You just don't get it. A leader can't stop everyone from doing wrong, but it is his duty to take action when we DOES find out about it.
Your newspaper analogy would be:
The editor-in-chief of the New York Times may not be directly responsible for Jayson Blair's misreporting, but by taking no action when he does find out about it, he would be giving it implicit approval.
Your comment about handling crime within their own ranks for thousands of years suggests a very ill-informed opinion. Whether it's the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the Holocaust, the Catholic church has not shown itself to behave as you suggest.
But the Pope personally? Do you really think he has that much power? There's a culture of powerful subordinates that are going to respect him as their spiritual father but not as their boss, and I'd blame them for the misdoings of the Vatican, not Mr. Ratzinger as a person.
Why are you being such an apologist?
He's the head of the organization and he's "infallible".
What he says goes, or he can boot you from the church. Either way, this means that all these bad people are operating with his implicit approval.
Based on your logic, no leader should ever be held accountable for the actions of his subordinates, unless specifcally ordered by him. I don't see how a person with any sort of decent moral compass can subscribe to such a view. Even if he can't stop something from happening, he's still responsible for taking adequate steps to enure it doesn't happen again.
God help you if you ever have to divide anything by a number other than four. What happens when you get a 9" piece of wood and have to divide it into seven pieces? Your imperial system is useless. Maybe you're scared of decimals as well.
In that case, it works just as well as the metric system.
I don't think you get it. All you've done is to try and take a cheap shot at me for using a simple example, while your counter-example is no easier to deal with in metric units than english units.
I'm just a lowly Electrical Engineer who works in RF.
So am I.
There is no way that a working transmitter can be fitted into a mockup coin.
Sorry, but you're dead wrong here.
You'll have to have some kind of processor.
No you don't. Although some people may find it hard to believe there are tons of electronic devices that have no computers in them at all.
It's actually really easy and really simple to build a small AM transmitter. You're talking less than ten parts. This doesn't even consider more exotic possibilities such as the "Great Seal Bug".
So how does this work, again?
Money. Lots and lots of money.
Think custom battery, and construction techniques similar to a MMIC.
I think you need to understand the type of resources a gov't can put towards projects like this.
If I was to build something like this, I'd have a guy designing the battery, a guy making cases, a guy designing the antenna, and a guy doing the actual circuitry.
-The battery guy would give me the highest energy density in the smallest package he could. It would probably be some custom lithium manganese dioxidecell.
-The case guy would take pairs of coins and mill them down to half thickness, then mill out a cavity inside each one.
-The antenna guy would design something similar to a Yaego 4311-127-00500. (Digikey part 311-1230-1-ND) The size for that part is only 3.5mm x 2.7mm x 0.9mm.
-The circuitry guy would probably be fabbing a custom IC.
Months later, take all these parts, hook them toghether, glue the coin shut and hand it off.
You could probably do $4 million for a thousand bugs. I'd suggest that's easily within the price range of any first world nation.
Sure it's not something I could accomplish on the weekends with no budget, but you just needed to apply some imagination to the situation.
Huh? What stops you from counting in whatever fractions you're comfortable with? If you want to use 4 3/12 deciliters or something, just go ahead.
That's only if you don't care how hard it is to use a given unit system, in which case you've invalidated most of the arguments people make for switching everything to metric. Did you actually try doing the experiment I suggested?
If you take one meter and cut into five pieces you get five sticks of 2dm. What does cutting a one foot stick in five pieces get you?
I'll let you know just as soon as I get around to building that five-legged table....
I think you need to calm down a bit; you're sounding quite obsessive about this, to the point of being irrational.
That's a rather strange accusation. I suggest that I'm am being perfectly rational, whereas you are suggesting that using "whatever fractions you're comfortable with" is just fine, in which case, that's just what the imperial system does.
1 inch = 1/12 foot, 1 foot = 1/5280 mile
It's all fractional. If there's no problem with people using any fractions they like, then what's wrong with that?
You do realize, of course, that using metric units in no way stops you from using fractions rather than decimal whenever it is convenient?
Actually, it does because ten has less factors (1,2,5,10) than twelve (1,2,3,4,6,12) or sixteen (1,2,4,8,16).
Pretty much none of your arguments have anything to do with the units used, but with how you use them - and you can do it equally with either measurement system.
This is only true if you don't care about working easily in your head, or the number of digits you must use. If I take a stick that's 1 foot long and cut it into four pieces, I have four sticks that are 3 inches long. If I take a stick that's one meter long and cut it into four pieces, I have four sticks that are 25 centimeters long. I pick up an extra digit in the result, and I have to do 100/4 in my head instead of 12/4, which means that I have to calculate an extra digit as well. (Try doing the math longhand and counting the number of characters you must write in each case.)
There are other issues with metric, such as scaling.
The english units are derived from direct human experience. The metric units are not. They are quantites and levels of precision that humans typically deal with in their day to day existence.
The metric units are all related to physical constants. This makes life easy for scientists, but it leads to my soda can containing 355 mL and my car tires containing 220 kPa of pressure. In order to describe day to day numbers, you wind up using improper precision. do you really think my tire guage is accurate to less than one percent?
In english units, it's simply 12 oz and 32 psi. The numbers have one less digit and give a better sense of the accuracy of the measurement.
I'm not saying one system should be scrapped in place of the other, I just think people should use what works. The Mars Orbiter was lost not due to the imperial system, but due to sloppy work. The Orbiter would have been just as lost if they accidentally used kilometers somewhere instead of meters.
* When I say "sloppy work", it's not to put the NASA folks down. They do a phenominal job. My point is that if everything was fully specified and verified, this mistake could not happen. If it's not, then this mistake can also be made within meteric units.
He actually found witnesses, canvassed the neighborhood, followed a suspect, snuck onto their property, found his car, staked out the place and called the cops. This guy was tenacious.
You mean just like the US thinks it has power over Russian companies?
As much as I think the RIAA lawsuit against AllofMP3 is insane, let's be reasonable here.
The RIAA has not been awarded ANYTHING against AllofMP3. AFAIK, this lawsuit still has not seen the inside of a courtroom. It is possible that this lawsuit might be dismissed.
Other the other hand Google, probably has an actual business presence in Brazil, which means that Google then is clearly subject to Brazilian law. The issue seems to be that Brazilian law is fubar'ed, not that it is being applied outside of Brazil. You'll note that those of us in the US have no problem finding this video.
Those arguments would make sense if bits and bytes were somehow related to the CGS system of units. They aren't.
Base two is automatically implied by using the terms "bit" or "byte".
If they want something that functions differently, they are free to invent new root words which take on different meanings with those same modifiers.
What right does the IEC have to redefine terms that were in common use 20 years before this standard existed?
A bit is not a part of the CGS system of units. The terms were already well defined before this "standard" existed and this is nothing but a dishonest attempt to redfine the terms for the benefit of the hard drive manufacturers.
How about some fucking common sense people? Computers work in base TWO.... why the FUCK are you going to measure storage in base TEN? Could you imagine if we allowed coporate marketing departments to redfine ALL our technical terms? Grade 8 bolts would suddenly have the same composition as drywall screws.... people would fucking die because us poor egineers could not keep it straight. But hey, we'd all be following standards....
I'm giving a very lowball estimate of 0.5W for the laptop CPU fans just to keep my estimates nice and low and safe. Even if you end up using the same total power consumption - I honestly don't know what that really looks like
Right. You don't really know.
First you should study the basics of the problem at hand.
What does all this mean?
Your comparison is meaningless.
The amount of cooling you're trying to accomplish given a set of size and ventilation constraints DRAMATICALLY affects your efficiency. Regardless of the true effectiveness of this device it is easy to engineer a situation where you get a very impressive power dissipation number. All you do is allow a large delta T across the cooling system and use a nice heatsink.
What you did was like comparing the MPG of two cars driven at completely unknown speeds. The faster you move air, the more work it takes to do so. Without knowing the key parameters, a worthwhile comparison is impossible. Consider, for example, the relative efficiency of a car traveling at 40 MPH vs a car traveling at 160 MPH.
Unlike your poor analogy to computer programming, law is not something you can practice in your parent's basement. Lawyers like to claim they have professional ethics.... prove it.
Yes, but why would you put those orders on official documents which are marked CLASSIFIED and subject to all the regulatory bullshit that went with it?
Because that "regulatory bullshit" means that anyone who leaks those orders goes to jail. Maybe they even get executed. You can probably even keep the trial secret too!
then presumably you trust them enough to be able to give them instructions which they are not to keep a record of
This might work for a small, closely knit group of willing participants that didn't require any money to operate and didn't need to interact with members outside that group, but even then you're taking a chance.
you don't want to leave a paper trail,
Who's to say those documents still exist when it's time for them to be declassified 20+ years later? Do you think classified information has never been "lost"?
Speaking of just TSP, you'll remember that there's a not insignificant amount of support from people in all three branches of the government for the "legality" of at least some of it.
If you simply look at the objective reality of what they did, it very obviously violates the law. Just as there was "not [an] insignificant amount of support" for Nixon, so is there for Bush. This does not make their actions any less criminal.
I suppose this is my point:
Your post included these words: If somebody in a government position is doing something illegal, they probably just won't tell anybody about it. Calling it "classified" would just draw attention to it.
I VERY strongly disagree. I believe you're making faulty assumptions here.
For one, conspirators must communicate and underlings must be ordered around and kept silent.
Additionally, the claim that classifying something draws attention is silly. Draws WHO's attenion? The gov't deliberately minimizes the dissemination of classified information. That's the entire point of calling something a secret in the first place: to limit who gets told about it.
Guy tried to install Ubuntu using all the help already given via the website
I think you need to go read that thread again. It's pretty clear that this is not the case. There are screwups such as believing that a bit-for-bit compare of a downloaded file to another copy from the same download is the same thing as verifying an MD5 sum.
This guy was a arrogant dickhead from the get go.
I tried installing Ubuntu once to precisely these same problems.
Perhaps because you're the same guy Mr. Anonymous Coward.....
However, if you want people to USE your systems and BOOT your OS you damn well better provide fucking support and you'd better be damn cheery about it or you can expect your distro to die pretty quickly if NOBODY CAN INSTALL IT PROPERLY.
Boy doesn't this tone sound familiar....
Let's see:
Sarcasm and dickishness.... check
Crazy sense of entitlement.... check
"sky is falling" comments regarding linux... check
As I said, problem is between keyboard and chair. The vast majority of us are doing just fine.
If you'd like to join us, I suggest you read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.
As someone else has already pointed out, it's simply amazing how many of these guidelines this guy violated in his post.
I hate to break it to you but no one is obligated to provide you with free tech support. If you're such a genius and everyone else is a retard then fix it yourself.
Starting out a request for a favor with: Before you make this even more frustrating for me:
Is a real dick move.
Snide remarks like: But it's my fault, really. I should never have believed all that crap about "providing access to all".
Aren't making you any friends either.
Let me make this more clear for you:
You fucked up.
You are asking someone else to help find your fuckup.
You are being a jerk about it.
People get sick of your crap.
The problem in this case is clearly between the keyboard and the chair.
I think that the idea of floating breeder reactors or a floating three mile island will hamper that switch. Even though there are military nuke ships.
So why not let the military handle it?
They have knowedge, expertise and sailors. They could easily design, build and operate a fleet of container ships. This seems like something that falls under the classifcation of a public good, much like the interstate highway system.
If somebody in a government position is doing something illegal, they probably just won't tell anybody about it.
That statement is based on the ridiculously flawed assumption that these actions involve only a single person.
If you want to do something like assasinate a foreign head of state are you going to hop a plane and try to do it yourself, or are you going to collect the right people and develop a plan?
Watergate would be a great example of how totally full of shit this statement is.
The NSA wiretapping program would be another.
The whole point of doing illegal things in government is that you have the resources of the gov't at your disposal. To take advantage of this you need to communicate with your underlings and co-conspirators. How is the NSA going to set up an illegal wiretapping program if you don't tell them to? How are they going to keep it secret without piles of secret money?
Slashdot Mirror
You just don't get it. A leader can't stop everyone from doing wrong, but it is his duty to take action when we DOES find out about it.
Your newspaper analogy would be:
The editor-in-chief of the New York Times may not be directly responsible for Jayson Blair's misreporting, but by taking no action when he does find out about it, he would be giving it implicit approval.
Your comment about handling crime within their own ranks for thousands of years suggests a very ill-informed opinion. Whether it's the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the Holocaust, the Catholic church has not shown itself to behave as you suggest.
But the Pope personally? Do you really think he has that much power? There's a culture of powerful subordinates that are going to respect him as their spiritual father but not as their boss, and I'd blame them for the misdoings of the Vatican, not Mr. Ratzinger as a person.
Why are you being such an apologist?
He's the head of the organization and he's "infallible".
What he says goes, or he can boot you from the church. Either way, this means that all these bad people are operating with his implicit approval.
Based on your logic, no leader should ever be held accountable for the actions of his subordinates, unless specifcally ordered by him. I don't see how a person with any sort of decent moral compass can subscribe to such a view. Even if he can't stop something from happening, he's still responsible for taking adequate steps to enure it doesn't happen again.
How can you not believe that a Pope lacks accountability for actions like this:
Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse
God help you if you ever have to divide anything by a number other than four. What happens when you get a 9" piece of wood and have to divide it into seven pieces? Your imperial system is useless. Maybe you're scared of decimals as well.
In that case, it works just as well as the metric system.
I don't think you get it. All you've done is to try and take a cheap shot at me for using a simple example, while your counter-example is no easier to deal with in metric units than english units.
I'm just a lowly Electrical Engineer who works in RF.
So am I.
There is no way that a working transmitter can be fitted into a mockup coin.
Sorry, but you're dead wrong here.
You'll have to have some kind of processor.
No you don't. Although some people may find it hard to believe there are tons of electronic devices that have no computers in them at all.
It's actually really easy and really simple to build a small AM transmitter. You're talking less than ten parts. This doesn't even consider more exotic possibilities such as the "Great Seal Bug".
So how does this work, again?
Money. Lots and lots of money.
Think custom battery, and construction techniques similar to a MMIC.
I think you need to understand the type of resources a gov't can put towards projects like this.
If I was to build something like this, I'd have a guy designing the battery, a guy making cases, a guy designing the antenna, and a guy doing the actual circuitry.
-The battery guy would give me the highest energy density in the smallest package he could. It would probably be some custom lithium manganese dioxidecell.
-The case guy would take pairs of coins and mill them down to half thickness, then mill out a cavity inside each one.
-The antenna guy would design something similar to a Yaego 4311-127-00500. (Digikey part 311-1230-1-ND) The size for that part is only 3.5mm x 2.7mm x 0.9mm.
-The circuitry guy would probably be fabbing a custom IC.
Months later, take all these parts, hook them toghether, glue the coin shut and hand it off.
You could probably do $4 million for a thousand bugs. I'd suggest that's easily within the price range of any first world nation.
Sure it's not something I could accomplish on the weekends with no budget, but you just needed to apply some imagination to the situation.
Huh? What stops you from counting in whatever fractions you're comfortable with? If you want to use 4 3/12 deciliters or something, just go ahead.
That's only if you don't care how hard it is to use a given unit system, in which case you've invalidated most of the arguments people make for switching everything to metric. Did you actually try doing the experiment I suggested?
If you take one meter and cut into five pieces you get five sticks of 2dm. What does cutting a one foot stick in five pieces get you?
I'll let you know just as soon as I get around to building that five-legged table....
I think you need to calm down a bit; you're sounding quite obsessive about this, to the point of being irrational.
That's a rather strange accusation. I suggest that I'm am being perfectly rational, whereas you are suggesting that using "whatever fractions you're comfortable with" is just fine, in which case, that's just what the imperial system does.
1 inch = 1/12 foot, 1 foot = 1/5280 mile
It's all fractional. If there's no problem with people using any fractions they like, then what's wrong with that?
You do realize, of course, that using metric units in no way stops you from using fractions rather than decimal whenever it is convenient?
Actually, it does because ten has less factors (1,2,5,10) than twelve (1,2,3,4,6,12) or sixteen (1,2,4,8,16).
Pretty much none of your arguments have anything to do with the units used, but with how you use them - and you can do it equally with either measurement system.
This is only true if you don't care about working easily in your head, or the number of digits you must use. If I take a stick that's 1 foot long and cut it into four pieces, I have four sticks that are 3 inches long. If I take a stick that's one meter long and cut it into four pieces, I have four sticks that are 25 centimeters long. I pick up an extra digit in the result, and I have to do 100/4 in my head instead of 12/4, which means that I have to calculate an extra digit as well. (Try doing the math longhand and counting the number of characters you must write in each case.)
There are other issues with metric, such as scaling.
The english units are derived from direct human experience. The metric units are not.
They are quantites and levels of precision that humans typically deal with in their day to day existence.
The metric units are all related to physical constants. This makes life easy for scientists, but it leads to my soda can containing 355 mL and my car tires containing 220 kPa of pressure. In order to describe day to day numbers, you wind up using improper precision. do you really think my tire guage is accurate to less than one percent?
In english units, it's simply 12 oz and 32 psi. The numbers have one less digit and give a better sense of the accuracy of the measurement.
I'm not saying one system should be scrapped in place of the other, I just think people should use what works.
The Mars Orbiter was lost not due to the imperial system, but due to sloppy work. The Orbiter would have been just as lost if they accidentally used kilometers somewhere instead of meters.
* When I say "sloppy work", it's not to put the NASA folks down. They do a phenominal job. My point is that if everything was fully specified and verified, this mistake could not happen. If it's not, then this mistake can also be made within meteric units.
My favorite story like this is a guy who got his car stolen.
He actually found witnesses, canvassed the neighborhood, followed a suspect, snuck onto their property, found his car, staked out the place and called the cops. This guy was tenacious.
You mean just like the US thinks it has power over Russian companies?
As much as I think the RIAA lawsuit against AllofMP3 is insane, let's be reasonable here.
The RIAA has not been awarded ANYTHING against AllofMP3. AFAIK, this lawsuit still has not seen the inside of a courtroom. It is possible that this lawsuit might be dismissed.
Other the other hand Google, probably has an actual business presence in Brazil, which means that Google then is clearly subject to Brazilian law. The issue seems to be that Brazilian law is fubar'ed, not that it is being applied outside of Brazil. You'll note that those of us in the US have no problem finding this video.
AllofMp3 isn't Russian...
Actually, it is. I can't help but wonder why you would claim otherwise.
But where were the servers located?
The servers are in freaking Russia, just like the rest of the company. Ever heard of traceroute?
You are making statements that are directly contradicted by the facts of the matter. Why are you doing this?
Exactly. So why the need for this 1024 shit?
Because 2^10 = 1024, not 1000.
You're already talking about units in multiples of what's "native" to the machine/software.
Which is my point. Addressing of data is done in base two, not base ten.
The switch to base ten, was a marketing tactic of the hard drive manufacturers. It is dishonest and deliberately misleading.
If you look at other things like RAM, a 1Gb RAM chip gives you 1073741824 bits (2^30).
It's that way today, and it was that way twenty years ago.
1 Kb = 1000 bits is the brainchild of sleazeball marketers.
Those arguments would make sense if bits and bytes were somehow related to the CGS system of units. They aren't.
Base two is automatically implied by using the terms "bit" or "byte".
If they want something that functions differently, they are free to invent new root words which take on different meanings with those same modifiers.
The question is:
What right does the IEC have to redefine terms that were in common use 20 years before this standard existed?
A bit is not a part of the CGS system of units. The terms were already well defined before this "standard" existed and this is nothing but a dishonest attempt to redfine the terms for the benefit of the hard drive manufacturers.
How about some fucking common sense people? Computers work in base TWO.... why the FUCK are you going to measure storage in base TEN? Could you imagine if we allowed coporate marketing departments to redfine ALL our technical terms? Grade 8 bolts would suddenly have the same composition as drywall screws.... people would fucking die because us poor egineers could not keep it straight. But hey, we'd all be following standards....
Or maybe I, too, can post unprovable, untestable anti-Microsoft conjecture to slashdot and get modded up?
Mircosoft has been convicted TWICE and has yet to face significant penalties. This is a statement of FACT.
The crazy amount of backwards compatibility is what allowed Microsoft to rise to the position it holds today...
Or maybe it was their illegal business tactics?
It would be pretty easy for me to run a successful business too if I could break federal law with impunity.
Terrorism is the worst thing our country has had to face in possibly centuries, granted
Bull-fucking-shit. Don't you think EITHER world war was just a little bit more of a threat to our country?
The lack of perspective is simply amazing.
I'm giving a very lowball estimate of 0.5W for the laptop CPU fans just to keep my estimates nice and low and safe. Even if you end up using the same total power consumption - I honestly don't know what that really looks like
Right. You don't really know.
First you should study the basics of the problem at hand.
Take a look at this plot of thermal resistance vs airflow for a typical heatssink. Note that thermal resistance does not decrease linearly with increased airflow.
Now look at the specs for some typical 92mm fans. Note that the power dissipation per volume of air pumped does not increase linearly. If you want to pump twice as much air with the same size fan, you're going to spend MORE than double the amount of energy doing it.
What does all this mean?
Your comparison is meaningless.
The amount of cooling you're trying to accomplish given a set of size and ventilation constraints DRAMATICALLY affects your efficiency. Regardless of the true effectiveness of this device it is easy to engineer a situation where you get a very impressive power dissipation number. All you do is allow a large delta T across the cooling system and use a nice heatsink.
What you did was like comparing the MPG of two cars driven at completely unknown speeds. The faster you move air, the more work it takes to do so. Without knowing the key parameters, a worthwhile comparison is impossible. Consider, for example, the relative efficiency of a car traveling at 40 MPH vs a car traveling at 160 MPH.
what exactly do you expect us to do?
DISBAR THEM
Unlike your poor analogy to computer programming, law is not something you can practice in your parent's basement. Lawyers like to claim they have professional ethics.... prove it.
Yes, but why would you put those orders on official documents which are marked CLASSIFIED and subject to all the regulatory bullshit that went with it?
Because that "regulatory bullshit" means that anyone who leaks those orders goes to jail. Maybe they even get executed. You can probably even keep the trial secret too!
then presumably you trust them enough to be able to give them instructions which they are not to keep a record of
This might work for a small, closely knit group of willing participants that didn't require any money to operate and didn't need to interact with members outside that group, but even then you're taking a chance.
you don't want to leave a paper trail,
Who's to say those documents still exist when it's time for them to be declassified 20+ years later? Do you think classified information has never been "lost"?
You'll notice it reads just as well if you assume a group instead of a single person.
Except that a group needs to communicate within itself. So yes, you can pronounce the words, but it doesn't make logical sense.
Exactly what classified material did the Watergate scandal involve?
Please read a little more on this subject. Classified information and "executive priveledge" were key issues in the Watergate debacle.
Speaking of just TSP, you'll remember that there's a not insignificant amount of support from people in all three branches of the government for the "legality" of at least some of it.
If you simply look at the objective reality of what they did, it very obviously violates the law. Just as there was "not [an] insignificant amount of support" for Nixon, so is there for Bush. This does not make their actions any less criminal.
I suppose this is my point:
Your post included these words:
If somebody in a government position is doing something illegal, they probably just won't tell anybody about it. Calling it "classified" would just draw attention to it.
I VERY strongly disagree. I believe you're making faulty assumptions here.
For one, conspirators must communicate and underlings must be ordered around and kept silent.
Additionally, the claim that classifying something draws attention is silly. Draws WHO's attenion? The gov't deliberately minimizes the dissemination of classified information. That's the entire point of calling something a secret in the first place: to limit who gets told about it.
Guy tried to install Ubuntu using all the help already given via the website
I think you need to go read that thread again. It's pretty clear that this is not the case. There are screwups such as believing that a bit-for-bit compare of a downloaded file to another copy from the same download is the same thing as verifying an MD5 sum.
This guy was a arrogant dickhead from the get go.
I tried installing Ubuntu once to precisely these same problems.
Perhaps because you're the same guy Mr. Anonymous Coward.....
However, if you want people to USE your systems and BOOT your OS you damn well better provide fucking support and you'd better be damn cheery about it or you can expect your distro to die pretty quickly if NOBODY CAN INSTALL IT PROPERLY.
Boy doesn't this tone sound familiar....
Let's see:
Sarcasm and dickishness.... check
Crazy sense of entitlement.... check
"sky is falling" comments regarding linux... check
As I said, problem is between keyboard and chair. The vast majority of us are doing just fine.
If you'd like to join us, I suggest you read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.
As someone else has already pointed out, it's simply amazing how many of these guidelines this guy violated in his post.
Why not just send a letter with instructions to keep it confidential (eg. out of a filing cabinet)?
Beacuse then they couldn't send you to jail for publishing the letter (or possibly even execute you).
And if they need money, just bump up the budget (nobody will ask too many questions about that). What's so hard here?
Prison.
I hate to break it to you but no one is obligated to provide you with free tech support. If you're such a genius and everyone else is a retard then fix it yourself.
Starting out a request for a favor with:
Before you make this even more frustrating for me:
Is a real dick move.
Snide remarks like:
But it's my fault, really. I should never have believed all that crap about "providing access to all".
Aren't making you any friends either.
Let me make this more clear for you:
The problem in this case is clearly between the keyboard and the chair.
Cause shipping costs would quadruple. The military has a long successfull safety record but their efficiency is not so good.
This is FUD. Consider the post office (which is cash flow positive) for an obvious conter-example.
Heck, even if their labor and construction costs WERE 4X higher, it might still be justified based solely on the fuel and environmental costs.
I think that the idea of floating breeder reactors or a floating three mile island will hamper that switch. Even though there are military nuke ships.
So why not let the military handle it?
They have knowedge, expertise and sailors. They could easily design, build and operate a fleet of container ships. This seems like something that falls under the classifcation of a public good, much like the interstate highway system.
If somebody in a government position is doing something illegal, they probably just won't tell anybody about it.
That statement is based on the ridiculously flawed assumption that these actions involve only a single person.
If you want to do something like assasinate a foreign head of state are you going to hop a plane and try to do it yourself, or are you going to collect the right people and develop a plan?
Watergate would be a great example of how totally full of shit this statement is.
The NSA wiretapping program would be another.
The whole point of doing illegal things in government is that you have the resources of the gov't at your disposal. To take advantage of this you need to communicate with your underlings and co-conspirators.
How is the NSA going to set up an illegal wiretapping program if you don't tell them to? How are they going to keep it secret without piles of secret money?