Most "safes" that you see in your average retail store are just locked cabinets. Well, they usually have fancier locks, but a hasp and padlock would work better.
I'm giving someone one of my old safes. It looked similar to the first one, so I decided to try the drop test. It didn't open. They need it to keep a single firearm, and some papers, away from a 3 year old. I found it oddly coincidental that this story came up now. The one I'm giving away is sitting on my floor waiting for me to take it over and mount it.
When I was reading reviews on the "economy" safes (like anything under $200), quite a few are easily defeated. Some can be opened by just jiggling the handle until it opens (about 3 seconds). Some take a screwdriver to pop the dial off (combination lock).
I want a nice rifle safe. After look at the prices, I'm tempted to build my own. If you have welding and machining skills, you could craft one pretty easily. Double layer steel (inner and outer shell), with a few inches of concrete make for a respectable vault. Then you have to make the bolt mechanism, which takes a little more thinking.
Jamming the bolt mechanism so it won't open, is the hardest part. You can't exactly use a residential deadbolt. There are plenty of ways to open those in seconds with little skill. (lockpick gun, bump key, lockpick rake, etc).
It would take me time, but I could build something that would normally cost thousands.
I picked my first lock when I was about 8 years old. I had a toy that needed a key to open a panel. I had lost the key long before, so I got it open with a paperclip and small screwdriver, acting as a rake and tensioner.
I know people who want to keep guns in those cheap moneyboxes. They change their mind when I show them that I can pick the lock in seconds, or force it open with a screwdriver. Come on... Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?
Or use my favorite method. Don't do anything at work that you wouldn't want your bosses seeing. Assume you could be called away from your desktop without having a chance to lock it, and someone else will sit down to do a forensic investigation.
I've had to access all kinds of workstations for various reasons. It's less embarrassing for the user if there's nothing embarrassing to find. Most workplaces appreciate this. They are paying you to work for them, not to mess around with any of your personal stuff.
Well, knowing that inmates make weapons out of amazingly mundane things, the only way to make people perfectly safe from themselves, is to put them all in straight jackets, and keep them stored in padded rooms. Not one. Not some. Every last one of them.
Or we can trust in humanity. We know that the majority of people don't do "bad" things. The remainder can easily be dealt with, using existing laws. Creating new laws for every possible scenario, just because it's an election year, or a particularly dangerous threat, is not grounds for making new laws.
Every new law I've noticed in the news, was already covered by something previously. It just fluffs out the law books, and makes it look like legislators are doing something.
Then it would take just a bit of research to see that a 20 gauge shotgun shell is 0.615", and the nominal inside diameter of 1/2" steel pipe is 0.62, with a wall thickness of 0.11". With a little magic, the barrel thickness can be increased (sacrificing weight, obviously), by using a sheath of a larger pipe (3/4" pipe with a bit of applied heat, or 1" pipe with an epoxy or molten metal filler) to strengthen it. Screw cap, drill hole, a nail, and a rubber band.
Since the article mentioned building a.22, the 20 gauge shotgun would have substantially more power, and not require much of an engineer nor much fancy equipment (vice, power drill, and a willingness to lose a hand, or more, if it doesn't work right). A common wood stock, a decent finish on the metal, and you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference. Well, assuming you did something better than a screw on metal cap for the "bolt", and rubber band for the "firing mechanism".:)
I'm sure something about it is going to come up in the new future. Probably not a ban, but strict licensing and controls on the distribution of the machines.
The sad part is, anyone with decent skills can make perfectly functional weapons in the comfort of their own home (usually garage).
Technically, I *could* make my own weapons. I wouldn't bother though. I have perfectly good professionally manufactured weapons, and I like to be able to take them to the range. I doubt most ranges would let just anyone walk in with a homemade anything and fire it.
I have been thinking of a "some assembly required" Uzi, but that would be more to say I did it, than to have one.:)
I've been using touch screens and tablets for an awful long time. Touch screens are great for specific purposes. Doing basic functions on a phone (like, dialing), it's great. I helped out a store with touchscreen overlays on their register monitors. That was perfect for them, and somewhat (but not totally) useful when I dropped down to the OS.
I suppose if touchscreens were the end-all be-all of computing, we would have ditched our keyboards long ago. If you'd like to try it, osk.exe comes with Windows 7. Set your keyboard aside, and try using your PC for a day only using the mouse. Yup, that'd suck. The touchscreen is almost more useful, if your hand weren't directly between your eyes and the screen.
If you're surfing the net, it's fine. Click a link, continue.. no problems. Type in a URL? That's more challenging. Typing out something even as long as your post or this post, goes from a few seconds of typing, to a few minutes of wishing you had some sort of tactile response.
I have yet to see any office, where they expect any sort of productivity which requires doing more than clicking on a mouse, to use any sort of touchpad. Actually, I can only think of one office I've been in, where one person *wanted* a touchpad. They were doing inventory. It was an older one. The touchscreen surface was defective, and it didn't have enough memory. I repaired it, and upgraded the memory, and it worked fine. They used it for almost a whole day, before putting it away and getting out a notepad and paper. Yup, the old standby. Write it down, then key it in later. It was a nice idea though.
I guess if we go to more touchscreen devices, sales of bluetooth gaming pads will go up. Then we'll have the fun of many different pads, some compatible with some games, so any somewhat serious gamer will have a whole collection of them.
That's great. They want it changed for reprints. They're not demanding recalling the existing books. They're even willing to help pay for it.
Right now, I want to go down to the store, buy a bottle of Jack Daniels Single Barrel, grab a copy of the book, and enjoy them both together. At this point, I don't even care what the book is about, and will probably care less the more I drink.:)
Congratulations, you've resurrected a dead meme, and once again proved that people can post wrong links in a self-righteous attempt to show their superiority.
The first link isn't it. Unless you're saying that a DVD is a book, and that it was ok in either jurisdiction, and you think Colorado was recently annexed by California. You'll notice the DVD that is really a book is actually a handbook for how to be a pedophile. It's a tutorial on something that's illegal in every state. (Title: "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct")
The second link is the USDOJ news archive.
The third link is a list of news stories about pedophiles.
The fourth is a list of news stories about extradition.
The fifth is another story on the subject of the first, which also adds that he waved his right to fight the extradition. I would be willing to bet that his attorney said he had a better chance in a Florida court. Since he got off with probation, that's most likely correct.
I gave up there.
I'm interested in finding out about the referenced case, and no one has provided it.
My dragon doesn't drive. And if I really piss him off, I've found that his fire breath is enough to vaporize a vehicle. Have you ever tried to file a car insurance claim, where you honestly say "The invisible dragon in my garage vaporized it." They ask for evidence of the dragon, you say "He's invisible and undetectable". They ask for the remains of the car, and you explain "it's vaporized, there are no remains." They ask if it was stolen, and you say it wasn't, the dragon did it..
It'll either get them to hang up on you, or call for the nice men in white coats to take you to a happy place.
You know, the happy place really isn't all that nice. There's some crazy people there.
The ones that I've dug up have always been metal, leading from the street, to the meter, to the point of service. That's when people frequently switch over to PVC or CPVC.
I'm not sure on the mains. I've seen plastic of some sort (possibly PVC), and concrete. I'm not positive if the concrete ones are fresh water, or waste water.
When I was a kid, the plat maps at our house indicated the county has something like 5' from the narrow road. They widened the road a bit (it was almost too narrow for two cars to pass). Later on, we were notified that the county now claimed 15' on each side of the road as "easement". Basically, they said the road was something like 30' wide (15' each way from center), plus 15' on both sides. That extended to inside our fences.
If, for any reason, the county needed to use that property, for things like drainage ditches, allowing utility poles, or anything else, they could use it.
I know a guy in a residential area, where there was a drainage canal behind his house. The area had built up significantly from when his property was built. Because of all the construction over the years, natural drainage couldn't occur. They widened the canal to about 50', taking his back fence and part of his sprinkler system. He made a lot of noise, because they intended to make his yard smaller. Because he complained more than the people on the other side of the canal, they shifted the canal by several feet. Basically, they took more on the other side, keeping the canal the same size.
Some things need to be done, like draining rainwater. If they don't, neighborhoods could (and did) flood.
I happen to live at the opposite. The homes are very close to each other, so there simply isn't room to dig a canal without taking out quite a few homes. We had some nasty storms recently, and the roads, yards, and some homes, flooded. Everyone screamed "they should have done something to prevent this". No one liked the idea of their home being torn down to allow for a canal or drainage retention pond.
Actually, the "call before you dig" people come out with sensors. to find the wires. "best guess" should be within a few inches of where underground wires and pipes are. They come out with metal detectors, and follow them from known locations.
For water and gas pipes, they're pretty easy, since they're metal pipes.
For copper telco and cable, they're also (obviously) metal conductors.
From something like Verizon FiOS, there is a tracer lead along the fiber that has metal, so they can be detected.
After seeing quite a few done, I know they diverge from the obvious path (the right of way), to go to the destination. I've seen lines run diagonally across yards. Sometimes they'll do "the right thing", and follow the sidewalk, then turn up the side of the driveway or adjacent to the property line. In any case, knowing if it's 6 inches or 6 feet from the driveway is kind of important if you're having new work done.
For some more expensive runs, I have seen where they'll put up empty junction boxes at intervals. Some were fairly close, like every 20 feet. Some have been more distant, like every 100 feet or so. From what I've observed, they'll put the boxes closer, where people won't complain about the aesthetics, and where it's likely someone else will come along digging.
It's fairly easy to be "careful" digging with a hand shovel. You'll hopefully notice when you hit a cable. but quite often they don't feel any worse than a small tree root. If they're digging with heavier equipment, it can be downright impossible to know if you just went through a gas line until you see the broken pipe.
That explains theological debates. I have yet to find anyone to disprove the invisible undetectable dragon in my garage. That bastard only makes himself present to me. Have you ever tried to back out of a garage with a dragon in the way?
If this is the case referenced, the original reference was a blatant lie.
A California citizen wasn't extradited to Florida, to be tried on charges in Florida.
A California citizen was charged, tried, and convicted in federal court. There was no state extradition and misapplication of jurisdiction of state laws.
But hey, people can say anything they want, and still get modded up without factual backing. Gotta love Slashdot.
Well, it was used in the space program. I'm sure most of us know, it was used as a flight model. It was planned for use as an active shuttle, but NASA found it would have been cost prohibitive to fit it with the required gear.
I believe it was flown 5 times. So it didn't launch the same way the others did, and it didn't achieve orbit (by design), but it was flown. It was used for various purposes from 1976 through 1985.
What I don't quite get is why it's a big deal that it's available to the public to view now. It was at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles for a while, where you could walk right up to it. Just like everything there, it was interesting to see.
Yes, but they're upgraded piecemeal. If people suddenly started buying EVs en masse then they wouldn't be able to find enough labor (or budget) to upgrade all the neighborhoods.
I may be getting old, but I always hear about some catastrophic effect that new technology will have. As CPUs approached 50Mhz, people were telling warnings about if their frequencies got faster, there would be widespread FM interference.
With the public availability of wifi, people made relations to the 2.4Ghz signal being so close to microwave ovens, that the world population would be sterile, we'd all die of cancer within a few years, and other false claims.
Ages ago, it was suggested if the population started (oh my gosh) having their own vehicles, the road infrastructure would fail. There simply wouldn't be room on the roads for all the cars, and if there were, there would simply be no usable area for anything but highways.
And lets not forget about oil shortages. The 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, (I think we forget about it in the 1990s), were all going to be the end of the world, because there would be no more oil, or at least not enough to provide for consumer use. I doubt many people here remember WWII war rationing.
As for your assertion that there will be a conflict with electric vehicles and power grids, is irrational. Sure, if everyone bought an electric car today, and plugged them all in at 6pm, it would most likely cripple some areas.
There will be a portable 120 V unit (R) that can be plugged into any standard receptacle. It will be able to recharge the car fully in 6 hours at 12 amps or 8 hours at 8 amps.
The other device option (L) is a 240 V stationary wall-mounted unit that has to be installed in the owners garage per code. This unit running at 16 amps can recharge the Volt in 3 hours.
For comparison, a 3 ton residential air conditioner draws about 14A@240VAC. A 4 ton draws about 17A @240VAC.
It could be equally claimed that building newer homes in excess of 3000 sq/ft with vaulted ceilings would have crippled the power grid. I may not have received the memo, but it looks like we all still have power for our computers, so I'm guessing the power grid survived. That gives a good impression of what the peak current is. For those who turn on their air conditioner (or heater, depending on location and climate) when they get home, make dinner, watch their big screen TVs, etc, etc, the peak power consumption is higher.
The only real problem would be if everyone bought new plug in electric cars within a *very* short time span. If I were to step outside, and look at my neighbors cars, I would see cars made from the 1970's through maybe 2010. I don't need to look right now, I did last night. I've also noticed similar trends just about everywhere I've been (which is an awful lot of places).
Just like the telephone and cable companies upgraded areas to support faster Internet speeds, the power companies will upgrade areas as needed to support higher demands.
The article makes a 20 year prediction that half of new cars sold will be plug-in electric. That doesn't mean half of homes will have them. That would indicate for half of homes to have them, you'd still be looking more like 50 years in the future. Now think, what was the spot you're sitting in now, 50 years ago? Where I am was a partially wooded rural area, a few miles off a 2-lane highway that was probably farm land of some sort. Now it's a residential neighborhood, surrounded by residential neighborhoods, off of a 6 lane highway, and a 4 lane bypass.
If you think back (or imagine, if you aren't old enough), households have grown, power needs have grown. A typical 1940s
You should try this out yourself. Set yourself up a Linux box to be an iptables firewall, between your machine and the Internet. Only allow port 80 and 443, and see how well things work. Things aren't getting simpler, they're getting more complex.
Here's part of one of one personal firewall that I maintain.
@fw_pub_tcp_ports = ( "20", # FTP Data (non-pasv) "21", # FTP "25", # STMP "43", # Whois "53", # DNS "80", # HTTP "110", # POP3 "123", # NTP "143", # IMAP "443", # HTTPS "465", # SMTPS "587", # SMTP Alt "990", # FTPS "993", # IMAPS "995", # POP3S "465", # SMTPS "1194", # OpenVPN "4321", # rWhois "1237", # Star Trek Online "5228", # Star Trek Online "7000:8000", # Star Trek online "7000:7005", # Star Trek Online "7046", # Star Trek Online "7202", # Star Trek Online "7224", # Star Trek Online "7255", # Star Trek Online "7301", # Star Trek Online "7325", # Star Trek Online "7399", # Star Trek Online "7403", # Star Trek Online "7405", # Star Trek Online "7400:7420", # Star Trek Online "7416", # Star Trek Online "7387", # Star Trek Online "7499", # Star Trek Online "8995", # EA Games "27030:27040", #steam installer "1119:1120", # Blizzard "3724", # Blizzard "4000", # Blizzard "6112:6119", # Blizzard "6881:6999", # Blizzard "12000:12999", # EA Games (ST:TOR) "20000:30000", # EA Games (ST:TOR) "2870:2871", # EA Games (ST:TOR) "8995", # EA Games (ST:TOR) "3479", # EA Games (ST:TOR) "27015:27016", # Brink "8766", # Brink
Intertubewebpipepornnetonline. It's a lot to say, but when I say it sarcastically at someone using any wrong part of it, they usually realize they shouldn't have taken Internet advice from the late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).
... and mail doesn't go over HTTP, except for some client interfaces...... and DB connections don't go over HTTP (They're done over an IP network, therefor they are Internet)...... and FTP doesn't go over HTTP...... and NTP doesn't go over HTTP...... and streaming media frequently doesn't go over HTTP, although it's becoming more common... I want to repeat DNS, but since you already said it, I won't.
So without DNS, NTP, and DB connections, we'd have a horrible static web to look at, that would have frequent problems because the clocks are out of sync. Kinda like we had in 1995.:) Oh, how I miss Geocities, huge blinking horrible contrast pages, and dancing babies.
They've run plenty in the past, where they are planning to release a product. One of the pages is to contact them for more information. That was the only one in text that I could push through Google Translate. So they can't sell quite yet, but they probably want pre-sales and investors.
Don't forget, there is a Japanese Slashdot site. Apparently the search there sucks just as bad as the English version. Google found a reference to the Pius, but not I can't find it through the site. I don't have any grasp of the Japanese language, so it is less likely that I could do a successful search.
I actually know two Prius owners, and they are respectful drivers. I was dating one for a while, and drove her car a few times, just to say I did. The other one told me "Don't bother, you won't like it. It's like driving a golf cart." His next purchase wasn't a Prius.
So there are at least 2 exceptions, but I've definitely seen the rest. I'm particularly annoyed when they sit in the fast lanes going under the speed limit, or tailgating to increase their gas mileage by 0.1%. I *know* they will go over 45mph, so either do it, or get out of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Most "safes" that you see in your average retail store are just locked cabinets. Well, they usually have fancier locks, but a hasp and padlock would work better.
I'm giving someone one of my old safes. It looked similar to the first one, so I decided to try the drop test. It didn't open. They need it to keep a single firearm, and some papers, away from a 3 year old. I found it oddly coincidental that this story came up now. The one I'm giving away is sitting on my floor waiting for me to take it over and mount it.
When I was reading reviews on the "economy" safes (like anything under $200), quite a few are easily defeated. Some can be opened by just jiggling the handle until it opens (about 3 seconds). Some take a screwdriver to pop the dial off (combination lock).
I want a nice rifle safe. After look at the prices, I'm tempted to build my own. If you have welding and machining skills, you could craft one pretty easily. Double layer steel (inner and outer shell), with a few inches of concrete make for a respectable vault. Then you have to make the bolt mechanism, which takes a little more thinking.
Jamming the bolt mechanism so it won't open, is the hardest part. You can't exactly use a residential deadbolt. There are plenty of ways to open those in seconds with little skill. (lockpick gun, bump key, lockpick rake, etc).
It would take me time, but I could build something that would normally cost thousands.
I picked my first lock when I was about 8 years old. I had a toy that needed a key to open a panel. I had lost the key long before, so I got it open with a paperclip and small screwdriver, acting as a rake and tensioner.
I know people who want to keep guns in those cheap moneyboxes. They change their mind when I show them that I can pick the lock in seconds, or force it open with a screwdriver. Come on... Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?
Why the tee?
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1024k
Or use my favorite method. Don't do anything at work that you wouldn't want your bosses seeing. Assume you could be called away from your desktop without having a chance to lock it, and someone else will sit down to do a forensic investigation.
I've had to access all kinds of workstations for various reasons. It's less embarrassing for the user if there's nothing embarrassing to find. Most workplaces appreciate this. They are paying you to work for them, not to mess around with any of your personal stuff.
Well, knowing that inmates make weapons out of amazingly mundane things, the only way to make people perfectly safe from themselves, is to put them all in straight jackets, and keep them stored in padded rooms. Not one. Not some. Every last one of them.
Or we can trust in humanity. We know that the majority of people don't do "bad" things. The remainder can easily be dealt with, using existing laws. Creating new laws for every possible scenario, just because it's an election year, or a particularly dangerous threat, is not grounds for making new laws.
Every new law I've noticed in the news, was already covered by something previously. It just fluffs out the law books, and makes it look like legislators are doing something.
It gets more complicated than that. Can you buy a pipe, craft a breech, and engineer a way for a pin to push through the retaining piece?
https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&safe=off&q=zip+gun
Then it would take just a bit of research to see that a 20 gauge shotgun shell is 0.615", and the nominal inside diameter of 1/2" steel pipe is 0.62, with a wall thickness of 0.11". With a little magic, the barrel thickness can be increased (sacrificing weight, obviously), by using a sheath of a larger pipe (3/4" pipe with a bit of applied heat, or 1" pipe with an epoxy or molten metal filler) to strengthen it. Screw cap, drill hole, a nail, and a rubber band.
Since the article mentioned building a .22, the 20 gauge shotgun would have substantially more power, and not require much of an engineer nor much fancy equipment (vice, power drill, and a willingness to lose a hand, or more, if it doesn't work right). A common wood stock, a decent finish on the metal, and you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference. Well, assuming you did something better than a screw on metal cap for the "bolt", and rubber band for the "firing mechanism". :)
I'm sure something about it is going to come up in the new future. Probably not a ban, but strict licensing and controls on the distribution of the machines.
The sad part is, anyone with decent skills can make perfectly functional weapons in the comfort of their own home (usually garage).
Technically, I *could* make my own weapons. I wouldn't bother though. I have perfectly good professionally manufactured weapons, and I like to be able to take them to the range. I doubt most ranges would let just anyone walk in with a homemade anything and fire it.
I have been thinking of a "some assembly required" Uzi, but that would be more to say I did it, than to have one. :)
I've been using touch screens and tablets for an awful long time. Touch screens are great for specific purposes. Doing basic functions on a phone (like, dialing), it's great. I helped out a store with touchscreen overlays on their register monitors. That was perfect for them, and somewhat (but not totally) useful when I dropped down to the OS.
I suppose if touchscreens were the end-all be-all of computing, we would have ditched our keyboards long ago. If you'd like to try it, osk.exe comes with Windows 7. Set your keyboard aside, and try using your PC for a day only using the mouse. Yup, that'd suck. The touchscreen is almost more useful, if your hand weren't directly between your eyes and the screen.
If you're surfing the net, it's fine. Click a link, continue.. no problems. Type in a URL? That's more challenging. Typing out something even as long as your post or this post, goes from a few seconds of typing, to a few minutes of wishing you had some sort of tactile response.
I have yet to see any office, where they expect any sort of productivity which requires doing more than clicking on a mouse, to use any sort of touchpad. Actually, I can only think of one office I've been in, where one person *wanted* a touchpad. They were doing inventory. It was an older one. The touchscreen surface was defective, and it didn't have enough memory. I repaired it, and upgraded the memory, and it worked fine. They used it for almost a whole day, before putting it away and getting out a notepad and paper. Yup, the old standby. Write it down, then key it in later. It was a nice idea though.
I guess if we go to more touchscreen devices, sales of bluetooth gaming pads will go up. Then we'll have the fun of many different pads, some compatible with some games, so any somewhat serious gamer will have a whole collection of them.
You should have posted this with your account. You would have gotten such a crazy moderation on it. :)
That's great. They want it changed for reprints. They're not demanding recalling the existing books. They're even willing to help pay for it.
Right now, I want to go down to the store, buy a bottle of Jack Daniels Single Barrel, grab a copy of the book, and enjoy them both together. At this point, I don't even care what the book is about, and will probably care less the more I drink. :)
Congratulations, you've resurrected a dead meme, and once again proved that people can post wrong links in a self-righteous attempt to show their superiority.
The first link isn't it. Unless you're saying that a DVD is a book, and that it was ok in either jurisdiction, and you think Colorado was recently annexed by California. You'll notice the DVD that is really a book is actually a handbook for how to be a pedophile. It's a tutorial on something that's illegal in every state. (Title: "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct")
The second link is the USDOJ news archive.
The third link is a list of news stories about pedophiles.
The fourth is a list of news stories about extradition.
The fifth is another story on the subject of the first, which also adds that he waved his right to fight the extradition. I would be willing to bet that his attorney said he had a better chance in a Florida court. Since he got off with probation, that's most likely correct.
I gave up there.
I'm interested in finding out about the referenced case, and no one has provided it.
My dragon doesn't drive. And if I really piss him off, I've found that his fire breath is enough to vaporize a vehicle. Have you ever tried to file a car insurance claim, where you honestly say "The invisible dragon in my garage vaporized it." They ask for evidence of the dragon, you say "He's invisible and undetectable". They ask for the remains of the car, and you explain "it's vaporized, there are no remains." They ask if it was stolen, and you say it wasn't, the dragon did it..
It'll either get them to hang up on you, or call for the nice men in white coats to take you to a happy place.
You know, the happy place really isn't all that nice. There's some crazy people there.
The ones that I've dug up have always been metal, leading from the street, to the meter, to the point of service. That's when people frequently switch over to PVC or CPVC.
I'm not sure on the mains. I've seen plastic of some sort (possibly PVC), and concrete. I'm not positive if the concrete ones are fresh water, or waste water.
When I was a kid, the plat maps at our house indicated the county has something like 5' from the narrow road. They widened the road a bit (it was almost too narrow for two cars to pass). Later on, we were notified that the county now claimed 15' on each side of the road as "easement". Basically, they said the road was something like 30' wide (15' each way from center), plus 15' on both sides. That extended to inside our fences.
If, for any reason, the county needed to use that property, for things like drainage ditches, allowing utility poles, or anything else, they could use it.
I know a guy in a residential area, where there was a drainage canal behind his house. The area had built up significantly from when his property was built. Because of all the construction over the years, natural drainage couldn't occur. They widened the canal to about 50', taking his back fence and part of his sprinkler system. He made a lot of noise, because they intended to make his yard smaller. Because he complained more than the people on the other side of the canal, they shifted the canal by several feet. Basically, they took more on the other side, keeping the canal the same size.
Some things need to be done, like draining rainwater. If they don't, neighborhoods could (and did) flood.
I happen to live at the opposite. The homes are very close to each other, so there simply isn't room to dig a canal without taking out quite a few homes. We had some nasty storms recently, and the roads, yards, and some homes, flooded. Everyone screamed "they should have done something to prevent this". No one liked the idea of their home being torn down to allow for a canal or drainage retention pond.
Actually, the "call before you dig" people come out with sensors. to find the wires. "best guess" should be within a few inches of where underground wires and pipes are. They come out with metal detectors, and follow them from known locations.
For water and gas pipes, they're pretty easy, since they're metal pipes.
For copper telco and cable, they're also (obviously) metal conductors.
From something like Verizon FiOS, there is a tracer lead along the fiber that has metal, so they can be detected.
After seeing quite a few done, I know they diverge from the obvious path (the right of way), to go to the destination. I've seen lines run diagonally across yards. Sometimes they'll do "the right thing", and follow the sidewalk, then turn up the side of the driveway or adjacent to the property line. In any case, knowing if it's 6 inches or 6 feet from the driveway is kind of important if you're having new work done.
For some more expensive runs, I have seen where they'll put up empty junction boxes at intervals. Some were fairly close, like every 20 feet. Some have been more distant, like every 100 feet or so. From what I've observed, they'll put the boxes closer, where people won't complain about the aesthetics, and where it's likely someone else will come along digging.
It's fairly easy to be "careful" digging with a hand shovel. You'll hopefully notice when you hit a cable. but quite often they don't feel any worse than a small tree root. If they're digging with heavier equipment, it can be downright impossible to know if you just went through a gas line until you see the broken pipe.
That explains theological debates. I have yet to find anyone to disprove the invisible undetectable dragon in my garage. That bastard only makes himself present to me. Have you ever tried to back out of a garage with a dragon in the way?
If this is the case referenced, the original reference was a blatant lie.
A California citizen wasn't extradited to Florida, to be tried on charges in Florida.
A California citizen was charged, tried, and convicted in federal court. There was no state extradition and misapplication of jurisdiction of state laws.
But hey, people can say anything they want, and still get modded up without factual backing. Gotta love Slashdot.
I hadn't heard of this case. Can you provide a link?
Well, it was used in the space program. I'm sure most of us know, it was used as a flight model. It was planned for use as an active shuttle, but NASA found it would have been cost prohibitive to fit it with the required gear.
I believe it was flown 5 times. So it didn't launch the same way the others did, and it didn't achieve orbit (by design), but it was flown. It was used for various purposes from 1976 through 1985.
What I don't quite get is why it's a big deal that it's available to the public to view now. It was at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles for a while, where you could walk right up to it. Just like everything there, it was interesting to see.
I may be getting old, but I always hear about some catastrophic effect that new technology will have. As CPUs approached 50Mhz, people were telling warnings about if their frequencies got faster, there would be widespread FM interference.
With the public availability of wifi, people made relations to the 2.4Ghz signal being so close to microwave ovens, that the world population would be sterile, we'd all die of cancer within a few years, and other false claims.
Ages ago, it was suggested if the population started (oh my gosh) having their own vehicles, the road infrastructure would fail. There simply wouldn't be room on the roads for all the cars, and if there were, there would simply be no usable area for anything but highways.
And lets not forget about oil shortages. The 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, (I think we forget about it in the 1990s), were all going to be the end of the world, because there would be no more oil, or at least not enough to provide for consumer use. I doubt many people here remember WWII war rationing.
As for your assertion that there will be a conflict with electric vehicles and power grids, is irrational. Sure, if everyone bought an electric car today, and plugged them all in at 6pm, it would most likely cripple some areas.
We'll use the Chevy Volt as an example, since it is a newer plugin hybrid that is available to consumers.
http://gm-volt.com/2009/08/20/charging-the-chevy-volt/
For comparison, a 3 ton residential air conditioner draws about 14A@240VAC. A 4 ton draws about 17A @240VAC.
It could be equally claimed that building newer homes in excess of 3000 sq/ft with vaulted ceilings would have crippled the power grid. I may not have received the memo, but it looks like we all still have power for our computers, so I'm guessing the power grid survived. That gives a good impression of what the peak current is. For those who turn on their air conditioner (or heater, depending on location and climate) when they get home, make dinner, watch their big screen TVs, etc, etc, the peak power consumption is higher.
The only real problem would be if everyone bought new plug in electric cars within a *very* short time span. If I were to step outside, and look at my neighbors cars, I would see cars made from the 1970's through maybe 2010. I don't need to look right now, I did last night. I've also noticed similar trends just about everywhere I've been (which is an awful lot of places).
Just like the telephone and cable companies upgraded areas to support faster Internet speeds, the power companies will upgrade areas as needed to support higher demands.
The article makes a 20 year prediction that half of new cars sold will be plug-in electric. That doesn't mean half of homes will have them. That would indicate for half of homes to have them, you'd still be looking more like 50 years in the future. Now think, what was the spot you're sitting in now, 50 years ago? Where I am was a partially wooded rural area, a few miles off a 2-lane highway that was probably farm land of some sort. Now it's a residential neighborhood, surrounded by residential neighborhoods, off of a 6 lane highway, and a 4 lane bypass.
If you think back (or imagine, if you aren't old enough), households have grown, power needs have grown. A typical 1940s
How has society shifted away from all these true pleasures of life?
(There be Kingons around Uranus! HA!)
Ahh, the good old days...
#!/usr/bin/perl
open(FILE, "somefile.txt");
while (<FILE>){
print $_;
};
close(FILE);
You should try this out yourself. Set yourself up a Linux box to be an iptables firewall, between your machine and the Internet. Only allow port 80 and 443, and see how well things work. Things aren't getting simpler, they're getting more complex.
Here's part of one of one personal firewall that I maintain.
@fw_pub_tcp_ports = (
"20", # FTP Data (non-pasv)
"21", # FTP
"25", # STMP
"43", # Whois
"53", # DNS
"80", # HTTP
"110", # POP3
"123", # NTP
"143", # IMAP
"443", # HTTPS
"465", # SMTPS
"587", # SMTP Alt
"990", # FTPS
"993", # IMAPS
"995", # POP3S
"465", # SMTPS
"1194", # OpenVPN
"4321", # rWhois
"1237", # Star Trek Online
"5228", # Star Trek Online
"7000:8000", # Star Trek online
"7000:7005", # Star Trek Online
"7046", # Star Trek Online
"7202", # Star Trek Online
"7224", # Star Trek Online
"7255", # Star Trek Online
"7301", # Star Trek Online
"7325", # Star Trek Online
"7399", # Star Trek Online
"7403", # Star Trek Online
"7405", # Star Trek Online
"7400:7420", # Star Trek Online
"7416", # Star Trek Online
"7387", # Star Trek Online
"7499", # Star Trek Online
"8995", # EA Games
"27030:27040", #steam installer
"1119:1120", # Blizzard
"3724", # Blizzard
"4000", # Blizzard
"6112:6119", # Blizzard
"6881:6999", # Blizzard
"12000:12999", # EA Games (ST:TOR)
"20000:30000", # EA Games (ST:TOR)
"2870:2871", # EA Games (ST:TOR)
"8995", # EA Games (ST:TOR)
"3479", # EA Games (ST:TOR)
"27015:27016", # Brink
"8766", # Brink
Intertubewebpipepornnetonline. It's a lot to say, but when I say it sarcastically at someone using any wrong part of it, they usually realize they shouldn't have taken Internet advice from the late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).
... and mail doesn't go over HTTP, except for some client interfaces... ... and DB connections don't go over HTTP (They're done over an IP network, therefor they are Internet)... ... and FTP doesn't go over HTTP ... ... and NTP doesn't go over HTTP ... ... and streaming media frequently doesn't go over HTTP, although it's becoming more common ...
I want to repeat DNS, but since you already said it, I won't.
So without DNS, NTP, and DB connections, we'd have a horrible static web to look at, that would have frequent problems because the clocks are out of sync. Kinda like we had in 1995. :) Oh, how I miss Geocities, huge blinking horrible contrast pages, and dancing babies.
They've run plenty in the past, where they are planning to release a product. One of the pages is to contact them for more information. That was the only one in text that I could push through Google Translate. So they can't sell quite yet, but they probably want pre-sales and investors.
Don't forget, there is a Japanese Slashdot site. Apparently the search there sucks just as bad as the English version. Google found a reference to the Pius, but not I can't find it through the site. I don't have any grasp of the Japanese language, so it is less likely that I could do a successful search.
I actually know two Prius owners, and they are respectful drivers. I was dating one for a while, and drove her car a few times, just to say I did. The other one told me "Don't bother, you won't like it. It's like driving a golf cart." His next purchase wasn't a Prius.
So there are at least 2 exceptions, but I've definitely seen the rest. I'm particularly annoyed when they sit in the fast lanes going under the speed limit, or tailgating to increase their gas mileage by 0.1%. I *know* they will go over 45mph, so either do it, or get out of the way.