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Comment Overloading unprepared equipment isn't difficult. (Score 1) 94

" Those who created and programmed Stuxnet needed to know the exact amount of pressure or torque needed to damage aluminum rotors within them, sabotaging the country's uranium enrichment operation."

Mechanic with machinist training here. That's no big deal. Overloading a system by running it as hard as the drive motors allow will often break it as many machines aren't built with protective mechanical safeties such as simple wasp-waist shear points on driveshafts, shear pins, or mechanical governors.

It's easier to control machinery electrically and when a targeted operator doesn't expect malicious control operation they aren't likely to have designed with it in mind.

Comment Re:What works best. (Score 1) 503

"what about if a car came along that didn't have wheels?"

They have. It's called a "hovercraft" and proponents saw them as the wave of the future.
They are inefficient, lack positive steering or braking (good luck stopping one on a downgrade) and remain in the niche markets they suit.

If a future wheel-free car is offered, I won't need to "try" it to determine if it suits my requirements. I can infer that from what I see it do.

Comment When TAC ate SAC, such was predicted... (Score 1) 313

SAC was famous for tight discipline and esprit de corps. When TAC ate SAC, many SAC folks we'd inherited predicted slack standards and the end of the highly disciplined SAC culture. Years of fuckups proved their point.

Some jobs require performance of a very high standard. Go old-school and crush the cheaters in an exemplary manner. Do what Curtis LeMay would do to shitbags and replace the lot.

Comment Re:Repurpose existing equipment (Score 3, Informative) 723

Quite right!
Snowplows do get chewed up in the North, but they'd survive just fine in the South and last many, many years.
Plow mounts could be swapped easily as generations of trucks are replaced. Both dump and garbage trucks already have hydraulic power takeoff systems so adding plows is is but mounting and plumbing.
The bed modification shown in your pic is easy to retrofit at a cost of a few hundred dollars per truck, and easy to repair if it gets bashed. Local fab shops and possibly the DOT shops could spit them out easily.
Spreaders can be purchased and fitted with quick-attach mounts.
If it were my tasking I'd set aside warehouse space and have plows spreaders palletized on steel frames with forklift pockets for easy handling and maintenance. One or two forklifts could feed the gear to a line of trucks staged outdoors. Lift the gear, attach the gear to the truck, move to the next truck while hydraulic hookups and functional checks proceed. That's faster than storing them on the ground outdoors and would involve less wresting to connect if done right.
When operations are complete, reverse the process, pressure wash and lube the gear on the pallets, then fork them back into the warehouse for the next adventure.
Have each device carry a set of printed maintenance forms in an attached container as is done with military ground support equipment to facilitate easy review and entry of discrepancies. No need to invent a new system as the military has done it this way for decades and it works well.

Comment Re:Pffft (Score 2) 723

Local forecasters don't forecast nor do they own their own weather satellites.
Anyone using anything but the National Weather Service for weather information is a fool consuming altered data proffered with the intent to draw eyeballs to adverts.
I do on my home PC exactly what they did in Ops facilities when I was in the Air Force. They had the appropriate NOAA page refreshing on one monitor for local reference.
Of course mission data was provided by the USAF weather folks but that's a considerable additional level of detail ground users don't need.

Comment Re:People that have like (Score 2) 281

" that's when you incorrectly shut-down most linux distro's you'll actually destroy your OS"

Citation needed or take your FUD elsewhere. I've been using a variety of distros since 1999 and have had FAR more problems with Windows when power is interrupted.

Incidentally, rescuing Linux with the live media I install it with in the first place is very convenient, though most rescues I use Linux to perform are on Windows machines.

Comment SSD + SteamOS = SATA game cartridge? (Score 1) 1

Since Linux installs are "portable" by nature, booting from an external SSD could allow a full Linux gaming installation to be portable between different devices.
If a tard-simple GUI clone/backup package were offered a gamer could conveniently clone their tweaked installation for backup or replication.
As MSFT prefer the vendor lock model this could be an advantage for Linux.

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