Good point! I'll make sure to only violate any compulsory anti-suicide agreements that I sign in America, in order to avoid any unpleasant punishment.:D
I entirely agree. I wish that I had a mod point to spend here. 9/11 was startling, frightening and tragic but our reaction to it has been absurdly counter-productive.
The GP was most likely referring to a battery rated for 600 cold cranking amps (essentially, a rating of the battery's equivalent series resistance), which is a reasonable rating for a car/truck starting battery. That does not imply that the computers were actually drawing 600 amps from the battery (and they almost certainly weren't). Furthermore, working with that much current is not unusual. Starting a car/truck engine may draw much more current than that very briefly before the starter begins turning, and once the starter is cranking the engine it can still draw hundreds of amps (particularly in cold weather). Working with a large current is only dangerous if the wiring is so severely undersized that it overheats to the point that the insulation melts, something catches on fire, etc.
Granted, the battery's cold cranking amperage rating isn't very meaningful in the context of the GP's post. The CCA rating is important in engine-starting applications, which draw a large amount of power for a short period of time followed by a long recharging period. In an application like running a UPS, the battery's energy capacity (generally specified in units of amp-hours at a given discharge rate) would be more meaningful. I'll hazard a guess that the GP isn't an electrical engineer with detailed knowledge of battery ratings and their meanings, and (s)he simply stated the big number on the battery's label.
And the risk to reward ratio for copper is still rather low. Copper isn't gold people, it would be better to just get a bunch of pre-1982 pennies and melt them down if you wanted cheap, illegal copper.
Copper wires aren't stolen by people who want cheap, illegal copper. They're stolen by people who are desperate for money. If the copper thief had a bunch of pre-1982 pennies, they wouldn't melt them down for the copper; they'd spend them. Then they'd go steal something when they ran out of pennies.
In my area, a recent rash of copper telephone thefts were done by a small group of meth addicts who then sold the copper to a crooked recycler who didn't check their ID and report the suspicious activity. From what I heard, the meth addicts made around $750, and the damages were estimated at around $750,000. I think they were eventually caught, as well as the crooked recycler. These sorts of thieves won't perceive the risk vs. reward ratio the same way that a rational, functional, employed person would.
Except that I've already paid for that hardware with the original $200, and Intel made a profit on it unless they were daft enough to sell it to me at a loss. It cost a fixed amount to build that chip, based on wafer cost, die size, test time and yield. It'd be one thing if they took a bunch of chips in which some of the nonessential features failed final test and then sold them at a lower cost instead of throwing them away, but these proposed feature-locked chips are necessarily fully-functional chips in which they've chosen to hold some of the features for ransom. This is simply price gouging.
This is just like paying $20,000 for an SUV, and then later paying another $5,000 for the key that opens the back doors and the cargo area once I've decided that two seats and a glovebox aren't enough for me.
There's a simple trick to determine which eye is dominant. Describing it might not be so simple, but I'll give it a try. Put your hands together so they're overlapping a bit, with the backs of your hands towards your face, and with a hole left open between the webs of your thumbs. Put your hands out at arm's length and look at a fairly distant object through that hole. Now slowly bring your hands towards your face while continuing to look at that same object. You'll end up with your hands against your face, looking at the object with one eye, with the other eye covered. The uncovered eye is your dominant one.
If you show the trick to somebody else, have them look at you through the hole. You'll immediately see which of their eyes is looking at you, before they start moving their hands towards their face. It's also a lot easier to show them how to do the trick when you can just say "go like this" instead of trying to describe it!
I shoot firearms lefty (not fun learning to shoot with an M16-A1 that required a clip-on "lefty" brass deflector, forgot it once and was rewarded with a hot casing stuck between my face and my eyeglasses).
I'm just curious: Which of your eyes is dominant? I've been told that pistols are best operated with the dominant hand, while rifles are best fired from whichever side has the dominant eye. I'm both right-handed and right-eye-dominant, but if I ever happen to introduce shooting to somebody with their dominant hand and eye on opposite sides, I don't want to mislead them with bad advice.
All of my AR-pattern rifles have the cast-in shell deflector behind the ejection port, but I'm not sure I'd trust it if I had to shoot lefty. There are left-handed AR-pattern rifles out there, and I've even seen a left-handed M1911: everything was a mirror image of the normal design, right down to requiring left-handed magazines.
If only we could harvest energy from articles about operating multi-watt devices from nanowatt energy sources, all of the world's energy problems would be solved.
Much of PC 12020's restrictions are pretty stupid in my opinion (shuriken? nunchuks? brass knuckles?!). They're also mostly things that are easy to buy or make. I don't consider them unenforceable; I just consider them to be things which may easily escape notice and which a lot of people get away with.
In the case of one guy I know, he was charged with twelve felonies, including some PC 12020 charges. The thing is, he didn't do anything illegal; the charges were trumped up and politically motivated. All were dropped before trial, as I recall. He's a law-abiding guy with a clean criminal record, but LAPD and the LA county prosecutor chose to persecute him. He was lucky to be represented by a very good lawyer, and to get much of his five-figure legal expenses covered by donations from many folks like me.
I see nothing at all nice about having an over-extensive penal code. It makes so many things illegal that just about anybody can be found to have committed some crime, thus giving our governments far too many ways to persecute anybody they wish.
You don't care, and I don't care, but an officer arresting you for possession of one cares. People have been and continue to be prosecuted for possession of such items whose possession, importation, etc. are restricted by PC 12020, even when the definitions in PC 12020 are stretched to absurd limits by a prosecutor making an unjust prosecution. I personally know people who have been charged under PC 12020. You are quite simply mistaken about nobody caring.
The obvious absurdity of restricting shuriken (or any of the other weapons restricted by PC 12020, for that matter) doesn't make them any less illegal in California.
I hope he wasn't planning to fly directly to California with them, because they are restricted here.
CALIFORNIA CODES
PENAL CODE
SECTION 12020-12040
12020. (a) Any person in this state who does any of the following
is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year
or in the state prison:
(1) Manufactures or causes to be manufactured, imports into the
state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, or who gives,
lends, or possesses any [...] shuriken [...]
There are many exceptions to that rule listed in the following sections, but I'd be surprised if any of them apply in this case.
Sea water is quite hostile. I wouldn't want my nuclear plant *rusting* from all the sea water, thank-you-very-much.
I'm sure that the operators of all of those coastal nuclear power plants (such as San Onofre, the nearest one to me that I know of) will be quite disturbed to learn of your disapproval of their use of sea water as a heat sink.
Coal and nuclear also require vast quantities of water for cooling.
I may be mistaken, but I don't think that coolant water needs to be potable. I think that sea water with the big chunks strained out is sufficient (for coastal powerplant installations, that is). Thus, those water-guzzling coal and nuclear plants don't necessarily impact our fresh water supply, if they're installed at a coast and using salt water, with the adjacent body of water serving as a heat sink.
If you hire somebody else to hold that gun for you, then you only have the illusion of freedom until another person comes along and offers them a better deal. If you wish to be free, then you must keep that gun yourself, and be willing to bear it if and when needed to defend yourself from violence and tyranny.
An armed man is a citizen; an unarmed man is a subject.
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Good point! I'll make sure to only violate any compulsory anti-suicide agreements that I sign in America, in order to avoid any unpleasant punishment. :D
If they were forced to sign it, then it was signed under duress and it's not enforceable. :)
I would be pleased to have a weapon handed to me, either a knife or a club or just a fist.
If you can take somebody's fist away from them in order to use it as a weapon, then remind me not to pick a fight with you. :-p
I entirely agree. I wish that I had a mod point to spend here. 9/11 was startling, frightening and tragic but our reaction to it has been absurdly counter-productive.
Meh. This whiz-bang Unicode stuff is a passing fad. Good ol' 5-bit ITA2 code is all we really need.
A thousand apologies! I did not fully appreciate his benevolence. :)
Your shift key doesn't fund terrorists. It's OK to use it.
The GP was most likely referring to a battery rated for 600 cold cranking amps (essentially, a rating of the battery's equivalent series resistance), which is a reasonable rating for a car/truck starting battery. That does not imply that the computers were actually drawing 600 amps from the battery (and they almost certainly weren't). Furthermore, working with that much current is not unusual. Starting a car/truck engine may draw much more current than that very briefly before the starter begins turning, and once the starter is cranking the engine it can still draw hundreds of amps (particularly in cold weather). Working with a large current is only dangerous if the wiring is so severely undersized that it overheats to the point that the insulation melts, something catches on fire, etc.
Granted, the battery's cold cranking amperage rating isn't very meaningful in the context of the GP's post. The CCA rating is important in engine-starting applications, which draw a large amount of power for a short period of time followed by a long recharging period. In an application like running a UPS, the battery's energy capacity (generally specified in units of amp-hours at a given discharge rate) would be more meaningful. I'll hazard a guess that the GP isn't an electrical engineer with detailed knowledge of battery ratings and their meanings, and (s)he simply stated the big number on the battery's label.
And the risk to reward ratio for copper is still rather low. Copper isn't gold people, it would be better to just get a bunch of pre-1982 pennies and melt them down if you wanted cheap, illegal copper.
Copper wires aren't stolen by people who want cheap, illegal copper. They're stolen by people who are desperate for money. If the copper thief had a bunch of pre-1982 pennies, they wouldn't melt them down for the copper; they'd spend them. Then they'd go steal something when they ran out of pennies.
In my area, a recent rash of copper telephone thefts were done by a small group of meth addicts who then sold the copper to a crooked recycler who didn't check their ID and report the suspicious activity. From what I heard, the meth addicts made around $750, and the damages were estimated at around $750,000. I think they were eventually caught, as well as the crooked recycler. These sorts of thieves won't perceive the risk vs. reward ratio the same way that a rational, functional, employed person would.
Whatever they are, I bet they get first class seating on the B-Ark.
Cool. I'd like to hire one of them for my next design review at work.
Congratulations on your new license!
The proprietary AMBE codec bothers me, too. I think that a closed, license-encumbered, proprietary codec is entirely inappropriate for ham radio use.
Except that I've already paid for that hardware with the original $200, and Intel made a profit on it unless they were daft enough to sell it to me at a loss. It cost a fixed amount to build that chip, based on wafer cost, die size, test time and yield. It'd be one thing if they took a bunch of chips in which some of the nonessential features failed final test and then sold them at a lower cost instead of throwing them away, but these proposed feature-locked chips are necessarily fully-functional chips in which they've chosen to hold some of the features for ransom. This is simply price gouging.
This is just like paying $20,000 for an SUV, and then later paying another $5,000 for the key that opens the back doors and the cargo area once I've decided that two seats and a glovebox aren't enough for me.
Ah, so that cast-in deflector really works? Cool.
There's a simple trick to determine which eye is dominant. Describing it might not be so simple, but I'll give it a try. Put your hands together so they're overlapping a bit, with the backs of your hands towards your face, and with a hole left open between the webs of your thumbs. Put your hands out at arm's length and look at a fairly distant object through that hole. Now slowly bring your hands towards your face while continuing to look at that same object. You'll end up with your hands against your face, looking at the object with one eye, with the other eye covered. The uncovered eye is your dominant one.
If you show the trick to somebody else, have them look at you through the hole. You'll immediately see which of their eyes is looking at you, before they start moving their hands towards their face. It's also a lot easier to show them how to do the trick when you can just say "go like this" instead of trying to describe it!
I shoot firearms lefty (not fun learning to shoot with an M16-A1 that required a clip-on "lefty" brass deflector, forgot it once and was rewarded with a hot casing stuck between my face and my eyeglasses).
I'm just curious: Which of your eyes is dominant? I've been told that pistols are best operated with the dominant hand, while rifles are best fired from whichever side has the dominant eye. I'm both right-handed and right-eye-dominant, but if I ever happen to introduce shooting to somebody with their dominant hand and eye on opposite sides, I don't want to mislead them with bad advice.
All of my AR-pattern rifles have the cast-in shell deflector behind the ejection port, but I'm not sure I'd trust it if I had to shoot lefty. There are left-handed AR-pattern rifles out there, and I've even seen a left-handed M1911: everything was a mirror image of the normal design, right down to requiring left-handed magazines.
If only we could harvest energy from articles about operating multi-watt devices from nanowatt energy sources, all of the world's energy problems would be solved.
Much of PC 12020's restrictions are pretty stupid in my opinion (shuriken? nunchuks? brass knuckles?!). They're also mostly things that are easy to buy or make. I don't consider them unenforceable; I just consider them to be things which may easily escape notice and which a lot of people get away with.
In the case of one guy I know, he was charged with twelve felonies, including some PC 12020 charges. The thing is, he didn't do anything illegal; the charges were trumped up and politically motivated. All were dropped before trial, as I recall. He's a law-abiding guy with a clean criminal record, but LAPD and the LA county prosecutor chose to persecute him. He was lucky to be represented by a very good lawyer, and to get much of his five-figure legal expenses covered by donations from many folks like me.
I see nothing at all nice about having an over-extensive penal code. It makes so many things illegal that just about anybody can be found to have committed some crime, thus giving our governments far too many ways to persecute anybody they wish.
You don't care, and I don't care, but an officer arresting you for possession of one cares. People have been and continue to be prosecuted for possession of such items whose possession, importation, etc. are restricted by PC 12020, even when the definitions in PC 12020 are stretched to absurd limits by a prosecutor making an unjust prosecution. I personally know people who have been charged under PC 12020. You are quite simply mistaken about nobody caring.
The obvious absurdity of restricting shuriken (or any of the other weapons restricted by PC 12020, for that matter) doesn't make them any less illegal in California.
I hope he wasn't planning to fly directly to California with them, because they are restricted here.
There are many exceptions to that rule listed in the following sections, but I'd be surprised if any of them apply in this case.
Sea water is quite hostile. I wouldn't want my nuclear plant *rusting* from all the sea water, thank-you-very-much.
I'm sure that the operators of all of those coastal nuclear power plants (such as San Onofre, the nearest one to me that I know of) will be quite disturbed to learn of your disapproval of their use of sea water as a heat sink.
Coal and nuclear also require vast quantities of water for cooling.
I may be mistaken, but I don't think that coolant water needs to be potable. I think that sea water with the big chunks strained out is sufficient (for coastal powerplant installations, that is). Thus, those water-guzzling coal and nuclear plants don't necessarily impact our fresh water supply, if they're installed at a coast and using salt water, with the adjacent body of water serving as a heat sink.
If you hire somebody else to hold that gun for you, then you only have the illusion of freedom until another person comes along and offers them a better deal. If you wish to be free, then you must keep that gun yourself, and be willing to bear it if and when needed to defend yourself from violence and tyranny.
An armed man is a citizen; an unarmed man is a subject.
"So, why is it eight feet deep?"
"Uh... for deep reflection?"
:)
This sort of thing may stimulate a wider interest in practical application of camouflage techniques.