No. You are not good enough of a driver to do these either. If you are, why aren't you a professional race-car driver? (And many pro race-car drivers will tell you not to do these things either.) If you want to eat, drink, yack and read take the bus or a train that serves breakfast. Voice mail exists so you don't have to carry on a 5-way conference call while swerving down Interstate 40 on your way to hell.
Hey! I live just off of I-40, and while it does travel through Amarillo, TX I'm pretty sure that the road to hell is I-10 to Phoenix, AZ (with a stop in El Paso, TX which strengthens the case for I-10 as the way to hell).
Peter
(Happily living the Good Life in Oklahoma after punching out of the high tech rat race in Phoenix)
I feel this way too, but at the same time, when I want a soda I generally ask for a "Coke" and am slightly annoyed when the server asks "Is Pepsi okay?" Furthermore, it never even occurs to me to ask for an "RC". An independent outside observer might suspect that Coke's advertising dollars aren't entirely wasted.
(Of course, I've also gotten to the point in my life where paying $4.00+ for a case of sodas is just insane, so I buy a store brand for about half that price.)
The place I'm most offended by ads is in the names of sports venues. "Infineon Raceway"? Where the effing hell is that? "Enron Park" what losers play there? etc. It will be a sad day when "Soldier Field" becomes "Tampax Super Absorbent Extra Longs Field".
I know that geeks,/.ers in particular, are lining up to work with the government on wiretapping!
I have a brilliant, inexpensive, 100% reliable, portable nuclear weapon detector that I'm trying to sell to the government. Before I begin full scale production, I've been trying to get the DOD to give me a few dozen nukes so I can properly test my device. Due to the bureaucracy involved I haven't yet received the nukes that I've requested, but I have received 1200Kg of 3/4" ball bearings, an invoice for the USS Arizona, and a large ticking package from Langley, Virginia.
Tornado's, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding... Mother nature probably poses a very large threat to this thing. And it isn't like you can just let it float or move it around as the need arises, it has to be firmly attached to the planet. Granted a flood doesn't threaten it much, but high winds (hurricane, tornado) could damage the strand. An earthquake could damage the foundation that keeps it there in the first place.
As I understand it, the ideal site for a space elevator would be on the equator. As such, hurricanes and typhoons should not pose a threat. The closest ever tropical storm (not even a typhoon or hurricane) to the equator was Tropical Storm Vamei which formed at a 1.5 N latitude (about 100 miles north of the equator). Vamei occured in 2001. The previous record holder dated back to 1956, so we can see that these storms are rare along the equator.
Flooding in the ocean isn't generally a problem.
Earthquakes substantial enough to cause damage don't happen everywhere. There is plenty of space in the Pacific Ocean along the equator that is as stable as you could reasonably expect any place on the planet to be.
We complain when people who hold strong views don't censure their extremists. I would be a hypocrite if I didn't say this.
Violence isn't the answer. These people are destructive. These people are assholes. However, the answer is not to shoot them. They should be arrested, tried and, if found guilty, fined and/or imprisoned for their crimes.
Fantasies of "first against the wall, motherfuckers!" are briefly satisfying, but ultimately degrading to the person having the fantasy.
I disagree. I think shooting someone who is in the act of trying to burn down my house is entirely reasonable.
I might add that the satisfaction in doing so would last quite a while and far from being degraded, I'd probably be a hero to my family and my neighbors.
The only regrets that I'd have is having to listen to my neighbor's monday morning quarterbacking of the events. "I'd have used the 12 gauge, Pete. You'd only need shoot him once with that."
I used this on SBC by telling them that I was moving to Afghanistan (obvious lie) and would like to remain in my service contract as long as they could provide an internet connection for me in Kandahar. The customer service rep was skeptical and asked me my address, so I made one up (123 Islam way).
Hi Neighbor! I live at 125 Islam Way in Kandahar and I noticed that your Anti-aircraft battery was firing last night at about 11:30pm. The terms of our HOA state that AA guns may only be used between the hours of 7am and 9pm.
PS. I saw an SBC rep near your house last week so I had him shot.
There should be a size limit on legislation.
If you can't say it in less than a thousand words, it should be broken into seperate bills.
Here's a good alternative:
The Downsize DC Read The Bills Act. This bill would actually force Congress to utter every single syllable of every single law they pass. This alone would stop things like the USA PATRIOT Act and the DMCA from getting passed. The RTBA would also require a public comment time period between the reading of the bill and the actual vote, so no more rushing unpopular legislation through in the dead of night.
Given its length, and the presumably large number of people that could be on it at a time, I presume it would be a potential target for terrorists or organized crime (hey, it's Sicily...) based on past threats against bridges and tunnels by terrorist groups.
How would they prevent against this? It seems such a bridge has two critical failure points at both ends and one or more in the middle.
I know they have water to cross, so its size doesn't appear to be the motivation, as say for the tallest building etc. but I think these are issues which (sadly) need to be considered.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick! Can we even mention constructing a structure larger than a Taco Bell without someone saying "Well, that's a nice idea, but The Terrorists could just blow it up." Here's a whack from The Reality Stick for you. The Terrorists can (and will) Blow Stuff Up. They're generally going to do it where there are a lot of people in order to maximize Body Count (aka Terror). Fortunately, for The Terrorists, the world is a target rich environment because for the past 10,000 years people have not advanced "Well, that's a nice idea, but The Terrorists could just blow it up" as a credible reason to abandon major projects. A new world's longest bridge or World's Blankest Blank will be yet another target and life will go on.
Now, I'm not advancing this bridge as a good idea. There may be, and probably are, many legitimate reasons why it should be built differently or even not at all. However, suggesting that every new structure should be terrorist proof is delusional.
How would you protect the flash drive if you had to swim for it? There's this cool new waterproofing technology called the ziploc bag. This technology can also give flash drives a positive buoyancy, just in case _it_ has to swim for it and leave your foundering ass behind.
Unfortunately there is no country in the world who could build a rocket (unless they allowed something like an Orion) big enough to carry all the lawyers.
You just have to crush the lawyers first, then use a centrifuge to separate out the bulk of the water from the lawyer mash. The dehydrated lawyer mash would then have a mass of about 10% of the original supply of lawyers. Next, this dehydrated lawyer mash could be compressed to make it compact enough to fit into a reasonable launch vehicle which could then be shot into the sun.
Not many people bitch about the legislators not reviewing papers.
It is time to force our legislators to do just that.
If this Read The Bills Act was law we would not have monstrosities like the PATRIOT ACT and the DMCA. Hell, they'd still be reading the full text of the PATRIOT ACT.
My wife had the laser eye surgery done in Austin, Texas by Dr. Dell ( no coincidence, he's Michael Dell's brother) at Texan Eye Care. Prior to the surgery her uncorrected vision was in the 20/600 range. She could not read the 2" high LCD clock letters on the night table without her contact lenses. The day after the surgery her vision was 20/20 in one eye and 20/25 in the other. It has been about five years now and her vision is still 20/20. She claims it was the best money she ever spent.
My uncorrected vision is about 20/50 and I don't find life with (or without, since I can do without for normal everyday life) to be much trouble, so the surgery isn't worth it to me, but it changed her life.
It was merely signed because if I encrypted it no one would be able to read it, since I can't encrypt it for _everyone_ to decrypt. (You are, however, correct. I'll make an encrypted version just for you as soon as I get your public key).
It is called GPG. If you're that worried about your privacy then you shouldn't be sending your emails around in plain unencrypted text. (And, if you cared, you'd know that I edited this message after generating my signature key)
Peter -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (Darwin)
iD8DBQFA4ysB3YxiXhUBOVoRAl8fAJ9RyODBM1IOZEpjnM// Oz 7a8MKE1QCgwYx3 ItBFAxORjYx4AZRVqYH8It8= =ugwf - ----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I was worried there for a second. I thought someone had created a virus for The Sybian. A remote exploit for a half horsepower pud puller could be very very bad.
First of all, at only 21 years old time is on your side. Any money that you can put away before you're 30 should, with the magic of compound interest, be worth almost 10 times as much if you put away the same amount of money after you're fifty. (This assumes that you have your debt under control. If not, knock it out first.)
Live below your means. Put off that new car or computer for another year or two. Eat out 1 fewer times per week. Don't pay so much for your porn! Simple things like that can easily add up to one hundred bucks per month with very little pain.
Time is on your side. Start saving now. Be patient. It will grow very slowly at first. But the earlier you start, the earlier your savings will start growing rapidly.
This is insightful? I hope aardwolf was actually trying to be funny. Otherwise his "don't save money because it is too easy to spend savings" plan will have him working until the day he dies. Personally, my SO and I live off of one paycheck and put the other into some form of savings or another. Using this plan, we're aiming at having a million smackers in the bank before we're fifty.
Better still, this plan doesn't have us up Shit Creek when a paycheck (or twenty) is missed.
If you have such a serious problem with raiding your savings account direct deposit can be a great tool for you. Have a small chunk of each check sent into this savings account and never touch it. Never ever. Hell, you'd probably be better off if you didn't even open your bank statements for that account but once a year. Whatever you do, living month to month is not the answer.
People need to learn the mentality that crime can actually be low enough.
Personally, I think crime is too low. I mean, seriously, what is a guy supposed to do with his Glock if no one ever breaks into his home. I've kept this thing loaded under my pillow since 1993 and haven't had the chance to shoot a prowler in the middle of the night yet.
I'm beginning to feel that my investment in a weatherproof shotgun for the shower and a ten inch stiletto for my sock drawer will never pay off by proving that they're actually for self defense.
Instead, I'm forced to defend my home against scorpions and termites and, let me tell you, a.45 automatic is not the right tool for the job when it comes to termite control.
Someone did steal the knobs off of my Jeep's radio once, so if you see someone with an extra set of Jeep radio knobs let me know and I'll be right over to reduce the criminal population some more.
One area I'd like to see would be strength of a password in terms of randomness, requireing use of characters, etc. vs length. Is an 8 character password with a punctuation mark better than a 10 character pasword with all lower case characters? If so, by how much?
An 8 character password using unique upper case, lower case, digits and punctuation has about 94 different characters. If we picked a random 8 character password from this we would have:
So, the 8 character password using all characters is about 200 times more difficult to brute force than the 10 character password only using lower case characters.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey! I live just off of I-40, and while it does travel through Amarillo, TX I'm pretty sure that the road to hell is I-10 to Phoenix, AZ (with a stop in El Paso, TX which strengthens the case for I-10 as the way to hell).
Peter
(Happily living the Good Life in Oklahoma after punching out of the high tech rat race in Phoenix)
I feel this way too, but at the same time, when I want a soda I generally ask for a "Coke" and am slightly annoyed when the server asks "Is Pepsi okay?" Furthermore, it never even occurs to me to ask for an "RC". An independent outside observer might suspect that Coke's advertising dollars aren't entirely wasted.
(Of course, I've also gotten to the point in my life where paying $4.00+ for a case of sodas is just insane, so I buy a store brand for about half that price.)
The place I'm most offended by ads is in the names of sports venues. "Infineon Raceway"? Where the effing hell is that? "Enron Park" what losers play there? etc. It will be a sad day when "Soldier Field" becomes "Tampax Super Absorbent Extra Longs Field".
Peter
I have a brilliant, inexpensive, 100% reliable, portable nuclear weapon detector that I'm trying to sell to the government. Before I begin full scale production, I've been trying to get the DOD to give me a few dozen nukes so I can properly test my device. Due to the bureaucracy involved I haven't yet received the nukes that I've requested, but I have received 1200Kg of 3/4" ball bearings, an invoice for the USS Arizona, and a large ticking package from Langley, Virginia.
Peter
As I understand it, the ideal site for a space elevator would be on the equator. As such, hurricanes and typhoons should not pose a threat. The closest ever tropical storm (not even a typhoon or hurricane) to the equator was Tropical Storm Vamei which formed at a 1.5 N latitude (about 100 miles north of the equator). Vamei occured in 2001. The previous record holder dated back to 1956, so we can see that these storms are rare along the equator.
Flooding in the ocean isn't generally a problem.
Earthquakes substantial enough to cause damage don't happen everywhere. There is plenty of space in the Pacific Ocean along the equator that is as stable as you could reasonably expect any place on the planet to be.
Peter
Violence isn't the answer. These people are destructive. These people are assholes. However, the answer is not to shoot them. They should be arrested, tried and, if found guilty, fined and/or imprisoned for their crimes.
Fantasies of "first against the wall, motherfuckers!" are briefly satisfying, but ultimately degrading to the person having the fantasy.
I disagree. I think shooting someone who is in the act of trying to burn down my house is entirely reasonable.
I might add that the satisfaction in doing so would last quite a while and far from being degraded, I'd probably be a hero to my family and my neighbors.
The only regrets that I'd have is having to listen to my neighbor's monday morning quarterbacking of the events. "I'd have used the 12 gauge, Pete. You'd only need shoot him once with that."
Peter
Hi Neighbor! I live at 125 Islam Way in Kandahar and I noticed that your Anti-aircraft battery was firing last night at about 11:30pm. The terms of our HOA state that AA guns may only be used between the hours of 7am and 9pm.
PS. I saw an SBC rep near your house last week so I had him shot.
Peter
If you can't say it in less than a thousand words, it should be broken into seperate bills.
Here's a good alternative:
The Downsize DC Read The Bills Act. This bill would actually force Congress to utter every single syllable of every single law they pass. This alone would stop things like the USA PATRIOT Act and the DMCA from getting passed. The RTBA would also require a public comment time period between the reading of the bill and the actual vote, so no more rushing unpopular legislation through in the dead of night.
Peter
What? You didn't recognise 11413 as the product of 101 and 113? Hang your head in shame and hang in your geek badge at the door.
Ah ha! I've caught you out! You didn't notice that 447333 is the product of 3 and 149,111.
*crickets chirping*
149,111 is prime too! Give me my geek badge back!
Peter
BridgeBum (11413) wrote:
At least the department store removes the tag after you buy it.
--
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
How much of a geek do you have to be to know that your UID consists of two primes. You freak!
Peter
Not necessarily...consider this, what's worse:
Your wife divorcing you to marry some jerk she met on the internet
or
Your wife divorcing you to marry your best friend.
Wait! What? I don't understand why you think there's a problem with either of these options.
Peter
So, Taco Bells are safe from terrorist attacks?
From my experiences with Taco Bell, I could be convinced that Taco Bells are terrorist attacks!
Peter
How would they prevent against this? It seems such a bridge has two critical failure points at both ends and one or more in the middle.
I know they have water to cross, so its size doesn't appear to be the motivation, as say for the tallest building etc. but I think these are issues which (sadly) need to be considered.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick! Can we even mention constructing a structure larger than a Taco Bell without someone saying "Well, that's a nice idea, but The Terrorists could just blow it up." Here's a whack from The Reality Stick for you. The Terrorists can (and will) Blow Stuff Up. They're generally going to do it where there are a lot of people in order to maximize Body Count (aka Terror). Fortunately, for The Terrorists, the world is a target rich environment because for the past 10,000 years people have not advanced "Well, that's a nice idea, but The Terrorists could just blow it up" as a credible reason to abandon major projects. A new world's longest bridge or World's Blankest Blank will be yet another target and life will go on.
Now, I'm not advancing this bridge as a good idea. There may be, and probably are, many legitimate reasons why it should be built differently or even not at all. However, suggesting that every new structure should be terrorist proof is delusional.
Peter
How would you protect the flash drive if you had to swim for it? There's this cool new waterproofing technology called the ziploc bag. This technology can also give flash drives a positive buoyancy, just in case _it_ has to swim for it and leave your foundering ass behind.
Peter
I bought an iPod Shuffle and it is so scratched up that I can't see the screen at all!
Peter
You just have to crush the lawyers first, then use a centrifuge to separate out the bulk of the water from the lawyer mash. The dehydrated lawyer mash would then have a mass of about 10% of the original supply of lawyers. Next, this dehydrated lawyer mash could be compressed to make it compact enough to fit into a reasonable launch vehicle which could then be shot into the sun.
Peter
It is time to force our legislators to do just that.
If this Read The Bills Act was law we would not have monstrosities like the PATRIOT ACT and the DMCA. Hell, they'd still be reading the full text of the PATRIOT ACT.
Peter
My wife had the laser eye surgery done in Austin, Texas by Dr. Dell ( no coincidence, he's Michael Dell's brother) at Texan Eye Care. Prior to the surgery her uncorrected vision was in the 20/600 range. She could not read the 2" high LCD clock letters on the night table without her contact lenses. The day after the surgery her vision was 20/20 in one eye and 20/25 in the other. It has been about five years now and her vision is still 20/20. She claims it was the best money she ever spent.
My uncorrected vision is about 20/50 and I don't find life with (or without, since I can do without for normal everyday life) to be much trouble, so the surgery isn't worth it to me, but it changed her life.
Peter
D'oh! One moment please.
Peter
It was merely signed because if I encrypted it no one would be able to read it, since I can't encrypt it for _everyone_ to decrypt. (You are, however, correct. I'll make an encrypted version just for you as soon as I get your public key).
Peter
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
/ Oz 7a8MKE1QCgwYx3
- ----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Hash: SHA1
It is called GPG. If you're that worried about your privacy then you shouldn't be sending your emails around in plain unencrypted text. (And, if you cared, you'd know that I edited this message after generating my signature key)
Peter
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (Darwin)
iD8DBQFA4ysB3YxiXhUBOVoRAl8fAJ9RyODBM1IOZEpjnM/
ItBFAxORjYx4AZRVqYH8It8=
=ugwf
Peter
Live below your means. Put off that new car or computer for another year or two. Eat out 1 fewer times per week. Don't pay so much for your porn! Simple things like that can easily add up to one hundred bucks per month with very little pain.
Time is on your side. Start saving now. Be patient. It will grow very slowly at first. But the earlier you start, the earlier your savings will start growing rapidly.
Peter
This is insightful? I hope aardwolf was actually trying to be funny. Otherwise his "don't save money because it is too easy to spend savings" plan will have him working until the day he dies. Personally, my SO and I live off of one paycheck and put the other into some form of savings or another. Using this plan, we're aiming at having a million smackers in the bank before we're fifty.
Better still, this plan doesn't have us up Shit Creek when a paycheck (or twenty) is missed.
If you have such a serious problem with raiding your savings account direct deposit can be a great tool for you. Have a small chunk of each check sent into this savings account and never touch it. Never ever. Hell, you'd probably be better off if you didn't even open your bank statements for that account but once a year. Whatever you do, living month to month is not the answer.
Peter
Personally, I think crime is too low. I mean, seriously, what is a guy supposed to do with his Glock if no one ever breaks into his home. I've kept this thing loaded under my pillow since 1993 and haven't had the chance to shoot a prowler in the middle of the night yet.
I'm beginning to feel that my investment in a weatherproof shotgun for the shower and a ten inch stiletto for my sock drawer will never pay off by proving that they're actually for self defense.
Instead, I'm forced to defend my home against scorpions and termites and, let me tell you, a .45 automatic is not the right tool for the job when it comes to termite control.
Someone did steal the knobs off of my Jeep's radio once, so if you see someone with an extra set of Jeep radio knobs let me know and I'll be right over to reduce the criminal population some more.
Peter
An 8 character password using unique upper case, lower case, digits and punctuation has about 94 different characters. If we picked a random 8 character password from this we would have:
94_P_8 = 94! / (94 - 8)! = 94! / 86! = 94 * 93 * 92 * 91 * 90 * 89 * 88 * 87 = 4.4x10^15 permutations
A 10 character password using only unique 26 lower case characters has:
26_P_10 = 26! / (26-10)! = 26! / 16! = 1.9x10^13 permutations.
So, the 8 character password using all characters is about 200 times more difficult to brute force than the 10 character password only using lower case characters.
Peter