If you're going to make a game set in WW2, you model real WW2 weapons.
If your game is set anywhere from 1990 to 2050, and you're trying to model real-world combat situations (with varying degrees of accuracy), then you'll have to model real world firearms. Due to the durability of firearms and the essentially mature technology, you could expect current technology and models to be used for decades. Consider the 1911 pistol for example: that's not a just a model number, that's the year it was introduced. It's also the most common handgun used by serious competitors today.
Savvy gamers today just aren't going to buy it if their High Intensity Combat Operative character in the game is deploying with Generic Intermediate Caliber Select Fire Rifle firing the combat tested 5.44x40mm Solid Lead to Ashcanistan to fight the nefarious Ethnically and Ideologically Unidentifiable Terrorist Organization. They want their DEVGRU to drop out of a Lockheed C-130J into Timbuktu carrying a Colt M-4 Carbine with a Trijicon ACOG on top so they can put a 5.56mm NATO round into the tuches of a Al Qaeda splinter group that's trying to destroy a UN World Heritage site. (Licensing fees paid for all those trademarks.)
If you want to make stuff up, you've got to set your story a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, or some other equivalent narrative technique to put distance between what the player knows and the game-world contains. You can fake medieval weapons. You can't fake modern fire-arms in present-day settings.
No, this is the state of play even before we start talking about lobbyists.
The regulations accumulated like that as the result of some grievously bad deal that happened a long time ago on a project you've never heard of. Because of this forgotten screw-up, Congress passed laws to require oversight and record keeping for this, that or the other detail.
Also, when Congress appropriates money in the budget, they allocate the money for certain purposes. In government, they call that "colors of money". Certain colors can pay for R&D, certain colors for initial purchases, other colors for maintenance, things like that. This can guide certain government decisions, such as whether to pay for more R&D now to have lower initial procurement costs, or buy cheaper components in initial procurement and plan for higher maintenance costs, etc. Using funds for purposes not consistent with the appropriated purpose is a crime.
Let's use my cheeseburger example. If you want one, you determine what kind of money you have and what quality you want, and some qualities may be out of your price range. You then go to McDonalds, or Red Robin, or Rainforest Cafe, whatever, and you pay your money and you get a (restaurant name) cheeseburger. Let's say they advertise a double quarter pounder, medium rare with Tillamook medium cheddar cheese with pickles, onions, tomatoes on a sesame seed bun, and you want all that.
Now, let's say the government wants the same cheeseburger, only they're going to buy 10,000 of them. As a result of the FAR, the following certifications must be established before delivery and acceptance by the Decision Authority:
- Weight of each hamburger patty must be +/- 5% of the Critical Performance Metric of 0.25 lbs. Continuous sampling, measurement and reporting must be done to maintain quality/quantity standards to the governments specifications (The restaurant/manufacturer's own QA process is done separately and in parallel, but has no bearing on the government's metrics.), reported monthly - The cooking process must be certified to achieve a 95% outcome of Medium Rare (see appendix A for definition). Sampling, measuring and reporting to be provided monthly. - Quality of other ingredients are also to be sampled, measured and reported, monthly. - The economic health of the providers of cheese, tomato, onion, ground beef, buns, etc must be assessed for economic viability, and a multi-source procurement process must be implemented for any critical material to ensure the supply of all components even in the event of a supplier going out of business. If a component can only be procured from one source (possibly for proprietary reasons), the liability of the manufacturing line must be assessed and if necessary, the government will buy the whole plant to assure the production of the material even if no one else on the market wants that product any more.
Without considering corruption, wastage, inefficiency, lobbying, political favors, etc, this is how you make a $200 hamburger. All by the regulations.
It's a military, construction, health, fill-in-the-government-blank, problem.
General Dynamics, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton, etc provide a critical service: they understand government regulation. If you've ever seen a printed out copy of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, you'd be surprised that gravitational collapse isn't happening.
For most businesses, it's not worth taking a government contract until they're asking you to provide a COTS solution, where you know what you're selling, and the government pays you, and that's the end of it. The government is getting exactly what the commercial market gets. Firm Fixed Price contract, no surprises.
As soon as the government wants it customized in any way, and they're willing to pay you to customize it, that rabbit hole goes all the way down. Every stipulation of the contract must be assessed for compliance, and every assessment requires some kind of test, and every test has a schedule towards passage of the test, and every last one of these things costs time and resources, which means money, which the government is going to pay you, because the government wants its double cheeseburger in a way that no-one else wants it.
If you're an action oriented kind of entrepreneur, this will drive you insane. So you don't do it yourself. You go in as a subcontractor to one of the big Gov-BS-Handlers. You do the work, they firewall you from the BS, 50% for you, 250% for them (after change orders and spec changes and reviews and program management overhead) and everyone is happy with the $500 hammer (non-sparking, minimal toxic release, aircraft rated, 8 pound, loading bracket hinge, for the hitting of, one count)
On November 3rd, 2004, one could predict that there would be change happening on January 20th, 2009. One could predict that the 44th president of the United States of America would be inaugurated.
It is now the responsibility of the 44th President to ensure that there will be an orderly transition of power to the 45th President. It is also his responsibility to ensure that there will be an orderly transition to the 100th President, and the 200th President, and so on.
I recommend using a data class rather than setting a global variable.
Data classes are compiled at configuration load and are static, whereas setting the global variable with each firing of the event absorbs a small amount of processing time to reset the variable. Setting global variables can also move TMM into a slower processing regime. As the HTTP_REQUEST event is very 'inner loop', it is best to optimize it as much as possible.
If you absolutely have to set a global variable with a semi-fixed value, I recommend doing it during the RULE_INIT event.
(As of July 1st, F5 is offering expanded iRule support to Premium and Premium Plus support contract holders. Call in with your troublesome iRules, and you have a somewhat decent chance of ending up with me at the other end of the phone.)
They're going to wonder at the legions of people in various modes of dress, from lawyers to pimply-faced geeks to Vin Diesel, that will stop by and pour out a tube of dice on his grave.
And then they'll realize they have to have someone go out and clear up the piles before they can mow. A lawnmower hitting Gygax's grave will cause a 30' radius spray of polyhedrons, doing from 1d6 to 3d6 damage depending on the horsepower of the mower.
Oddly enough, the AA sniper school lessons on being aware of your breathing when trying to make a long range shot actually helped me be aware of the importance of my breathing when I was on the 100 yard range with my M-14. I managed a 1.5 MOA grouping when I did that, as opposed to my neophyte 3 MOA grouping otherwise.
There are a few reasons why this weapon is not illegal.
ONE. It is primarily used as an anti-materiel weapon. You don't get many shots out of a COIL, so you don't waste them on individual infantry. So it's not illegal in the same way that an anti-tank gun isn't illegal.
TWO. Assuming the weapon is used against a human target, you're not being "burned alive". The focussed energy would burn a relatively small hole into the target, so the demise of the target would be either due to the hole interfering with the operation of vital organs, or the target slightly exploding due to vaporized tissue expanding in an enclosed space. Either way, this happens in a second or less. For an analogy: slowly hammering a lump of lead into a combatant's heart, illegal. Firing a high speed lump of lead into a combatant's heart, legal.
THREE, you use the word "legal", for which I must refer to a dictionary... ah, yes, "of or pertaining to law". So, we must refer to the established law or treaty on the matter. The 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons only forbids the use of lasers with an intended effect of blinding the target. If you're using the laser to kill or destroy, it is not forbidden. My search of Wikipedia for other applicable laws doesn't turn up anything else applicable... you can't stretch the 1899 Hague Convention on the prohibition of deforming or expanding bullets far enough to cover the destructive use of lasers.
How about taxing political campaigns for their contributions?
It's growth industry: every year the amount send on political campaigns grows.
I propose a 25% tax on political contributions per criteria met:
The contributor is not verified as being resident to the district of the vote (applies to out-of-area contributors)
The contributor is not verified as being eligible to vote at all (applies to corporations, non-citizens, PACs)
On that portion of the contribution above $2000 (or whatever used to be the maximum limit before the cap was lifted to permit more taxable revenue. This includes the limit on the amount a candidate can donate to his/her own campaign)
So, untaxed is those contributions from individual voters within the voting district under the contribution cap. Good for everyone, all around!
So I'd say they'd fare pretty well against shoulder-fired missiles.
Besides, the whole reason behind the Predator drones in the first place was to put a loitering recon asset in the sky that does not put a person at risk of their life. It was also cheap enough that it was economically not worth it to try to deploy the kind of SAM it would take to kill it. Militarily, you couldn't afford not to shoot it down, because the Predator would be followed by a fast-mover with the precision weapons. So, make your choice: shoot them down and go broke, or don't shoot them down and risk a JDAM through your window.
The Reaper just takes that technology and makes it fly higher, harder to hit, and it carries its own precision weapons. At that altitude, the cost of the SAM system necessary, plus radar, transporter, ground crew, and maintenance infrastructure, is going to approach the price of the drone plus munitions.
Maybe there should be a treaty to reduce older, high pollution aircraft from long distance flights.
Older planes, especially old turbojet airliners like the 707, have particularly loud and inefficient engines. Some can be re-engined with high-bypass turbofans for much quieter operation, much like the way the KC-135E (a 707 military air tanker modification) was up-engined to be the KC-135R, which is OK if you have good pilots that won't scrape the larger engine nacelles on a rough landing.
Of course, the airlines operating 707s and similar aircraft these days are the third world airlines, who got those airplanes for low, low prices after they'd exceeded 80%+ of their airframe lifespan. They probably don't maintain them that well, either, which increases the pollution. And if we restrict them to shorter hops, they'll never get into their most efficient flight regime...
But, hey, we get to use environmental regulation to screw over the third world, or we can exempt them from the regulations and gain nothing as they fly their air-jalopies all over the world. Yay!
And yes, I do have a degree in meteorology. My understanding is that global climate change is coming, whether or not it is caused by human activity, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can realistically be done to stop it. It's best to treat it as if it were a natural change and change with it. Besides, if a (worse case scenario according to IPCC) 20" increase in global sea level happens (over, what, 50 years), and you get caught by that, it will be like being passed by a slug. I will laugh uproariously at you as you stand in the rising water that you watched coming for forty five years and fret, oh, what am I going to do now? MOVE OR GET YOUR HOUSE LIFTED. Even tribal aboriginals will have that figured out without having to be told!
I agree. Not that we can't stop people from banding together in groups, but we would be better off as a nation to have 300 parties, of which any one person could belong to many at one time, than two or three monoliths.
So, parties happen. But we can reduce their affect on the political process.
First, remove all political party designations from all ballots and titles. If you're up for election in office, you are the representative for your district, not the representative of the Democrats/Republicans in your district.
Second, all political financial contributions must come from a voter. If you're under 18, not a citizen, not qualified to vote, a corporation or other legal fiction, it is election fraud to accept a financial contribution from them. Similarly, no more PACs. If you want to fund an ad for/against a candidate or position, or other activity of a political nature on the behalf of a third party, you fund it as an individual citizen or group of citizens, and you're responsible for the content thereof with no liability limitation. (If the statement is endorsed by the candidate, it is a contribution.)
Third, all political contributions from a qualified person (see above) that is not eligible to actually vote for that position or office will be taxed at the rate of 50%, with the funds supporting the elections auditor office.
Fourth, make it a felony to use taxpayer funds in any way to support a political campaign. You don't have to necessarily send them to jail, nor fine them to any substantial way, but this will disqualify them from holding public office.
Fifth, entrenched politicians tend to be vulnerable to promises of support from those with powerful interests, to the detriment of the country as a whole. Therefore, all senators or representatives to legislative bodies, at any level, are barred from public office for a period equal to the term of their current office. Go get a real job for a while. You can be the on-off representative of a district if you were so good the last time that the district remembers it two, four, six years later. This will also discourage "politician" as a profession.
Lastly, political party labels shall be trademarked. If you want to be labeled as a Democrat(tm), you better meet the standards of being a Democrat(tm), or they can withdraw your license to use that mark. Alternatively, if you as a political party will take anyone under your banner, as long as they can win an election, your political party label will mean little to nothing. A politician can simultaneously claim to be Republican(tm), Democrat(tm), Libertarian(tm) and Labour(tm) if he meets their criteria. He can also be Pro-Gun-Rights(tm), Anti-Death-Penalty(tm), Green(tm), Disestablishmentarian(tm), Pro-Moon-Colony-Independence(tm) and Slashdot Party(tm).
1) Develop high efficiency, long life solar cells 2) Figure out how to process lunar resources with robotic factories to make said cells 3) Plate the entire far size of the moon 4) Transmit the energy back to earth with a few lunar horizon transmitting stations with atmosphere and cloud penetrating lasers/masers/whatever 5) PROFIT 6) Reserve fossil fuels for high-energy-density required transportation needs, not short distance ground transport or general power production 7) PROFIT plus ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS 8) Colonize the moon with the residual infrastructure from the power grid 9) PROFIT plus ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS plus OFF-PLANET HUMAN SUSTAINABILITY 10) Use short lunar gravity well to build interplanetary transport, colonize Mars 11) PROFIT plus ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS plus FULLY REDUNDANT HUMAN SUSTAINABILITY 12) ??? 13) A fully armed and operational battlestation
You seem to be employing a form of primitive animist belief: that an inanimate object will someone affect your future behavior.
It is NOT just as likely that a gun-carrying student will flip out as use a gun in their own defense. Good estimates are that there are about 2 million legitimate defensive uses of firearms per year, most of which do not involve the weapon being fired. If your assertion was even 10% correct, there would be 200,000 illegitimate homicide shootings per year. In fact, in 2005, the number unjustifiably killed by firearms was 14,860, most of which was committed by those already barred from firearm ownership. If we assume that every one of those was a otherwise peaceable person that "flipped", you would be about 0.7% to 1.8% right, at best.
It is significantly likely that a criminal person, who may not legally possess a gun, but has come into possession of one, will "flip out", i.e. commit a crime, as soon as use it in their own defense.
As to your argument that "just because you're licensed to carry a gun does not make you mentally stable forever" is interesting, and it says more about you than it does anyone else. Do you think this of other people because you are concerned that if you had that kind of capability in your hands, you would be likely to flip out? Do you think everyone else has a inner seething cauldron of rage because you, in fact, have an internal rage? Psychologists call this projection.
Lastly, the people committing this kind of crime are rational, although they are rational in an abominable way. Having decided that he must kill someone, and being unwilling to face the death penalty in Virginia, the killer was instantly freed of all possible consequences of his actions by intending a suicide to follow his murder. And if you're going to do one, why not get all the people that pissed him off? Where should you do it? Somewhere his victims must go, be corralled in one place, and they cannot possess the means to stop him. The university is the perfect, rational place to commit an abomination, as would any victim disarmament zone, otherwise laughingly known as a gun free-zone.
In short, your facts are weak, your arguments unsupportable, you espouse a primitive belief system, and the policies you support make the problem worse. Bring a better game. And I agree, you should not possess weapons, but your choices should have no bearing on anyone else.
You have convinced me that you should not carry a lethal weapon. I will not try to convince you otherwise.
You have not convinced me, nor swayed me in any way, that your choice should have any bearing on any one else's choices in how to exercise their fundamental human right of self defense.
We're calling for school campuses to stop being one of the last places in the country where someone determined to cause mayhem is guaranteed to find a completely defenseless population of targets.
If administrators, teachers and students over 21, provided they are not federally prohibited persons (refer to section 12 of the link), could have guns for the defense of themselves and those under their authority, the mayhem-seekers would go where the target population is easier, like a federal building. The possibility that one out of twenty students could be legally packing, and he can't tell which one, is what will deter him/her.
I don't need a lethal weapon to feel safe. I need the lethal weapon for that one in a ten thousand situation when nothing but a lethal weapon is suitable. I know CPR is case someone has a heart attack and the EMTs are ten minutes away. I know first aid in case someone cuts themselves badly and the EMTs are still ten minutes away. I know how to use a fire extinguisher because the firemen are STILL ten minutes away. Why in the name off all that is reasonable must I wait fifteen to thirty minutes for armed men (i.e. police) to show up, assuming that they're not too busy, to deal with the maniac that is interested in causing me potentially lethal harm? Why should your daughter have to wait even five minutes for the cops while a 220-lb rapist does what his superior strength will allow? Everyone is their own first responder. If you can't comprehend that, please make sure that you only have a heart attack, catch on fire, or get beaten with a stick in the presence of a government servant of the correct type.
TAX AVOIDANCE is a patriotic thing to do. It does no good to give the government money in excess of what it needs to do its job, and what it has been lawfully authorized to collect.
TAX EVASION is illegal. That's what they got Al Capone on when then couldn't nail him for any other crimes.
Move copyright infringement from a civil case to a criminal case, in all cases. Make it a gross misdemeanor with a jail term of, oh, six to twelve months.
Suddenly, it will be top priority of legislators and prosecutors NOT to prosecute. Just like, magically, the law against possession of a controlled substance, i.e. Mary Jo Wanna, became an unenforceable law because no cop is allowed to search for it and prosecutors won't prosecute it even if you are arrested. Legislators will suddenly see the projected budget line-item for prison space skyrocket to accomodate all the non-violent offenders.
Best of all, the accuser has to prove his case to criminal court standards. If you're found not-guilty, the civil case is pretty well hobbled, yes?
Additionally, if there ever is another draft, a copyright infringement charge will certainly get to sent to the Group W bench. Then you sing a few bars of Alice's Restaurant, which you conveniently got via a Bittorrent download, and tell the induction sergeant that they have a lot of damn gall to ask if you are rehabilitated from your special crime of copyright infringement. Be sure to Cause A Nuisance, as well, or all the father-rapers and mother-stabbers on the Group W bench will give you the cold shoulder.
At the WSIS Summit...
Certain EU Commissioner: "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here. According to our best research, the internet is five days away from total collapse."
Gasps from the assembled bureaucrats, politicians and appointed functionaries.
Certain US Senator: "It's true! Just a few days ago, three to be precise, it was eight days away from collapse."
Muttering amongst the massed bloviators. The geek running the projector shakes his head.
Certain US Senator: "And do you know why that is?"
Blank stares.
Certain US Senator: "Because it took three days for our last delegate to arrive. Glad you could make it, Manuel. How's Fidel these days?"
Diplomatic chuckles all around
Certain EU Commissioner: "Right, then, to the business at hand. If we can make a resolution within three days, we can distribute it to the press on the fourth, and by the end of the fifth day, the Internet will have collapsed."
Applause.
Certain EU Commissioner: "We can do it, but only if we do our best! We have to work fast, we have to work together, and most of all, we need to craft a resolution that is completely impossible to be technically implemented. Every mandatory provision must be mutually exclusive with at least two other mandatory provisions! However, each provision by itself must seem reasonable and justifiable."
Certain US Senator: "If you're having trouble, just say it's all for the children. But only as a last resort."
Certain EU Commissioner: "If we do our best, the Internet is done for by the weekend. If we don't, it could continue running for weeks. Weeks! Now, just to check... who here knows anything about... domain names? Nobody? Excellent!"
If a person is convicted of this crime, even if he gets no jail time (or just probabtion), he is still a convicted felon.
That means no government security clearances, no ownership of a firearm, no interstate travel without the permission of the parole officer (while on parole), many employers won't hire you, and no voting. Those are permanent restictions for live, barring a successful petition to restore rights.
As heinous as the crime is *cough debatable cough*, it is still fundamentally a matter of interfering with someone's commercial interests. I think there should be all sorts of civil liability payable to the wronged party, but (nearly) irrevocable loss of civil rights? No!
As opposed to what happened back then, which was to build a space program out of the weapons technology developed during the twenty (or so) years previous. Assisted, in the brightest display of international friendship, by the former German V-weapon scientists and engineers. Further facilitiated by the computer technology originally developed to break enemy codes. All that for national pride, and an opportunity to one-up the Soviets.
Yup, nuthin' good ever came of better weapon system.
This celebrity endorsement has some plusses and minuses, according to what it would say about the product.
Plus Side:
Will interface with anything!
Has multiple interface options!
Apparently, interfacing can happen wirelessly.
Using it is an easy way to get nation-wide publicity.
Minus side:
[Editor - Promiscuous mode joke already made]
Doesn't seem to make best use of available resources, such as CPU.
Poorly configured: always runs in root mode. Australian root mode.
Goes down all the time.
High maintainence, and only runs best on the latest and greatest and most expensive SGIs. Otherwise, the sulk process eats up 64% of available CPU and writes constantly to STDERR about how Component X, whose price is expressed in exponential notation, would work so much better than the proletarian thing it currently has to deal with.
After interfacing once or twice, most devices won't interface again.
PLUS SIDE: The devices do produce verbose error messages to STDERR to explain why.
MINUS SIDE: The error messages are also sent to STDOUT, SYSLOG, system terminal,/dev/null,/dev/rand, wall, every entry in aliases, and even slipped into STDINs of other programs.
What do you do when the government breaks its own laws?
The US Constitution specifies some things that the federal government shall do and specifies particular procedures for doing those. Much of the rest of the Constitution is a list of things the federal government cannot do.
This stands to reason. If there is no limit to what the federal government can do, or no limit to what can be accomplished with a majority vote, why bother to have a constitution? Without the long list of limits, you could have written it on a 18th century Post-It note: "We the people of the United States of America empower the government to do whatever a majority of our elected representatives vote for and the elected president signs. The supreme judiciary shall verify that whatever is done is done according the letter of the laws we pass." This, of course, is a recipe for an elected tyrany.
So, no, it is not possible for something under the Patriot act, or any other law, to make legal a government activity that would otherwise be forbidden by the Constitution. If any offending part of the Patriot act is used to bring someone to court, it will immediately be struck down.
This does not, however, prevent Patriot act powers to be used to pursue someone, then find other offenses under other laws (tax evasion, for example, Mr Capone?) to charge them with, thus shielding the Patriot act powers from court scrutiny. Remember, you have to have standing in order to challenge a law, i.e. you personally must be charged or restrained under the law in order to challenge it.
I think that Congress should review the prosecution history of the Patriot Act powers. If someone has not been successfully prosecuted under a particular section, or the agencies involved cannot positively indicate when they will begin court proceedings under that section of law, then obviously, that power is not valuable for the purpose it was passed, and should be repealed. You don't leave matches in the hands of babies, firearms in the hands of violent felons, sportscar keys in the hands of teenagers, you shouldn't leave unneeded powers in the hands of government.
Slashdot Mirror
Verisimilitude.
If you're going to make a game set in WW2, you model real WW2 weapons.
If your game is set anywhere from 1990 to 2050, and you're trying to model real-world combat situations (with varying degrees of accuracy), then you'll have to model real world firearms. Due to the durability of firearms and the essentially mature technology, you could expect current technology and models to be used for decades. Consider the 1911 pistol for example: that's not a just a model number, that's the year it was introduced. It's also the most common handgun used by serious competitors today.
Savvy gamers today just aren't going to buy it if their High Intensity Combat Operative character in the game is deploying with Generic Intermediate Caliber Select Fire Rifle firing the combat tested 5.44x40mm Solid Lead to Ashcanistan to fight the nefarious Ethnically and Ideologically Unidentifiable Terrorist Organization. They want their DEVGRU to drop out of a Lockheed C-130J into Timbuktu carrying a Colt M-4 Carbine with a Trijicon ACOG on top so they can put a 5.56mm NATO round into the tuches of a Al Qaeda splinter group that's trying to destroy a UN World Heritage site. (Licensing fees paid for all those trademarks.)
If you want to make stuff up, you've got to set your story a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, or some other equivalent narrative technique to put distance between what the player knows and the game-world contains. You can fake medieval weapons. You can't fake modern fire-arms in present-day settings.
No, this is the state of play even before we start talking about lobbyists.
The regulations accumulated like that as the result of some grievously bad deal that happened a long time ago on a project you've never heard of. Because of this forgotten screw-up, Congress passed laws to require oversight and record keeping for this, that or the other detail.
Also, when Congress appropriates money in the budget, they allocate the money for certain purposes. In government, they call that "colors of money". Certain colors can pay for R&D, certain colors for initial purchases, other colors for maintenance, things like that. This can guide certain government decisions, such as whether to pay for more R&D now to have lower initial procurement costs, or buy cheaper components in initial procurement and plan for higher maintenance costs, etc. Using funds for purposes not consistent with the appropriated purpose is a crime.
Let's use my cheeseburger example. If you want one, you determine what kind of money you have and what quality you want, and some qualities may be out of your price range. You then go to McDonalds, or Red Robin, or Rainforest Cafe, whatever, and you pay your money and you get a (restaurant name) cheeseburger. Let's say they advertise a double quarter pounder, medium rare with Tillamook medium cheddar cheese with pickles, onions, tomatoes on a sesame seed bun, and you want all that.
Now, let's say the government wants the same cheeseburger, only they're going to buy 10,000 of them. As a result of the FAR, the following certifications must be established before delivery and acceptance by the Decision Authority:
- Weight of each hamburger patty must be +/- 5% of the Critical Performance Metric of 0.25 lbs. Continuous sampling, measurement and reporting must be done to maintain quality/quantity standards to the governments specifications (The restaurant/manufacturer's own QA process is done separately and in parallel, but has no bearing on the government's metrics.), reported monthly
- The cooking process must be certified to achieve a 95% outcome of Medium Rare (see appendix A for definition). Sampling, measuring and reporting to be provided monthly.
- Quality of other ingredients are also to be sampled, measured and reported, monthly.
- The economic health of the providers of cheese, tomato, onion, ground beef, buns, etc must be assessed for economic viability, and a multi-source procurement process must be implemented for any critical material to ensure the supply of all components even in the event of a supplier going out of business. If a component can only be procured from one source (possibly for proprietary reasons), the liability of the manufacturing line must be assessed and if necessary, the government will buy the whole plant to assure the production of the material even if no one else on the market wants that product any more.
Without considering corruption, wastage, inefficiency, lobbying, political favors, etc, this is how you make a $200 hamburger. All by the regulations.
It's a military, construction, health, fill-in-the-government-blank, problem.
General Dynamics, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton, etc provide a critical service: they understand government regulation. If you've ever seen a printed out copy of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, you'd be surprised that gravitational collapse isn't happening.
For most businesses, it's not worth taking a government contract until they're asking you to provide a COTS solution, where you know what you're selling, and the government pays you, and that's the end of it. The government is getting exactly what the commercial market gets. Firm Fixed Price contract, no surprises.
As soon as the government wants it customized in any way, and they're willing to pay you to customize it, that rabbit hole goes all the way down. Every stipulation of the contract must be assessed for compliance, and every assessment requires some kind of test, and every test has a schedule towards passage of the test, and every last one of these things costs time and resources, which means money, which the government is going to pay you, because the government wants its double cheeseburger in a way that no-one else wants it.
If you're an action oriented kind of entrepreneur, this will drive you insane. So you don't do it yourself. You go in as a subcontractor to one of the big Gov-BS-Handlers. You do the work, they firewall you from the BS, 50% for you, 250% for them (after change orders and spec changes and reviews and program management overhead) and everyone is happy with the $500 hammer (non-sparking, minimal toxic release, aircraft rated, 8 pound, loading bracket hinge, for the hitting of, one count)
The nit is well picked. I shall resolve to remember that detail.
I was told dissent is patriotic.
I dissented with some things (rather vigorously) during the 43rd Presidency. I dissented with a lot of things during the 42nd Presidency.
The 44th President is going to get my dissent as well.
Welcome to the United States of America. I can see you just arrived.
Wud hav had it neway
On November 3rd, 2004, one could predict that there would be change happening on January 20th, 2009. One could predict that the 44th president of the United States of America would be inaugurated.
It is now the responsibility of the 44th President to ensure that there will be an orderly transition of power to the 45th President. It is also his responsibility to ensure that there will be an orderly transition to the 100th President, and the 200th President, and so on.
So Help Barack H. Obama, God. So Help Us All.
I recommend using a data class rather than setting a global variable.
Data classes are compiled at configuration load and are static, whereas setting the global variable with each firing of the event absorbs a small amount of processing time to reset the variable. Setting global variables can also move TMM into a slower processing regime. As the HTTP_REQUEST event is very 'inner loop', it is best to optimize it as much as possible.
If you absolutely have to set a global variable with a semi-fixed value, I recommend doing it during the RULE_INIT event.
(As of July 1st, F5 is offering expanded iRule support to Premium and Premium Plus support contract holders. Call in with your troublesome iRules, and you have a somewhat decent chance of ending up with me at the other end of the phone.)
They're going to wonder at the legions of people in various modes of dress, from lawyers to pimply-faced geeks to Vin Diesel, that will stop by and pour out a tube of dice on his grave.
And then they'll realize they have to have someone go out and clear up the piles before they can mow. A lawnmower hitting Gygax's grave will cause a 30' radius spray of polyhedrons, doing from 1d6 to 3d6 damage depending on the horsepower of the mower.
Oddly enough, the AA sniper school lessons on being aware of your breathing when trying to make a long range shot actually helped me be aware of the importance of my breathing when I was on the 100 yard range with my M-14. I managed a 1.5 MOA grouping when I did that, as opposed to my neophyte 3 MOA grouping otherwise.
There are a few reasons why this weapon is not illegal.
ONE. It is primarily used as an anti-materiel weapon. You don't get many shots out of a COIL, so you don't waste them on individual infantry. So it's not illegal in the same way that an anti-tank gun isn't illegal.
TWO. Assuming the weapon is used against a human target, you're not being "burned alive". The focussed energy would burn a relatively small hole into the target, so the demise of the target would be either due to the hole interfering with the operation of vital organs, or the target slightly exploding due to vaporized tissue expanding in an enclosed space. Either way, this happens in a second or less. For an analogy: slowly hammering a lump of lead into a combatant's heart, illegal. Firing a high speed lump of lead into a combatant's heart, legal.
THREE, you use the word "legal", for which I must refer to a dictionary... ah, yes, "of or pertaining to law". So, we must refer to the established law or treaty on the matter. The 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons only forbids the use of lasers with an intended effect of blinding the target. If you're using the laser to kill or destroy, it is not forbidden. My search of Wikipedia for other applicable laws doesn't turn up anything else applicable... you can't stretch the 1899 Hague Convention on the prohibition of deforming or expanding bullets far enough to cover the destructive use of lasers.
How about taxing political campaigns for their contributions?
It's growth industry: every year the amount send on political campaigns grows.
I propose a 25% tax on political contributions per criteria met:
So, untaxed is those contributions from individual voters within the voting district under the contribution cap. Good for everyone, all around!
The specs for the old Predators was 25,000 ft. The new Reaper flies at up to 50,000 ft.
MANPADs seem to be good for up to 17,000 ft (Wikipedia cite, for what it's worth).
So I'd say they'd fare pretty well against shoulder-fired missiles.
Besides, the whole reason behind the Predator drones in the first place was to put a loitering recon asset in the sky that does not put a person at risk of their life. It was also cheap enough that it was economically not worth it to try to deploy the kind of SAM it would take to kill it. Militarily, you couldn't afford not to shoot it down, because the Predator would be followed by a fast-mover with the precision weapons. So, make your choice: shoot them down and go broke, or don't shoot them down and risk a JDAM through your window.
The Reaper just takes that technology and makes it fly higher, harder to hit, and it carries its own precision weapons. At that altitude, the cost of the SAM system necessary, plus radar, transporter, ground crew, and maintenance infrastructure, is going to approach the price of the drone plus munitions.
Maybe there should be a treaty to reduce older, high pollution aircraft from long distance flights.
Older planes, especially old turbojet airliners like the 707, have particularly loud and inefficient engines. Some can be re-engined with high-bypass turbofans for much quieter operation, much like the way the KC-135E (a 707 military air tanker modification) was up-engined to be the KC-135R, which is OK if you have good pilots that won't scrape the larger engine nacelles on a rough landing.
Of course, the airlines operating 707s and similar aircraft these days are the third world airlines, who got those airplanes for low, low prices after they'd exceeded 80%+ of their airframe lifespan. They probably don't maintain them that well, either, which increases the pollution. And if we restrict them to shorter hops, they'll never get into their most efficient flight regime...
But, hey, we get to use environmental regulation to screw over the third world, or we can exempt them from the regulations and gain nothing as they fly their air-jalopies all over the world. Yay!
And yes, I do have a degree in meteorology. My understanding is that global climate change is coming, whether or not it is caused by human activity, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can realistically be done to stop it. It's best to treat it as if it were a natural change and change with it. Besides, if a (worse case scenario according to IPCC) 20" increase in global sea level happens (over, what, 50 years), and you get caught by that, it will be like being passed by a slug. I will laugh uproariously at you as you stand in the rising water that you watched coming for forty five years and fret, oh, what am I going to do now? MOVE OR GET YOUR HOUSE LIFTED. Even tribal aboriginals will have that figured out without having to be told!
I agree. Not that we can't stop people from banding together in groups, but we would be better off as a nation to have 300 parties, of which any one person could belong to many at one time, than two or three monoliths.
So, parties happen. But we can reduce their affect on the political process.
First, remove all political party designations from all ballots and titles. If you're up for election in office, you are the representative for your district, not the representative of the Democrats/Republicans in your district.
Second, all political financial contributions must come from a voter. If you're under 18, not a citizen, not qualified to vote, a corporation or other legal fiction, it is election fraud to accept a financial contribution from them. Similarly, no more PACs. If you want to fund an ad for/against a candidate or position, or other activity of a political nature on the behalf of a third party, you fund it as an individual citizen or group of citizens, and you're responsible for the content thereof with no liability limitation. (If the statement is endorsed by the candidate, it is a contribution.)
Third, all political contributions from a qualified person (see above) that is not eligible to actually vote for that position or office will be taxed at the rate of 50%, with the funds supporting the elections auditor office.
Fourth, make it a felony to use taxpayer funds in any way to support a political campaign. You don't have to necessarily send them to jail, nor fine them to any substantial way, but this will disqualify them from holding public office.
Fifth, entrenched politicians tend to be vulnerable to promises of support from those with powerful interests, to the detriment of the country as a whole. Therefore, all senators or representatives to legislative bodies, at any level, are barred from public office for a period equal to the term of their current office. Go get a real job for a while. You can be the on-off representative of a district if you were so good the last time that the district remembers it two, four, six years later. This will also discourage "politician" as a profession.
Lastly, political party labels shall be trademarked. If you want to be labeled as a Democrat(tm), you better meet the standards of being a Democrat(tm), or they can withdraw your license to use that mark. Alternatively, if you as a political party will take anyone under your banner, as long as they can win an election, your political party label will mean little to nothing. A politician can simultaneously claim to be Republican(tm), Democrat(tm), Libertarian(tm) and Labour(tm) if he meets their criteria. He can also be Pro-Gun-Rights(tm), Anti-Death-Penalty(tm), Green(tm), Disestablishmentarian(tm), Pro-Moon-Colony-Independence(tm) and Slashdot Party(tm).
1) Develop high efficiency, long life solar cells
2) Figure out how to process lunar resources with robotic factories to make said cells
3) Plate the entire far size of the moon
4) Transmit the energy back to earth with a few lunar horizon transmitting stations with atmosphere and cloud penetrating lasers/masers/whatever
5) PROFIT
6) Reserve fossil fuels for high-energy-density required transportation needs, not short distance ground transport or general power production
7) PROFIT plus ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
8) Colonize the moon with the residual infrastructure from the power grid
9) PROFIT plus ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS plus OFF-PLANET HUMAN SUSTAINABILITY
10) Use short lunar gravity well to build interplanetary transport, colonize Mars
11) PROFIT plus ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS plus FULLY REDUNDANT HUMAN SUSTAINABILITY
12) ???
13) A fully armed and operational battlestation
You seem to be employing a form of primitive animist belief: that an inanimate object will someone affect your future behavior.
It is NOT just as likely that a gun-carrying student will flip out as use a gun in their own defense. Good estimates are that there are about 2 million legitimate defensive uses of firearms per year, most of which do not involve the weapon being fired. If your assertion was even 10% correct, there would be 200,000 illegitimate homicide shootings per year. In fact, in 2005, the number unjustifiably killed by firearms was 14,860, most of which was committed by those already barred from firearm ownership. If we assume that every one of those was a otherwise peaceable person that "flipped", you would be about 0.7% to 1.8% right, at best.
It is significantly likely that a criminal person, who may not legally possess a gun, but has come into possession of one, will "flip out", i.e. commit a crime, as soon as use it in their own defense.
As to your argument that "just because you're licensed to carry a gun does not make you mentally stable forever" is interesting, and it says more about you than it does anyone else. Do you think this of other people because you are concerned that if you had that kind of capability in your hands, you would be likely to flip out? Do you think everyone else has a inner seething cauldron of rage because you, in fact, have an internal rage? Psychologists call this projection.
Lastly, the people committing this kind of crime are rational, although they are rational in an abominable way. Having decided that he must kill someone, and being unwilling to face the death penalty in Virginia, the killer was instantly freed of all possible consequences of his actions by intending a suicide to follow his murder. And if you're going to do one, why not get all the people that pissed him off? Where should you do it? Somewhere his victims must go, be corralled in one place, and they cannot possess the means to stop him. The university is the perfect, rational place to commit an abomination, as would any victim disarmament zone, otherwise laughingly known as a gun free-zone.
In short, your facts are weak, your arguments unsupportable, you espouse a primitive belief system, and the policies you support make the problem worse. Bring a better game. And I agree, you should not possess weapons, but your choices should have no bearing on anyone else.
You have convinced me that you should not carry a lethal weapon. I will not try to convince you otherwise.
You have not convinced me, nor swayed me in any way, that your choice should have any bearing on any one else's choices in how to exercise their fundamental human right of self defense.
We're calling for school campuses to stop being one of the last places in the country where someone determined to cause mayhem is guaranteed to find a completely defenseless population of targets.
If administrators, teachers and students over 21, provided they are not federally prohibited persons (refer to section 12 of the link), could have guns for the defense of themselves and those under their authority, the mayhem-seekers would go where the target population is easier, like a federal building. The possibility that one out of twenty students could be legally packing, and he can't tell which one, is what will deter him/her.
I don't need a lethal weapon to feel safe. I need the lethal weapon for that one in a ten thousand situation when nothing but a lethal weapon is suitable. I know CPR is case someone has a heart attack and the EMTs are ten minutes away. I know first aid in case someone cuts themselves badly and the EMTs are still ten minutes away. I know how to use a fire extinguisher because the firemen are STILL ten minutes away. Why in the name off all that is reasonable must I wait fifteen to thirty minutes for armed men (i.e. police) to show up, assuming that they're not too busy, to deal with the maniac that is interested in causing me potentially lethal harm? Why should your daughter have to wait even five minutes for the cops while a 220-lb rapist does what his superior strength will allow? Everyone is their own first responder. If you can't comprehend that, please make sure that you only have a heart attack, catch on fire, or get beaten with a stick in the presence of a government servant of the correct type.
As told to me by my ex-IRS tax accountant:
TAX AVOIDANCE is a patriotic thing to do. It does no good to give the government money in excess of what it needs to do its job, and what it has been lawfully authorized to collect.
TAX EVASION is illegal. That's what they got Al Capone on when then couldn't nail him for any other crimes.
No, I'm serious.
Move copyright infringement from a civil case to a criminal case, in all cases. Make it a gross misdemeanor with a jail term of, oh, six to twelve months.
Suddenly, it will be top priority of legislators and prosecutors NOT to prosecute. Just like, magically, the law against possession of a controlled substance, i.e. Mary Jo Wanna, became an unenforceable law because no cop is allowed to search for it and prosecutors won't prosecute it even if you are arrested. Legislators will suddenly see the projected budget line-item for prison space skyrocket to accomodate all the non-violent offenders.
Best of all, the accuser has to prove his case to criminal court standards. If you're found not-guilty, the civil case is pretty well hobbled, yes?
Additionally, if there ever is another draft, a copyright infringement charge will certainly get to sent to the Group W bench. Then you sing a few bars of Alice's Restaurant, which you conveniently got via a Bittorrent download, and tell the induction sergeant that they have a lot of damn gall to ask if you are rehabilitated from your special crime of copyright infringement. Be sure to Cause A Nuisance, as well, or all the father-rapers and mother-stabbers on the Group W bench will give you the cold shoulder.
Certain EU Commissioner: "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here. According to our best research, the internet is five days away from total collapse."
Gasps from the assembled bureaucrats, politicians and appointed functionaries.
Certain US Senator: "It's true! Just a few days ago, three to be precise, it was eight days away from collapse."
Muttering amongst the massed bloviators. The geek running the projector shakes his head.
Certain US Senator: "And do you know why that is?"
Blank stares.
Certain US Senator: "Because it took three days for our last delegate to arrive. Glad you could make it, Manuel. How's Fidel these days?"
Diplomatic chuckles all around
Certain EU Commissioner: "Right, then, to the business at hand. If we can make a resolution within three days, we can distribute it to the press on the fourth, and by the end of the fifth day, the Internet will have collapsed."
Applause.
Certain EU Commissioner: "We can do it, but only if we do our best! We have to work fast, we have to work together, and most of all, we need to craft a resolution that is completely impossible to be technically implemented. Every mandatory provision must be mutually exclusive with at least two other mandatory provisions! However, each provision by itself must seem reasonable and justifiable."
Certain US Senator: "If you're having trouble, just say it's all for the children. But only as a last resort."
Certain EU Commissioner: "If we do our best, the Internet is done for by the weekend. If we don't, it could continue running for weeks. Weeks! Now, just to check... who here knows anything about... domain names? Nobody? Excellent!"
That means no government security clearances, no ownership of a firearm, no interstate travel without the permission of the parole officer (while on parole), many employers won't hire you, and no voting. Those are permanent restictions for live, barring a successful petition to restore rights.
As heinous as the crime is *cough debatable cough*, it is still fundamentally a matter of interfering with someone's commercial interests. I think there should be all sorts of civil liability payable to the wronged party, but (nearly) irrevocable loss of civil rights? No!
This is a perfect example of overcriminalization.
Yup, nuthin' good ever came of better weapon system.
Plus Side:
Minus side:
The US Constitution specifies some things that the federal government shall do and specifies particular procedures for doing those. Much of the rest of the Constitution is a list of things the federal government cannot do.
This stands to reason. If there is no limit to what the federal government can do, or no limit to what can be accomplished with a majority vote, why bother to have a constitution? Without the long list of limits, you could have written it on a 18th century Post-It note: "We the people of the United States of America empower the government to do whatever a majority of our elected representatives vote for and the elected president signs. The supreme judiciary shall verify that whatever is done is done according the letter of the laws we pass." This, of course, is a recipe for an elected tyrany.
So, no, it is not possible for something under the Patriot act, or any other law, to make legal a government activity that would otherwise be forbidden by the Constitution. If any offending part of the Patriot act is used to bring someone to court, it will immediately be struck down.
This does not, however, prevent Patriot act powers to be used to pursue someone, then find other offenses under other laws (tax evasion, for example, Mr Capone?) to charge them with, thus shielding the Patriot act powers from court scrutiny. Remember, you have to have standing in order to challenge a law, i.e. you personally must be charged or restrained under the law in order to challenge it.
I think that Congress should review the prosecution history of the Patriot Act powers. If someone has not been successfully prosecuted under a particular section, or the agencies involved cannot positively indicate when they will begin court proceedings under that section of law, then obviously, that power is not valuable for the purpose it was passed, and should be repealed. You don't leave matches in the hands of babies, firearms in the hands of violent felons, sportscar keys in the hands of teenagers, you shouldn't leave unneeded powers in the hands of government.