Their web site had instructions that said, esentially DHCP, with forced swapping every 4 hours.
Actually, that's not quite what they said. What they said was that the IP lease is *renewed* every four hours. This can mean that they will change the IP at that rate, but usually not. My computer switched over to the new IP block a few days ago, and has had the same IP address since then.
There is a good reasons for frequent lease renewals that does not have anything to do with changing the IP. Since a handful of other info is renewed with the lease, including routing info, this allows them to make changes to the network topology without having to contact everyone every time.
On the one DHCP network I ran, lease renewals were every 12 hours. IP reservations were 72 hours. This means that as long as your computer fired up once every three days, you were guaranteed to get the same IP address. Only after 72 hours of non-use would the IP address get "recycled".
If you want to heat a car battery up, just turn on all the accessories in the car and crank it a few times.
Um, dude, in every car I've owned, all of the "accessories" except the headlights are cut out of the circuit while the engine is cranking. Not that they'd make a bit of difference anyway. The starter motor itself draws more current than all of them put together.
How can I setup Sendmail to deny all emails where the Reply To: != From: address?
Not a good idea. Many mailing lists use Reply-To addresses that are different from the sender address. Customer support departments and such tend to do this as well.
How can I verify that the sender's domain (or parent if they have a tertiary level domain such as neal@cowboy.slashdot.org) has a valid MX record?
It's not that simple. MX records are not required. I can get mail at me@foo.com so long as there is an MX record OR an A record OR a CNAME record for foo.com that points to a machine running a mailserver. Most folks use MX records, but not all. Sendmail can be set up to verify the domain exists.
As for sendmail filtering on Subject: (And co-incidentally on Reply-To:), Those items are actually in the message body, and are sent after the mail has been accepted. It's possible to modify sendmail and run a filter that will drop the connection if it sees certain things in the message, but not easy. Filtering on these things is best done by post-processing applications like procmail. Of course, my biggest beef with that is that I already accepted the mail, and it's sucking up my server's resources.
I was VERY unhappy when I heard that Qwest acquired US West - US West certainly had its problems, but combining US West's telecom infrastructure with Qest's arrogance, it turns out, was a recipe for exactly what we're seeing now.
Hate to break it to you, but US Worst's arrogance made Qworst look like the model of customer satisfaction.
US Worst never gave a tinker's damn about their customers. Qworst buying them out was just the a continuation of past practices. I switched away from US Worst after a three month running battle with them over slamming problems, billing inter-lata calls to the intra-lata long distance provider, etc...
I'm with Cox now for phone, and while they're not perfect, I've had less down-time, cheaper rates, no billing errors, and I've never gotten a bad attitude from their service folks.
I'm not a big fan of M$, as some of my posts shows, but I don't like to be unfair. They don't spam. this is final.
Sure they do, they have a whole division for spamming.
Microsoft owns listbuilder.com and bcentral.com which both run opt-out mailing lists. A few months ago I started getting spammed by them, complained, kept getting spammed. They even put javascript in the messages that keeps a right-click from pulling up the menu so I could view the source. (Like that was going to stop me.) I finally just put entries in my sendmail access.db to reject email from those domains. My logs show they're still trying to spam me.
Sure he did. We all discover things all the time. Remember when you first discovered it really hurts to hit your thumb with a hammer? Just because you weren't the first to discover it didn't make it any less important a discovery.
Tolkein just wasn't the first to discover Finnish.
Ooooh! A whole 140hp in a vehicle that weighs more than a half-ton! Wow, I'm impressed. And don't forget folks, that 140hp is measured at the crankshaft!
As opposed to my 1993 Yamaha FZR-1000, which weighs a bit over 400 pounds, and I have personally tested at 122hp at the rear wheel on a rear-wheel dynamometer. (Factory, no mods.) The current model sports 140 rear-wheel hp and weighs just over 300 pounds.
I could run the 1/4 mile, stop and eat a sandwich before you crossed the line.
Stupid toys like Civics shouldn't be allowed on the road.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
- It's incredibly dangerous to have any firearm on a plane, no matter who it belongs to. I don't care if you hire Chuck Norris, if a terrorist organization puts 5 of it's men on a plane, chances are they're getting that gun, or something else bad is going to happen. You don't want bullets flying around an airplane. And if you don't give the air marshall a gun, he's just another passenger, who perhaps knows a few self-defense techniques. Hardly the kind of protection you want against a terrorist with a weapon.
Idiot.
#1, Air marshals are plain clothes. You can't take away his weapon unless you know who he is. Like any other plainclothes officer, they are well trained in when and how to act efficiently.
#2, There exists (on the commercial market) ammunition that will not penetrate walls, not even cheapass apartment wallboard. They're called Glaser Safety Slugs, highly effective at short ranges, with no ricochet and no penetration of hard surfaces.
Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
>>The question I would have about this is how many lives have been saved over the years because somebody was able to enter the cockpit and land the plane.
Not counting movies?
How about none, zero, zilch. Cripes, crawl out from in front of your television into the sunlight now and again.
There's a reason why there are a minimum of TWO pilots on commercial airliners.
there is still a slight difference between the criminal himself and someone helping a criminal - and criminal law fully recognizes that difference: the murderer gets the chair (at least in your civilized country, over here, he'll have to settle for lifelong imprisonment), the guy who hides him gets away with maybe a couple of years.
Wrong. Any member of a conspiracy is liable for any crime commited by any member of the conspiracy. The driver of the getaway car can get the death penalty if one of the gunmen kills someone.
Re:future safeguards against airline hijacking
on
Our New Pearl Harbor
·
· Score: 1
Wouldn't it be easier to just put an armored door between the cabin and the cockpit, and don't allow it to be opened while in flight.
Technological solutions have their place, but they aren't worth anything if we don't have the wisdom to take the simple precautions first.
...but Pullman gives the impression that he's really trying to discuss the "fundamental truths" (though it's not surprising if his books are more pedagogical seeing as he used to be a teacher).
My my, the assumptions we make. It's not him, it's her.
This is one of the most pernicious fallacies in marketing.
The customer is not "always right." In fact, they are very frequently wrong, sometimes fatally so. The true statement is "the customer is always the customer." This means that you must treat them politely and respectfully, and often you must tell them they are right even when they are not. It does not, however, make them right.
>>It says a lot more about geek culture than about the quality of Monty Python's work that they've persisted as long as they have. <<
My my, what big egos we have here. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's not just geeks who are die-hard Monty Python fans. Better than half the employees at the ambulance company my wife works for spontaneously recite Python quotes at appropriate/inappropriate moments. "It's just a flesh wound!" Most of them aren't even old enough to have seen ANY episodes while they were still being produced.
Python is still popular because it's that good. No political correctness, no over-sensitivity, just pure timeless fun. (and fanatical devotion to the pope)
>>This is a no-brainer win for a Congressman, so they will probably take it up. <<
You think so? I certainly don't agree. Remember that most of your congresscritters are LAWYERS. They're the ones who put us in this situation. They also get a lot of money from people who very much want things to stay the way they are. And, last of all, lawyers don't make any money when the system is simple and fair. Changing this law would be a direct conflict of interest for the majority of Congress.
I've always thought the US legal system was flawed in one particular way... Imagine a game where the citizens represent the players, and the lawyers represent the referees. The referees are paid by the players for both the length of the game, and the number of calls. Now, imagine that the referees could re-write the rules any time they wanted, including during the game. Now you've got a game where it is the referees' best interest to make the game last as long as possible, and have as many calls as possible.
What do you call a lawyer who graded his own tests in law school?
A couple of years ago, I headed a project that we deployed via servlets, and used the Apache Jserv engine as the platform. Simple, stable, good performance. We deployed the app, and had no trouble. Everyone was happy.
This year, I was looking to develop another servlet app. I saw that Jserv is no longer under development, and has been "replaced" by Tomcat. Holy crap! what a reversal of fortune. It wouldn't install, the configuration is so complex that a degree in advanced illogic is necessary, it's unstable, and it doesn't have the feature set that a two-year-old version of Jserv had. In short, it's completely unusable. But, because Jserv isn't in the development path any more, that wasn't a good long-term option either. We ended up abandoning Java entirely as an option, since we didn't have time to evaluate other engines.
I'm kind of hoping that Tomcat dies a fiery death. Maybe then someone will go back and resurrect Jserv.
>> Note that O'Meara says his deal with Apple convinced him he could make a living as a programmer, but now he talks more like he's forced to cease all development of GForce now that he's on active duty, and he's "profoundly depressed." <<
Yeah, poor baby. He signed a contract so the US Navy would pay his way through college and now he's upset that they actually want him to hold up his end of the bargain. The guy produces some truly spectacular stuff, but all his moaning about how he's getting screwed just makes him sound like a crybaby. Personally, I think the Navy's getting screwed.
This is why high-performance engines need high-octane fuel. They have very high compression ratios that would cause low-octane fuels to pre-detonate (explode before the spark fired), which is the cause of "knocking and pinging" in an engine. It also can cause a lot of damage.
This is also why high-octane fuels are a complete waste of money in engines that don't require them. Modern engines have very efficient chamber designs that allow for higher compression without the need for higher octane. My 1995 Yamaha FZR-1000 has 12:1 compression and runs very happily on cheap pump gas. (Don't do this with your 1970 high-compression muscle-car!)
>>Funny, they didn't spec a new helicopter.. The sped'ed a VTOL aircraft.
No, they didn't. This is from Air Wing senior officers *before* the Osprey contract was awarded.
>>Funny. The Corps has been the most vocal in trying to get it finshed.
True, once they got saddled with it, they knew they had to make it work, or they'd be left with nothing. Those CH-46's aren't going to fly forever, they're already WAY past their expected life cycle.
>>Funny. They have been trying for years to get more of one of the most complicated and difficult to fly aircraft in the world. The AV-8 Harrier.
Ever work on one? I have. It's actually a very simple aircraft, and pretty easy to maintain. Having only one engine, you don't have to worry about out-of-balance engines flipping your craft like a flapjack. The Soviets built a two-engine copy of the Harrier, it was the most dangerous birds in their inventory. (Starting to see the flaw in the Osprey?) One of our Harriers hit a Great Blue Heron on takeoff, sucked a good part of the canopy through the intakes, and the pilot still managed to bring it back for a landing (with a dislocated shoulder). The AV-8B is a very rugged aircraft, I'd take a ride in one any day.
>>Translation: I'm a clueless line grunt who confuses my narrow perspective with the requirements of the Corps.
Oops, sorry, I spent over 4 years with Marine aviation units, primarily AV-8B Harriers. While I wasn't a mechanic (Navy Corpsman) I did my share of assisting (carting around parts, holding tools, removing panels, and strongbacking bombs). I've also flown as crew on CH-46 and UH1N Helos.
There's a word for this, it's called "overengineered". The Marine Corps wanted a new helicopter, what they got was on over-engineered, overly-expensive, overly-complicated monstrosity that has already taken taken twice the time it would have taken to develop a new helicopter, and *IT'S STILL NOT READY*. In the meantime, their aged fleet of CH-46 Sea Knights (many with authentic Vietnam-era bullet-holes) is just getting older, and failing more frequently.
Folks, the Corps didn't *want* this piece of shit, they got it rammed down their throat by a congressman who is in the pocket of the manufacturer, and his buddies, who owed him a favor. Now they're stuck with it.
The Marine Corps is the smallest of the military branches, with the smallest budget. They *don't like* complexity or high cost. They want extremely reliable, easy to maintain equipment at reasonable cost. This monstrosity doesn't qualify for even one of these criteria, let alone all three. They even got the name wrong, it should have been named "Albatross".
You cannot believe how grateful I am that I am no longer with the Marine Corps, just so I *never* have to get in one of those things.
>>first Sealand is armed and standard UK police are not <<
Well, that's a matter of perspective, isn't it? The average Bobby on the street is not armed. However, certain divisions within the UK constabulary are not only armed, but extremely armed, some on a daily basis. (We're talking automatic weapons here, folks.)
Trust me, there are divisions of the UK police that could mop up Sealand in very short order. Certainly you don't think Sealand could put up as much of a fuss as the Irish have in the past years?
For you, I'm sure. Personally, I get bored with them very easily.
Real-time = tactical play
Tactics get your blood boiling, you need to be thinking 3-5 steps ahead. Nonetheless, you are constantly reacting to other's actions, you're not really in control.
Turn-based = strategy
Strategy is cool, reasoned long-term planning. Unless you can plan 10 or more steps ahead, you're not going to cut it.
In tactical games, those with the fastest reflexes win. In strategy games, those with the best planning and creativity win.
I'll take the strategy games any day of the week, I happen to enjoy attempting to figure out the long-term consequences of seemingly minor actions. Plus, I can daydream all day about the various things I can do for my next turn...
Funny thing, I was diagnosed ADD a long time ago. I actually find it an advantage in this type of game, since I can "task-switch" between evaluating various options while planning my next move.
Absolutely, the US consumer has a right to make a backup. Time-shifting and other reasons for copying things have also been declared fair use, and are therefore legal.
However, this does not mean that the manufacturer or content provider is obligated to provide you with the means to do so. And, because of the DMCA, they can put in specific measures to prevent such things, and prosecute us for breaking them. They aren't prosecuting us for making the copy, they're prosecuting us for breaking the copy-protection.
Nice of the PGP folks to provide a fix for those using the freeware version of PGP. However, if you were one of the suckers who purchased PGP for commercial use, Network Associates requires that you *purchase* an upgrade to fix the problem. Seems to me that with a major blunder like this, they owe me a fix at no charge.
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Their web site had instructions that said, esentially DHCP, with forced swapping every 4 hours.
Actually, that's not quite what they said. What they said was that the IP lease is *renewed* every four hours. This can mean that they will change the IP at that rate, but usually not. My computer switched over to the new IP block a few days ago, and has had the same IP address since then.
There is a good reasons for frequent lease renewals that does not have anything to do with changing the IP. Since a handful of other info is renewed with the lease, including routing info, this allows them to make changes to the network topology without having to contact everyone every time.
On the one DHCP network I ran, lease renewals were every 12 hours. IP reservations were 72 hours. This means that as long as your computer fired up once every three days, you were guaranteed to get the same IP address. Only after 72 hours of non-use would the IP address get "recycled".
If you want to heat a car battery up, just turn on all the accessories in the car and crank it a few times.
Um, dude, in every car I've owned, all of the "accessories" except the headlights are cut out of the circuit while the engine is cranking. Not that they'd make a bit of difference anyway. The starter motor itself draws more current than all of them put together.
How can I setup Sendmail to deny all emails where the Reply To: != From: address?
Not a good idea. Many mailing lists use Reply-To addresses that are different from the sender address. Customer support departments and such tend to do this as well.
How can I verify that the sender's domain (or parent if they have a tertiary level domain such as neal@cowboy.slashdot.org) has a valid MX record?
It's not that simple. MX records are not required. I can get mail at me@foo.com so long as there is an MX record OR an A record OR a CNAME record for foo.com that points to a machine running a mailserver. Most folks use MX records, but not all. Sendmail can be set up to verify the domain exists.
As for sendmail filtering on Subject: (And co-incidentally on Reply-To:), Those items are actually in the message body, and are sent after the mail has been accepted. It's possible to modify sendmail and run a filter that will drop the connection if it sees certain things in the message, but not easy. Filtering on these things is best done by post-processing applications like procmail. Of course, my biggest beef with that is that I already accepted the mail, and it's sucking up my server's resources.
I was VERY unhappy when I heard that Qwest acquired US West - US West certainly had its problems, but combining US West's telecom infrastructure with Qest's arrogance, it turns out, was a recipe for exactly what we're seeing now.
Hate to break it to you, but US Worst's arrogance made Qworst look like the model of customer satisfaction.
US Worst never gave a tinker's damn about their customers. Qworst buying them out was just the a continuation of past practices. I switched away from US Worst after a three month running battle with them over slamming problems, billing inter-lata calls to the intra-lata long distance provider, etc...
I'm with Cox now for phone, and while they're not perfect, I've had less down-time, cheaper rates, no billing errors, and I've never gotten a bad attitude from their service folks.
I'm not a big fan of M$, as some of my posts shows, but I don't like to be unfair. They don't spam. this is final.
Sure they do, they have a whole division for spamming.
Microsoft owns listbuilder.com and bcentral.com which both run opt-out mailing lists. A few months ago I started getting spammed by them, complained, kept getting spammed. They even put javascript in the messages that keeps a right-click from pulling up the menu so I could view the source. (Like that was going to stop me.) I finally just put entries in my sendmail access.db to reject email from those domains. My logs show they're still trying to spam me.
Sure he did. We all discover things all the time. Remember when you first discovered it really hurts to hit your thumb with a hammer? Just because you weren't the first to discover it didn't make it any less important a discovery.
Tolkein just wasn't the first to discover Finnish.
That has always seemed like a pretty cool idea to me.
:)
Beaming the power, or the fact that it would stop working for no apparent reason?
Ooooh! A whole 140hp in a vehicle that weighs more than a half-ton! Wow, I'm impressed. And don't forget folks, that 140hp is measured at the crankshaft!
As opposed to my 1993 Yamaha FZR-1000, which weighs a bit over 400 pounds, and I have personally tested at 122hp at the rear wheel on a rear-wheel dynamometer. (Factory, no mods.) The current model sports 140 rear-wheel hp and weighs just over 300 pounds.
I could run the 1/4 mile, stop and eat a sandwich before you crossed the line.
Stupid toys like Civics shouldn't be allowed on the road.
- It's incredibly dangerous to have any firearm on a plane, no matter who it belongs to. I don't care if you hire Chuck Norris, if a terrorist organization puts 5 of it's men on a plane, chances are they're getting that gun, or something else bad is going to happen. You don't want bullets flying around an airplane. And if you don't give the air marshall a gun, he's just another passenger, who perhaps knows a few self-defense techniques. Hardly the kind of protection you want against a terrorist with a weapon.
Idiot.
#1, Air marshals are plain clothes. You can't take away his weapon unless you know who he is. Like any other plainclothes officer, they are well trained in when and how to act efficiently.
#2, There exists (on the commercial market) ammunition that will not penetrate walls, not even cheapass apartment wallboard. They're called Glaser Safety Slugs, highly effective at short ranges, with no ricochet and no penetration of hard surfaces.
Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.
>>The question I would have about this is how many lives have been saved over the years because somebody was able to enter the cockpit and land the plane.
Not counting movies?
How about none, zero, zilch. Cripes, crawl out from in front of your television into the sunlight now and again.
There's a reason why there are a minimum of TWO pilots on commercial airliners.
there is still a slight difference between the criminal himself and someone helping a criminal - and criminal law fully recognizes that difference: the murderer gets the chair (at least in your civilized country, over here, he'll have to settle for lifelong imprisonment), the guy who hides him gets away with maybe a couple of years.
Wrong. Any member of a conspiracy is liable for any crime commited by any member of the conspiracy. The driver of the getaway car can get the death penalty if one of the gunmen kills someone.
Wouldn't it be easier to just put an armored door between the cabin and the cockpit, and don't allow it to be opened while in flight.
Technological solutions have their place, but they aren't worth anything if we don't have the wisdom to take the simple precautions first.
...but Pullman gives the impression that he's really trying to discuss the "fundamental truths" (though it's not surprising if his books are more pedagogical seeing as he used to be a teacher).
My my, the assumptions we make. It's not him, it's her.
Dude, the customer is always right
This is one of the most pernicious fallacies in marketing.
The customer is not "always right." In fact, they are very frequently wrong, sometimes fatally so. The true statement is "the customer is always the customer." This means that you must treat them politely and respectfully, and often you must tell them they are right even when they are not. It does not, however, make them right.
>>It says a lot more about geek culture than about the quality of Monty Python's work that they've persisted as long as they have. <<
My my, what big egos we have here. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's not just geeks who are die-hard Monty Python fans. Better than half the employees at the ambulance company my wife works for spontaneously recite Python quotes at appropriate/inappropriate moments. "It's just a flesh wound!" Most of them aren't even old enough to have seen ANY episodes while they were still being produced.
Python is still popular because it's that good. No political correctness, no over-sensitivity, just pure timeless fun. (and fanatical devotion to the pope)
>>This is a no-brainer win for a Congressman, so they will probably take it up. <<
You think so? I certainly don't agree. Remember that most of your congresscritters are LAWYERS. They're the ones who put us in this situation. They also get a lot of money from people who very much want things to stay the way they are. And, last of all, lawyers don't make any money when the system is simple and fair. Changing this law would be a direct conflict of interest for the majority of Congress.
I've always thought the US legal system was flawed in one particular way... Imagine a game where the citizens represent the players, and the lawyers represent the referees. The referees are paid by the players for both the length of the game, and the number of calls. Now, imagine that the referees could re-write the rules any time they wanted, including during the game. Now you've got a game where it is the referees' best interest to make the game last as long as possible, and have as many calls as possible.
What do you call a lawyer who graded his own tests in law school?
Your honor.
A couple of years ago, I headed a project that we deployed via servlets, and used the Apache Jserv engine as the platform. Simple, stable, good performance. We deployed the app, and had no trouble. Everyone was happy.
This year, I was looking to develop another servlet app. I saw that Jserv is no longer under development, and has been "replaced" by Tomcat. Holy crap! what a reversal of fortune. It wouldn't install, the configuration is so complex that a degree in advanced illogic is necessary, it's unstable, and it doesn't have the feature set that a two-year-old version of Jserv had. In short, it's completely unusable. But, because Jserv isn't in the development path any more, that wasn't a good long-term option either. We ended up abandoning Java entirely as an option, since we didn't have time to evaluate other engines.
I'm kind of hoping that Tomcat dies a fiery death. Maybe then someone will go back and resurrect Jserv.
>> Note that O'Meara says his deal with Apple convinced him he could make a living as a programmer, but now he talks more like he's forced to cease all development of GForce now that he's on active duty, and he's "profoundly depressed." <<
Yeah, poor baby. He signed a contract so the US Navy would pay his way through college and now he's upset that they actually want him to hold up his end of the bargain. The guy produces some truly spectacular stuff, but all his moaning about how he's getting screwed just makes him sound like a crybaby. Personally, I think the Navy's getting screwed.
Nope, higher octane=slower burning.
This is why high-performance engines need high-octane fuel. They have very high compression ratios that would cause low-octane fuels to pre-detonate (explode before the spark fired), which is the cause of "knocking and pinging" in an engine. It also can cause a lot of damage.
This is also why high-octane fuels are a complete waste of money in engines that don't require them. Modern engines have very efficient chamber designs that allow for higher compression without the need for higher octane. My 1995 Yamaha FZR-1000 has 12:1 compression and runs very happily on cheap pump gas. (Don't do this with your 1970 high-compression muscle-car!)
>>Funny, they didn't spec a new helicopter.. The sped'ed a VTOL aircraft.
No, they didn't. This is from Air Wing senior officers *before* the Osprey contract was awarded.
>>Funny. The Corps has been the most vocal in trying to get it finshed.
True, once they got saddled with it, they knew they had to make it work, or they'd be left with nothing. Those CH-46's aren't going to fly forever, they're already WAY past their expected life cycle.
>>Funny. They have been trying for years to get more of one of the most complicated and difficult to fly aircraft in the world. The AV-8 Harrier.
Ever work on one? I have. It's actually a very simple aircraft, and pretty easy to maintain. Having only one engine, you don't have to worry about out-of-balance engines flipping your craft like a flapjack. The Soviets built a two-engine copy of the Harrier, it was the most dangerous birds in their inventory. (Starting to see the flaw in the Osprey?) One of our Harriers hit a Great Blue Heron on takeoff, sucked a good part of the canopy through the intakes, and the pilot still managed to bring it back for a landing (with a dislocated shoulder). The AV-8B is a very rugged aircraft, I'd take a ride in one any day.
>>Translation: I'm a clueless line grunt who confuses my narrow perspective with the requirements of the Corps.
Oops, sorry, I spent over 4 years with Marine aviation units, primarily AV-8B Harriers. While I wasn't a mechanic (Navy Corpsman) I did my share of assisting (carting around parts, holding tools, removing panels, and strongbacking bombs). I've also flown as crew on CH-46 and UH1N Helos.
There's a word for this, it's called "overengineered". The Marine Corps wanted a new helicopter, what they got was on over-engineered, overly-expensive, overly-complicated monstrosity that has already taken taken twice the time it would have taken to develop a new helicopter, and *IT'S STILL NOT READY*. In the meantime, their aged fleet of CH-46 Sea Knights (many with authentic Vietnam-era bullet-holes) is just getting older, and failing more frequently.
Folks, the Corps didn't *want* this piece of shit, they got it rammed down their throat by a congressman who is in the pocket of the manufacturer, and his buddies, who owed him a favor. Now they're stuck with it.
The Marine Corps is the smallest of the military branches, with the smallest budget. They *don't like* complexity or high cost. They want extremely reliable, easy to maintain equipment at reasonable cost. This monstrosity doesn't qualify for even one of these criteria, let alone all three. They even got the name wrong, it should have been named "Albatross".
You cannot believe how grateful I am that I am no longer with the Marine Corps, just so I *never* have to get in one of those things.
>>first Sealand is armed and standard UK police are not <<
Well, that's a matter of perspective, isn't it? The average Bobby on the street is not armed. However, certain divisions within the UK constabulary are not only armed, but extremely armed, some on a daily basis. (We're talking automatic weapons here, folks.)
Trust me, there are divisions of the UK police that could mop up Sealand in very short order. Certainly you don't think Sealand could put up as much of a fuss as the Irish have in the past years?
>>Real-time games are more fun.<<
For you, I'm sure. Personally, I get bored with them very easily.
Real-time = tactical play
Tactics get your blood boiling, you need to be thinking 3-5 steps ahead. Nonetheless, you are constantly reacting to other's actions, you're not really in control.
Turn-based = strategy
Strategy is cool, reasoned long-term planning. Unless you can plan 10 or more steps ahead, you're not going to cut it.
In tactical games, those with the fastest reflexes win. In strategy games, those with the best planning and creativity win.
I'll take the strategy games any day of the week, I happen to enjoy attempting to figure out the long-term consequences of seemingly minor actions. Plus, I can daydream all day about the various things I can do for my next turn...
Funny thing, I was diagnosed ADD a long time ago. I actually find it an advantage in this type of game, since I can "task-switch" between evaluating various options while planning my next move.
Absolutely, the US consumer has a right to make a backup. Time-shifting and other reasons for copying things have also been declared fair use, and are therefore legal.
However, this does not mean that the manufacturer or content provider is obligated to provide you with the means to do so. And, because of the DMCA, they can put in specific measures to prevent such things, and prosecute us for breaking them. They aren't prosecuting us for making the copy, they're prosecuting us for breaking the copy-protection.
It's called having your cake, and eating it too.
Nice of the PGP folks to provide a fix for those using the freeware version of PGP. However, if you were one of the suckers who purchased PGP for commercial use, Network Associates requires that you *purchase* an upgrade to fix the problem. Seems to me that with a major blunder like this, they owe me a fix at no charge.
Nice to see that honesty is rewarded.