Comment I have kids.... (Score 2) 312
I have kids, sooooo.....last option.
I have kids, sooooo.....last option.
So, they spoofed GPS, jammed the drone's communications, then convinced it to land with the spoofed GPS coordinates. That's awesome.
Then, uhhh, why exactly did you guys have the kids from the Tehran High school football team and pep squad make up banners to hide the undercarriage?
Don't get me wrong. Both sides have plenty invested in having their own version of the story be the authoritative version, and the odds of the general public finding out the truth any time this decade are infinitesimal at best. But what we've been shown doesn't currently support the "we made it land on its own because we're fucking badass and the Americans suck" theory. It supports the "we don't want you to see what the underbelly looks like, also, we're lousy artists" theory. The iranians might have brought it down, and it might have crashed on its own while inside Iranian borders. "Proof" is in short supply at the moment.
Disagree.
After reading reading Tuesday's account of the first 24 hours at Fukishima, it's pretty clear that the scope of the accident exceeded what the engineers thought was possible. From there there chain of "we believe" and "probably" and "fairly certain's" began flowing until several days later when the full extent of the accident became clear.
With any major incident, hindsight allows us to say "Look! You were bullshitting us when you said XYZ!" Did the head of TEPCO say everything was hunky dory an hour after the tsunami? Maybe. But was that because the various people charged with reporting the situation to him told him that things were okay, or because he was a genuine piece of shit who knew that they were 24 hours from the worst nuclear disaster in his countries history, and wanted to cover his own ass? Proving what everyone up and down the chain of command knew at what point in time is almost impossible, because we know the people on the ground couldn't get a good handle on what was going on for a couple days.
On top of that, you honestly expect that information to filter up and back down through the proper channels and out to the media (all of whom immediately started checking how to correctly spell "Chernobyl" the instant someone said "nuclear power plant") AND expect that information to be disseminated out responsibly? YEAH. RIGHT.
Fukushima is not some watershed moment that finally drives the stake in the evil demon of nuclear power. At least it shouldn't be. This accident (a top 25 all time earthquake followed by possibly the worst Tsunami in the nation's history, proved that a positively ancient nuclear plant wasn't as prepared as it could have been. Even in those circumstances there still wasn't ANY loss of life.) should be a signpost that says we need to modernize nuclear power, not bury it.
OJ Simpson killed more people than the Fukushima disaster.
Just for good measure:
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
Brown Out
Claim: Van Halen's standard performance contract contained a provision calling for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, but with all the brown candies removed.
Status: True.
Example: [Harrington, 1981]
Van Halen tends to make the news portion of radio more often than it gets airplay. There was the M&M riot in New Mexico where the band did thousands of dollars of damage to a hall when they were served brown M&Ms — their contract said the brown ones had to be removed.
Origins: Rock concerts have come a long ways since the days when the Beatles performed in boxing rings and hockey rinks, and made no greater demand of Van Halen promoters than they be provided with clean towels and a few bottles of soft drinks. As the audiences grew larger, promoters stood to make more and more money from staging concerts, which meant that not only could rock stars command higher prices for their performances, but they were able to demand other perks as well, such as luxurious accommodations, lavish backstage buffets, and chauffeured transportation. It was inevitable that some high-demand acts, all their financial and pampering whims satisfied, would exercise their power and start making frivolous demands of promoters, simply because they could.
By far the most notorious of these whimsical requests is the legend that Van Halen's standard concert contract called for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with provision that all the brown candies must be removed. The presence of even a single brown M&M in that bowl, rumor had it, was sufficient legal cause for Van Halen to peremptorily cancel a scheduled appearance without advance notice (and usually an excuse for them to go on a destructive rampage as well).
The legendary "no brown M&Ms" contract clause was indeed real, but the purported motivation for it was not. The M&Ms provision was included in Van Halen's contracts not as an act of caprice, but because it served a practical purpose: to provide an easy way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read (and complied with). As Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with
nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through.
The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . .
So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.
Nonetheless, the media ran exaggerated and inaccurate accounts of Van Halen's using violations of the "no brown M&Ms" clause as justification for engaging in childish, destructive behavior (such as the newspaper article quoted at the top of this page). David Lee Roth's version of such events was decidedly different:
The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn't read the contract, and weren't sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.
I came backstage. I found some brown M&M's, I went into full Shakespearean "What is this before me?" . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars' worth of fun.
The staging sank through their floor. They didn't bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars' worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M's and did eighty-five thousand dollars' worth of damage to the backstage area.
Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?
Last updated: 17 May 2007
Even though they are the kings of chincy chinese crap-tronics, I love my Trendnet cameras. I've spread five of them through my house and, with a little port forwarding and a dyndns hostname, I can instantly check up on my home. I've also sent saved images (who says ftp is useless?) to local law enforcement after my neighbors house was broken into.
yeah, they're crappy 640x480 cameras. But I can instant know if I left my garage door open, If the UPS guy put packages on the front porch, who pulled up in the driveway, or just sit at my desk at work and look out a window at my house...
...Why not Zoidberg?
(especially since the episode where Zoidberg finds a shell has some of the best quick gags in the series.)
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand you (and quite a few others downstream, since the inevitable "I've got a
Guns are *part* of your plan. A good part at that. But I've yet to see a zombie / disaster prep conversation go forty comments deep into rainwater purification or essential first aid techniques.
Where'd the monkey take his vaction? All over Tehran!
What color were the monkey's eyes? Blue. One blew north, the other blew south....
Iranian NASA. Needs Another Simian Astronaut
Whenever discussions of the inevitable zombiepocalypse start up, folks always talk about how prepared they are, which is the on-ramp to the much more boring conversation about what guns they own. Don't get me wrong, guns are great. I don't own one, but appreciate the right to own one (even if it think the wording / logic (in Jefferson's time, everyone would have been in a militia, ergo the 2nd amendment is clear.) could be a little more clear and concrete). But there's a handful of problems with guns in terms of disaster preparedness tools:
-You can't eat them.
-You can't drink them.
-They can't power your well, sump pump, freezer, or furnace
-A gun doesn't do a very good job of providing you information about the weather, news updates from the CDC, or other emergency management information.
-1000 rounds of ammunition == approximately 1000 dead zombies +/- your accuracy. This becomes a problem when the zombie population goes > 1000 zombies. A delta of zombies is a bad thing.
-Guns cannot process large game into juicy delicious steaks all by themselves.
(and before you say "a gun can get you all of those things" it can't. It takes a person willing to carry that gun across the street to their neighbor's house and blow that guy's brains out to get those things. Internet tough-guying aside, a human has to make that choice. i would wager, for most of us decent human beings, it's far easier to use a gun to keep someone from taking what you have when it's all that's keeping you alive, than it is to flip the switch in your mind and go take that stuff from someone else. YMMV.)
The current zombie fascination brings to light a really good set of ideas. The topic forces you to think about how prepared you are in the event of a disaster, but too often you get sidetracked into "Me, a six pack, a tall building, a Barret
You can use zombies as the driving force in the thought exercise, but think critically. If you're snowed in for two weeks, what do you need? Food, water, heat. What if there's no running water? No electricity? Run the game out even longer in your mind. Say you've got kerosene lamps for light and a little warmth, what happens if one gets knocked over? Do you have a fire extinguisher? Is it current and charged? When was the last time you started your generator? Do you have enough insulin on hand? Thoughts like that may end up doing you far more good one day than thinking "We'll head to the Winchester!"
So, for your NEXT laptop, try this:
It's an open source tracker (with the obvious caveats that come with tracking software), but the nice thing is, you can point it to a server you control, rather theirs if you so choose. My MBP was stolen from my car (wife didn't know my bag was in the back, parked the car at a hotel lot. One busted window later....), and a very similar one (missing the extended power cord that I still had no less) showed up on craigslist a couple days later with a weak story behind why it was being sold. I told the cops, but local cops wouldn't go out of jurisdiction without better proof, the local (to seller) cops wouldn't show without better proof, and the state cops weren't going to get involved over the value. They said if I could prove it was mine (by buying it back) they could prosecute.
Sadly, a $1500 laptop, even though you may consider it "your life" just doesn't make the police drop everything. Your best bet is to be able to overwhelm the police with evidence, and prey will help you do that. In the end, the lesson is that your data comes first (back it up early, often, and everywhere), your safety comes second (if you want to get it back face to face, bring a weapon and be prepared to use it. and I don't mean show it off like a hollywood badass. I mean take another human beings life in exchange for the laptop you already planned on getting rid of in three years, or get shot yourself), and your hardware comes third. Anyone that's committed themselves to stealing isn't going anywhere in life anyway. Odds are they're not going to live to a ripe old age where they can regale their grandkids with tales of snatching bags. Live and learn, even if it enables the assholes of the world.
What does Dave Grohl's band have to do with any of this?
"The government abandoned the property, he should claim it as salvage."
Salvage wouldn't work. It's not like he loaded up a few days worth of oxygen in the back seat of his Plymouth and drove to the moon to go digging through the junk piles. Somebody had to provide him with the means of getting to and from, and that someone just so happened to be the Government.
Sure, we'll give you web access....through our prefect system.
Then there's the hardware spec. 1024x600 screen, 8 gigs internal storage (free cloud storage for *amazon* content) and no camera.
The dual core tegras are nice, but that's about it. I told someone earlier today. This isn't Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it's more like 6:00am on the Normandy (or Dieppe) beaches. The iPad is still going to dominate for a long time, but there might finally be a legit contender on the horizon
...and THAT hasn't stopped a group of passengers from suing Boeing.
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.
