a welcome change.:)
(I think I just invited myself off the list for people to do pat-down searches on.)
Nope, you're right on the gas prices. People have selective memory.
You can see the last 6 years of gas price history here.
Also, set it to show the Canadian prices. They mirror the American trends. In early 2004, the price was around $1.44/gal. By July of 2008, the retail price was through the roof at about $4.12/gal. Election season and campaign influences brought it from approx $3.80 to $1.50 in a span of about two months.
As for Bush "standing up" to Cheney, that quote is a bit out of context. That was Bush trying to throw Cheney under the bus, in case he was to be charged for crimes after he left office.
Don't endow Bush with sainthood quite yet, until you realize he did exactly what you think he's good for not doing.
Bush, not Cheney, urged Congress in 2006 to sign the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122), Section 1076 titled "Use of the Armed Forces in major public emergencies". Bush signed it into law after he got Congress to approve it.
That gave the President (not the VP, not a General, not the Joint Chiefs, only the POTUS himself.) power to put American troops on the street at his will. "...natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition...". It didn't matter that he spelled out the first few, even though they're obvious. "other condition" means he could say "well, this is one of the other conditions."
It continues to list conditions. "any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy ". Ahhh, we're not the only conspiracy nuts. It was spelled out in law. It's a conspiracy, and we have to put troops on the streets. I know, it wouldn't be (and wasn't) done for just anything, but the very dangerous option was there.
Some countries use their military in police actions around their nations. They are trained for it, and have long term experience in it. Our troops unfortunately don't. I won't say all would treat American streets as a war zone if so ordered, but a number greater than 0 could.
I'm sure "other conditions" was worded for alien invasion, not for any other nefarious reasons.:) insurrection or conspiracy, well, that's just bad. It ensures that if the people should try to stand up against their elected government, or even if they *think* that they were going to, the military could legally be deployed to deal with it. We're not talking about simple arrest and detain either.
Just because in 2008, Bush said "no I didn't, I'm the good guy" doesn't mean anything. He did sign another law repealing the previous in 2008, but you know that's one serious CYA move. If it was good enough to make into a law, why would he repeal it 2 years later?
I'm writing this from my Linux machine at work. It was purchased by my office and I was told "here's your machine, enjoy". There were no considerations on "does this work" on any components. And oddly enough, everything works, just like just about every component I've used for a long time.
I upgraded two machines to Win7, and both of them had problems with the existing hardware. Two different devices where the manufacturers don't support anything higher than 32 bit Windows XP. And oddly enough, there *ARE* linux drivers for both of those devices. There were other pieces that it was a hunting game to try to find a driver. Oh, the vendor doesn't provide it, but this other vendor uses a similar component, maybe that'll work. Nope, ok, try again. Is this driver just posted in a forum somewhere a virus? Lets find out.
Required software depends on the person. I can browse (since I'm writing this). I can read my email. I can develop software. I can do graphic editing as needed. I can watch movies. There are even plenty of games that work under Wine. So... What is your requirement that's so special, or are you just being pissy? Don't go with the "You can't run MS Office", because there *are* good options for that. You could make the same argument about MSIE on OSX. MS dropped support in MSIE 5.x. There are 3rd party options for getting around that though.
Now I'm disappointed about the pastries. I was looking forward to having myself a nice cardboard dumpling.:)
Actually, retractions very rarely get the same kind of coverage as the initial sensationalized story. It's just not interesting. You can't run "hey, we were wrong" on the front page, but you sure as heck can run "USAF Confirms Aliens Land In New York City":)
Ya, my "Rolex" actually had the name and logo right. It ticked seconds though, rather than the smooth sweep. I was joking with someone who's very familiar with real Rolex's, and he said it *looked* pretty good, but there wasn't a real edition that looked exactly like mine. If I remember right, the face was right, but the color and band style was wrong. It was obvious when he held it though. It was heavier than a crappy $10 digital watch, but way too light to be a real one.
It fooled a lot of people, which I found entertaining. It wasn't trying to fool anyone, and I'd happily admit that it wasn't real.
You'll find a lot of the folks here were children, or not even born yet, when those were popular.
I had my first exposure to computers in about 1980. The school owned it, and had it available to students, but no one knew what to do with it. "Ok, we have it. What now?". So, I sat with magazines that had basic code, typing it in to make things scroll on the screen, and other nonsense. Hey, it was a start, and not bad for a 7 year old who had only seen mini's and mainframes, but wasn't allowed to touch them.
I think folks should get some exposure to the roots of what they're using now. Is it really unrealistic that someone should know how to open a dos box and get a directory listing, or view the contents of a file without a GUI? Any DOS user could do it back in the day. It's not like you had much of a choice. Now, if presented with a dos box, a lot of people only know how to click the X at the top to get rid of it. Dammit, you must exit your shell, don't just disconnect.:)
Dear god man, what were you thinking? An intelligent response to my funny version of a first post (it's too easy just to say FP).:)
I've never heard of the fake eggs. Melamine enriched foods, sure. Cardboard based pastries yum. But not the eggs.
And ya, I know Chinese products are the finest that you can get for the least amount of money. That's where my Rolex came from. It lasted for 6 months before literally falling apart. That was the best $20 I spent that week though.:)
I agree, they're doing it to have something to sell. It actually avoids the piracy issue, and gives the customer something that they believe is Windows. For new users, they won't know the difference, other than the fact that some of the stuff they download (or buy pirated) won't work. For most people who just surf the net and read their email through web based places, it is actually perfect. Maybe it will begin a trend of people moving to Linux without the preconceptions of "It's not Windows, I can't use it." 1.3 billion people can't all be wrong.:)
Well, they were 32 bit machines. It's been a while, so I don't remember the specifics. It could have been 497 days, but I was pretty sure it was at about a year.
A lot of my stuff has gone up to x86_64, so it's possible I haven't seen it in a while, because I really don't care what the 32 bit machines do.:)
Actually, that works most of the time. For most people, it will seem to work all the time. I've seen a few instances where it didn't. Hell if I know why. That was one of those circumstances.
But, I will say it's very very rare. I wouldn't even begin to count how many servers I've had running out there over the years. We could put the number up in the thousands though. Most were Linux. There were a few other *nix's and Windows. If I can remember that one particular instance as being special, that's pretty unique.:)
There actually was another application that had the same problem. It was running on quite a few servers (like, a dozen). It would very rarely happen, so maybe twice a year we'd have to reboot a machine or two. Again, that problem faded away with updates to the software.
I worked at a place that was running a really old Linux distro. It was funny, after 356 days of uptime, uptime would wrap back to 0. That was a bug in the way they patched uptime. So, we'd have to count the years it had been running on top of what uptime showed.:)
I'm a huge Linux guy, but I try everything to see how it works. I have a copy of Win7 Ultimate, and it's actually working pretty well. It's crashed a few times, but I was tuning the overclocking of the CPU and GPU at the time. Otherwise, it's gone pretty good. When I went to shut it down to install a newer video card yesterday, it refused because some application didn't want to shut down. Instead of just going down, it hung on a screen that says an application wouldn't stop, so it couldn't shut down. {sigh}
XP has gotten a lot better, but it took quite a while for them to get it really stable.
My Linux machines tend to hold an uptime of as long as they have power, or when I've rebooted it because I wanted to add or change hardware. Over 100 days is typical on them, not the exception. Windows, you can't ave those, because it will want to reboot itself for an update well before you reach those kinds of uptimes.
I had a Linux server once, that misbehaved. There was an application that would get stuck, and was unkillable. It would fail after a few weeks of running, so the server was scheduled to reboot every Monday morning at 4am. That wasn't an OS fault though, it was a 3rd party app. It rebooted flawlessly every week for quite a while. I'd always get a reboot notification in my mail, so every Monday morning when I got to work, I was pleased to see it in my mail. Eventually, the author made an update available to fix it, and I took that cron out.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be offended by Slashdot. Be offended by Duke University. That's where the quoted text was from. There are other reasons to be offended by some members of the Slashdot crowd in the same realm.
If you read the story, women are mentioned also. It doesn't appear to be a male biased article. Most likely it wasn't heavily researched for the sake of gender bias, but more of a reflection of works that the author recognized from a big list.
There were a lot of books published, and they couldn't possibly mention them all.
It's all in where you are. :) I know people from all over, so I already know what they mean. I doubt anyone would want to bum a homosexual from me. It's not like I keep any handy. :) People who get confused about what they're asking for must already be closet homosexuals anyways.
Do they run what? Do you always aim for edge cases? Can Win7 run Win3.1 apps? Actually, I found a nice site a little while back that had old video games. I found that quite a few wouldn't run on WinXP, but would have run fine in DOS or in Win3.1. The suggested solutions on many message boards were
You'll find, if you don't make yourself totally Windows-centric, you'll find that yes, there are alternatives to the Windows world.
And, corps choose to stay with Windows, because it's what they've done for years. I'll take it that you've never tried to make a change at a corp. The chances of a 20 pound diamond meteorite crashing into the meeting room during a meeting regarding your raise (and you being allowed to keep said diamond), is much better than saying "Lets change the desktop OS across the enterprise."
It's the same reason that there are still WinNT and Win2k servers floating around, and WinXP continues to be maintained. The corps don't like change. A lot of enterprises that won't even allow windows patches to be deployed automatically without their own internal review first.
If for some strange (and statistically improbable) reason, I was in a situation like that, it wouldn't matter what they had for a weapon. Get shot and save the lives of everyone (but likely not me), or everyone including me dies? I'd opt for the good of the many.
But, that's just me. There are a lot of people who always worry about themselves first, and don't consider future consequences. Then again, I don't have 70 virgins waiting for me in heaven. I'm pretty sure I'm not headed that way anyways. :)
You'd be amazed how many people are oblivious to hand signals from other cars here. When I've been driving larger vehicles with trailers, sometimes I need them to move so I can make the turn. I've sat waving them through, and they're just staring like they're amazed there's another vehicle on the road. {sigh} Too many people are off in their own little world, as soon as they sit down behind the wheel.
I think part of it isn't just lack of education, nor rudeness. I had learned to look around, and see what other people are seeing (watch their eyes, see where they're looking). In some places, that's just not done, unless you know the person, or are about to mug them. I guess that translates well into possible road rage.
In a 3 car situation, I believe the car to the right has priority. I say believe, because it's never used in practice, so you forget little things like that. It's like remembering the allowable blood alcohol level. Who cares? We're not drinking, and measuring out blood alcohol before we drive. Either you drink and don't drive, or you don't drive and you drive home. Virtually no one stops at 1 drink if they're out somewhere.
So anyways...
In practice, the way the 4-way cluster-_uck goes is this. 4 cars come up to a stop sign. Usually the one who gets there first isn't quite sure of what to do, so they'll sit there while the other 3 drivers wait. Sometimes they'll be chattering on the cell phone, or yelling at their passengers, or even admiring the scenery. When these drivers have a situation that takes a single brain cell to negotiate (go or not go), they shut down. Oh look, pretty flowers...
So, you sit, waiting patiently. Eventually someone goes. Regardless of who moves first, someone else will always (ALWAYS) try to move at the same time. It's a given. They see motion, so some primitive thought in the back of their head says "the pack is moving, so will I." They'll both realize it about 5 feet into the intersection, and they'll both come to hard stops. This will go back and forth for a little while, until one finally moves.
I've learned to use an alternative technique to this. I stop long enough to evaluate the other drivers. This gives me a good 10 seconds to figure out the situation. Is one a teenage kid in a fast car? He's probably going to go first all on his own, like it or not. Grandpa Moses? He's going to go, very very slowly, at the least opportune time. I wait for just shy of when the above mentioned cluster-_fuck, and go. My car accelerates and brakes very well. I'm not doing drag race launches through the intersection, but I scoot through fast enough where I won't get hit. Most people in legitimately fast cars (not 4 cyl cars with a coffee can for a muffler) and/or are good drivers, actually use eye contact and hand signals to negotiate who's going first. Being that I'm in a fast car, I'm usually waved through first, regardless if I waved to them to move first. :) They know I'll get out of the way quickly so everyone else can move.
A lot of times, if I see that we're going to be in a situation like that, I slow down real early before the stop, so it's obvious that I was the *last* person there. That doesn't always help. Even adding 15+ seconds to my stop, they're still confused, and I'll frequently go first. {sigh} Stopping several car lengths before the stop sign isn't enough of a clue to those people either.
There was a recent story on here, about drivers that are jerks actually help keep traffic moving. If I scoot through the intersection safely, the car opposite me usually does them same. Now you've moved two cars through, and the other two can move safely once you're clear, and the problem is resolved. Frequently, taking that extra little bit of initiative is required to keep traffic moving. Otherwise, those 2+ minutes these 4 cars sit there trying to figure out who's moving first will cause a backup behind one or more of them.
As much of a jerk as I may sound like, I've never had a near miss or accident at a 4 way stop. I've had more problems with folks running red lights. Come on, the light has been read for over 10 seconds, don't you think you should stop? Some people only see traffic lights as an suggestion. "hey, maybe you should stop, but don't worry about it." And no, I'm not in snow country, so we don't have the problem with snow on the lights. We do have vicious thunderstorms and hurricanes, which will completely kill off the lights sometimes. And ya, if your light isn't working, it's a full stop, dammit. I do.
The "toy" I referenced was not anything to laugh at. We could throw it at plywood, and it would stick. Anything less dense, it would penetrate. Would you be willing to take on an attacker with a 6+" knife of this sort?
While armed people lose in knife fights all the time, the also win. It's the skill of those fighting.
I'm sure any explosives that could be loaded up today would be far superior to the explosives used in WWi. Besides that (without researching it), I'd be pretty sure a military craft would be loaded with use ready munitions. That would be ammunition, both the cartridge and projectile, and a terrorist craft would be loaded for yield, not spread for access to aisles between the crates.
The difference is that The Onion is a well known parody site, running news that's generally so out there you couldn't mistake it for reality.
These guys are portraying themselves as government agencies or commercial companies, and spreading potentially dangerous false information, apparently including the news report of their own demise. For the businesses involved, there could be distinguishable monetary losses because of what they do. For the government agencies, there could be a lost of trust in the state (no surprise there), or disinformation being spread by word of mouth.
I can't believe anyone is believing a press release done by a group who intentionally does bogus press releases and web sites. No one else sees the problem with this??
They're not operating very far away from the phishers. Well, except they'll accept your invitations to speak at events, and get paid for it, as if they were the real people.
They're not doing any good. They're actually very intentionally trying to pick fights with the government, and large corporations.
The only thing they're not doing quite yet is accepting the money from online places. They are still actively committing fraud, under the guise of parody.
It's folks like this that endanger free speech for everyone. I won't say to stop them, but I will strongly suggest that they shouldn't do it any more.
When I was a kid, my friend bought two "Delta Darts" knives and gave me one. They are 3 sided blades, and were made out of very plastic. They'd make it right through the metal detectors, and probably even the carry on xray.
I've long since lost mine. It's probably sitting in a landfill somewhere. If an underage kid can mail order one without his parents knowing, why would we think that a "terrorist" couldn't do the same?
I'm happy to know that I'm allowed to board flights with a weapon. I have an 8 pound laptop, and should the need arise, I'd be more than happy to use it. I'd also hope that the airline would reimburse me afterwards, but that's less questionable.
He was really correct about our security theater. There's always another way for them to do things. What would a chartered ocean going freighter full of explosives do at any major port? How about a chartered business jet?
The freighter would pack more punch, but the jet would get closer to the target. According to the wikipedia page on cargo ships, the smallest ocean going ship would be categorized as "Small Handy Size", with a capacity of over 44,800,000 pounds. Consider what happened in Oklahoma City bombing. That was only 7,000 pounds of explosives (roughly equivalent to 5,000 pounds of TNT). It virtually destroyed the Murrah Federal Building, and damaged buildings for a 16 block radius. If my math is right, and assuming the same configuration, that would make for the equivalent of 32,000,000 pound (16k tons) of TNT (think just a shade larger than Hiroshima).
Bringing that close to dock in New York, that would be catastrophic. Well, assuming it could be detonated properly. I don't know enough about such things, and I don't suspect anyone's intentionally blown up a freighter full to it's load capacity with only explosives. It's usually too difficult to move that much mass in for anything strategic. That's why we like nukes now. At least we like to have them. The biggest bomb that we drop now is the MOAB, with a yield of 11 tons. So, like 1454 MOAB's being dropped simultaneously.
Not that I'm suggesting this to anyone. It's simply an example of what could be done. There are lots and lots of ways that "bad things" could happen, beyond our control.
So, we defend against what we've seen, so those won't be repeated, and pray we catch the rest. But yes, good detective work and good intelligence would get us a lot farther than any number of TSA agents you can have cupping your nuts, and feeling up your wife's boobs. Not that it's not always good. Sometimes it's been a long lonely trip, and that warm hand in my crotch is a welcome change. :)
(I think I just invited myself off the list for people to do pat-down searches on.)
Nope, you're right on the gas prices. People have selective memory.
You can see the last 6 years of gas price history here.
Also, set it to show the Canadian prices. They mirror the American trends. In early 2004, the price was around $1.44/gal. By July of 2008, the retail price was through the roof at about $4.12/gal. Election season and campaign influences brought it from approx $3.80 to $1.50 in a span of about two months.
As for Bush "standing up" to Cheney, that quote is a bit out of context. That was Bush trying to throw Cheney under the bus, in case he was to be charged for crimes after he left office.
Don't endow Bush with sainthood quite yet, until you realize he did exactly what you think he's good for not doing.
Bush, not Cheney, urged Congress in 2006 to sign the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122), Section 1076 titled "Use of the Armed Forces in major public emergencies". Bush signed it into law after he got Congress to approve it.
That gave the President (not the VP, not a General, not the Joint Chiefs, only the POTUS himself.) power to put American troops on the street at his will. "...natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition...". It didn't matter that he spelled out the first few, even though they're obvious. "other condition" means he could say "well, this is one of the other conditions."
It continues to list conditions. "any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy ". Ahhh, we're not the only conspiracy nuts. It was spelled out in law. It's a conspiracy, and we have to put troops on the streets. I know, it wouldn't be (and wasn't) done for just anything, but the very dangerous option was there.
Some countries use their military in police actions around their nations. They are trained for it, and have long term experience in it. Our troops unfortunately don't. I won't say all would treat American streets as a war zone if so ordered, but a number greater than 0 could.
I'm sure "other conditions" was worded for alien invasion, not for any other nefarious reasons. :) insurrection or conspiracy, well, that's just bad. It ensures that if the people should try to stand up against their elected government, or even if they *think* that they were going to, the military could legally be deployed to deal with it. We're not talking about simple arrest and detain either.
Just because in 2008, Bush said "no I didn't, I'm the good guy" doesn't mean anything. He did sign another law repealing the previous in 2008, but you know that's one serious CYA move. If it was good enough to make into a law, why would he repeal it 2 years later?
I'm writing this from my Linux machine at work. It was purchased by my office and I was told "here's your machine, enjoy". There were no considerations on "does this work" on any components. And oddly enough, everything works, just like just about every component I've used for a long time.
I upgraded two machines to Win7, and both of them had problems with the existing hardware. Two different devices where the manufacturers don't support anything higher than 32 bit Windows XP. And oddly enough, there *ARE* linux drivers for both of those devices. There were other pieces that it was a hunting game to try to find a driver. Oh, the vendor doesn't provide it, but this other vendor uses a similar component, maybe that'll work. Nope, ok, try again. Is this driver just posted in a forum somewhere a virus? Lets find out.
Required software depends on the person. I can browse (since I'm writing this). I can read my email. I can develop software. I can do graphic editing as needed. I can watch movies. There are even plenty of games that work under Wine. So... What is your requirement that's so special, or are you just being pissy? Don't go with the "You can't run MS Office", because there *are* good options for that. You could make the same argument about MSIE on OSX. MS dropped support in MSIE 5.x. There are 3rd party options for getting around that though.
Ummm, might I recommend you not have kids then. Kids can and will put their hands, face, feet, or just about anything, in the wrong places.
But ya, that add was stupid.
Now I'm disappointed about the pastries. I was looking forward to having myself a nice cardboard dumpling. :)
Actually, retractions very rarely get the same kind of coverage as the initial sensationalized story. It's just not interesting. You can't run "hey, we were wrong" on the front page, but you sure as heck can run "USAF Confirms Aliens Land In New York City" :)
Ya, my "Rolex" actually had the name and logo right. It ticked seconds though, rather than the smooth sweep. I was joking with someone who's very familiar with real Rolex's, and he said it *looked* pretty good, but there wasn't a real edition that looked exactly like mine. If I remember right, the face was right, but the color and band style was wrong. It was obvious when he held it though. It was heavier than a crappy $10 digital watch, but way too light to be a real one.
It fooled a lot of people, which I found entertaining. It wasn't trying to fool anyone, and I'd happily admit that it wasn't real.
You'll find a lot of the folks here were children, or not even born yet, when those were popular.
I had my first exposure to computers in about 1980. The school owned it, and had it available to students, but no one knew what to do with it. "Ok, we have it. What now?". So, I sat with magazines that had basic code, typing it in to make things scroll on the screen, and other nonsense. Hey, it was a start, and not bad for a 7 year old who had only seen mini's and mainframes, but wasn't allowed to touch them.
I think folks should get some exposure to the roots of what they're using now. Is it really unrealistic that someone should know how to open a dos box and get a directory listing, or view the contents of a file without a GUI? Any DOS user could do it back in the day. It's not like you had much of a choice. Now, if presented with a dos box, a lot of people only know how to click the X at the top to get rid of it. Dammit, you must exit your shell, don't just disconnect. :)
Dear god man, what were you thinking? An intelligent response to my funny version of a first post (it's too easy just to say FP). :)
I've never heard of the fake eggs. Melamine enriched foods, sure. Cardboard based pastries yum. But not the eggs.
And ya, I know Chinese products are the finest that you can get for the least amount of money. That's where my Rolex came from. It lasted for 6 months before literally falling apart. That was the best $20 I spent that week though. :)
I agree, they're doing it to have something to sell. It actually avoids the piracy issue, and gives the customer something that they believe is Windows. For new users, they won't know the difference, other than the fact that some of the stuff they download (or buy pirated) won't work. For most people who just surf the net and read their email through web based places, it is actually perfect. Maybe it will begin a trend of people moving to Linux without the preconceptions of "It's not Windows, I can't use it." 1.3 billion people can't all be wrong. :)
Well, they were 32 bit machines. It's been a while, so I don't remember the specifics. It could have been 497 days, but I was pretty sure it was at about a year.
A lot of my stuff has gone up to x86_64, so it's possible I haven't seen it in a while, because I really don't care what the 32 bit machines do. :)
Actually, that works most of the time. For most people, it will seem to work all the time. I've seen a few instances where it didn't. Hell if I know why. That was one of those circumstances.
But, I will say it's very very rare. I wouldn't even begin to count how many servers I've had running out there over the years. We could put the number up in the thousands though. Most were Linux. There were a few other *nix's and Windows. If I can remember that one particular instance as being special, that's pretty unique. :)
There actually was another application that had the same problem. It was running on quite a few servers (like, a dozen). It would very rarely happen, so maybe twice a year we'd have to reboot a machine or two. Again, that problem faded away with updates to the software.
I worked at a place that was running a really old Linux distro. It was funny, after 356 days of uptime, uptime would wrap back to 0. That was a bug in the way they patched uptime. So, we'd have to count the years it had been running on top of what uptime showed. :)
I'm a huge Linux guy, but I try everything to see how it works. I have a copy of Win7 Ultimate, and it's actually working pretty well. It's crashed a few times, but I was tuning the overclocking of the CPU and GPU at the time. Otherwise, it's gone pretty good. When I went to shut it down to install a newer video card yesterday, it refused because some application didn't want to shut down. Instead of just going down, it hung on a screen that says an application wouldn't stop, so it couldn't shut down. {sigh}
XP has gotten a lot better, but it took quite a while for them to get it really stable.
My Linux machines tend to hold an uptime of as long as they have power, or when I've rebooted it because I wanted to add or change hardware. Over 100 days is typical on them, not the exception. Windows, you can't ave those, because it will want to reboot itself for an update well before you reach those kinds of uptimes.
I had a Linux server once, that misbehaved. There was an application that would get stuck, and was unkillable. It would fail after a few weeks of running, so the server was scheduled to reboot every Monday morning at 4am. That wasn't an OS fault though, it was a 3rd party app. It rebooted flawlessly every week for quite a while. I'd always get a reboot notification in my mail, so every Monday morning when I got to work, I was pleased to see it in my mail. Eventually, the author made an update available to fix it, and I took that cron out.
Why would I want a perfectly good Linux machine to look like a Windows machine?
Google results versus globally agreed upon treaties. I think you have a misplaced faith in the result of search engines.