Tanks are arms. A10 gunships are arms. Chemical and biological weapons are arms. Nuclear weapons are arms. No one seriously disputes the fact that we get to infringe on bearing arms, the question is only where to draw the line. Why do you insist that semi-automatic weapons must not be infringed but not tanks and nukes?
Not very many of our military planes get blown up. Instead we just stick thousands of them in the desert boneyards to make room for the new shinies.
We can still cut military spending without stopping making new shinies though by closing bases and getting out of Afghanistan. Or we could put some of them to work making new bridges to replace the ones that are fucking falling apart all over the country. Or nuclear power plants. Or we could build a colony on the moon, I bet that would keep a few people busy. If we have to make work then let's make something besides bombs with that work.
2. Well we could get into a whole discussion about precision in woodworking, but the short version is no it isn't enough but it doesn't really matter. What really matters is that like parts are exactly the same length, but what that length actually is isn't always important. When it is important you need to sneak up on the cut anyway. That's why the decimal/fraction conversions aren't that big of a deal, because if it needs to be that accurate then it's not getting cut exactly to a measurement on the first cut anyway.
4. I use table saws much more than circular saws and those blades are either 1/8" or 3/32", at least to start with. Once you resharpen the blade the kerf becomes slightly smaller. I can't easily get a metric size kerf blade for a 5/8" arbor anyway. I don't do much cutting of things out of sheet goods for the stuff I do so it's a moot point for me.
You have to account for the fact that I have to make things for customers who are going to expect measurements in imperial. So there would have to be a conversion between the two either at the beginning or end (or both) of the project. If they want a box that is 10" deep I'm going to be dealing with an oddball 254mm measurement that I can't really round off to 250 and then that has a ripple effect of every other dimension based on it being oddball.
My squares that have measurements are imperial. My calipers and dial indicator are imperial. My drill bits are imperial. My spindle sander has imperial size drums. And on and on. I do have some metric chisels. I'm also going to get hardware that comes with screw/bolt patterns that are imperial.
It's not as simple as using a different ruler and suddenly I live in a metric world.
I do woodworking for a living and get along just fine with imperial. It can be a bit of a pain any time you need a calculator to divide something, say 7-3/8" divided by 5, and then have to convert the answer back to the nearest fraction to actually do anything with it. But when you do it often enough you memorize all the decimal equivalents of 1/16 pretty quickly. Even though I've got rulers with metric on one side and could easily use that instead in those situations I don't.
The biggest thing I find is an imperial tape or ruler is graduated such that the 1/2 inch marks and longer than the 1/4 inch marks which are longer than the 1/8 inch marks and so on. A metric ruler/tape has longer marks at 1/2 cm but everything between is the same length. So not being used to that, it takes me longer to register what the measurement is with metric. That annoys me. So any experiment with using the metric side of the ruler usually ends in about 30 seconds because I'm instantly annoyed at being slowed down.
Let me put it this way, if all we needed was the yard and the inch, why'd we come up with the foot in the first place? If it wasn't useful we wouldn't bother with it.
It's interesting that you bring up construction, because this is the area where I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence of imperial still being used. As long as plywood keeps coming in 4x8 foot sheets here we're going to keep measuring in imperial. Would you like us to knock down every house and rebuild everything with metric spacing on the studs? Houses need remodeling and no one wants to cut down 250x125 cm plywood to 4x8 sheets. Our table saws are just getting safety features that you've had for decades so you'd maim a few thousand of us just doing that. Think about the size warehouse you would need to stock all the different thicknesses and types in two different sizes. Though actually melamine does come in 250x125 sheets here, but it's not something that's used for anything that requires stud spacing.
My tapes that have imperial and metric on them only go down to mm, and that isn't precise enough for the finish work that I do. Do you have tapes with half mm on them over there? I have seen some rulers with sections in half mms but not the whole thing. Our rulers are typically all 1/16th inches (1.5 mm) with sections in 1/32 and 1/64, so I don't know how you'd manage with just mm. I admit the math can be a PITA when you need a calculator to divide something and then have to get back to the nearest 1/32 to actually do anything with the answer. Part of the problem may just be that we have crappy metric rulers and tape measures here, just like when you try to make imperial tapes. It would actually be nice to have a tape measure or ruler with the feet divided in inches on one side and in 10ths on the other.
I somewhat said that. What you are used to is a huge factor but, as I said above, the foot and inch are useful units of measure. I could get along with cm instead of inches, but there's nothing in the metric system to replace the foot.
What really annoys the hell out of me is when you metric folks make an imperial rule you often inexplicably make the 1/8" marks longer than the 1/4" marks. No one I know has been able to explain the logic to me, so I think you're just messing with us. Stop it.
No one is trying to get the rest of the world to switch to metric. Wasn't it obvious there was an implied "in the US" after people? Btw I have heard plenty of anecdotal evidence of imperial measurements still being widely used for certain things in supposedly metric-only countries.
My point is simply that the foot is a handy length unit to have that doesn't exist in SI. Obviously you can make do without it, but it's something that just works well and if there was a near SI equivalent it would be easier to make the transition. No one seems to use decimeter, which sounds too much like decameter, particularly with all the interesting dialects in the US that would just be a mess. Now if 1 meter was close to 1 foot and then you went in multiples of 10 from there, that would be easier for imperial users to get.
My other point that units that aren't necessarily easy to convert between doesn't matter because the average person doesn't ever actually have to convert you didn't address. It doesn't matter if the system as a whole is better if the only parts that people use regularly are just as good in the old system if it's the average person that you need to convince to use it.
Because no one really cares how many yards are in a mile. Things that are usefully measured in yards are measured in yards and not converted to miles and vice versa. The inch and the foot are more practical units for everyday use than cm and meters and that's what people are used to. If there were closer SI units to the inch and foot I think it would be a much easier conversion to sell.
Letting a temporary tax cut expire isn't raising taxes, anymore than not continuing to get a Christmas bonus in January isn't cutting your pay. I really have no idea why no one calls them on this nonsense. If you are only interesting in technically not raising taxes then you can play whatever word games you want.
The problem is that Republicans see this as an opportunity to cut every program that they disagree with while continuing to spend just as much or even more on the things they do agree with. This is their opportunity to do with the budget what they can't do with votes or the courts, and they won't accept that their little fantasy isn't possible.
Ah but law enforcement wants to be able to fly a drone over your property without a warrant any time they want. So not allowing these guys to do it would be a bad precedent.
TFA: "Says Kellar Autumn of Lewis and Clark University, 'I predict that in the next decade we will see shape-changing artificial muscles in many products, such as mobile phones, portable computers and automobiles.'"
When the next iphone prototype gets left in a bar it simply slithers back to HQ, using its camera to identify anyone that sees it for later questioning by the authorities.
The article talks about how the pyramids got looted within a generation. So by all means, make your don't dig here notice out of fucking platinum and sapphire. I'm sure no one will want to go looking for those things to steal them. A stone tablet sounds pretty much like the ideal medium, but even that will probably get looted because people are stupid.
You might get some people to leave this thing on, but most people who drive like idiots will just turn it off once the novelty wears off because it's not going fast enough, leaving too much space in front of them, etc...
The problem isn't that people can't effectively gauge the proper speed to keep the traffic flowing, even though the computer may be able to do it better. They just don't want to, and they aren't going to let the car do it for them either.
He did sort of imply nuking DC would improve things, if you choose to read it that way, while questioning someone else's "misdirected statement". I found it humorous, and we'll need funny people around after DC gets nuked to lighten the mood. So I hope they don't leave the country.
Isn't the only sane response at this point from Iran to get nuclear weapons as quickly as possible to stop us from fucking with them? Then we either decide to leave them alone or go to war with them and bankrupt ourselves.
George RR Martin is doing a good job of making us not want to let the world go back to a feudal society. Or have dragons. Apparently before you can take over the world with them first you have to raise them and send them to college and 8000 pages later you still haven't done anything with them.
Longer hoods? Like they need an excuse to make the beds even shorter. I keep waiting to see the next generation of trucks with 3 rows of seats and a wheelbarrow strapped to the back.
How about we don't have woodworkers price IT projects and don't have IT workers price woodworking projects? You are apparently expecting the wood to cut and assemble itself into a finished product, not consume any electricity in the process or require any rent to be paid on the facility it's building itself in. All of the tools required also purchased themselves and did not wear at all during the process. No other consumables like glue and sandpaper were needed. Further Etsy didn't take 3.5% and Paypal 2.5% off the top. No time was spent photographing, marketing, or answering questions from potential customers either.
All that not withstanding, that maple is highly figured curly maple (which doesn't really show in the article pictures but does in the Etsy ones) so you aren't even close on the lumber costs.
I bought a used pickup at the end of last year, but you wouldn't catch me buying a new one anytime soon. If you live in an area where it doesn't snow you might have a different view, but I've had enough experience with 2wd pickups in the snow to never want to do it again. So 4wd is a must for me and that adds between $4-6k which takes the price up into the $25k area. I'd sooner buy a small car that gets much better mileage for less money and just rent a truck when I actually need one. And yet if you look around the dealerships around here trucks are pretty much all you see. I guess we didn't get the memo about gas prices here.
What bugs me is that while pretty much every little hatchback lets you fold down the rear seats, very few let you also fold down the front seat to fit the long stuff you'd want the pickup for (okay you aren't going to get a full sheet of plywood in there, but that's what the truck rentals are for). The Honda Fit was pretty much the only one that I saw that would do it, and the Fit really ought to get better mileage for what it is. It could also stand to not be so freaking ugly.
It would give them an excuse to start prying into the lives of anyone they associated with through gaming. Actually finding anyone who is a real threat is a secondary concern to having more people to have to look into and more ways to look into them so they can get more money and influence.
I'm playing through it right now on win7x64. First you install the game with the option to put as much on the hdd as possible. Then you install patch 1.02. The game will work at this point, but the movies won't because you don't have the right codecs for it. Then you install a mod that converts the game to opengl and allows it to run at higher resolution and compensate for widescreen monitors. There is a whole modding community for the game that among other things replaces the in game models for the characters with better versions, so Cloud doesn't look like a lego man outside of battles.
I've had some crashes, once in a great while when entering battles, and often it hangs up when exiting the program.
It will also work pretty much out of the box with an xbox 360 controller, except the dpad and L2 and R2 don't work. It's playable as is though, it thinks the left analog is a joystick and you don't really need L2 and R2.
Slashdot Mirror
Tanks are arms. A10 gunships are arms. Chemical and biological weapons are arms. Nuclear weapons are arms. No one seriously disputes the fact that we get to infringe on bearing arms, the question is only where to draw the line. Why do you insist that semi-automatic weapons must not be infringed but not tanks and nukes?
Not very many of our military planes get blown up. Instead we just stick thousands of them in the desert boneyards to make room for the new shinies.
We can still cut military spending without stopping making new shinies though by closing bases and getting out of Afghanistan. Or we could put some of them to work making new bridges to replace the ones that are fucking falling apart all over the country. Or nuclear power plants. Or we could build a colony on the moon, I bet that would keep a few people busy. If we have to make work then let's make something besides bombs with that work.
2. Well we could get into a whole discussion about precision in woodworking, but the short version is no it isn't enough but it doesn't really matter. What really matters is that like parts are exactly the same length, but what that length actually is isn't always important. When it is important you need to sneak up on the cut anyway. That's why the decimal/fraction conversions aren't that big of a deal, because if it needs to be that accurate then it's not getting cut exactly to a measurement on the first cut anyway.
4. I use table saws much more than circular saws and those blades are either 1/8" or 3/32", at least to start with. Once you resharpen the blade the kerf becomes slightly smaller. I can't easily get a metric size kerf blade for a 5/8" arbor anyway. I don't do much cutting of things out of sheet goods for the stuff I do so it's a moot point for me.
You have to account for the fact that I have to make things for customers who are going to expect measurements in imperial. So there would have to be a conversion between the two either at the beginning or end (or both) of the project. If they want a box that is 10" deep I'm going to be dealing with an oddball 254mm measurement that I can't really round off to 250 and then that has a ripple effect of every other dimension based on it being oddball.
My squares that have measurements are imperial. My calipers and dial indicator are imperial. My drill bits are imperial. My spindle sander has imperial size drums. And on and on. I do have some metric chisels. I'm also going to get hardware that comes with screw/bolt patterns that are imperial.
It's not as simple as using a different ruler and suddenly I live in a metric world.
I do woodworking for a living and get along just fine with imperial. It can be a bit of a pain any time you need a calculator to divide something, say 7-3/8" divided by 5, and then have to convert the answer back to the nearest fraction to actually do anything with it. But when you do it often enough you memorize all the decimal equivalents of 1/16 pretty quickly. Even though I've got rulers with metric on one side and could easily use that instead in those situations I don't.
The biggest thing I find is an imperial tape or ruler is graduated such that the 1/2 inch marks and longer than the 1/4 inch marks which are longer than the 1/8 inch marks and so on. A metric ruler/tape has longer marks at 1/2 cm but everything between is the same length. So not being used to that, it takes me longer to register what the measurement is with metric. That annoys me. So any experiment with using the metric side of the ruler usually ends in about 30 seconds because I'm instantly annoyed at being slowed down.
Let me put it this way, if all we needed was the yard and the inch, why'd we come up with the foot in the first place? If it wasn't useful we wouldn't bother with it.
It's interesting that you bring up construction, because this is the area where I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence of imperial still being used. As long as plywood keeps coming in 4x8 foot sheets here we're going to keep measuring in imperial. Would you like us to knock down every house and rebuild everything with metric spacing on the studs? Houses need remodeling and no one wants to cut down 250x125 cm plywood to 4x8 sheets. Our table saws are just getting safety features that you've had for decades so you'd maim a few thousand of us just doing that. Think about the size warehouse you would need to stock all the different thicknesses and types in two different sizes. Though actually melamine does come in 250x125 sheets here, but it's not something that's used for anything that requires stud spacing.
My tapes that have imperial and metric on them only go down to mm, and that isn't precise enough for the finish work that I do. Do you have tapes with half mm on them over there? I have seen some rulers with sections in half mms but not the whole thing. Our rulers are typically all 1/16th inches (1.5 mm) with sections in 1/32 and 1/64, so I don't know how you'd manage with just mm. I admit the math can be a PITA when you need a calculator to divide something and then have to get back to the nearest 1/32 to actually do anything with the answer. Part of the problem may just be that we have crappy metric rulers and tape measures here, just like when you try to make imperial tapes. It would actually be nice to have a tape measure or ruler with the feet divided in inches on one side and in 10ths on the other.
I somewhat said that. What you are used to is a huge factor but, as I said above, the foot and inch are useful units of measure. I could get along with cm instead of inches, but there's nothing in the metric system to replace the foot. What really annoys the hell out of me is when you metric folks make an imperial rule you often inexplicably make the 1/8" marks longer than the 1/4" marks. No one I know has been able to explain the logic to me, so I think you're just messing with us. Stop it.
No one is trying to get the rest of the world to switch to metric. Wasn't it obvious there was an implied "in the US" after people? Btw I have heard plenty of anecdotal evidence of imperial measurements still being widely used for certain things in supposedly metric-only countries.
My point is simply that the foot is a handy length unit to have that doesn't exist in SI. Obviously you can make do without it, but it's something that just works well and if there was a near SI equivalent it would be easier to make the transition. No one seems to use decimeter, which sounds too much like decameter, particularly with all the interesting dialects in the US that would just be a mess. Now if 1 meter was close to 1 foot and then you went in multiples of 10 from there, that would be easier for imperial users to get.
My other point that units that aren't necessarily easy to convert between doesn't matter because the average person doesn't ever actually have to convert you didn't address. It doesn't matter if the system as a whole is better if the only parts that people use regularly are just as good in the old system if it's the average person that you need to convince to use it.
Because no one really cares how many yards are in a mile. Things that are usefully measured in yards are measured in yards and not converted to miles and vice versa. The inch and the foot are more practical units for everyday use than cm and meters and that's what people are used to. If there were closer SI units to the inch and foot I think it would be a much easier conversion to sell.
Letting a temporary tax cut expire isn't raising taxes, anymore than not continuing to get a Christmas bonus in January isn't cutting your pay. I really have no idea why no one calls them on this nonsense. If you are only interesting in technically not raising taxes then you can play whatever word games you want.
The problem is that Republicans see this as an opportunity to cut every program that they disagree with while continuing to spend just as much or even more on the things they do agree with. This is their opportunity to do with the budget what they can't do with votes or the courts, and they won't accept that their little fantasy isn't possible.
I believe it involves Steve Ballmer and hunting down every patent attorney in the world, but I'm a little fuzzy on the details.
Ah but law enforcement wants to be able to fly a drone over your property without a warrant any time they want. So not allowing these guys to do it would be a bad precedent.
Even if it's another entity besides NASA that builds a heavy lift rocket, they are going to need somewhere to launch it from.
A patent will have to interfere with political fundraising in some significant manner. Patent reform will follow in about a week.
TFA: "Says Kellar Autumn of Lewis and Clark University, 'I predict that in the next decade we will see shape-changing artificial muscles in many products, such as mobile phones, portable computers and automobiles.'"
When the next iphone prototype gets left in a bar it simply slithers back to HQ, using its camera to identify anyone that sees it for later questioning by the authorities.
The article talks about how the pyramids got looted within a generation. So by all means, make your don't dig here notice out of fucking platinum and sapphire. I'm sure no one will want to go looking for those things to steal them. A stone tablet sounds pretty much like the ideal medium, but even that will probably get looted because people are stupid.
You might get some people to leave this thing on, but most people who drive like idiots will just turn it off once the novelty wears off because it's not going fast enough, leaving too much space in front of them, etc... The problem isn't that people can't effectively gauge the proper speed to keep the traffic flowing, even though the computer may be able to do it better. They just don't want to, and they aren't going to let the car do it for them either.
He did sort of imply nuking DC would improve things, if you choose to read it that way, while questioning someone else's "misdirected statement". I found it humorous, and we'll need funny people around after DC gets nuked to lighten the mood. So I hope they don't leave the country.
Isn't the only sane response at this point from Iran to get nuclear weapons as quickly as possible to stop us from fucking with them? Then we either decide to leave them alone or go to war with them and bankrupt ourselves.
George RR Martin is doing a good job of making us not want to let the world go back to a feudal society. Or have dragons. Apparently before you can take over the world with them first you have to raise them and send them to college and 8000 pages later you still haven't done anything with them.
Longer hoods? Like they need an excuse to make the beds even shorter. I keep waiting to see the next generation of trucks with 3 rows of seats and a wheelbarrow strapped to the back.
How about we don't have woodworkers price IT projects and don't have IT workers price woodworking projects? You are apparently expecting the wood to cut and assemble itself into a finished product, not consume any electricity in the process or require any rent to be paid on the facility it's building itself in. All of the tools required also purchased themselves and did not wear at all during the process. No other consumables like glue and sandpaper were needed. Further Etsy didn't take 3.5% and Paypal 2.5% off the top. No time was spent photographing, marketing, or answering questions from potential customers either.
All that not withstanding, that maple is highly figured curly maple (which doesn't really show in the article pictures but does in the Etsy ones) so you aren't even close on the lumber costs.
I bought a used pickup at the end of last year, but you wouldn't catch me buying a new one anytime soon. If you live in an area where it doesn't snow you might have a different view, but I've had enough experience with 2wd pickups in the snow to never want to do it again. So 4wd is a must for me and that adds between $4-6k which takes the price up into the $25k area. I'd sooner buy a small car that gets much better mileage for less money and just rent a truck when I actually need one. And yet if you look around the dealerships around here trucks are pretty much all you see. I guess we didn't get the memo about gas prices here.
What bugs me is that while pretty much every little hatchback lets you fold down the rear seats, very few let you also fold down the front seat to fit the long stuff you'd want the pickup for (okay you aren't going to get a full sheet of plywood in there, but that's what the truck rentals are for). The Honda Fit was pretty much the only one that I saw that would do it, and the Fit really ought to get better mileage for what it is. It could also stand to not be so freaking ugly.
It would give them an excuse to start prying into the lives of anyone they associated with through gaming. Actually finding anyone who is a real threat is a secondary concern to having more people to have to look into and more ways to look into them so they can get more money and influence.
I'm playing through it right now on win7x64. First you install the game with the option to put as much on the hdd as possible. Then you install patch 1.02. The game will work at this point, but the movies won't because you don't have the right codecs for it. Then you install a mod that converts the game to opengl and allows it to run at higher resolution and compensate for widescreen monitors. There is a whole modding community for the game that among other things replaces the in game models for the characters with better versions, so Cloud doesn't look like a lego man outside of battles.
I've had some crashes, once in a great while when entering battles, and often it hangs up when exiting the program.
It will also work pretty much out of the box with an xbox 360 controller, except the dpad and L2 and R2 don't work. It's playable as is though, it thinks the left analog is a joystick and you don't really need L2 and R2.