ATTN: Citizen of Earth FROM: ankh.terra.sol
RE: Your posting, saying simply "I wouldn't"
I have just metamoderated a moderation of this post that called it "insightful". Your simple statement that you wouldn't is just that. It gives no reason for your choice, and so I felt unable to allow a moderation of "insightful" for your comment to go unpunished. Forgive me if I get a little verbose, and I know it's really offtopic here, but I've been mostly away from Slashdot for over 2 months and I feel the need to write something.
Perhaps you are no good with a handgun, so you don't feel competent to use one. Certainly an airliner is a challenging environment for defence, and I understand that special ammunition is desirable that wouldn't puncture the aircraft's skin. Perhaps this ammunition has a reduced propellant charge that wouldn't correctly operate the mechanism of a Glock with a standard spring. Perhaps whoever moderated you up knew Citizen of Earth's previous postings, and knew why you took that position.
Maybe you're a blanket pacifist, but we live in a real world where bad people do bad things and it has been found, at least as far back as David Vs Goliath, that being handy with available or improvised weapons is, or at least can be, a survival skill. Also, it's not just the prototypical 'bad guys' and 'criminals' you need to look out for. It's also corrupt regimes. That's one of the reasons why Americans value their right to bear arms. If I was down in Port Arthur with a handgun when (apparently) Martin Bryant 'went postal', the result might have been quite different.
I handled three replica pistols earlier today, and I'm considering getting back into target shooting again, both rifles and pistols this time. I think I'll try IPSC sometime - perhaps with a Beretta model 92x. (Wasn't it an 'S' that Mel used in Lethal Weapon?) I wonder if They'll let me shoot standard gun with a Beretta Neo. A Biathlon rifle would be nice too, I wonder if they'll let me ride from home to the range and back on my motorcycle with the Biathlon rifle slung across my back (if it's in a bag, I think it's just possible that they might:-).
I've been away from shooting for a decade and a half, and no, reading Slashdot didn't cause me to want to acquire concealable weapons. There's no great rush. Things tend to happen in their own time.
I feel the need to explain what my general policy would be in using firearms against criminals and others who would seek to harm me and those I love. I would aim never to intentionally take a fatal shot, consistent with the need to protect myself and other innocents in the vicinity from imminent danger. Obviously if the situation escalates rapidly, a poorly aimed and possibly fatal shot may be the surest way to prevent loss of innocent life or serious injury. An event resulting in the death or serious injury of an adversary would require some serious review of what happened and why, but in any case I'd like to be able to offer at least first aid assistance to the person(s). IOW, I'd like to be able to shoot 'em up and then immediately patch 'em up, though in some conceivable circumstances this is clearly not going to be feasible. I may be running for my life.
Regards, Koualla.
FWIW, Back in my day, my first computer - a laptop - had 256K of battery-backed SRAM for main memory, a 6MHz 186 CPU, plugin ROM modules, a 16-line character-only mono display, nonstandard serial & parallel ports, a ROM BIOS written in C, and DOS 2.x... and I liked it.:-) No floppies in the portable unit, though - we used RAMDISK, so knock n K off the 256K of main memory To get the actual amount available to programs, where n is the size of the RAMDISK. (Too long for a sig, I know; I'm trying to cut it down).
I believe I have just about the right level of paranoia. For example, I don't believe these people are 'out to get me', at least not at this point. Their very irritating behavior (not just the internet/communication interruptions) is probably seen as just part of their job. Maybe they'd like to 'put me away' for a while, but I haven't been doing anything for which they could reasonably put me away.
Peculiar things have been happening, and I'm not going to list them here. Telstra techs are probably the fourth-last bunch I'd voluntarily let into my home at this point
Also, I've had some peculiar sorts of crackers in my computer, and I don't believe they're out yet. It is possible that there are backdoors in the distribution of Linux I'm using.
To quote the King: "I am paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?"
I have good reason to believe that Australian Government people are not only stalking the net, watching for suspicious activity and monitoring the net behavior of what they consider to be suspicious people, but they will actively interrupt and subvert an individual's net access if they think it's in their interest. So far I haven't seen any evidence of identity theft from these clowns - they don't seem to be forging emails from me or anything. They have gone so far as to deny me free access to the net when they feel uncomfortable about what I'm doing. Perhaps this is their idea of a hint that what I'm doing is potentially dangerous, but these shadowy puppeteers are unwilling to come out into the light and have a meaningful conversation. Sneaky bastards!
I recently tried to change ISPs but found that my dialup connections were not even reaching the servers of the new, local ISP. My guess is that the phone calls were diverted to a dummy system.
My current ISP - the one I am trying to ditch - is several states away, or at least their mail servers are, which gives the powers that be plenty of opportunities to intercept my logins. Getting an ISP that will supply me with an account that will give me secure authentication for both dialup and email seems to be a difficult proposition. Any fellow Aussies know of a good ISP that does this?
One would hope that they are doing all this for what they consider to be good reasons, but if they're the crowd I think they are, they're serving the government of the day, which I consider to be - what's a good way to put it? - "a bunch of power-hungry, lying, short-sighted morons" - yeah, that about covers it. (Not that I have much faith in the current opposition, but maybe they can be reasoned with.)
Also, the Australian 50c coin used to be round, with a smooth outer surface. People would shave off a little bit of the silver-containing alloy and return the rest of the coin to circulation. The mint got around that by making the newer coins polygonal, not circular.
On the 10th of February 1972, in New Scientist magazine, Daedalus proposed a similar scheme, using ammonia as the working fluid:
"... one might think, a balloon filled with ammonia would rise rapidly to 25,000 feet, and then lose lift by the liquefaction of its gas."
"... overcome this by putting his ammonia in a somewhat elastic balloon which will always squeeze it to about 0.1 atmospheres greater pressure than the atmosphere outside. This will raise its condensation-point sufficiently for the ammonia to liquefy at about 34,000 feet."
It seems that someone has been taking Daedalus seriously, but when they did the math, they found that the ammonia was a bit troublesome, and they now seek to do without it.
You can read a copy of the original Daedalus column in "The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes" by David E.H. Jones, W.H. Freeman & Co 1982. ISBN 0-7167-1412-4.
Regards.
Scientifically flawed?
on
Mice In Space
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I'm glad to hear of this mission, especially since my local university (UQ) is among those participating, but I'm concerned about the absence of a control group.
There should be two compartments on the satellite, one rotating and one stationary, so they can directly compare mars-type gravity with zero gravity, and also a population of mice on Earth to represent the normal case.
I suppose they could run a control group up to the ISS, but having them on the same satellite makes more sense, and would ensure that the mice are all subjected to the same stresses during launch and reentry.
Anyhow, here's hoping the folks here at UQ don't screw up the deorbit, reentry and landing phases so we get the mice back intact.:-)
In this case, the guy probably was communicating with the right people, but the obvious target for one's righteous indignation isn't necessarily the correct one.
I've noticed failure notices in one of my inboxes (the one that collects all the spam) that suggests that my address is being used as a return address in forged headers for spam.
On at least two occasions I have received a nasty email stating that my computer had been deliberately infected by a nasty virus because they believed that I had infected their computer by sending them email. Since I use mozilla under Linux, however, it is unlikely in the extreme that my computer propagated any virus, and their virus didn't have any effect (lucky me).
I've read both AFITD and ADITS (in that order) and I was a little disappointed in ADITS. There's really not much in common between the two, so don't write off AFITD completely - it's a good read.
Hopefully there will be English language support in the new OS, rather than only support for the Asian languages of the countries that will be developing it.
Slashdot Mirror
ATTN: Citizen of Earth
:-).
... and I liked it. :-)
FROM: ankh.terra.sol
RE: Your posting, saying simply "I wouldn't"
I have just metamoderated a moderation of this post that called it "insightful". Your simple statement that you wouldn't is just that. It gives no reason for your choice, and so I felt unable to allow a moderation of "insightful" for your comment to go unpunished. Forgive me if I get a little verbose, and I know it's really offtopic here, but I've been mostly away from Slashdot for over 2 months and I feel the need to write something.
Perhaps you are no good with a handgun, so you don't feel competent to use one. Certainly an airliner is a challenging environment for defence, and I understand that special ammunition is desirable that wouldn't puncture the aircraft's skin. Perhaps this ammunition has a reduced propellant charge that wouldn't correctly operate the mechanism of a Glock with a standard spring. Perhaps whoever moderated you up knew Citizen of Earth's previous postings, and knew why you took that position.
Maybe you're a blanket pacifist, but we live in a real world where bad people do bad things and it has been found, at least as far back as David Vs Goliath, that being handy with available or improvised weapons is, or at least can be, a survival skill. Also, it's not just the prototypical 'bad guys' and 'criminals' you need to look out for. It's also corrupt regimes. That's one of the reasons why Americans value their right to bear arms. If I was down in Port Arthur with a handgun when (apparently) Martin Bryant 'went postal', the result might have been quite different.
I handled three replica pistols earlier today, and I'm considering getting back into target shooting again, both rifles and pistols this time. I think I'll try IPSC sometime - perhaps with a Beretta model 92x. (Wasn't it an 'S' that Mel used in Lethal Weapon?) I wonder if They'll let me shoot standard gun with a Beretta Neo. A Biathlon rifle would be nice too, I wonder if they'll let me ride from home to the range and back on my motorcycle with the Biathlon rifle slung across my back (if it's in a bag, I think it's just possible that they might
I've been away from shooting for a decade and a half, and no, reading Slashdot didn't cause me to want to acquire concealable weapons. There's no great rush. Things tend to happen in their own time.
I feel the need to explain what my general policy would be in using firearms against criminals and others who would seek to harm me and those I love. I would aim never to intentionally take a fatal shot, consistent with the need to protect myself and other innocents in the vicinity from imminent danger. Obviously if the situation escalates rapidly, a poorly aimed and possibly fatal shot may be the surest way to prevent loss of innocent life or serious injury. An event resulting in the death or serious injury of an adversary would require
some serious review of what happened and why, but in any case I'd like to be able to offer at least first aid assistance to the person(s). IOW, I'd like to be able to shoot 'em up and then immediately patch 'em up, though in some conceivable circumstances this is clearly not going to be feasible. I may be running for my life.
Regards, Koualla.
FWIW, Back in my day, my first computer - a laptop - had 256K of battery-backed SRAM for main memory, a 6MHz 186 CPU, plugin ROM modules, a 16-line character-only mono display, nonstandard serial & parallel ports, a ROM BIOS written in C, and DOS 2.x
No floppies in the portable unit, though - we used RAMDISK, so knock n K off the 256K of main memory To get the actual amount available to programs, where n is the size of the RAMDISK.
(Too long for a sig, I know; I'm trying to cut it down).
I believe I have just about the right level of paranoia. For example, I don't believe these people are 'out to get me', at least not at this point. Their very irritating behavior (not just the internet/communication interruptions) is probably seen as just part of their job. Maybe they'd like to 'put me away' for a while, but I haven't been doing anything for which they could reasonably put me away.
Peculiar things have been happening, and I'm not going to list them here. Telstra techs are probably the fourth-last bunch I'd voluntarily let into my home at this point
Also, I've had some peculiar sorts of crackers in my computer, and I don't believe they're out yet.
It is possible that there are backdoors in the distribution of Linux I'm using.
To quote the King: "I am paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?"
I have good reason to believe that Australian Government people are not only stalking the net, watching for suspicious activity and monitoring the net behavior of what they consider to be suspicious people, but they will actively interrupt and subvert an individual's net access if they think it's in their interest. So far I haven't seen any evidence of identity theft from these clowns - they don't seem to be forging emails from me or anything. They have gone so far as to deny me free access to the net when they feel uncomfortable about what I'm doing. Perhaps this is their idea of a hint that what I'm doing is potentially dangerous, but these shadowy puppeteers are unwilling to come out into the light and have a meaningful conversation. Sneaky bastards!
I recently tried to change ISPs but found that my dialup connections were not even reaching the servers of the new, local ISP. My guess is that the phone calls were diverted to a dummy system.
My current ISP - the one I am trying to ditch - is several states away, or at least their mail servers are, which gives the powers that be plenty of opportunities to intercept my logins. Getting an ISP that will supply me with an account that will give me secure authentication for both dialup and email seems to be a difficult proposition. Any fellow Aussies know of a good ISP that does this?
One would hope that they are doing all this for what they consider to be good reasons, but if they're the crowd I think they are, they're serving the government of the day, which I consider to be - what's a good way to put it? - "a bunch of power-hungry, lying, short-sighted morons" - yeah, that about covers it. (Not that I have much faith in the current opposition, but maybe they can be reasoned with.)
Also, the Australian 50c coin used to be round, with a smooth outer surface. People would shave off a little bit of the silver-containing alloy and return the rest of the coin to circulation. The mint got around that by making the newer coins polygonal, not circular.
On the 10th of February 1972, in New Scientist magazine, Daedalus proposed a similar scheme, using ammonia as the working fluid:
"... one might think, a balloon filled with ammonia would rise rapidly to 25,000 feet, and then lose lift by the liquefaction of its gas."
"... overcome this by putting his ammonia in a somewhat elastic balloon which will always squeeze it to about 0.1 atmospheres greater pressure than the atmosphere outside. This will raise its condensation-point sufficiently for the ammonia to liquefy at about 34,000 feet."
It seems that someone has been taking Daedalus seriously, but when they did the math, they found that the ammonia was a bit troublesome, and they now seek to do without it.
You can read a copy of the original Daedalus column in "The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes" by David E.H. Jones, W.H. Freeman & Co 1982. ISBN 0-7167-1412-4.
Regards.
I'm glad to hear of this mission, especially since my local university (UQ) is among those participating, but I'm concerned about the absence of a control group.
:-)
There should be two compartments on the satellite, one rotating and one stationary, so they can directly compare mars-type gravity with zero gravity, and also a population of mice on Earth to represent the normal case.
I suppose they could run a control group up to the ISS, but having them on the same satellite makes more sense, and would ensure that the mice are all subjected to the same stresses during launch and reentry.
Anyhow, here's hoping the folks here at UQ don't screw up the deorbit, reentry and landing phases so we get the mice back intact.
I think they're working on the principle that "If we build it, they will come (together)". Referring, of course to protons, not baseball players.
Is it just me, or is this article back from the future? It's only 4:25am local time as I write this, but the article says it was posted at 5:16am.
Regards, Ross.
Australian TV reported that the folks at McMurdo wouldn't even recharge his cellphone. Now that's petty.
Regards.
In this case, the guy probably was communicating with the right people, but the obvious target for one's righteous indignation isn't necessarily the correct one.
I've noticed failure notices in one of my inboxes (the one that collects all the spam) that suggests that my address is being used as a return address in forged headers for spam.
On at least two occasions I have received a nasty email stating that my computer had been deliberately infected by a nasty virus because they believed that I had infected their computer by sending them email. Since I use mozilla under Linux, however, it is unlikely in the extreme that my computer propagated any virus, and their virus didn't have any effect (lucky me).
Regards.
That's good news. I had previously read that there was a fundamental and difficult-to-fix problem with more than 1 monitor.
What sort of graphics card(s) are you using?
Regards, Ross.
When will Xfree86 be fixed so that it will support more than 1 monitor, or has it happened recently but I haven't noticed?
What does a key grip do anyway?
Seriously, I have wondered about this for a while.
Regards, Koualla.
I've read both AFITD and ADITS (in that order) and I was a little disappointed in ADITS. There's really not much in common between the two, so don't write off AFITD completely - it's a good read.
Hopefully there will be English language support in the new OS, rather than only support for the Asian languages of the countries that will be developing it.
Regards, Graeme