Not applicable. Not everyone is armed, particularly in Somolia. But thats another story, and I don't want to run my blood pressure up trying to figure out why we haven't already done something there. The rest of this world looks at us as either our brothers keeper, or a bunch of meddling assholes. We got the message that in Somolia, AFATAC, we're the meddling assholes.
To me there is one hell of a difference between the jerk who intends to rob or rape if there is no resistance, and the person who is intent on the prevention of that robbery or rape.
The label of sociopath applies to the robber or rapist. The rest of us have a quite reasonable expectation of a peacefull existance, and a right to protect that, which is an apparently ficticious scenario in the minds of those who would think that all of societies ills are nothing more than a lack of labels, so lets label this and see if it goes away in shame.
It often doesn't go away in anything but a body bag. But I'm not the sociopath. The jerk that put me in that situation against my will is the 'sociopath'.
Or as someone once said: I've got a shotgun and a shovel. Any questions?
And you're a dumb fsck if you actually believe that liberal pablum. And the NEJM is as liberal as they come, with medical accuracy only when its convienient, their political agenda has been showing for decades. They should stick to things medical, and be respected, or change their name officially to something more fitting of their editorial pages.
Me, I have one of those little suction cup attached signs in the back window of my pickup that advises wannabe's that "Notice, driver only carries $20 (in ammunition)"
And the house has had a 'never mind the dog, beware of the owner' sign on the front window with a very obviously loaded revolver pointed right out of the picture at the viewer for years.
Yes, I'm a hunter/shooter and I have a concealed carry permit. Its up to you to guess where its at, because it is loaded.
And I've never worried about my kids playing with my guns, every one of them got a lesson in how destructive they can be about the time they started crawling around on the floor. For many years, my guns stood loaded and ready in an open cabinet rack behind the front door while they were growing up, and to this day they all have a healthy respect for them, and treat their own guns today in the same manner as I taught them way back then. Would any of them shove a loaded 38 up your nose? You betcha, if you were threatening them or their family without wearing a badge & carrying a warrant.
They remember their departed mother, who was herself a damn good shot, using the Ackley-06 I built for her to open up a can of Bud in the hand of a drunken punk who came calling one afternoon. It got his (and that of the rest of his party) attention, and we saved the remains of the can for a souvenier. No idea how he explained his need for a few stitches in his hand at the emergency shop, nor do I care. Thats how it should be, for an armed society is a polite society. And we sure could use a bit more civility in our personal relationships with the rest of the world about now.
Those that do all this bad acting just because they can, thinking the victim is going to just let them, are some we could cheerfully miss, but not by very much, and only once, the next time we don't intend to miss.
Like Willie Nelson and company in a recent song, a tall oak tree and a suitable length of rope are all we really need to handle the likes of them bad boys.
Well, this is the 3rd one of them we've had in 15 years. The first, which may remind me of your story, had a 2.2L 4 in it, and so help me God, you had to shut off the air conditioner to get across the intersection before the light turned red again. And, like yours, it self-destructed, but it waited till we'ed replaced the head once at about 120k miles, and then it ran for another 75k miles before the pan suddenly wasn't quite big enough for all the parts as the wife was going bowling one night. But, it had been pretty decent in the mileage dept, and had carried us quite a ways, so whan I went looking, I considered that she was still teaching school as a traveling elementary music teacher who carried about 500 pounds of stuff from school to school every day, and found another van, a 92 to replace that old '85 model. This one had a 3.6L V6 that had at least 5x the giddyup the 4 had, capable of burning rubber on the takeoff should you want to abuse it that way.
It had 50k on it when we bought it, and when the headlights got so yellow we had to check with a flashlight to see if they were lit, I traded it off on this '97 we have now, writing a check for the $12k difference not too long before 9/11/01. It had 60 on it then, and took immediately several dashboard teardowns and a new clockspring in the steering column before all the controls worked right, that item miss-installed at the factory. That dashboard, when fully dissed, takes up the whole front yard! It now has 106k on it, and I managed to muss up the right front corner about 3k worth this spring, (first time I've had to call the insurance folks for something that happened with me behind the wheel since July 1968!) so I had a good excuse to replace the headlight on that corner. So its nice and bright yet while the one on the left is showing signs of yellowing already at 7 years of age. 'twouldn't be so bad but just the replacement plastic headlight, no bulb in it, is $280 from the aftermarket folks, and almost $400 from chrysler. That, pardon my language, is fscking ridiculious. But, instead of having cookie cutter 5x7 glass ones they can sell for $17 at wallyworld, each maker has to put his 'styling' trademark on a different unit each year, and sometimes several different models in a year will use unique moldings. Thats no way to have any 'economy of scale'.
The headlights lesn plastic turning yellow is such a problem for the last 20 years that I've considered mounting a class action federal suit to make all makers doing business in the states replace them with glass lights as a safety recall. A 5 year old set of those things, even with fresh lamps installed, is only half as bright as when new. I've measured them with a light meter.
Couple that with chryslers penchant for a headlamp rated at 45/40 watts hi/lo, (so they don't have to put a bigger, gas hogging alternator on the vehicle) and you got a whole generation of people driving around in the dark, looking for a good place to have an accident.
At my age, with the dark adaptation going to hell in a hand basket (I'm double doomed in that dept, I have excellent color vision, and you can be colorblind and see well in the dark, or have good color vision but can't see at night worth a toot), the temptation to hang extra driving lights on the rig is quite strong. I'm also well aware as an electronics type, that an extra 110 watts worth of H3's, is way more than that puny little alternator can handle and live to tell about it.
Sigh, you used to be able to hit the junkyard and find a good used 75-100 amp alternator for a $50 bill or less, but now its $200-$400 because its rare, and you couldn't make it fit without access to a full-fledged machine shop to make its brackets and get the pulleys to line up. And then there might not be space left for it if its bigger around, they use every millimeter in the engine compartments today. Or how about a 2" longer serpentine belt? Only by accident from some other maker probably. Murphy's Law and all that.
Good thinking. We have 2 vehicles, a 97 Dodge Caravan with 106K miles on it, wrote a $12k check for it 4 years ago and its running quite well yet, and of course the obligatory 4wd since this IS West Virginia, but its an 88 Nissan 3L V6 with the automatic, with a bit over 200k miles on it. Hasn't used a drop of oil yet, runs great.
Rated at a half ton, I've had a ton of rock or sackrete in it several times. But we have vehicle inspection laws here, and the rust is beginning to be a problem, so I may not be able to get a sticker on it in another 1-2 years without major bodywork. I paid 3k for it 3 years ago, so replacing it is a "shrug" and write the check. I asked the missus a couple of days ago if she would mind driving a pickup and she said no, so I guess when it comes time to unload one of them, the van could be tradein materiel.
In one of the nations poorest states, in one of the hardest hit by loss of jobs recently, Lewis County, West Virginia. When I met and married my current wife 15 years ago, she had a house, on a 30 year contract at about 400 a month, doing that on a school teachers salary. When I finally got my own head above water financially (the 2nd ex left me a hell of a mess with the irs, but as a tv Chief Engineer, I made quite a bit more than she did teaching school) the first thing I did was refinance it for 7 years at 6%, at a hair under 700/mo. Been paid off now for about 7 or 8 years.
West Virginia can use a few selected people who are willing to come here. Jobs can be had, but may not be everyones cups of tea. With oil back up, well drilling has started up again, which has taken up most of the slack from the closeier(sp) of several glass making operations due to far eastern imports cutting the market for our higher priced hand-blown products. Basicly, he who is willing to work, can usually find work. It may not be at what one would call the prevailing scale, but then neither is the cost of living here (older places in bad need of some sweat equity can be had for under $20k) other than its almost de-rigor for the first vehicle to be a 4wd. There is one thing we've got planty of, and thats hills. Right up in your face hills.
I seemed to have fit right in when I came here as I am essentially self-educated in electronics and have been making my living making electrons do interesting work since the late 1940's. My highest 'formal' education is the 8th grade. But in local tv broadcasting, I am a very big frog in a quite tiny pond, spending the last 20 years in that office/workshop. With all the perks added in, I was making more than $60k when I retired.
To give you an idea of the climate here for technical jobs, about 10 years ago I gave a 10 explanation of how tv works to a bunch of 8th graders touring the station as an end of the school year perk. I finished up by saying that my job keeping all this working was an interesting job, but that someday I would retire, and I wanted one of them to be nipping at my heels wanting to replace me. 30 some 8th graders laughed their collective asses off, they didn't understand that like shoveling shit out of the cowbarn, somebody has to do it. I'm an old Iowa farm kid, so I know about shoveling shit out of the cowbarn too. So I wrote that possibility off and never mentioned it again to an end of the school year tour group. AFIAC, it was their loss, not mine. I rather enjoyed being the old man on the mountain, the guru if you will, that when things went to hell, got the phone call. Of course, 2.5 years after I retired, I still do. No one knows that 40 year old GE transmitter (locally anyway) like I do. OTOH, I get paid to answer the phone too, which helps in the health insurance dept.:)
To put something in here thats not OT, I would hope that this russian does take the money, and that he has more sense than to turn into a russian version of Jack Whitaker, who won the lottery here for about 140 mill 2 years ago, and has had nothing but legal problems since. He's also been mugged & left for half dead several times since everyone knows he carries several hundred $K around with him as he frequents the bars. IMO, thats not what winning the lottery should be about.
The russian would be similarly targeted as one to be taken advantage of if he had that kind of money at his disposal. Because of this, he may see it as a less than ideal situation. If he was smart, he'ed open an account here, and have a regular funds transfer to there of maybe 1 or 2 hundred a month setup in perpetuity. That amount would go a long way in raising his standard of living I'm sure. As to how to assure he got it when the russion mafia probably owns the local bank there, I don't know.
All money is, is slavery to a bank, which gives permission for someone to transfer real property to you.
Humm, but what if the loan has been paid off, for long enough you've forgotten that you once made house payments?
You see, I wasn't about to be scratching to make a mortgage payment when my income was reduced to the social security (gawd, what an oxymoron that is for some folks) levels in my old age, so the house has been paid off for 8 years now, and I've been almost-retired for 2.5 years.
That little detail makes it so that I still have some "discretionary" income, keep 2 vehicles running and can play with a little woodworking (I found some cherry a few days ago for less than $1 a bd ft) and these damned computers, and still afford a couple of beers a day. And oh yes, take my boat out on the lake and fish if I get otherwise totally bored. It aint new, it aint fancy, but it keeps my butt dry unless its raining, and gets me around the lake at about 5mph with its 10hp motor.
Think about it... Its called managing your money for you, not some faceless loan shark or bank (is there a difference at the end of the day?).
But, it was easy to pay it off in a short time when both of us were working full time, so we didn't really miss a nearly $700 a month payment while we were paying it of in 7 years instead of 30, and we saved about 60,000 USD in interest doing it. Now all we owe are utilities and taxes. Its a nice feeling, and those we can handle, or at least till oil hits $100 a barrel.
So no, you don't have to owe your soul to the money lenders. Way the hell and gone too many of you do though.
To those who will never get ahead because they owe their soul to the company store, I have sympathy, but the message is the same. Look at how you are handling your money now and see if there is any room to cut waste. Doing so will pay hundreds of thousands in future dividends once you get into the habit of making every dollar that comes out of your pocket buy something worthwhile. The "just gotta have it" attitude doesn't count at the end of the day if theres nothing left to invest in tomorrow at the end of the day.
Uh huh, I know that. But it doesn't give local relative velocities. In 40k years, it won't be a lot of help without lots of observation time to establish that. My whole point is that we aren't going to be anywhere near that location in 40k years. And TBT, neither is the location of any of those pulsars that solidly fixed. Just the relative motions of those, and the aliens interpretation of our math system might lead to a 50 light year error. Not to mention the accuracy of our own measurements of their locations.
The plaque and record were great ideas at the time. The keyword is time though. In 40k years, *we* figure it might enter another stars system and be observed. But first, the interceptors would have to find those 14 pulsars, backtrack time till they are where the plaque or record says they are, then goto that junction point (and that will take much time unless they have an FTL drive), and then observe for a star that seems to have little angular velocity from this observation point, measure its speed as it moves away, and determine if this is the star that was here 40k years ago.
Yes, it could potentially be done, but without an FTL drive, it obviously isn't worth doing except for the mental "what if" exersize. For either of us, should we happen to find somebody elses 'voyager'. Without an FTL drive, never the twain shall meet.
I haven't lost any sleep over it, and don't expect to ever do so. And I'd still say that even if I were 60 years younger. I'll be 70 a month on down the calendar, so if I'm lucky, I might have another 10 to see if I change my mind. But its going to take something truely amazing for that to happen.
Actually, the new scientist site might just have been taken down by government action. Such conspiracy theories have been rampant, and just often enough to confirm the theory that where there's smoke, there probably is a fire. We'll see if its available after office hours begin today, and if the story is available. IIRC that site doesn't have real big iron anyway, many times when I've accessed it, its been slower than a friggin dialup line.
If they do manage to reboot a/.'d machine and bring it back, and the story is now missing, then those theories will become the barter medium of the week. Until forgotten...
You are missing the big picture. In order to find our home planet, they would have to spend an inordinate anount to time surveying everything within say 500 lights years, and figureing out which one of those relatively dim stars *might* have been the one that was *here* 40,000 years before. Radio will not be of any use by then since everything will be on the successor to todays glass fiber unless we've gotten stupid and bombed us back to the stone age and have just reinvented it.
Since that little detail means there are several thousand potential targets they'll have to backtrack in order to find the best candidate for the *right* one, and obtaining the current positions and proper motions of each one takes a few months of triangulated observations to establish the level of accuracy required. Not that they couldn't do it given sufficient hardware and the urge. But my bet is on the relative lazyness level bogging the project down for what would be many decades in our time frame.
Besides, its theoreticly 40k years into the future when they find it, if indeed they do, (hell, we can't even spot a NEAR object before its zipped on by clearing this planet by a measely 9k miles!) and I doubt seriously that my bones are going to be aware of the condition of their surroundings by then. And hopefully my soul will be someplace else enjoying itself. That of course depends on what $DIETY you believe in.
It's when those aliens find Voyager and kit it out with lots of death rays and send it back to Earth in search of its creator you have to worry...
Yeah, well now stop and think about it. For anyone to find earth, based on the observed trajectory of a pioneer or voyager, they are going to have to do a hell of a lot of math backwards in order to find us. You see, in 40,000 years, we aren't going to be anywhere near where the trajectory of those vessels points back to. We're in an orbit around the milky way, quite a way out in one arm of it, with an average speed of 700 miles per second according to what I've read.
Besides, unless they've developed an FTL drive, I have this image of the hick coon hunter with his oat straw in his mouth to go with a chaw of terbaky, and a baseball cap that says "Who knows, or give a shit. I don't". They will be as powerless to come and see us as we are to go see them.
You all are seeing demons under your beds, now just be good kids and go back to sleep...
That said, I do seti, at 99.24% ranking currently.
Well, congress has screwed with a lot of laws in my time so far, but fortunately for us, they haven't tried to repeal any of the laws of physics. Occasionally wiser minds have usually prevailed.
This is true for most electrical motors with the singular exception of the most commonly used 'induction' motor used in everything from your can opener to your airconditioners multiple fans and compressors. Because of its simple construction and lack of life reducing brushes and such, this is the motor used in probably 99% of the 'over 1/50th horse' category if power hand tools aren't counted in the overall.
Even that type could possibly function as a poor generator if the overspeed was no more than the normal 'slip angles' associated with its normal load. But 95% of the time they will be nothing more than a brakeing loss if turned at a speed above the applied frequency/number of poles.
All other motors can be used either as motors or generators. This includes even the motor in the form of a loudspeaker as they have been used as the signal generating microphone in millions of intercom systems over the last 65 years.
That doesn't mean that some types might need supporting electrical stuff to work, and others don't, to achieve a practical level of efficiency in the dual role...
Cheers, Gene
The ponies are: =big diff in the missing colon
on
Odds-on Science
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Anyway, those are very long odds on the life on Titan bet.
Following the saga of all the predictionists (is there such a word), my bet is that there is. But we'll have to dig fairly deep, and test pretty thoroughly because while the right elements are there, its also cold enough that the chemical reactions are running at.01% of what they would run at given a nice balmy 70F for a working environment.
So, given the age of this star system, say 5 billion years, my guess is thats its reached not higher on the evolutionary scale than microbe sized stuff. But it will reproduce, and by that definition, it is life. We will probably have to detect its waste byproducts first, then deduce what could be producing that anomoly.
No, I wouldn't come anywhere near offering those radical sized odds, no more than 5/1 if it was my money on the line. And limited to a total wager of a 5 dollar bill.
As a broadcast engineer, this system was IMO, broken from the gitgo.
However, let me also point out that the huge majority of the system, if it all worked, which is rare, is secure in that the average stations gear can only accept input from the designated primary station in the area, and the NWS services which are also a part of the "network".
The rest of the secondary sites in a given area are proscribed from the generation of any spurious information by the FCC, with the penalties being both uncontestable, and damned expensive for the offender who originated the false message.
The rest of the problem is its dependability. The local system here has to jump the NRAO Quiet Zone, and is I believe now a satellite link, itself a huge problem in the event of an emp from an atomic device on the same side of the planet, or solar flares also can potentially render the link useless.
Once you get the alert up here from star city, then you have the problem of poorly designed gear foisted off on us broadcasters by the relatively short timetable mandated by the last methodology change about 15 years ago. That gear is now failing, and the maker, who was probably incorporated just to peddle the things, has since found it impossible to survive on the expendables the system requires, like its printers unique thermal paper etc. No schematics were furnished without a lot of yelling and screaming on our part, and sending it back for expert service? Fugetaboudit. Expert service does not exist in many cases.
And then the commission wants to fine us 27,000 per malfunction to boot. Most of the failures are beyond our control as the testing frequency is not sufficient to locate a malfunction before its a real malfunction.
Yes, its broken, hopelessly so. It needs to be replaced with something that actually works AND is secure from outside attacks.
And it needs to be stated up front that anyone with an idea of sueing the users for using an unknown submarine patent they ran to the patent office and got a patent on after the system was developed, will do jail time until such time as the system is declared unusable as this one s/b now. We went thru that already with this system, some jerk, smelling an easy dollar, ran and got a patent on it from our slumbering USTPO and sent all of us letters demanding $1500 a year for a license to use the system that was developed and mandated by the government. I think all of us were in close harmony during the chorus that told the commission and the equipment makers to pay it, we weren't about to pay annually for something that was mandated by them once we had purchased the original gear and installed it.
They faded away into the slime from whence they came eventually, and the patent was eventually set aside, or so we are being told.
Yah, we need a new system, one considerably more well thought out than this one ever was.
It rather sounds as if we're in violent agreement here.
I think I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the offices come tomorrow morning. I think I'd find I was living in some of those "interesting times" Confusious was fond of refering to.:-)
Can the air conditioning handle the expected smoke?
Mmm, I suppose I'd better put in the obligatory smiley here, you might need it tomorrow.:-)
Humm, if you are indeed who you say you are, then basicly the 'mistaken' action is probably going to be taken as a continuance of the Z-D normal methods by the public in general. And thats not what could be called good press. Its "ink", but not good ink.
I haven't always subscribed to the Z-D slamming that has taken place in the media occasionally, but I can recall when a Sci-Fi magazine that had been purchased by Z-D slowly went in the downward spiral that another Sci-Fi editor whose name I don't recall, made the remark in print that it (the Z-D periodical) had followed the usual Z-D "school of how to kill a magazine" practices.
Generally, it seems that Z-D has not always followed the "first please the customer" in its public face. More attention should be paid to this aspect of running the business IMO. In this case, I think I'd start with one less legal assistant in that office.
FWIW, I've been reading Sci-Fi since I was a sub-teenager, and everyone haunted the bookstores waiting for the next output of a gentleman called E. E. (Doc) Smith. Can you recall those golden years of Sci-Fi? I certainly do. I guess that makes me an old fart. Guilty. But that also means I've had a few more years to observe the human condition...
As a now private, more or less un-employed and semi-retired person, most of my mailing list activitys are recorded in the various folders my email agent maintains. But, part of that maintainance in most cases is an expire date. I keep mailng list messages only for a couple of months, then they are automaticly gone as basicly their contents are no longer valid anyway.
Not only that, but what the hell has happened to our basic 1st amendment rights. Or the rest of the Bill of Rights for that matter.
I think its way past time we found an honest man for the white house, one who would uphold the constitution instead of figure out ways to feed his buddies ever more government contract monies without actually putting it out to bid.
Unforch, politics and religion have this commonality. As the devil said when God threatened to sue to get an engineer back that was sent down by accident, "And just where are *you* going to get a lawyer?"
Seriously, we need a "D" option on the ballot, for none of the above, thereby forceing a fresh start at finding a suitable candidate, one crazy enough to want the job, and still honest enough to try to fix the congressional excesses of the last 30 years.
You don't like my message? Then don't post, but get off your ass and be a part of a democracy, register and VOTE dammit! Then send a message to the winner saying that you expect him to do the job he was elected to do.
Wello, for starters. how about having it in the john, just as handy as the readers digest, laying open to the page where you left off reading it the last time you were sitting there?
Nice idea, but as long as these things need power, or the contents cannot be downloaded for long term storage and retrieval on demand (and do the retrieval in 10 seconds or less from anyplace in your home) its never going to happen. I don't want to mess with the device, I just want to read, and for that, dead trees are the exact ticket.
Throw in the DRM and its a dead product that will never, ever "find its niche market" and make billions for the retailers peddling it. Anyones vision that includes that is suffering from dillusions of grandieur and a way outsized "I'm important so do as I say" ego.
I'd suggest a good shrink, but I don't know any that aren't also at least 51% quacks.
That seems like the right way, but very labor intensive. I took the easy way out and called AT&T and told them in no uncertain terms to call off the dogs else I would make a lot of noise they might not like in court.
I'm not a lawyer by any means, but I do have a sense of whats right and whats wrong. Giving them that particular piece of my mind didn't bother me a bit, and I felt better for having done it. Such mind polution should NOT be treated as valuable property because it just multiplies if you try to contain it.
Thanks for the advice though, I'll try to recall it the next time, if there is one. I don't normally tempt fate by letting bills go unpaid IF I owe them. Those I don't usually get charged to the dust and I'll let the rain settle them.
I suppose that they are broke, which leads accounts receivable to do strange things at times.
Or, maybe that was the pretext, drive people away from a non-profitable service. But, from the size of the bills I was paying, I see no reason that it couldn't have been profitable. They must have been charging us at least a quarter/min during the day, and if that doesn't make ungodly amounts of money, then obviously they are very very top heavy.
In any event, they are out of my picture frame forever.
I just canceled a long term agreement to use AT&T for my long distance carrier, and went to the Freedom plan from Verizon.
Why?
1. The about 30 minutes a month we were using cost as much or more in the average month.
2. I pay my bills online. 3 months ago I scheduled their payment to go out 7 days ahead of the due date, a standard practice.
The check got there a couple of days past the due date and some asshole turned it over to a collection agency, who was of course out of state. They called me at 8:55 pm 3 different days to rag and otherwise irritate me into paying a measely $47 bill that I already had a bank statement showing it had been paid, and AT&T themselves told me that it had been paid when I called them. The collectors people were the most obnoxious people I've tangled with on the phone in a decade or more, and I used up most of a 15 minute monolog's worth of swear words discussing their geneology with them. It took over 2 months to get that collector off my back and that forever turned any inclination I had for AT&T's service off forever.
AT&T was a fine, long term business, till some jerks managed to get themselves jobs in accounts receivable. AT&T should either prepare to sink in the long term view, or do some weeding in accounts receivable. Either way, they are going to do it without me, who has been a customer of theirs for 69 years.
All I have to say is they had better make the first shot count, cause the second one is mine, and it will count as a final settlement. The only time I've had to use more shots the target was 640 yards away. That took 3, nice buck too.
Screw 'em, and the camel that rode in on them too.
I'd say. They really should have enlisted some of those suns to serve the site, and/or bought some more bandwadth. I think it melted down in the middle of the 4th page for me, after about 3 minutes waiting for page 4 to load, I gave up and came back here.
Setting up a web auction without the iron to handle it should be criminal since the web viewers are going to be at such a lengthy time disadvantage.
I was looking for a decent tape system myself, but there's no way in hell I'll be able to find it before the auction is over on the 21st when the site is so slow.
Slashdot Mirror
Groan. Thats a terribly good pun, almost worthy of the Calahans Bar crowd.
Cheers, Gene
Ahh, but Neptunes orbit, like Pluto's, is a bit eccentric.
So the question then is: Where the hell was it then?
Think about it...
Cheers, Gene
Not applicable. Not everyone is armed, particularly in Somolia. But thats another story, and I don't want to run my blood pressure up trying to figure out why we haven't already done something there. The rest of this world looks at us as either our brothers keeper, or a bunch of meddling assholes. We got the message that in Somolia, AFATAC, we're the meddling assholes.
Cheers, Gene
Be carefull who you are calling the sociopath.
To me there is one hell of a difference between the jerk who intends to rob or rape if there is no resistance, and the person who is intent on the prevention of that robbery or rape.
The label of sociopath applies to the robber or rapist. The rest of us have a quite reasonable expectation of a peacefull existance, and a right to protect that, which is an apparently ficticious scenario in the minds of those who would think that all of societies ills are nothing more than a lack of labels, so lets label this and see if it goes away in shame.
It often doesn't go away in anything but a body bag. But I'm not the sociopath. The jerk that put me in that situation against my will is the 'sociopath'.
Or as someone once said: I've got a shotgun and a shovel. Any questions?
Cheers, Gene
And you're a dumb fsck if you actually believe that liberal pablum. And the NEJM is as liberal as they come, with medical accuracy only when its convienient, their political agenda has been showing for decades. They should stick to things medical, and be respected, or change their name officially to something more fitting of their editorial pages.
Me, I have one of those little suction cup attached signs in the back window of my pickup that advises wannabe's that "Notice, driver only carries $20 (in ammunition)"
And the house has had a 'never mind the dog, beware of the owner' sign on the front window with a very obviously loaded revolver pointed right out of the picture at the viewer for years.
Yes, I'm a hunter/shooter and I have a concealed carry permit. Its up to you to guess where its at, because it is loaded.
And I've never worried about my kids playing with my guns, every one of them got a lesson in how destructive they can be about the time they started crawling around on the floor. For many years, my guns stood loaded and ready in an open cabinet rack behind the front door while they were growing up, and to this day they all have a healthy respect for them, and treat their own guns today in the same manner as I taught them way back then. Would any of them shove a loaded 38 up your nose? You betcha, if you were threatening them or their family without wearing a badge & carrying a warrant.
They remember their departed mother, who was herself a damn good shot, using the Ackley-06 I built for her to open up a can of Bud in the hand of a drunken punk who came calling one afternoon. It got his (and that of the rest of his party) attention, and we saved the remains of the can for a souvenier. No idea how he explained his need for a few stitches in his hand at the emergency shop, nor do I care. Thats how it should be, for an armed society is a polite society. And we sure could use a bit more civility in our personal relationships with the rest of the world about now.
Those that do all this bad acting just because they can, thinking the victim is going to just let them, are some we could cheerfully miss, but not by very much, and only once, the next time we don't intend to miss.
Like Willie Nelson and company in a recent song, a tall oak tree and a suitable length of rope are all we really need to handle the likes of them bad boys.
Cheers, Gene
Well, this is the 3rd one of them we've had in 15 years. The first, which may remind me of your story, had a 2.2L 4 in it, and so help me God, you had to shut off the air conditioner to get across the intersection before the light turned red again. And, like yours, it self-destructed, but it waited till we'ed replaced the head once at about 120k miles, and then it ran for another 75k miles before the pan suddenly wasn't quite big enough for all the parts as the wife was going bowling one night. But, it had been pretty decent in the mileage dept, and had carried us quite a ways, so whan I went looking, I considered that she was still teaching school as a traveling elementary music teacher who carried about 500 pounds of stuff from school to school every day, and found another van, a 92 to replace that old '85 model. This one had a 3.6L V6 that had at least 5x the giddyup the 4 had, capable of burning rubber on the takeoff should you want to abuse it that way.
It had 50k on it when we bought it, and when the headlights got so yellow we had to check with a flashlight to see if they were lit, I traded it off on this '97 we have now, writing a check for the $12k difference not too long before 9/11/01. It had 60 on it then, and took immediately several dashboard teardowns and a new clockspring in the steering column before all the controls worked right, that item miss-installed at the factory. That dashboard, when fully dissed, takes up the whole front yard! It now has 106k on it, and I managed to muss up the right front corner about 3k worth this spring, (first time I've had to call the insurance folks for something that happened with me behind the wheel since July 1968!) so I had a good excuse to replace the headlight on that corner. So its nice and bright yet while the one on the left is showing signs of yellowing already at 7 years of age. 'twouldn't be so bad but just the replacement plastic headlight, no bulb in it, is $280 from the aftermarket folks, and almost $400 from chrysler. That, pardon my language, is fscking ridiculious. But, instead of having cookie cutter 5x7 glass ones they can sell for $17 at wallyworld, each maker has to put his 'styling' trademark on a different unit each year, and sometimes several different models in a year will use unique moldings. Thats no way to have any 'economy of scale'.
The headlights lesn plastic turning yellow is such a problem for the last 20 years that I've considered mounting a class action federal suit to make all makers doing business in the states replace them with glass lights as a safety recall. A 5 year old set of those things, even with fresh lamps installed, is only half as bright as when new. I've measured them with a light meter.
Couple that with chryslers penchant for a headlamp rated at 45/40 watts hi/lo, (so they don't have to put a bigger, gas hogging alternator on the vehicle) and you got a whole generation of people driving around in the dark, looking for a good place to have an accident.
At my age, with the dark adaptation going to hell in a hand basket (I'm double doomed in that dept, I have excellent color vision, and you can be colorblind and see well in the dark, or have good color vision but can't see at night worth a toot), the temptation to hang extra driving lights on the rig is quite strong. I'm also well aware as an electronics type, that an extra 110 watts worth of H3's, is way more than that puny little alternator can handle and live to tell about it.
Sigh, you used to be able to hit the junkyard and find a good used 75-100 amp alternator for a $50 bill or less, but now its $200-$400 because its rare, and you couldn't make it fit without access to a full-fledged machine shop to make its brackets and get the pulleys to line up. And then there might not be space left for it if its bigger around, they use every millimeter in the engine compartments today. Or how about a 2" longer serpentine belt? Only by accident from some other maker probably. Murphy's Law and all that.
Stop the w
Good thinking. We have 2 vehicles, a 97 Dodge Caravan with 106K miles on it, wrote a $12k check for it 4 years ago and its running quite well yet, and of course the obligatory 4wd since this IS West Virginia, but its an 88 Nissan 3L V6 with the automatic, with a bit over 200k miles on it. Hasn't used a drop of oil yet, runs great.
Rated at a half ton, I've had a ton of rock or sackrete in it several times. But we have vehicle inspection laws here, and the rust is beginning to be a problem, so I may not be able to get a sticker on it in another 1-2 years without major bodywork. I paid 3k for it 3 years ago, so replacing it is a "shrug" and write the check. I asked the missus a couple of days ago if she would mind driving a pickup and she said no, so I guess when it comes time to unload one of them, the van could be tradein materiel.
Cheers, Gene
In one of the nations poorest states, in one of the hardest hit by loss of jobs recently, Lewis County, West Virginia. When I met and married my current wife 15 years ago, she had a house, on a 30 year contract at about 400 a month, doing that on a school teachers salary. When I finally got my own head above water financially (the 2nd ex left me a hell of a mess with the irs, but as a tv Chief Engineer, I made quite a bit more than she did teaching school) the first thing I did was refinance it for 7 years at 6%, at a hair under 700/mo. Been paid off now for about 7 or 8 years.
:)
West Virginia can use a few selected people who are willing to come here. Jobs can be had, but may not be everyones cups of tea. With oil back up, well drilling has started up again, which has taken up most of the slack from the closeier(sp) of several glass making operations due to far eastern imports cutting the market for our higher priced hand-blown products. Basicly, he who is willing to work, can usually find work. It may not be at what one would call the prevailing scale, but then neither is the cost of living here (older places in bad need of some sweat equity can be had for under $20k) other than its almost de-rigor for the first vehicle to be a 4wd. There is one thing we've got planty of, and thats hills. Right up in your face hills.
I seemed to have fit right in when I came here as I am essentially self-educated in electronics and have been making my living making electrons do interesting work since the late 1940's. My highest 'formal' education is the 8th grade. But in local tv broadcasting, I am a very big frog in a quite tiny pond, spending the last 20 years in that office/workshop. With all the perks added in, I was making more than $60k when I retired.
To give you an idea of the climate here for technical jobs, about 10 years ago I gave a 10 explanation of how tv works to a bunch of 8th graders touring the station as an end of the school year perk. I finished up by saying that my job keeping all this working was an interesting job, but that someday I would retire, and I wanted one of them to be nipping at my heels wanting to replace me. 30 some 8th graders laughed their collective asses off, they didn't understand that like shoveling shit out of the cowbarn, somebody has to do it. I'm an old Iowa farm kid, so I know about shoveling shit out of the cowbarn too. So I wrote that possibility off and never mentioned it again to an end of the school year tour group. AFIAC, it was their loss, not mine. I rather enjoyed being the old man on the mountain, the guru if you will, that when things went to hell, got the phone call. Of course, 2.5 years after I retired, I still do. No one knows that 40 year old GE transmitter (locally anyway) like I do. OTOH, I get paid to answer the phone too, which helps in the health insurance dept.
To put something in here thats not OT, I would hope that this russian does take the money, and that he has more sense than to turn into a russian version of Jack Whitaker, who won the lottery here for about 140 mill 2 years ago, and has had nothing but legal problems since. He's also been mugged & left for half dead several times since everyone knows he carries several hundred $K around with him as he frequents the bars. IMO, thats not what winning the lottery should be about.
The russian would be similarly targeted as one to be taken advantage of if he had that kind of money at his disposal. Because of this, he may see it as a less than ideal situation. If he was smart, he'ed open an account here, and have a regular funds transfer to there of maybe 1 or 2 hundred a month setup in perpetuity. That amount would go a long way in raising his standard of living I'm sure. As to how to assure he got it when the russion mafia probably owns the local bank there, I don't know.
Cheers, Gene
All money is, is slavery to a bank, which gives permission for someone to transfer real property to you.
Humm, but what if the loan has been paid off, for long enough you've forgotten that you once made house payments?
You see, I wasn't about to be scratching to make a mortgage payment when my income was reduced to the social security (gawd, what an oxymoron that is for some folks) levels in my old age, so the house has been paid off for 8 years now, and I've been almost-retired for 2.5 years.
That little detail makes it so that I still have some "discretionary" income, keep 2 vehicles running and can play with a little woodworking (I found some cherry a few days ago for less than $1 a bd ft) and these damned computers, and still afford a couple of beers a day. And oh yes, take my boat out on the lake and fish if I get otherwise totally bored. It aint new, it aint fancy, but it keeps my butt dry unless its raining, and gets me around the lake at about 5mph with its 10hp motor.
Think about it... Its called managing your money for you, not some faceless loan shark or bank (is there a difference at the end of the day?).
But, it was easy to pay it off in a short time when both of us were working full time, so we didn't really miss a nearly $700 a month payment while we were paying it of in 7 years instead of 30, and we saved about 60,000 USD in interest doing it. Now all we owe are utilities and taxes.
Its a nice feeling, and those we can handle, or at least till oil hits $100 a barrel.
So no, you don't have to owe your soul to the money lenders. Way the hell and gone too many of you do though.
To those who will never get ahead because they owe their soul to the company store, I have sympathy, but the message is the same. Look at how you are handling your money now and see if there is any room to cut waste. Doing so will pay hundreds of thousands in future dividends once you get into the habit of making every dollar that comes out of your pocket buy something worthwhile. The "just gotta have it" attitude doesn't count at the end of the day if theres nothing left to invest in tomorrow at the end of the day.
Cheers, Gene
Uh huh, I know that. But it doesn't give local relative velocities. In 40k years, it won't be a lot of help without lots of observation time to establish that. My whole point is that we aren't going to be anywhere near that location in 40k years. And TBT, neither is the location of any of those pulsars that solidly fixed. Just the relative motions of those, and the aliens interpretation of our math system might lead to a 50 light year error. Not to mention the accuracy of our own measurements of their locations.
/.'d machine and bring it back, and the story is now missing, then those theories will become the barter medium of the week. Until forgotten...
The plaque and record were great ideas at the time. The keyword is time though. In 40k years, *we* figure it might enter another stars system and be observed. But first, the interceptors would have to find those 14 pulsars, backtrack time till they are where the plaque or record says they are, then goto that junction point (and that will take much time unless they have an FTL drive), and then observe for a star that seems to have little angular velocity from this observation point, measure its speed as it moves away, and determine if this is the star that was here 40k years ago.
Yes, it could potentially be done, but without an FTL drive, it obviously isn't worth doing except for the mental "what if" exersize. For either of us, should we happen to find somebody elses 'voyager'. Without an FTL drive, never the twain shall meet.
I haven't lost any sleep over it, and don't expect to ever do so. And I'd still say that even if I were 60 years younger. I'll be 70 a month on down the calendar, so if I'm lucky, I might have another 10 to see if I change my mind. But its going to take something truely amazing for that to happen.
Actually, the new scientist site might just have been taken down by government action. Such conspiracy theories have been rampant, and just often enough to confirm the theory that where there's smoke, there probably is a fire. We'll see if its available after office hours begin today, and if the story is available. IIRC that site doesn't have real big iron anyway, many times when I've accessed it, its been slower than a friggin dialup line.
If they do manage to reboot a
Cheers, Gene
You are missing the big picture. In order to find our home planet, they would have to spend an inordinate anount to time surveying everything within say 500 lights years, and figureing out which one of those relatively dim stars *might* have been the one that was *here* 40,000 years before. Radio will not be of any use by then since everything will be on the successor to todays glass fiber unless we've gotten stupid and bombed us back to the stone age and have just reinvented it.
Since that little detail means there are several thousand potential targets they'll have to backtrack in order to find the best candidate for the *right* one, and obtaining the current positions and proper motions of each one takes a few months of triangulated observations to establish the level of accuracy required. Not that they couldn't do it given sufficient hardware and the urge. But my bet is on the relative lazyness level bogging the project down for what would be many decades in our time frame.
Besides, its theoreticly 40k years into the future when they find it, if indeed they do, (hell, we can't even spot a NEAR object before its zipped on by clearing this planet by a measely 9k miles!) and I doubt seriously that my bones are going to be aware of the condition of their surroundings by then. And hopefully my soul will be someplace else enjoying itself. That of course depends on what $DIETY you believe in.
Cheers, Gene
It's when those aliens find Voyager and kit it out with lots of death rays and send it back to Earth in search of its creator you have to worry...
Yeah, well now stop and think about it. For anyone to find earth, based on the observed trajectory of a pioneer or voyager, they are going to have to do a hell of a lot of math backwards in order to find us. You see, in 40,000 years, we aren't going to be anywhere near where the trajectory of those vessels points back to. We're in an orbit around the milky way, quite a way out in one arm of it, with an average speed of 700 miles per second according to what I've read.
Besides, unless they've developed an FTL drive, I have this image of the hick coon hunter with his oat straw in his mouth to go with a chaw of terbaky, and a baseball cap that says "Who knows, or give a shit. I don't". They will be as powerless to come and see us as we are to go see them.
You all are seeing demons under your beds, now just be good kids and go back to sleep...
That said, I do seti, at 99.24% ranking currently.
Cheers, Gene
Well, congress has screwed with a lot of laws in my time so far, but fortunately for us, they haven't tried to repeal any of the laws of physics. Occasionally wiser minds have usually prevailed.
Cheers, Gene
This is true for most electrical motors with the singular exception of the most commonly used 'induction' motor used in everything from your can opener to your airconditioners multiple fans and compressors. Because of its simple construction and lack of life reducing brushes and such, this is the motor used in probably 99% of the 'over 1/50th horse' category if power hand tools aren't counted in the overall.
Even that type could possibly function as a poor generator if the overspeed was no more than the normal 'slip angles' associated with its normal load. But 95% of the time they will be nothing more than a brakeing loss if turned at a speed above the applied frequency/number of poles.
All other motors can be used either as motors or generators. This includes even the motor in the form of a loudspeaker as they have been used as the signal generating microphone in millions of intercom systems over the last 65 years.
That doesn't mean that some types might need supporting electrical stuff to work, and others don't, to achieve a practical level of efficiency in the dual role...
Cheers, Gene
Anyway, those are very long odds on the life on Titan bet.
.01% of what they would run at given a nice balmy 70F for a working environment.
Following the saga of all the predictionists (is there such a word), my bet is that there is. But we'll have to dig fairly deep, and test pretty thoroughly because while the right elements are there, its also cold enough that the chemical reactions are running at
So, given the age of this star system, say 5 billion years, my guess is thats its reached not higher on the evolutionary scale than microbe sized stuff. But it will reproduce, and by that definition, it is life. We will probably have to detect its waste byproducts first, then deduce what could be producing that anomoly.
No, I wouldn't come anywhere near offering those radical sized odds, no more than 5/1 if it was my money on the line. And limited to a total wager of a 5 dollar bill.
--
Cheers, Gene
As a broadcast engineer, this system was IMO, broken from the gitgo.
However, let me also point out that the huge majority of the system, if it all worked, which is rare, is secure in that the average stations gear can only accept input from the designated primary station in the area, and the NWS services which are also a part of the "network".
The rest of the secondary sites in a given area are proscribed from the generation of any spurious information by the FCC, with the penalties being both uncontestable, and damned expensive for the offender who originated the false message.
The rest of the problem is its dependability. The local system here has to jump the NRAO Quiet Zone, and is I believe now a satellite link, itself a huge problem in the event of an emp from an atomic device on the same side of the planet, or solar flares also can potentially render the link useless.
Once you get the alert up here from star city, then you have the problem of poorly designed gear foisted off on us broadcasters by the relatively short timetable mandated by the last methodology change about 15 years ago. That gear is now failing, and the maker, who was probably incorporated just to peddle the things, has since found it impossible to survive on the expendables the system requires, like its printers unique thermal paper etc. No schematics were furnished without a lot of yelling and screaming on our part, and sending it back for expert service? Fugetaboudit. Expert service does not exist in many cases.
And then the commission wants to fine us 27,000 per malfunction to boot. Most of the failures are beyond our control as the testing frequency is not sufficient to locate a malfunction before its a real malfunction.
Yes, its broken, hopelessly so. It needs to be replaced with something that actually works AND is secure from outside attacks.
And it needs to be stated up front that anyone with an idea of sueing the users for using an unknown submarine patent they ran to the patent office and got a patent on after the system was developed, will do jail time until such time as the system is declared unusable as this one s/b now. We went thru that already with this system, some jerk, smelling an easy dollar, ran and got a patent on it from our slumbering USTPO and sent all of us letters demanding $1500 a year for a license to use the system that was developed and mandated by the government. I think all of us were in close harmony during the chorus that told the commission and the equipment makers to pay it, we weren't about to pay annually for something that was mandated by them once we had purchased the original gear and installed it.
They faded away into the slime from whence they came eventually, and the patent was eventually set aside, or so we are being told.
Yah, we need a new system, one considerably more well thought out than this one ever was.
--
Cheers, Gene
Greetings Matthew;
:-)
:-)
It rather sounds as if we're in violent agreement here.
I think I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the offices come tomorrow morning. I think I'd find I was living in some of those "interesting times" Confusious was fond of refering to.
Can the air conditioning handle the expected smoke?
Mmm, I suppose I'd better put in the obligatory smiley here, you might need it tomorrow.
--
Cheers & good luck, Gene
Humm, if you are indeed who you say you are, then basicly the 'mistaken' action is probably going to be taken as a continuance of the Z-D normal methods by the public in general. And thats not what could be called good press. Its "ink", but not good ink.
I haven't always subscribed to the Z-D slamming that has taken place in the media occasionally, but I can recall when a Sci-Fi magazine that had been purchased by Z-D slowly went in the downward spiral that another Sci-Fi editor whose name I don't recall, made the remark in print that it (the Z-D periodical) had followed the usual Z-D "school of how to kill a magazine" practices.
Generally, it seems that Z-D has not always followed the "first please the customer" in its public face. More attention should be paid to this aspect of running the business IMO. In this case, I think I'd start with one less legal assistant in that office.
FWIW, I've been reading Sci-Fi since I was a sub-teenager, and everyone haunted the bookstores waiting for the next output of a gentleman called E. E. (Doc) Smith. Can you recall those golden years of Sci-Fi? I certainly do. I guess that makes me an old fart. Guilty. But that also means I've had a few more years to observe the human condition...
Cheers, Gene
As a now private, more or less un-employed and semi-retired person, most of my mailing list activitys are recorded in the various folders my email agent maintains. But, part of that maintainance in most cases is an expire date. I keep mailng list messages only for a couple of months, then they are automaticly gone as basicly their contents are no longer valid anyway.
Not only that, but what the hell has happened to our basic 1st amendment rights. Or the rest of the Bill of Rights for that matter.
I think its way past time we found an honest man for the white house, one who would uphold the constitution instead of figure out ways to feed his buddies ever more government contract monies without actually putting it out to bid.
Unforch, politics and religion have this commonality. As the devil said when God threatened to sue to get an engineer back that was sent down by accident, "And just where are *you* going to get a lawyer?"
Seriously, we need a "D" option on the ballot, for none of the above, thereby forceing a fresh start at finding a suitable candidate, one crazy enough to want the job, and still honest enough to try to fix the congressional excesses of the last 30 years.
You don't like my message? Then don't post, but get off your ass and be a part of a democracy, register and VOTE dammit! Then send a message to the winner saying that you expect him to do the job he was elected to do.
Cheers, Gene
Wello, for starters. how about having it in the john, just as handy as the readers digest, laying open to the page where you left off reading it the last time you were sitting there?
Nice idea, but as long as these things need power, or the contents cannot be downloaded for long term storage and retrieval on demand (and do the retrieval in 10 seconds or less from anyplace in your home) its never going to happen. I don't want to mess with the device, I just want to read, and for that, dead trees are the exact ticket.
Throw in the DRM and its a dead product that will never, ever "find its niche market" and make billions for the retailers peddling it. Anyones vision that includes that is suffering from dillusions of grandieur and a way outsized "I'm important so do as I say" ego.
I'd suggest a good shrink, but I don't know any that aren't also at least 51% quacks.
Cheers, Gene
That seems like the right way, but very labor intensive. I took the easy way out and called AT&T and told them in no uncertain terms to call off the dogs else I would make a lot of noise they might not like in court.
I'm not a lawyer by any means, but I do have a sense of whats right and whats wrong. Giving them that particular piece of my mind didn't bother me a bit, and I felt better for having done it. Such mind polution should NOT be treated as valuable property because it just multiplies if you try to contain it.
Thanks for the advice though, I'll try to recall it the next time, if there is one. I don't normally tempt fate by letting bills go unpaid IF I owe them. Those I don't usually get charged to the dust and I'll let the rain settle them.
Cheers, Gene
I suppose that they are broke, which leads accounts receivable to do strange things at times.
Or, maybe that was the pretext, drive people away from a non-profitable service. But, from the size of the bills I was paying, I see no reason that it couldn't have been profitable. They must have been charging us at least a quarter/min during the day, and if that doesn't make ungodly amounts of money, then obviously they are very very top heavy.
In any event, they are out of my picture frame forever.
Cheers, Gene
I just canceled a long term agreement to use AT&T for my long distance carrier, and went to the Freedom plan from Verizon.
Why?
1. The about 30 minutes a month we were using cost as much or more in the average month.
2. I pay my bills online. 3 months ago I scheduled their payment to go out 7 days ahead of the due date, a standard practice.
The check got there a couple of days past the due date and some asshole turned it over to a collection agency, who was of course out of state. They called me at 8:55 pm 3 different days to rag and otherwise irritate me into paying a measely $47 bill that I already had a bank statement showing it had been paid, and AT&T themselves told me that it had been paid when I called them. The collectors people were the most obnoxious people I've tangled with on the phone in a decade or more, and I used up most of a 15 minute monolog's worth of swear words discussing their geneology with them. It took over 2 months to get that collector off my back and that forever turned any inclination I had for AT&T's service off forever.
AT&T was a fine, long term business, till some jerks managed to get themselves jobs in accounts receivable. AT&T should either prepare to sink in the long term view, or do some weeding in accounts receivable. Either way, they are going to do it without me, who has been a customer of theirs for 69 years.
Cheers, Gene
Humm, snipers and all that eh?
All I have to say is they had better make the first shot count, cause the second one is mine, and it will count as a final settlement. The only time I've had to use more shots the target was 640 yards away. That took 3, nice buck too.
Screw 'em, and the camel that rode in on them too.
Cheers, Gene
I'd say. They really should have enlisted some of those suns to serve the site, and/or bought some more bandwadth. I think it melted down in the middle of the 4th page for me, after about 3 minutes waiting for page 4 to load, I gave up and came back here.
Setting up a web auction without the iron to handle it should be criminal since the web viewers are going to be at such a lengthy time disadvantage.
I was looking for a decent tape system myself, but there's no way in hell I'll be able to find it before the auction is over on the 21st when the site is so slow.
No Cheers, Gene