I have a Simplified Modest Proposal along the same lines. I propose that we classify spamming (along with any intrusive advertising, like junk mail) as a form of premeditated mass murder.
Frank Herbert sums it up very nicely:
Between depriving a man of one hour from his life, and depriving him of his
life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to
him, consumed his energy.
--Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Since spammers collectively waste many lifetimes that could otherwise be productively spent, we should take the valuable organs of these heinous criminals, and donate them to people who are waiting for a replacement organ. This simultaneously relieves the suffering of people who need replacement organs, and rids the world of some of its most insidious criminals.
Shouldn't be difficult to integrate with a subway system. Options are:
- replace subway stop with PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) stop - if there is enough room, run PRT alongside the subway lines at some point (i.e. replace one subway track of several with a PRT track). - run PRT rail to the subway 'railhead', and make people swich forms of transit. Since PRT runs constantly, there won't be much wait for a PRT 'pod'; tho there will be one for the subway.
I suspect the user satisfaction of the PRT system will be substantially higher than that of traditional mass-transit. People will likely even pay a premium to use it.
Hmm not sure i understand what you're saying. Taking a pic at 640x480 then zooming 2x to 640x480 ?
No, he's asking if the camera does 2x zoom by taking the image at 1280x960, then just resampling down to 640x480 so it looks bigger.
In the end, a wild-ass-guess says the answer is 'no'; simply because it's probably easier to build a camera with a crappy zoom feature than a good one. I could be wrong tho.
Actually, it has to do with which eye gets the most exposure from each monitor. I had a similar experience; running one monitor at 1600x1200@85Hz, and the other at 1280x1024@75Hz. By the end of the day, I'd start to get eyestrain in one eye; the one on the side of the lower-refresh-rate monitor.
I know from some experimentation that I stop seeing flicker at 81Hz; so I spent some time with xvidtune and a modeline generator, until I came up with a modeline that would do 1152x864@89Hz on that second display. No more eyestrain.
Mismatched refresh rates aren't a problem (I was running one at 85Hz and one at 89Hz; and I'm currently running a nice new 20" Dell flat-panel next to a 1992-vintage Nokia 445X 20" CRT at the aforementioned 89Hz). Seeing flicker; that's what does it.
It should be noted that fluorescent lights don't help. Combine their flicker with the flicker of the monitor, and in some cases it can really make you hurt. (Not always, but sometimes). This is why it's good to change fluorescent bulbs as soon as they start to flicker - your eyes will thank you.
Finally, I've never used Redhat and I don't think their software has been tweaked for Redhat since I had absolutely no problems setting everything up.
Which version of zoneminder did you use?
What did you use for an init script? I don't remember seeing a debian-specific one or a generic one; and the Redhat one depended on a number of files (the "functions" init 'library' for one) that don't exist on debian. I certainly could have hacked a working one; but after poking at the whole thing for some time, I decided I didn't think the quality of the code justified the work.
It's entirely possible that I just had a cascading set of failures because I chose a non-default installation location. (Didn't feel like letting a non-packaged program spew files all over my filesystem, so I tried to constrain it all to/usr/local/zoneminder.) The perl errors I got while trying to set it up looked like coding problems to me though; and a mature program shouldn't be nearly this touchy about it's setup in any case.
I recently tried installing ZoneMinder to test it as a security system for my company.
I downloaded the most recent version (1.19.5), and tried installing it on a Debian box with a USB webcam attached. Being that there isn't a Debian package for it yet, I tried installing it from source. I installed it to/usr/local/zoneminder (after a couple of false starts, figuring out the directives that needed to be passed to the configure script); and then tried to run the setup script.
I found that I needed to hack the setup script in order for it to find certain things (which Debian puts in a different place than Redhat, and were hard-coded in); and even when I did so, the setup script bombed out near the end with a perl error (even after turning off 'use strict', which helped me past a couple of coding errors). I discovered that Redhat-ish values (user and group to run as) had been hard-coded into some autogenerated config files.
Even after straightening that out, I found that the init script was Redhat-specific (and not outrageously well-written at that). So as a quick-and-dirty measure, I just started the daemons by hand, the old Unix way. (If I cared to, I can write init scripts with equal aplomb for both Redhat and Debian; but I just wanted to try this program out).
Got the daemons up & running. Looked at the config page through a web browser. Tried setting up a camera. Got no output. Got no useful debugging information in the logs. I knew very well that the camera was working (got output via xawtv and camstream); but zoneminder wouldn't produce output. After reading the FAQ, troubleshooting docs, and Googling a bit, I figured out how to invoke some of the programs from the command line, and saw that Zoneminder's tools could scan for video devices and get information about them; but couldn't figure out any more than "something's not right with this daemon, it exits directly after being invoked".
At this point I decided that the quality of this tool was highly suspect, and not appropriate for our use. Definitely not appropriate for a post-1.0 release; since even just the installer bombed out with a perl coding error.
It looks like a nifty program, which is why I stuck with the frustrating install & troubleshooting process for 4 hours or so. I wish the developers the best; but I humbly and honestly suggest they develop some regression and install tests.
Note: I am anything but new to Linux. I've been admin'ing Redhat and Debian systems for 6 years now, and using it as my exclusive desktop since about 2000. I am not a perl hacker nor a C programmer by trade (tho I'm not unfamiliar with such things); and I really don't feel like becoming one in order to just try out a post-v1.0 program.
But the more I read about stuff like this, the more that I realise that we need to change the way our governments operate. They have TOO much power, and the do things that sould be illegal under the guise of saftey
As Davy Crockett said, any government that is powerful enough to give you what you want, is powerful enough to take away what you have. This is why I vote Libertarian. Keep the government small, so it doesn't have enough power to mess up the lives of everyone it touches. Let power return to the people by cutting government's role in regulating our lives, and removing the government protections that corporations have. (Protections like the right to pollute, so long as they get approval to do so from the EPA; and no liability for executives when the company harms people while under their guidance).
Look at the Bill of Rights sometime. It doesn't say "the people have the right to.."; it says things like "Congress shall make no law...". The Constitution of the United States was designed to be a limit on the power of the federal government; not an enumeration of the rights you have. The current U.S. government is way out of control, because it's slipped its Constitutional chains, and is trampling all over the limits that are supposed to be placed on it.
Well, therein may be the problem. Taxes should be levied on wealth, and taxes on income reduced. Take a look at Ralph Nader's stance on taxes. You'll find it interesting, if nothing else.
How about we cut the size of the federal government, and all its associated wasteful and slow bureaucracy, and slash taxes for everyone at the federal level? Devolve healthcare, education, road construction, and more, down to the state level. This would give everyone more say in how their money is spent (because your local representative is much more accessible than your rep in Washington D.C.); and would provide an opportunity for different states to try different methods of administrating costs and managing overhead -- making solutions more customized to local needs and giving fertile ground for the best ideas to grow and flourish.
This is the original idea behind having multiple states instead of a massive federal bureaucracy that has too many layers and too many factions to be efficient.
This would give *everyone* more money, and more say in how it's spent. We know this works, because it's the way our country was run until the last few decades. Just compare the prosperous 1950s (where the average tax burden was only about %12 of income); or pre-1913 America (no income tax); to the ruinous %40-50 tax burden of today (once you factor in the hidden costs of tax compliance, taxes during production, and accounting overhead) which requires both parents to work and leaves the children to the not-so-tender mercies of the public school system.
Exactly. The Commision on Presidential Debates is refusing to allow anyone but the two major candidates to get the media exposure of the major debates; despite the fact that a majority of Americans, when asked, want to hear what other candidates want to say.
http://www.opendebates.org/theissue/
They even work to keep other candidates out of the debate when those candidates would be on the ballot. (i.e. several thousand people have signed a petition to get a candidate on the ballot... which is how candidates get their name on the ballot)
Corporations are soulless entities that will do anything and everything for profit. When human life and limb is at stake, safety guidelines must be established and enforced before an incident ever happens.
Which is exactly why corporations should not be treated as 'legal persons', and the chief executives should be held directly responsible for the actions of their company. This would allow lawsuits against those companies to have real meaning to those in power at the company... it's their wallet and reputation on the line. This will introduce a little more responsibility to the corporate culture; without the waste, trouble, and inconvenience of government regulation.
> I got to the bit about how pollution is not a thing that should concern the government, > and should be taken care of via free enterprise, and thought, > "that's a bit odd - the only purpose of government is to provide public goods: defense, police, etc - > why isn't lack of pollution a public good?".
Read the answers thoroughly. He's not advocating *no* controls on pollution, he's proposing that private landowners provide those controls by suing the polluters. He wants to remove the special protections that the megacorps recieve under our system, so that they will be more liable for the damage they cause. He also wants to scale back government, which causes unchecked pollution in many cases, because no one has the authority to stop it.
As for education; it's pointed out that education has gotten steadily worse, the more the federal government has been involved in it. If authority over the schools were devolved to a local level (even retaining the public schools), the way they were in the 1800s, we would see a small fraction of the waste that currently goes on as government agencies spend enormous amounts of effort just fighting each other for the right to skim off your tax dollars.
As for moderation, it's also pointed out that there will be moderating effects inherent in the 3-branch system. So the Socialists/Greens/Christian Conservatives/Purple People's Union will all have their effect on what bills come out in the end. (for better or for worse).
> just an interesting curiosity and not of any practical use.
If we ever build a sufficiently large earth-atmosphere enclosure on the moon (think lava-tunnel caverns, or man-made caverns); human-powered flight could be quite practical for those of us without Olympic levels of strength and endurance.
Space colonies also offer interesting possibilities. Need to go see your friend on the other side of the cylindrical space habitat? (think Babylon 5) Just launch your flycycle from a simple catapult, get up close to the center, and pedal your way through the free-fall to the other side.
Landing becomes the real issue here; and the naysayers will complain about how dangerous it is; but the tourists ought to love it.
The first time I heard that the Marine could use either the flashlight, or a weapon, but not both at the same time, I immediately thought of the Harries flashlight techinque.
Here's a page showing off the Harries technique, and a number of other methods of employing a light and a one-handed weapon at the same time.
www.themartialist.com/1203/fightwithlight.htm
Basically, you hold the flashlight in your 'weak' hand (the left, for most people), and the pistol in your strong hand. Cross your wrists and press the backs of your hands together, while holding the pistol up in a normal orientation.
Pressing the backs of your hands together makes the gun more stable. It's not quite as good as holding the gun in both hands (which you should do whenever possible); but better than just waving it around one-handed. As my instructor at Gunsite said "If you aren't pressing the backs of your hands together enough to hurt, you aren't doing it hard enough".
This works best with flashlights that have a pressure-switch on the tailcap, which you press with your thumb when you want light, and release when you want dark. (fastest on-off mechanism).
Light the target; shoot it, then *move*. Immediately be somewhere other than where your light came from. The FBI used to teach a method of holding your light way out at arm's length to the side, in the theory that the bad guy will shoot at the light and miss you. In practice, running around corners and through doors tends to bring the light near you anyway, so that theory didn't work out well in practice. Use both hands together for best effect, use your feet for what they were intended for (running away, if at all possible!)
Game companies should send FPS game designers off to Gunsite (www.gunsite.net) for a week of instruction with real firearms and real room-clearing techniques, before they come up with too many movie-esque notions of how guns work in the Real World.
Only thing I can think of would be the ever-touted-but-never-perfected 'appliance' computer. Run the OS out of ROM, with *no* hooks for updates/patches or anything like that.
If you want to patch it; you get a new chunk of ROM which upgrades the whole OS. (Put it in a PCMCIA-type package?)
Allow the user to modify their own configuration via dotfiles in their home directory, Unix-style. This way: a. they only screw their own config up b. resetting the config to usable defaults is as simple as blowing away the.whatever file/directory.
I think this will require a few more years of stabilization in the computing world, before code requires few enough updates (you still have to patch your browser occasionally...) that it's reasonable.
Still, it's an attractive-enough goal that eventually someone will get the format & marketing right; and build a sustainable base of users. The ThinkNIC mostly just demonstrated that the user base isn't there yet.
> these were really smart people with a lot of forethought
>(they can be forgiven for the Second
Amendment).
One cannot have an environment where people are allowed to freely express
their opinions -- even unpopular ones, which are the most important to
consider -- without the freedom to defend oneself. The lessons of history
clearly show that 'dangerous' ideas tend to be suppressed if the people
espousing these ideas have no way or will to defend themselves. Our
forefathers fought a revolution against an oppressive and arbitrary
government; and they codified the basic ideas they fought for, into the Bill
of Rights.
The First Amendment is there to let ideas be heard and discussed, before
pressure builds up behind them and overflows into revolution. (Revolution is
disastrous for everyone involved, make no mistake).
The Second Amendment is there to give tyrants both foreign and domestic
pause, knowing that the American people are armed and therefore cannot be
made to do anything they do not choose to do themselves. This is the essence
of liberty; all our freedoms depend on it, and all our 'Inalienable Rights'
are defended by it.
It should be pointed out that before the National Firearms Act of 1934, it was perfectly legal for anyone in America to mail-order heavy machineguns, modern artillery pieces (there were clubs devoted to the shooting of these weapons), silencers, and other military ordnance. This never posed a problem (how many bank robberies were committed with artillery pieces? I defy you to find one.); until some politicians were convinced that they could make some political hay by legislating against such things, imposing some 'reasonable' regulations, to counter a threat more percieved than real (the gangsters famed in newspaper and radio), which in any case had arisen as a reaction to government regulation (Prohibition of Alcohol).
One can take a lession about the decline of freedoms, and where the First Amendment might be going, by studying the infringements upon the Second Amendment over the past 70 years.
from _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_: "Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you."
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Simplified Modest Proposal along the same lines. I propose that we classify spamming (along with any intrusive advertising, like junk mail) as a form of premeditated mass murder.
Frank Herbert sums it up very nicely:
Between depriving a man of one hour from his life, and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.
--Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Since spammers collectively waste many lifetimes that could otherwise be productively spent, we should take the valuable organs of these heinous criminals, and donate them to people who are waiting for a replacement organ. This simultaneously relieves the suffering of people who need replacement organs, and rids the world of some of its most insidious criminals.
Shouldn't be difficult to integrate with a subway system. Options are:
- replace subway stop with PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) stop
- if there is enough room, run PRT alongside the subway lines at some point (i.e. replace one subway track of several with a PRT track).
- run PRT rail to the subway 'railhead', and make people swich forms of transit. Since PRT runs constantly, there won't be much wait for a PRT 'pod'; tho there will be one for the subway.
I suspect the user satisfaction of the PRT system will be substantially higher than that of traditional mass-transit. People will likely even pay a premium to use it.
No, he's asking if the camera does 2x zoom by taking the image at 1280x960, then just resampling down to 640x480 so it looks bigger.
In the end, a wild-ass-guess says the answer is 'no'; simply because it's probably easier to build a camera with a crappy zoom feature than a good one. I could be wrong tho.
Actually, it has to do with which eye gets the most exposure from each monitor. I had a similar experience; running one monitor at 1600x1200@85Hz, and the other at 1280x1024@75Hz. By the end of the day, I'd start to get eyestrain in one eye; the one on the side of the lower-refresh-rate monitor.
I know from some experimentation that I stop seeing flicker at 81Hz; so I spent some time with xvidtune and a modeline generator, until I came up with a modeline that would do 1152x864@89Hz on that second display. No more eyestrain.
Mismatched refresh rates aren't a problem (I was running one at 85Hz and one at 89Hz; and I'm currently running a nice new 20" Dell flat-panel next to a 1992-vintage Nokia 445X 20" CRT at the aforementioned 89Hz). Seeing flicker; that's what does it.
It should be noted that fluorescent lights don't help. Combine their flicker with the flicker of the monitor, and in some cases it can really make you hurt. (Not always, but sometimes). This is why it's good to change fluorescent bulbs as soon as they start to flicker - your eyes will thank you.
Which version of zoneminder did you use?
What did you use for an init script? I don't remember seeing a debian-specific one or a generic one; and the Redhat one depended on a number of files (the "functions" init 'library' for one) that don't exist on debian. I certainly could have hacked a working one; but after poking at the whole thing for some time, I decided I didn't think the quality of the code justified the work.
It's entirely possible that I just had a cascading set of failures because I chose a non-default installation location. (Didn't feel like letting a non-packaged program spew files all over my filesystem, so I tried to constrain it all to /usr/local/zoneminder.) The perl errors I got while trying to set it up looked like coding problems to me though; and a mature program shouldn't be nearly this touchy about it's setup in any case.
I recently tried installing ZoneMinder to test it as a security system for my company.
/usr/local/zoneminder (after a couple of false starts, figuring out the directives that needed to be passed to the configure script); and then tried to run the setup script.
I downloaded the most recent version (1.19.5), and tried installing it on a Debian box with a USB webcam attached. Being that there isn't a Debian package for it yet, I tried installing it from source. I installed it to
I found that I needed to hack the setup script in order for it to find certain things (which Debian puts in a different place than Redhat, and were hard-coded in); and even when I did so, the setup script bombed out near the end with a perl error (even after turning off 'use strict', which helped me past a couple of coding errors). I discovered that Redhat-ish values (user and group to run as) had been hard-coded into some autogenerated config files.
Even after straightening that out, I found that the init script was Redhat-specific (and not outrageously well-written at that). So as a quick-and-dirty measure, I just started the daemons by hand, the old Unix way. (If I cared to, I can write init scripts with equal aplomb for both Redhat and Debian; but I just wanted to try this program out).
Got the daemons up & running. Looked at the config page through a web browser. Tried setting up a camera. Got no output. Got no useful debugging information in the logs. I knew very well that the camera was working (got output via xawtv and camstream); but zoneminder wouldn't produce output. After reading the FAQ, troubleshooting docs, and Googling a bit, I figured out how to invoke some of the programs from the command line, and saw that Zoneminder's tools could scan for video devices and get information about them; but couldn't figure out any more than "something's not right with this daemon, it exits directly after being invoked".
At this point I decided that the quality of this tool was highly suspect, and not appropriate for our use. Definitely not appropriate for a post-1.0 release; since even just the installer bombed out with a perl coding error.
It looks like a nifty program, which is why I stuck with the frustrating install & troubleshooting process for 4 hours or so. I wish the developers the best; but I humbly and honestly suggest they develop some regression and install tests.
Note: I am anything but new to Linux. I've been admin'ing Redhat and Debian systems for 6 years now, and using it as my exclusive desktop since about 2000. I am not a perl hacker nor a C programmer by trade (tho I'm not unfamiliar with such things); and I really don't feel like becoming one in order to just try out a post-v1.0 program.
As Davy Crockett said, any government that is powerful enough to give you what you want, is powerful enough to take away what you have. This is why I vote Libertarian. Keep the government small, so it doesn't have enough power to mess up the lives of everyone it touches. Let power return to the people by cutting government's role in regulating our lives, and removing the government protections that corporations have. (Protections like the right to pollute, so long as they get approval to do so from the EPA; and no liability for executives when the company harms people while under their guidance).
Look at the Bill of Rights sometime. It doesn't say "the people have the right to.."; it says things like "Congress shall make no law...". The Constitution of the United States was designed to be a limit on the power of the federal government; not an enumeration of the rights you have. The current U.S. government is way out of control, because it's slipped its Constitutional chains, and is trampling all over the limits that are supposed to be placed on it.
How about we cut the size of the federal government, and all its associated wasteful and slow bureaucracy, and slash taxes for everyone at the federal level? Devolve healthcare, education, road construction, and more, down to the state level. This would give everyone more say in how their money is spent (because your local representative is much more accessible than your rep in Washington D.C.); and would provide an opportunity for different states to try different methods of administrating costs and managing overhead -- making solutions more customized to local needs and giving fertile ground for the best ideas to grow and flourish.
This is the original idea behind having multiple states instead of a massive federal bureaucracy that has too many layers and too many factions to be efficient.
This would give *everyone* more money, and more say in how it's spent. We know this works, because it's the way our country was run until the last few decades. Just compare the prosperous 1950s (where the average tax burden was only about %12 of income); or pre-1913 America (no income tax); to the ruinous %40-50 tax burden of today (once you factor in the hidden costs of tax compliance, taxes during production, and accounting overhead) which requires both parents to work and leaves the children to the not-so-tender mercies of the public school system.
So far, the only party that supports this is the Libertarians [lp.org]. Listen to Michael Badnarik [badnarik.org] speak sometime, like on this radio interview.
Exactly. The Commision on Presidential Debates is refusing to allow anyone but the two major candidates to get the media exposure of the major debates; despite the fact that a majority of Americans, when asked, want to hear what other candidates want to say.
http://www.opendebates.org/theissue/
They even work to keep other candidates out of the debate when those candidates would be on the ballot. (i.e. several thousand people have signed a petition to get a candidate on the ballot... which is how candidates get their name on the ballot)
http://badnarik.org/
Establishing trusted, industry-wide standards for safety can go a long way towards legitimizing a new industry in the eyes of the public.
Underwriters Laboratories provides consistent, trusted standards for safety. All without government intervention or taxpayer dollars.
As for 'legitimizing a new industry'... why is it any concern of the government whether an industry is trusted?
Corporations are soulless entities that will do anything and everything for profit. When human life and limb is at stake, safety guidelines must be established and enforced before an incident ever happens.
Which is exactly why corporations should not be treated as 'legal persons', and the chief executives should be held directly responsible for the actions of their company. This would allow lawsuits against those companies to have real meaning to those in power at the company... it's their wallet and reputation on the line. This will introduce a little more responsibility to the corporate culture; without the waste, trouble, and inconvenience of government regulation.
> I got to the bit about how pollution is not a thing that should concern the government,
> and should be taken care of via free enterprise, and thought,
> "that's a bit odd - the only purpose of government is to provide public goods: defense, police, etc -
> why isn't lack of pollution a public good?".
Read the answers thoroughly. He's not advocating *no* controls on pollution, he's proposing that private landowners provide those controls by suing the polluters. He wants to remove the special protections that the megacorps recieve under our system, so that they will be more liable for the damage they cause. He also wants to scale back government, which causes unchecked pollution in many cases, because no one has the authority to stop it.
As for education; it's pointed out that education has gotten steadily worse, the more the federal government has been involved in it. If authority over the schools were devolved to a local level (even retaining the public schools), the way they were in the 1800s, we would see a small fraction of the waste that currently goes on as government agencies spend enormous amounts of effort just fighting each other for the right to skim off your tax dollars.
As for moderation, it's also pointed out that there will be moderating effects inherent in the 3-branch system. So the Socialists/Greens/Christian Conservatives/Purple People's Union will all have their effect on what bills come out in the end. (for better or for worse).
> just an interesting curiosity and not of any practical use.
If we ever build a sufficiently large earth-atmosphere enclosure on the moon (think lava-tunnel caverns, or man-made caverns); human-powered flight could be quite practical for those of us without Olympic levels of strength and endurance.
Space colonies also offer interesting possibilities. Need to go see your friend on the other side of the cylindrical space habitat? (think Babylon 5) Just launch your flycycle from a simple catapult, get up close to the center, and pedal your way through the free-fall to the other side.
Landing becomes the real issue here; and the naysayers will complain about how dangerous it is; but the tourists ought to love it.
http://www.natecarlson.com/linux/ipsec-x509.php
The first time I heard that the Marine could use either the flashlight, or a weapon, but not both at the same time, I immediately thought of the Harries flashlight techinque.
Here's a page showing off the Harries technique, and a number of other methods of employing a light and a one-handed weapon at the same time.
www.themartialist.com/1203/fightwithlight.htm
Basically, you hold the flashlight in your 'weak' hand (the left, for most people), and the pistol in your strong hand. Cross your wrists and press the backs of your hands together, while holding the pistol up in a normal orientation.
Pressing the backs of your hands together makes the gun more stable. It's not quite as good as holding the gun in both hands (which you should do whenever possible); but better than just waving it around one-handed. As my instructor at Gunsite said "If you aren't pressing the backs of your hands together enough to hurt, you aren't doing it hard enough".
This works best with flashlights that have a pressure-switch on the tailcap, which you press with your thumb when you want light, and release when you want dark. (fastest on-off mechanism).
Light the target; shoot it, then *move*. Immediately be somewhere other than where your light came from. The FBI used to teach a method of holding your light way out at arm's length to the side, in the theory that the bad guy will shoot at the light and miss you. In practice, running around corners and through doors tends to bring the light near you anyway, so that theory didn't work out well in practice. Use both hands together for best effect, use your feet for what they were intended for (running away, if at all possible!)
Game companies should send FPS game designers off to Gunsite (www.gunsite.net) for a week of instruction with real firearms and real room-clearing techniques, before they come up with too many movie-esque notions of how guns work in the Real World.
--Redchrome
Can you provide a news story or other corroborating evidence of your '40 miles' claim?
My question is how the piece got out of the (presumably very strong) bunker, still retaining that much energy.
--
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
-- Steven Wright
Only thing I can think of would be the ever-touted-but-never-perfected 'appliance' computer. Run the OS out of ROM, with *no* hooks for updates/patches or anything like that.
.whatever file/directory.
If you want to patch it; you get a new chunk of ROM which upgrades the whole OS. (Put it in a PCMCIA-type package?)
Allow the user to modify their own configuration via dotfiles in their home directory, Unix-style. This way:
a. they only screw their own config up
b. resetting the config to usable defaults is as simple as blowing away the
I think this will require a few more years of stabilization in the computing world, before code requires few enough updates (you still have to patch your browser occasionally...) that it's reasonable.
Still, it's an attractive-enough goal that eventually someone will get the format & marketing right; and build a sustainable base of users. The ThinkNIC mostly just demonstrated that the user base isn't there yet.
>(they can be forgiven for the Second Amendment).
One cannot have an environment where people are allowed to freely express their opinions -- even unpopular ones, which are the most important to consider -- without the freedom to defend oneself. The lessons of history clearly show that 'dangerous' ideas tend to be suppressed if the people espousing these ideas have no way or will to defend themselves. Our forefathers fought a revolution against an oppressive and arbitrary government; and they codified the basic ideas they fought for, into the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment is there to let ideas be heard and discussed, before pressure builds up behind them and overflows into revolution. (Revolution is disastrous for everyone involved, make no mistake).
The Second Amendment is there to give tyrants both foreign and domestic pause, knowing that the American people are armed and therefore cannot be made to do anything they do not choose to do themselves. This is the essence of liberty; all our freedoms depend on it, and all our 'Inalienable Rights' are defended by it.
It should be pointed out that before the National Firearms Act of 1934, it was perfectly legal for anyone in America to mail-order heavy machineguns, modern artillery pieces (there were clubs devoted to the shooting of these weapons), silencers, and other military ordnance. This never posed a problem (how many bank robberies were committed with artillery pieces? I defy you to find one.); until some politicians were convinced that they could make some political hay by legislating against such things, imposing some 'reasonable' regulations, to counter a threat more percieved than real (the gangsters famed in newspaper and radio), which in any case had arisen as a reaction to government regulation (Prohibition of Alcohol).
One can take a lession about the decline of freedoms, and where the First Amendment might be going, by studying the infringements upon the Second Amendment over the past 70 years.
from _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_:
"Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you."
I see some definite parallels here...
Redchrome