If this were an episode of CSI They could have simply drag-and-dropped the photo into their "automatically un-distort face in image" program, then zoomed in over the man's shoulder to read the artist's signature of a painting behind him. Then recognizing that these paintings are only sold from one obscure store in New York City, they drag-and-drop the photo into their "compare to every frame of every NYC ATM to this picture" program and found a frame of him standing conveniently in front of his license plate, which they could also zoom in to read the registration sticker text.
Get with the times Interpol. Sheesh, CSI wouldn't even have had to use their "match a partial fingerprint I zoomed in 6000% to get off of a glass of water in a 72dpi jpeg to every known felon in the US in under 10 seconds during witty banter" program to solve this one!
If you read the explosive section, you'll see a given explosive mentioned on one page as being relatively stable and safe, and on another page the same explosive will be described as being very unstable. It appears that a lot of the information was just copied from other sources without any analysis of what was being copied.
I think you misunderstood slightly. The word 'Anarchist' in the title refers to the editing style.;)
Putting aside for the moment that the people this is intended for will only be using it in emergency situations, they are also the group of people least likely to appreciate such a "ride" even if it were in casual circumstances. These folks already ride a massive controlled explosion into orbit where they are weightless for a week or more at a time. Compared to that ride this "third highest drop in the world" probably sounds like a day off for their stomachs.;)
And they can build voting machines that way too, if their customers ask for them. Again, that's a policy and procurement issue at the election board level.
I agree 100% with that statement. Your original post, however, seemed to imply that the only possible way Diebold could achieve such a request was through a rediculous amount of manhours and attending every single council meeting, which is false.
And when the equipment vendor is the one telling election boards what their policies should be, how do you address all of the shrill people who scream that Diebold is running the elections?
There is a HUGE difference between making a feature available and dictating election procedures to election boards. While it is not Diebold's responsibility to make such a feature on their own dime and without a request, it hardly implies that they would be dictating its use.
Diebold is not blameless in the electronic voting security arena either, lestweforget, they have dragged their feet repeatedly in implementing even basic security for these machines. Basic security for a voting machine is something that shouldn't have to be defined by every election board. Diebold is well aware these machines are to be used in state and national elections, that should demand a certain level of confidence in security measures without being told explicitly. Again, these machines are less secure than even the ATMs they produce.
Diebold creates ATMs with paper trails. They don't need to attend every council meeting or voters' rights group association to know that paper trail == good. Additionally even comparing their recount process to a regular paper-vote process would immediately show that there are edge cases where they would be unable to perform a recount but a paper-trail election would be able to.
It seems pretty obvious that having a hard-copy of critical data makes sense for the use cases of voting. It doesn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars or require Diebold to have any more than a handful of engineers/representatives to figure that out and maintain a Functional Requirements Specification that covers this. You ranting about how "How many election board meetings should thousands of Diebold employees attend" is baseless if you understood how writing and maintaining technical requirements work. It requires neither "thousands" of employees be directly involved, nor does it require day to day government meetings to maintain a process that has an auditable paper trail for any vote, regardless of how any given county conducts said vote.
How was my post a troll? That took 3 people to mod me to -1. Everything I posted is FACT. 'Zelda: Twilight Princess' and 'TMNT' for the Wii both allow the player to making slashing motions to attack with weapons in game, and both are rated 'Teen' and 'Everyone' respectively. That is FACT. Sorry to point out relevant comparisons that don't fit your goddamn world view.
I wonder if any instant messaging programs have implemented this? If so, do they consider the possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks as SSH does?
While I don't offhand know the encryption level or if it is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks I can tell you that the IM client GAIM has a plugin called OTR - Off The Record - that encrypts conversations. Googling for OTR + GAIM should get you the info you need.
I think more than any other mobile platform out there the potential for a well-written VOIP app on the iPhone to obsolete the use of its cell function is what makes AT&T terrified. I'm pretty sure Apple is bowing to pressure for AT&T on this one.
Imagine people buying a device that doesn't need a restrictive lock-in cell plan from the provider to make and receive calls. This is the same reason why the big telecomms don't want open access on the 700MHz band, it would kill their sacred profit cow.
Gee, what other titles for the Wii allow you to slash the controllers to attack in-game. Hmmm... oh that's right, the critically acclaimed Zelda: Twilight Princess, rated T for Teen.
Or how about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, rated E for EVERYONE.
Remember kids, never let the facts get in the way of a good story!
Now, lets take our college textbooks. Due to the technical nature, they can't just fire out one every 2 months - it takes at least a year and often more if it's extremely technical in nature (Knuth books, for example were started ~1960, and came out in '68,'69, '73 - vol 4 is now going on 30 years). The printing for these is not as cheap - these books are meant to last,
The problem is though that these publishers are rerelasing these books under new editions annually for almost no reason. I had multiple classes in college where the professor pointed out that the only changes between the new edition and two to three editions previously was either a renumbering of the problem sets (for no good reason other than to force students to get the most recent copy so that the problems they were assigned matched what they had in their books) or *minor* grammatical or spelling errors. I can think of no text I had that contained even a single new chapter or section between editions - comparing with others who bought the new edition straight from the campus store. If the publishers printing costs are so high maybe they should stop doing useless edition releases for the sole purpose of forcing upgrades on students and quashing the used market.
Additionally, given that the publishers KNOW they will be releasing a new edition every year or every other year, why then would they go to the extra expense of making the textbooks of extra high quality pages to last for years? They know they will force upgrades on students annually so the text hardly needs to last a decade as it will be obsolete in one year or less. I believe it is simply another point to use to inflate margins. My girlfriend worked in the printing industry for two years and I learned a lot about companies' margins and business techniques through her. For many types of paper the profit margins increased at a greater rate than the paper quality as one went to more expensive stock. Note, that's a generalization and was not true for all paper stock, though usually only "exotic" papers had shrinking margins with quality increases.
Why is it 20/20? Does NASA really require every astronaut to be capable of landing the shuttle in an emergency? I just don't see why, if I'm the robotics engineer on board, I would need perfect vision to complete my tasks.
Granted, you don't want people who can't function at all without glasses in case of emergency, glasses are broken/lost in space;) etc. But what's the maximum line of sight on the space station, like 25 feet? If someone can see well enough I don't understand why perfect vision is required. Hell why not make the requirement correctable to 20/10 while we're at it, hyper vision only candidates. And a space pony.
And also, my mother has undergone corrective laser eye surgery, so I know that it pretty much ruins one's night vision. Um, isn't space *really* dark? So it's ok if you can't see worth a damn in the dark/near dark, but not ok if you can read an instrument panel at 40 feet but not 50?
Just like how Tivo used to have a 30 second skip button. Then it was disabled, but don't worry you can always enter the "secret code" to make it work again. Until they removed that functionality as well.
Just like how DVD producers *could* disable skip and menu buttons before letting you get to the disc menu, but don't worry, they won't do that except for things like copyright legal notices. Until some DVDs started forcing you to sit through all the previews on the disc, even if they're years out of date.
Just like how income tax was a temporary measure to fund the war, don't worry, they'll never make it permanent. Until now when we have taxes withheld automatically and the only argument seems to be should that amount go up slightly or down slightly.
Power to control is always argued in terms of slight increases for temporary times or only mild inconvenience, but eventually once it is in place and the sheep are used to it, it inevitably is used for that which we feared. I should point out I'm NOT trying to equate Vista DRM with government erosion of rights, those are rather different in scope and morality. However examples of restriction-creep abound, I merely pointed out 3 to illustrate my point.
also, point me to a logical fallacy presented by the government(US). Just one.
By corralling all you protesters into one (razor wire) fenced off area away from the actual political event we are preserving your right to free speech.
How about that? I could give more but you asked for just one.
There is something more powerful than SCOTUS, POTUS and even COTUS (Congress). It's the Press. I linked to the Clinton trying to abuse political opponents by using their FBI files against them and they got caught. Just like if a Prez tries to use a wire tap against a political opponent for political or other nefarious purposes will also be caught and tried in the court of public opinion, much like we are doing here.
I agree that the "4th branch" of democracy - a free and informed press - is both extremely important and extremely powerful. But my last point was that the abuses with regards to the FISA court *were* exposed to/by the press, and there was NO accountability. The law required that the FISA court be consulted for certain international warrants, it even allowed a 72 hour retroactive provision for time-critical missions. It had a nearly 100% approval rate on warrants for thousands of previous cases. In total disregard of this, and while simultaneously lying about it (see youtube or other news archive for video of Bush claiming all eavesdropping was being done with warrants which was recorded during this time period) this administration sidestepped the FISA court. One of the first "justifications" given when called out on it by the press was that there was no time to get the warrants, which is patently false since retroactive warrants were allowed!
Look, I think we mostly agree on how things *should* work, I'm just saying the accountability part hasn't been functioning well in recent years. I am citing a specific abuse of a law, and pointing out that despite press coverage there has been zero criminal accountability. I'm not even going to argue whether those taps were valid or useful or anything, just that they were obtained outside the prescribed process. No one was fired, no one went to jail, no one has even been charged. You can't say the press will hold wayward officials accountable and therefore we need not worry when we have a glaring example that shows, thus far anyway, that accountability isn't happening. I will cede that once the press exposed the program the administration was forced to start doing things above board again. But since no one got punished for breaking the law what did they learn from this? "Don't get caught." That's not the lesson we want, we want them to realize there are penalties for breaking the law, so that they don't break it in the first place.
Hi, I'm not sure what exactly you were replying to in my post, but let me say I agree with yours. I think we're on the same footing with this argument. There's two things at issue: the first is - are the checks and balances and laws that are set up in line with the constitution? I would argue that in many cases recently, USA PATRIOT Act in particular, the answer is "no". But I wasn't even getting into that point with my post. I was taking the less confrontational route this time of the second issue: When those laws (even if they are bad ones) are in place, the government doesn't even seem to be following those! This is I think where we agree. It's bad enough some of the laws are unconscionable and/or unconstitutional, it's totally ridiculous when even those laws are then ignored.
If you are to say that you will give up no rights for protection, then why do you have locks on your doors?
False analogy. Putting locks on my own doors doesn't require me giving up any of my rights. I am not against the government using FISA to intercept communications to fight CRIME ('terrorism' is vague, and overly subjective) but I am AGAINST the government doing so without warrants, going against their own prescribed checks and balances. The FISA court was set up to handle this type of thing. The FISA court was sidestepped by the current administration for years before it came to light. The government should do what it can to maintain national security, however it should do so LEGALLY.
There are attacks being planned that make Beslan look like a school yard scuffle.
Oh really? Proof? Maybe you ought to report that to someone if you have information of a national security nature. Or are you just using vague scare tactics to push policy?
I'm willing to give up some rights to prevent it.
I, and many others, are NOT willing.
I understand that there is the possibility for abuse, but the second this is abused, the press is alerted and there is hell to pay.
Really? Hell to pay? Voluntary resignations and the firing/court martials of low level NCOs is hardly hell being paid. Maybe if someone responsible for OKing various abuses were ever charged, or [gasp] impeached then your sentiment would be comforting. From what we have seen thus far, a wrist slap is the most anyone has gotten. Case in point: although the FISA court was the ONLY legal way to tap certain international calls it was sidestepped completely by this administration. In total defiance of the law. Name one conviction of someone involved in ordering or executing those wiretaps without going through FISA. Zero accountability. It matters not whether the President, his legal council, or anyone other than SCOTUS thought the law should be different. It was defined, it was breached as defined, not one bit of accountability.
I retract and apologize for misunderstanding. However, a mean is not an average.
While I applaud you for admitting your error, as most on/. never will when called out, you're being overly pedantic about the mean-average relationship. The arithmetic mean is a type of average, so technically, yes, the mean is an average. There are different kinds of averages: mean, median, and mode specifically. But it is incorrect to say the mean is not an average, just as it is incorrect to say that a square is not a rectangle, it is merely a specific type of rectangle.
You don't have to take a breathalyser or do any road side test.
You are completely correct, this is true, however not without consequences in some states. For example, in MA where I live, refusing a roadside sobriety test is legally an admission of guilt essentially, and carries a mandatory license suspension. Not really any wiggle room there eh? It still boils down to: know the law for your state. In some states your advice is good, in other states it's quite bad.
[...] from my experience [...] I find it hard to believe [...] I don't know how the traffic is measured our where to get any good stats [...] I am just going on the habits of the people I know
You just admitted repeatedly that your entire argument that the RIAA lawsuits are reducing copyright infringement from filesharing is based wholly on nothing more than observation of a few friends' actions. Do any of your friends sky dive? No? Then I guess no one else must either.
If you have to store all the shit at the airport anyway, you might as well just get a plane.
I'm sorry but I have to disagree with this statement, especially having been out at a small airstrip this week. There is lots more space to put a pair of wings and possibly some car hardware into a shelving system than there is to have whole planes stored on a tarmac. The wingspan alone, even for Cessna craft, dictates a much larger footprint than a separate set of wings that can be stacked, stored vertically, etc. Also an airplane is by default an airplane. Another poster, I think in this very thread, who is a private pilot listed all of the reasons why having one vehicle to drive and fly might be many times more convenient than two. Things like getting to the airport, paying to store your car, procuring a car on the other end of the journey, etc. It's not the right solution for everyone obviously, but for those who are private pilots it might make a lot of sense. Also I was brainstorming about the OP's complaints about extra frame weight when I suggested the car part swap/rideshare idea. But there's no reason (other than fuel economy and engine power, both surmountable problems) that you couldn't leave the car frame as is and just add/remove only the wings and prop. I just find it ridiculous to argue that a whole plane takes up as much storage space as only a detachable set of wings.
Probably watching it on DVD. Plenty of us realize that by pirating our entertainment, we essentially have cut out the ability for them to make more.
Funny, I'm sure the checks from all the advertisers have already been cashed by the time it gets to this stage. The people advocating downloading are voting with their wallets. In this case it might actually have a negative, rather than zero sum, affect on the networks. How else do we as a populace convey our desires to these media conglomerates since they don't seem to listen to viewers?
Note: I'm nicely neutral in this debate as I don't pirate anything. I also don't buy much mainstream media tv shows, other than paying for cable (which I Tivo to suit my schedule). However, I'd like the media companies to wise up to the 21st century so when I do want something I can access it legally, at high quality, quickly - and for that I am willing to pay them, but they have to make it available to us to get our dollars.
I mean, I've just bought an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ EE for 68euros (the 3800+ was selling for 59 euros) and each kingston 1GB DDR-800 stick for 46 euros. Where did all the rest of the money went?
Extended warranties. Apparently these guys aren't as smart as they appear.;)
You make excellent points, all. I would add though that the wings need not be attached all the time. Some of the problems of having both sets of hardware all the time could be alleviated by making the wings/other controls detachable and store those at the airport. You still need a runway of sorts to take off anyway, it would be much cheaper to store some wings on a rack in a garage than a whole plane. Sure, you lose the instant-plane transformation aspect but like you said, foolproof linkages on something as important as the wings is a hard problem. It might also be possible to remove certain heavy parts of the car frame for when it's a plane, although this would require a ride-share program with the airports so there are equivalent parts waiting for you to bolt back on at your destination.
In any case, it seems like a much easier problem with a far safer design than a turbine based wingless VTOL craft.
The judge says, 'log that address when the connection is established'.
I think it's become a bit more complicated than that because of the way the judge ruled. The judge didn't say "start logging all IPs" the judge said "start logging all the contents of your RAM." Those two statements result in very different technical solutions. AFAIK there aren't auto-RAM logging apps, it's not something people normally do. The interesting thing about this ruling is how it could affect mandatory logging requirements. As other have said, if the contents of RAM are now considered storage mediums that must be logged then restarting a computer becomes tantamount to destruction of evidence for some people (e.g. those that must follow Sarbanes-Oxley). And how about this, what if I do find a nifty program that will log all my RAM contents for me, but after installing the app I must reboot my computer for the changes to take effect?;)
Slashdot Mirror
If this were an episode of CSI They could have simply drag-and-dropped the photo into their "automatically un-distort face in image" program, then zoomed in over the man's shoulder to read the artist's signature of a painting behind him. Then recognizing that these paintings are only sold from one obscure store in New York City, they drag-and-drop the photo into their "compare to every frame of every NYC ATM to this picture" program and found a frame of him standing conveniently in front of his license plate, which they could also zoom in to read the registration sticker text.
Get with the times Interpol. Sheesh, CSI wouldn't even have had to use their "match a partial fingerprint I zoomed in 6000% to get off of a glass of water in a 72dpi jpeg to every known felon in the US in under 10 seconds during witty banter" program to solve this one!
Putting aside for the moment that the people this is intended for will only be using it in emergency situations, they are also the group of people least likely to appreciate such a "ride" even if it were in casual circumstances. These folks already ride a massive controlled explosion into orbit where they are weightless for a week or more at a time. Compared to that ride this "third highest drop in the world" probably sounds like a day off for their stomachs. ;)
There is a HUGE difference between making a feature available and dictating election procedures to election boards. While it is not Diebold's responsibility to make such a feature on their own dime and without a request, it hardly implies that they would be dictating its use.
Diebold is not blameless in the electronic voting security arena either, lest we forget, they have dragged their feet repeatedly in implementing even basic security for these machines. Basic security for a voting machine is something that shouldn't have to be defined by every election board. Diebold is well aware these machines are to be used in state and national elections, that should demand a certain level of confidence in security measures without being told explicitly. Again, these machines are less secure than even the ATMs they produce.
Diebold creates ATMs with paper trails. They don't need to attend every council meeting or voters' rights group association to know that paper trail == good. Additionally even comparing their recount process to a regular paper-vote process would immediately show that there are edge cases where they would be unable to perform a recount but a paper-trail election would be able to.
It seems pretty obvious that having a hard-copy of critical data makes sense for the use cases of voting. It doesn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars or require Diebold to have any more than a handful of engineers/representatives to figure that out and maintain a Functional Requirements Specification that covers this. You ranting about how "How many election board meetings should thousands of Diebold employees attend" is baseless if you understood how writing and maintaining technical requirements work. It requires neither "thousands" of employees be directly involved, nor does it require day to day government meetings to maintain a process that has an auditable paper trail for any vote, regardless of how any given county conducts said vote.
How was my post a troll? That took 3 people to mod me to -1. Everything I posted is FACT. 'Zelda: Twilight Princess' and 'TMNT' for the Wii both allow the player to making slashing motions to attack with weapons in game, and both are rated 'Teen' and 'Everyone' respectively. That is FACT. Sorry to point out relevant comparisons that don't fit your goddamn world view.
I think more than any other mobile platform out there the potential for a well-written VOIP app on the iPhone to obsolete the use of its cell function is what makes AT&T terrified. I'm pretty sure Apple is bowing to pressure for AT&T on this one.
Imagine people buying a device that doesn't need a restrictive lock-in cell plan from the provider to make and receive calls. This is the same reason why the big telecomms don't want open access on the 700MHz band, it would kill their sacred profit cow.
Gee, what other titles for the Wii allow you to slash the controllers to attack in-game. Hmmm... oh that's right, the critically acclaimed Zelda: Twilight Princess, rated T for Teen.
Or how about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, rated E for EVERYONE.
Remember kids, never let the facts get in the way of a good story!
Now, lets take our college textbooks. Due to the technical nature, they can't just fire out one every 2 months - it takes at least a year and often more if it's extremely technical in nature (Knuth books, for example were started ~1960, and came out in '68,'69, '73 - vol 4 is now going on 30 years). The printing for these is not as cheap - these books are meant to last,
The problem is though that these publishers are rerelasing these books under new editions annually for almost no reason. I had multiple classes in college where the professor pointed out that the only changes between the new edition and two to three editions previously was either a renumbering of the problem sets (for no good reason other than to force students to get the most recent copy so that the problems they were assigned matched what they had in their books) or *minor* grammatical or spelling errors. I can think of no text I had that contained even a single new chapter or section between editions - comparing with others who bought the new edition straight from the campus store. If the publishers printing costs are so high maybe they should stop doing useless edition releases for the sole purpose of forcing upgrades on students and quashing the used market.
Additionally, given that the publishers KNOW they will be releasing a new edition every year or every other year, why then would they go to the extra expense of making the textbooks of extra high quality pages to last for years? They know they will force upgrades on students annually so the text hardly needs to last a decade as it will be obsolete in one year or less. I believe it is simply another point to use to inflate margins. My girlfriend worked in the printing industry for two years and I learned a lot about companies' margins and business techniques through her. For many types of paper the profit margins increased at a greater rate than the paper quality as one went to more expensive stock. Note, that's a generalization and was not true for all paper stock, though usually only "exotic" papers had shrinking margins with quality increases.
Why is it 20/20? Does NASA really require every astronaut to be capable of landing the shuttle in an emergency? I just don't see why, if I'm the robotics engineer on board, I would need perfect vision to complete my tasks.
;) etc. But what's the maximum line of sight on the space station, like 25 feet? If someone can see well enough I don't understand why perfect vision is required. Hell why not make the requirement correctable to 20/10 while we're at it, hyper vision only candidates. And a space pony.
Granted, you don't want people who can't function at all without glasses in case of emergency, glasses are broken/lost in space
And also, my mother has undergone corrective laser eye surgery, so I know that it pretty much ruins one's night vision. Um, isn't space *really* dark? So it's ok if you can't see worth a damn in the dark/near dark, but not ok if you can read an instrument panel at 40 feet but not 50?
Just like how Tivo used to have a 30 second skip button. Then it was disabled, but don't worry you can always enter the "secret code" to make it work again. Until they removed that functionality as well.
Just like how DVD producers *could* disable skip and menu buttons before letting you get to the disc menu, but don't worry, they won't do that except for things like copyright legal notices. Until some DVDs started forcing you to sit through all the previews on the disc, even if they're years out of date.
Just like how income tax was a temporary measure to fund the war, don't worry, they'll never make it permanent. Until now when we have taxes withheld automatically and the only argument seems to be should that amount go up slightly or down slightly.
Power to control is always argued in terms of slight increases for temporary times or only mild inconvenience, but eventually once it is in place and the sheep are used to it, it inevitably is used for that which we feared. I should point out I'm NOT trying to equate Vista DRM with government erosion of rights, those are rather different in scope and morality. However examples of restriction-creep abound, I merely pointed out 3 to illustrate my point.
How about that? I could give more but you asked for just one.
Look, I think we mostly agree on how things *should* work, I'm just saying the accountability part hasn't been functioning well in recent years. I am citing a specific abuse of a law, and pointing out that despite press coverage there has been zero criminal accountability. I'm not even going to argue whether those taps were valid or useful or anything, just that they were obtained outside the prescribed process. No one was fired, no one went to jail, no one has even been charged. You can't say the press will hold wayward officials accountable and therefore we need not worry when we have a glaring example that shows, thus far anyway, that accountability isn't happening. I will cede that once the press exposed the program the administration was forced to start doing things above board again. But since no one got punished for breaking the law what did they learn from this? "Don't get caught." That's not the lesson we want, we want them to realize there are penalties for breaking the law, so that they don't break it in the first place.
Hi, I'm not sure what exactly you were replying to in my post, but let me say I agree with yours. I think we're on the same footing with this argument. There's two things at issue: the first is - are the checks and balances and laws that are set up in line with the constitution? I would argue that in many cases recently, USA PATRIOT Act in particular, the answer is "no". But I wasn't even getting into that point with my post. I was taking the less confrontational route this time of the second issue: When those laws (even if they are bad ones) are in place, the government doesn't even seem to be following those! This is I think where we agree. It's bad enough some of the laws are unconscionable and/or unconstitutional, it's totally ridiculous when even those laws are then ignored.
Regards,
Jtheletter
I am not against the government using FISA to intercept communications to fight CRIME ('terrorism' is vague, and overly subjective) but I am AGAINST the government doing so without warrants, going against their own prescribed checks and balances. The FISA court was set up to handle this type of thing. The FISA court was sidestepped by the current administration for years before it came to light. The government should do what it can to maintain national security, however it should do so LEGALLY.Oh really? Proof? Maybe you ought to report that to someone if you have information of a national security nature. Or are you just using vague scare tactics to push policy?I, and many others, are NOT willing.Really? Hell to pay? Voluntary resignations and the firing/court martials of low level NCOs is hardly hell being paid. Maybe if someone responsible for OKing various abuses were ever charged, or [gasp] impeached then your sentiment would be comforting. From what we have seen thus far, a wrist slap is the most anyone has gotten. Case in point: although the FISA court was the ONLY legal way to tap certain international calls it was sidestepped completely by this administration. In total defiance of the law. Name one conviction of someone involved in ordering or executing those wiretaps without going through FISA. Zero accountability. It matters not whether the President, his legal council, or anyone other than SCOTUS thought the law should be different. It was defined, it was breached as defined, not one bit of accountability.
[...] from my experience [...] I find it hard to believe [...] I don't know how the traffic is measured our where to get any good stats [...] I am just going on the habits of the people I know
You just admitted repeatedly that your entire argument that the RIAA lawsuits are reducing copyright infringement from filesharing is based wholly on nothing more than observation of a few friends' actions. Do any of your friends sky dive? No? Then I guess no one else must either.
Also I was brainstorming about the OP's complaints about extra frame weight when I suggested the car part swap/rideshare idea. But there's no reason (other than fuel economy and engine power, both surmountable problems) that you couldn't leave the car frame as is and just add/remove only the wings and prop.
I just find it ridiculous to argue that a whole plane takes up as much storage space as only a detachable set of wings.
Note: I'm nicely neutral in this debate as I don't pirate anything. I also don't buy much mainstream media tv shows, other than paying for cable (which I Tivo to suit my schedule). However, I'd like the media companies to wise up to the 21st century so when I do want something I can access it legally, at high quality, quickly - and for that I am willing to pay them, but they have to make it available to us to get our dollars.
You make excellent points, all. I would add though that the wings need not be attached all the time. Some of the problems of having both sets of hardware all the time could be alleviated by making the wings/other controls detachable and store those at the airport. You still need a runway of sorts to take off anyway, it would be much cheaper to store some wings on a rack in a garage than a whole plane. Sure, you lose the instant-plane transformation aspect but like you said, foolproof linkages on something as important as the wings is a hard problem. It might also be possible to remove certain heavy parts of the car frame for when it's a plane, although this would require a ride-share program with the airports so there are equivalent parts waiting for you to bolt back on at your destination.
In any case, it seems like a much easier problem with a far safer design than a turbine based wingless VTOL craft.