The graphics weren't bad on my PC. It defaulted to all the graphics settings maxed out, since I have a decent gaming machine.
I wasn't expecting the latest greatest technology out of it. I only bought it because... well... it finally came out.:)
I suspect a lot of people here are commenting on the game that they haven't touched yet. People will talk out of their asses just because they want to. I'm sure no one has played through it on a PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 yet, just to see how they compare.
Someone else mentioned long load times between levels. I didn't see that at all. I'm running a pretty quick machine (Phenom II x4 @ 3.8Ghz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB GDDR5 video card, and RAID 0 for installed games). I didn't go much over 3GB RAM used, even with a bunch of windows still open in the background.
Relax, I was only poking a bit of fun at capitalization of the Mammary Gland.
As for the capitalization of "God", as far as the base Christian documents go, it isn't a proper noun. It's a position or title, not a name. It's like capitalizing "he", "she", "corporal", or "sergeant". When used in conjunction with the proper name, then it would be capitalized. Zeus would be capitalized, because it's his name. God would not be, as his name is simply never revealed. (note: I only capitalized it there because it began the sentence).
So, "Zeus, a god, is firm and just with his decisions". Not "Zeus, a God, is firm and just with His decisions".
Most likely, the capitalization was inherited as time went on. If you're reading a bible that has the word "god" in it, it's a N-th copy translation. Each revision has added authority to the word.
As for the Narnia reference, it's a place. Much like you wouldn't capitalize "land" or "country". "Narnia is a country in a far distant land".
There are thousands of religions currently practiced world wide, capitalizing "god" for one is horribly disrespectful to the others, who have named gods. It's an attempt to take possession of all gods of all religions, and saying "Nope, those are all mine, his name is God". Childish? Yes. Truthful? Unfortunately yes.
Actually, Tits should be capitalized. God should not, unless it's the first word in a sentence.
Breasts (Tits, Boobs, Boobies, Funbags, etc) are real. We've all seen them. Well, some of you have only seen pictures, and the shape in women's shirts. Some of you have touched them. We all know them, in their variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. They are categorized for their size and type. There are entire industries dedicated to supporting, decorating, and even marketing them. For those who can't see them normally, there is an abundance of establishments (Tittie Bars) where you can rent the privilege of seeing them.
We even apply the term to other objects. Man Boobs, back Boobs, and the largest of them all, the Grand Tetons.
This god myth is something else. You can't see it, touch it, hear it, or in any way recognize that it exists other than a few irrational assumptions. There may be one or more, depending on which piece of classical fiction people believe in. Some believe it looks like a man, a woman, or even a plate of spaghetti.
Capitalize your favorite term for Breasts with pride. We all love Boobs!
Not all professionals, nor all amateurs, are true craftsmen though.
I've seen people with very impressive tools in their workshop, and couldn't fix problems. They ask me, and I ask for a small handful of tools, and fix the problem quickly.
It's never the cost of your tools, it's how you use what you have.... and I do my coding in vim or UltraEdit32, depending on which platform the workstation I'm at is. No syntax highlighting, no autocompletes. I've seen too many people who use technological crutches, and can't see the obvious problem in front of them. If they aren't spoon fed everything, they're lost.
There's a problem when this makes it to court. It's the matter of the trustworthiness of the witnesses. Law enforcement officers with clean records versus a known drug dealer and disregard for the legal system and authority of law enforcement and the courts.
Sure, sometimes bad cops go down. Sometimes it takes years. I had an interaction with a dirty cop, who's reports were entirely fiction other than my name and the arrest location. I won my case, but that didn't change his position in the least. It wasn't until a few years later that he went down for his corruption. This isn't the right case, but it's the right state and era.
An analysis of employee discipline records by The Tampa Tribune showed that another 108 troopers out of the patrol's work force of 2,090 were reprimanded or suspended during 1986.
People will do the drugs. They're illegal, and have been for a long time, which keeps purchasing such things in the black market. If you could purchase them easily, that would change the landscape of the black market. Look at what happened with alcohol. It was illegal, and people smuggled it in, or produced it in back stills. There was questionable quality because there were no real controls over it.
Now you can purchase alcohol legally. You know the quality is good, and the strength is clearly marked on the container. We have no concern that a beer is a beer, or a shot of liquor is that liquor.
There are plenty of drug related deaths, where the drugs are tainted or cut with something. If someone is used to purchasing horribly cut cocaine, they believe they know how much they can take. If they get uncut drugs, it can be fatal.
Consider if someone believes they're consuming alcohol 75% abv (150 proof), but it's cut (watered down) to 5% abv (10 proof). They can drink that all day with no problems. Now if they try drinking the real thing (150 proof), it would likely result in alcohol poisoning or death.
The argument can be made, "but I can taste it". Sure. But if you try to down a pint glass of American beer, it's not very hard to do. If you down a pint glass of Everclear 151, it'd be a good idea for your friends to get you to the hospital. Well, assuming you manage to hold it down for long.
We see this a lot in immature drinkers. They'll drink, assuming all drinks are the same, and not realizing what will happen, until they're puking their guts out, or passed out on the floor somewhere.
When property is seized from illegal activity, not all of it always gets reports as impounded. The person it's being seized from won't complain, as it reduces the number of charges or the severity of them.
For example, if you're caught with $1,000,000 cash, and 20 kilos of cocaine, but the arrest report only shows $1,000 cash and 1 kilo of cocaine. Only an absolute idiot would demand that the correct amounts are listed. "No your honor, my client insists that he had more drugs and cash at the time of the arrest. Yes, he does realize that it will result in changing the penalty from 1 year in jail to 30 years in prison."
Of course, that can be a risky venture on the part of the person falsifying the report. The guy being arrested knows that he took them, so he may find himself with a few extra holes, in a shallow grave.
Lets look at this scientifically. We should do experiments to validate your assertion.
We'll take different vehicles, and put them in this real-world scenario.
You get a Mazda Miata. I'll take my Firebird. We'll get on a major road, and find loaded semi rigs traveling at 60mph, change lanes to be in front of them, and try emergency stops. You get to try first. Remember to have someone shoot the video.
Ok, you got me. My memory isn't perfect. It was a 56k modem with compression. And it may have been a little longer than an hour, but not more than a day.
Ok, lets look at this another way for you then. Before I owned a SUV, I had to use my Trans Am to move anything that I wanted to buy, or rent a truck. I lived on a lovely wind-swept hill, which meant anything that would sit on the back porch had a tendency of finding itself torn to shreds, knocked around, or be found hundreds of feet away. I went to Home Depot, and picked up eight 8x8x16 concrete blocks to secure a few things, such as my BBQ grill. I had the rear seat folded down, and layered the blocks across the seat , rear deck, and trunk area. It's only about 300 pounds, equally over the rear axle. It made a huge difference in stopping ability. Rather than feeling like it would stop on a dime, it felt like I was being pushed while stopping. No other changes were made during that trip, except consuming a bit of gasoline.
Have you ever towed a trailer? I helped a friend move a travel trailer not too long ago. Again, the added weight adds substantially to stopping distance. You won't find anyone who says it doesn't, unless the weight of the towed vehicle is insignificant to the overall vehicle weight. The bus, at something like 35,000 pounds, doesn't take a significant performance hit with about 3800 pounds of car and trailer behind it (10.8% increase in weight). A 4500 SUV with the same trailer in tow would (84% increase in weight).
But for the sake of tire traction, yes, you can generally get better performance tires in 275/40x17 than you can in 275/70x16. We're not talking about either one sliding down the road when stopping though. We're talking about stopping in a normal distance. High traction tires made it harder to lock the wheels up when stopping, since they do have an excellent grip on the road.
It's because on the Internet, everyone thinks they're experts, regardless of the field.
You're probably arguing with a 15 year old kid, who's never driven anything heavier than his Huffy.
I'm confident that you are correct, not only from the math and what we see on paper, but from practical experience. I've driven everything, from mopeds to 26' box trucks, a 40' city bus, and a few solid tanker rigs with 13 speed transmissions.
I know the biggest annoyance for truckers is the four-wheelers (passenger vehicles), because they get in the way, and don't consider what kind of space a large rig needs to stop or maneuver. They'll cut you off, ride in your blind spots, and try to squeeze by on the right when you're making right turns. Well, except for a few people like me. If I see a truck signaling or trying to maneuver, I give them room, and flash my lights twice to indicate I'm doing so.
But back to the question. yes, the heavier the vehicle, the more room you need to accelerate and stop. I had fun in a 26' U-Haul when it was empty. It felt comparable to a sluggish pickup truck. Once it was loaded, with a flat bed car trailer in tow, it felt like a turd tied to a huge boat anchor. 0 to 60 in about 60 seconds or so (assuming it's downhill with a good stiff breeze). Stopping time was anything but graceful.
I rather enjoy my bus (It's converted to be an RV). It has lots of torque. 0-60 time is somewhere around 15 to 20 seconds, as I recall. The weight of a car and trailer are negligible, if there isn't too much stuff inside the bus. Even still, if I stand on the brakes, it doesn't stop like a sports car, or even a custom conversion van (they add an amazing amount of weight).
It's idiots who assume everyone can stop at their rate, that cause accidents and get people killed. The guy in the rig will be ok, but the guy in the passenger car is going to know what pain is, if he survives.
Well, the vehicles I'm comparing are a 1999 Tahoe LT 4wd vs a 2000 TransAm WS/6. Both have upgraded tires, but the TransAm tires have a much hire traction rating. While I can hit the brakes hard enough to toss passengers around, I can make the TransAm stop and corner much faster. It's simply inherent in the two vehicles.
The stock TransAm (not the WS/6) is rated for a 60-0 braking distance of 120 feet. The WS/6 performs better in most categories, and the only significant change as far as that part of the vehicle is concerned.
I couldn't find the 60-0 distance for the Tahoe, but I did find these. It's a snippet of a list from Motor Trend.
Now assume this scenario. 3 lanes in the direction of travel. The outside two lanes are occupied with vehicles. A '08 Cadillac CTS moves from an outside lane to the center lane, in front of a '08 Tahoe 4WD. Cars almost never change lanes allowing for a "3 second gap" between themselves and the vehicle that they're changing lanes in front of. You can assume 20 feet, which just from my drive today I'd say is a very liberal number (a car cut in front of me, so I could no longer see his car from the rear window back).
They are both traveling at 60mph.
The NHTSA has tested that an average driver on an average day needs 1 full second to recognize something happening in front of them, and react properly. You've shortened the 20 foot gap down to maybe 5 feet.
The Cadillac in a panic stop will be fully stopped at 104' . The Tahoe won't be stopped until 140'. That's a 36' difference. So there will be an accident, and the Cadillac in front will likely be shoved or energy otherwise being passed, resulting in the Cadillac, a tad bit shorter than moments before, will be 36' from where he could have stopped.
So like I said, no, a SUV won't stop as fast as a sports car. And I never claimed to drive a sedan. The only ones I've driven in years either belonged to friends, or were rental cars.
I got one on the east coast, because I couldn't see the light change. The NHTSA recommends at least 4.5 seconds at that intersection, based on the speed limit on that section of road, and the width of the intersection. The bare minimum to allow a driver to react to the light change is 3.5 seconds. The light is set to 3 seconds. At every intersection nearby of similar size characteristics, the yellow light is 5 to 6 seconds.
When I went through it, it was green when I couldn't see it any more. The jurisdiction provides video evidence. At 3.5 seconds, I had already crossed over the line at the other side of the intersection. At 4.5 seconds, I was well clear of the intersection.
Since they installed the camera, and drivers have found out about it from other drivers and newspaper stories, there have been an increase in accidents, where drivers make panic stops to avoid running the light. But "officially" they don't attribute that to the light, they attribute it to the driver in the rear of the accident. By the state's logic, if he hadn't been following so close, the accident wouldn't have happened. In reality, different vehicles have different stopping characteristics. In my car, I *can* stand on the brakes and make it stop on a dime (practiced in autocross racing). In my SUV, if someone stopped like that, they'd be be crushed. It's the difference between a performance sports car, and a truck.
There are plenty of heavy commercial vehicles on that stretch of road too. They try to leave sufficient space, but if the front driver just changed lanes too close (I see it all the time), and then panic stopped for the yellow, the remains of his car would be shoved through the intersection.
The city where that specific light is makes something like $2 to $4 million per year *PROFIT* from the light. They'll never take it out. Other cities on the same road only a very few miles away refuse to install a camera, because of safety concerns. Instead, they made the yellow light longer (a recommendation of the NHTSA), so drivers have time to safely stop, or get clear of the intersection.
I guess you haven't done any heavy mailings, have you?
You can serve them out slowly with a little bit of memory. If you're sending out a bunch of mail, you want it to be multithreaded. The more you send simultaneously, the more memory you need.
But why am I explaining computing basics to a troll anyways?
Well, the system was horrible. I worked at a place where we sent a lot of mail. It was all customer service related, like password resets, billing confirmation, and expiration notices. They wanted a little something, but with the huge numbers of customers that we had, it would have been unmanageable. That doesn't even account for the normal business emails, exchanged between our network and customers.
We looked at it, said "when it's been accepted by more systems, we'll use it", and that was the end of it.
It would have really sucked for one of my sites. We sent a few thousand newsletters out daily (specifically requested by the users, no dirty tricks to "encourage" them to sign up). With other associated costs (server hardware, hosting, SSL cert, etc), we've been in negative cashflow for about 8 years. But we like it, our users like it, so it survives. If we had to pay per email, the newsletters would stop. And one thing I learned years ago, once you start delivering news straight to people's email, and they want it, if your newsletter doesn't even go out for *ONE* day, people start complaining.
Sure, it'd impact spammers more (hopefully), but for us little guys, it would have killed us.
Well, from what I've heard from people in such unsavory businesses, the profit is down. That's in conversions (convert from unknown person to paying customer) per thousand emails.
Years ago, you could get a conversion ratio of 1:300 to 1:1,000. A few years ago, the conversion rate went to something like 1:100,000 to 1:1,000,000, depending on how "clean" your list is.
The little guys trying to push their pharmaceuticals, porn sites, or whatever do very poorly, so it could only be one of every few million make a paying customer. The good money moved over to mainstream companies. Their "targeted marketing" (i.e., spam that they'll insist you asked for) from mainstream companies has a better look and feel, *and* makes it through most spam filters.
You are correct. Faster machines with more memory, and larger residential pipes make a *huge* difference. I knew someone who could send out 100,000 messages/hr on a 28.8 dialup on a machine with 128MB RAM. What's your 15MB/s up FiOS line and a machine with 4GB RAM going to do? A whole lot more, if you set it up right. So they aren't hurt as much by the poor conversion rates, they just make up for it by spamming more people.
As long as people buy from spam or "targeted marketing", the companies will continue to send it. When the sales aren't there, spam will go the way of the print department store catalogs.
In the article, they said that when Amazon's cloud went down, the sites continued to serve. That means they couldn't possibly be sending any hits back to the server (since it's down and all).
It wouldn't matter at that point if you're logging X-Forwarded-For, or using SSL. Even with using SSL, that does nothing for you, if they have the key on their server to decrypt with.
I've been doing a lot of packet analysis and logging lately. At the firewall and IDS level, we're decoding and classifying every inbound packet. That includes monitoring web based intrusion attempts. Bad packets get ditched. Good packets get passed. SSL is decoded at the firewall and IDS to determine if it's good or not. That's all fine and dandy, since it's equipment owned and operated by our company, where we have exclusive access. When that equipment is owned and operated by a 3rd party, you can't take "trust us" as proof that they won't do bad things (tm).
Don't forget, it's bound to mess up your logs. Connections aren't coming from the user any more, they're coming from the CDN. Good luck doing your own filtering server-side from there. If they're caching parts of it, that means you have no prayer of seeing that request. You might get a Via header for some requests, but the cached requests? There won't even be a hit back to your server.
I'd consider using them for a few things I do, but there are some problems. I don't know who they are, other than from this story. Due to the kind of monitoring and filtering they are doing, there is a good chance that they are intercepting usernames, passwords, and other sensitive data. Even if they promise not to log it, how do I know that they really aren't logging everything.
For some sites I'm involved in, that's not a big deal. But for others, where there is a wealth of personal data I can't possibly use it. It's not just my morals, nor company policy involved, but stacks of laws and huge fines for violations.
You know, I was reading a news story about a "dry" county here in the US. Possession of alcohol was illegal.
There were locals who were very insistent that alcohol would cause civilization to collapse. Worse yet, they were discussing plans Walmart had to open up a store there. It was to have a full grocery store and pharmacy. They were predicting that people would go into the store, buy prescription drugs and alcohol, and go back to the parking lot to consume both. Moments later, they warned, these same people would come in and go on a shooting rampage.
People are generally afraid of the unknown. Oh my gosh, what happens if you don't limit people's access to the evil drug "alcohol"?
People do fine. There aren't daily shootings at Walmart because people can buy beer and prescription drugs. The world hasn't ended because people can buy DXM laced cough syrup.
I hate to break the bad news to anyone, but you can easily buy any drug you'd like in just about any city in the world. No prescription required. Just look around, or ask around, and you'll find it. And most people never buy it. Even when presented with drugs, they aren't interested. It's a free economy, without restrictions. If the demand was there, every house in America would be supplied. Just because you can't go down to Walmart, Walgreens, or 7-11, doesn't mean that the supply pipeline isn't already in place and operating normally. Street drugs don't require a prescription, or even a photo ID to prove you're over 21. There is open and unrestricted access to it.
There is only two things that are broken in the hard drug sales and distribution system. First, the government loses out on the ability to collect billions of dollars per year in sales taxes. Second, the quality control, to ensure the drugs purchased are what was advertised. They can and will be cut down with fillers for profit. It's not like that doesn't happen in regular retail products though. Unless you think melamine laced food products are *good* for you, or that Taco Bell's 100% meat really should mean up to 30% meat and 70% filler.
I'm guessing you don't follow American politics very well.
There are two main parties that will hold the majority of the political offices. Both parties, regardless of what they say publicly, are owned by corporations. There is no "hidden agenda", as a lot of people like to say. It's in plain sight. Another party has found a new strong backing. They claim to be totally different, but if you look hard enough (which isn't very hard), you will find that they are backed by the same corporations that back the other two.
The representatives that the voting public can vote for are owned by the same corporations, and have the same agenda.
There *ARE* candidates from other parties, or no party affiliation. It is extremely rare.
Lets look at the US Congress. For those unclear on how this works, there are two parts, the "House of Representatives" and the "Senate".
In the House, there are 193 democrats, and 242 republicans.
In the Senate, there are 51 democrats, 47 republicans, and 2 independents.
So, out of 533 belong to the two major parties, and 2 don't. 0.37% are not members of those two parties.
And when I say an open armed revolution will result in a lot of deaths, I am not stating 90%. The *FIRST* waves will be horribly bloody.
We did an analysis on this a few years ago, and the basics of it have no changed.
First, you won't have 90% of the population show up to the same place at the same time, for anything at all. That is not only due to apathy. Say 90% of Americans showed up in Washington DC. DC has 61.4 square miles of land. There are 310,300,000 people in the United States. That puts 279,270,000 people there, or a population density of 4,547,372 people per square mile, or 6.13 square feet per person.
That does not account for pesky issues like buildings and other structures, or even parking space. The average parking space is 160 sq/ft, so if people showed up in an average of 4 people per vehicle. Actually, that kind of ruins it right there, since just their cars would take up 400 square miles. People arriving late wouldn't want to walk from New York.:)
So I think we can agree, you can't put that many people in one place.
The most likely circumstances would be that groups across the country would revolt independently. So groups ranging from a dozen to hundreds. When under orders the President can order US troops to neutralize the threat. That isn't really necessary though, as local law enforcement can and will do it. Referencing the article, a guy who may have been guilty of DUI, and was suspected of other crimes, was executed in a barrage of gunfire.
So the first wave will end up dead, or the survivors will be in prison. I wouldn't see anything more than a trivial win, followed by a bloody loss, on the part of those revolting.
Such an action would likely drive others to do the same. Repeated actions like this would force the President to order troops in to neutralize the threat.
Being that law enforcement and military soldiers are humans, they will at some point, question if they are doing the right thing. The more killing they see of Americans exercise their rights, the more will change sides away from government sponsored positions. In that, they'll most likely take their equipment with them. It isn't only the soldiers though. Military leaders will recognize that it is wrong to stand against the American people. So instead of one-off soldiers walking over to the citizens, you will see units of Brigade strength or larger defending the citizens rights. The general idea behind this is, despite any orders they may be given, they have family and friends all over the country. Would you defend your mother, siblings, and friends, or
You may remember it, and I may remember it, but the courts will side with the law enforcement officers, especially when it's law enforcement that will be investigating it.
You know, it's not exactly that easy to explain away. It doesn't always go that well. Ask any officer about showing up to a domestic dispute, and who they can trust. They'll tell you "neither one".
The same goes for a burglary call. When they arrive, they don't know if it's the burglars turned kidnappers, or the victim. Or, when they come in to make sure there's no intruders, they find something illegal, you're in trouble. And yes, if you let the police come in to look around, anything in plain sight is fair game. A bong and scale on the coffee table turn a simple call to check out the house into a drug bust. And if there's a quantity in the house, you can be pretty sure that there are a few small arms laying around to defend the stash. And the difference between shooting a cop and hauling ass, or losing a substantial stash, lots of people will chose the wrong choice. Well, I guess if they lose their stash, their upstream dealer may not be very entertained either.
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The graphics weren't bad on my PC. It defaulted to all the graphics settings maxed out, since I have a decent gaming machine.
I wasn't expecting the latest greatest technology out of it. I only bought it because ... well ... it finally came out. :)
I suspect a lot of people here are commenting on the game that they haven't touched yet. People will talk out of their asses just because they want to. I'm sure no one has played through it on a PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 yet, just to see how they compare.
Someone else mentioned long load times between levels. I didn't see that at all. I'm running a pretty quick machine (Phenom II x4 @ 3.8Ghz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB GDDR5 video card, and RAID 0 for installed games). I didn't go much over 3GB RAM used, even with a bunch of windows still open in the background.
Relax, I was only poking a bit of fun at capitalization of the Mammary Gland.
As for the capitalization of "God", as far as the base Christian documents go, it isn't a proper noun. It's a position or title, not a name. It's like capitalizing "he", "she", "corporal", or "sergeant". When used in conjunction with the proper name, then it would be capitalized. Zeus would be capitalized, because it's his name. God would not be, as his name is simply never revealed. (note: I only capitalized it there because it began the sentence).
So, "Zeus, a god, is firm and just with his decisions". Not "Zeus, a God, is firm and just with His decisions".
Most likely, the capitalization was inherited as time went on. If you're reading a bible that has the word "god" in it, it's a N-th copy translation. Each revision has added authority to the word.
As for the Narnia reference, it's a place. Much like you wouldn't capitalize "land" or "country". "Narnia is a country in a far distant land".
There are thousands of religions currently practiced world wide, capitalizing "god" for one is horribly disrespectful to the others, who have named gods. It's an attempt to take possession of all gods of all religions, and saying "Nope, those are all mine, his name is God". Childish? Yes. Truthful? Unfortunately yes.
Actually, Tits should be capitalized. God should not, unless it's the first word in a sentence.
Breasts (Tits, Boobs, Boobies, Funbags, etc) are real. We've all seen them. Well, some of you have only seen pictures, and the shape in women's shirts. Some of you have touched them. We all know them, in their variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. They are categorized for their size and type. There are entire industries dedicated to supporting, decorating, and even marketing them. For those who can't see them normally, there is an abundance of establishments (Tittie Bars) where you can rent the privilege of seeing them.
We even apply the term to other objects. Man Boobs, back Boobs, and the largest of them all, the Grand Tetons.
This god myth is something else. You can't see it, touch it, hear it, or in any way recognize that it exists other than a few irrational assumptions. There may be one or more, depending on which piece of classical fiction people believe in. Some believe it looks like a man, a woman, or even a plate of spaghetti.
Capitalize your favorite term for Breasts with pride. We all love Boobs!
Not all professionals, nor all amateurs, are true craftsmen though.
I've seen people with very impressive tools in their workshop, and couldn't fix problems. They ask me, and I ask for a small handful of tools, and fix the problem quickly.
It's never the cost of your tools, it's how you use what you have. ... and I do my coding in vim or UltraEdit32, depending on which platform the workstation I'm at is. No syntax highlighting, no autocompletes. I've seen too many people who use technological crutches, and can't see the obvious problem in front of them. If they aren't spoon fed everything, they're lost.
There's a problem when this makes it to court. It's the matter of the trustworthiness of the witnesses. Law enforcement officers with clean records versus a known drug dealer and disregard for the legal system and authority of law enforcement and the courts.
Sure, sometimes bad cops go down. Sometimes it takes years. I had an interaction with a dirty cop, who's reports were entirely fiction other than my name and the arrest location. I won my case, but that didn't change his position in the least. It wasn't until a few years later that he went down for his corruption. This isn't the right case, but it's the right state and era.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sun_sentinel/access/88013435.html?dids=88013435:88013435&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+16%2C+1987&author=News%2FSun-Sentinel+wire+services&pub=South+Florida+Sun+-+Sentinel&desc=12+STATE+TROOPERS+WERE+FIRED+LAST+YEAR&pqatl=google
An analysis of employee discipline records by The Tampa Tribune showed that another 108 troopers out of the patrol's work force of 2,090 were reprimanded or suspended during 1986.
You are correct.
People will do the drugs. They're illegal, and have been for a long time, which keeps purchasing such things in the black market. If you could purchase them easily, that would change the landscape of the black market. Look at what happened with alcohol. It was illegal, and people smuggled it in, or produced it in back stills. There was questionable quality because there were no real controls over it.
Now you can purchase alcohol legally. You know the quality is good, and the strength is clearly marked on the container. We have no concern that a beer is a beer, or a shot of liquor is that liquor.
There are plenty of drug related deaths, where the drugs are tainted or cut with something. If someone is used to purchasing horribly cut cocaine, they believe they know how much they can take. If they get uncut drugs, it can be fatal.
Consider if someone believes they're consuming alcohol 75% abv (150 proof), but it's cut (watered down) to 5% abv (10 proof). They can drink that all day with no problems. Now if they try drinking the real thing (150 proof), it would likely result in alcohol poisoning or death.
The argument can be made, "but I can taste it". Sure. But if you try to down a pint glass of American beer, it's not very hard to do. If you down a pint glass of Everclear 151, it'd be a good idea for your friends to get you to the hospital. Well, assuming you manage to hold it down for long.
We see this a lot in immature drinkers. They'll drink, assuming all drinks are the same, and not realizing what will happen, until they're puking their guts out, or passed out on the floor somewhere.
I believe what he would reply is "woosh".
When property is seized from illegal activity, not all of it always gets reports as impounded. The person it's being seized from won't complain, as it reduces the number of charges or the severity of them.
For example, if you're caught with $1,000,000 cash, and 20 kilos of cocaine, but the arrest report only shows $1,000 cash and 1 kilo of cocaine. Only an absolute idiot would demand that the correct amounts are listed. "No your honor, my client insists that he had more drugs and cash at the time of the arrest. Yes, he does realize that it will result in changing the penalty from 1 year in jail to 30 years in prison."
Of course, that can be a risky venture on the part of the person falsifying the report. The guy being arrested knows that he took them, so he may find himself with a few extra holes, in a shallow grave.
Lets look at this scientifically. We should do experiments to validate your assertion.
We'll take different vehicles, and put them in this real-world scenario.
You get a Mazda Miata. I'll take my Firebird. We'll get on a major road, and find loaded semi rigs traveling at 60mph, change lanes to be in front of them, and try emergency stops. You get to try first. Remember to have someone shoot the video.
Ok, you got me. My memory isn't perfect. It was a 56k modem with compression. And it may have been a little longer than an hour, but not more than a day.
Ok, lets look at this another way for you then. Before I owned a SUV, I had to use my Trans Am to move anything that I wanted to buy, or rent a truck. I lived on a lovely wind-swept hill, which meant anything that would sit on the back porch had a tendency of finding itself torn to shreds, knocked around, or be found hundreds of feet away. I went to Home Depot, and picked up eight 8x8x16 concrete blocks to secure a few things, such as my BBQ grill. I had the rear seat folded down, and layered the blocks across the seat , rear deck, and trunk area. It's only about 300 pounds, equally over the rear axle. It made a huge difference in stopping ability. Rather than feeling like it would stop on a dime, it felt like I was being pushed while stopping. No other changes were made during that trip, except consuming a bit of gasoline.
Have you ever towed a trailer? I helped a friend move a travel trailer not too long ago. Again, the added weight adds substantially to stopping distance. You won't find anyone who says it doesn't, unless the weight of the towed vehicle is insignificant to the overall vehicle weight. The bus, at something like 35,000 pounds, doesn't take a significant performance hit with about 3800 pounds of car and trailer behind it (10.8% increase in weight). A 4500 SUV with the same trailer in tow would (84% increase in weight).
But for the sake of tire traction, yes, you can generally get better performance tires in 275/40x17 than you can in 275/70x16. We're not talking about either one sliding down the road when stopping though. We're talking about stopping in a normal distance. High traction tires made it harder to lock the wheels up when stopping, since they do have an excellent grip on the road.
It's because on the Internet, everyone thinks they're experts, regardless of the field.
You're probably arguing with a 15 year old kid, who's never driven anything heavier than his Huffy.
I'm confident that you are correct, not only from the math and what we see on paper, but from practical experience. I've driven everything, from mopeds to 26' box trucks, a 40' city bus, and a few solid tanker rigs with 13 speed transmissions.
I know the biggest annoyance for truckers is the four-wheelers (passenger vehicles), because they get in the way, and don't consider what kind of space a large rig needs to stop or maneuver. They'll cut you off, ride in your blind spots, and try to squeeze by on the right when you're making right turns. Well, except for a few people like me. If I see a truck signaling or trying to maneuver, I give them room, and flash my lights twice to indicate I'm doing so.
But back to the question. yes, the heavier the vehicle, the more room you need to accelerate and stop. I had fun in a 26' U-Haul when it was empty. It felt comparable to a sluggish pickup truck. Once it was loaded, with a flat bed car trailer in tow, it felt like a turd tied to a huge boat anchor. 0 to 60 in about 60 seconds or so (assuming it's downhill with a good stiff breeze). Stopping time was anything but graceful.
I rather enjoy my bus (It's converted to be an RV). It has lots of torque. 0-60 time is somewhere around 15 to 20 seconds, as I recall. The weight of a car and trailer are negligible, if there isn't too much stuff inside the bus. Even still, if I stand on the brakes, it doesn't stop like a sports car, or even a custom conversion van (they add an amazing amount of weight).
It's idiots who assume everyone can stop at their rate, that cause accidents and get people killed. The guy in the rig will be ok, but the guy in the passenger car is going to know what pain is, if he survives.
I think you really intended to say "One difference is that postal mail spam fees are paid to the government..."
Well, the vehicles I'm comparing are a 1999 Tahoe LT 4wd vs a 2000 TransAm WS/6. Both have upgraded tires, but the TransAm tires have a much hire traction rating. While I can hit the brakes hard enough to toss passengers around, I can make the TransAm stop and corner much faster. It's simply inherent in the two vehicles.
The stock TransAm (not the WS/6) is rated for a 60-0 braking distance of 120 feet. The WS/6 performs better in most categories, and the only significant change as far as that part of the vehicle is concerned.
I couldn't find the 60-0 distance for the Tahoe, but I did find these. It's a snippet of a list from Motor Trend.
08 Cadillac CTS 3.6 104'
07 Ferrari 599 GTB 105'
09 BMW X6 111'
09 Dodge Challenger SRT8 121' manual tran, 117' auto tran
08 Shelby Mustang GT-C 117'
08 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT 118'
08 Accord coupe EX-L 127'
09 Dodge Challenger SE 130'
08 Charge R/T 137'
08 Toyota Tundra Doublr Cab 4X4 139'
08 Tahoe 4WD 140'
07 Silverado Crew Cab 150'
Now assume this scenario. 3 lanes in the direction of travel. The outside two lanes are occupied with vehicles. A '08 Cadillac CTS moves from an outside lane to the center lane, in front of a '08 Tahoe 4WD. Cars almost never change lanes allowing for a "3 second gap" between themselves and the vehicle that they're changing lanes in front of. You can assume 20 feet, which just from my drive today I'd say is a very liberal number (a car cut in front of me, so I could no longer see his car from the rear window back).
They are both traveling at 60mph.
The NHTSA has tested that an average driver on an average day needs 1 full second to recognize something happening in front of them, and react properly. You've shortened the 20 foot gap down to maybe 5 feet.
The Cadillac in a panic stop will be fully stopped at 104' . The Tahoe won't be stopped until 140'. That's a 36' difference. So there will be an accident, and the Cadillac in front will likely be shoved or energy otherwise being passed, resulting in the Cadillac, a tad bit shorter than moments before, will be 36' from where he could have stopped.
So like I said, no, a SUV won't stop as fast as a sports car. And I never claimed to drive a sedan. The only ones I've driven in years either belonged to friends, or were rental cars.
I got one on the east coast, because I couldn't see the light change. The NHTSA recommends at least 4.5 seconds at that intersection, based on the speed limit on that section of road, and the width of the intersection. The bare minimum to allow a driver to react to the light change is 3.5 seconds. The light is set to 3 seconds. At every intersection nearby of similar size characteristics, the yellow light is 5 to 6 seconds.
When I went through it, it was green when I couldn't see it any more. The jurisdiction provides video evidence. At 3.5 seconds, I had already crossed over the line at the other side of the intersection. At 4.5 seconds, I was well clear of the intersection.
Since they installed the camera, and drivers have found out about it from other drivers and newspaper stories, there have been an increase in accidents, where drivers make panic stops to avoid running the light. But "officially" they don't attribute that to the light, they attribute it to the driver in the rear of the accident. By the state's logic, if he hadn't been following so close, the accident wouldn't have happened. In reality, different vehicles have different stopping characteristics. In my car, I *can* stand on the brakes and make it stop on a dime (practiced in autocross racing). In my SUV, if someone stopped like that, they'd be be crushed. It's the difference between a performance sports car, and a truck.
There are plenty of heavy commercial vehicles on that stretch of road too. They try to leave sufficient space, but if the front driver just changed lanes too close (I see it all the time), and then panic stopped for the yellow, the remains of his car would be shoved through the intersection.
The city where that specific light is makes something like $2 to $4 million per year *PROFIT* from the light. They'll never take it out. Other cities on the same road only a very few miles away refuse to install a camera, because of safety concerns. Instead, they made the yellow light longer (a recommendation of the NHTSA), so drivers have time to safely stop, or get clear of the intersection.
I guess you haven't done any heavy mailings, have you?
You can serve them out slowly with a little bit of memory. If you're sending out a bunch of mail, you want it to be multithreaded. The more you send simultaneously, the more memory you need.
But why am I explaining computing basics to a troll anyways?
Well, the system was horrible. I worked at a place where we sent a lot of mail. It was all customer service related, like password resets, billing confirmation, and expiration notices. They wanted a little something, but with the huge numbers of customers that we had, it would have been unmanageable. That doesn't even account for the normal business emails, exchanged between our network and customers.
We looked at it, said "when it's been accepted by more systems, we'll use it", and that was the end of it.
Luckily, goodmail seems to have died off.
It would have really sucked for one of my sites. We sent a few thousand newsletters out daily (specifically requested by the users, no dirty tricks to "encourage" them to sign up). With other associated costs (server hardware, hosting, SSL cert, etc), we've been in negative cashflow for about 8 years. But we like it, our users like it, so it survives. If we had to pay per email, the newsletters would stop. And one thing I learned years ago, once you start delivering news straight to people's email, and they want it, if your newsletter doesn't even go out for *ONE* day, people start complaining.
Sure, it'd impact spammers more (hopefully), but for us little guys, it would have killed us.
Well, from what I've heard from people in such unsavory businesses, the profit is down. That's in conversions (convert from unknown person to paying customer) per thousand emails.
Years ago, you could get a conversion ratio of 1:300 to 1:1,000. A few years ago, the conversion rate went to something like 1:100,000 to 1:1,000,000, depending on how "clean" your list is.
The little guys trying to push their pharmaceuticals, porn sites, or whatever do very poorly, so it could only be one of every few million make a paying customer. The good money moved over to mainstream companies. Their "targeted marketing" (i.e., spam that they'll insist you asked for) from mainstream companies has a better look and feel, *and* makes it through most spam filters.
You are correct. Faster machines with more memory, and larger residential pipes make a *huge* difference. I knew someone who could send out 100,000 messages/hr on a 28.8 dialup on a machine with 128MB RAM. What's your 15MB/s up FiOS line and a machine with 4GB RAM going to do? A whole lot more, if you set it up right. So they aren't hurt as much by the poor conversion rates, they just make up for it by spamming more people.
As long as people buy from spam or "targeted marketing", the companies will continue to send it. When the sales aren't there, spam will go the way of the print department store catalogs.
In the article, they said that when Amazon's cloud went down, the sites continued to serve. That means they couldn't possibly be sending any hits back to the server (since it's down and all).
It wouldn't matter at that point if you're logging X-Forwarded-For, or using SSL. Even with using SSL, that does nothing for you, if they have the key on their server to decrypt with.
I've been doing a lot of packet analysis and logging lately. At the firewall and IDS level, we're decoding and classifying every inbound packet. That includes monitoring web based intrusion attempts. Bad packets get ditched. Good packets get passed. SSL is decoded at the firewall and IDS to determine if it's good or not. That's all fine and dandy, since it's equipment owned and operated by our company, where we have exclusive access. When that equipment is owned and operated by a 3rd party, you can't take "trust us" as proof that they won't do bad things (tm).
Don't forget, it's bound to mess up your logs. Connections aren't coming from the user any more, they're coming from the CDN. Good luck doing your own filtering server-side from there. If they're caching parts of it, that means you have no prayer of seeing that request. You might get a Via header for some requests, but the cached requests? There won't even be a hit back to your server.
I'd consider using them for a few things I do, but there are some problems. I don't know who they are, other than from this story. Due to the kind of monitoring and filtering they are doing, there is a good chance that they are intercepting usernames, passwords, and other sensitive data. Even if they promise not to log it, how do I know that they really aren't logging everything.
For some sites I'm involved in, that's not a big deal. But for others, where there is a wealth of personal data I can't possibly use it. It's not just my morals, nor company policy involved, but stacks of laws and huge fines for violations.
No, it's Old English. "What Fuck Thee?" Roughly meaning "I found you in the barn with a sheep and a goat. Which one were you fucking?"
You know, I was reading a news story about a "dry" county here in the US. Possession of alcohol was illegal.
There were locals who were very insistent that alcohol would cause civilization to collapse. Worse yet, they were discussing plans Walmart had to open up a store there. It was to have a full grocery store and pharmacy. They were predicting that people would go into the store, buy prescription drugs and alcohol, and go back to the parking lot to consume both. Moments later, they warned, these same people would come in and go on a shooting rampage.
People are generally afraid of the unknown. Oh my gosh, what happens if you don't limit people's access to the evil drug "alcohol"?
People do fine. There aren't daily shootings at Walmart because people can buy beer and prescription drugs. The world hasn't ended because people can buy DXM laced cough syrup.
I hate to break the bad news to anyone, but you can easily buy any drug you'd like in just about any city in the world. No prescription required. Just look around, or ask around, and you'll find it. And most people never buy it. Even when presented with drugs, they aren't interested. It's a free economy, without restrictions. If the demand was there, every house in America would be supplied. Just because you can't go down to Walmart, Walgreens, or 7-11, doesn't mean that the supply pipeline isn't already in place and operating normally. Street drugs don't require a prescription, or even a photo ID to prove you're over 21. There is open and unrestricted access to it.
There is only two things that are broken in the hard drug sales and distribution system. First, the government loses out on the ability to collect billions of dollars per year in sales taxes. Second, the quality control, to ensure the drugs purchased are what was advertised. They can and will be cut down with fillers for profit. It's not like that doesn't happen in regular retail products though. Unless you think melamine laced food products are *good* for you, or that Taco Bell's 100% meat really should mean up to 30% meat and 70% filler.
You didn't read the whole thread, now did you? Scroll up to
That is what I was replying to.
I'm guessing you don't follow American politics very well.
There are two main parties that will hold the majority of the political offices. Both parties, regardless of what they say publicly, are owned by corporations. There is no "hidden agenda", as a lot of people like to say. It's in plain sight. Another party has found a new strong backing. They claim to be totally different, but if you look hard enough (which isn't very hard), you will find that they are backed by the same corporations that back the other two.
The representatives that the voting public can vote for are owned by the same corporations, and have the same agenda.
There *ARE* candidates from other parties, or no party affiliation. It is extremely rare.
Lets look at the US Congress. For those unclear on how this works, there are two parts, the "House of Representatives" and the "Senate".
In the House, there are 193 democrats, and 242 republicans.
In the Senate, there are 51 democrats, 47 republicans, and 2 independents.
So, out of 533 belong to the two major parties, and 2 don't. 0.37% are not members of those two parties.
And when I say an open armed revolution will result in a lot of deaths, I am not stating 90%. The *FIRST* waves will be horribly bloody.
We did an analysis on this a few years ago, and the basics of it have no changed.
First, you won't have 90% of the population show up to the same place at the same time, for anything at all. That is not only due to apathy. Say 90% of Americans showed up in Washington DC. DC has 61.4 square miles of land. There are 310,300,000 people in the United States. That puts 279,270,000 people there, or a population density of 4,547,372 people per square mile, or 6.13 square feet per person.
That does not account for pesky issues like buildings and other structures, or even parking space. The average parking space is 160 sq/ft, so if people showed up in an average of 4 people per vehicle. Actually, that kind of ruins it right there, since just their cars would take up 400 square miles. People arriving late wouldn't want to walk from New York. :)
So I think we can agree, you can't put that many people in one place.
The most likely circumstances would be that groups across the country would revolt independently. So groups ranging from a dozen to hundreds. When under orders the President can order US troops to neutralize the threat. That isn't really necessary though, as local law enforcement can and will do it. Referencing the article, a guy who may have been guilty of DUI, and was suspected of other crimes, was executed in a barrage of gunfire.
So the first wave will end up dead, or the survivors will be in prison. I wouldn't see anything more than a trivial win, followed by a bloody loss, on the part of those revolting.
Such an action would likely drive others to do the same. Repeated actions like this would force the President to order troops in to neutralize the threat.
Being that law enforcement and military soldiers are humans, they will at some point, question if they are doing the right thing. The more killing they see of Americans exercise their rights, the more will change sides away from government sponsored positions. In that, they'll most likely take their equipment with them. It isn't only the soldiers though. Military leaders will recognize that it is wrong to stand against the American people. So instead of one-off soldiers walking over to the citizens, you will see units of Brigade strength or larger defending the citizens rights. The general idea behind this is, despite any orders they may be given, they have family and friends all over the country. Would you defend your mother, siblings, and friends, or
You may remember it, and I may remember it, but the courts will side with the law enforcement officers, especially when it's law enforcement that will be investigating it.
You know, it's not exactly that easy to explain away. It doesn't always go that well. Ask any officer about showing up to a domestic dispute, and who they can trust. They'll tell you "neither one".
The same goes for a burglary call. When they arrive, they don't know if it's the burglars turned kidnappers, or the victim. Or, when they come in to make sure there's no intruders, they find something illegal, you're in trouble. And yes, if you let the police come in to look around, anything in plain sight is fair game. A bong and scale on the coffee table turn a simple call to check out the house into a drug bust. And if there's a quantity in the house, you can be pretty sure that there are a few small arms laying around to defend the stash. And the difference between shooting a cop and hauling ass, or losing a substantial stash, lots of people will chose the wrong choice. Well, I guess if they lose their stash, their upstream dealer may not be very entertained either.
So, which calls were you implying were safe?