I was put under a bench warrant (IIRC, that is what it is called) directly from the judge, who then turned to the 2 lawyers standing on either side of us and told them that I would not be participating as a juror in this case nor any other for the time I was in the jurors pool. She further enjoined me from telling or discussing the order she put me under with any of the other potential jurors in the pool, possible 6 month jail term and $250 fine if I did.

My crime? I told her that I believed that as an intelligent and informed Citizen of my country, as a juror it was my Right and Duty to sit not only in judgement of the facts, but also in judgement of the law, if I felt that it was an unjust law or was being applied unfairly.

Up until that moment, I pretty much thought FIJA was a neat concept, but also a bit too "tin hatty". No more.

People need to know.

There are likely not many more than 9,000 of those types of boats in the world, much less in the Middle East. And Iran is not a rich nation. Figures mentioned put Iran as having only 1,000 small attack boats. Say 900 of that number (doubtful, to me) are the high-speed, hi-tech attack craft used by our US Navy for training...

By my own admission the numbers quoted for the boats I wrote about above were very low. Per your post we are now playing with hyperbole, so lets go ahead and put the cost per boat at a much more likely $250,000 for bare hull + engines + mechanical systems for running it. Add in a minimum of 2 trained, specialist crewmembers, ancillary objects like radios and GPS nav systems, the weapons (what's a .50 cal machine gun + ammo cost? A shoulder-fired rocket and spares?) and you are getting closer to $1,000,000 per boat, if not over that amount. Still a lot cheaper than the carrier, but at that rate, with the losses they are likely to sustain, it is going to put a strain on their naval warfare coffers very quickly. Boat and weapons on the bottom of the Straits ain't helping Iran at all, and are a cost that cannot be recouped...

Additionally, I'll say that the Iranian "swarms" would probably number far less than 100 boats per (as that would give them a potential of only 10 'swarm shots'), so 50 is more likely (and probably still on the high side). A carrier + carrier group (destroyers, escorts, fixed- and rotating-wing aircraft) would have no trouble making it so that only a very small number of that 50 attackers would be able to get through to a point where they could actually threaten a carrier to the point of sinking, even with a missile at stand-off range. Barring some extremely good circumstances happening on their part, I don't see this Iranian small-boat navy having much of a chance at sinking one of our carriers.

Keep in mind that Iran is not using these boats because they are the optimal solution for attacking a modern day carrier group; they are doing so because *it is the only way that they can*. Full stop.

It takes a certain minimum size of boat to be able to carry a machine gun in the bow, a crew of 2+, and a larger payload of explosives or missile launcher at any good rate of speed through any sizable seas. Iran is not going to be able to effectively use a 16' SeaRay or Bayliner ski boat that is only $20k, unless as a decoy. The costs of a truly capable fast attack "speedboat" would come in two major chunks: the hull cost, and the engine costs. The 'speedboats' hulls our Navy is training with cost (& I'm somewhat-knowledgeably lowball estimating here) $40k+ on the low end, and each hull has 2-3 outboard motors hanging off the rear end, at a cost of well over $15k each. Those 'speedboats' are ex$pen$ive, $100k+ each, and losing several every raid (along with weapons and personnel) would rack up a huge cost even for a nation state. Most if not all of these boats are produced by companies who would not be very friendly to Iran, and so I doubt they would ramp up production in order to provide Iran with more 'weapons' once the original stock has been decimated.

Please, please take the time to (re)educate yourself regarding the function and purpose of individual jurors. Although many people believe as you do that:

...this is most emphatically NOT the truth.

If you'll visit the FIJA website (Fully Informed Jury Association), it is explained in plain and easily understandable language why a jury has the right and duty to sit in judgment of the law as well as the/any disputed facts.

That said, do not tell the judge or lawyers that you have this knowledge. Otherwise you risk getting sidelined from the process, put under a bench warrant which makes you unable to sit on a jury or inform any other jurors of their rights and duties. I know this because it happened to me.

I think our US Navy has been practicing for just this kind of warfare for several years because I've seen the boats they use as "enemies" - they sometimes stay at the marina where I live. The "enemy" boats are likely a step above what Iran would be able to field in large numbers; they are 25-35' LOA rigid inflatable craft powered by twin or triple 200+hp outboards, or glass-hulled fast sportfishers like Fountain or Donzi. The kind of boat where the crew is strapped in with 5-point harnesses because they *need* to be when a boat that size runs in excess of 50kts on open water. I would hope that crews trained against these extremely fast 'aggressors' would find it fairly easy to take out targets using slower, older, less capable craft. HITRON may well have a role in such a conflict scenario as well.

Are you accusing these fine, upstanding, all-taxes-and-royalty-paying media corporations of being greedy and/or acting solely in their own interests? Heh. Next thing you'll come up with is that they've intentionally uploaded corrupted files, stuffed the Obama administration and political process with their lobbyist sock puppets, or something else ridiculous like that...

For shame, you, you... pirate!

Remember this story from back in October?

Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

Ever since I read Iran claimed they didn't shoot it down, I've been wondering if or how much that virus and this "cyber warfare" attack might be connected...

"Blob" is very apt terminology, yet "(Unecessarily) Giant Blob" might be even more accurate. Not sure if these are exact numbers, but they are probably close. From Wikipedia, re: Sumatra PDF:

Adobe PDF Reader - now with 10-40x the size of what's *really* needed! ***Bonus*** - Includes Critical 0 Day vulnerability, @ no extra charge!!!

What more could you ask for?

Thanks for the idea. {evil-grin}

;)

Some clients come to me having found me through my website - if *your* website developing company website ranks high in their search, is nice looking, easy to understand, etc..., then they already have an idea of your capabilities, and what you can do for them. This works better in rural areas with less competition, and localized searches, of course. Perhaps that should be my disclaimer - I am not in a big city environment, I deal with "small business", so my method may not work as well there, though I think it would still work fairly well - people are people, and small business revolves around them.

The larger percentage of new website clients have come to me through word of mouth from existing customers, some from the website side but even more from the 'tech support' business I do. Being someone's IT guy really puts your foot in the door of not only that business, but into those of the friends of that business. There is a definite lack of personable, available, quality tech people in the independent sector, and to most people not involved directly in some sort of computer technology business, websites and fixing systems/networking/etc... are pretty much all closely related variants of the same field. You and I and I'd expect most /. readers know different, but there it is, in my experience. And if you know your stuff, and are personable enough that your clients know they can ask and trust your answers, your existing clients are your sales force - and a powerful one at that.

Your last sentence was something I used to ask myself about 10+ years back; does my new buddy Joe Shadetree really need a website for his backyard radiator shop? There is no question about it any more, the answer is a resounding "Yes!". :) ***Every*** business needs a website these days - the 'net is the first place most people look to find out about a business, even in rural America. Not every business needs a $10K website, though, and certainly not "Joe's Hometown Radiators" - it would take him forever to recoup that kind of investment. I do well selling "mom-n-pop" businesses with small requirements a 4-5 page, modifiable brochure site in the $700-2K range, using a custom design built on a CMS, running on a LAMP stack via a reseller account. This allows me to keep their cost low enough that after that initial investment of $2-5/day for their website and first year of maintenance/hosting, their ongoing cost for the site is a bit less than $0.50/day (if I don't have to work on their site much). For the ones who want to, however, they can log on to their site and update content, add pages, etc etc..., and all I do is make sure there are regular backups and upgrades. In this price range they are getting me for about 1/2 of what I charge on an hourly basis for the time I will put in on their site, BUT - I get a new, happy client, and a relationship that will likely last years, and put more money in my pocket over time than if I had gone full price to begin with.

Like the OP, I am self-taught, and am of the same mind as CmdrPony, having done it myself. If you need to start working right away...

Start your own shop, but count on the website/SEO/marketing side of things to start slow and develop (no pun intended) over time - likely several years. The market for "website developers" is fairly well saturated, albeit with far too many that are no more than Dreamweaver/FrontPage/MSWord-using ex-construction worker/secretary types who are 95% clueless yet able to put up a $200 site in a few days by advertising on Craigslist. Yes, your site may be far better, but money talks, and many clients don't understand the finer points of what makes a really good, nice-looking, fast rendering, cross platform website, or what SEO is and the kind of time it can eat.

Until you have a solid core of client sites showing your skill and capability and helping you sell at a price point that makes it worthwhile, your working capital and day-to-day income can be supplanted by the other computer skills you have: repair, networking, etc... Be willing to make on-site visits (even to homes - at least until you get too busy), and have a fast response time. Come up with good ways to describe common computer problems and your fixes for them in normal human-speak - people do like to understand a bit about what you are doing, and teaching them a little helps them become better users and clients.

Find a small, cheap location where you can set up half a dozen systems while you work on them, get some biz cards made, and put out your shingle. If you do a good job, word of mouth will start putting feet in your doorway in a matter of months, enough traffic to live off of so you can begin to grow and thrive and start getting website work, likely from many of the same clients whose system you maintain, once they realize that their super-cheap website really is for the dogs. Being their trusted and proven IT guy helps you sell yourself in this area - they understand that you know what you are talking about, and will be more willing to pay you a fair price to help them market themselves better online. Good luck!

It begs pointing out that we are drilling that deep not because we *have* to, but because oil/gas much nearer the surface (potentially very large reserves inshore/onshore, *much* nearer the surface, and arguably much easier gotten/transported/contained in an accident) is not being accessed for other reasons than a simple lack of the resource.

Hi Moxie -

I'd be interested to know more about the hardware and/or platform you use on a daily/regular basis to do your work/research. I would assume that with your 'itinerant' lifestyle you have had to make choices and compromises in this area. IIRC, you "temporarily bought" ;) a laptop to edit Hold Fast, but that isn't something you do on a regular basis - is it? Are there any suggestions/tips/tricks about hardware or methods that you'd care to share for the traveling hacker with the above in mind?

As an aside - Thanks for all the good work and entertaining tales! :) Been using that Capt's license much lately?

Combine the two, and you'll be "spending time sleeping with people". Way fun!

And while it can be productive, there are also several different methods you can use to keep that from happening... ;)

One of the reasons for this is that, across the board, there seems to be a notable reluctance for Google to include input from meatspace, whether that is for customer support or many other issues. Example: There is a web development company which poisons results in my state by automatically generating pages with an overly large (even by and according to Google standards for keyword stuffing) amount of specific keywords. Like so: a search for "Web design My_town, My_state" will return this companies' site at #1 because their php script packs those terms in *8-10 times in 3 small, generic paragraphs* of text. They are specifically gaming Google results; this tactic does not work nearly as well for them in a Bing search.

The company is not local to any of those results, with the exception of the 2 towns they are actually located. I have submitted this site to the Google Webmaster report pages several times over the last year, with no response and no effect. Granted, there are brazillions of pages and I would assume many thousands of such reports, and I understand that Google cannot put eyeballs on every incident immediately, but in this case it would seem that something would be done as *the report is coming directly from a long-term, current user of their services, via a channel explicitly provided to report such abuse*. Why otherwise have such a channel? This is just one example of how I have seen Google starting to slide down from their place at #1. Google could easily use some of their ready cash to pay more people to fill in some of these types of 'holes' in their infrastructure in order to provide better results and a better customer experience.