And remember, just because you can shoot accurately from 25 yard while calm, that doesn't mean you can do the same while pumped.
Absolutely - when the feces and the fan meet, the first thing you lose is fine motor control, but that applies to anyone with any weapon, and there are very few people with the training to overcome that. Generally, the guys you see at the airports aren't them.:-)
Hence the Founding Fathers' concern with having a standing army, and my sincere belief that the Second Amendment refers to arms in general, not just small arms.
You see, a pistol, any pistol, is a terrible weapon. It is horribly difficult to shoot accurately past a few yards. Its only salvation is with its concealability and low-weight.
In an airport, it is likely that the police would be engaging terrorists/criminals at distances that would not be in a pistol-shooter's favor. Thus, these weapons are necessary.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Most people that take the time to practice and get familiar with their weapon can shoot reasonably accurately out to about 25 yards or so. There aren't going to be many disturbances at an airport that are going to require more range and if there are, you probably want a rifle (M16, etc.) with a scope, which none of the airport guys ever seem to have. Certainly pistols require more skill to shoot with accurately, but at the ranges at which most police and self-defense actions take place, rifles tend to be more clumsy and are certainly easier to take away.
What's surprising is that after decades of development of that business model, they've never managed to improve the quality of debt they're buying, because every time I've been sent to collections it's due to paperwork fuckups. The collectors losing money on my ability to clear those up without paying a nickel should be the ones beating up the service companies to improve the precision of their internal management processes.
They don't care about that because they're probably buying the debt for 40 cents on the dollar, and for every debt they can't collect on, there's ten that they can. They just factor it in as a cost of doing business. There's also the non-trivial fact that most people don't know their rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, nor do they know the restrictions placed on creditors under said law. The collection agencies use that to their advantage every chance they get.
Actually, I was talking about if it was a third-party collection agency which might have purchased the debt. The often will buy the debts but don't get the supporting documentation which they'd need to verify it.
I predict that regardless of whether the confirmation arrives, I'll receive another collections notice, and there's a 50-50 chance that the delays will result in this being reported to a credit bureau.
They can't report it while the charge is being disputed/investigated, and until they provide proof that you owe the debt *provided you demand verification of said debt within 30 days*. If they report it anyway, see a lawyer.
I'm running MythTV 0.15 with the new Zap2It code - *much* better than the old tv_grab_na way of doing things. I really wouldn't have too much of a problem if Zap2It decided to charge a *reasonable* monthly fee, on the order of $5.00 or so per month. It still beats having a unit that phones home with all your viewing habits - I find it ludicrous that TiVo expects people to pay a monthly fee for listings while the company gets free viewing data back which is substantially more valuable.
I also find it incredibly handy to run a Myth front-end on other machines so as to be able to watch TV/recordings where I don't have cable drops or another TV.
On the third plane, once people found out what was going on, we see that the passengers were able to resist and thwart the terrorists plans. Yes, it cost them their lives, but we see that hijackers cannot just take over a plane and do their will, when the passengers know the score.
Everyone keeps forgetting about Flight 77, the plane that went into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, Flight 93, was the one that crashed before reaching its destination, and would likely have made it had it not been delayed for 40+ minutes prior to takeoff.
I think you're referring to alerons and rudder...flaps increase the lifting surface (for some types of flaps) and slow the aircraft down.
Except the B-52 doesn't have ailerons - it uses the spoilers on the tops of the wings to drop one wing or the other when needed (for coordinated turns, etc.) The original poster's comment concerning how they crab the B-52 into crosswinds during landing is right on though - it's weird as hell watching one land with the fuselage noticeably not parallel to the runway until well after it's on the ground.
And the argument, "it's for the people's safety" rings pretty damn hollow, as many U.S. courts have ruled time and again that the police have NO duty to protect anyone.
Let's not forget that FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi not only didn't go to jail, but got federal protection after he shot and killed Vicki Weaver as she held her infant daughter in her arms, even after the state of Idaho tried to prosecute him. At best, he was an incompetent shooter that should have been liable for civil charges. At worst, he was a murderer. In no way is he accountable to the people of the United States.
Japan also has ETC (Electronic Toll Charge - I think). Rather cool stuff that allows you to zoom through the ETC toll lane at about 20 - 30 Kph. The fare is automatically deducted from your account.
Florida does the same with with their E-pass system, which uses RF to read the transponder in a subscriber's car. In a few places, they have it set up such that two lanes are designated for E-pass only with antennas mounted above the highway. Works just fine with cars going 80 mph underneath. I'm just waiting for them to start using the transponder logs to issue speeding tickets - "you went through these two toll facilities ten minutes apart, when the fastest you can do that at the speed limit is 11.5 minutes."
Interesting, because by that reasoning every CD player that buffers any appreciable amount of data (for anti-skip functionality, for instance) is in violation of the law even when playing a fresh-out-of-the-shrinkwrap CD, isn't it? [shrug]
The first Star Destroyer model (Devastator) was about three feet in length. The second one (Avenger) built for "Empire" was about eight feet and *much* more detailed, and the Super Star Destroyer (Executor) for the same movie was about ten feet. Some really good photos of the Avenger studio model are available here, and show the sheer amount of effort that ILM put into building these behemoths. Of course, there are lots of other photos of all the studio models available elsewhere online.
Actually, the Xbox issues were because the drive optics in many of the the early Thomson-equipped units were not assembled/mounted properly, which led to the inability to read some DVDs - my Thomson-equipped Xbox positively would not run Crimson Skies until I cajoled MS into replacing the drive. With the shiny new Samsung drive, the machine now runs CS flawlessly, and as you mentioned, can now read CD-Rs as well.
Microsoft still refuses to to even acknowledge this problem, and there is at least one class-action suit underway that addresses this.
In the interest in making this post at least slightly on-topic, I'd like to say that my original 5GB iPod that I bought two weeks after the product was released still runs like a champ, with no battery life, static, or other issues to speak of. I've probably just jinxed myself by saying that....:-)
I find Ethereal to be most handy in that very situation (debugging network code), unless I'm working on something with Windows - it annoys the hell out of me that Windows processes its loopback traffic in such a way that a sniffer can't see it.
Because the crime does not involve actual physical property there can be no stealing/theft.
There are a lot of people that have been convicted of theft of services that might disagree with you. What we're talking about is at the very least theft of services, and more properly fraud on several different levels - not only are the employees being cheated out of the compensation that's rightfully theirs, but the government is also losing out on tax revenue that it would otherwise receive.
was talking about the UK. There is no "or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony" clause here and rightly so. IMHO human life is more important than ANY property right and so using potentially lethal force to protect property only is morally wrong.
To each their own. I respect your beliefs, but I will also respectfully disagree. Generally, it's not a good idea to shoot at someone attempting to flee here in the U.S. either, and the Florida statute shouldn't be construed as condoning that unless you're a law enforcement officer. Having said that, if I find an intruder in my home at 4 in the morning, I'm not really in a position to question his motives. I'd prefer not to shoot him if I can help it, but if I get even a hint that he's armed, all bets are off.
You probably don't want the C for self-defense - the compensated models are great for matches, but tend to blind you pretty badly for a while in dark environments.:-)
People shoot center of mass not because it's deadly, but because it's likely to stop the person
And also because it's a much larger target, and thus much easier to hit - any hit is better than a miss in those circumstances. Once the adrenaline starts, the fine motor skills go to hell, so you can't really count on being as precise as you'd like.
You make a good point, and one that most people seem to overlook a lot - the idea is not to kill, but to incapacitate. A lot of people will stop whatever it is they're doing upon the first hit regardless of the actual injury inflicted, simply to avoid being shot again. Psychological incapacitation is just as valid as physical incapacitation, since the idea is to get them to stop whatever they're doing *now*. Often the simple act of having a firearm drawn on them is enough to accomplish this, though it would be foolish to rely on it.
Man taps your car's window with a 9mm.
Being clever you pull out your bigger handgun to tap it on the window.
Carjacker shoots you in the head and you die.
More likely hypothetical story:
Man taps my car's window with a 9mm.
Man lies on street with a gaping.45 wound to the head - if someone taps on the window with a gun like that, I consider it an immediate threat to my life and will respond by shooting him without warning. I would much prefer to be able to get out of the situation without violence, but I'm not going to give him the chance to hurt me if I can avoid it.
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And remember, just because you can shoot accurately from 25 yard while calm, that doesn't mean you can do the same while pumped.
:-)
Absolutely - when the feces and the fan meet, the first thing you lose is fine motor control, but that applies to anyone with any weapon, and there are very few people with the training to overcome that. Generally, the guys you see at the airports aren't them.
Hence the Founding Fathers' concern with having a standing army, and my sincere belief that the Second Amendment refers to arms in general, not just small arms.
You see, a pistol, any pistol, is a terrible weapon. It is horribly difficult to shoot accurately past a few yards. Its only salvation is with its concealability and low-weight.
In an airport, it is likely that the police would be engaging terrorists/criminals at distances that would not be in a pistol-shooter's favor. Thus, these weapons are necessary.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Most people that take the time to practice and get familiar with their weapon can shoot reasonably accurately out to about 25 yards or so. There aren't going to be many disturbances at an airport that are going to require more range and if there are, you probably want a rifle (M16, etc.) with a scope, which none of the airport guys ever seem to have. Certainly pistols require more skill to shoot with accurately, but at the ranges at which most police and self-defense actions take place, rifles tend to be more clumsy and are certainly easier to take away.
What's surprising is that after decades of development of that business model, they've never managed to improve the quality of debt they're buying, because every time I've been sent to collections it's due to paperwork fuckups. The collectors losing money on my ability to clear those up without paying a nickel should be the ones beating up the service companies to improve the precision of their internal management processes.
They don't care about that because they're probably buying the debt for 40 cents on the dollar, and for every debt they can't collect on, there's ten that they can. They just factor it in as a cost of doing business. There's also the non-trivial fact that most people don't know their rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, nor do they know the restrictions placed on creditors under said law. The collection agencies use that to their advantage every chance they get.
Actually, I was talking about if it was a third-party collection agency which might have purchased the debt. The often will buy the debts but don't get the supporting documentation which they'd need to verify it.
I predict that regardless of whether the confirmation arrives, I'll receive another collections notice, and there's a 50-50 chance that the delays will result in this being reported to a credit bureau.
They can't report it while the charge is being disputed/investigated, and until they provide proof that you owe the debt *provided you demand verification of said debt within 30 days*. If they report it anyway, see a lawyer.
I'm running MythTV 0.15 with the new Zap2It code - *much* better than the old tv_grab_na way of doing things. I really wouldn't have too much of a problem if Zap2It decided to charge a *reasonable* monthly fee, on the order of $5.00 or so per month. It still beats having a unit that phones home with all your viewing habits - I find it ludicrous that TiVo expects people to pay a monthly fee for listings while the company gets free viewing data back which is substantially more valuable.
I also find it incredibly handy to run a Myth front-end on other machines so as to be able to watch TV/recordings where I don't have cable drops or another TV.
On the third plane, once people found out what was going on, we see that the passengers were able to resist and thwart the terrorists plans. Yes, it cost them their lives, but we see that hijackers cannot just take over a plane and do their will, when the passengers know the score.
Everyone keeps forgetting about Flight 77, the plane that went into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, Flight 93, was the one that crashed before reaching its destination, and would likely have made it had it not been delayed for 40+ minutes prior to takeoff.
I think you're referring to alerons and rudder...flaps increase the lifting surface (for some types of flaps) and slow the aircraft down.
Except the B-52 doesn't have ailerons - it uses the spoilers on the tops of the wings to drop one wing or the other when needed (for coordinated turns, etc.) The original poster's comment concerning how they crab the B-52 into crosswinds during landing is right on though - it's weird as hell watching one land with the fuselage noticeably not parallel to the runway until well after it's on the ground.
And the argument, "it's for the people's safety" rings pretty damn hollow, as many U.S. courts have ruled time and again that the police have NO duty to protect anyone.
Let's not forget that FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi not only didn't go to jail, but got federal protection after he shot and killed Vicki Weaver as she held her infant daughter in her arms, even after the state of Idaho tried to prosecute him. At best, he was an incompetent shooter that should have been liable for civil charges. At worst, he was a murderer. In no way is he accountable to the people of the United States.
Japan also has ETC (Electronic Toll Charge - I think). Rather cool stuff that allows you to zoom through the ETC toll lane at about 20 - 30 Kph. The fare is automatically deducted from your account.
Florida does the same with with their E-pass system, which uses RF to read the transponder in a subscriber's car. In a few places, they have it set up such that two lanes are designated for E-pass only with antennas mounted above the highway. Works just fine with cars going 80 mph underneath. I'm just waiting for them to start using the transponder logs to issue speeding tickets - "you went through these two toll facilities ten minutes apart, when the fastest you can do that at the speed limit is 11.5 minutes."
Interesting, because by that reasoning every CD player that buffers any appreciable amount of data (for anti-skip functionality, for instance) is in violation of the law even when playing a fresh-out-of-the-shrinkwrap CD, isn't it? [shrug]
The first Star Destroyer model (Devastator) was about three feet in length. The second one (Avenger) built for "Empire" was about eight feet and *much* more detailed, and the Super Star Destroyer (Executor) for the same movie was about ten feet. Some really good photos of the Avenger studio model are available here, and show the sheer amount of effort that ILM put into building these behemoths. Of course, there are lots of other photos of all the studio models available elsewhere online.
Gads, I gotta get a life....
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. I guess Nigel Tufnel sketched it out on a napkin for him. :-)
One Representive it all it takes to filibuster the House, which is almost as effective as a presidential veto.
Um, filibusters are unique to the Senate.
So *you're* the other one!
Actually it was Michael Palin in the original televised sketch. Graham Chapman himself is pining for the fjords now.
Actually, the Xbox issues were because the drive optics in many of the the early Thomson-equipped units were not assembled/mounted properly, which led to the inability to read some DVDs - my Thomson-equipped Xbox positively would not run Crimson Skies until I cajoled MS into replacing the drive. With the shiny new Samsung drive, the machine now runs CS flawlessly, and as you mentioned, can now read CD-Rs as well.
:-)
Microsoft still refuses to to even acknowledge this problem, and there is at least one class-action suit underway that addresses this.
In the interest in making this post at least slightly on-topic, I'd like to say that my original 5GB iPod that I bought two weeks after the product was released still runs like a champ, with no battery life, static, or other issues to speak of. I've probably just jinxed myself by saying that....
I find Ethereal to be most handy in that very situation (debugging network code), unless I'm working on something with Windows - it annoys the hell out of me that Windows processes its loopback traffic in such a way that a sniffer can't see it.
Because the crime does not involve actual physical property there can be no stealing/theft.
There are a lot of people that have been convicted of theft of services that might disagree with you. What we're talking about is at the very least theft of services, and more properly fraud on several different levels - not only are the employees being cheated out of the compensation that's rightfully theirs, but the government is also losing out on tax revenue that it would otherwise receive.
was talking about the UK. There is no "or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony" clause here and rightly so. IMHO human life is more important than ANY property right and so using potentially lethal force to protect property only is morally wrong.
To each their own. I respect your beliefs, but I will also respectfully disagree. Generally, it's not a good idea to shoot at someone attempting to flee here in the U.S. either, and the Florida statute shouldn't be construed as condoning that unless you're a law enforcement officer. Having said that, if I find an intruder in my home at 4 in the morning, I'm not really in a position to question his motives. I'd prefer not to shoot him if I can help it, but if I get even a hint that he's armed, all bets are off.
You probably don't want the C for self-defense - the compensated models are great for matches, but tend to blind you pretty badly for a while in dark environments. :-)
People shoot center of mass not because it's deadly, but because it's likely to stop the person
And also because it's a much larger target, and thus much easier to hit - any hit is better than a miss in those circumstances. Once the adrenaline starts, the fine motor skills go to hell, so you can't really count on being as precise as you'd like.
You make a good point, and one that most people seem to overlook a lot - the idea is not to kill, but to incapacitate. A lot of people will stop whatever it is they're doing upon the first hit regardless of the actual injury inflicted, simply to avoid being shot again. Psychological incapacitation is just as valid as physical incapacitation, since the idea is to get them to stop whatever they're doing *now*. Often the simple act of having a firearm drawn on them is enough to accomplish this, though it would be foolish to rely on it.
I'm not inclined to let your lack of imagination limit my self-defense options
[applause]
Hypothetical story not told:
.45 wound to the head - if someone taps on the window with a gun like that, I consider it an immediate threat to my life and will respond by shooting him without warning. I would much prefer to be able to get out of the situation without violence, but I'm not going to give him the chance to hurt me if I can avoid it.
Man taps your car's window with a 9mm. Being clever you pull out your bigger handgun to tap it on the window. Carjacker shoots you in the head and you die.
More likely hypothetical story:
Man taps my car's window with a 9mm. Man lies on street with a gaping