Even if the cop starts to get some distance, how exact is the radius of the RFID going to be? Depending on whether it's a ring or a watch or a bracelett, what clothes they're wearing, etc. there's no way to know how close you have to be in practice for the gun to be armed.
I think the whole point of these things was that the gun needed to be more or less in the owners hand to be fired thus preventing it from being used against them in the event that it was taken from them. Obviously an effective range of more than a couple of inches would make the system useless.
Besides, it's not like the cop can outrun the bullet or something.
I don't get it. The point is to prevent the gun from firing, hence no bullets to outrun.
My all time favorite stupid "convenience" type fee is how Ticketmaster (last time I looked at least) actually charges more for you to download and print out your own tickets than for them to mail them to you!
Second would be being charged to electronically file my taxes. For the past several years I have owed the IRS, so there is no way I am going to pay extra so they can get my money sooner.
Never heard of that check printing thing, but scan your own credit card while the register and bag monkeys do their thing and you get out of there 5 seconds faster!
Re:A big waste, considering the commodity...
on
Encrypted Ammunition?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
So you get a risk of the gun not shooting when you need it to on the con side, and the very narrow pro that if someone steals the gun but doesn't have time/know-how to bypass the security, they can't fire it. They can still fire it if they are fighting you for it or if they have a little bit of time to work on it.
I'm not sure that the pro is really that narrow. I would think that most instances of someone getting shot with their own gun, especially for law enforcement, occur within seconds of it being stolen. If there is a struggle for the gun, the owner can just release the gun if they are in danger of being shot. I would presume that the technology is good enough that the owner could get away before the security could be bypassed.
The patent doesn't actually make any mention of using radio signals to fire the bullet. It does mention using high frequency energy, but the overall descriptions sounds more like there would be a physical, electrical connection rather than wireless, electromagnetic.
The patent doesn't make any mention of using radio energy, but rather of a high frequency energy pulse to activate the firing cap. It does mention an interface between the firing pulse transmitter and the cartridge. I tend to think it is referring to an actual physical interface, i.e. electrical contacts, rather than an abstract communications interface.
I do agree however that this idea is somewhat silly. For safety's sake it makes more sense to just have the firing pin of a traditional gun "password protected".
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
The prices for some things on eBay really are amazing. It makes you wonder if some of the people on there aren't aware that there are others places to shop online.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
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· Score: 4, Insightful
You are correct, in the event of a tie the earliest bid wins. Also the increments can get odd when eBay's automatic bidding decides things, so you can lose by a penny if the other person's max bid is even a penny more than yours. The set increments only matter when placing a bid, you have to bid at least one set increment higher than the current winning bid, but the final winning bid doesn't have to be by a set increment, just higher than any other bids.
That is why it is always worth bidding an oddball amount slightly higher than your target bid, like $20.53 instead of $20 even.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
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· Score: 5, Insightful
How is this such a problem? I don't really get what is not "fair" about sniping?
If the dumbasses that got their auction "stolen" at the last minute didn't put in the absolute maximum that they wanted to pay for the item, then that's their own fault. Either your willing to pay more than anyone else or your not. If you don't put your maximum bid in straight off and keep incrementing your bid, you are really just engaging in really inefficient sniping.
Adding a ten minute extension wouldn't really solve this. It would work great for sellers because the emotionally invested bidders would run up their bids more than they otherwise would. The buyers however would be better off just joining the snipers rather than fighting them. If everyone sniped it would basically revert to the pre-sniping days.
Well, according to the U.S. DOT information found here http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/fccount04.htm , the number of bridges is correct (26-01 and 26-11 are rural and urban interstate bridges repsectively).
The mileage figure pretty much jives with what wikipedia says, so it sounds like the numbers are probably right.
As others have mentioned, if you count every overpass, underpass, and creek crossing slightly larger than a culvert as a bridge then it seems more reasonable.
Indeed we don't really know what the level of commitment is. He referred to his "partner" which is somewhat ambiguous. Perhaps they would be married if they could but maybe not. Unmarried hetero couples will on occasion refer to their SO as their "partner" and I have even heard rumors that some long married hetero couples haved screwed around on each other.
I think you severely underestimate the cynicism of the slashdot crowd if you think that no one would question the fidelity of the wife in your hypothetical scenario.
Sure he says he has two lines but he never explicitly says which phone the calls were actually billed to. For all we know, he can't parse the phone bill and doesn't realize that all the calls were made to his partner's phone.
Of course if the roles were reversed you'd be saying how silly it was that American landline users have to pay extra to call someone who chooses to use a cellphone.
Out of curiosity, do you get charged double air time if you call another mobile from your own?
3. Are you SURE your partner isn't really receiving these calls? I.e., have you been with him at known times when these alleged calls have come in?
I didn't get this part of the story. On my "Family Plan" bill from Verizon there are completely separate sections for each phone showing the calls made to and from that particular phone. I would assume that T-mobile indicates which phone the calls are being made to or from on its bill as well. No need to question the partner if the calls are being charged to the poster's phone. On the other hand...
According to TFA, the guy picked her up after school. She probably told her parents she had soccer practice or whatever. Also, the assault took place in an apartment complex parking lot, not actually in his apartment apparently. Perhaps she realized that she shouldn't go in with him and he got mad.
While I think that it is terrible that this girl was assaulted, I still think this lawsuit is BS though with the parents and girl both shirking their own resposibility in avoiding the situation.
Second, we're talking about an explosion of 4 tonnes of TNT. I'm not greatly familiar with bomb sizes, but I think this is a few large conventional bomb, a large car bomb or small truck bomb.
Correct. The U.S. used two 500-lb bombs to destroy the little cinder block house that Al-Zarqawi was in. Four times that in a large city would hardly cause widespread devastation.
To over-use the phrase - "spoken like someone that has not yet moved out of their parent's basement." When you do, and discover how much rent/mortgage + utilities cost in the real world, you can come back and fix your silly statement.
And since this all in the context of "choosing" to have a stay-at-home wife and a couple kids, don't forget the health insurance that the $11/hr job likely does not provide for. Bye-bye 1/4+ of your paycheck!
I am sure there are places where one can live in modest comfort on $2000/month, but they are also the same places that keep disappearing when the local fill-in-the-blank factory is moved overseas.
I don't believe that putting "I think..." in front of a statement automatically gives you carte blanche to make whatever kind of accusation that you want. If I were to state, "I think Bourbon Man likes to fondle little boys", I could probably still get in some trouble.
I think there is a grey area in the law when stating an "opinion" on something that is really either true or not and not just a matter of personal view. I didn't RTFA and don't mean to imply that this applies here, but thought is was worth pointing out.
Worse than that, it shouldn't be too hard to display the "that was just a test" message on a more and more frequent basis.
And you say this should be easy based on... what? You and some of the other posters make it sound like someone could just pop a floppy into the machine while the guard isn't looking and change the software.
I'm sure we are much more likely to see a well-disguised bomb, etc, snuck through security or bypassing via some kind of social engineering before they would go to the trouble of trying to modify the software on the x-ray machines.
For that matter it would probably be a lot easier to turn down the sensitivity on the metal detectors. Wasn't there an incident last year where a terminal had to be reprocessed after they discovered a metal detector had actually been turned off for like an hour?
I'd say some, rather than most. My three year old car does not have such a switch. The back seat is still much safer for anyone to be riding in regardless.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the whole point of these things was that the gun needed to be more or less in the owners hand to be fired thus preventing it from being used against them in the event that it was taken from them. Obviously an effective range of more than a couple of inches would make the system useless.
Besides, it's not like the cop can outrun the bullet or something.
I don't get it. The point is to prevent the gun from firing, hence no bullets to outrun.
My all time favorite stupid "convenience" type fee is how Ticketmaster (last time I looked at least) actually charges more for you to download and print out your own tickets than for them to mail them to you!
Second would be being charged to electronically file my taxes. For the past several years I have owed the IRS, so there is no way I am going to pay extra so they can get my money sooner.
Never heard of that check printing thing, but scan your own credit card while the register and bag monkeys do their thing and you get out of there 5 seconds faster!
I'm not sure that the pro is really that narrow. I would think that most instances of someone getting shot with their own gun, especially for law enforcement, occur within seconds of it being stolen. If there is a struggle for the gun, the owner can just release the gun if they are in danger of being shot. I would presume that the technology is good enough that the owner could get away before the security could be bypassed.
The patent doesn't actually make any mention of using radio signals to fire the bullet. It does mention using high frequency energy, but the overall descriptions sounds more like there would be a physical, electrical connection rather than wireless, electromagnetic.
The patent doesn't make any mention of using radio energy, but rather of a high frequency energy pulse to activate the firing cap. It does mention an interface between the firing pulse transmitter and the cartridge. I tend to think it is referring to an actual physical interface, i.e. electrical contacts, rather than an abstract communications interface.
I do agree however that this idea is somewhat silly. For safety's sake it makes more sense to just have the firing pin of a traditional gun "password protected".
The prices for some things on eBay really are amazing. It makes you wonder if some of the people on there aren't aware that there are others places to shop online.
That is why it is always worth bidding an oddball amount slightly higher than your target bid, like $20.53 instead of $20 even.
How is this such a problem? I don't really get what is not "fair" about sniping?
If the dumbasses that got their auction "stolen" at the last minute didn't put in the absolute maximum that they wanted to pay for the item, then that's their own fault. Either your willing to pay more than anyone else or your not. If you don't put your maximum bid in straight off and keep incrementing your bid, you are really just engaging in really inefficient sniping.
Adding a ten minute extension wouldn't really solve this. It would work great for sellers because the emotionally invested bidders would run up their bids more than they otherwise would. The buyers however would be better off just joining the snipers rather than fighting them. If everyone sniped it would basically revert to the pre-sniping days.
The mileage figure pretty much jives with what wikipedia says, so it sounds like the numbers are probably right.
As others have mentioned, if you count every overpass, underpass, and creek crossing slightly larger than a culvert as a bridge then it seems more reasonable.
Hmmm...I predict a lot of healthy discussion and changed minds on this one.
I think you severely underestimate the cynicism of the slashdot crowd if you think that no one would question the fidelity of the wife in your hypothetical scenario.
Sure he says he has two lines but he never explicitly says which phone the calls were actually billed to. For all we know, he can't parse the phone bill and doesn't realize that all the calls were made to his partner's phone.
Out of curiosity, do you get charged double air time if you call another mobile from your own?
Whose phone are the calls supposedly being made to? Surely T-mobile indicated whether the calls in question were received by you or your partner.
I didn't get this part of the story. On my "Family Plan" bill from Verizon there are completely separate sections for each phone showing the calls made to and from that particular phone. I would assume that T-mobile indicates which phone the calls are being made to or from on its bill as well. No need to question the partner if the calls are being charged to the poster's phone. On the other hand ...
While I think that it is terrible that this girl was assaulted, I still think this lawsuit is BS though with the parents and girl both shirking their own resposibility in avoiding the situation.
Correct. The U.S. used two 500-lb bombs to destroy the little cinder block house that Al-Zarqawi was in. Four times that in a large city would hardly cause widespread devastation.
And since this all in the context of "choosing" to have a stay-at-home wife and a couple kids, don't forget the health insurance that the $11/hr job likely does not provide for. Bye-bye 1/4+ of your paycheck!
I am sure there are places where one can live in modest comfort on $2000/month, but they are also the same places that keep disappearing when the local fill-in-the-blank factory is moved overseas.
And Michael Jackson was cool!
And black!
My personal list would have to include "playing games" with the wife in the #1 slot.
Playing games with her #2 slot can be fun too.
I think there is a grey area in the law when stating an "opinion" on something that is really either true or not and not just a matter of personal view. I didn't RTFA and don't mean to imply that this applies here, but thought is was worth pointing out.
I, for one, welcome our new piracy overlords.
And you say this should be easy based on ... what? You and some of the other posters make it sound like someone could just pop a floppy into the machine while the guard isn't looking and change the software.
I'm sure we are much more likely to see a well-disguised bomb, etc, snuck through security or bypassing via some kind of social engineering before they would go to the trouble of trying to modify the software on the x-ray machines.
For that matter it would probably be a lot easier to turn down the sensitivity on the metal detectors. Wasn't there an incident last year where a terminal had to be reprocessed after they discovered a metal detector had actually been turned off for like an hour?
I'd say some, rather than most. My three year old car does not have such a switch. The back seat is still much safer for anyone to be riding in regardless.