Additionally, given that the average gas tank of the average car contains roughly 12-15 gallons, that would mean each car had approximately five ten-gallon gas cans.

You'd think even the dimmest bulb that never thought to put an Out of Order sign on the pump would notice ten cars filling five gas cans each.

Given the thieves' appearance, I wouldn't assume Russian Mafia.

And no, not because they're black. Stop being all racist.

gallon (gln)

n. A unit of volume in the U.S. Customary System, used in liquid measure, equal to 4 quarts (3.785 liters).

n. A unit of volume in the British Imperial System, used in liquid and dry measure, equal to 4 quarts (4.546 liters).

n. A container with a capacity of one gallon.

Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

Instead of staring there open-mouthed because the cut-offs don't work, why not walk out to the pump and wrap a standard yellow Out of Order sign on it?

It doesn't sound as though there was some kind of organized operation involved. It sounds like one of the usual idiots installed the device, got gas themselves, and drove off giggling. The rest were probably just average schmoes getting gas and assumed they were getting a hell of a deal. If I got charged $.50 a gallon, I wouldn't look that particular gift horse in the mouth.

The clerk knew people were pumping gas. S/he knew it was billing at an incorrect price. Time to put an Out of Order sign on it. I've driven up to many a gas pump with one of those and have declined to attempt to use it on that basis. I've no idea why any of them were non-functional, you just don't use them because it says they're broken.

If someone uses the appropriately-marked pump, take down their license plate number (or use the security footage) and report a drive-off or theft, whichever is applicable.

Color me unsurprised, however. Having seen what passes for convenience store (and many other low-skill) employees in the last decade, I doubt many of them would have thought of the simple expedient of an Out of Order sign.

"Boss says me turn it off. It not turn off. Me not know what to do. Duh"

The quote describes our current situation.

In over-militarizing the police and training them to be unrealistically hyper-paranoid, we have created the situation Adama describes.

You knock on the doors of the people you protect and serve. You kick down the doors and shoot anyone you think might cause trouble when fighting the enemies of the state.

We are no longer a people who are protected and served. We are the enemies of the state and are treated as such.

Police work and warfare aren't the same. When you treat them as the same, you get what we have.

Planet: Earth.

Locations (all places I've lived in half a century on the planet, in order of where I lived):

Yankton, South Dakota
Lincoln, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Chicago, Illinois
Several suburbs of Chicago, Illinois
Sioux City, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa
Several suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa Several feeder-towns of Des Moines, Iowa

Other locations (of which I'm aware via family members or extended stays):

Denver, Colorado
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Sheveport, Louisiana
Little Rock, Arkansas
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Reading, Pennsylvania
Newark, New Jersey
Rapid City, South Dakota

I'm sure I could come up with more if I sat down with a map.

Also, your assertion that active-duty guard members are inadequate to handle the fantastically rare police situation requiring military hardware is inaccurate. I would point you straight to the NG and ANG bases in Des Moines, Iowa for proof. The guard that you see in natural disasters are what the regular guard call "weekend warriors." They are not the guard itself.

This is not fantasy. This is reality in most of the United States. The reason you believe otherwise is simply lack of world experience and knowledge of history.

You're describing the national guard now, not what they've been historically.

The national guard's historic role has changed for one reason:

We've over-militarized our police into paranoids who'll shoot first and ask questions later.

Get rid of the military hardware. Stop training multiple generations of police to be paranoid, thinking that every citizen could stab them in the face at any moment.

And no, I'm not kidding. Surviving Edged Weapons is a real video produced by the Milwaukee PD in the 1990s. That's how long we've been training our police to be paranoid.

Police should look and act like this (forgiving the quality due to the uploader's attempts to dodge YouTube's bots). They should not look like this

They most certainly should not be able to be manipulated by a few scubag teenagers into blowing away innocents.

And so what if they have to call the Governor to get the national guard called out? You think the Police Chief doesn't have the Mayor's cell number; and that the Mayor doesn't have the Governor's? Calling the guard in an emergency situation is a pair of calls away. Done and done in 15 minutes, and the guard is on its way -- probably from a base within the city itself.

Over the last 40 years, we have simply over-militarized our police and this is a direct result.

Police don't need to be a hyper-paranoid, paramilitary group. Take away the hardware, let a patrolman knock on the door instead, and this would not have happened.

Adama was right. The people tend to become the enemies of the state.

Get rid of the military hardware and stop training them to be paranoids, and this crap simply won't happen.

I'm quite certain that the general attitude toward police would also rise. At present, I wouldn't call one unless my life absolutely depended on it. Calling a hyper-paranoid, paramilitary organization will only lead to ... well, this.

(Also, you need to stop resorting to name-calling. It makes you look like an ignorami incapable of making a reasoned argument.)

Here's what would have happened in the 1970s when I was growing up. Think of Reed and Malloy from Adam 12:

1. Dispatcher gets the call.
2. Dispatcher assigns the call to a pair of uniformed patrolmen in their squad car.
3. Patrolmen arrive and knock on the door
4. Patrolman 1: "We've got a report that you're holding a hostage here."
5. Citizen (suprised): "Huh? There's nothing like that going on here."
6. Patrolman 1: "Do you mind if we come in and have a look around?"
7. Citizen: "Sure."
8. Patrolman enter the home and wander around. They find nothing.
9. Patrolman 1: "Sorry to have bothered you. Must have been a false report. Do you know of anyone who might want to file it?"
10. Citizen: "No idea."
11. Patrolman 1: "We'll turn it over to the detectives. They might come by to ask some questions. If you think of anything, give us a call. Here's my card."
12. Citizen: "No problem. Sorry you had to waste your time."
13. Patrolman 1: "Better to be safe than sorry. We'll let you get back to watching TV."
14. Patrolmen get back in their car and relay the false report to the dispatcher.

While I have no sympathy for the swatters, I also have no sympathy for the police on this one. A simple knock on the door would have sufficed.

This ultimately comes down to an over-militarized police. The solution is simple:

Take away all the hardware. Limit the average patrolman to a sidearm (I'd recommend a .45ACP M1911 rather than a 9mm Glock). Give them a shotgun in the door in case things get dangerous.

No flack vests. No M16s, except for the SWAT team that would rarely be called. If the patrolmen can't handle it, then call SWAT.

If SWAT can't cope with it, police cordon off the area for several blocks and call in the national guard. It's part of why they exist. It's just that now that we've armed police to the teeth, it never happens.

It used to. Get rid of the hardware.

Again, no sympathy for the swatters. I hope they get life. But this is what happens when you over-militarize your police.

And of course the name-calling. What else would one expect on a public forum from an anonymous coward?

Please cease using your fingers until such time as you actually understand the issues. It's not QOS. Learn the TCP/IP stack and in particular the physical layer.

Lack of "neutrality" is built into the system itself, all the way down the stack to the hardware layer.

I wish someone would tell these imbeciles that net neutrality breaks the Internet.

Now those of us on the Infrastructure and Networking side will be forced to break the law en masse in order to keep the Internet functioning.

Ah, yes. Now I remember why I almost never post to /.

Within a few moments, some troll is down-moderating my posts as trolling. In so doing, it fraks up my karma, etc.

It happens every frakking time.

Screw you guys. If /. can't fix this obviously broken system, I'm going back to lurking. Posting is a pointless exercise in futility.

Hence the request for at least $50 million.

I'm hoping that by Sunday, I'll be streaming to every service. I do a live SF/genre review show Monday-Wednesday; then an anything-goes talk-show on Thursday. I'll also get on if I think I have something useful to say. I have some production values, and since I'm older, I bill myself as "The Fandi Master."

If you're curious, I did one a couple of hours ago on the Nunes memo (what a surprise). However, I'm bringing my 40 years of IT and ITSec with me rather than the 53 years of fandom. Tonight's is at The Nunes Memo: What Should Happen

However, as it's live, I'm planning to just chuck it at every streaming service in the universe. I'm not sure where I can base its front face. I suppose SDF.org, they're less likely than anyone else to kill it on someone's whim.

Just gonna be a big gorramed pain in the ass. Thanks for nothing, American providers whom I can no longer trust.

Oh, right. Because there's no real competitor.

They killed me with the copyright review process. I can't even get one because my views are too low.

They killed me when they de-monitized all the small channels.

The threaten to take action against "bad actors" and people who "misbehave" without defining the terms. I mean, I was never a great actor, but I don't think I qualified as a bad one. At least I hope not.

And I do misbehave from time to time.

I'm having a really hard time wondering why I don't dump YouTube in favor of Facebook. At least there I have some chance of growing an audience. As it stands, YouTube has made it essentially impossible.

There needs to be a competitor -- and I mean a competitor, not these "Hey, look at this, they're using a distributed infrastructure and blockchain tech!"

Yeah, that's fine and all. I'm the first one to hop as soon as it takes off or shows signs of growing. I need eyes to grow an audience. The only other services that come close to the number of eyes are Dailymotion (French) and VK (Russian).

Maybe I'll just go to VK. Amazingly, there's considerably more free speech on a frakking Russian website than there is on YouTube at the moment.

There needs to be a competitor. A real one. Anybody got about $50 million so I can get it off the ground?

Somehow, I suspect this video got a manual review. Now if they'd only deign to do the same for mine ...