It is in Canada, genius! Better do your snooping elsewhere eh?
And by the way, pinheads like yourself are the reason I have to run ethernet cables all through my house instead of using a nice convenient wireless setup. You're one very short step above the creeps who scan for cellphone numbers and then sell them.
So, if I leave my keys in the car at the gas station and some pervert jumps in, drives away and then uses my car to transport a bale of hard copy kiddie porn, this is my fault?
Here's a better one. Dirtbags do drug deals in your backyard when you're not home. This is your fault?
My personal favorite of all, is it the ISPs fault that kiddie porn crosses his server on the way to the guy's house whose 802.11 network has been hijacked?
So kids, everyone still think its a good idea to provide powerful operating systems etc. to people who jail citizens over nothing? "Red Flag Linux for the People! Well, except the ones we shot because they whined, eh?"
Good idea for the Chicom government to be able to make clusters? And use 'em for nuclear explosive research? I'm thinking no.
Maybe some fertile minds should think about that little problem, eh? Exploding Linux for Chinese missile labs, run a nuke simulation on it and it burns up your CPUs. Make the bastards WORK for their WMD's!
"You can't attack them into becoming a democracy. You can't sanction them into it."
The Iraqis, the Taliban, the Russians, the Germans and the Japanese would point out that you're statement ain't neccessarily so.
The thing to be done with heinous bastards like the ones running China is to SHOOT them. Otherwise they laugh and steal your money while they look for an opening to shoot you first.
Why is this so hard for people to understand? If the USA and Europe leaned on China the way they leaned on the USSR from 1946 to the 1980's, that house of cards would come down in five years maximum. The only thing holding Communist China out of the toilet bowl right now is slave labour building all the cheapie consumer dreck we buy at WalMart. Cut that off and the whole works goes down the shit house.
And before you go whining at the cost in human lives, let us remember that while Russia is still a mess 15 years post-communism, it was a worse mess before and at least now they don't have nukes pointed at MY freakin' house!!!
That last is the important bit. If the people of China can't get it together to revolt, at least let them point those missiles someplace else. Or we in the West will vote in governments who will do it FOR them.
Airflow won't be significantly limited if you design the baffles properly. Don't forget the computer is a -heat source- so you get the jet engine effect going.
If you draw cold air from the floor and release warm air out the top through a decently sized baffle with smooth curves, the addition of heat alone should be sufficient to power the air movement. Leave us not forget that the P-51 Mustang design manages to generate actual thrust from the radiator, which more than eliminates the cooling drag of the system.
Besides, the box doesn't have to be butt ugly. there's more materials available in the world than shag carpet and farticle board.
Bhopal was an -accident-. A criminaly stupid accident granted, but not a deliberate act. Nobody pulled the lever on purpose and let the gas out, it just broke.
Killing innocent civilians -on purpose- is an atrocity. Whether it be by a deluded suicidal a-hole with a buttload of C4 under his coat or 5 deluded suicidal a-holes in a jet isn't really important, its the deliberate nature of the act that makes it an atrocity.
In the case of the USS Cole and 9/11 its also an act of war. War tends to get more press coverage than criminal stupidity. Just the way life is.
Furthermore Bhopal was a one-time event, particularly given the sh*t kicking Union Carbide took on the stock exchange and in the courts of India and the USA both. I'm sure many multinationals quietly went throught their foreign opperations and fixed a lot of substandard gear after that.
Terrorist bombings on the other hand are repeated acts. One will surely be followed by another and another and another unless and until the people organizing the mayhem are killed dead, dead, dead.
So yeah, I'm glad to hear the Spanish cops are thinking ahead about checking boat hulls. I would hope they'd find a cheaper sub that the POS in question, but whatever, they are on the ball.
If you want to avoid all mention of terrorist threats, just move to Canada. Here our fearless leaders are ignoring the issue just as hard as they possibly can. You'll love it.
Until some insane Islamofascist cretin pulls an explosive stunt in your town that is. Then I predict you'll be all pissed off to discover you can't buy a gun in this idiot country, and you'll run back to GeorgeBushland and thank Ghod for the 2nd Amendment.
Fuckhead?! My, how tolerant of you my dear. Just what I've come to expect from our friends in the Environmental community. When faced with an alternative opinion, default to profane mode.
I will agree with you in one regard, small energy efficient cars do have their place. That place is under the bumper of my truck. Who needs a cow catcher when you've got a 6" lift kit in your 4x4?
So you'll pardon me I hope if I don't risk my ignorant beer drinking ass in a tiny hurtling shoebox on wheels just so the gentle antelope can enjoy clear spring water and fresh air 200 years from now.
By the way, have you noticed that with all these deadly death vehicles on the road killing and maiming and spewing noxious gases, the air and water just keep getting cleaner?
Maybe I'm just old, but doesn't it strike anyone that a system built to handle petabytes of data should cost more than $90,000? That's not a whole lot of money for enterprize level hardware.
Hell, I remeber seeing an IBM System 38 with 16 gigabytes of storage, bloody thing took up a room and cost a couple million bucks. All they did with it was keep a driver's licence database on it and run print batches.
Hey pal, at least American soldiers have the best gear, best support and best weapons money can buy, and at least your government is 100% behind them.
Our guys from Canada are getting their asses killed by landmines in Afghanistan this week because our government won't support them, won't supply them and won't buy decent vehicles for them. They are driving around in 30 year old Volkswagon shitboxes known as the Iltis with no armor or air support. Zero. Nada.
When Bush says "bring it!" your lads are ready for it. Jean Chretiene sent 4000 Canadians bare assed into a shooting gallery and doesn't give a rip if any of them come back.
No doubt you are an "angry [White or fill in race here] man" like myself, but I don't like to presume.:) That'd be rude, eh?
I thank you for your kind words of support.
Unfortunately I don't think stupidity covers this kind of lapse in common sense. I think our good friend Fermion is simply playing back the tape of the media crap he's been force fed over the last few years. His problem is that due to to a hijacked education system and intellectual lazyness he can't tell shit from shinola.
What I find scary is his/her/it's capacity to believe that the average brush guard equiped SUV owner would deliberately put child slaying paraphenalia on their vee-hicle. No doubt to supplement the big 'ol shotgun in the back window and the case of beer under the seat.
That's a whole new level of fanaticism I hadn't encountered before. I suppose its good because it means they are getting desperate over on the Left. On the other hand they are starting to identify the enemy as being -me-. That's not good.
Maybe I should buy a new Prius... Nah. I'll put some more big nasty teeth in my child slaying cow catcher. ~:D
Dude, I've seen some knee jerk Liberal reactions here on/. before, but this one take the cake.
"But what about cow catchers on trucks and SUVs. Most of these never leave the city. I have not seen a cow in a road since I was a kid. Is there any reason for these except to inflict maximum damage to a kid who is unfortunate to get in front of one these while the driver is on the phone?"
One word, DEER. There are deer in the cities these days because there's no hunting. There's no hunting because of 10,000 idiots who value the life of sweet little Bambi more than the lives of the people snuffed out when they slam into a 300 pound animal at 70 mph on the freakin' parkway, in a car that's too small because of those same 10,000 idiots and their CAFE regulations. In an SUV with brush bars you'll live, in a Honda you'll die. Geddit?
I don't know who you hang out with, but I don't know a single person who would deliberately stick something on their truck to maximize the damage to any pedestrian they might hit. What the hell are you thinking?!
If your kid needs an immunization, go to the closest county hospital and GET ONE. They are free already. Paid for by that rich guy's tax dollars, which you and the rest of the tax-the-rich crowd have no moral right to incidentally. Its called stealing, and it is economically counterproductive at best.
Illegal immigration is a pox on America that exists only because it is politically convenient for the Democrats. You doubt me, check out who just kicked ass and who's ass got kicked in California and look at their respective platforms. Davis gives driver's licences to illegals, Arnold wants them to go home. Which of those two approaches is more likely to reduce the kind of abuse of immigrant labour you're talking about? Which is honest and which is a crooked manipulation of the voters?
Greenies the world over really are fighting against life-saving measures for the poor, just like those -authentic- quotes suggest. They consider Humanity to be a disease, so anything that kills more humans is forth fighting for. Frankly, that's sick.
Finally, Bush said "Bring it on!" to the Islamofascist scum flooding into Iraq from all directions because that's where the ARMY is. You know, the guys with the tanks, guns and airplanes? The guys who are all set up and gung-ho to SHOOT BACK?
George Bush said that because he, unlike you, is not a fuzzy brained bunny hugger. If the enemy is predisposed to run himself up onto your bayonet, shout encouragement!
Thank God for George Bush, SUVs and Americans with 10 million in the bank. Without them we'd all be royally fucked.
There are assholes in the world. They are few, but they cause trouble out of all proportion to their numbers. Prepare for the assholes while you enjoy the good people. Worth remembering in trying times.
Here are some easy solutions to their sorry efforts.
1. Spam: don't post your e-mail address in machine readable format. Pretty much handles it. If people whine about the re-typing, ask 'em if they'd rather be getting e-mail for "Hot Gay Webcam!!!" or "I love you!".
2. Worms/viri: Use non-standard hardware. The Wintel setup is the main target, so don't be a target.
There's so much semi-obsolete workstation hardware out there for the asking, it staggers the imagination. Stuff that was $30,000 five years ago is under $500 now. Check out Alpha, SGI, Sun boxes. Big crunch for small bucks, and most run Linux. Some assembly required.
Eg. SGI Octanes are cheap, they SMOKE and they run all manner of Gnu freeware on Irix 6.5. Plus they have the best video I've ever seen. DEC Alphas run Linux natively, and they are also cheap.
3. Firewall! Even if you are on a corporate intranet, firewall your shit. There's no reason not to when a P-150 can run a bulletproof and FREE firewall. You can even encrypt your in-office traffic and the stuff on your hard drives.
4. Lawsuits: Not to say that RIAA and etc. are good guys, but if you stay off the download circuit they've got nothing. We know where the sharks are, don't swim there. Pretty simple. Trade your music on CDs with friends. Snail mail has very high bandwidth, y'know.
5. Big Brother really isn't going to fix this: There's no way in hell a bunch of power-seeking gubmint nitwits are going to keep up with the curve here. Even if they cared they aren't smart enough, and they really don't care.
Anything they enact is guaranteed to fuck over regular users while leaving spammers in business. Somebody up the thread used gun control as an example, and it is an apt one. It is how government weenies think. Do you really want to be buying a computer licence next year, have some clerk at the Ministry of Computer Sanitation reading your e-mail and still be getting spam? Because that's the way they will do it and that's what will happen.
Centralized command and control doesn't work on a distributed system, only distributed self defence works. Harden your own gear and give the black hats a big 'ol raspberry!
Or you can wait for Big Brother to make it all better. "You haf ze papieren fur zis laptop, mein herr?"
Hey, I live in Canada. We have ~65% taxes here, if you add up all the federal, provincial and other stuff. We have all that free healthcare stuff. It means you get to stand in line, when you're sick.
As it happens, I work for $13.50 an hour. See if you can imagine what my take home looks like. Up here, "normal" people drive the shit only illegal immigrants drive in the USA. Taxes, y'know.
I made all the dough to buy that truck in the STATES! First house I ever owned was in the USA, and I could afford it because of low interest and LOW TAXES. The house I live in now was bought with profit from the one in the USA, otherwise I'd be renting some cheesy apartment. Guys who work in construction do not own houses or nice trucks here. In the USA, they do.
It all boils down to who you want looking after your interests. You want Big Brother to do it, or you want to do it yourself? I choose the latter, because it works better. I never had a bean to my name in Canada, went to the Eeeevile Capitalist USA and made a shitload of money, now I'm back here in the land of the $0.65 cent dollar and I don't have a bean again except what I saved up.
Difference between the two countries is OPPORTUNITY. In the USA there is the opportunity to have an SUV and something nice to tow behind it parked in front of your house that you own outright. Here in Canada you have to know somebody in the Big Brother office and take table scraps. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but only a slight one.
Put it this way. In Phoenix Arizona there are many companies that make all manner of race cars, dune buggies, jeeps, play stuff. Like more than 30 who build whole cars. Here in Toronto, the biggest, richest city in Canada, there are maybe three. In Phoenix everybody has some kind of customization on their new to two year old car, even if its only alloy wheels or pinstripes. Here, bone stock and five to eight years old is the rule. Imagine that rule applied to all private enterprise and you have Canada. Now go find a job.
Here's a beauty article that explains the concept even better: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=A8A DD018-60D5-4705-B8F1-9C18ED072D19
Do you really want the government to be deciding on the contents of your OS, your processor, your hard drive controller, and etc? Everybody thinks Mickeysoft sucks now, just wait until the gubmint gets their hads on it.
Plus, it is so easy to build computers now that any highschooler can whip one together, therby invalidating all that licencing effort. There's enough Pentium processors out there to keep any black market going virtually forever, and if there were a demand for "off the books" hardware you know that there would be no end of clever bastards out there to fill it.
Centralised control never works in the real world.
Supposing some pinhead government really did require an internet licence. How long does anyone think it would take for an unlicenced, subrosa net to grow up from the grass roots?
I'd give it a month, myself. Even Red China has people surfing up stuff they aren't supposed to. This genie ain't going back in that little bottle, kids.
I did not need an SUV. I could have made do with a smaller/cheaper/more environmentaly friendly rollerskate, but I went for the biggest pickup I could get. I bought it for two very important reasons, neither of which has anything to do with need.
1. After dump trucks and 18 wheelers, I am king of the fucking road. It is good to be king.
2. It pisses off all the right people.
In answer to the sorely misguided youth who asked the question about hybrids that started this flame war, GET A TRUCK. You want fuel economy, get a diesel truck. Anybody who tells you a Honda Civic is going to keep you alive in an accident even half as well as a full sized pickup is not your friend.
And to all the oh-so-superior Euro types who think our gas is too cheap in North America, here's a news flash: There is no honour in being milked like a cow, ladies and gentlemen.
Our gas costs almost exactly the same as yours. The difference in the price at the pump is tax. You keep voting for the socialists, they will keep taking your money. Moo!
I'm waiting for fusion. Specifically hydrogen fusion generating useful amounts of nice cheap electricity.
Sure fix the blackouts, wouldn't it?
All these things on the list are devices and/or services that turned out to be a hell of a lot harder to implement than scifi authors thought they'd be back in the day.
Flying cars won't be -really- feasible until there's antigravity widgetry you can fit in a car-sized package. Too many points of failure in a VTOL aircraft for there to be millions of the things floating around.
Most of the points of failure are with the operator as others have mentioned, but let us not forget that a flying car has to share its environment with fences, power lines, flagpoles, weather and most importantly, BIRDS. You want to be riding in an aircraft that needs four props or fans to stay airborn when it sucks a Canada goose through one of those fans? Or standing underneath it?
Me neither. Just give me better than break-even hydrogen fusion and I'll be happy.
Yes, you too could be painting other people's houses while you live in your car. If that doesn't motivate your ass to do school work, nothing ever will.
Ditch the social life, ditch the internet connection, do the work. Period. Life's a bitch.
O2 in the converter = fire in your floormats, usually. Not good to let high levels of oxygen in there, shit gets way too hot. Redirect skipped stroke exhaust? Jettison converter? This stuff gets complex eh? Needs a specially designed head, not just a new computer.
Interesting idea on the O2 problem though, just give each cylinder its own O2 sensor. Then your program will be able to manage each charge.
If you half the gas pulse it makes a lean fuel charge and burns a hole in your piston. If you just skip a stroke you have the cost of compressing the air to deal with.
You need to do is have the correct fuel charge for the ammount of air intake you have on every stroke. Skipped strokes have to find a way to not compress air, or a way to break even with the compression cost.
One possibility is a special presure release valve for when you want to skip a stroke. Or possibly water injection into the compressed charge. That could work by giving you a steam expansion by stealing ambient heat from the engine.
Pretty hard to inject liquid water into 150 psi air though. Need a kickass injector/pump system to run at >150 psi, regular fuel systems run at ~80 psi.
Dude, this was the 1950's. MAD and nuclear armageddon and all the bullshit we were brought up with wasn't even INVENTED until the middle 1960's. No such thing as a pin point strike, they -wanted- to flatten the city, town, factory or whatever. Smart bombs not invented yet.
Neither were tactical low yield nukes. This is a multi kiloton device at least. Thousands of innocents in the enemy's country is better than thousands back home. Still is, for that matter.
For these reasons and many others, 300 feet was more than good, it was awsome.
Postmodernism is sooo convenient, eh?
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Postmodern though is so convenient for some people. If "truth" is a hegemonic social construction, you can equate anything to anything and still be "right".
Unfortunately Mr Foucault was a publish-or-perish hack and his philosophy does not survive contact with the real world.
I ask you sir, what is the difference between a highly trained and motivated pilot performing in practice a mission he hopes and prays he will never be called upon to perform for real, and a suicide bomber who straps on C4 with the sole purpose of killing people he does not know but never the less hates?
In truth one cannot equate them at all. There is no connection of method, motivation, or most important, results. Please note that the Iron Curtain is no more and it fell without a shot being fired, but Israel still stands despite hundreds of suicide bombers.
There really is truth, it seems.
Re:A *very* interesting topic, but ...
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Point being, this is just one little thing done by the American military, the totality of which resulted in you living in a free country in Europe.
Without these guys training for these incredibly dangerous missions, you'd be speaking Russian. As would we all.
The USA is again at war, for much the same reason. So you can type away on Slashdot and not have to worry about nukes/bugs/chemicals released by some Islamist lunatic in your town. A thankless task, it seems to me.
If you read the article at all, you'd know that these guys were well aware of the likely results. They were the smartest lads in the whole Navy, of course they knew. People are not stupid, particularly military people. Contrary to the opinion of certain Left leaning doofi on/.
You'd also know that they were a bunch of gung-ho super hotdogs and figured if anyone could beat the odds it would be them.
As a general rule, you'll always find a lot more guys lined up for a super dangerous mission than you will for a suicide bomber's vest. Only zealots and lunatics will do that stuff.
As for accuracy, you'll find they were hitting inside 300 ft. Close enough for a nuke, don't you think?
These days they usually hit inside three feet from 5 miles up. Think about that for a second, eh? Which window of this building do we want broken?
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It is in Canada, genius! Better do your snooping elsewhere eh?
And by the way, pinheads like yourself are the reason I have to run ethernet cables all through my house instead of using a nice convenient wireless setup. You're one very short step above the creeps who scan for cellphone numbers and then sell them.
Please find a new hobby. Like subway surfing.
So, if I leave my keys in the car at the gas station and some pervert jumps in, drives away and then uses my car to transport a bale of hard copy kiddie porn, this is my fault?
Here's a better one. Dirtbags do drug deals in your backyard when you're not home. This is your fault?
My personal favorite of all, is it the ISPs fault that kiddie porn crosses his server on the way to the guy's house whose 802.11 network has been hijacked?
In all of the above cases, NUH UH!
So kids, everyone still think its a good idea to provide powerful operating systems etc. to people who jail citizens over nothing? "Red Flag Linux for the People! Well, except the ones we shot because they whined, eh?"
Good idea for the Chicom government to be able to make clusters? And use 'em for nuclear explosive research? I'm thinking no.
Maybe some fertile minds should think about that little problem, eh? Exploding Linux for Chinese missile labs, run a nuke simulation on it and it burns up your CPUs. Make the bastards WORK for their WMD's!
"You can't attack them into becoming a democracy. You can't sanction them into it."
The Iraqis, the Taliban, the Russians, the Germans and the Japanese would point out that you're statement ain't neccessarily so.
The thing to be done with heinous bastards like the ones running China is to SHOOT them. Otherwise they laugh and steal your money while they look for an opening to shoot you first.
Why is this so hard for people to understand? If the USA and Europe leaned on China the way they leaned on the USSR from 1946 to the 1980's, that house of cards would come down in five years maximum. The only thing holding Communist China out of the toilet bowl right now is slave labour building all the cheapie consumer dreck we buy at WalMart. Cut that off and the whole works goes down the shit house.
And before you go whining at the cost in human lives, let us remember that while Russia is still a mess 15 years post-communism, it was a worse mess before and at least now they don't have nukes pointed at MY freakin' house!!!
That last is the important bit. If the people of China can't get it together to revolt, at least let them point those missiles someplace else. Or we in the West will vote in governments who will do it FOR them.
Airflow won't be significantly limited if you design the baffles properly. Don't forget the computer is a -heat source- so you get the jet engine effect going.
If you draw cold air from the floor and release warm air out the top through a decently sized baffle with smooth curves, the addition of heat alone should be sufficient to power the air movement. Leave us not forget that the P-51 Mustang design manages to generate actual thrust from the radiator, which more than eliminates the cooling drag of the system.
Besides, the box doesn't have to be butt ugly. there's more materials available in the world than shag carpet and farticle board.
English appears to be your second language.
Bhopal was an -accident-. A criminaly stupid accident granted, but not a deliberate act. Nobody pulled the lever on purpose and let the gas out, it just broke.
Killing innocent civilians -on purpose- is an atrocity. Whether it be by a deluded suicidal a-hole with a buttload of C4 under his coat or 5 deluded suicidal a-holes in a jet isn't really important, its the deliberate nature of the act that makes it an atrocity.
In the case of the USS Cole and 9/11 its also an act of war. War tends to get more press coverage than criminal stupidity. Just the way life is.
Furthermore Bhopal was a one-time event, particularly given the sh*t kicking Union Carbide took on the stock exchange and in the courts of India and the USA both. I'm sure many multinationals quietly went throught their foreign opperations and fixed a lot of substandard gear after that.
Terrorist bombings on the other hand are repeated acts. One will surely be followed by another and another and another unless and until the people organizing the mayhem are killed dead, dead, dead.
So yeah, I'm glad to hear the Spanish cops are thinking ahead about checking boat hulls. I would hope they'd find a cheaper sub that the POS in question, but whatever, they are on the ball.
If you want to avoid all mention of terrorist threats, just move to Canada. Here our fearless leaders are ignoring the issue just as hard as they possibly can. You'll love it.
Until some insane Islamofascist cretin pulls an explosive stunt in your town that is. Then I predict you'll be all pissed off to discover you can't buy a gun in this idiot country, and you'll run back to GeorgeBushland and thank Ghod for the 2nd Amendment.
The loudest hawks are doves who've been mugged.
Fuckhead?! My, how tolerant of you my dear. Just what I've come to expect from our friends in the Environmental community. When faced with an alternative opinion, default to profane mode.
I will agree with you in one regard, small energy efficient cars do have their place. That place is under the bumper of my truck. Who needs a cow catcher when you've got a 6" lift kit in your 4x4?
So you'll pardon me I hope if I don't risk my ignorant beer drinking ass in a tiny hurtling shoebox on wheels just so the gentle antelope can enjoy clear spring water and fresh air 200 years from now.
By the way, have you noticed that with all these deadly death vehicles on the road killing and maiming and spewing noxious gases, the air and water just keep getting cleaner?
Maybe I'm just old, but doesn't it strike anyone that a system built to handle petabytes of data should cost more than $90,000? That's not a whole lot of money for enterprize level hardware.
Hell, I remeber seeing an IBM System 38 with 16 gigabytes of storage, bloody thing took up a room and cost a couple million bucks. All they did with it was keep a driver's licence database on it and run print batches.
$90,000? CHEAP!
Hey pal, at least American soldiers have the best gear, best support and best weapons money can buy, and at least your government is 100% behind them.
Our guys from Canada are getting their asses killed by landmines in Afghanistan this week because our government won't support them, won't supply them and won't buy decent vehicles for them. They are driving around in 30 year old Volkswagon shitboxes known as the Iltis with no armor or air support. Zero. Nada.
When Bush says "bring it!" your lads are ready for it. Jean Chretiene sent 4000 Canadians bare assed into a shooting gallery and doesn't give a rip if any of them come back.
But hey, he's right on the politics eh?
No doubt you are an "angry [White or fill in race here] man" like myself, but I don't like to presume. :) That'd be rude, eh?
I thank you for your kind words of support.
Unfortunately I don't think stupidity covers this kind of lapse in common sense. I think our good friend Fermion is simply playing back the tape of the media crap he's been force fed over the last few years. His problem is that due to to a hijacked education system and intellectual lazyness he can't tell shit from shinola.
What I find scary is his/her/it's capacity to believe that the average brush guard equiped SUV owner would deliberately put child slaying paraphenalia on their vee-hicle. No doubt to supplement the big 'ol shotgun in the back window and the case of beer under the seat.
That's a whole new level of fanaticism I hadn't encountered before. I suppose its good because it means they are getting desperate over on the Left. On the other hand they are starting to identify the enemy as being -me-. That's not good.
Maybe I should buy a new Prius... Nah. I'll put some more big nasty teeth in my child slaying cow catcher. ~:D
Dude, I've seen some knee jerk Liberal reactions here on /. before, but this one take the cake.
"But what about cow catchers on trucks and SUVs. Most of these never leave the city. I have not seen a cow in a road since I was a kid. Is there any reason for these except to inflict maximum damage to a kid who is unfortunate to get in front of one these while the driver is on the phone?"
One word, DEER. There are deer in the cities these days because there's no hunting. There's no hunting because of 10,000 idiots who value the life of sweet little Bambi more than the lives of the people snuffed out when they slam into a 300 pound animal at 70 mph on the freakin' parkway, in a car that's too small because of those same 10,000 idiots and their CAFE regulations. In an SUV with brush bars you'll live, in a Honda you'll die. Geddit?
I don't know who you hang out with, but I don't know a single person who would deliberately stick something on their truck to maximize the damage to any pedestrian they might hit. What the hell are you thinking?!
If your kid needs an immunization, go to the closest county hospital and GET ONE. They are free already. Paid for by that rich guy's tax dollars, which you and the rest of the tax-the-rich crowd have no moral right to incidentally. Its called stealing, and it is economically counterproductive at best.
Illegal immigration is a pox on America that exists only because it is politically convenient for the Democrats. You doubt me, check out who just kicked ass and who's ass got kicked in California and look at their respective platforms. Davis gives driver's licences to illegals, Arnold wants them to go home. Which of those two approaches is more likely to reduce the kind of abuse of immigrant labour you're talking about? Which is honest and which is a crooked manipulation of the voters?
Greenies the world over really are fighting against life-saving measures for the poor, just like those -authentic- quotes suggest. They consider Humanity to be a disease, so anything that kills more humans is forth fighting for. Frankly, that's sick.
Finally, Bush said "Bring it on!" to the Islamofascist scum flooding into Iraq from all directions because that's where the ARMY is. You know, the guys with the tanks, guns and airplanes? The guys who are all set up and gung-ho to SHOOT BACK?
George Bush said that because he, unlike you, is not a fuzzy brained bunny hugger. If the enemy is predisposed to run himself up onto your bayonet, shout encouragement!
Thank God for George Bush, SUVs and Americans with 10 million in the bank. Without them we'd all be royally fucked.
There are assholes in the world. They are few, but they cause trouble out of all proportion to their numbers. Prepare for the assholes while you enjoy the good people. Worth remembering in trying times.
Here are some easy solutions to their sorry efforts.
1. Spam: don't post your e-mail address in machine readable format. Pretty much handles it. If people whine about the re-typing, ask 'em if they'd rather be getting e-mail for "Hot Gay Webcam!!!" or "I love you!".
2. Worms/viri: Use non-standard hardware. The Wintel setup is the main target, so don't be a target.
There's so much semi-obsolete workstation hardware out there for the asking, it staggers the imagination. Stuff that was $30,000 five years ago is under $500 now. Check out Alpha, SGI, Sun boxes. Big crunch for small bucks, and most run Linux. Some assembly required.
Eg. SGI Octanes are cheap, they SMOKE and they run all manner of Gnu freeware on Irix 6.5. Plus they have the best video I've ever seen. DEC Alphas run Linux natively, and they are also cheap.
3. Firewall! Even if you are on a corporate intranet, firewall your shit. There's no reason not to when a P-150 can run a bulletproof and FREE firewall. You can even encrypt your in-office traffic and the stuff on your hard drives.
4. Lawsuits: Not to say that RIAA and etc. are good guys, but if you stay off the download circuit they've got nothing. We know where the sharks are, don't swim there. Pretty simple. Trade your music on CDs with friends. Snail mail has very high bandwidth, y'know.
5. Big Brother really isn't going to fix this: There's no way in hell a bunch of power-seeking gubmint nitwits are going to keep up with the curve here. Even if they cared they aren't smart enough, and they really don't care.
Anything they enact is guaranteed to fuck over regular users while leaving spammers in business. Somebody up the thread used gun control as an example, and it is an apt one. It is how government weenies think. Do you really want to be buying a computer licence next year, have some clerk at the Ministry of Computer Sanitation reading your e-mail and still be getting spam? Because that's the way they will do it and that's what will happen.
Centralized command and control doesn't work on a distributed system, only distributed self defence works. Harden your own gear and give the black hats a big 'ol raspberry!
Or you can wait for Big Brother to make it all better. "You haf ze papieren fur zis laptop, mein herr?"
Hey, I live in Canada. We have ~65% taxes here, if you add up all the federal, provincial and other stuff. We have all that free healthcare stuff. It means you get to stand in line, when you're sick.
A DD018-60D5-4705-B8F1-9C18ED072D19
As it happens, I work for $13.50 an hour. See if you can imagine what my take home looks like. Up here, "normal" people drive the shit only illegal immigrants drive in the USA. Taxes, y'know.
I made all the dough to buy that truck in the STATES! First house I ever owned was in the USA, and I could afford it because of low interest and LOW TAXES. The house I live in now was bought with profit from the one in the USA, otherwise I'd be renting some cheesy apartment. Guys who work in construction do not own houses or nice trucks here. In the USA, they do.
It all boils down to who you want looking after your interests. You want Big Brother to do it, or you want to do it yourself? I choose the latter, because it works better. I never had a bean to my name in Canada, went to the Eeeevile Capitalist USA and made a shitload of money, now I'm back here in the land of the $0.65 cent dollar and I don't have a bean again except what I saved up.
Difference between the two countries is OPPORTUNITY. In the USA there is the opportunity to have an SUV and something nice to tow behind it parked in front of your house that you own outright. Here in Canada you have to know somebody in the Big Brother office and take table scraps. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but only a slight one.
Put it this way. In Phoenix Arizona there are many companies that make all manner of race cars, dune buggies, jeeps, play stuff. Like more than 30 who build whole cars. Here in Toronto, the biggest, richest city in Canada, there are maybe three. In Phoenix everybody has some kind of customization on their new to two year old car, even if its only alloy wheels or pinstripes. Here, bone stock and five to eight years old is the rule. Imagine that rule applied to all private enterprise and you have Canada. Now go find a job.
Here's a beauty article that explains the concept even better: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=A8
Socialism sucks.
Do you really want the government to be deciding on the contents of your OS, your processor, your hard drive controller, and etc? Everybody thinks Mickeysoft sucks now, just wait until the gubmint gets their hads on it.
Plus, it is so easy to build computers now that any highschooler can whip one together, therby invalidating all that licencing effort. There's enough Pentium processors out there to keep any black market going virtually forever, and if there were a demand for "off the books" hardware you know that there would be no end of clever bastards out there to fill it.
Centralised control never works in the real world.
Supposing some pinhead government really did require an internet licence. How long does anyone think it would take for an unlicenced, subrosa net to grow up from the grass roots?
I'd give it a month, myself. Even Red China has people surfing up stuff they aren't supposed to. This genie ain't going back in that little bottle, kids.
I did not need an SUV. I could have made do with a smaller/cheaper/more environmentaly friendly rollerskate, but I went for the biggest pickup I could get. I bought it for two very important reasons, neither of which has anything to do with need.
1. After dump trucks and 18 wheelers, I am king of the fucking road. It is good to be king.
2. It pisses off all the right people.
In answer to the sorely misguided youth who asked the question about hybrids that started this flame war, GET A TRUCK. You want fuel economy, get a diesel truck. Anybody who tells you a Honda Civic is going to keep you alive in an accident even half as well as a full sized pickup is not your friend.
And to all the oh-so-superior Euro types who think our gas is too cheap in North America, here's a news flash: There is no honour in being milked like a cow, ladies and gentlemen.
Our gas costs almost exactly the same as yours. The difference in the price at the pump is tax. You keep voting for the socialists, they will keep taking your money. Moo!
I'm waiting for fusion. Specifically hydrogen fusion generating useful amounts of nice cheap electricity.
Sure fix the blackouts, wouldn't it?
All these things on the list are devices and/or services that turned out to be a hell of a lot harder to implement than scifi authors thought they'd be back in the day.
Flying cars won't be -really- feasible until there's antigravity widgetry you can fit in a car-sized package. Too many points of failure in a VTOL aircraft for there to be millions of the things floating around.
Most of the points of failure are with the operator as others have mentioned, but let us not forget that a flying car has to share its environment with fences, power lines, flagpoles, weather and most importantly, BIRDS. You want to be riding in an aircraft that needs four props or fans to stay airborn when it sucks a Canada goose through one of those fans? Or standing underneath it?
Me neither. Just give me better than break-even hydrogen fusion and I'll be happy.
Tax the rich, feed the poor = Socialist.
Socialist = bankruptcy
Next.
Yes, you too could be painting other people's houses while you live in your car. If that doesn't motivate your ass to do school work, nothing ever will.
Ditch the social life, ditch the internet connection, do the work. Period. Life's a bitch.
O2 in the converter = fire in your floormats, usually. Not good to let high levels of oxygen in there, shit gets way too hot. Redirect skipped stroke exhaust? Jettison converter? This stuff gets complex eh? Needs a specially designed head, not just a new computer. Interesting idea on the O2 problem though, just give each cylinder its own O2 sensor. Then your program will be able to manage each charge.
If you half the gas pulse it makes a lean fuel charge and burns a hole in your piston. If you just skip a stroke you have the cost of compressing the air to deal with. You need to do is have the correct fuel charge for the ammount of air intake you have on every stroke. Skipped strokes have to find a way to not compress air, or a way to break even with the compression cost. One possibility is a special presure release valve for when you want to skip a stroke. Or possibly water injection into the compressed charge. That could work by giving you a steam expansion by stealing ambient heat from the engine. Pretty hard to inject liquid water into 150 psi air though. Need a kickass injector/pump system to run at >150 psi, regular fuel systems run at ~80 psi.
Dude, this was the 1950's. MAD and nuclear armageddon and all the bullshit we were brought up with wasn't even INVENTED until the middle 1960's. No such thing as a pin point strike, they -wanted- to flatten the city, town, factory or whatever. Smart bombs not invented yet. Neither were tactical low yield nukes. This is a multi kiloton device at least. Thousands of innocents in the enemy's country is better than thousands back home. Still is, for that matter. For these reasons and many others, 300 feet was more than good, it was awsome.
Postmodern though is so convenient for some people. If "truth" is a hegemonic social construction, you can equate anything to anything and still be "right". Unfortunately Mr Foucault was a publish-or-perish hack and his philosophy does not survive contact with the real world. I ask you sir, what is the difference between a highly trained and motivated pilot performing in practice a mission he hopes and prays he will never be called upon to perform for real, and a suicide bomber who straps on C4 with the sole purpose of killing people he does not know but never the less hates? In truth one cannot equate them at all. There is no connection of method, motivation, or most important, results. Please note that the Iron Curtain is no more and it fell without a shot being fired, but Israel still stands despite hundreds of suicide bombers. There really is truth, it seems.
Point being, this is just one little thing done by the American military, the totality of which resulted in you living in a free country in Europe.
Without these guys training for these incredibly dangerous missions, you'd be speaking Russian. As would we all.
The USA is again at war, for much the same reason. So you can type away on Slashdot and not have to worry about nukes/bugs/chemicals released by some Islamist lunatic in your town. A thankless task, it seems to me.
Get the point yet?
If you read the article at all, you'd know that these guys were well aware of the likely results. They were the smartest lads in the whole Navy, of course they knew. People are not stupid, particularly military people. Contrary to the opinion of certain Left leaning doofi on /.
You'd also know that they were a bunch of gung-ho super hotdogs and figured if anyone could beat the odds it would be them.
As a general rule, you'll always find a lot more guys lined up for a super dangerous mission than you will for a suicide bomber's vest. Only zealots and lunatics will do that stuff.
As for accuracy, you'll find they were hitting inside 300 ft. Close enough for a nuke, don't you think?
These days they usually hit inside three feet from 5 miles up. Think about that for a second, eh? Which window of this building do we want broken?