Something Random

F

Fushigi

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
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Illinois, USA
jtr1962 said:
Regarding terrorism, some of the things you might need to be aware of, or to prepare for an admittedly unlikely terrorist attack, are the exact same things you might need in case of a major natural disaster.
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Very true. Many security experts - real ones, not the gubmint - preach general disaster preparedness v. point "solutions". Prepare for what to do if the power grid is disabled, there's a huge storm / earthquake / flood / whatever-affects-your-region, there's a hazmat or biological agent released, etc. Don't prepare for a terrorist attack on the grid. Don't erect electric fences everywhere. The simple truth is that a dedicated attacker will get by just about any defense systems.

Put 80% of the budget towards general preparedness. Only then should the remaining 20% be used for intelligence gathering and specific countermeasures.

Unfortunately what we're getting for our tax dollars is increased domestic surveillance and reduced privacy. And the illusory security (TSA, cameras on the corners, etc.) may mean our actual security posture is reduced.
 
Bozo

Bozo

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 12, 2002
Messages
4,396
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Twilight Zone
Fushigi said:
Very true. Many security experts - real ones, not the gubmint - preach general disaster preparedness v. point "solutions". Prepare for what to do if the power grid is disabled, there's a huge storm / earthquake / flood / whatever-affects-your-region, there's a hazmat or biological agent released, etc. Don't prepare for a terrorist attack on the grid. Don't erect electric fences everywhere. The simple truth is that a dedicated attacker will get by just about any defense systems.

Put 80% of the budget towards general preparedness. Only then should the remaining 20% be used for intelligence gathering and specific countermeasures.

Unfortunately what we're getting for our tax dollars is increased domestic surveillance and reduced privacy. And the illusory security (TSA, cameras on the corners, etc.) may mean our actual security posture is reduced.
Click to expand...

Well said!

Bozo :joker:
 
ddrueding

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
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I'm off on an extended weekend.

Half-Moon Bay, hwy 1 to Santa Cruz, Salinas to visit the folks, hwy 1 to Morro Bay, visiting my last grandparent, Santa Barbara, and back. About 700 miles. I may be posting on and off...we'll see.
 
Howell

Howell

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Feb 24, 2003
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Chattanooga, TN
Fushigi said:
If you want mass impact, the easiest and most far-reaching attacks would probably be against municipal water supplies.
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I work at the local water treatment plant about 5 times a year. There are specific areas that I'm not supposed to go and I'm even supposed to take a specific path through a nearly wide open room. I'm told the snipers are watching.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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When I was younger, I worked in Coal and Nuclear power plants. I had to pass a background check. That was it. A background check.
To work in a Nuclear Power plant.
 
Handruin

Handruin

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Mercutio said:
When I was younger, I worked in Coal and Nuclear power plants. I had to pass a background check. That was it. A background check.
To work in a Nuclear Power plant.
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Where in the plant did you work? Were you anywhere remotely close to where the core was, or could you even get near it? From what I've heard from a former professor who worked on systems inside a nuclear plant, he was always seen by armed guards. Even traveling in from the outside there was never a point where two guard check points would lose sight of him and he had to report in at every one of them.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I worked in plant offices, but I had to walk past the turbines on the plant floor all the time to get anyplace. The nuke plants were a lot more secure than coal, but at the same time, I think plant security at the steel mills I've been to was considerably tighter than those nuke plants were.
 
F

Fushigi

Storage Is My Life
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Illinois, USA
On this day in 2004, the X-43A scramjet flew at nearly Mach 10--over 3 kilometers per second--becoming the fastest air-breathing jet. Thirty years ago in 1977, Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in theaters. In 1965, the Soviet Union launched the Venera 3 space probe, which became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet. In 1920, Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited), the national airline of Australia, registered as an aerial carrier. In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming invented the vacuum tube. And in 1896, electricity was first transmitted between a power plant (in Niagara Falls) and a city (Buffalo, New York). Happy Birthday Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977), Lisa Bonet (1967), Dwight Gooden (1964), Terry Labonte (1956), David Leisure (1950), Daws Butler (1916-1988 ), Burgess Meredith (1907-1997) and George S. Kaufman (1889-1961). RIP Milton Friedman and Art Donovan (d. 2006), William Holden (1981) and Clark Gable (1960).

"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns."
- John Maurice Clarke
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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USA
My life is basically ruined due to a combination of factors, but it does not matter.
 
Handruin

Handruin

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Why is your life ruined? I'm sorry to hear that things aren't well for you right now.
 
udaman

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
1,209
LunarMist said:
I'm totally F***ED. :crap: :bibber:
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OK, LM...you have us all anxious and worried (well most of us anyway). Is this a Merc, jtr, udaman kind of thing? Or is it somekind of health diagnosis, like cancer?

Or have you been sued by a contingency fee attorney? (I was, was and I felt much the same at the time).

Word on health crisis, you get a cancer diagnosis...you may die a week later. No I'm not joking. Local KTAL, Channel 5 newsancor (sp?) of many decades here in lalaland, had his star on Hlly Blvd., died 1 week after his colon cancer diagnosis (had spread to the rest of his body, apparently he was of the mind, leaving his family and children to grieve for what could have been prevented) because he did not get a colonoscopy (sp?).

But there is always hope, my mother while quite depressed these days with enduring her body falling appart and being on a dozen or so pills to take each day which drain/sap what little energy she still has in her life, has so far beaten lung cancer, mouth cancer, and a heart attach in 2000.

Keep the faith LM. If you have but only a short time on this planet...stay with us here as long as you can. We all get f**ked, in the end, no one lives forever; which is why you should not take life forgranted and each year you live on this planet, try to do something that will me *you* happy, or at least someone else---be selfish once in a while (as long as it doesn't risk the life of others).

If you don't want to let the general populace of SF know what's up, then at least let someone here know in a PM or via email.
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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All human problems have the trivial solution and eventually the entire species will be extinct.
 
J

jtr1962

Storage? I am Storage!
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Flushing, New York
I hope it's nothing tax related. That's probably even worse than a lawsuit. I had an acquaintance who failed to pay about $100 in taxes in 1976. In the 1990s when they found irregularities on some of his recent returns they elected to go back. Contrary to popular belief the IRS can go back indefinitely, not just 7 years, if it wants to. To make a long story short the original $100 had mushroomed into over $1 million with penalties and interest because a penalty equal to 100% of the unpaid tax plus accumulated interest was added each year, and next year's penalties were based on the new total amount. I think he settled for about ten cents on the dollar, but it did wipe him out. For what it's worth, though, lots of people bounce back even from stuff like that. No idea if that was true about this person. As I said, he was just a casual acquaintance I met once. I got the story through others he knew.
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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NO, but thanks for giving one more to worry about. Tax papers are gone except last year scanned, even that birth certificate I had once.
 
P

paugie

Storage is cool
Joined
Dec 13, 2003
Messages
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Bulacan, Philippines
Hello, LM.

FWIW, I'd just like to say I understand you need something, help, prayers, relief, somebody to just be there, even if not able to say something...

Just hoping you find the strength to keep plugging on and triumphing over whatever has got you down . . for now.
 
L

LOST6200

Storage is cool
Joined
May 30, 2005
Messages
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Im gong to work later toady. It shoudl be a quiet. most people are gone and not bad trafficas.
 
udaman

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
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Messages
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Suxx, 1st time in probabaly a year or two I got a kernal panick why surfin the net, got the command line interface, saying something about trying to connect via ethernet MAC addy...so I hit power button to shut it down. Then tried to reboot, no go, wouldn't even start :(. Hit reset button which IIRC resets PRAM (date went back to default). I have 3 partitions, with 2 bootable (OSX 10.2 my primary, OSX 10.3 on the other which I rarely use cause it's a little slower and I don't like the file directory tree display in 10.3)...but now I can't select the partion w/10.3 on it to boot from, it shows up as a mounted drive under 10.2 and I can access files (for now at least), but no booting which can be problem since the files are owned under a different username on the 10.3 partition. Uggh, I guess I need to run a file directory repair program before both partitions become corrupted and inaccessable.

Was wondering if SSD's have file directory corruption problems/require repairing, and if it matters what OS you run? Also wonder if repairing such a corrupted file structure would be much faster with a SSD, as with ever increasing capacity of HD's it takes forever to run disk repair programs...literally hours.

But now my system is running about 1/2 speed it was before the crash, which makes my dialup connection almost unbearable...takes 2 full minutes for the reply window here to finish loading/displaying. My system is almost in standstill stay, better get that corrupted file structure repaired soon...gambling?

3 posts for the price of one, therefore. Anyone going to Black Friday sales? No me, too much of a hassle, and I'm not going into the rioting rushes before the sun comes up...no way. Got enough stress in life to play that game.

Seems Oprah is the biggest charity giving celebrity by far (Brad & Angie are #2) with over $300mil given. In the USA 2006 21 rich people donated more than $100mil to charitable or non-profit orgs in that year...surely there are more billionaires than that, IIRC Forbes has 900+ billionaires in the world now.

Forget about auto carbon credits, just take yourself off junkmail catalog mailings and save more, use recycled paper products like tiolet paper and save more :p.

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

Seems Monaco's Prince Albert is on the homepage of this site, so he's not only a top charity giver, but also renouned playboy with lots of pr0nstar g/f's which should make the already depressed Merc, even more depressed...you can thank me later Merc :p

http://www.whoswhoofworldgiving.org/


Also according to this site, the USA beats Japan & the Euro community (take that Prof. Wizzer) as the world's largest give of food aid. Not saying that's anything to be particularly proud of, given all the Bush haters, but it is still a fact.
 
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