BadAim

I cannot promise as work comes first at this hour, but I will show up if I can to fill a seat if it's available.....If it's not I can hardly complain......

The Devil is in the details..............

That's the way a lot some of us over on this side of the pond think as well. The chances of a catastrophic event are so small that to take everyone's freedom away in an attempt to mitigate and legalize the inherent danger out of life... Well, at some point it just gets supid. Yet that's exactly what's happening. On the other hand, take look at a somewhat recent crash test with regards to motor vehicle safety where they crashed a museum quality 1950's car and a late 90's early 2000s (whenever the test was done) car. A majority of the extra cost of the new design (adjusted for inflation) went into safety features, and the results were, of course, predictable. Go back and look at the records from the 1950s and you'll find that roadway vehicle crashes resulted in a much larger percentage of deaths in the 1950s than it does today. Part of that has to do with advances in medicine, but you have to have a live patient, first. As the saying goes "You are now leaving the safe skies for the danger of the roads. Drive safely." But there's a reason for that, at least here in the US, where aviation is the second most heavily regulated industry in the country after nuclear power. Why? Because flying is not natural to humans and is thus inherently dangerous. The fact that it is at all viewed as "safe" and events like this cause the concern they do is due to massive regulation on the part of governments. Translation: You are not "free" in any way, shape or form when you board an airplane. The same goes for many other aspects of life where there have been attempts to regulate the danger out of certain activities. Take a not so recent discussion on house building requirements in the EU, for example. Same as cars. Why are they so expensive? Why can't you build the house you want? Because they've regulated it to the point where you must have this and you must have that, and in the end, you get a predictable result instead of what you wanted. Take a much closer look at the realities therein, and you'll find that as governments recognize that flying is dangerous, and as a result of regulation, not just anybody gets to fly these things. Things go wrong every day with airplanes, and when something does go wrong, the ridiculously vast majority make it down either perfectly safely, or with a minimum of problems. The reason for that is that flight crews (both cockpit and cabin) are professionals who are trained to deal with just about any emergency that could possibly happen. Such crashes as this make headlines not because they happen every day (like auto crash deaths in the 1950s), but because they are so rare. Amen to that! That's the problem, right there. Reasonable citizens. What are those again? Why is it that so few of them get to be lawmakers, anyway? Oh, yeah. Could it be that either so few of them are around or that those that are are out making an honest living? Methinks that this may be putting the given conversation off the rails a bit, but it does bring up the point that this country was never meant to be run by full time politicians, and it was doing just fine before they came along. As for the murderer of 150 persons, It's interesting that I just had a conversation last night with a friend that has suffered from depression who experessed that insofar as she ever considered suicide, it would never have been concievable to take a single person with her (even some who it might be argued had earned it, and that's my own addition- Chet) My answer was "That's because your not an entitled narcissistic little shit". "There's that" was her reply. How else do you explain it other than pure unudulterated evil? I know there is only a handful here that could envisage that.

BTW, Gecster, do try to show up occasionaly; we enjoy the company. Oh, and BTW I apreciate the adultness of this conversation. Time will tell how far that goes on.........

Nope. Sorry, it's too late. You're one of '"us" now. Welcome to the club Sven.

My goodness, Sven! This is at best poor timing. I shall have to relieve you of your tile of "Commie Bastard" and consider you amognst my "Gun toting, gap tothed, flannel wearing, sister kissing" friends. I'm dissapointed. Or not.

From what I gather from what I've heard (and I place little faith in the news media), this particular fellow got a psychological examination that declared him unfit to fly, but he ripped it up and no one was the wiser. My doctor and I had a conversation about this this morning and we were in kind of a stalemate, because if a guy knows that he may be declared incompetent to do his job he may never report his condition or do everything in his power to hide it. It's such a massive grey area, it seems to defy reasonable resolution.

You say that 'till you have to take a leak real bad! I in general agree as well. (of course my reasonable consessions to the balance of freedom to reality includes strapping a pistol to my hip every morning).

Lol, FT. Don't insult poor Gec like that! I however am a US citizen and I am quite familiar with the concept of freedom, but I have not seen it practiced sucessfully in my lifetime save for a eight short years in the eighties (and that only in part). Alas I think we may be walking a bit close to the brink here.........That said, true freedom sort of borders on anarchy a little bit, in that it relies on the majority of a given populace to be law abiding and reasonable citizens willingly. Unfortunately when you raise up several generations of narcisistic, entitled, whining shits, the whole idea kind of falls apart. (Especially when said shits are running the country).

You get to be free when your dead FT, in the meantime just shut up and do what your told!!!!!

Holy shit are these people stupid. I can't even watch mainstream media anymore.

I don't think any of the JSGME options should make any difference in CUP. Even so, it would be a limited number of players anyway as I doubt CUP would be mainstream for us. I'd love to try an online trial on some off night, I don't see any reason it wouldn't work, given everyone has machines that can run it efficiently. BTW Tiger sounds are built in, so Cup wouldn't be you cup 'o tea, Arjen. BTW, for those that just have to add something, it should be fairly easy to package it into JSGME so that it would be easy to roll it back for online use

That's really amazing, and one hulluva feat of pilotage. Cudos to Han Solo!

It has an Electra. Close enough?

Moving.

Sorry to hear about your B. I Law. It's tough to find a man that's good enough for your sister! Tougher still to loose him. As for the 970, thanks for the heads up. Please keep us updated on the 980.

Not many of these men left. and Cdr Vraciu!

I look forward to exploring that one day.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, they are however not entitled to my giving a crap about it. Just another self important know it all spouting ill informed opinion as if it comes down from Sinai. Prefering to use the "authorised version" is fine by me, but insulting people who give thier valuable time to the community for free is just piss ant. Piss ants are to be ignored. Besides, people that think they know everything really grate on those of us that actually do............

Helluva story. True badass.

Oooo, that's a coold one eh?

All in a days work. FOR A LUNATIC!

Welcome to USB Hell, my friend. I've been having problems with USB and the various devices installed on it since my first Saitek x36. To be fair it has been more often than not crappy Saitek drivers rather than USB itself. Surfing the interwebs is fairly simple, but once you start running advanced software (like flightsims) and plugging in a dozen peripherals it can go sideways fast. Methinks the Captain has earned his "Power User" merit badge!

I looked into this lock a bit further, but didn't find much. I did find a few photo's of the deadbolt that the above cylinder came out of and it looked like a real piece of crap, so there's your method of selling this thing at a marketable price. It looks much like a Chinese lock that you can get for five bucks at Wallmart. I'm surprised that I don't remember seeing this thing at trade shows or something. Unlike Bill, I'd love to take that bad boy apart. The other question would be, what is the market in the US for pick proof locks? Not much. For the most part criminals around here wouldn't learn such a skill, I mean if they wanted to work they'd get a job. I haven't seen credible evidence of a criminal picking a lock in thirty years. I sell two different high security locks, and two different restricted keyway locks and the latter far outstrip the (three times) more expensive High security locks in sales. 80% of High security lock buyers are looking for key control and the restricted keyways do the job nicely without wasting money on pick and drill resistance that is just not needed. I do believe that I've figured out the manufacturing process though! It looks on closer inspection like it's injection molded pot metal with a couple of (possibly steel) rails inserted from the sides to guide the key smoothly around the curves. The steps that are visible from the outside are I believe molded in to provide even more resistance to inserting a pick. It's quite a clever design, but I'm still quite sure it wouldn't last long under typical American use (abuse).

Nope, never have. I can tell you why it failed though. It's waaaaaay too expensive to manufacture and waaaaay to not idiot proof. I'm sure that if the manufacturer ever sold any they got them back within two weeks, the lock is simply too complicated and requires too much user skill to operate. The benefit is just not worth the cost and inconvenience. I also doubt that the thing is very reliable. I've seen a hundred of these solutions in search of a problem pop up and disappear over the last thirty years. It also looks like the thing would be nearly impossible to service. I also have a manufacturing background, and I doubt they were able to make that plug in one piece (though they may have been able to bond the "slices" somehow). I can typically re-pin a standard lock in one to two minutes each without even trying to work fast. A typical high security lock bumps that up to at least ten minutes or so. I'd hate to even imagine the work required to get all of those pieces in and out. The guy in the video was well justified in being afraid to take that thing apart. The key is yet another level of Dante's hell for locksmiths. Brass would simply not be strong enough, even nickel silver would be too soft and the stuff is tougher to cut and puts a lot of wear and tear on your key machine. That leaves mild steel and that will destroy your machine slicker 'n shit and also chew up the lock in no time. And it still won't hold up over time. Another cool idea relegated to history's scrap pile. Damn cool lock though, thanks for sharing.