Posts by Greg

Worldwide GPS may die in 2010, say US gov

Feh, GPS: False Security for the Navigationally Challenged

I hated the PLGR they issued in the Army...half the time the damned thing would lock up if there was a tree within 50 feet.

'Direction: North (12.3°)'

<Turn around, walk 10 feet.>

'Direction: North (11.2°)'

<Turn left, walk 30 feet> '

Direction: North (15.7°)'

<Curse, turn off PLGR, open compass, shoot azimuth>.

I believe there may still be a lightly-used PLGR somewhere in the Mojave desert courtesy of Top winging it out the window after it locked up, again. Oops, FIELD LOSS!

Works great on the open sea, in the open desert, or at 10,000ft, but damned if it works in triple canopy jungle. Hopefully they've improved them since I got out.

The best was some REMF who wrote into the Stars&Stripes (upon her third time failing PLDC) "It's stupid to still require Land Navigation with a compass. We have PLGRs now, we don't need compasses anymore!" Uh-huh. I'll take a 1:50,000 and my "crank the bezel 2 clicks CCW 'cause it's a little wonky" compass any day.

250kg Russian drops healthy 2kg sprog

Yeah, whatever

There's a difference between "Chubby" and "Morbidly Obese". Some of you are defensive because you're mebbe 30lbs more that you should be. Relax. Yeah, you probably want to get some exercise into your life (Cardio is important, regardless of weight), and look at what you're eating, BUT: I'm talking the "Can't walk", "Rides the Mart-Cart", "100+ lbs past where they oughta be" crowd. You don't get that fucking fat from eating 2000 calories a day. And those are the ones you always (without fail) hear crying about their "disorders".

If these "disorders" were so goddamn common, why is it only now, in a time where life is far more sedentary and high fat/carb food is more easily available than ever before, that the obesity rates are skyrocketing? Why weren't we seeing similar rates 60 years ago? This is a tech site, do the math people.

I refuse to be "Sensitive to others' feelings" when the "others" in question are killing themselves. A little less "Sensitivity" would go a long way to straightening shit out. This coddling of people, like 'It Wasn't Me' spoke of (and I see it everywhere over here, too) ain't helping nobody, but it is hurting people.

News Flash: Metabolic rates vary from person to person. One man can eat at 'Neato Burrito' for lunch every day and stay thin. Another man turns into the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. My wife and I have vastly different metabolisms, just like AC 15:51...but unlike his wife, mine's not a heifer. She has this crazy diet regimen: she consumes <= calories than she burns. Try this plan for 3 months and I guarantee you'll lose weight, or I'll triple your money back.

Or, keep on with your, "<whatever>'s not MY fault!" excuses. Just don't expect sympathy from me; I watched my tax dollars buy a new livestock-capable MRI machine at the local hospital, because they couldn't get some fatass into a normal one with 10lbs of axle grease, a shoehorn, and running start.

@ Francis Boyle

>>>"Perhaps you would like to explain how a hormonal disorder makes a women unfit to be a mother."

Maybe because 98% of the obese always claim to have a "glandular/hormone/thyroid/metabolic disorder"? Nobody can ever admit, 'I'm a bumbling lardbody because I eat absolute shit and never get off my ass." It's cliché. It's bullshit. Anything to avoid taking responsibility for yourself and your circumstances. That attitude is disgusting--more disgusting than the 300lbs of cottage cheese thighs that kid bounced off of on the way out.

C'mon, she weighs >550lbs! Even us Americans with our (not undeserved, sadly) reputation of being overweight rarely get to that extreme. That's about 100 lbs shy of "Send a construction company with the ambulance call to knock a wall out". That's "Riding the Rascal (scooter) everywhere" territory.

How does it make her unfit to be a mother? Ever notice that fat, lazy parents have fat, lazy, spoiled kids? If you can't discipline yourself, how the hell are you going to discipline a child? I have a son; my job as a father is to raise him to be a responsible, hardworking, and polite member of society. To do that, I have to lead by example (because "Do as I say, not as I do" parenting doesn't work.) Wanna take bets on how Twinkie McTransFat's kid will turn out?

Sorry if this hits too close to home for some of you, but deal with it--I'm sick of seeing it everywhere. Take charge of your life, nobody else is going to. You'll feel better about yourself.

Brit couple divorce over Sadville infidelity

And y'all make fun of Americans

But you'll notice, the 55 year-old Yank is a lot thinner and prettier than the 28 year-old Brit.

I wish Second Life made you take a webcam shot of yourself and then turned it into your avatar. But then Sadville would look more like Wisconsin.

Hacker unearths young Chinese gymnast scam

Easy way to settle this

Nobody's sure about her real age? Easy peasy: Just saw her in half and count the rings. Duh.

Kaminsky (finally) reveals gaping hole in internet

@Greg (the Greg who is not me, who is also a Greg)

"Running Linux wouldn't help at all. One reason, really. Who in their right mind is going to be running a DNS server on anything other than Linux in the first place? ;-)"

Those of us who aren't allowed to use Linux, because it's "Open Source and therefore HACKERS!!1!!!1 can see the code!!!!"...so Solaris is the approved *nix.

Yep.

Ours not to reason why, ours not to make reply...

American auto dealer offers free handguns

Ah, yes, the Britons turn out in full force...

...to 'Tut-tut' about us Yanks & our guns. There's something you don't get to hear much about overseas, and they don't exactly discuss much here stateside: Yes, we have a high number of firearm murders here. But it's not the gun-toting yokels that are involved in 97% of it. As a matter of fact, having lived in rural Pennsylvania for most of my life, except for my Army days, everybody I know owns a gun, and there has been 2 shootings outside of the cities here in 20 years. They aren't the legally owned guns concealed carried by rednecks that are involved in these crimes. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find a single murder committed by a concealed-carry licensee.

Nope, the vast majority of gun crime occurs in the inner cities with illegally possessed and carried handguns. But anyone who points that out is automatically 'racist', regardless of color and the statistics, because that's what the Brady Bill crowd want you to believe.

And remember, we loaned y'all a lot of firearms back in the early 40's, just in case Hitler decided to cross the Channel, because, surprise, surprise, nobody being allowed to own guns= unarmed citizenry in time of need. Too bad you didn't learn your lesson, and worse yet, YOU DIDN'T SEND THE DAMNED THINGS BACK!

...mine will be the oddly heavy black trenchcoat that makes the clinking noise.

Afghan networks start nightly shutdown

Yeah, but the difference between the Russian occupation...

...and ours, is that WE were backing the Afghanis back in the 80's. We supplied them with all those sweet RPGs and AKs we'd bought from other countries, and training.

Now we've killed most of the a-holes we'd trained back then (except for the biggest a-hole- although the jury's still out on that), and the poorly trained schlubs that are trying to resurrect their idiotic fundie government are getting stomped every time they show their faces.

Subprime PC retailer coughs up $5m fine

Why do people fall for this?

Because here in the US we have a lot of low income people who buy into everything the media and ad agencies tell them: "You ain't nothing unless you drivin' an Escalade", "Get the kind of car you DESERVE" (despite the fact you work at McDonalds) "Get the kind of house you DESERVE!"(despite the fact you're on food stamps), "You NEED a computer!"

In short? Because people are stupid enough to fall for these scams. Look at how our housing market is taking a shit, thanks to unscrupulous lenders giving out interest-only mortgages and people who have no concept of "consequences". In one of my sociology classes, the professor lectured on a study that showed that 76% of people who receive welfare checks will spend all the money within 4 days. She somehow managed to turn this into being my fault, for being a white middle (lower) class male, that poor people have no idea how to save money, and will often spend what's left in the grocery lines on the impulse items by the register.

Those are the kinds of people too stupid to stop for one second and do the simple on math on how much a Blue Hippo computer will cost them. Paris, because she did the same thing on the Simple Life (though she has the $$$ to back it up)

Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter

Phil's a pessimist

I'm here in Pennsylvania about 40 miles away, and Bob the local groundhog was chillin' in my backyard all morning.

I think Phil's being paid off by corporate interests- he's been taking campaign contributions from the sidewalk salt and snow chain industries for years!

Mammoth wool gives up genetic secrets

Iskandar's right

...but it could be a self healing problem: fat guy gets on mammoth, mammoth gets mad, fat guy get speared with tusks and stepped on. Besides, as far as our mammoth cavalry goes, the combat arms sections of our military does stay in pretty good, non-back-breaking shape. Or we'll just GM them to be bigger.

On a serious note, I was under the impression that they chose to work on the mitochondrial DNA over the cellular DNA because Mitochondrial is so rarely preserved, in order to show how useful their hair-grinding technique was. It sounds to me like getting cellular DNA from this hair is a cakewalk, and they wanted to show off.

I want my 50 lb T-bones!