When's the last time you had a throttle cable break?
I've only seen it happen twice. Those were motorcycles. One was a "pocketbike", being driven by a big teenager who overstressed the inferior piece. (he twisted it til it broke).
I actually had a problem with my cable. My car has a crappy plastic retainer at the throttle body end, which cracked. It was a weekend, after the dealerships had closed. I went to another parts store, and they couldn't get a replacement cable. I used plastic cable ties to hold it in place where it belonged. It's been like that for 3 months, without fail.:)
I have a friend with a car that has a drive by wire throttle, to facilitate the traction control. That car is now having a problem when accelerating. It's only at particular throttle positions, but it acts funny. My car with a good ol' fashion cable between the pedal and throttle body is very very reliable. If the cable goes, I can replace it fairly cheap. It's much more expensive to replace the more exotic parts.
Some cars do that because of the shape of the fuel tank too. Mine has a float in it, but the bottom of the tank is smaller than the top, so the first quarter tank is larger than the last. It's still fairly close. It's good enough to estimate my travel distance on an Interstate at a fixed speed (when that's possible). Just below empty still leaves 2 gallons though.:)
Actually, the details I read on this were something like 10% over the actual ground speed. The ones built for European dealerships are worse about it than the American destinations. From what I read on the matter, most European cars do it to some degree, as a "safety feature". Even though the roads are rated for a speed, it will encourage drivers of their cars to drive a little slower, and make it appear that the cars are safer (lower incidents of speed related accidents, blah, blah, blah)
In my American car (built in Canada with parts primarily sourced from Canada and Mexico), the speedometer is dead on with the GPS, which is nice. I have my GPS mounted at the roofline on the windshield, so I only have to glance up a few degrees, rather twice as far down to the actual speedometer. Both come pretty close to the road side "your speed is" signs. Unfortunately, the road side signs fluctuate +-3mph (usually). It makes me wonder about the accuracy of radar guns. If I'm not in traffic, I usually set my cruise control, so I don't accidentally get a ticket, so my speed doesn't fluctuate (according to the speedo and the GPS).
The "trawling for information" idea is an easy one. Set a Google News alert for it. You can specify it to provide notifications for other things like website updates. I've already gotten a few, but they were all talking about the contest, and how it could be subverted.:)
I'm just trying to figure out where to buy an 8 foot red balloon. Since I already know the risks associated with being identified as a contestant, I'd rather play the other side, and give people a false target. I already have magnetic signs for DOD, FBI, DHS, and FEMA to put on my truck to allow easy movement depending on what the disaster is.:) The DOD sign should be close enough for folks to believe I'm DARPA.:) I'll taser any contestants who come close enough, so I can steal their lists (and wallets, and GPS devices, and laptops, etc, etc, etc).:)
Well, in my observation of the cameras in various cities, there are lots on major roads, but they don't have complete coverage. Also, they never said the balloons would be by major roads. That could actually be hazardous, depending on the size of the balloon. They don't even indicate that. Is the balloon a 1 foot diameter, or 100 foot diameter? What altitude are they flying at? 1 foot above the ground, or 200 feet up?
For all we know, they'll all be down dirt roads in Nebraska and North Dakota. While "visible from nearby roadways", it doesn't mean that you'd spot it from a major highway. Someone mentioned truckers. They'd have great coverage for major roads, but what if it was at say 48.138857,-101.59873 or 25.745912,-81.035317 or 34.939317,-117.507614. Sure, those are roads, and sure you could see something by the road, but sure as hell no one is going to see it out there, unless they already know what they're looking for. I seriously doubt they're going to set up shop in the middle of major metro areas.
BTW, those points were chosen arbitrarily from general locations that I know or presume to be rather unpopulated. Since I've now posted them, they're coming off my list of "places to hide when the zombie apocalypse occurs in 2012".:)
CCTV cameras don't feed into a centralized computer somewhere. Hell, in many commercial buildings with more than one tenant, even they don't share camera feeds.
Even traffic light cameras feed to the organization that installed them. Some news stations have their own cameras, and frequently city transportation offices have their own.
I'd love to get access to "the place" that has all the cameras, but that's yet another myth created and reinforced by television, where they wrote themselves into a corner, and needed some slick way to get out of it. They're also the same crowd that makes you believe you can take a blurry distant picture of a vehicle, that may only be 8px wide, and be able to enhance it enough to read the license plate number, and see the dumb look on the drivers face. Nope, that doesn't happen either, but it helps the story on TV. Hell, I was watching NCIS the other night, and with a satellite image, they were able to enhance it to get a clear full screen view of just the license plate, from an event that happened days before. And for reference, the highest resolution satellite that they have is 0.41 meters. That is, you can see that there is a 41cm object, but you wouldn't be able to read the writing on it. You probably could read a large building sign, or large lettering on a billboard, except the letters are facing the wrong way.:)
* Establish a geographically diverse target (10 balloons somewhere in the US).
* Observe how the organizers encourage people to work with them.
* Observe how they communicate with the search teams, coordinate efforts, and disseminate data.
This could be used to coordinate efforts between the military and civilians, should the need arise. In the sake of the great terrorism debate, what if a vehicle was known to be in the US, and it is expected to detonate a nuke on US soil. This kind of crowdsourcing would have a better chance of finding it than putting everyone in the law enforcement and intelligence communities on the road hunting.
Unfortunately, this is probably organized towards the handling and neutralization of civilian unrest inside the CONUS. It would:
* Identify civilians who can organize large groups to neutralize them.
* Identify communications routes that would need to be neutralized.
* Identify intelligence breaches that could be used by the dissidents.
So, it's all in how much you trust our government. Would they recruit the civilian population to assist in a time of need? Would they neutralize dissidents during a period of civil unrest?
I'm fairly confident I'm not on the stage 1 list (neutralize in the first hour), but I'm pretty sure I'm on the stage 2 list. I'd suspect the organizers who aren't LEO or government will be on the stage 1 list. The followers will be on the stage 2 list.
Who wants to play the game now?
If I happen to spot a red balloon, with a couple spooks camped out below it, I'm going to plink at it with a BB gun.:)
I love the speed limit argument, let me play too!:)
Speed limits, and the optimal speed varies by vehicle!!!!!
Every engine has an optimal speed. That's generally 1700 to 2200 RPM.
In my car, optimal cruise RPM is 2200 RPM.
I tested at identical RPM (2k RPM) in 5th and 6th gear. 6th gear was more fuel efficient.
I tested at identical speeds (The speed limit, 70mph), in 5th and 6th gear. 6th gear was more fuel efficient.
The remainder of the testing results were in 6th gear.
At 70mph, I got 24mpg.
At 75mph, I got 25mpg.
At 80mph, I got 26mpg.
86mph is 2,000RPM.
Optimal cruise would be approx 95mph.
Many 4 cyl cars are turning something like 4000 RPM at 70mph. These cars are obvious candidates to slow down a little (or a lot!)
I drive my car for the best fuel economy. I coast to stops. I accelerate in the best way for my car. I don't like spending any more than I have to in gas. I cruise at the best speeds I can for my car. That still puts me as what you consider to be bad.
I've driven cars that are built to cruise at 55mph. In those, I cruise at 55mph, and annoy other people. Sorry, I'm driving for the vehicle. I don't mind driving the faster car though, as I do get from Point A to Point B faster. I would appreciate if there were modifications to the speed limits, to allow for variations in vehicles. Maybe a typing system, where performance cars that do operate better at high speed, are allowed to go faster. That would also restrict vehicles that should operate slower, to better speeds for them.
Actually, I'd just be happy if people knew what lanes to drive in. Slow to the right, fast to the left. If someone comes up behind you, yield to them. And god damn it, stop making right turns from the left lane!
Already done. I have something on the order of 5,000 children, who will be tall, skinny, and insanely intelligent. I've also created 3 biological children (the old fashion way). One girl, two boys. They're all tall, skinny, and intelligent. They'll all likely be hackers and/or megalomaniacs. The next world wars will be between my own children.:) As it continues, the biological children count should increase, as there are many tall skinny attractive intelligent women who are courting me to be their mate.:)
I've done my part to improve humanity through unnatural selection. It's up to the rest of you to do your parts. You short fat idiots need not attempt it.:)
Roads are generally paid for through fuel taxes. You have to buy fuel to drive a motor vehicle.
The other fees don't really cost much. For my car, it's $60/yr for the registration, and $48 every 6 years for my license $8/yr).. If I were an average driver, I would travel 15,000 miles per year, and assume my vehicle averages 19mpg. Our gas tax is 51.6/gallon.
My state shows that in 2006, there were 15,888,511 licensed drivers. Assuming 25% drive normally, (others are in school, retired, or don't work, etc) that puts 3,972,128 drivers on the road. This is skewed slightly, as out of state drivers come down (and spend money on fuel), and we have a lot of tourism. My numbers will be low.
If I remember correctly, the life expectancy of a concrete structure is 50 years. Some of the old NASA launch structures are deteriorating to the point of collapse, even though they were built to be extremely strong.
Concrete meteorites. Metal rusts. Wood rots. Plastic? Nah, not that great for a bridge.:) 50 years is a decent judgement for projected growth too. Look at any city. How many can you find that have small or minimal growth between 1959 to 2009? In 50 years, it can be expected that a bridge or highway will be outdated and need to be replaced or upgraded. Unfortunately, infrastructure budgets don't necessarily line up with growth even though government is suppose to make it work.
Power, water, phone, and cable don't usually suffer the same problems, because they are funded by the people using them. Unfortunately, roads cannot be paid for in the same way. The most overused and wrong statement that I've heard and hate is "Driving is a privilege, not a right". Nope, the state taxes the users (paying for drivers license and registration), AND the use (fuel taxes). They already had the RIGHT to drive. The state designated it a privilege so they could tax and control it.
It's the middle east. They've always been at war with someone. They always will be. By putting yourself in their area, you're an enemy. There's no way to "win", especially where there is no organized enemy.
A requirement for entering any situation must be to have a clear cut expectation of what the goals are, and an exit strategy.
Aw, everyone knows Slashdot is full of experts. Even if we don't know what we're talking about, we'll still pretend to be experts. Well, until a real expert speaks up and makes us look stupid.:)
The one that infected all the stargates did. It was.. aw heck.. the last Goa'uld guy. The mediocre badguy. It used the stargates automatic update network to reprogram all the gates. They used that plot device twice. The others that they had in the show propagated what ever way was easy to show. Didn't one go through the power lines?
Actually, all of those considerations aren't a big deal.
I installed Linux on a very old tablet, with no CDRom, Floppy, and it wouldn't boot to USB. The easy solution? I pulled the drive out. {sigh} I don't know why people don't think of that.
I started at about 10pm, so a parts run was out of the question. It was only a 20Gb drive, but in his case, I'd suggest buying a bigger drive. Maybe he can find one on eBay that'll work in it. Otherwise, he can do a conservative install. I'm a Slackware guy, so that's always my choice in distros, even though I've used just about everything out there at some point.
I stuck the drive in my much more modern laptop, and booted to the Slackware install CD. I did the install normally, and then recompiled the kernel for exactly the hardware that was in the tablet, and included just a very few drivers that the laptop needed (like network and IDE controller). Since it was old hardware with limited memory, I didn't want to load anything that wasn't necessary. I followed that up by cleaning the startup of absolutely everything that I didn't want. When it was done, and I saw it booted successfully on the laptop, although optimized for the much older slower processor.
I pulled the drive back out of the laptop, and put it back in the tablet. Voila, a working tablet. Some things were kind of a pain to get working, such as the touch screen, because no one had supported it in many years. I wanted a modern distro, I didn't want to go back to the 2.0 kernel that people had used when it was new-ish.
I've done this a lot in the past, when I'm trying to resurrect machines that would take forever to build kernels for. For example, I had an old 386 once that I wanted to use as a firewall. I did all the work on a Pentium machine (modern at the time). The compile time for the kernel on the Pentium was something like 20 minutes. I did recompile the kernel once on the 386, and it took something like 4 hours. After that, any time I wanted to recompile, I pulled the drive, as the time it took to move the drive to a more modern machine was insignificant compared to the difference in compile time.
Any time I build a kernel, there are a few drivers I always use, like the PIIX IDE controller, and a small assortment of network drivers (I have a lot of 3com and Intel network cards laying around). That way, I can always move it to another machine, work on the drive, and then put it back in the slow machine.
So, that's my solution for his problem. No floppy install. No need for a CDRom. No crying over the lack of USB.
I don't know what kind of American you are, but I have plenty of manhood to go around. I really don't mind sharing my mahood with the Italians at all. I assure you, it's all in the interest of international relations and world peace.:)
If I recall correctly, the F-14 grounding wasn't exactly a replacement parts issue. Well, I guess it could have been.
When the contractors left the country, they were kind enough to sabotage and/or liberate parts from them. The aircraft apparently would still fly, but they were unable to use any weapons.
And yes, they have the problem of replacement parts too. It is still assumed that about 30 may still be in service, the rest cannibalized for parts. The US Navy has made it rather difficult for parts to make it to the black market.
I went from being on top of my game, running a huge network, to drifting through a few pathetic jobs, and now I'm finishing up my 5th month of unemployment. Resumes have been flying out the door, targeted to places I'm perfectly qualified for. The few callbacks I've had were pathetic. "Sorry, we took someone for 10% of what you wanted". "Sorry, you're overqualified.", and my favorite has been headhunters asking me to lie about my credentials. "Can you add a few more certifications on there?", "Can you add a part about your years of ___ administration?" No, I won't lie.
So I'm doing what I know. IT was a lot of fun. I really (REALLY) enjoyed it. The closest I've gotten to IT in the last year has been maintaining a half ass network, and helping people with their desktops. {sigh}
For the last 5 months, I've been helping people. In exchange, they give me food, a place to live, and other necessities that I may need (hey can you fill my gas tank). My part of that has been doing auto repairs, home repairs and upgrades, etc, etc. I like working on cars, so that's been good. Since I'm not ASE certified, and can't show my years of working in a "shop", I'm not considered for even changing oil. It's ok, my resume and description of the auto work I've done over the years is in the same stack with kids right out of high school, except the kids are more likely to get the job because the highly qualified IT guy is going to bail as soon as the economy picks up. {sigh} I'm amazed at how many running toilets I've fixed, and other assorted "skilled labor" jobs, yet I can't get steady work in any of them due to lack of experience.
I've applied for every job that I could possibly do. Loading docks? Sure. Short order cook? Sure. Fast food burger flipper? Sure. Nope, nada.
When helping people runs out, which I'm sure it will since everyone's broke these days, I may have to turn to more exotic work. Hit man? Sure. Bank robber? Sure. Drug runner? Sure. Cult leader? Now we're talking. We'll see how desperate times get.
Right now, my advice to anyone is, don't bail on your career, until it bails on you. Right now, the odds are it'll happen soon enough, and you too will be exploring the wonderful world of desperation.
Very interesting. And there's a decent chance you've been stationed or flew over somewhere I was in the last year. Hmmm, are you following me?:)
I keep a vigilant lookout for those damned silent black helicopters (they unnamed agency upgraded at a classified point in the conspiracy theorists past). Shhh, if you listen very carefully, you can't hear them. That's how you know that they're there.:) One of my favorite hobbies is to give conspiracy theorists panic attacks.
I freaked a guy out in a bar a few months ago. He started talking about aliens, and I wasn't anywhere near as drunk as him, so when he started talking, I went from friendly to dead serious. He started rambling on about something where aliens could exist. In a "this is classified, but I'll give you a little treat" kind of way, I told him, it's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when we let you know". He said something else, and I continued on about riding on alien spacecraft, and how you just can't share alien technology with the Russians because they can't fly for shit. A reference to "the incident" made that one just right for his drunken brain to absorb. Then I went into the clandestine release of alien technology to the general population. He looked at me a little funny (funnier than just his drunkness), and I mentioned how "interesting" it was that little things like cell phones were ever declassified and sold on the open market. There's a sucker born every minute, you just have to tailor your spiel to their paranoia.:)
He started looking carefully at everyone in the bar, who could have cared less about him, and then made his way carefully to the door. I watched through the window as he ran away from the bar as fast as he could.:)
So, not to digress too far from your message, keep up the good work.:) I'm seriously jealous of you guys. I wanted to do what you do, but am categorically excluded (eye surgery).:(
Slashdot Mirror
When's the last time you had a throttle cable break?
I've only seen it happen twice. Those were motorcycles. One was a "pocketbike", being driven by a big teenager who overstressed the inferior piece. (he twisted it til it broke).
I actually had a problem with my cable. My car has a crappy plastic retainer at the throttle body end, which cracked. It was a weekend, after the dealerships had closed. I went to another parts store, and they couldn't get a replacement cable. I used plastic cable ties to hold it in place where it belonged. It's been like that for 3 months, without fail. :)
I have a friend with a car that has a drive by wire throttle, to facilitate the traction control. That car is now having a problem when accelerating. It's only at particular throttle positions, but it acts funny. My car with a good ol' fashion cable between the pedal and throttle body is very very reliable. If the cable goes, I can replace it fairly cheap. It's much more expensive to replace the more exotic parts.
Some cars do that because of the shape of the fuel tank too. Mine has a float in it, but the bottom of the tank is smaller than the top, so the first quarter tank is larger than the last. It's still fairly close. It's good enough to estimate my travel distance on an Interstate at a fixed speed (when that's possible). Just below empty still leaves 2 gallons though. :)
Actually, the details I read on this were something like 10% over the actual ground speed. The ones built for European dealerships are worse about it than the American destinations. From what I read on the matter, most European cars do it to some degree, as a "safety feature". Even though the roads are rated for a speed, it will encourage drivers of their cars to drive a little slower, and make it appear that the cars are safer (lower incidents of speed related accidents, blah, blah, blah)
In my American car (built in Canada with parts primarily sourced from Canada and Mexico), the speedometer is dead on with the GPS, which is nice. I have my GPS mounted at the roofline on the windshield, so I only have to glance up a few degrees, rather twice as far down to the actual speedometer. Both come pretty close to the road side "your speed is" signs. Unfortunately, the road side signs fluctuate +-3mph (usually). It makes me wonder about the accuracy of radar guns. If I'm not in traffic, I usually set my cruise control, so I don't accidentally get a ticket, so my speed doesn't fluctuate (according to the speedo and the GPS).
The "trawling for information" idea is an easy one. Set a Google News alert for it. You can specify it to provide notifications for other things like website updates. I've already gotten a few, but they were all talking about the contest, and how it could be subverted. :)
I'm just trying to figure out where to buy an 8 foot red balloon. Since I already know the risks associated with being identified as a contestant, I'd rather play the other side, and give people a false target. I already have magnetic signs for DOD, FBI, DHS, and FEMA to put on my truck to allow easy movement depending on what the disaster is. :) The DOD sign should be close enough for folks to believe I'm DARPA. :) I'll taser any contestants who come close enough, so I can steal their lists (and wallets, and GPS devices, and laptops, etc, etc, etc). :)
(just kidding, I don't own a taser.)
Well, in my observation of the cameras in various cities, there are lots on major roads, but they don't have complete coverage. Also, they never said the balloons would be by major roads. That could actually be hazardous, depending on the size of the balloon. They don't even indicate that. Is the balloon a 1 foot diameter, or 100 foot diameter? What altitude are they flying at? 1 foot above the ground, or 200 feet up?
For all we know, they'll all be down dirt roads in Nebraska and North Dakota. While "visible from nearby roadways", it doesn't mean that you'd spot it from a major highway. Someone mentioned truckers. They'd have great coverage for major roads, but what if it was at say 48.138857,-101.59873 or 25.745912,-81.035317 or 34.939317,-117.507614. Sure, those are roads, and sure you could see something by the road, but sure as hell no one is going to see it out there, unless they already know what they're looking for. I seriously doubt they're going to set up shop in the middle of major metro areas.
BTW, those points were chosen arbitrarily from general locations that I know or presume to be rather unpopulated. Since I've now posted them, they're coming off my list of "places to hide when the zombie apocalypse occurs in 2012". :)
Shoot 'em all down. You'll figure out which one had the kid when it hits.
I always love this idea.
CCTV cameras don't feed into a centralized computer somewhere. Hell, in many commercial buildings with more than one tenant, even they don't share camera feeds.
Even traffic light cameras feed to the organization that installed them. Some news stations have their own cameras, and frequently city transportation offices have their own.
I'd love to get access to "the place" that has all the cameras, but that's yet another myth created and reinforced by television, where they wrote themselves into a corner, and needed some slick way to get out of it. They're also the same crowd that makes you believe you can take a blurry distant picture of a vehicle, that may only be 8px wide, and be able to enhance it enough to read the license plate number, and see the dumb look on the drivers face. Nope, that doesn't happen either, but it helps the story on TV. Hell, I was watching NCIS the other night, and with a satellite image, they were able to enhance it to get a clear full screen view of just the license plate, from an event that happened days before. And for reference, the highest resolution satellite that they have is 0.41 meters. That is, you can see that there is a 41cm object, but you wouldn't be able to read the writing on it. You probably could read a large building sign, or large lettering on a billboard, except the letters are facing the wrong way. :)
I think there's a lot more to this.
What are they observing?
* Establish a geographically diverse target (10 balloons somewhere in the US).
* Observe how the organizers encourage people to work with them.
* Observe how they communicate with the search teams, coordinate efforts, and disseminate data.
This could be used to coordinate efforts between the military and civilians, should the need arise. In the sake of the great terrorism debate, what if a vehicle was known to be in the US, and it is expected to detonate a nuke on US soil. This kind of crowdsourcing would have a better chance of finding it than putting everyone in the law enforcement and intelligence communities on the road hunting.
Unfortunately, this is probably organized towards the handling and neutralization of civilian unrest inside the CONUS. It would:
* Identify civilians who can organize large groups to neutralize them.
* Identify communications routes that would need to be neutralized.
* Identify intelligence breaches that could be used by the dissidents.
So, it's all in how much you trust our government. Would they recruit the civilian population to assist in a time of need? Would they neutralize dissidents during a period of civil unrest?
I'm fairly confident I'm not on the stage 1 list (neutralize in the first hour), but I'm pretty sure I'm on the stage 2 list. I'd suspect the organizers who aren't LEO or government will be on the stage 1 list. The followers will be on the stage 2 list.
Who wants to play the game now?
If I happen to spot a red balloon, with a couple spooks camped out below it, I'm going to plink at it with a BB gun. :)
Don't be too sure about that. I have almost 400hp, and a 0.32 coefficient of drag.
I love the speed limit argument, let me play too! :)
Speed limits, and the optimal speed varies by vehicle!!!!!
Every engine has an optimal speed. That's generally 1700 to 2200 RPM.
In my car, optimal cruise RPM is 2200 RPM.
I tested at identical RPM (2k RPM) in 5th and 6th gear. 6th gear was more fuel efficient.
I tested at identical speeds (The speed limit, 70mph), in 5th and 6th gear. 6th gear was more fuel efficient.
The remainder of the testing results were in 6th gear.
At 70mph, I got 24mpg.
At 75mph, I got 25mpg.
At 80mph, I got 26mpg.
86mph is 2,000RPM.
Optimal cruise would be approx 95mph.
Many 4 cyl cars are turning something like 4000 RPM at 70mph. These cars are obvious candidates to slow down a little (or a lot!)
I drive my car for the best fuel economy. I coast to stops. I accelerate in the best way for my car. I don't like spending any more than I have to in gas. I cruise at the best speeds I can for my car. That still puts me as what you consider to be bad.
I've driven cars that are built to cruise at 55mph. In those, I cruise at 55mph, and annoy other people. Sorry, I'm driving for the vehicle. I don't mind driving the faster car though, as I do get from Point A to Point B faster. I would appreciate if there were modifications to the speed limits, to allow for variations in vehicles. Maybe a typing system, where performance cars that do operate better at high speed, are allowed to go faster. That would also restrict vehicles that should operate slower, to better speeds for them.
Actually, I'd just be happy if people knew what lanes to drive in. Slow to the right, fast to the left. If someone comes up behind you, yield to them. And god damn it, stop making right turns from the left lane!
Already done. I have something on the order of 5,000 children, who will be tall, skinny, and insanely intelligent. I've also created 3 biological children (the old fashion way). One girl, two boys. They're all tall, skinny, and intelligent. They'll all likely be hackers and/or megalomaniacs. The next world wars will be between my own children. :) As it continues, the biological children count should increase, as there are many tall skinny attractive intelligent women who are courting me to be their mate. :)
I've done my part to improve humanity through unnatural selection. It's up to the rest of you to do your parts. You short fat idiots need not attempt it. :)
Roads are generally paid for through fuel taxes. You have to buy fuel to drive a motor vehicle.
The other fees don't really cost much. For my car, it's $60/yr for the registration, and $48 every 6 years for my license $8/yr).. If I were an average driver, I would travel 15,000 miles per year, and assume my vehicle averages 19mpg. Our gas tax is 51.6/gallon.
Yearly costs
Registration: $60
Drivers License: $8
Fuel tax: $407.36
Total yearly tax: $475.36
My state shows that in 2006, there were 15,888,511 licensed drivers. Assuming 25% drive normally, (others are in school, retired, or don't work, etc) that puts 3,972,128 drivers on the road. This is skewed slightly, as out of state drivers come down (and spend money on fuel), and we have a lot of tourism. My numbers will be low.
DL Tax: $ 31,777,024
Reg Tax: $ 238,372,680
Fuel Tax:$1,618,086,062
It's not to see where the real money is. We're paying for our "right" by paying for fuel. The rest of their crap is just crap.
If I remember correctly, the life expectancy of a concrete structure is 50 years. Some of the old NASA launch structures are deteriorating to the point of collapse, even though they were built to be extremely strong.
Concrete meteorites. Metal rusts. Wood rots. Plastic? Nah, not that great for a bridge. :) 50 years is a decent judgement for projected growth too. Look at any city. How many can you find that have small or minimal growth between 1959 to 2009? In 50 years, it can be expected that a bridge or highway will be outdated and need to be replaced or upgraded. Unfortunately, infrastructure budgets don't necessarily line up with growth even though government is suppose to make it work.
Power, water, phone, and cable don't usually suffer the same problems, because they are funded by the people using them. Unfortunately, roads cannot be paid for in the same way. The most overused and wrong statement that I've heard and hate is "Driving is a privilege, not a right". Nope, the state taxes the users (paying for drivers license and registration), AND the use (fuel taxes). They already had the RIGHT to drive. The state designated it a privilege so they could tax and control it.
Just a comment on your disclaimer.
It's the middle east. They've always been at war with someone. They always will be. By putting yourself in their area, you're an enemy. There's no way to "win", especially where there is no organized enemy.
A requirement for entering any situation must be to have a clear cut expectation of what the goals are, and an exit strategy.
If infrastructure would stop breaking people, maybe the healthcare wouldn't need quite as much help. :)
Minnesota - 13 dead, 145 injured.
Florida - 35 dead, 1 injured.
Washington - 0 dead, 0 injured, 1 dog dead.
Indiana 25 injured
Massachusetts 1 dead, 1 injured
Aw, everyone knows Slashdot is full of experts. Even if we don't know what we're talking about, we'll still pretend to be experts. Well, until a real expert speaks up and makes us look stupid. :)
The one that infected all the stargates did. It was .. aw heck .. the last Goa'uld guy. The mediocre badguy. It used the stargates automatic update network to reprogram all the gates. They used that plot device twice. The others that they had in the show propagated what ever way was easy to show. Didn't one go through the power lines?
Actually, all of those considerations aren't a big deal.
I installed Linux on a very old tablet, with no CDRom, Floppy, and it wouldn't boot to USB. The easy solution? I pulled the drive out. {sigh} I don't know why people don't think of that.
I started at about 10pm, so a parts run was out of the question. It was only a 20Gb drive, but in his case, I'd suggest buying a bigger drive. Maybe he can find one on eBay that'll work in it. Otherwise, he can do a conservative install. I'm a Slackware guy, so that's always my choice in distros, even though I've used just about everything out there at some point.
I stuck the drive in my much more modern laptop, and booted to the Slackware install CD. I did the install normally, and then recompiled the kernel for exactly the hardware that was in the tablet, and included just a very few drivers that the laptop needed (like network and IDE controller). Since it was old hardware with limited memory, I didn't want to load anything that wasn't necessary. I followed that up by cleaning the startup of absolutely everything that I didn't want. When it was done, and I saw it booted successfully on the laptop, although optimized for the much older slower processor.
I pulled the drive back out of the laptop, and put it back in the tablet. Voila, a working tablet. Some things were kind of a pain to get working, such as the touch screen, because no one had supported it in many years. I wanted a modern distro, I didn't want to go back to the 2.0 kernel that people had used when it was new-ish.
I've done this a lot in the past, when I'm trying to resurrect machines that would take forever to build kernels for. For example, I had an old 386 once that I wanted to use as a firewall. I did all the work on a Pentium machine (modern at the time). The compile time for the kernel on the Pentium was something like 20 minutes. I did recompile the kernel once on the 386, and it took something like 4 hours. After that, any time I wanted to recompile, I pulled the drive, as the time it took to move the drive to a more modern machine was insignificant compared to the difference in compile time.
Any time I build a kernel, there are a few drivers I always use, like the PIIX IDE controller, and a small assortment of network drivers (I have a lot of 3com and Intel network cards laying around). That way, I can always move it to another machine, work on the drive, and then put it back in the slow machine.
So, that's my solution for his problem. No floppy install. No need for a CDRom. No crying over the lack of USB.
I don't know what kind of American you are, but I have plenty of manhood to go around. I really don't mind sharing my mahood with the Italians at all. I assure you, it's all in the interest of international relations and world peace. :)
I found the show. It's "Surviving Disaster" Season 1, Episode 1, "Hijack".
You can watch it on Spike TV's site here.
If I recall correctly, the F-14 grounding wasn't exactly a replacement parts issue. Well, I guess it could have been.
When the contractors left the country, they were kind enough to sabotage and/or liberate parts from them. The aircraft apparently would still fly, but they were unable to use any weapons.
And yes, they have the problem of replacement parts too. It is still assumed that about 30 may still be in service, the rest cannibalized for parts. The US Navy has made it rather difficult for parts to make it to the black market.
I didn't leave IT. IT left me.
I went from being on top of my game, running a huge network, to drifting through a few pathetic jobs, and now I'm finishing up my 5th month of unemployment. Resumes have been flying out the door, targeted to places I'm perfectly qualified for. The few callbacks I've had were pathetic. "Sorry, we took someone for 10% of what you wanted". "Sorry, you're overqualified.", and my favorite has been headhunters asking me to lie about my credentials. "Can you add a few more certifications on there?", "Can you add a part about your years of ___ administration?" No, I won't lie.
So I'm doing what I know. IT was a lot of fun. I really (REALLY) enjoyed it. The closest I've gotten to IT in the last year has been maintaining a half ass network, and helping people with their desktops. {sigh}
For the last 5 months, I've been helping people. In exchange, they give me food, a place to live, and other necessities that I may need (hey can you fill my gas tank). My part of that has been doing auto repairs, home repairs and upgrades, etc, etc. I like working on cars, so that's been good. Since I'm not ASE certified, and can't show my years of working in a "shop", I'm not considered for even changing oil. It's ok, my resume and description of the auto work I've done over the years is in the same stack with kids right out of high school, except the kids are more likely to get the job because the highly qualified IT guy is going to bail as soon as the economy picks up. {sigh} I'm amazed at how many running toilets I've fixed, and other assorted "skilled labor" jobs, yet I can't get steady work in any of them due to lack of experience.
I've applied for every job that I could possibly do. Loading docks? Sure. Short order cook? Sure. Fast food burger flipper? Sure. Nope, nada.
When helping people runs out, which I'm sure it will since everyone's broke these days, I may have to turn to more exotic work. Hit man? Sure. Bank robber? Sure. Drug runner? Sure. Cult leader? Now we're talking. We'll see how desperate times get.
Right now, my advice to anyone is, don't bail on your career, until it bails on you. Right now, the odds are it'll happen soon enough, and you too will be exploring the wonderful world of desperation.
Very interesting. And there's a decent chance you've been stationed or flew over somewhere I was in the last year. Hmmm, are you following me? :)
I keep a vigilant lookout for those damned silent black helicopters (they unnamed agency upgraded at a classified point in the conspiracy theorists past). Shhh, if you listen very carefully, you can't hear them. That's how you know that they're there. :) One of my favorite hobbies is to give conspiracy theorists panic attacks.
I freaked a guy out in a bar a few months ago. He started talking about aliens, and I wasn't anywhere near as drunk as him, so when he started talking, I went from friendly to dead serious. He started rambling on about something where aliens could exist. In a "this is classified, but I'll give you a little treat" kind of way, I told him, it's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when we let you know". He said something else, and I continued on about riding on alien spacecraft, and how you just can't share alien technology with the Russians because they can't fly for shit. A reference to "the incident" made that one just right for his drunken brain to absorb. Then I went into the clandestine release of alien technology to the general population. He looked at me a little funny (funnier than just his drunkness), and I mentioned how "interesting" it was that little things like cell phones were ever declassified and sold on the open market. There's a sucker born every minute, you just have to tailor your spiel to their paranoia. :)
He started looking carefully at everyone in the bar, who could have cared less about him, and then made his way carefully to the door. I watched through the window as he ran away from the bar as fast as he could. :)
So, not to digress too far from your message, keep up the good work. :) I'm seriously jealous of you guys. I wanted to do what you do, but am categorically excluded (eye surgery). :(