Don't forget, each vehicle has it's use. I wish they had never put "S" in "SUV". It's not a sports vehicle. It was a way to make a utility vehicle sexy.
I have a sports car, and a utility vehicle (SUV). I drive the sports car, and enjoy 26mph on the highway, excellent acceleration, handling, and short stopping distance. I drive the utility vehicle to carry passengers, cargo, or tow trailers.
For example, soon I will be going to the airport to pick up 4 people who are flying internationally, and staying for a while. They will have a lot of luggage, and after 12 hours or so on airplanes, the last thing they want is to be crammed into small seats for the last leg. Our choices (in order of capacity) were a mini cooper, my sports car, a full size sedan, or my SUV. The sedan may work out, but most likely won't have the cargo capacity for all their luggage.
I also like doing my own handy-man stuff. I do the repairs in our home, and fix our cars. While I can technically put a 4x8 sheet of plywood in my sports car, it's not exactly comfortable. 10' or longer boards or pipes can fit, as long as I am the only occupant. In the SUV, they fit with no problems, and I can easily have a second or third person along to help me load and unload.
But I'm sure the case you're trying to make is for the soccer mom in the average household (husband, wife, 2 kids), where the largest cargo they've ever carried is a dozen bags of groceries. the SUV as a status symbol was wrong. It was pushed as a solution by the automobile manufacturers, both to make more money, and to avoid emissions restrictions. SUVs can have big engines, heavy frames, and they don't take a hit for them only getting 12 to 15 mpg on the highway. I don't suppose the oil industry had any complaints about it either. How do you go about selling twice as much product to the same consumer base? Make them use the product twice as fast.
Some say it's a conspiracy. Since neither the automotive nor oil industries invite me to sit in on their meetings, I'll assume the only conspiracy is dumb consumers who will spend more money on stuff, just because they can. Or at least could. (as he considers the economy over the last few years). Never blame on a conspiracy what is easily attributable to dumb consumers.
I believe it's suppose to be line of sight of the operator. If the operator on the ground can't see it directly, [s]he is in violation.
It makes good sense too. Once the drone is out of sight, anything could go wrong, and the operator couldn't make any sort of corrections. In your example of a string of drones, if one element of that chain were to fail, the operator would then not have visual controls.
This is usually assisted by the fact that most R/C aircraft controls have a very short range. When the receiver no longer receives input from the controls, it shuts the motor down and (hopefully) lands gracefully. R/C aircraft are generally rather small, so your little aircraft would easily disappear at much over a few hundred feet anyways.
When the aircraft is almost out of sight, some operators make for a standard rate turn, count the seconds, and hopefully it's coming back. If not, they're going for a nice hike to the last place they saw it. If I could fly for say a mile, and a crosswind started pushing it off course at say 500', I may have no idea where in the next 4,780 feet it finally "landed". If that were into a road, that would be a rather bad thing.
Well... I guess you could try. It would at least mask one level of tests. They'll get you for driving in a bad neighborhood with bushels of pot in the trunk of your new Mercedes.:) Actually the way it usually works is, someone down the chain gets busted for misdemeanor possession, tells the police where he bought it, and then that dealer says "Oh ya, I buy from Frank. Here's his phone number and address."
The weakest link in any sort of security is always people. The stoner was willing to point out his dealer, to avoid up to a year in jail. The street dealer was willing to inform on you to avoid years for possession with intent to distribute. And you? Well, you were the grower, and don't have a lot of bigger fish to exchange for reduced/dropped charges.
And not only do they get the pot, but everything related to it can become forfeit. In my jurisdiction that includes the home, cars, bank accounts, and contents of them all. And lets not forget, your wife/girlfriend/significant other are accessories to the crime. Nothing breaks up a relationship like losing everything and jail time.
Ya.. That's exactly why my room was hot.. A 15k BTU portable A/C made it very comfortable in there. Where I am now, we have most of our gear by the main return for the A/C, so it manages the extra heat load very nicely. I'm going to be adding a small server room here, but that has it's own dedicated A/C duct and return.:) I don't know why they built the house with that single room like that, but I can't complain. No windows, solid block construction all the way around, two 20A circuits, and dedicated A/C.. I couldn't ask for much more. I'm going to drop cat6 to all the rooms we might have computers in, and put a Catalyst 6500 with GigE line cards in. It looks like I'll be spending some quality time with the attic in the near future.
Your climate is pretty similar to ours here in Florida. You probably want to move the gear inside. I had a Catalyst 5000 switch, that didn't like being left in the garage for a year. It got some surface corrosion on it, and when I got around to firing it up for someone, I couldn't get on the console ports again. So it made a nice paperweight.
BTW, the 5500's and 6500's are really nice switches, and you can get them cheap on eBay. But if you're learning for the CCNA, it's a bit beyond what you'll need. They're really nice if you need a high port density, or a really solid switching platform.
A UAV/drone is generally something that can fly without the assistance of a pilot.
A R/C aircraft is controlled by a pilot on the ground.
The UAV/drone in the sense of a self-controlled R/C aircraft, would be say a helicopter that will hover by itself, or an aircraft that will fly to provided waypoints, or fly home (back to you) if the R/C control is lost.
They may simply fly with a bit of computer assist, so they are easier to operate than a regular R/C aircraft, such as automatically going to straight & level flight, because the operator may simply need eyes above. It's silly for law enforcement to get 100+ hours practicing (and crashing) R/C airplanes, when they can get R/C's (drones, if you will), that will go straight up with a camera, and turn in the direction requested, to get a better view.
Some news outlets are mixing the terms, where their "drone" is simply an R/C aircraft, frequently with a camera. It's the same ugly trend, where anything related to any sort of computer technology suddenly had "cyber" and "e-" prepended to it. Expect it to be used by the media any time a R/C aircraft is used for anything but flying around in a circle above a father/son pair on a weekend.
The media works on a 5th grade reading level, and I'm fairly sure some "journalists" have the mental function of a 10 year old.
I learned a good bit of that from a local detective. We'd shoot the shit sometimes, and he told me a lot about work. Nothing specific to active cases, but a lot of methodology, inter-agency politics, etc. All in all, if more people had nice casual conversations with the police like we used to have, people would have more respect for the police. At least for the good ones.
I guess the question would be, do you run 24/7, and do you have so much equipment that you require supplemental air conditioning running all the time? Is your power bill at least a couple hundred dollars higher than would be typical for a house in your area with similar square footage?
It's possible that you'd get their attention. The police work a lot on hunches too. If you're a nice clean cut guy, living within your means, no huge cash transactions and shady personal relationships, it's doubtful you'd be checked out. I only met with a couple of those qualifications. Oh my gosh, at the time, I knew pot smokers, although I wasn't one myself. My employer (at the time) was looked at by the FBI a couple times. I was fully aware of it, and knew there was nothing to it. Oddly enough, several years later, he was brought up on drug charges, but those were related to pharmaceuticals. I didn't know about it til I ran across a news story about it.
The police do this all the time, with real aircraft.
They'll frequently use helicopters with FLIR, to identify marajuana grow houses. They use hot lights, which require extra cooling. Some vent to the outside, which leaves an obvious odor. Others use additional air conditioning. In either case, the room is warmer than other rooms, or surrounding houses. They usually find target homes by checking for homes that use more power. That information is apparently "public record", although I've never found how to get them.
Extra power consumption, with a hot room or plume of heat from an extra air conditioner, is enough probable cause for a warrant. They usually look for other tidbits, like flashy cars, neighbor complaints, resident utilities paid by cash or individuals with prior investigations, charges, or convictions.
Of course, the legality varies by jurisdiction. Contact a local attorney for clarification of the laws in your area. and... IANAL, just observant.
The other provision is, you must maintain line of sight with the aircraft. It's the same restrictions as put on remote control aircraft.
I do recall something about needing to have manual control override. I.e., a remote control. I'm not sure if that is a FAA rule, or just a guideline for responsible behavior.
That's not very hard. Plenty of people travel a lot. If I had been so inclined, I could have collected cards from multiple locations in about 12 states. Since you can buy them in most gas stations, you can get them anywhere, regardless of if it's on your route or not. If you're really dedicated, a nice 4 hour drive away can put you in another state to make the purchase.
From what I have seen of the prepaid credit cards is, you are expected to provide personal information, and have the card with your name on it sent via USPS.
Use of the temporary card is limited. You'll get funny looks using it at a point of sale. You'll have a hard time using it online if they ask for *any* identifiable information. You don't have even a name and zip code, which are the bare minimum that most ask for. Depending on the merchant account, they may let it slide, but it's a big risk for the vendor.
Getting something less traceable, like a Starbucks gift card, isn't quite as usable for this purpose.
Well, that theoretical case is invalid. Passengers can (and do) put weapons and ammunition in their checked luggage. Air Marshals carry their weapons in the passenger cabin with no problems.
I've checked my sidearm plenty of times. The TSA requires that the weapon is unloaded, in a locked hard shell case. Ammunition cannot be stored in the same container. So my sidearm goes in the locked case, and two loaded magazines go in another. All I have to do is declare them at the counter. They ask a few questions, have me sign a paper that states the above, and I get a personal escort over to the baggage scanner. It's a very quick and polite procedure, that doesn't involve any secret rooms or lube.
I've never had any ammunition accidentally discharge. I've never heard of it happening. There are some flights that would have serious problems if there was any chance of it, such as flights to/from military installations.
I've also mail-ordered ammunition. Sometimes it's shipped ground. Sometimes it's shipped air. Either way, the boxes arrive without any extra holes. Again, I've never heard of any discharging. The only "accidental" discharges I've heard of involve fires.
Actually, a zip gun is easily concealable. A tube, rubber band, and thumbtack.. Individually, they aren't dangerous. Assembled, they aren't dangerous. Assembled with a single cartridge is dangerous at a short range. You won't hit a target at 50 yards, but you'll hit a target at a yard pretty accurately.
The x-ray, millimeter wave, backscatter x-ray, and pat down will.
When I was younger, I had a couple of these. They were good for self defense in places that had walk through or handheld metal detectors.
Of course, the way they do pat downs these days, you could probably walk through with a dozen of them. I strongly advise against trying. If you get caught with one, you'll likely find yourself in handcuffs, and on the no-fly list.
Ya, I remember when that happened.:) They didn't continue to make serious progressions with the design though. It's not like STS Orbiter 2.0 and 3.0 ever existed. If we continue to improve the design over the 39 years the shuttle program existed (from first design to last flight), they were still the same orbiters.
If we had continually improved the design, STS-134 would have been a 3rd or 4th generation craft, with significant design changes. We would have already practiced atmospheric skip re-entry, and other methods to not require such a hot re-entry. We would have practiced air launches. We would have had more than one shuttle up at a time, and practiced craft to craft transfers (not docked to the ISS).
And, most likely, they would have reduced the number of switches in the cockpit, as virtually all could be moved from physical dedicated switches, to on-screen soft switches.
But hey, the US space craft are retired. We're dedicated to using the Soviet parachuting capsules, and the folks on the ISS are one capsule away from saying "oh shit, we don't have a ride home".
Right. They upgraded to IBM AP-101S. 32bit, 1.2Mhz, 1MB RAM.
From what I understand, there were Intel 80386 processors used for other functions.
They are used in all kinds of embedded systems, both gov't and commercial. There isn't much need to upgrade the CPU on some embedded device that's always worked that way. Well, not til the next generation needs more power.
The shuttle didn't generally change very much, so if they were using 386's to run some device, there wasn't much need to upgrade.
Well, several years ago, before they moved their servers, I was in the same datacenter with them. My cage was almost next to theirs. On several occasions, I talked to them. All of their folks knew their stuff, and showed me around the inner workings a good bit. I was impressed. I highly recommended them at the time. Unless someone made some horrible decisions, I strongly suspect they're still worth the praise.
Now, what happened? Hell if I know. I'm on the other side of the country now, and we don't talk. Was it that someone snagged the shadow file, or a hashed password list? Was it that someone brute forced several passwords? Either way, they did the right thing, and changed all the passwords that were potentially compromised.
Sure, there's a risk of finding hashed passwords via rainbow tables. Someone could brute force the passwords on their home machine (otherwise, someone would notice a script taking 100% of the CPU time). And, if users can pick their own passwords, there's always a huge risk of weak passwords. I've known so many people that use dictionary words, or dictionary words followed by one or two digits. And of course, I follow that up by lecturing them on strong passwords, and password security. So they may pick a strong password that time. They'll probably go back to using weak passwords for other things.
When I've been traveling, I've always seen attractive Aer Lingus flight attendants. I found this list: 2011 Top 10 Most Beautiful Airline Flight Attendants. Not surprisingly, no US carriers are listed. Attractive and friendly flight attends are the exception, not the rule, with US carriers. I won't say they don't exist. They're just rare.
In an internationally accepted fashion that wouldn't have a high risk of interception? Probably cash mailed to mail drops. That'd probably be Euros, as the US Dollar has been... well... not so strong.
As anyone who has dealt with drugs to non-locals in the US knows, ship by UPS or FedEx. The gov't can tie crimes to transferring anything related to a "crime" via USPS, but that doesn't apply to courier services.
Back to the good old mail order days. Oh how we are progressing. If the gov't gets their way, we'll be back to print catalogs, and printed newsletters mailed to interested parties. Talk about dropping a nuke on the information superhighway.
I totally agree. I switched my site over to a static(ish) page with articles relating to SOPA. Slashdot's published articles today are on SOPA. That's better than just being down.
Not everyone has the time nor knowledge to put up informative stories on it, so it's understandable that they'd just participate in the blackout For news sites like Slashdot, it's better this way.
It's funny watching my logs. There are many places that have us linked for news articles. All of our articles are redirecting to the SOPA page. The sad truth is, if SOPA goes through, they wouldn't even get the SOPA message. We'd just disappear from the Internet, as if we just shut down.
Thanks for the heads up. I added them to my list of participating sites.
I won't ask why you're looking up Miley Cyrus songs.:)
And we all know you're kidding about BT.:) Actually, there was an interesting story recently that CD and DVD sales are *up*. They were down, because they were producing crap, their prices were too high, etc. I honestly don't know whats in the stores now, because the music I listen to is on the radio. It's not worth my time to hunt down good new artists, buy their CDs or MP3s, filter through what's crap and what's not, just to fill up a rack with disks. Bootleg materials were the minority, and even those, I went out and bought the ones I liked. I had a good record and cassette collection when I was a kid, and started buying CDs when they became popular and the equipment was readily available (i.e., CD player in all new-ish cars). As you get older, you realize that there are more important things to do with your life and money. Most of my collection has been given to friends, or stolen by ex-friends. Do I want to buy a $20 CD isn't really worth it when it can be damaged or stolen pretty easily. Not really. So I listen to a few good radio stations when I want music. They may have a playlist of 100 songs, but they rotate songs in and out so I get a good variety, and newer stuff on a regular basis.
I guess when they outlaw growing old, and radio, I'll have to consider other options.:) Luckily, SOPA will prevent me from hearing about new stuff, so I won't be inclined to buy it.
If a site was censored because of SOPA, several things could happen. They could be cut off from any electronic financial transactions. No online sales or donations. No ad revenue. They couldn't afford to stay up, unless people started mailing cash and checks. Even still, they could lose their bank accounts, therefor being unable to even cash the checks.
The IP, or even the whole ISP could be blackholed by the US Gov't. That would stop anyone who's network traffic transits the United States from reaching the site anywhere in the world. Blackholing the ISP would mean that every site hosted there would disappear. No amount of circumventing DNS would help you.
Any cooperative nation can do the same thing. I would suspect several European nations would pick it up fairly quickly. As it expands, I would not be surprised to see them start blocking large swaths of the Internet as "illegal" and "untrustworthy". Those "untrustworthy" areas would be countries that don't cooperate with the US.
I would expect that Slashdot would be taken down fairly quickly. They illegally copy story content. It's legal under "Fair Use" right now. It wouldn't be after SOPA. What people put in the comments are definitely illegal. That would result in Geeknet being entirely blocked. So enjoy Slashdot while you can.
It's up to the owners of each site to make their own decisions on how to support it. It could be a simple warning. Google chose to censor their logo and link to an information page. We chose to replace the site with a warning, and are carrying stories and links related to SOPA. Some may consider us "not blacked out", but as we've censored almost 9 years worth of articles, we are "blacked out".
Many sites need to support their users, and can't simply shut down. Unfortunately, if SOPA does become law, their users will find out the hard way that the blackout can become a reality.
Disable adblock for a minute, and check it yourself.:)
They don't have the regular adword ads. They do have business listings in the map. Most of the business listings show up if you search for something like "pizza near 10011".
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget, each vehicle has it's use. I wish they had never put "S" in "SUV". It's not a sports vehicle. It was a way to make a utility vehicle sexy.
I have a sports car, and a utility vehicle (SUV). I drive the sports car, and enjoy 26mph on the highway, excellent acceleration, handling, and short stopping distance. I drive the utility vehicle to carry passengers, cargo, or tow trailers.
For example, soon I will be going to the airport to pick up 4 people who are flying internationally, and staying for a while. They will have a lot of luggage, and after 12 hours or so on airplanes, the last thing they want is to be crammed into small seats for the last leg. Our choices (in order of capacity) were a mini cooper, my sports car, a full size sedan, or my SUV. The sedan may work out, but most likely won't have the cargo capacity for all their luggage.
I also like doing my own handy-man stuff. I do the repairs in our home, and fix our cars. While I can technically put a 4x8 sheet of plywood in my sports car, it's not exactly comfortable. 10' or longer boards or pipes can fit, as long as I am the only occupant. In the SUV, they fit with no problems, and I can easily have a second or third person along to help me load and unload.
But I'm sure the case you're trying to make is for the soccer mom in the average household (husband, wife, 2 kids), where the largest cargo they've ever carried is a dozen bags of groceries. the SUV as a status symbol was wrong. It was pushed as a solution by the automobile manufacturers, both to make more money, and to avoid emissions restrictions. SUVs can have big engines, heavy frames, and they don't take a hit for them only getting 12 to 15 mpg on the highway. I don't suppose the oil industry had any complaints about it either. How do you go about selling twice as much product to the same consumer base? Make them use the product twice as fast.
Some say it's a conspiracy. Since neither the automotive nor oil industries invite me to sit in on their meetings, I'll assume the only conspiracy is dumb consumers who will spend more money on stuff, just because they can. Or at least could. (as he considers the economy over the last few years). Never blame on a conspiracy what is easily attributable to dumb consumers.
I believe it's suppose to be line of sight of the operator. If the operator on the ground can't see it directly, [s]he is in violation.
It makes good sense too. Once the drone is out of sight, anything could go wrong, and the operator couldn't make any sort of corrections. In your example of a string of drones, if one element of that chain were to fail, the operator would then not have visual controls.
This is usually assisted by the fact that most R/C aircraft controls have a very short range. When the receiver no longer receives input from the controls, it shuts the motor down and (hopefully) lands gracefully. R/C aircraft are generally rather small, so your little aircraft would easily disappear at much over a few hundred feet anyways.
When the aircraft is almost out of sight, some operators make for a standard rate turn, count the seconds, and hopefully it's coming back. If not, they're going for a nice hike to the last place they saw it. If I could fly for say a mile, and a crosswind started pushing it off course at say 500', I may have no idea where in the next 4,780 feet it finally "landed". If that were into a road, that would be a rather bad thing.
Well... I guess you could try. It would at least mask one level of tests. They'll get you for driving in a bad neighborhood with bushels of pot in the trunk of your new Mercedes. :) Actually the way it usually works is, someone down the chain gets busted for misdemeanor possession, tells the police where he bought it, and then that dealer says "Oh ya, I buy from Frank. Here's his phone number and address."
The weakest link in any sort of security is always people. The stoner was willing to point out his dealer, to avoid up to a year in jail. The street dealer was willing to inform on you to avoid years for possession with intent to distribute. And you? Well, you were the grower, and don't have a lot of bigger fish to exchange for reduced/dropped charges.
And not only do they get the pot, but everything related to it can become forfeit. In my jurisdiction that includes the home, cars, bank accounts, and contents of them all. And lets not forget, your wife/girlfriend/significant other are accessories to the crime. Nothing breaks up a relationship like losing everything and jail time.
Ya.. That's exactly why my room was hot.. A 15k BTU portable A/C made it very comfortable in there. Where I am now, we have most of our gear by the main return for the A/C, so it manages the extra heat load very nicely. I'm going to be adding a small server room here, but that has it's own dedicated A/C duct and return. :) I don't know why they built the house with that single room like that, but I can't complain. No windows, solid block construction all the way around, two 20A circuits, and dedicated A/C.. I couldn't ask for much more. I'm going to drop cat6 to all the rooms we might have computers in, and put a Catalyst 6500 with GigE line cards in. It looks like I'll be spending some quality time with the attic in the near future.
Your climate is pretty similar to ours here in Florida. You probably want to move the gear inside. I had a Catalyst 5000 switch, that didn't like being left in the garage for a year. It got some surface corrosion on it, and when I got around to firing it up for someone, I couldn't get on the console ports again. So it made a nice paperweight.
BTW, the 5500's and 6500's are really nice switches, and you can get them cheap on eBay. But if you're learning for the CCNA, it's a bit beyond what you'll need. They're really nice if you need a high port density, or a really solid switching platform.
AC got it right.
A UAV/drone is generally something that can fly without the assistance of a pilot.
A R/C aircraft is controlled by a pilot on the ground.
The UAV/drone in the sense of a self-controlled R/C aircraft, would be say a helicopter that will hover by itself, or an aircraft that will fly to provided waypoints, or fly home (back to you) if the R/C control is lost.
They may simply fly with a bit of computer assist, so they are easier to operate than a regular R/C aircraft, such as automatically going to straight & level flight, because the operator may simply need eyes above. It's silly for law enforcement to get 100+ hours practicing (and crashing) R/C airplanes, when they can get R/C's (drones, if you will), that will go straight up with a camera, and turn in the direction requested, to get a better view.
Some news outlets are mixing the terms, where their "drone" is simply an R/C aircraft, frequently with a camera. It's the same ugly trend, where anything related to any sort of computer technology suddenly had "cyber" and "e-" prepended to it. Expect it to be used by the media any time a R/C aircraft is used for anything but flying around in a circle above a father/son pair on a weekend.
The media works on a 5th grade reading level, and I'm fairly sure some "journalists" have the mental function of a 10 year old.
I learned a good bit of that from a local detective. We'd shoot the shit sometimes, and he told me a lot about work. Nothing specific to active cases, but a lot of methodology, inter-agency politics, etc. All in all, if more people had nice casual conversations with the police like we used to have, people would have more respect for the police. At least for the good ones.
I guess the question would be, do you run 24/7, and do you have so much equipment that you require supplemental air conditioning running all the time? Is your power bill at least a couple hundred dollars higher than would be typical for a house in your area with similar square footage?
It's possible that you'd get their attention. The police work a lot on hunches too. If you're a nice clean cut guy, living within your means, no huge cash transactions and shady personal relationships, it's doubtful you'd be checked out. I only met with a couple of those qualifications. Oh my gosh, at the time, I knew pot smokers, although I wasn't one myself. My employer (at the time) was looked at by the FBI a couple times. I was fully aware of it, and knew there was nothing to it. Oddly enough, several years later, he was brought up on drug charges, but those were related to pharmaceuticals. I didn't know about it til I ran across a news story about it.
Nope.
The police do this all the time, with real aircraft.
They'll frequently use helicopters with FLIR, to identify marajuana grow houses. They use hot lights, which require extra cooling. Some vent to the outside, which leaves an obvious odor. Others use additional air conditioning. In either case, the room is warmer than other rooms, or surrounding houses. They usually find target homes by checking for homes that use more power. That information is apparently "public record", although I've never found how to get them.
Extra power consumption, with a hot room or plume of heat from an extra air conditioner, is enough probable cause for a warrant. They usually look for other tidbits, like flashy cars, neighbor complaints, resident utilities paid by cash or individuals with prior investigations, charges, or convictions.
Of course, the legality varies by jurisdiction. Contact a local attorney for clarification of the laws in your area. and ... IANAL, just observant.
The other provision is, you must maintain line of sight with the aircraft. It's the same restrictions as put on remote control aircraft.
I do recall something about needing to have manual control override. I.e., a remote control. I'm not sure if that is a FAA rule, or just a guideline for responsible behavior.
That's not very hard. Plenty of people travel a lot. If I had been so inclined, I could have collected cards from multiple locations in about 12 states. Since you can buy them in most gas stations, you can get them anywhere, regardless of if it's on your route or not. If you're really dedicated, a nice 4 hour drive away can put you in another state to make the purchase.
From what I have seen of the prepaid credit cards is, you are expected to provide personal information, and have the card with your name on it sent via USPS.
Use of the temporary card is limited. You'll get funny looks using it at a point of sale. You'll have a hard time using it online if they ask for *any* identifiable information. You don't have even a name and zip code, which are the bare minimum that most ask for. Depending on the merchant account, they may let it slide, but it's a big risk for the vendor.
Getting something less traceable, like a Starbucks gift card, isn't quite as usable for this purpose.
Well, that theoretical case is invalid. Passengers can (and do) put weapons and ammunition in their checked luggage. Air Marshals carry their weapons in the passenger cabin with no problems.
TSA information on transporting weapons and ammunition
I've checked my sidearm plenty of times. The TSA requires that the weapon is unloaded, in a locked hard shell case. Ammunition cannot be stored in the same container. So my sidearm goes in the locked case, and two loaded magazines go in another. All I have to do is declare them at the counter. They ask a few questions, have me sign a paper that states the above, and I get a personal escort over to the baggage scanner. It's a very quick and polite procedure, that doesn't involve any secret rooms or lube.
I've never had any ammunition accidentally discharge. I've never heard of it happening. There are some flights that would have serious problems if there was any chance of it, such as flights to/from military installations.
I've also mail-ordered ammunition. Sometimes it's shipped ground. Sometimes it's shipped air. Either way, the boxes arrive without any extra holes. Again, I've never heard of any discharging. The only "accidental" discharges I've heard of involve fires.
Actually, a zip gun is easily concealable. A tube, rubber band, and thumbtack.. Individually, they aren't dangerous. Assembled, they aren't dangerous. Assembled with a single cartridge is dangerous at a short range. You won't hit a target at 50 yards, but you'll hit a target at a yard pretty accurately.
The x-ray, millimeter wave, backscatter x-ray, and pat down will.
When I was younger, I had a couple of these. They were good for self defense in places that had walk through or handheld metal detectors.
Of course, the way they do pat downs these days, you could probably walk through with a dozen of them. I strongly advise against trying. If you get caught with one, you'll likely find yourself in handcuffs, and on the no-fly list.
Ya, I remember when that happened. :) They didn't continue to make serious progressions with the design though. It's not like STS Orbiter 2.0 and 3.0 ever existed. If we continue to improve the design over the 39 years the shuttle program existed (from first design to last flight), they were still the same orbiters.
If we had continually improved the design, STS-134 would have been a 3rd or 4th generation craft, with significant design changes. We would have already practiced atmospheric skip re-entry, and other methods to not require such a hot re-entry. We would have practiced air launches. We would have had more than one shuttle up at a time, and practiced craft to craft transfers (not docked to the ISS).
And, most likely, they would have reduced the number of switches in the cockpit, as virtually all could be moved from physical dedicated switches, to on-screen soft switches.
But hey, the US space craft are retired. We're dedicated to using the Soviet parachuting capsules, and the folks on the ISS are one capsule away from saying "oh shit, we don't have a ride home".
I see you have an excellent grasp of international relations. It's a big game of he-said she-said in a world theater.
Right. They upgraded to IBM AP-101S. 32bit, 1.2Mhz, 1MB RAM.
From what I understand, there were Intel 80386 processors used for other functions.
They are used in all kinds of embedded systems, both gov't and commercial. There isn't much need to upgrade the CPU on some embedded device that's always worked that way. Well, not til the next generation needs more power.
The shuttle didn't generally change very much, so if they were using 386's to run some device, there wasn't much need to upgrade.
Well, several years ago, before they moved their servers, I was in the same datacenter with them. My cage was almost next to theirs. On several occasions, I talked to them. All of their folks knew their stuff, and showed me around the inner workings a good bit. I was impressed. I highly recommended them at the time. Unless someone made some horrible decisions, I strongly suspect they're still worth the praise.
Now, what happened? Hell if I know. I'm on the other side of the country now, and we don't talk. Was it that someone snagged the shadow file, or a hashed password list? Was it that someone brute forced several passwords? Either way, they did the right thing, and changed all the passwords that were potentially compromised.
Sure, there's a risk of finding hashed passwords via rainbow tables. Someone could brute force the passwords on their home machine (otherwise, someone would notice a script taking 100% of the CPU time). And, if users can pick their own passwords, there's always a huge risk of weak passwords. I've known so many people that use dictionary words, or dictionary words followed by one or two digits. And of course, I follow that up by lecturing them on strong passwords, and password security. So they may pick a strong password that time. They'll probably go back to using weak passwords for other things.
When I've been traveling, I've always seen attractive Aer Lingus flight attendants. I found this list: 2011 Top 10 Most Beautiful Airline Flight Attendants. Not surprisingly, no US carriers are listed. Attractive and friendly flight attends are the exception, not the rule, with US carriers. I won't say they don't exist. They're just rare.
Yet another fine application for a trebuchet!
In an internationally accepted fashion that wouldn't have a high risk of interception? Probably cash mailed to mail drops. That'd probably be Euros, as the US Dollar has been ... well ... not so strong.
As anyone who has dealt with drugs to non-locals in the US knows, ship by UPS or FedEx. The gov't can tie crimes to transferring anything related to a "crime" via USPS, but that doesn't apply to courier services.
Back to the good old mail order days. Oh how we are progressing. If the gov't gets their way, we'll be back to print catalogs, and printed newsletters mailed to interested parties. Talk about dropping a nuke on the information superhighway.
I totally agree. I switched my site over to a static(ish) page with articles relating to SOPA. Slashdot's published articles today are on SOPA. That's better than just being down.
Not everyone has the time nor knowledge to put up informative stories on it, so it's understandable that they'd just participate in the blackout For news sites like Slashdot, it's better this way.
It's funny watching my logs. There are many places that have us linked for news articles. All of our articles are redirecting to the SOPA page. The sad truth is, if SOPA goes through, they wouldn't even get the SOPA message. We'd just disappear from the Internet, as if we just shut down.
Thanks for the heads up. I added them to my list of participating sites.
I won't ask why you're looking up Miley Cyrus songs. :)
And we all know you're kidding about BT. :) Actually, there was an interesting story recently that CD and DVD sales are *up*. They were down, because they were producing crap, their prices were too high, etc. I honestly don't know whats in the stores now, because the music I listen to is on the radio. It's not worth my time to hunt down good new artists, buy their CDs or MP3s, filter through what's crap and what's not, just to fill up a rack with disks. Bootleg materials were the minority, and even those, I went out and bought the ones I liked. I had a good record and cassette collection when I was a kid, and started buying CDs when they became popular and the equipment was readily available (i.e., CD player in all new-ish cars). As you get older, you realize that there are more important things to do with your life and money. Most of my collection has been given to friends, or stolen by ex-friends. Do I want to buy a $20 CD isn't really worth it when it can be damaged or stolen pretty easily. Not really. So I listen to a few good radio stations when I want music. They may have a playlist of 100 songs, but they rotate songs in and out so I get a good variety, and newer stuff on a regular basis.
I guess when they outlaw growing old, and radio, I'll have to consider other options. :) Luckily, SOPA will prevent me from hearing about new stuff, so I won't be inclined to buy it.
Most likely, no.
If a site was censored because of SOPA, several things could happen. They could be cut off from any electronic financial transactions. No online sales or donations. No ad revenue. They couldn't afford to stay up, unless people started mailing cash and checks. Even still, they could lose their bank accounts, therefor being unable to even cash the checks.
The IP, or even the whole ISP could be blackholed by the US Gov't. That would stop anyone who's network traffic transits the United States from reaching the site anywhere in the world. Blackholing the ISP would mean that every site hosted there would disappear. No amount of circumventing DNS would help you.
Any cooperative nation can do the same thing. I would suspect several European nations would pick it up fairly quickly. As it expands, I would not be surprised to see them start blocking large swaths of the Internet as "illegal" and "untrustworthy". Those "untrustworthy" areas would be countries that don't cooperate with the US.
I would expect that Slashdot would be taken down fairly quickly. They illegally copy story content. It's legal under "Fair Use" right now. It wouldn't be after SOPA. What people put in the comments are definitely illegal. That would result in Geeknet being entirely blocked. So enjoy Slashdot while you can.
They've done the right thing by carrying this story.
On my site, http://freeinternetpress.com/ , we've redirected our home page and every article to our SOPA page http://freeinternetpress.com/sopa.php.
It's up to the owners of each site to make their own decisions on how to support it. It could be a simple warning. Google chose to censor their logo and link to an information page. We chose to replace the site with a warning, and are carrying stories and links related to SOPA. Some may consider us "not blacked out", but as we've censored almost 9 years worth of articles, we are "blacked out".
Many sites need to support their users, and can't simply shut down. Unfortunately, if SOPA does become law, their users will find out the hard way that the blackout can become a reality.
Disable adblock for a minute, and check it yourself. :)
They don't have the regular adword ads. They do have business listings in the map. Most of the business listings show up if you search for something like "pizza near 10011".