Yeah, he's skipped over a ton of window-centric systems...
He completetly left out the first commercially successful workstation. Apollo Domain from around in 1979 if my old fart memory manager isn't totally hosed. despite being built with M680X0 hardware, these puppies were way fast for their time. That single level memory storage model made location of your data tranparent across the LAN. Very cool.
As I can best recall we had a sun2-160 with Suntools, later on SunView in 1982 or 1983. Yeah, they were slower than shit until the Sun3/260 came out. That $80K workstation was way faster than our VAVen except the 8650 which cost $800K!
And SGI had their M680x0 hardware out that ran their proprietary windowing package.
We had a bunch of MicroVaxII's running as a VMScluster with some kinda B/W head on them in 1985 or 86.
I was managing the graphics programmers for a little company called ECAD when the color heads for the DECstation were made available. I started my guys migrating from our platform specific "bare glass" graphics libraries to this new-fangled X-windows 10.R4 around then. I think we may of shipped one of the first commecial software packages to run under X-windows. Around 1986.
And Sun's NeWS totally rocked except it came out way after X-windows was really entrenched.
And the Motif window manager was out long before MS Windows Program Manager was released. The MS window dudes copied it's form and function, not the otherway around.
"Show me ONE kernel thats not written in C or C with a dab of C++?"
I recall that these operating systems had kernels NOT written using any C or C+:
Digital VAXVMS - MACRO32 and some BLISS Apollo Domain - some subset of Pascal Tandem Guardian - TAL which was "Tandem ALGOL"
I think HP and Data General used some dialect of ALGOL for their OS offerings, too.
Yeah, I know these are proprietary operating systems written for a specific architectures back in the late 1970's - early 1980's. One thing I really liked about "old school" systems was they didn't go tits up on ya all that often.
> Whatever, as if anything running on VAX can be considered a complex system..
Well, some percentage of the ICs in your desktop 'puters and your other toys were designed using CAD software that was originally developed on VAX/VMS systems in the 1980's. And some of that software is still being used today -- like Cadence Design Systems "DRACULA", an IC CAD physical verification package.
The individual IC CAD software packages had between 250K to 500K lines of code, excluding vendor libraries, for each product. And there were probably a hundred point tools, so something like 30 million lines of code. That's a ton of software.
So I gotta ask the obvious question -
What do ya consider to be complex system? And do ya think it has any where near half a million lines of code in it?
> And, BTW, does the name of Lysenko mean anything to this crowd?;-/
Just off the top of my head, wasn't he a Soviet genetist that came up with some hair-brained theory of evolution? Since he was some sort of state minister of science, he sent anyone that disagreed with his crazy ass idea to an extended vacation in the Gulag. This produced a major set back in biological sciences in the USSR. His name is now associated with any politicalization of science - "Lysenkoism"
> I bet the pr0n industry had absolutely nothing to do with this.
Cant tell if you are being sarcastic...
A year ago, I saw a couple of adult sites that used a cheaper 360 cam. They were using a cam from another vendor located in Santa Clara as I recall.
It was sitting on a coffee table in order to cover the on-going activities of a party being held in the room. You could control the direction with your browser.
more questions -- (was Re: details about cameras)
on
Remembering Pioneer 10
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· Score: 1
You asked
> I know that RTG wattage is to low to power the > transmitter, but is there any part of it that is > still 'on'?
After three decades, really doubt it.
The thermal energy from the plutonium was only expected to provide max power for like 17 years. After that, the mission controllers had to budget the declining electrical power really carefully.
> Also, I am under the impression that in all odds its did > not fly with an onboard computer so some sort of logic > based control system was used. Mind telling me a little > about how the system opperated
Pioneer 10/11 were about as intelligent as Pamela Anderson. We're talkin' major dain bramage.
Pioneer mission controllers flew the spacecraft by sending command sequences uplinked in 22 bit frames into this dinky on-board buffer. The commands sequences were usually timetagged but you could give it instructions to be executed immediately. They were just brain dead commands to turn experiments on/off, turn power supplies on/off, warm up and fire reaction motors, etc. Sorta like a fancy cycle control on a washing machine. The engine management system on a '82 Buick is waaay more sophisticated.
It's major saving grace was that it was rock solid. Problems were always on the dirtside systems, which could be good and bad. One time I was chasing a bug in the C3 software and I got to remote pilot Pioneer 13...by accident. Talk about a major fuckin' "Oooops". The NASA guy doing flight ops duty saw the on-board command count increment. He didn't freak out, just stood up and made sure Kathy,the FOA, was sitting right next to me at the command console. Just a bunch of NOOP commands but still, I was just so lucky they didn't shitcan my stupid butt.
But like how many of us geeks can honestly say they once commanded a spacecraft orbiting Venus?! Damn, that was the coolest job a young geek could ever hope for..
> and how data was stored and sent to earth?
Getting data back thru the DSN was such a fuckin' amazing feat....It's the RF equivalent of getting data sent via Morse code from a 3 watt lightbulb floating out around Saturn with sun shining in your eyes! No shit.
The xmiters on the Pioneer spacecraft were just sooo under-powered. The Deep Space Network receivers had to be so incredibly senstive, something like a a -200dB s/n ratio as I recall. To get that kinda performance, they had to run the amps in a bath of liquid nitrogen. This was to reduce the circuit noise from Brownian motion. Make a good audio amp for that new home theatre system, eh?
Since I only ever worked on the uplink side of Pioneer, I have just a vague idea what the telemetry data stream looked like. I can tell ya that it was one royal pain in the ass to decode the downlink data. I used to listen to my geek buddies at work piss and moan about it all the time. The spacecraft status and scientific data gets "commutated" into the stream using an obtuse, totally bizarre scheme that would make a pretty good encryption algorithm. It was based on a horrible mechanical kludge that inserted serial data at what appeared to me to be random intervals but really wasn't. Working on the telemetry software drove people to drink, do drugs, write bad checks, cheat on their wife, etc.
If ya want a great introduction to spaceflight basics, there is a totally killer tutorial used for training new DSN operations people at:
Pioneer 10/11 were spin-stabilizied spacecrafts. With each revolution there was a light sensitive aperture assembly that generated a scanline. The scanlines were reassembled dirtside to create the image. When Pioneer 11 reached Saturn it moving so fast that the raw planet image was shaped like a football. These raw images were sent to the Univ. of Arizona in real-time for correction. Now, we'd just use Photoshop or whatever but in 1979 that sorta image enhancement was really state of the art.
Yeah, Pioneer was primitive compared to Voyager but it did more basic science. Voyager was mostly just an expensive ass camera platform. Good for PR mostly.
Looking back on my 30 years as a geek, working on Pioneer was the most fun job I ever had.
that in the 21st century we'd have flying cars, AI in every product, vacations on Mars and robot butlers. Real "Space Age" looking stuff with great big ol' fins, styled after 1950's jet aircraft. We'd all be wearing stupid looking jumpsuits with bizarre shoes made out of plastic instead of leather. The total George Jetson lifestyle.
So what did we really get?
Just the bizarre rubber shoes and those damn things cost more money than my first automobile.
I don't think he has a very positive view of religion. He's quoted as saying: ____________________
Religion is a disease promoted by starvation, because hungry people hallucinate, and then pray for food. This is why so many religions encourage fasting: it weakens the mind.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Although religious beliefs mainly result from brain damage acquired in early life, the worst symptoms (e.g. churchgoing) are often delayed for years.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
God invented Religion to hide Herself from Mankind.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Of all the evils that God, in Her inscrutable wisdom, inflicted upon Mankind, Religion is by far the worst.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Nothing matches Religion in its power to make good men do evil, e.g. witch burning and the Inquisition.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
The psychologist who famously remarked that chastity was the rarest of all sexual perversions might have added that Religion was the most common.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
As the opening words of the Lord's Prayer demonstrate, monotheistic religions are pathological artifacts of sexual reproduction. They rarely occur among such entities as intelligent egg-layers, clones, computers, colonial organisms, hive-minds, slime-molds, or sentient networks, etc.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Ockham's Principle - "Plurality should not be assumed without necessity" - favors the hypothesis of a single Creator. The "infinite regress" objection - "Who created the Creator?" - may be taken care of (translation: swept under the carpet) by a useful recent invention.
Welcome to the Singularity.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Fiction is more than non-fiction, in some ways. You can create a universe of your own. You can stretch people's minds, alerting them to the possibilities of the future, which is very important in an age where things are changing rapidly.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, interview for the The Onion, Vol. 40 Issue 07, February 18, 2004
[N]ow I've combined all my beliefs into this phrase I've been circulating: "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." It's adapted from a phrase by the British writer and scientist Richard Dawkins, who said that religion was a mind virus, an idea that infected the mind. He said that not all mind-viruses are malignant; some may even be beneficial. But many are harmful - racist theories, for instance.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, interview for the The Onion, Vol. 40 Issue 07, February 18, 2004
> Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, people code in C, when they're > writing applications.
snip 8-------
I fully understand how rs79 feel about his trusty old tool but I gotta agree with the snotty AC on this one. Having developed EDA apps in C for almost a decade, there's no question that I get alot more done quicker using Perl than I ever could using C. And the argument that ya can't use interpretive languages for big nasty apps like place and route is only partially true.
It's just too damn easy in C to shoot yourself in the foot. Even worse is when ya got several people writing C code running in a single binary. Ya might as well be coding while juggling hand grenades. Sure, I realize how much fun it is to do that all nite long, esp. while naked and high on illicit narcotics but we gotta face facts and march headlong into the 20th century.
And hey, rs79, like me, don't ya miss the good ol' days? Ya know, back before all the developer jobs got flushed and shipped off to some stinking, lousy third world country like Texas. Yeah, back when all us software weenies were pulling down the big bucks, driving big steaks, eating fast cars and boinking promiscuous young women. Big sigh....
oh BTW, I thought that "real programmers" like us only used assembly language....
EuropeanSwallow spoketh the right stuff but I disagree on one point
Tele-command: Since SCADA also involves the tele-control of grid equipments, ex: breakers, a fake order could be sent to the RTU. This is complicated because:
You would need to also fake measurements (previous point).
Not all kind of maneuvers and maneuvering sequences are allowed by the local controllers or apparatus.
I'm not sure it would be all that complicated to send bogus operating commands to the RTU's. I developed SCADA software for Landis and Gyr a while ago, but I bet ya I could probably still decode the little packets going back and forth from the SCADA systems to the RTU just using a serial line analyzer. I used to dump the packets out for debugging and it didn't take long to get my eyeballs calibrated to the data. So it's not as tuff as you think.
Once you get that nailed down, ya just gotta tell those great big, oil filled breakers to trip.
I used to try to be mr. nice guy and give them a chance. Now if they are scheduled to get something done and it isn't done, the minute it is due, it gets reported as a roadblock, and my project timeline gets extended until they get their job done. Talk about pressure! Move it to where it belongs.
save all email, CYA (including sent items) and the world will turn.
I am absolutely stress free with regards to people standing in my way now. Hold up my projects? I don't think so. If you do you are always going to burn yourself. Now my stuff always gets done on time:
Ya know, I always cringe when I have to work with somebody like this but after almost thirty years as a professional software geek I manage to do it without needing to hire some hell's angels to beat some sense into 'em.
Yeah, this guy got stress relief -- and sent his career into the toilet. Just put yoursself as this guy's boss or his boss's boss shoes. You don't give a shit that this guy has or hasn't got what he needs, all you care about is getting the project out the door on time. So the last thing ya need is this candy-ass who wants his schedule and deadlines pushed out cuz one of his dependncies is late. Like there aren't twelve other things that he needs to be working on to get his part of the damn project finished. Just take him out and shoot him.
When guys like this work for me, I make sure that I don't put them in my critical path and just give them ancillary tasks to do. Yeah, its a career killer for the person but they are the one that wanted to play schedule games with everybody. I'm not a total prick for a boss so I try to clue them into what will happen if they keep this kinda career damaging CYA behavior up.
If you're a manager and one of your best players is acting this way, you might try to use them as kinda of 'free safety' and assign them short, high priority tasks to help out whereever things are behind and need doing. I never played schedule games but one of the best managers I've ever known, used me like this when I worked as a contractor for him. My job was to get done whatever he needed doing the most to keep his projects moving on schedule. And problem areas were always on the front burner this way. He was smart enough to insist that I keep him up to minute status-wise so he never looked stupid. Like I said, one of the best managers I ever had..
> We don't all have diesel generators in our back sheds to > power our homes, because it is cheaper and cleaner to > have a high-efficiency power plant supplying millions of > homes.
Sorry but your analysis of "economies of scale" in the power industry is seriously flawed. It was turned topsy-turvy by government mandated monopolies and fixed rates of return on utility company investments. That created the bloated monsters that ate money and shit electricity that we are stuck with today.
The fundamental fuckup was having the PUC fix the rate of return the utility companies could earn. So it was easy to make more profit. All they had to was just spend more money. And those guys knew how to spend money. I discovered this when I developed software for the SCADA systems used to control power generation and distribution. It was a great business cuz the utility companies spent ten times the amount of money as was actually needed.
Nuclear power was so attractive to the power utilities because it was the best way to run up a big check. There was never a good engineering reason to build huge multi-gigawatt nuclear powered generating stations. The most efficient nuclear power plants are on submarines. The fuel section on some were as small 55 gallon drums and they can produce enough power for a small city. After a huge hurricane destroyed local power generating facilities, electricity for the island of Kauai was supplied by a Navy submarine. And small nuclear power plants are much safer, too. You don't need the massive containment structure that was the major construction cost for nuclear power plants.
And although building those radioactive puppies cost billions, decommissioning them costs even more. For example, the San Onofre nuclear facility can't produce electricity at competitive rates any more. So the California PUC is gonna stick the consumers with a $30 billon charge to take it out of service. Most of the cost is because the giant concrete tit containment structures are badly contaminated.
Bottom line is that if the normal market mechanisms had been allowed to operate in the production and consumption of power, then we would of had alot more smaller, more efficient power generating facilities. At one time there were hundreds of small hydroelectric plants that produced 30% of California's power. Hike up the small rivers in the northern and central California and you'll find the abandoned remains of them. Another obvious reason is the technology for long distance power transmission wastes 30% of our generating capacity.
best regards,
buck __________________________________________ ________ _________ "One is constantly aware that we live in a world where dreams and reality interchange"- Charles Lindbergh
Unless you are a criminal, you have nothing to hide and thus nothing to fear from the goverment.
This has gotta be a troll...
Innocent guyz who are convicted because somebody got time knocked off their sentence by fingering whoever the prosecutor sez, might disagree. Or the poor dudes that did hard time when the prosecutor had evidence that they did NOT do the crime. Or the guy whose court appointed lawyer feel asleep during his trial.
Remember the law is blind. The rich guy that steals a loaf of bread because he's starving is treated the same way as a poor dude that's starving.
The prison-industrial system doesn't care if you are guilty or not, just so long as your ass is theirs. If you get caught in their revolving door you'll do more time for violating terms of your parole than for your original crime.
best regards,
buck __________________________________________ ________ ________ "The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced." - Frank Zappa
brain damaged prognostication
on
Science Faction
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· Score: 1
Ah geez--
"Adcock says he was struck when he saw Minority Report as it was so in tune with scientific developments."
The article reads like a Sunday morning puff piece or some crap from Reader's Digest.
Now let's compare the short sighted scientific prognostication in that Tom Cruise (another lameass L. Ron Hubbard dicklicker) movie with this:
"And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them."
A line from H.G. Wells "The World Set Free", published in 1914.
Now THAT is a real example of being "in tune" with science and technology.
Relativity was still being debated. Quantum what? H.G. When soldiers were still riding into battle on fuckin' horses at the start of World War I. Wells anticipated the potential impact of nuclear war by reading the latest bleeding edge physics papers, understood what was incomprehensible to the average Joe, realized the potential in the science, and correctly forecast the social consequences. (Plus that stinkin' lousy little social liberal commie bastard, was boning this most gorgeous English hottie and good ol' Herbie's old lady was OK with that sweet setup. How much cooler can ya get? Let's see one of those science illiterate pundits get away that kind of scene with their ugly ass wife.)
These post modern social analysts haven't the slightest clue about what is going on in the mega geek world of physics, biology or anything technical topic with math beyond high school. It's embarrassing to let these clowns represent us to the non-technical portion of our society. The stupid asshole politicians will listen to these clowns.
Somebody please give those morons a nickel so they can go buy a clue.... big sigh
MacGyver: 80s TV show praised for its near documentary accuracy and depiction of real world uses of science.
Yeah, fer sure.
And the "A-Team" was an accurate depiction of what happens when a bunch of freelance mercenaries armed with assault rifles spray bullets all over the place. No one even gets wounded.
And all cars blow up when they crash, but the occupants always crawl out of the wreckage without even a scratch.
And then those evil bad guys make the biggest mistake ever. The assholes broke the arm of Mr. T's mom. I would not wanna be in their shoes....no sir.
Hey, MacGyver is still my favorite TV show but I realize that its make believe.
It is a wonderful thing that the GIA web site developers are doing to fight against our government's attack on our privacy and other constitutional rights.
And what an imaginative way to do it!! Too Cool...
Too bad the rest of us don't have access to, and the ability to correct any bogus data those clowns collect on us scumbag citizens.
Hey, what do ya thing about this?
Pass a constitutional amendment that establishes the inalienable right of ownership by the individual, to any and all data collected, complied and maintained regarding that individual. Any person, public corporation, local, state or federal government agency or any other group or organization must respect the individual's right of ownership in exactly the same manner as any other constitutional protected property or right.
Sweet and simple, huh? Do ya think that would go along way in solving some of these issues? Anyway, just my $0.000002 worth.
Thanks again to the GIA developers for what they are doing!!
> I'd rather buy and own. That goes for anything - The > house that I live in, the car that I drive, the clothes > that I wear (unless I'm attending a one-off function) THE > MUSIC THAT I LISTEN TO etc.
I dunno. Ever hear the Carlin comedy routine about 'stuff'?
Old George is 110% right on that subject. After just having past the half century mileage marker, my only big insight is that all possessions are a curse. I've had the big house, the built-in pool, the barn for the horses, all the stupid furniture, all the toys, and the rest of that 'stuff'. They don't mean shit. It's all just 'stuff' you wanna use but why do you need to own it?
I'd rather live in hotels. No cleaning up. No maintenance. No insurance. Just hang out, use their pool, piss in it if ya feel like it, drink out of their glasses, use their towels. When you're finished using their 'stuff', ya get up and split. No worries about is my 'stuff' put away or is my 'stuff' in a safe place so nobody else can steal my 'stuff' or use my 'stuff' without my permission? Who gives a shit? It's not my 'stuff'! Your 'stuff' becomes a boat anchor as you sail thru life...
About the only exception to how I feel are nice, old cars. I had this totally killer, '68 Pontiac Firebird convertible. Ya can't really lease or rent that kinda car because you have too much of a personal kinda relationship/investment with an automobile like that. I just miss driving down by the beach on Hiway 101. Or hauling ass 95 MPH across the desert to Vegas, top down, 105 degrees out, a very oral blonde in the passenger seat, a 12-pack of ice cold beer sitting in a cooler on the back seat... Ahhhh!
> Kinda like do you get married or rent a woman...
Kinda like you'd be outta yer mind to buy a cow when all ya really want is a glass of milk, right?
Actually, both are just forms of ownership - the former is usually just over a longer time period than the latter. I don't understand the male need to possess females as if they were just more 'stuff'. Or females that wanna be the possession of some dude. I dunno if my attitude is PC or not on this subject.
This attitude comes from being married for 25 years but now I'm living with these two beautiful women. Ya can't own, try to bribe, pay or otherwise control women like these two. That would just fuck up your relationship. It's really great just to hang out and share their beds with them . My buddies can't believe what a kinky little arrangement we have. (To be honest. I can't either..;) What makes this work out so well is our mutual attitude about "ownership".
Now that's a real personal protection device for geek girls and boys. You'd get the respect you so desperately seek. No one in their right mind is gonna knock your glasses off or steal your pocket protector if they know you got one of those sub-kiloton babies under your arm. If MAD (mutually assured destruction) was a good enough strategy to prevent WWIII, it ought to work at MIT.
A wiseguy, huh? Youse spoketh this: Again, a centralized list of these sorts of complaints would be priceless. I'm sure the state hired a company to manage this (maybe not), but at least the legislature would think twice about funding such a mistake-prone system.
Actually the opposite is true! The folks in charge are only interested in maximizing the revenue for their coffers.
For example, here in sunny San Diego they farmed out the contract to install, maintain and operate the red light cameras that catch the jackrabbits that blow off red lights. The company get a percentage of the tickets the system wrote to offset the increased operational costs. Some smart attorney starting fighting all the tickets and what did they discover? The company was tweaking the yellow light times so as to increase their revenue by increasing the number of violations. The lawyer proved this by measuring the legth of the yellow light at monitored lights vs. stop lights without the cameras.
The judge saw the evidence, thru all the cases out and banned the use of the cameras.
Something similar happened when the local governments took over parking enforcement (and the revenues produced) All of a sudden, every parking place was time limited but no parking meters. That requires a capital investment and more importantly you can write more parking tickets (and make more money) without those pesky machines that time how long you have been parked. Guess what, the ticket writers didn't bother to time how long cars were parked. They walked around and if they saw a car twice, they wrote it up. So fast walkers wrote more tickets. Pretty soon they hired people training for marathons and iron man competitions to cover the parking ticket rounds.
Someone got one too many tickets and started a little parking surveillence of his own with a video camera and this led to a newspaper investigation where the city hiring practices came to light. The best part was the moron runners and the city officials could not understand why people objected to their way of increasing the amount of revenue parking enforcement produced. After all, it was for the benefit of the citizens of their community. I kid you not. That's what those assholes actually said....geez..
best regards,
buck
Re:Gaming the Recorder and Black Boxes
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
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· Score: 1
> What percentage of the officers killed or wounded in the line of duty, are getting shot with the own weapon?
> The most recent stat I remember gives about 15-20% for that.
Geez, that's a huge percentage. You'd think that officers would be anxious for a solution to that problem but according to what you are saying I guess donuts kill more of your fellows per year than your own pistols.
I understand your point about training. I observed first hand some of your brothers in arms needlessly create a dangerous situation that could have cost them their lives. Its a bad enough officers not only must face deadly situations in your everyday job. The guys must have ignored or forgot some very important training for this incident to happen:
I'm asleep in my bed, when a bright light woke me. I sit up to find three flashlights in my face, blinding me, I couldn't see who was holding them. All I knew was three dark, burly shapes had me surrounded in my bed and I was scared shitless. A voice said they were cops and demanded my ID. I got my wallet and proved I was the homeowner. Said they were there because a neighbor had called in a 'safety check' about my Mom. Said they had knocked on the front door and then came around the back to the sliding glass door of my bedroom. My adrenalin was still pumped up and I told them to get out of my house. They ignored me and proceeded to search the house while the senior officer interrogate me about all my computer and video hardware, why did I have so much equipment, where did I get it, was it stolen property, did I have the receipts, had I ever been arrested, and so on. After the search uncovered no evidence of serious criminal activity by an 85 year old woman and a handicapped dude, the officers just strolled off to their cars, and ignored my request for some sort of an incident ID and their badge numbers. Without even bothering to turn around to respond, the senior officer said to just call their watch commander.
I was totally pissed at this little home invasion stunt, so next morning I did phone the watch commander. I told him how I woke up to find three or more unknown individuals in my home and in my bedroom, who had me completely surrounded as I slept in my bed. I asked him - "What could of happened if I kept a 9MM under my pillow or the mattress like alot of people? In fear for my life and the life of my mom, would I have been legally justified in the use of deadly force against one or all of your officers? "Without waiting for him to respond, I answered my own question. "Me or some of your men could be dead now." He just sorta casually dismissed my complaints about the scene in my bedroom, the interrogation and their illegal search. He defended his officers actions saying that the 'safety check' call was an emergency situation and no warrant was required. Then I asked that once they confirmed I was the homeowner, why didn't his men just ask me to go get my mom and ensure that she was OK without further violations of my rights and the sanctity of my home? He must of thought I was just another damn stupid civilian trying to tell him and his men how to do their job, I guess. He abruptly ended our phone conversation. I wasn't contacted any further until I was sent a nice form letter saying my complaints were unjustified and unsubstantiated with no evidence of any wrong doing by any of the officers.
Ironically, with that whole scene in my home, not one of the officers even bothered to check on my Mom. They could not have determined her status because no one woke her up, she slept thru the entire incident. She had no clue what had happened in the middle of the nite.
I dunno if that incident was handled by the book or not It's hard to fathom they were actually trained to handle that situation in such a brain dead way. What a dangerous position those guys created for themselves and myself, and all needlessly. It's not like I live in a dangerous neighborhood, fit some racial profile to be singled out, have any criminal
Re:Gaming the Recorder and Black Boxes
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
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· Score: 1
> The combination of a good retention holster and proper > training is plenty to keep a cop from being killed with > his own weapon.
Just outta curiosity:
Is this the current 'best practice' for help keep officers from losing their weapon to an assailent?
What percentage of the officers killed or wounded in the line of duty, are getting shot with the own weapon?
If the percentage is still too high, then those two solutions, the special holster is not working or the training isn't enough, so what else could they do?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, he's skipped over a ton of window-centric systems...
He completetly left out the first commercially successful workstation. Apollo Domain from around in 1979 if my old fart memory manager isn't totally hosed. despite being built with M680X0 hardware, these puppies were way fast for their time. That single level memory storage model made location of your data tranparent across the LAN. Very cool.
As I can best recall we had a sun2-160 with Suntools, later on SunView in 1982 or 1983. Yeah, they were slower than shit until the Sun3/260 came out. That $80K workstation was way faster than our VAVen except the 8650 which cost $800K!
And SGI had their M680x0 hardware out that ran their proprietary windowing package.
We had a bunch of MicroVaxII's running as a VMScluster with some kinda B/W head on them in 1985 or 86.
I was managing the graphics programmers for a little company called ECAD when the color heads for the DECstation were made available. I started my guys migrating from our platform specific "bare glass" graphics libraries to this new-fangled X-windows 10.R4 around then. I think we may of shipped one of the first commecial software packages to run under X-windows. Around 1986.
And Sun's NeWS totally rocked except it came out way after X-windows was really entrenched.
And the Motif window manager was out long before MS Windows Program Manager was released. The MS window dudes copied it's form and function, not the otherway around.
So I agree the X-windows stuff got shortsheeted.
andreyw spoketh thusly:
"Show me ONE kernel thats not written in C or C with a dab of C++?"
I recall that these operating systems had kernels NOT written using any C or C+:
Digital VAXVMS - MACRO32 and some BLISS
Apollo Domain - some subset of Pascal
Tandem Guardian - TAL which was "Tandem ALGOL"
I think HP and Data General used some dialect of ALGOL for their OS offerings, too.
Yeah, I know these are proprietary operating systems written for a specific architectures back in the late 1970's - early 1980's. One thing I really liked about "old school" systems was they didn't go tits up on ya all that often.
Seriously brain damaged individual wrote:
> Whatever, as if anything running on VAX can be considered a complex system..
Well, some percentage of the ICs in your desktop 'puters and your other toys were designed using CAD software that was originally developed on VAX/VMS systems in the 1980's. And some of that software is still being used today -- like Cadence Design Systems "DRACULA", an IC CAD physical verification package.
The individual IC CAD software packages had between 250K to 500K lines of code, excluding vendor libraries, for each product. And there were probably a hundred point tools, so something like 30 million lines of code. That's a ton of software.
So I gotta ask the obvious question -
What do ya consider to be complex system? And do ya think it has any where near half a million lines of code in it?
Does this suggest anything to ya?
How 'bout you go buy yourself a clue.
Ya really ought to have at least one, ya know?
best regards,
buck
Paul sez:
> Yes, that was the story!
Great!!
So what fabulous prize did I win for submitting the correct answer? After all, this is an internet game show.
Shit, I just hope its not another vacation in the Gulag. Boring...
OK, question for our lovely audience:
Does anyone in the audience know what Lysenko's
brain dead theory was all about?
You have thirty seconds.
dum de dum (that's our theme music playing in the background... )
best regards,
buck (a wannabe game show host who wants to do Vanna White)
PaulBu spoketh the following:
;-/
> And, BTW, does the name of Lysenko mean anything to this crowd?
Just off the top of my head, wasn't he a Soviet genetist that came up with some hair-brained theory of evolution? Since he was some sort of state minister of science, he sent anyone that disagreed with his crazy ass idea to an extended vacation in the Gulag. This produced a major set back in biological sciences in the USSR. His name is now associated with any politicalization of science - "Lysenkoism"
Was I close?
best regards,
buck
> I bet the pr0n industry had absolutely nothing to do with this.
Cant tell if you are being sarcastic...
A year ago, I saw a couple of adult sites that used a cheaper 360 cam. They were using a cam from another vendor located in Santa Clara as I recall.
It was sitting on a coffee table in order to cover the on-going activities of a party being held in the room. You could control the direction with your browser.
You asked
> I know that RTG wattage is to low to power the
> transmitter, but is there any part of it that is
> still 'on'?
After three decades, really doubt it.
The thermal energy from the plutonium was only expected to provide max power for like 17 years. After that, the mission controllers had to budget the declining electrical power really carefully.
> Also, I am under the impression that in all odds its did
> not fly with an onboard computer so some sort of logic
> based control system was used. Mind telling me a little
> about how the system opperated
Pioneer 10/11 were about as intelligent as Pamela Anderson. We're talkin' major dain bramage.
Pioneer mission controllers flew the spacecraft by sending command sequences uplinked in 22 bit frames into this dinky on-board buffer. The commands sequences were usually timetagged but you could give it instructions to be executed immediately. They were just brain dead commands to turn experiments on/off, turn power supplies on/off, warm up and fire reaction motors, etc. Sorta like a fancy cycle control on a washing machine. The engine management system on a '82 Buick is waaay more sophisticated.
It's major saving grace was that it was rock solid. Problems were always on the dirtside systems, which could be good and bad. One time I was chasing a bug in the C3 software and I got to remote pilot Pioneer 13...by accident. Talk about a major fuckin' "Oooops". The NASA guy doing flight ops duty saw the on-board command count increment. He didn't freak out, just stood up and made sure Kathy,the FOA, was sitting right next to me at the command console. Just a bunch of NOOP commands but still, I was just so lucky they didn't shitcan my stupid butt.
But like how many of us geeks can honestly say they once commanded a spacecraft orbiting Venus?! Damn, that was the coolest job a young geek could ever hope for..
> and how data was stored and sent to earth?
Getting data back thru the DSN was such a fuckin' amazing feat....It's the RF equivalent of getting data sent via Morse code from a 3 watt lightbulb floating out around Saturn with sun shining in your eyes! No shit.
The xmiters on the Pioneer spacecraft were just sooo under-powered. The Deep Space Network receivers had to be so incredibly senstive, something like a a -200dB s/n ratio as I recall. To get that kinda performance, they had to run the amps in a bath of liquid nitrogen. This was to reduce the circuit noise from Brownian motion. Make a good audio amp for that new home theatre system, eh?
Since I only ever worked on the uplink side of Pioneer, I have just a vague idea what the telemetry data stream looked like. I can tell ya that it was one royal pain in the ass to decode the downlink data. I used to listen to my geek buddies at work piss and moan about it all the time. The spacecraft status and scientific data gets "commutated" into the stream using an obtuse, totally bizarre scheme that would make a pretty good encryption algorithm. It was based on a horrible mechanical kludge that inserted serial data at what appeared to me to be random intervals but really wasn't. Working on the telemetry software drove people to drink, do drugs, write bad checks, cheat on their wife, etc.
If ya want a great introduction to spaceflight basics, there is a totally killer tutorial used for training new DSN operations people at:
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/
Very cool stuff if you're a space geek...
Actually it didn't have a digital camera.
Pioneer 10/11 were spin-stabilizied spacecrafts. With each revolution there was a light sensitive aperture assembly that generated a scanline. The scanlines were reassembled dirtside to create the image. When Pioneer 11 reached Saturn it moving so fast that the raw planet image was shaped like a football. These raw images were sent to the Univ. of Arizona in real-time for correction. Now, we'd just use Photoshop or whatever but in 1979 that sorta image enhancement was really state of the art.
Yeah, Pioneer was primitive compared to Voyager but it did more basic science. Voyager was mostly just an expensive ass camera platform. Good for PR mostly.
Looking back on my 30 years as a geek, working on Pioneer was the most fun job I ever had.
buck
that in the 21st century we'd have flying cars, AI in every product, vacations on Mars and robot butlers. Real "Space Age" looking stuff with great big ol' fins, styled after 1950's jet aircraft. We'd all be wearing stupid looking jumpsuits with bizarre shoes made out of plastic instead of leather. The total George Jetson lifestyle.
So what did we really get?
Just the bizarre rubber shoes and those damn things cost more money than my first automobile.
Dudes, we got ripped off, big time.....
I don't think he has a very positive view of religion. He's quoted as saying:
____________________
Religion is a disease promoted by starvation, because hungry people hallucinate, and then pray for food. This is why so many religions encourage fasting: it weakens the mind.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Although religious beliefs mainly result from brain damage acquired in early life, the worst symptoms (e.g. churchgoing) are often delayed for years.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
God invented Religion to hide Herself from Mankind.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Of all the evils that God, in Her inscrutable wisdom, inflicted upon Mankind, Religion is by far the worst.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Nothing matches Religion in its power to make good men do evil, e.g. witch burning and the Inquisition.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
The psychologist who famously remarked that chastity was the rarest of all sexual perversions might have added that Religion was the most common.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
As the opening words of the Lord's Prayer demonstrate, monotheistic religions are pathological artifacts of sexual reproduction. They rarely occur among such entities as intelligent egg-layers, clones, computers, colonial organisms, hive-minds, slime-molds, or sentient networks, etc.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Ockham's Principle - "Plurality should not be assumed without necessity" - favors the hypothesis of a single Creator. The "infinite regress" objection - "Who created the Creator?" - may be taken care of (translation: swept under the carpet) by a useful recent invention.
Welcome to the Singularity.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "Thoughts for Today (and Tomorrow)," Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2002/2003, p. 16
Fiction is more than non-fiction, in some ways. You can create a universe of your own. You can stretch people's minds, alerting them to the possibilities of the future, which is very important in an age where things are changing rapidly.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, interview for the The Onion, Vol. 40 Issue 07, February 18, 2004
[N]ow I've combined all my beliefs into this phrase I've been circulating: "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." It's adapted from a phrase by the British writer and scientist Richard Dawkins, who said that religion was a mind virus, an idea that infected the mind. He said that not all mind-viruses are malignant; some may even be beneficial. But many are harmful - racist theories, for instance.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, interview for the The Onion, Vol. 40 Issue 07, February 18, 2004
an obviously brokenhearted rs79 wrote:
>> Doesn't anybody code in C any more?
an irate AC responded:
> Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, people code in C, when they're > writing applications.
snip 8-------
I fully understand how rs79 feel about his trusty old tool but I gotta agree with the snotty AC on this one. Having developed EDA apps in C for almost a decade, there's no question that I get alot more done quicker using Perl than I ever could using C. And the argument that ya can't use interpretive languages for big nasty apps like place and route is only partially true.
It's just too damn easy in C to shoot yourself in the foot. Even worse is when ya got several people writing C code running in a single binary. Ya might as well be coding while juggling hand grenades. Sure, I realize how much fun it is to do that all nite long, esp. while naked and high on illicit narcotics but we gotta face facts and march headlong into the 20th century.
And hey, rs79, like me, don't ya miss the good ol' days? Ya know, back before all the developer jobs got flushed and shipped off to some stinking, lousy third world country like Texas. Yeah, back when all us software weenies were pulling down the big bucks, driving big steaks, eating fast cars and boinking promiscuous young women. Big sigh....
oh BTW, I thought that "real programmers" like us only used assembly language....
best regards,
buck
I'm not sure it would be all that complicated to send bogus operating commands to the RTU's. I developed SCADA software for Landis and Gyr a while ago, but I bet ya I could probably still decode the little packets going back and forth from the SCADA systems to the RTU just using a serial line analyzer. I used to dump the packets out for debugging and it didn't take long to get my eyeballs calibrated to the data. So it's not as tuff as you think.
Once you get that nailed down, ya just gotta tell those great big, oil filled breakers to trip.
There goes everybody's lights....
best regards,
buck
Ya know, I always cringe when I have to work with somebody like this but after almost thirty years as a professional software geek I manage to do it without needing to hire some hell's angels to beat some sense into 'em.
Yeah, this guy got stress relief -- and sent his career into the toilet. Just put yoursself as this guy's boss or his boss's boss shoes. You don't give a shit that this guy has or hasn't got what he needs, all you care about is getting the project out the door on time. So the last thing ya need is this candy-ass who wants his schedule and deadlines pushed out cuz one of his dependncies is late. Like there aren't twelve other things that he needs to be working on to get his part of the damn project finished. Just take him out and shoot him.
When guys like this work for me, I make sure that I don't put them in my critical path and just give them ancillary tasks to do. Yeah, its a career killer for the person but they are the one that wanted to play schedule games with everybody. I'm not a total prick for a boss so I try to clue them into what will happen if they keep this kinda career damaging CYA behavior up.
If you're a manager and one of your best players is acting this way, you might try to use them as kinda of 'free safety' and assign them short, high priority tasks to help out whereever things are behind and need doing. I never played schedule games but one of the best managers I've ever known, used me like this when I worked as a contractor for him. My job was to get done whatever he needed doing the most to keep his projects moving on schedule. And problem areas were always on the front burner this way. He was smart enough to insist that I keep him up to minute status-wise so he never looked stupid. Like I said, one of the best managers I ever had..
best regards.
buck
> We don't all have diesel generators in our back sheds to
_ ________ _________
> power our homes, because it is cheaper and cleaner to
> have a high-efficiency power plant supplying millions of
> homes.
Sorry but your analysis of "economies of scale" in the power industry is seriously flawed. It was turned topsy-turvy by government mandated monopolies and fixed rates of return on utility company investments. That created the bloated monsters that ate money and shit electricity that we are stuck with today.
The fundamental fuckup was having the PUC fix the rate of return the utility companies could earn. So it was easy to make more profit. All they had to was just spend more money. And those guys knew how to spend money. I discovered this when I developed software for the SCADA systems used to control power generation and distribution. It was a great business cuz the utility companies spent ten times the amount of money as was actually needed.
Nuclear power was so attractive to the power utilities because it was the best way to run up a big check. There was never a good engineering reason to build huge multi-gigawatt nuclear powered generating stations. The most efficient nuclear power plants are on submarines. The fuel section on some were as small 55 gallon drums and they can produce enough power for a small city. After a huge hurricane destroyed local power generating facilities, electricity for the island of Kauai was supplied by a Navy submarine. And small nuclear power plants are much safer, too. You don't need the massive containment structure that was the major construction cost for nuclear power plants.
And although building those radioactive puppies cost billions, decommissioning them costs even more. For example, the San Onofre nuclear facility can't produce electricity at competitive rates any more. So the California PUC is gonna stick the consumers with a $30 billon charge to take it out of service. Most of the cost is because the giant concrete tit containment structures are badly contaminated.
Bottom line is that if the normal market mechanisms had been allowed to operate in the production and consumption of power, then we would of had alot more smaller, more efficient power generating facilities. At one time there were hundreds of small hydroelectric plants that produced 30% of California's power. Hike up the small rivers in the northern and central California and you'll find the abandoned remains of them. Another obvious reason is the technology for long distance power transmission wastes 30% of our generating capacity.
best regards,
buck
_________________________________________
"One is constantly aware that we live in a world where dreams and reality interchange"- Charles Lindbergh
So I buy this big ticket HP photo printer and a couple of years later an el cheapo printer costs less than the two damn HP ink cartridges.
Since then, when the ink runs out, I just buy another printer. Fuck those marketing weenies and their damn cartridges.
best regards,
buck
This has gotta be a troll...
Innocent guyz who are convicted because somebody got time knocked off their sentence by fingering whoever the prosecutor sez, might disagree. Or the poor dudes that did hard time when the prosecutor had evidence that they did NOT do the crime. Or the guy whose court appointed lawyer feel asleep during his trial.
Remember the law is blind. The rich guy that steals a loaf of bread because he's starving is treated the same way as a poor dude that's starving.
The prison-industrial system doesn't care if you are guilty or not, just so long as your ass is theirs. If you get caught in their revolving door you'll do more time for violating terms of your parole than for your original crime.
best regards,
buck
_________________________________________
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced." - Frank Zappa
The article reads like a Sunday morning puff piece or some crap from Reader's Digest.
Now let's compare the short sighted scientific prognostication in that Tom Cruise (another lameass L. Ron Hubbard dicklicker) movie with this:
A line from H.G. Wells "The World Set Free", published in 1914.
Now THAT is a real example of being "in tune" with science and technology.
Relativity was still being debated. Quantum what? H.G. When soldiers were still riding into battle on fuckin' horses at the start of World War I. Wells anticipated the potential impact of nuclear war by reading the latest bleeding edge physics papers, understood what was incomprehensible to the average Joe, realized the potential in the science, and correctly forecast the social consequences. (Plus that stinkin' lousy little social liberal commie bastard, was boning this most gorgeous English hottie and good ol' Herbie's old lady was OK with that sweet setup. How much cooler can ya get? Let's see one of those science illiterate pundits get away that kind of scene with their ugly ass wife.)
These post modern social analysts haven't the slightest clue about what is going on in the mega geek world of physics, biology or anything technical topic with math beyond high school. It's embarrassing to let these clowns represent us to the non-technical portion of our society. The stupid asshole politicians will listen to these clowns.
Somebody please give those morons a nickel so they can go buy a clue.... big sigh
best regards,
buck
About as cosmic as I get...
best regards,
buck
Yeah, fer sure.
And the "A-Team" was an accurate depiction of what happens when a bunch of freelance mercenaries armed with assault rifles spray bullets all over the place. No one even gets wounded.
And all cars blow up when they crash, but the occupants always crawl out of the wreckage without even a scratch.
And then those evil bad guys make the biggest mistake ever. The assholes broke the arm of Mr. T's mom. I would not wanna be in their shoes....no sir.
Hey, MacGyver is still my favorite TV show but I realize that its make believe.
best regards,
buck
It is a wonderful thing that the GIA web site developers are doing to fight against our government's attack on our privacy and other constitutional rights.
And what an imaginative way to do it!! Too Cool...
Too bad the rest of us don't have access to, and the ability to correct any bogus data those clowns collect on us scumbag citizens.
Hey, what do ya thing about this?
Pass a constitutional amendment that establishes the inalienable right of ownership by the individual, to any and all data collected, complied and maintained regarding that individual. Any person, public corporation, local, state or federal government agency or any other group or organization must respect the individual's right of ownership in exactly the same manner as any other constitutional protected property or right.
Sweet and simple, huh? Do ya think that would go along way in solving some of these issues? Anyway, just my $0.000002 worth.
Thanks again to the GIA developers for what they are doing!!
best regards,
buck
> I'd rather buy and own. That goes for anything - The
;) What makes this work out so well is our mutual attitude about "ownership".
> house that I live in, the car that I drive, the clothes
> that I wear (unless I'm attending a one-off function) THE > MUSIC THAT I LISTEN TO etc.
I dunno. Ever hear the Carlin comedy routine about 'stuff'?
Old George is 110% right on that subject. After just having past the half century mileage marker, my only big insight is that all possessions are a curse. I've had the big house, the built-in pool, the barn for the horses, all the stupid furniture, all the toys, and the rest of that 'stuff'. They don't mean shit. It's all just 'stuff' you wanna use but why do you need to own it?
I'd rather live in hotels. No cleaning up. No maintenance. No insurance. Just hang out, use their pool, piss in it if ya feel like it, drink out of their glasses, use their towels. When you're finished using their 'stuff', ya get up and split. No worries about is my 'stuff' put away or is my 'stuff' in a safe place so nobody else can steal my 'stuff' or use my 'stuff' without my permission? Who gives a shit? It's not my 'stuff'! Your 'stuff' becomes a boat anchor as you sail thru life...
About the only exception to how I feel are nice, old cars. I had this totally killer, '68 Pontiac Firebird convertible. Ya can't really lease or rent that kinda car because you have too much of a personal kinda relationship/investment with an automobile like that. I just miss driving down by the beach on Hiway 101. Or hauling ass 95 MPH across the desert to Vegas, top down, 105 degrees out, a very oral blonde in the passenger seat, a 12-pack of ice cold beer sitting in a cooler on the back seat... Ahhhh!
> Kinda like do you get married or rent a woman...
Kinda like you'd be outta yer mind to buy a cow when all ya really want is a glass of milk, right?
Actually, both are just forms of ownership - the former is usually just over a longer time period than the latter. I don't understand the male need to possess females as if they were just more 'stuff'. Or females that wanna be the possession of some dude. I dunno if my attitude is PC or not on this subject.
This attitude comes from being married for 25 years but now I'm living with these two beautiful women. Ya can't own, try to bribe, pay or otherwise control women like these two. That would just fuck up your relationship. It's really great just to hang out and share their beds with them . My buddies can't believe what a kinky little arrangement we have. (To be honest. I can't either..
best regards,
Buck
Electric jackets? Nawww.
Pistols? Nawww.
Hmmmm... a tactical nuke in a briefcase!
Now that's a real personal protection device for geek girls and boys. You'd get the respect you so desperately seek. No one in their right mind is gonna knock your glasses off or steal your pocket protector if they know you got one of those sub-kiloton babies under your arm. If MAD (mutually assured destruction) was a good enough strategy to prevent WWIII, it ought to work at MIT.
Play nice kids...
best regards,
buck
Hey Moe,
A wiseguy, huh? Youse spoketh this:
Again, a centralized list of these sorts of complaints would be priceless. I'm sure the state hired a company to manage this (maybe not), but at least the legislature would think twice about funding such a mistake-prone system.
Actually the opposite is true! The folks in charge are only interested in maximizing the revenue for their coffers.
For example, here in sunny San Diego they farmed out the contract to install, maintain and operate the red light cameras that catch the jackrabbits that blow off red lights. The company get a percentage of the tickets the system wrote to offset the increased operational costs. Some smart attorney starting fighting all the tickets and what did they discover? The company was tweaking the yellow light times so as to increase their revenue by increasing the number of violations. The lawyer proved this by measuring the legth of the yellow light at monitored lights vs. stop lights without the cameras.
The judge saw the evidence, thru all the cases out and banned the use of the cameras.
Something similar happened when the local governments took over parking enforcement (and the revenues produced) All of a sudden, every parking place was time limited but no parking meters. That requires a capital investment and more importantly you can write more parking tickets (and make more money) without those pesky machines that time how long you have been parked. Guess what, the ticket writers didn't bother to time how long cars were parked. They walked around and if they saw a car twice, they wrote it up. So fast walkers wrote more tickets. Pretty soon they hired people training for marathons and iron man competitions to cover the parking ticket rounds.
Someone got one too many tickets and started a little parking surveillence of his own with a video camera and this led to a newspaper investigation where the city hiring practices came to light. The best part was the moron runners and the city officials could not understand why people objected to their way of increasing the amount of revenue parking enforcement produced. After all, it was for the benefit of the citizens of their community. I kid you not. That's what those assholes actually said....geez..
best regards,
buck
> What percentage of the officers killed or wounded in
the line of duty, are getting shot with the own weapon?
> The most recent stat I remember gives about 15-20% for that.
Geez, that's a huge percentage. You'd think that officers would be anxious for a solution to that problem but according to what you are saying I guess donuts kill more of your fellows per year than your own pistols.
I understand your point about training. I observed first hand some of your brothers in arms needlessly create a dangerous situation that could have cost them their lives. Its a bad enough officers not only must face deadly situations in your everyday job. The guys must have ignored or forgot some very important training for this incident to happen:
I'm asleep in my bed, when a bright light woke me. I sit up to find three flashlights in my face, blinding me, I couldn't see who was holding them. All I knew was three dark, burly shapes had me surrounded in my bed and I was scared shitless. A voice said they were cops and demanded my ID. I got my wallet and proved I was the homeowner. Said they were there because a neighbor had called in a 'safety check' about my Mom. Said they had knocked on the front door and then came around the back to the sliding glass door of my bedroom. My adrenalin was still pumped up and I told them to get out of my house. They ignored me and proceeded to search the house while the senior officer interrogate me about all my computer and video hardware, why did I have so much equipment, where did I get it, was it stolen property, did I have the receipts, had I ever been arrested, and so on. After the search uncovered no evidence of serious criminal activity by an 85 year old woman and a handicapped dude, the officers just strolled off to their cars, and ignored my request for some sort of an incident ID and their badge numbers. Without even bothering to turn around to respond, the senior officer said to just call their watch commander.
I was totally pissed at this little home invasion stunt, so next morning I did phone the watch commander. I told him how I woke up to find three or more unknown individuals in my home and in my bedroom, who had me completely surrounded as I slept in my bed. I asked him - "What could of happened if I kept a 9MM under my pillow or the mattress like alot of people? In fear for my life and the life of my mom, would I have been legally justified in the use of deadly force against one or all of your officers? "Without waiting for him to respond, I answered my own question. "Me or some of your men could be dead now." He just sorta casually dismissed my complaints about the scene in my bedroom, the interrogation and their illegal search. He defended his officers actions saying that the 'safety check' call was an emergency situation and no warrant was required. Then I asked that once they confirmed I was the homeowner, why didn't his men just ask me to go get my mom and ensure that she was OK without further violations of my rights and the sanctity of my home? He must of thought I was just another damn stupid civilian trying to tell him and his men how to do their job, I guess. He abruptly ended our phone conversation. I wasn't contacted any further until I was sent a nice form letter saying my complaints were unjustified and unsubstantiated with no evidence of any wrong doing by any of the officers.
Ironically, with that whole scene in my home, not one of the officers even bothered to check on my Mom. They could not have determined her status because no one woke her up, she slept thru the entire incident. She had no clue what had happened in the middle of the nite.
I dunno if that incident was handled by the book or not It's hard to fathom they were actually trained to handle that situation in such a brain dead way. What a dangerous position those guys created for themselves and myself, and all needlessly. It's not like I live in a dangerous neighborhood, fit some racial profile to be singled out, have any criminal
> The combination of a good retention holster and proper
> training is plenty to keep a cop from being killed with
> his own weapon.
Just outta curiosity:
Is this the current 'best practice' for help keep officers from losing their weapon to an assailent?
What percentage of the officers killed or wounded in the line of duty, are getting shot with the own weapon?
If the percentage is still too high, then those two solutions, the special holster is not working or the training isn't enough, so what else could they do?
best regards,
buck