Agreed, but the British actually have good reason to be paranoid; unlike we US folks, terrorism is no stranger to them. Even though "the troubles" are supposed to be over, there are still a few fringe groups causing mayhem there.
The British police actually gave good advice -- call them and let them know you're geocaching, where the cache is, and what's in it.
have you ever had your abdomen cut open? It hurts, and there is very little room internally
Bullshit, there's plenty of room. Ever seen a fat man? But you still wouldn't bring an airplane down. This wouldn't be meant to explode on a plane, it would be meant to explode in the security line. As I said in TFS your greatest risk is driving to the airport, but your second greatest is pilot error, third mechanical failure, but fifth is the security line; that's where the next attack is most likely to be.
As to the bulge, it could be disguised as a fetus, the scar could look like a c-section scar and could sit there for months. You don't think Al Quaida could hire competent surgeons? They could leave the bomb in long enough for the incision to heal.
As to nicking the intestine, a woman I once knew walked around with a hole in her intestine for over a month. Another woman I knew had a cancer on her gall bladder bigger than the gall bladder (she died 4 months after being admitted to the hospital), had been complaining of pain for half a year or more. My old drinking buddy Ralph had a burst appendix, the stubborn old coot wouldn't go to the ER for two days (he died three months later). He was 86, a WWII vet.
People are tougher than you think. Some of us are, anyway.
How about they just disband? 45,000 people die on American highways every year. I'm far more worried about the idiot in the SUV sending text messages when he's supposed to be driving than I am of terrorists.
there's really only a handful of distros I'd consider to be in the same category as Ubuntu for general ease of installation/use
I see you've never installed Windows. Every Linux distro I've tried (Except Red Hat, and that was back in 1998) was brain-dead simple to install and completely painless, even Mandrake back in 2003.
Try typing in that forty digit key with 1s and ls and 0s and Os. And sit there having to click "yes" or "no" every two minutes for a solid hour -- with a whole lot of reboots. Then installing every application you'll need to do any actual work.
Compare that to installing ANY Linux distro; two screens of choices (only one with many distros), wait 1/2 hour with no babysitting (maybe change the CD) and one reboot, and you have a ready-to-use, functional machine.
Comparing installing Linux with installing Windows is like comparing driving a modern car with a model-T hand cranked Ford (Windows is the model T). People only think Windows is easy because they've used it all their lives. Those of us that cut our teeth on DOS (or even earlier machines, like a Sinclair or an Apple II or a Commodore) know better.
NOTHING makes Windows tolerable! God but I'll be glad when I retire and don't have to deal with Microsoft products.
If you like Windows, then stick with it. Me, I'd rather never see another MS program again. Well, Excel isn't too bad -- for a spreadsheet (I hate spreadsheets, too).
Why Ubuntu? She's familiar with OSX and Windows, I'd suggest something using a KDE desktop, which isn't that different than either one. Gnome is kind of weird if you ask me.
Kubunu iis a good one, combines Ubuntu with KDE. Wish Mandriva wasn't dead/dying, that was my all-time favorite.
It doesn't work when there's a lot of traffic. Here, though, there's seldom anyone going slower, although maddeningly they seem to slow down for the green lights and speed up and zoom around you when the light is red so you wind up stopping behind them for a green light, because the moron's in no hurry to go when the light turns green.
Sometimes I wonder if some people are trying as hard as they can to waste as much gas as possible, theirs and yours too.
The problem is, you might come up with a line or an idea you saw or heard decades ago. ZZ Top was sued by Howlin' Wolf for La Grange (a how how how). George Harrison was sued for My Sweet Lord (similar chord progression). Eddie Money was sued for Baby hold one to me ("whatever will be will be"). Again, art is like science or engineering; there's no such thing as "completely original". Hell, Douglas Adam's heirs could concievably sue me for today's journal, because I have a cloaked asteroid destroying the earth, or Niven and Pournell could sue because the asteroid collision is deliberate, even though there are no other similarities.
Yet only one in twenty RIAA artists ever make any money at all on their recording, so their marketing is pretty poor. The RIAA's strength is that they have radio.
I know a couple of guys who were offered RIAA contracts, read them, and told the label to go fuck themselves. Cory Doctorow credits his status as a New York Times best selling author to the fact that he gives his ebooks away for free on boingboing. As he says, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity.
I agree with you that "making it" shouldn't entail any more than making a decent living. I know I'm happy as long as I have food, transportation, beer, a roof over my head and utilities. IMO the most important thing I ever did in my life was to raise my two kids (also the most rewarding).
There's something wrong with someone who needs mansions, Porches, and bling.
Yes, it does take time. Back in the late '70s I did some animations on onion skin paper so I know how long it takes and how much work. Sadly, they were lost before computers and scanners came about or I'd have them up on youtube.
That's very true. The only problem I see for the little guy is the insanely long copyright lengths. Art is like science and technology, in that what is here now was built on what has come before. There was that one guys, for example, that wrote a sequel to... I can't remember which book, Catcher in the Rye maybe? Any way, the original authou's heirs sued to stop publication, even though it was a completely different book, and the original should have been in the public domain anyway.
I maintain that the RIAA is against P2P not to keep their stuff from being uploaded, but to keep guys like you from being heard. They have radio, you have P2P, and you're a threat to them.
CGI is still expensive now, but computing costs keep dropping. I'd say in ten years anybody with the talent will be able to do a movie exactly like that on a laptop.
I got here too soon. I was going to moderate, but there was only one comment, and it was an offtopic AC at -1 (starting 0, AC -1 modifier) so I posted instead. If I'd been slower I'd have modded your comment funny, good work, sir!
The internet and cheap recording (relatively cheap; the biggest cost of a professionally produced, recorded, and pressed CD is the cost of the musical instruments) has rendered the RIAA labels entirely obsolete. RIAA lables are of no use to anyone in the 21st century.
I can see the same thing happening to movies. Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning is certainly fat better than any B-movies I've ever seen. The South Park movie could have easily been "shot" for practically nothing. As of now, the big money the MPAA provides is still a prerequisite for a blockbuster action flick; smashing three dozen cars ain't cheap. But with improved CGI even that cost will be brought to effectively zero.
I know that game. Rename the thing, claim it's completely different, and then when it's built, it turns out to be exactly the same.
*sigh* look up "roundabout" in wikipedia. It explains the distinction, and it is a distinction with important differences.
If I beat the light, though, I might get into a pattern where I get through all the other lights too.
Yes, that is part of the strategy. If the light ahead is green, speed up unless it's so far ahead you know it will be red when you get to it. If the light ahead is red, it's stupid to not take your foot off the accelerator, and downright idiotic to speed up, no matter what the other idiots are doing.
There is a distinction between a traffic circle and a roundabout. Your objections are true for traffic circles, but not roundabouts. As TFA notes, traffic circles were tried and rejected in the US as early as the 1920s.
The roundabout's advantages include fewer and less damaging accidents, fuel savings and the resultant environmental boost, and yes, less congestion.
It also notes that Americans are generally opposed to following rules and yielding right-of-way, a phenomena anyone who has ever driven in the US easily notes, especially on interstate on-ramps. I find this ironic in the land of the sheeples, but perhaps not so ironic; the disregard for rules (signal a turn, never mind a lane change? never!) is possibly from the fact that "nobody else signals or yields when entering an interstate, why should I?"
I'm amused at most drivers' propensity to race to the red light. If you can find the right speed, you can often get where you're going without stopping at all, and get there in the same amount of time, but apparently most people lack the intelligence to understand this. The true speed limit isn't the posted limit, but the limit imposed by traffic signals. The faster you race to the red light, the longer you're going to sit still getting zero mpg and greatly reduced mileage overcoming inertia to get that mass of steel moving again.
When I read TFS I thought "hey, this is incorrect, there has been a roundabout in Belleville since before I started driving in 1968", but IINM that intersection has stop signs, making it a traffic circle.
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Agreed, but the British actually have good reason to be paranoid; unlike we US folks, terrorism is no stranger to them. Even though "the troubles" are supposed to be over, there are still a few fringe groups causing mayhem there.
The British police actually gave good advice -- call them and let them know you're geocaching, where the cache is, and what's in it.
You don't even have to run a red light, just park in the wrong neighborhood. It's happened to me!
have you ever had your abdomen cut open? It hurts, and there is very little room internally
Bullshit, there's plenty of room. Ever seen a fat man? But you still wouldn't bring an airplane down. This wouldn't be meant to explode on a plane, it would be meant to explode in the security line. As I said in TFS your greatest risk is driving to the airport, but your second greatest is pilot error, third mechanical failure, but fifth is the security line; that's where the next attack is most likely to be.
As to the bulge, it could be disguised as a fetus, the scar could look like a c-section scar and could sit there for months. You don't think Al Quaida could hire competent surgeons? They could leave the bomb in long enough for the incision to heal.
As to nicking the intestine, a woman I once knew walked around with a hole in her intestine for over a month. Another woman I knew had a cancer on her gall bladder bigger than the gall bladder (she died 4 months after being admitted to the hospital), had been complaining of pain for half a year or more. My old drinking buddy Ralph had a burst appendix, the stubborn old coot wouldn't go to the ER for two days (he died three months later). He was 86, a WWII vet.
People are tougher than you think. Some of us are, anyway.
"I told you fellows we wanted a public revolt to stop this TSA nonsense."
"But Mr. President, no matter how stupid and obnoxious we act, the American public sees it as us protecting their safety!"
"Well, try harder. That's an order."
How about they just disband? 45,000 people die on American highways every year. I'm far more worried about the idiot in the SUV sending text messages when he's supposed to be driving than I am of terrorists.
The number of deaths per passenger mile on commercial airlines in the United States between 1995 and 2000 is about 3 deaths per 10 billion passenger miles. while there are 1.3 deaths per hundred million vehicle miles for travel by car.
They need to disband the TSA and spend that money improving road safety. 3 per ten billion? Your odds of being struck by lightning are higher.
Only an idiot is afraid of terrorists.
I see you haven't met Rority or Gumal.
there's really only a handful of distros I'd consider to be in the same category as Ubuntu for general ease of installation/use
I see you've never installed Windows. Every Linux distro I've tried (Except Red Hat, and that was back in 1998) was brain-dead simple to install and completely painless, even Mandrake back in 2003.
Try typing in that forty digit key with 1s and ls and 0s and Os. And sit there having to click "yes" or "no" every two minutes for a solid hour -- with a whole lot of reboots. Then installing every application you'll need to do any actual work.
Compare that to installing ANY Linux distro; two screens of choices (only one with many distros), wait 1/2 hour with no babysitting (maybe change the CD) and one reboot, and you have a ready-to-use, functional machine.
Comparing installing Linux with installing Windows is like comparing driving a modern car with a model-T hand cranked Ford (Windows is the model T). People only think Windows is easy because they've used it all their lives. Those of us that cut our teeth on DOS (or even earlier machines, like a Sinclair or an Apple II or a Commodore) know better.
NOTHING makes Windows tolerable! God but I'll be glad when I retire and don't have to deal with Microsoft products.
If you like Windows, then stick with it. Me, I'd rather never see another MS program again. Well, Excel isn't too bad -- for a spreadsheet (I hate spreadsheets, too).
(Sudo mod me down?)
Indeed. If you want both on the same machine, install it dual-boot. If she's running Windows on an Apple she could run it triple boot.
Of course, if you're just trying it out most distros let you run it from the CD without actually installing it.
Why Ubuntu? She's familiar with OSX and Windows, I'd suggest something using a KDE desktop, which isn't that different than either one. Gnome is kind of weird if you ask me.
Kubunu iis a good one, combines Ubuntu with KDE. Wish Mandriva wasn't dead/dying, that was my all-time favorite.
I have to agree with you, I wouldn't consider that "agressive driving". Cruise is great on the highway, but you won't gain anything in the city.
It doesn't work when there's a lot of traffic. Here, though, there's seldom anyone going slower, although maddeningly they seem to slow down for the green lights and speed up and zoom around you when the light is red so you wind up stopping behind them for a green light, because the moron's in no hurry to go when the light turns green.
Sometimes I wonder if some people are trying as hard as they can to waste as much gas as possible, theirs and yours too.
Like I said, you neet two things: tools and talent.
The problem is, you might come up with a line or an idea you saw or heard decades ago. ZZ Top was sued by Howlin' Wolf for La Grange (a how how how). George Harrison was sued for My Sweet Lord (similar chord progression). Eddie Money was sued for Baby hold one to me ("whatever will be will be"). Again, art is like science or engineering; there's no such thing as "completely original". Hell, Douglas Adam's heirs could concievably sue me for today's journal, because I have a cloaked asteroid destroying the earth, or Niven and Pournell could sue because the asteroid collision is deliberate, even though there are no other similarities.
You could say the same of Terry Pratchett (and I need more Pratchett books, damn it!)
Yet only one in twenty RIAA artists ever make any money at all on their recording, so their marketing is pretty poor. The RIAA's strength is that they have radio.
I know a couple of guys who were offered RIAA contracts, read them, and told the label to go fuck themselves. Cory Doctorow credits his status as a New York Times best selling author to the fact that he gives his ebooks away for free on boingboing. As he says, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity.
I agree with you that "making it" shouldn't entail any more than making a decent living. I know I'm happy as long as I have food, transportation, beer, a roof over my head and utilities. IMO the most important thing I ever did in my life was to raise my two kids (also the most rewarding).
There's something wrong with someone who needs mansions, Porches, and bling.
Yes, it does take time. Back in the late '70s I did some animations on onion skin paper so I know how long it takes and how much work. Sadly, they were lost before computers and scanners came about or I'd have them up on youtube.
if the story is good you won't care about CGI
That's very true. The only problem I see for the little guy is the insanely long copyright lengths. Art is like science and technology, in that what is here now was built on what has come before. There was that one guys, for example, that wrote a sequel to... I can't remember which book, Catcher in the Rye maybe? Any way, the original authou's heirs sued to stop publication, even though it was a completely different book, and the original should have been in the public domain anyway.
I maintain that the RIAA is against P2P not to keep their stuff from being uploaded, but to keep guys like you from being heard. They have radio, you have P2P, and you're a threat to them.
CGI is still expensive now, but computing costs keep dropping. I'd say in ten years anybody with the talent will be able to do a movie exactly like that on a laptop.
I got here too soon. I was going to moderate, but there was only one comment, and it was an offtopic AC at -1 (starting 0, AC -1 modifier) so I posted instead. If I'd been slower I'd have modded your comment funny, good work, sir!
That's just the first installment. "To be continued" was the worst part of the second MATRIX movie.
The internet and cheap recording (relatively cheap; the biggest cost of a professionally produced, recorded, and pressed CD is the cost of the musical instruments) has rendered the RIAA labels entirely obsolete. RIAA lables are of no use to anyone in the 21st century.
I can see the same thing happening to movies. Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning is certainly fat better than any B-movies I've ever seen. The South Park movie could have easily been "shot" for practically nothing. As of now, the big money the MPAA provides is still a prerequisite for a blockbuster action flick; smashing three dozen cars ain't cheap. But with improved CGI even that cost will be brought to effectively zero.
Bye Bye, M.A.F.I.A.A.. and good riddance.
I know that game. Rename the thing, claim it's completely different, and then when it's built, it turns out to be exactly the same.
*sigh* look up "roundabout" in wikipedia. It explains the distinction, and it is a distinction with important differences.
If I beat the light, though, I might get into a pattern where I get through all the other lights too.
Yes, that is part of the strategy. If the light ahead is green, speed up unless it's so far ahead you know it will be red when you get to it. If the light ahead is red, it's stupid to not take your foot off the accelerator, and downright idiotic to speed up, no matter what the other idiots are doing.
There is a distinction between a traffic circle and a roundabout. Your objections are true for traffic circles, but not roundabouts. As TFA notes, traffic circles were tried and rejected in the US as early as the 1920s.
The roundabout's advantages include fewer and less damaging accidents, fuel savings and the resultant environmental boost, and yes, less congestion.
It also notes that Americans are generally opposed to following rules and yielding right-of-way, a phenomena anyone who has ever driven in the US easily notes, especially on interstate on-ramps. I find this ironic in the land of the sheeples, but perhaps not so ironic; the disregard for rules (signal a turn, never mind a lane change? never!) is possibly from the fact that "nobody else signals or yields when entering an interstate, why should I?"
I'm amused at most drivers' propensity to race to the red light. If you can find the right speed, you can often get where you're going without stopping at all, and get there in the same amount of time, but apparently most people lack the intelligence to understand this. The true speed limit isn't the posted limit, but the limit imposed by traffic signals. The faster you race to the red light, the longer you're going to sit still getting zero mpg and greatly reduced mileage overcoming inertia to get that mass of steel moving again.
When I read TFS I thought "hey, this is incorrect, there has been a roundabout in Belleville since before I started driving in 1968", but IINM that intersection has stop signs, making it a traffic circle.