The next time you're driving to work, take a glance to your left.
That 30' wide median strip? You know, the one they pay some public works teams to spend an entire week mowing several times a season? Yeah. Fully exposed to sunlight, easy access, on a major transportation route.
Now, granted, you're not going to want to grow food veggies in the median of a major interstate? Too much toxins from the exhaust and worse. But now that we've got the idea in your heads, take a look at the medians in your local town. Definitely not as much traffic, but sometimes just as wide, covered in very thirsty, very costly grass and/or other landscape plants, and 100% under-utilized.
So. When it looks like the global food riots are going to start, show up at your local council/zoning board and say, "Here's what's going on, here's what we're going to do about it. We will be growing food. We will take care of all maintenance and upkeep, and save the town (insert 5-6 figure amount) of dollars per year. If you interfere, we will sue you into oblivion. If you try to arrest us, we'll keep coming in until we're all incarcerated. Then YOU will have to pay for feeding us."
Law enforcement in cities where protests are expected to take place, will pull out some of their internal training videos, then put them up on big screens around areas where they expect a protest.
Then, when a LiveStreamer catches some of that training video, the bots will automagically shut off the protester's live feed.
I had one that was almost infinitely worse. I dropped a screw down the barrel of the carburetor, and it settled, right on the edge of blown piston oblivion.
I had no "grabber", no sticky tape, no magnet. But I did have access to my dad's lawn mower repair shop.
After digging around, I found a long drill bit that was used for drilling through fence posts and stringing wire for grapes. I took a piece of electrical wire, wrapped it around the steel drill bit, and touched the ends of the wire to a 12 volt battery.
*Note to self: never do that again without using insulated pliers.
After swallowing my heart and changing my shorts, I sent the now-highly magnetized drill bit down the bore of my carb. *TINK!* The screw leaped off the edge and right onto the bit. Saved my skin, that did?
3. Remove foreign object that slipped in there when nobody was looking, or forgot to check first.
It's called the "Law of Small, Easily Lost Items", aka "The Law of Dice".
"Any small, necessary object, when dropped, will travel a distance that is inversely proportionate to the force provided or otherwise available at the moment of dropping, and settle into the most ridiculously inaccessible or otherwise inconvenient location. The level of consternation to be generated in recovery or removal is a multiple of the risk involved in the attempt, times the expense of the most fragile object involved in the recovery, or the physical/mental/emotional pain likely to be generated during a catastrophic failure of said recovery operation."
How about re-posting the petition, and mention the fate of the previous petition. Include all the drama its removal incurred. You can even have a "release party", on Twitter, Facebook and whatnot.
One of the tags on this story is, "theyneverlearn".
On the contrary, "they" have learned exceptionally well! One could argue that "they" are A+ students with a 4.0 GPA across the board, having graduated Suma cum laude from the University of Violating People's Rights.
1. Any illegal action is legal until you get caught. (This is universal, and does not apply only to software.)
2. If you get caught, bluff. Claim that the plaintiff signed away their rights in the EULA.
3. If the bluff fails, obstruct. Claim that the EULA dictates the plaintiff must agree to arbitration in the Dominican Republic, where all parties may only meet on the 5th Wednesday of every month, between the hours of 8AM to 12PM.
4. If the obstruction has failed, then the client has identified themselves as a serious threat. Primarily because they have enough money to get this far in a court of law. Commence filing delaying actions. Request discovery on the plaintiff's machine. Engage private investigators, or even law enforcement by accusing the plaintiff of willfully violating the EULA. Plaintiff's property is then confiscated pending an investigation which can take up to a year. Continue until plaintiff runs out of money.
5. If things get this far, then plaintiff is extremely dangerous. Withdraw all claims against plaintiff. Immediately offer a deal to the plaintiff in return for a non-disclosure. Agree to any amount of money. Because it has not made it to court, you can promise umpteen squintillion bars of diamond-studded gold, and never have to pay one thin dime. What's the plaintiff going to do? Send the debt to a collection agency? (Use caution with this tactic! People are learning-albeit slowly-that you can send the sheriff to foreclose on a defaulting defendant's property.)
6. The plaintiff refuses any deal. Case actually makes it to court. Offer another deal for much less money. Court costs for the plaintiff will now most likely exceed damages, so make an appropriate offer. Use caution: a court-agreed settlement MUST be paid, but it will not dictate as to when it must be paid.
7. All attempts at a deal have failed. Plaintiff has bottomless pockets and blood in their eye, and is Hell-bent on taking you down. Begin repeat of Step 4.
8. Repeat of Step 4 has failed. The Lord God has taken a direct interest in this case, and has been witnessed pissing into your cornflakes. Change your plea to "no contest". The court is restricted to how much they can fine you, and the case comes to a halt.
9. Write off all losses by routing funds through the third set of books. Engage social media sock puppets to gin up your products. Sue anyone who bad-mouths you, even if they're pointing out the truth. Inform R&D that they are to conceal the program on the next release.
An illegal action is legal, until you can afford to contest it in court, assuming you haven't already assumed that said illegal action *is* legal, and you don't believe you can fight it.
Yeah, that occurred to me after posting it. Also, under "ideal" conditions, this would be done using a "college" freezer, preferably one without any food in it.
1. Get ahold of long cables that can reach *outside* the freezer to your machine.
2. Wrap the drive *before* you put it in the freezer. Heat a towel in the oven to make sure it's dry, then wrap the drive in the towel. Now stick it in a plastic baggie, along with some silica gel packs to suck up more moisture. Try to close the mouth of the baggie around the cables as much as possible. Use duct tape if necessary.
3. Put it in the freezer, route the cables through the door seal, and make damn sure the door is shut tight as possible. Seal it with more duct tape if you have to. Let it sit in the freezer for at least 6 hours to get really cold.
4. Make all your preparations before plugging in the drive. Situate your primary machine right next to the freezer, make sure you're ready to go. If you can somehow manage it, and you know what you're doing, boot into an old copy of DOS, or a command-line interface of your preferred *nix distro. Don't waste time loading Windows if you can help it.
5. Turn off your machine, plug the drive in, then reboot.
6. Move *fast*. Start copying the drive contents over to the backup drive as fast as you can. If you can do it via a script or batch file, then even better. Speed is of the essence. In fact, if you know the locations of the files you need, as well as their general file names, then creating a batch file BEFORE starting would be your best option. Just tell it to copy everything in C:\MyLifesWork\coldfusion*.*
7. MOST IMPORTANT STEP!!! If this does not work, and you can't pull anything off the drive, then don't panic just yet. Turn off your machine, unplug the drive, then unplug the freezer.
Do NOT open the freezer until it has reached ambient temperature, which will take at least 24 hours or more.
This will prevent the drive from getting roached from the condensation, and make it more feasible for a drive recovery company to save your data.
The creature lashes out so fast and powerful, that the impact generates a cavitation bubble on the forward surface of the claw. So not only does the claw hammer in, but there's a nasty blast of energy as the cavitation bubble collapse at the speed of sound. Its so powerful, it even generates light!
Yes, because planet Earth is just like Hollywood, and changes to the planet don't actually happen over a period of centuries, they take place over a period of a week, with massive tidal waves and reverse hurricanes freezing people solid in three seconds flat.
The overall fundamental problem: It is not economical for those in power to stop shitting where they sleep. They have sufficient money and power that they will never experience any hardship whatsoever within their lifetime. They will always have their private estates, their private food supplies and their private security forces.
The source of that problem: People who put those in power into their powerful positions are not suffering enough to abstain from supplying them with more power. They continue to spend money and purchase unnecessary products for purposes of pleasure, convenience or both. They continue to vote for politicians who campaign on emotional issues that have absolutely no bearing on the overall welfare of the public. Those that are suffering lack the ability to participate in the financial aspects, and therefore are considered unimportant. Those that attempt to participate in the political aspects without sufficient funds engage the political machine at their peril.
The solution to the overall fundamental problem: Stop buying non-essentials. Produce your own essentials as much as possible. Establish or take part in personal networks to share/sell/trade the essentials you are capable of producing, as well as any existing non-essentials you might already possess that you no longer have use for. To alter a popular phrase from the recent past: "Use it up, wear it out, make or do, or do without." With regards to political power, take part in the process. Vote in every single election for which you are eligible. Run for public office. Attend every hearing, meeting and session.
The ultimate goal: Remove the profit of shitting where you sleep. Once commercial entities and businesses find their profits falling because people are purchasing products and services based on ecological and/or ethical practices, they will alter those practices to please the consumer. Once citizens become fully involved in their government, oversight will become inescapable and unstoppable without executing a direct usurpation of the social contract. I.E. declaring martial law and ordering people to stop voting, stop participating in government and resuming shopping. If that happens, society will collapse entirely and something new will eventually develop. If it doesn't, reform will eventually alter society to something new, hopefully more capable of no longer finding a profit in shitting where they sleep.
So they're "mining" social data to target their message, huh?
What are they using to figure out where to dig for this data? Dowsing rods? Pendulums? Ouija boards? Because every time I go onto YouTube these days, I get these ridiculous anti-Obama adverts that look like they crawled out of Rupert Murdoch's colostomy bag.
But the fact that they exist at all is a bad thing. Monsanto told us this would not happen. But it is. So what else is going on that we were told would not happen? I could take the "ebil corporation" route, and argue maleficence on Monsanto's part, but that's not productive. Nor would it be productive to try and punish Monsanto for lying. What would be a good idea, if not productive for Monsanto, would be to require a longer testing period with more diverse tests.
The other thing that makes RR weeds bad, is the fact that Monsanto/Syngenta is the company that makes Round-Up.
For that reason alone, anything produced by Monsanto/Syngenta should be subjected to the strictest regulations and controls, if not forbidden until proven harmless.
That is not correct. You cannot unknowingly/unwittingly make a toxic hybrid, it is biologically impossible.
In order to hybridize, the plants must already be of the same Genus. A good example would be the Tangelo, which is a mix of the Pomelo and Tangerine. The Pomelo is Citrus maxima, and the Tangerine is Citrus tangerina. Plants and animals of the same Genus are usually genetically compatible.
However, you can make a toxic hybrid by doing it intentionally. You would have to specifically cross an already toxic, or potentially toxic plant, with another plant that has toxic potential or actually is toxic. But again, this would have to be intentional.
Splicing jellyfish into plants without conducting extended studies in restricted environments is a Bad Thing.
Monsanto/Syngenta wants it in the fields far too fast, and they've been found altering or suppressing research and/or evidence that is not in favor of their products. I can totally understand why? Such development costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and the only way to recoup those costs and make a profit is to get it in the field as fast as possible.
However, as we're already seeing with Round-Up resistant weeds, nature is all too ready and willing to exploit any loophole it can find. And the fossil record has numerous species that found themselves facing a loophole along the span of a few thousand years. Neanderthal is an excellent example? Their nasal passages were designed to conserve heat and moisture in an arctic environment. When the earth started warming up, they started dying of sinus infections, making room for us.
Nature has enough loopholes on it's own, and puts centuries, if not millenia, into developing them. We really can't afford to give it anything new without putting a comparable amount of time and resources into the project to make sure it's safe, and won't come back to haunt us.
Ah, thank you for the corrections! Should have been more careful with that?
As for smokers?
*snerk* Probably not? But then, considering how the tobacco companies alter the tobacco to make it more addictive, it's a moot point. If you're going to smoke, go with American Spirit. No additives at all, but watch out, it packs a punch.
Slashdot Mirror
The next time you're driving to work, take a glance to your left.
That 30' wide median strip? You know, the one they pay some public works teams to spend an entire week mowing several times a season? Yeah. Fully exposed to sunlight, easy access, on a major transportation route.
Now, granted, you're not going to want to grow food veggies in the median of a major interstate? Too much toxins from the exhaust and worse. But now that we've got the idea in your heads, take a look at the medians in your local town. Definitely not as much traffic, but sometimes just as wide, covered in very thirsty, very costly grass and/or other landscape plants, and 100% under-utilized.
So. When it looks like the global food riots are going to start, show up at your local council/zoning board and say, "Here's what's going on, here's what we're going to do about it. We will be growing food. We will take care of all maintenance and upkeep, and save the town (insert 5-6 figure amount) of dollars per year. If you interfere, we will sue you into oblivion. If you try to arrest us, we'll keep coming in until we're all incarcerated. Then YOU will have to pay for feeding us."
Law enforcement in cities where protests are expected to take place, will pull out some of their internal training videos, then put them up on big screens around areas where they expect a protest.
Then, when a LiveStreamer catches some of that training video, the bots will automagically shut off the protester's live feed.
I had one that was almost infinitely worse. I dropped a screw down the barrel of the carburetor, and it settled, right on the edge of blown piston oblivion.
I had no "grabber", no sticky tape, no magnet. But I did have access to my dad's lawn mower repair shop.
After digging around, I found a long drill bit that was used for drilling through fence posts and stringing wire for grapes. I took a piece of electrical wire, wrapped it around the steel drill bit, and touched the ends of the wire to a 12 volt battery.
*Note to self: never do that again without using insulated pliers.
After swallowing my heart and changing my shorts, I sent the now-highly magnetized drill bit down the bore of my carb. *TINK!* The screw leaped off the edge and right onto the bit. Saved my skin, that did?
Lenina Huxley: I thought your life force had been prematurely terminated!
John Spartan: Yeah, I thought I was history too. What the hell happened? All of a sudden, this car turned into a cannoli.
Right.
1. Remove bolt.
2. Shine pen camera and light down the hole.
3. Remove foreign object that slipped in there when nobody was looking, or forgot to check first.
It's called the "Law of Small, Easily Lost Items", aka "The Law of Dice".
"Any small, necessary object, when dropped, will travel a distance that is inversely proportionate to the force provided or otherwise available at the moment of dropping, and settle into the most ridiculously inaccessible or otherwise inconvenient location. The level of consternation to be generated in recovery or removal is a multiple of the risk involved in the attempt, times the expense of the most fragile object involved in the recovery, or the physical/mental/emotional pain likely to be generated during a catastrophic failure of said recovery operation."
How about re-posting the petition, and mention the fate of the previous petition. Include all the drama its removal incurred. You can even have a "release party", on Twitter, Facebook and whatnot.
Ah, the "Monsanto/Blackwater" Model. Yes, very efficient, that one?
Your sig is disturbingly appropriate for your comment.
One of the tags on this story is, "theyneverlearn".
On the contrary, "they" have learned exceptionally well! One could argue that "they" are A+ students with a 4.0 GPA across the board, having graduated Suma cum laude from the University of Violating People's Rights.
1. Any illegal action is legal until you get caught. (This is universal, and does not apply only to software.)
2. If you get caught, bluff. Claim that the plaintiff signed away their rights in the EULA.
3. If the bluff fails, obstruct. Claim that the EULA dictates the plaintiff must agree to arbitration in the Dominican Republic, where all parties may only meet on the 5th Wednesday of every month, between the hours of 8AM to 12PM.
4. If the obstruction has failed, then the client has identified themselves as a serious threat. Primarily because they have enough money to get this far in a court of law. Commence filing delaying actions. Request discovery on the plaintiff's machine. Engage private investigators, or even law enforcement by accusing the plaintiff of willfully violating the EULA. Plaintiff's property is then confiscated pending an investigation which can take up to a year. Continue until plaintiff runs out of money.
5. If things get this far, then plaintiff is extremely dangerous. Withdraw all claims against plaintiff. Immediately offer a deal to the plaintiff in return for a non-disclosure. Agree to any amount of money. Because it has not made it to court, you can promise umpteen squintillion bars of diamond-studded gold, and never have to pay one thin dime. What's the plaintiff going to do? Send the debt to a collection agency? (Use caution with this tactic! People are learning-albeit slowly-that you can send the sheriff to foreclose on a defaulting defendant's property.)
6. The plaintiff refuses any deal. Case actually makes it to court. Offer another deal for much less money. Court costs for the plaintiff will now most likely exceed damages, so make an appropriate offer. Use caution: a court-agreed settlement MUST be paid, but it will not dictate as to when it must be paid.
7. All attempts at a deal have failed. Plaintiff has bottomless pockets and blood in their eye, and is Hell-bent on taking you down. Begin repeat of Step 4.
8. Repeat of Step 4 has failed. The Lord God has taken a direct interest in this case, and has been witnessed pissing into your cornflakes. Change your plea to "no contest". The court is restricted to how much they can fine you, and the case comes to a halt.
9. Write off all losses by routing funds through the third set of books. Engage social media sock puppets to gin up your products. Sue anyone who bad-mouths you, even if they're pointing out the truth. Inform R&D that they are to conceal the program on the next release.
*AHEM*
An illegal action is legal, until you can afford to contest it in court, assuming you haven't already assumed that said illegal action *is* legal, and you don't believe you can fight it.
FTFY.
Yeah, that occurred to me after posting it. Also, under "ideal" conditions, this would be done using a "college" freezer, preferably one without any food in it.
At least do it the right way.
1. Get ahold of long cables that can reach *outside* the freezer to your machine.
2. Wrap the drive *before* you put it in the freezer. Heat a towel in the oven to make sure it's dry, then wrap the drive in the towel. Now stick it in a plastic baggie, along with some silica gel packs to suck up more moisture. Try to close the mouth of the baggie around the cables as much as possible. Use duct tape if necessary.
3. Put it in the freezer, route the cables through the door seal, and make damn sure the door is shut tight as possible. Seal it with more duct tape if you have to. Let it sit in the freezer for at least 6 hours to get really cold.
4. Make all your preparations before plugging in the drive. Situate your primary machine right next to the freezer, make sure you're ready to go. If you can somehow manage it, and you know what you're doing, boot into an old copy of DOS, or a command-line interface of your preferred *nix distro. Don't waste time loading Windows if you can help it.
5. Turn off your machine, plug the drive in, then reboot.
6. Move *fast*. Start copying the drive contents over to the backup drive as fast as you can. If you can do it via a script or batch file, then even better. Speed is of the essence. In fact, if you know the locations of the files you need, as well as their general file names, then creating a batch file BEFORE starting would be your best option. Just tell it to copy everything in C:\MyLifesWork\coldfusion*.*
7. MOST IMPORTANT STEP!!! If this does not work, and you can't pull anything off the drive, then don't panic just yet. Turn off your machine, unplug the drive, then unplug the freezer.
Do NOT open the freezer until it has reached ambient temperature, which will take at least 24 hours or more.
This will prevent the drive from getting roached from the condensation, and make it more feasible for a drive recovery company to save your data.
Animals: What the heck are those thing...OHSHI-*thump* ARRRGH! *dies from rock to head*
First Wave: Who they heck are those gu...OHSHI-*thunk* ARRGH! *dies from fire-hardened spear to the guts*
Second Wave: Who the heck are those gu...OHSHI-*THOCK!* ARRGH! *dies from Clovis point to the chest*
Third Wave: Who the heck are those gu...OHSHI-*BOOM!* ARRGH! *dies from musket ball*
Makes you wonder what the next wave for us is going to look like?
Probably something like: "What's that in the sk*FLASH! sizzle-pop*
And I'm out of mod points this week. Dammit!
...is it's primary hitting power is not the claw itself, but the inertial cavitation shockwave.
The creature lashes out so fast and powerful, that the impact generates a cavitation bubble on the forward surface of the claw. So not only does the claw hammer in, but there's a nasty blast of energy as the cavitation bubble collapse at the speed of sound. Its so powerful, it even generates light!
I nominate HTTP 451 - Site is not permitted in your country.
Yes, because planet Earth is just like Hollywood, and changes to the planet don't actually happen over a period of centuries, they take place over a period of a week, with massive tidal waves and reverse hurricanes freezing people solid in three seconds flat.
The overall fundamental problem: It is not economical for those in power to stop shitting where they sleep. They have sufficient money and power that they will never experience any hardship whatsoever within their lifetime. They will always have their private estates, their private food supplies and their private security forces.
The source of that problem: People who put those in power into their powerful positions are not suffering enough to abstain from supplying them with more power. They continue to spend money and purchase unnecessary products for purposes of pleasure, convenience or both. They continue to vote for politicians who campaign on emotional issues that have absolutely no bearing on the overall welfare of the public. Those that are suffering lack the ability to participate in the financial aspects, and therefore are considered unimportant. Those that attempt to participate in the political aspects without sufficient funds engage the political machine at their peril.
The solution to the overall fundamental problem: Stop buying non-essentials. Produce your own essentials as much as possible. Establish or take part in personal networks to share/sell/trade the essentials you are capable of producing, as well as any existing non-essentials you might already possess that you no longer have use for. To alter a popular phrase from the recent past: "Use it up, wear it out, make or do, or do without." With regards to political power, take part in the process. Vote in every single election for which you are eligible. Run for public office. Attend every hearing, meeting and session.
The ultimate goal: Remove the profit of shitting where you sleep. Once commercial entities and businesses find their profits falling because people are purchasing products and services based on ecological and/or ethical practices, they will alter those practices to please the consumer. Once citizens become fully involved in their government, oversight will become inescapable and unstoppable without executing a direct usurpation of the social contract. I.E. declaring martial law and ordering people to stop voting, stop participating in government and resuming shopping. If that happens, society will collapse entirely and something new will eventually develop. If it doesn't, reform will eventually alter society to something new, hopefully more capable of no longer finding a profit in shitting where they sleep.
Not illegal to shoot near, illegal to shoot from or across.
"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky." Morpheus: The Matrix
So they're "mining" social data to target their message, huh?
What are they using to figure out where to dig for this data? Dowsing rods? Pendulums? Ouija boards? Because every time I go onto YouTube these days, I get these ridiculous anti-Obama adverts that look like they crawled out of Rupert Murdoch's colostomy bag.
In and of themselves, no, RR weeds aren't bad.
But the fact that they exist at all is a bad thing. Monsanto told us this would not happen. But it is. So what else is going on that we were told would not happen? I could take the "ebil corporation" route, and argue maleficence on Monsanto's part, but that's not productive. Nor would it be productive to try and punish Monsanto for lying. What would be a good idea, if not productive for Monsanto, would be to require a longer testing period with more diverse tests.
The other thing that makes RR weeds bad, is the fact that Monsanto/Syngenta is the company that makes Round-Up.
RR weeds means you need to use more RU. That means you need to alter the desirable plants to be more resistant to RU, which could lead to even more resistant weeds. This already demonstrates a conflict of interest, but even if it doesn't, RU is still a dangerous environmental toxin. We already have environmental damage from run-off associated with farms using RU when it enters streams and waterways.
And finally, I don't have to suggest or allege lying, wrong-doing or criminal behavior on the part of Monsanto/Syngenta.
It has already been decided in a court of law.
For that reason alone, anything produced by Monsanto/Syngenta should be subjected to the strictest regulations and controls, if not forbidden until proven harmless.
That is not correct. You cannot unknowingly/unwittingly make a toxic hybrid, it is biologically impossible.
In order to hybridize, the plants must already be of the same Genus. A good example would be the Tangelo, which is a mix of the Pomelo and Tangerine. The Pomelo is Citrus maxima, and the Tangerine is Citrus tangerina. Plants and animals of the same Genus are usually genetically compatible.
However, you can make a toxic hybrid by doing it intentionally. You would have to specifically cross an already toxic, or potentially toxic plant, with another plant that has toxic potential or actually is toxic. But again, this would have to be intentional.
A fair question, so allow me to elucidate.
Splicing jellyfish into plants without conducting extended studies in restricted environments is a Bad Thing.
Monsanto/Syngenta wants it in the fields far too fast, and they've been found altering or suppressing research and/or evidence that is not in favor of their products. I can totally understand why? Such development costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and the only way to recoup those costs and make a profit is to get it in the field as fast as possible.
However, as we're already seeing with Round-Up resistant weeds, nature is all too ready and willing to exploit any loophole it can find. And the fossil record has numerous species that found themselves facing a loophole along the span of a few thousand years. Neanderthal is an excellent example? Their nasal passages were designed to conserve heat and moisture in an arctic environment. When the earth started warming up, they started dying of sinus infections, making room for us.
Nature has enough loopholes on it's own, and puts centuries, if not millenia, into developing them. We really can't afford to give it anything new without putting a comparable amount of time and resources into the project to make sure it's safe, and won't come back to haunt us.
Ah, thank you for the corrections! Should have been more careful with that?
As for smokers?
*snerk* Probably not? But then, considering how the tobacco companies alter the tobacco to make it more addictive, it's a moot point. If you're going to smoke, go with American Spirit. No additives at all, but watch out, it packs a punch.