root is default when you install linux, you then have to add a user if you have any clue as to what you are doing.
Depends what distribution. AFAIK, in Ubuntu, root isn't enabled by default and you do system admin tasks through a sudo-like mechanism that elevates your permissions temporarily.
"We had to hack the system in order to protect it"?
Why not? Picture a heavy steel door with no holes in it, but secured by a thin plastic deadbolt. Cut a hole in the door and put in a proper deadbolt, and it'll become more secure.
Nope, Microsoft want to charge you $49.95 for three PCs for a year, other than the free AV products, I don't of any "cheaper alternatives" care to elaborate?
The free AV products. Avast is very good and has actually caught infected files that Symantec ignored on my customers' PCs. I see no reason to pay M$ $50/yr if free products that are likely just as good as *their* software are available.
The terrorist already won in making the "free world" live in fear of the next attack and giving up our freedoms in the name of a false sense of security. Pull the US out of the entire Mid East, let them blow each other up and start kicking our addiction to oil by riding a bike for everything you do normally with a car.
Agreed 100%, except for the part about riding bikes everywhere. Bikes are fun, but they can't do everything. We can, however, in 20 years, be driving electric cars and riding on electric trains between cities, all powered using clean sources of energy like nuke and hydropower. And in the mean time while we lessen our use of oil, we can buy from the Russians and Venezuelans instead. Middle Eastern oil imports are only about 20-25% of our total usage.
With regards to mileage, a typical single-engine plane has a cruising speed of roughly 130 mph, and you could expect to burn fuel at 6-8 gph. That translates to something like 19 mpg.
And this is with Lycoming Aero engines, which are basically 30s designs. There are companies offering converted auto engines (the Subaru boxer 4 seems to be a popular choice due to its form factor) that are significantly more efficient. There's also a German company that has designed a Diesel aircraft engine that burns inexpensive jet fuel rather than $6/gal+ aviation gasoline.
So subsidize them more, the same way as we do the airlines and highways. The subsidies will pay off, because as service gets better, faster, and cheaper, more customers will come, and running a train has similar costs regardless of the number of passengers aboard.
I don't like Bush a bit, but I find your argument absurd. Al Quaeda might be as large as they want, but they are failing. This news is about a STOPPED attack. IIRC
No, they're succeeding. By generating fear of terrorism in Americans' minds, they are destroying our civil liberties and remaking the USA into a totalitarian state.
What will you do if they say the terrorists will swallow the explosives prior to boarding flights like drug mules (If you think they can't because they won't be available in time, they can swallow them the day before).
Does "availability matter?" They could swallow the explosives and one of the packages could have some sort of timed detonation mechanism or a radio-activated one controlled by (say) a cell phone or laptop. Think of it as the ultimate form of suicide bombing.
"In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease."
I'm impressed, you managed to put into one sentence exactly what the US could do to make the muslim world stop hating them. Maybe someone should pitch that line to Bush Jr... ^_^
Agreed, and I have no love for the asshole who's in the White House these days. Let's try this first, then if the violence continues, play some hardball and kick some ass. Is this a war of defense for most of the terrorists, or is it really a cultural/holy war thing where they are out to destroy our way of life? Let's hope it's the former, because if it's the latter, the consequences for the terrorists and their compatriots will be very dire indeed.
At least I assume Trollheim is where you're from, since you're obviously a troll. Unless you really believe what you're saying, in which case I have a bridge for you to live under at very reasonable rent.
I really believe it with all my heart. I fucking hate the terrorists for what they're doing to my country, its civil liberties, and its culture of freedom. Granted, the government is complicit too, but they have to be seen as doing something to prevent terrorism.
As I said, we need to withdraw from the Middle East unilaterally and give the terrorists the benefit of the doubt that their mar may be one of self defense. If it turns out not to be, and there are still attacks on the US, push the button on them, their families, and their countries. Americans and their rights are more important than some goat herder in Kaffiristan, thank you very much!
You are a very silly Troll. Why would McVeigh or the other Oklahoma City bombers care if you attacked someone on the other side of the world?
Think about it: how many Americans want to kill hundreds or thousands of fellow Americans? Not many? Good. McVeigh and Nichols were just deranged criminals. As was the Unabomber. Insane people happen, and there's not much we can do about it.
Now, how many Middle Eastern Muslims want to kill a lot of Americans. Quite a few, right? More than the previous category? Definitely. And how many of them are backed by organizations that recieve funding and/or material support from nation-states other than the US. Again, quite a few.
People: you aren't getting it. *These people want to destroy our way of life and the freedoms that we hold dear.* We can try appeasement - disengagement from the Middle East - and I hope that it will work. However, if they persist in being a danger to the US, we have two choices. One of them is to deal with the issue decisively and forcefully. The other is to lock down the US so stringently that a terrorist act will be difficult if not impossible to accomplish. Unfortunately, this will result in the loss of the freedoms that we cherish and hold dear. Personally, I'll take the first choice since I *like* my freedoms, and I hope that this country's leaders will do the same, because a leader's first obligation is to their country and its people, even if it means harming people in some other country.
Also, we should offer the host country to round up the terrorists before we go in guns blazing.
Fine, if the people given to the US (a) are given up in a timely manner and (b) are actually meaningful players, not some barely-involved schlubs that are given up just to appease the US.
"cowards" - you mean like the scum who crashed two jetliners loaded with... gasp!... civilians into buildings full of... again!... civilians? I'm not counting the Pentagon because that *was* a military building and thus it could be argued that it was a legitimate target, although the plane that hit it was still full of civilians.
Perhaps you forgot that the last major terrorist attack in this country before 9/11/01 was hashed up by two guys from Oklahoma. Are you really advocating that we carpet-bomb Topeka?
That was more of an insane criminal act, rather than terrorism on the scale of 9/11. They may have been members of the Michigan Militia at one point, but the Militia was horrified and disavowed them afterwards. Contrast that to the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda, and bin Laden - bin Laden has consistantly spoken in support of the 9/11 attacks! Besides, we *did* get rid of the people responsible for the Oklahoma attacks. One got the chair, the other's in prison for life.
Also, a bos-dc train is going to probably stop in: Providence, New Haven (ehh?) NYC, and maybe a few other stops along the way.
I took the stops into account when estimating 5 hr, assuming a consistent top speed of 125 mph. You'd need fast acceleration to maintain schedules along with a different railcar design, with wider doors at the 2/3 points of each car rather than in narrow vestibules.
It may not be practical for *you*, but some people'd do the 5 hr DC-Bos thing, especially if they could be more comfortable than in a steel sardine can with cattle car seating. NYC-DC and NYC-Bos should take under 3 hr, and the NYC airports are basically all painful to get to unlike National in DC, so it'd definitely be useful. The NE Corridor improvement/electrification project to allow high-speed rail between DC and Boston was a half-assed effort at best and neglected important areas that needed to be improved. Maybe they should have even built a more inland route between Groton, CT and Boston rather than going all the way along the coast via Providence (they could have kept Providence as a slower-speed spur).
So, when the US actually cares about the despicable things it does to the rest of the world and cleans up it's mess - then yeah, I'm up with the bomb the shit out of them meme. But until then, lets just call it what it is. A big ruthless bully who steals your lunch money and then beats you up because you complained about it.
Actually, I agree with you 95%, believe it or not, except that we can't wait until we have cleaned up all of our messes in the world. We should, however, act more responsibly in the future and discontinue our involvement in regions of the world which don't desire our meddling!
The shortest rail trip is 8 hours and costs 40$ more.
Bos DC is about 500 miles. This should be doable in 5 hours at 100 mph average. We don't need trains that can go 150 mph for that. We need medium-speed trains with a top speed of maybe 120 mph, and more lightly built so they can accelerate quickly after stopping at stations. Unfortunately, our antiquated crash safety regulations that focus more on mitigating crashed than preventing them with better signalling and interlocks, basically prohibit lighter trains. The other bottlenecks are the tracks and shunting yards in major cities (Philadelphia etc) that you often have to crawl through. And the Hudson River tunnels, of which there are only two and where spacing has to be maintained. If we threw a bit of money into the problem, we could go a long way. Unfortunately, the fucking douchbag that's in the White House intends to completely emasculate Amtrak.
Not a bad idea considering most of the world considers the USA are terrorists.
Which is why I stated that we should first cease activities that others consider terroristic - namely our political and military meddling in places that don't want us. Consider it a unilateral offer of peace. If the olive branch is taken in good faith - great. If it's rejected by governments that continue to fund or harbor terrorists, then the price must be paid. Let me be clear: I want us to fight back only as a last resort. But if nothing else works, fight back we must.
The US doesn't actually get that much oil from the middle east. Look up the figures.
We're still the largest consumer of Middle Eastern oil, even if only 20-25% of our consumption comes from here. Even if the Middle East didn't produce a single drop of oil, I'd still despise the oil industry for its rape of the environment through pollution and the global warming caused by the burning of oil when other far cleaner sources of energy abound. What we need to do is tighten our belts and reduce our consumption of energy. No, most of us don't need SUV's that get 15 mpg. Incandescent lightbulbs are outdated and dump 80% of their energy input as heat. Fluorescents are much better and the mercury in them can be recycled and reused. New homes need to be designed with passive heating and cooling in mind. The wasteful highway shopping strips have got to go, too. With a modest reduction in per-capita energy consumption (say, to 50% of 2006 levels) the remainder can be generated cleanly using wind, hydro, solar and nukes. This isn't even taking into account new tech like orbiting solar power stations that beam energy down as microwaves.
One problem though, is that you are sounding exactly like the terrorists.
How else do you deal with maniacs who want to kill Americans even at the (guaranteed) cost of their own lives? Perhaps they'd think twice if they realized that they're not only playing with their lives, but the lives of their fellow citizens. Sometimes, force has to be met with force, and the only way to bargain with a dangerous foe is from a position of strength.
And, by the way, I *did* say that we should make a few important concessions before we implement a policy of brute-strength-versus-strengh. But the only way to preserve a free society is ultimately, to stop the terrorist attacks *externally*, without implementing draconian internal restrictions that further curtail our freedoms!
trying to ground all aircraft built before the last few decades.
That, if anything, is due to lobbying by Cessna, which has once again entered the small GA plane market. (After their liability was limited to 18 years after date of manufacture by statute.) Since their products aren't cheap, and 40-yr old planes are still flying fine, they want to be able make some money. As another poster has said, the AOPA has been largely successful in lobbying against such restrictions.
No homeland security issue there, just old-fashioned graft and patronage.
To a radical Islamist, mutually-assured destructions just looks like the express line to heaven.
The point is that, while many people in certain countries may somewhat support the radical Islamists, a relatively small fraction of the population is actually willing to take the express train to heaven. If they realized that the actions of the radical Islamists had dire consequences, they might well take it upon themselves to eliminate the radical Islamists.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been done. See: nitrocellulose. However, nitrocellulose is a nitrate, so it's, fortunately, pretty easily detected.
-b.
Depends what distribution. AFAIK, in Ubuntu, root isn't enabled by default and you do system admin tasks through a sudo-like mechanism that elevates your permissions temporarily.
-b.
Why not? Picture a heavy steel door with no holes in it, but secured by a thin plastic deadbolt. Cut a hole in the door and put in a proper deadbolt, and it'll become more secure.
-b.
The free AV products. Avast is very good and has actually caught infected files that Symantec ignored on my customers' PCs. I see no reason to pay M$ $50/yr if free products that are likely just as good as *their* software are available.
-b.
Agreed 100%, except for the part about riding bikes everywhere. Bikes are fun, but they can't do everything. We can, however, in 20 years, be driving electric cars and riding on electric trains between cities, all powered using clean sources of energy like nuke and hydropower. And in the mean time while we lessen our use of oil, we can buy from the Russians and Venezuelans instead. Middle Eastern oil imports are only about 20-25% of our total usage.
-b.
And this is with Lycoming Aero engines, which are basically 30s designs. There are companies offering converted auto engines (the Subaru boxer 4 seems to be a popular choice due to its form factor) that are significantly more efficient. There's also a German company that has designed a Diesel aircraft engine that burns inexpensive jet fuel rather than $6/gal+ aviation gasoline.
-b.
So subsidize them more, the same way as we do the airlines and highways. The subsidies will pay off, because as service gets better, faster, and cheaper, more customers will come, and running a train has similar costs regardless of the number of passengers aboard.
-b.
No, they're succeeding. By generating fear of terrorism in Americans' minds, they are destroying our civil liberties and remaking the USA into a totalitarian state.
-b.
Does "availability matter?" They could swallow the explosives and one of the packages could have some sort of timed detonation mechanism or a radio-activated one controlled by (say) a cell phone or laptop. Think of it as the ultimate form of suicide bombing.
-b.
I'm impressed, you managed to put into one sentence exactly what the US could do to make the muslim world stop hating them. Maybe someone should pitch that line to Bush Jr... ^_^
Agreed, and I have no love for the asshole who's in the White House these days. Let's try this first, then if the violence continues, play some hardball and kick some ass. Is this a war of defense for most of the terrorists, or is it really a cultural/holy war thing where they are out to destroy our way of life? Let's hope it's the former, because if it's the latter, the consequences for the terrorists and their compatriots will be very dire indeed.
-b.
I really believe it with all my heart. I fucking hate the terrorists for what they're doing to my country, its civil liberties, and its culture of freedom. Granted, the government is complicit too, but they have to be seen as doing something to prevent terrorism.
As I said, we need to withdraw from the Middle East unilaterally and give the terrorists the benefit of the doubt that their mar may be one of self defense. If it turns out not to be, and there are still attacks on the US, push the button on them, their families, and their countries. Americans and their rights are more important than some goat herder in Kaffiristan, thank you very much!
-b.
Think about it: how many Americans want to kill hundreds or thousands of fellow Americans? Not many? Good. McVeigh and Nichols were just deranged criminals. As was the Unabomber. Insane people happen, and there's not much we can do about it.
Now, how many Middle Eastern Muslims want to kill a lot of Americans. Quite a few, right? More than the previous category? Definitely. And how many of them are backed by organizations that recieve funding and/or material support from nation-states other than the US. Again, quite a few.
People: you aren't getting it. *These people want to destroy our way of life and the freedoms that we hold dear.* We can try appeasement - disengagement from the Middle East - and I hope that it will work. However, if they persist in being a danger to the US, we have two choices. One of them is to deal with the issue decisively and forcefully. The other is to lock down the US so stringently that a terrorist act will be difficult if not impossible to accomplish. Unfortunately, this will result in the loss of the freedoms that we cherish and hold dear. Personally, I'll take the first choice since I *like* my freedoms, and I hope that this country's leaders will do the same, because a leader's first obligation is to their country and its people, even if it means harming people in some other country.
-b.
Fine, if the people given to the US (a) are given up in a timely manner and (b) are actually meaningful players, not some barely-involved schlubs that are given up just to appease the US.
-b.
"cowards" - you mean like the scum who crashed two jetliners loaded with ... gasp! ... civilians into buildings full of ... again! ... civilians? I'm not counting the Pentagon because that *was* a military building and thus it could be argued that it was a legitimate target, although the plane that hit it was still full of civilians.
-b.
That was more of an insane criminal act, rather than terrorism on the scale of 9/11. They may have been members of the Michigan Militia at one point, but the Militia was horrified and disavowed them afterwards. Contrast that to the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda, and bin Laden - bin Laden has consistantly spoken in support of the 9/11 attacks! Besides, we *did* get rid of the people responsible for the Oklahoma attacks. One got the chair, the other's in prison for life.
-b.
I took the stops into account when estimating 5 hr, assuming a consistent top speed of 125 mph. You'd need fast acceleration to maintain schedules along with a different railcar design, with wider doors at the 2/3 points of each car rather than in narrow vestibules.
It may not be practical for *you*, but some people'd do the 5 hr DC-Bos thing, especially if they could be more comfortable than in a steel sardine can with cattle car seating. NYC-DC and NYC-Bos should take under 3 hr, and the NYC airports are basically all painful to get to unlike National in DC, so it'd definitely be useful. The NE Corridor improvement/electrification project to allow high-speed rail between DC and Boston was a half-assed effort at best and neglected important areas that needed to be improved. Maybe they should have even built a more inland route between Groton, CT and Boston rather than going all the way along the coast via Providence (they could have kept Providence as a slower-speed spur).
-b.
Actually, I agree with you 95%, believe it or not, except that we can't wait until we have cleaned up all of our messes in the world. We should, however, act more responsibly in the future and discontinue our involvement in regions of the world which don't desire our meddling!
-b.
Bos DC is about 500 miles. This should be doable in 5 hours at 100 mph average. We don't need trains that can go 150 mph for that. We need medium-speed trains with a top speed of maybe 120 mph, and more lightly built so they can accelerate quickly after stopping at stations. Unfortunately, our antiquated crash safety regulations that focus more on mitigating crashed than preventing them with better signalling and interlocks, basically prohibit lighter trains. The other bottlenecks are the tracks and shunting yards in major cities (Philadelphia etc) that you often have to crawl through. And the Hudson River tunnels, of which there are only two and where spacing has to be maintained. If we threw a bit of money into the problem, we could go a long way. Unfortunately, the fucking douchbag that's in the White House intends to completely emasculate Amtrak.
-b.
Which is why I stated that we should first cease activities that others consider terroristic - namely our political and military meddling in places that don't want us. Consider it a unilateral offer of peace. If the olive branch is taken in good faith - great. If it's rejected by governments that continue to fund or harbor terrorists, then the price must be paid. Let me be clear: I want us to fight back only as a last resort. But if nothing else works, fight back we must.
-b.
We're still the largest consumer of Middle Eastern oil, even if only 20-25% of our consumption comes from here. Even if the Middle East didn't produce a single drop of oil, I'd still despise the oil industry for its rape of the environment through pollution and the global warming caused by the burning of oil when other far cleaner sources of energy abound. What we need to do is tighten our belts and reduce our consumption of energy. No, most of us don't need SUV's that get 15 mpg. Incandescent lightbulbs are outdated and dump 80% of their energy input as heat. Fluorescents are much better and the mercury in them can be recycled and reused. New homes need to be designed with passive heating and cooling in mind. The wasteful highway shopping strips have got to go, too. With a modest reduction in per-capita energy consumption (say, to 50% of 2006 levels) the remainder can be generated cleanly using wind, hydro, solar and nukes. This isn't even taking into account new tech like orbiting solar power stations that beam energy down as microwaves.
-b.
That's the idea: for us to have the ability and show the will; so hopefully we'll never have to *use* that ability to the detriment of anyone.
-b.
How else do you deal with maniacs who want to kill Americans even at the (guaranteed) cost of their own lives? Perhaps they'd think twice if they realized that they're not only playing with their lives, but the lives of their fellow citizens. Sometimes, force has to be met with force, and the only way to bargain with a dangerous foe is from a position of strength.
And, by the way, I *did* say that we should make a few important concessions before we implement a policy of brute-strength-versus-strengh. But the only way to preserve a free society is ultimately, to stop the terrorist attacks *externally*, without implementing draconian internal restrictions that further curtail our freedoms!
-b.
That, if anything, is due to lobbying by Cessna, which has once again entered the small GA plane market. (After their liability was limited to 18 years after date of manufacture by statute.) Since their products aren't cheap, and 40-yr old planes are still flying fine, they want to be able make some money. As another poster has said, the AOPA has been largely successful in lobbying against such restrictions.
No homeland security issue there, just old-fashioned graft and patronage.
-b.
The point is that, while many people in certain countries may somewhat support the radical Islamists, a relatively small fraction of the population is actually willing to take the express train to heaven. If they realized that the actions of the radical Islamists had dire consequences, they might well take it upon themselves to eliminate the radical Islamists.
-b,
"Nuke 'em 'till they glow!"
I think that a good conventional ass-kicking would be enough to get the message we want to communicate across. No need for nukes.
-b.