Posts by Malcolm Weir
221 posts • joined Wednesday 23rd May 2007 20:36 GMT
Re: Only in San Francisco!
The ban on plastic bags actually makes sense from a purely functional "run the city" perspective: those sorts of bags are a recurring source of blockages on drains and the like, so the use of cheap plastic bags drives the cost of maintaining the city's services up.
What DOESN'T make sense is the "pay 10c for a paper bag" thing that came in last year. That's the one that drives the reusable bag stuff, and is driven by philosophy, not practicality.
I was (and am) quite happy with the plastic bag ban, since paper bags were basically just as functional most of the time. But mandatory charging for paper bags is irritating: why shouldn't a business give away or charge for packaging, at its discretion?
Re: not sure but
Umm, no, @Andy Prough, decomposition in water does NOT happen twice as fast; its more complicated than that. Look at this: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/forensicmedicine/notes/water.pdf (specifically page 11), which notes that if the water temperature is consistently below 45F/7C there may be no appreciable decomposition for weeks (and incidentally water slows the process, not accelerates it).
Elsewhere, we find that the water temperature in the bay around Providence tends to "warm rapidly" beginning in April (see e.g. http://omp.gso.uri.edu/ompweb/doee/science/physical/cycle1.htm), so it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the water temperature in the Providence River may have been below 7C up until quite recently, and as the water warmed, so decay accelerated, resulting the body coming to the surface and being found.
I think it perfectly reasonable to consider what might have happened had death occurred after the attacks, but Occam's Razor would suggest that someone unaccountably disappearing for several weeks, then accidentally dieing and be found is less satisfactory an answer compared to the individual falling into the river and remaining submerged until the water temperature rises enough to start decomposition ("foul play is not suspected" suggests accident, not suicide or homicide).
The real issue is that, as previously noted, there are nearly 10,000 separate tax rates and authorities, and a business doing $1,000,001 in internet business is going to have to buy and maintain systems to handle that, which is reasonable if you're Amazon or selling high-value stuff, but a total crock if you're a small-to-medium size business.
Still, it does open the door to "reseller companies" located in Delaware, Montana, Oregon, and New Hampshire (ignoring Alaska because the increased freight eliminates it). Those four states have no sales tax. So I establish Acme Resales, Inc. which is a (say) Montana corporation that will arrange to buy whatever I want and then sell it on to me for, say, a 2% fee. True, there would be double shipping involved, but that could be offset by a "shipping consolidation" service whereby everything I buy is shipped on to me in package.
But wait, you say: surely Acme Resales will have to pay the tax when it hits $1M? Ah... says I.... that's where it gets cunning: Acme Resales is not a single company, but a group of them. Say, 50 of them, with imaginative names like "Acme Resales Week 01" and "Acme Resales Thanksgiving"...
Hmmmm.... on balance, I prefer the 50-something state plan instead (previous mentioned as the 51st state, but DC is a tax jurisdiction, as is Puerto Rico, Guam (I think) and the US Military...
A better idea...
Funnily enough, I was thinking just yesterday that the touch-screen (aftermarket) MP3-playing "radio" in my car is woefully inept compared to state-of-the-(prior)-art tablets.
Which leads me to ponder the idea of a car with, say, an iPad mini in place of the radio/satnav/"trip computer" stuff. I would have suggested a Nexus 7, but for this application (only) the Apple Lightning connector is a more elegant solution (technically; commercially, it's typical Apple scumminess, but that's another matter).
We know the Lightning interface can carry a lot of data (although quite what is a mystery, due to typical Apple scumminess) up to and including HDMI video, and it's bidirectional. So one could design a vehicle dashboard with audio interfaces, vehicle interfaces, and a feed from a GPS. The iPad mini could them handle the user interface, providing audio (from internal music), controlling audio (from an embedded radio), satnav (from an embedded GPS), etc.
Another nice feature of Lightning is that it's quite robust;; so when the device you build your car for dies and the replacement has moved the connector an inch to the right, you "just" need a new fascia insert for the new device.
Best bit is that different car users can have their own devices, and when you leave the car, you carry it with you...
Re: 15KWh?
My take is that the 15KWh figure was selected precisely because it is the same sort of storage density as lead acid batteries; given the choice, a kinetic energy store is preferable to a chemical one, simply because of the toxicity of the latter.
Re: Every article I've seen about this neglects to mention the most important thing
Why wouldn't a SDR make it through security? The thing isn't a weapon, explosive or liquid, so on what grounds would someone deny you from carrying it on board?
I've carried X-ray opaque metal boxes on board aircraft many times; depending on where you are, security may choose to swab the device for residue, but in some airports, they don't even do that.
For example, true dialog with TSA after a Pelican case containing one of my opaque metal box goes through X-ray:
TSA: "What's in the case?"
Me: "Airborne Data Recorder."
TSA: "OK, have a good flight".
Really. They waved it through. Of course, that was at SEA-TAC, and people carrying random bits of aircraft stuff is probably more common than at, say, Santa Rosa, California.
These responses, while likely reasonable from a purely practical standpoint, serve primarily to obscure the significance of the allegations.
Sure, in good weather and low stress conditions, pilots will notice bogus information... but what if the weather and stress levels are bad? Again, it's likely that the risk is low, but...
... why the heck AREN'T the digital radio messages signed?
Basically, they're saying that, while the door is never locked, it's hard to find and someone would notice if you walked in. All true, but why not turn the key, too?
@Barrie Shepherd... Hear! Hear!
While we're at it, an act of downloading copyrighted material may not even be any kind of offense; the content producers categorically "turn a blind eye" to some acts simply because it is in their best interests. Hence the HBO bloke's apparent change of heart: he is opposed to _illegal_ sharing, but if he (HBO) happen to want it shared, then it's not illegal, and he can go back to being appreciative of the effects of the practice.
Of course, no content producer is going to make a habit of _saying_ they want something shared, but how often do you see _TV_ production companies filing copyright infringement suits? (compared to music and film companies, for example)/
Re: "Get Out Of Jail Free" card (for specific combinations of "Jail", "Free" and circs)
@Gav, au contraire, the whole POINT here is that the sort of blanket guarantee that others have been talking about is problematic, but I explicitly wrote about a letter specific to the Assange situation.
Sure, such a letter could potentially create a precedent the next time someone who published a whole bunch of US secrets was due to be extradited to Sweden to answer questions, but we have a lot of history to know that such situations are rare.
Re: @Malcolm Weir
Dear obnoxiousGit,
Perhaps you missed the total absence of any real or implied offer of immunity in my example? Perhaps you missed the key frickin' point which is that the Swedes cannot offer the sort of promise you have fabricated? Perhaps you'd like to exert that thing between the ears before making devastating responses to things that haven't been written?
Re: wrong focus?
@AC 09:08: your error is to presume that ONLY your particular are of interest is worthy of debate, and to throw a hissy fit if people do NOT debate whatever you think they should.
Re: wrong focus?
@Mick Stranahan: you, and I suspect the OP, have just arbitrarily drawn a line in the sand with no practical, ethical, or moral basis for that line.
Your argument supports e.g. carpet bombing as long as there are people in the bombers. It is a foolish and naive distinction to try to measure acts of violence _on the risk to the attacker_. If the act is justifiable, it would be justifiable regardless of risk, and the mere fact that some attacks get approved because the risk is low while other don't due to high risk doesn't change the MORAL and ETHICAL issues. Just the practical ones.
Look, I'm well aware of the nature of the red herring that the OP was trying to introduce, and that you have repeated. The reality is that morality and ethics have nothing to do with the _type_ of tool, just whether or not the action can be justified. If it can be justified, the cost/benefit analysis associated with whether you use a missile fired by a UAV, fired by a helicopter, fired from distant bomber to home on a laser designator from a UAV, fired by a cruise missile or something fired by a Mk. 1 Squaddie . I mean, what sort of broken morality includes a calculus that killing someone is OK as long as the cost and risk is high enough?
Of course, there are very serious moral and ethical questions about the use of force. But if you think cost and risk matters, you're not talking about those; your argument boils down to something about whether or not it is "fair" to use a tool we have, which tells me that you've never been in harm's way.
Re: A time bomb.
@ecofeco One aspect of the Swedish/Google spat that didn't get a lot of coverage: it is generally known that if you don't try to protect a trademark, you may lose the mark. So if Google _didn't_ act, maybe they would have risked losing their trademark (a Bad Thing)... Perhaps Google's private expectation was that they would complain, the Swedes would override them, and honor (and trademark protection law) is satisfied...
Instead, the Swedes whined about Google's complaint, despite the (legal) reality that Google had no choice but to object.
Re: wrong focus?
Sorry, AC @ 16:59, the fact that you have your own particular area of interest does not require anyone else to participate.
As to the real (as opposed to artificial) "moral and ethical" issues, they are no different with a drone compared to any other weapons system. In particular, a Hellfire missile dropping off the rail of (say) an AH-64 Apache is in no way "morally or ethically" different from the same missile dropping off the rail of a Predator.
Don't forget to pick up your red herring on your way out...
It's jolly interesting, all that theoretical discussion about whether or not the Swedes _could_ grant Assange a guarantee that he would not be extradited to the USA for disclosure of (US) sensitive information.
But it's also ignoring that the Swedes could have done something less: they could have written Assange a letter saying, basically, what their Judge chap said: it is the opinion of the Swedish government that the circumstances under which Sweden would extradite him are so remote as to make it possible for them, the Swedish government, to offer to support Mr. Assange in any legal proceedings seeking extradition to the USA for any offenses related to the leak.
In return for this courtesy, Mr. Assange agrees to waive all messing around and get his ass on the next plane to Stockholm. Ta muchly!
To those who ask "why should they", the answer is simple: it would save time and cost less money to offer to do something which they think is unlikely to happen than it would have done to have fought Assange through the UK courts.
Re: Are you insane?
@Mad Mike: the US has whistle blower laws, but the purpose of those laws is not to protect those who reveal information of misconduct _by_ the government, but to protect those who reveal it _to_ the government.
Plus, Manning voluntarily signed up to a different judicial system (i.e. joined the Army), and voluntarily signed various agreements in return for a security clearance (which he was not obligated to sign as part of his time in the military).
Re: XFS not safe
@Kebabbert It is undoubtedly true that almost all commercial file systems depend on the storage accurately, well, storing data. It is undoubtedly lovely that ZFS provides a mechanism (at some cost) to improve the quality of the storage subsystem by adding error checking features.
It is NOT true to assert that XFS (or anything else) is "unsafe" simply because they do not have those error checks. Error checking can be implemented in many different places and in many different ways, and the fact that the ZFS folks have decided there is One True Way is irrelevant to the reality that, if the underlying storage fails in various ways, you may get hurt -- which is true even with ZFS, because as a non-clustered FS is the host croaks, you are down. CXFS (as an example) is immune from those sorts of errors.
So is CXFS "safe" and ZFS "not safe"? Of course not: XFS (underlying CXFS) is vulnerable to certain types of failure, and ZFS is vulnerable to other types. Yer pays yer money and yer takes your choices.
Meanwhile CXFS + dmapi is my friend.
Re: Is there a technical reason why the pilot has to do it manually?
@SkippyBing part of the issue is normalizing for the different type of air vehicle: most would contend that flying a RQ-9 Shadow into a net is _different_ from landing a RQ-4 Global Hawk and then taxi-ing said Global Hawk off the active runway onto some hardstand where they can hook up the tow bar... but incidents such as taxiing off the runway into a ditch (or into some other vehicle) may still be considered "landing accidents".
And indeed, the RQ-4 can happily fly itself thousands of miles, and land, all totally autonomously... but it can't taxi where other aircraft may be operating...
Re: @ AC hypocrites
@pete 22: Apple's failing with respect to PARC was not that they adopted the ideas (which they did, but they PAID FOR IT by giving Xerox stock), but that they then claimed some kind of ownership of the ideas.
What Apple vs Microsoft taught Apple was that you can't "copyright" a look-and-feel. But you can _patent_ it, in some circumstances (which many think are being interpreted far too loosely). So Apple patented everything they could think of, regardless of where it came from. There's even evidence in the legal record of Apple engineers being reluctant to propose features for patenting because they (the engineers) knew that the idea wasn't patentable because they (the engineers) had just implemented something they'd seen elsewhere (i.e. prior art) or that it was too obvious.
Re: @ AC hypocrites
@AC The iPhone was really "revolutionary", it was just the best implementation out there _for a while_. The vast majority of individual features had already been used/shown/played with elsewhere, and what Apple did was bring together a complete use experience that coupled "best of breed" implementations with a level of consistency that was (and is) rare.
Apple made a great product with the iPhone, and with the iPad. But what they did was assemble, rather than invent.
It's like cars: Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line method of build cars, and the Model T wasn't terribly remarkable... but the two together, coupled with Ford's distribution network, resulted in a lot of people mistakenly thinking that (a) Ford invented assembly lines, which he clearly didn't, and (b) the Model T was the first mass produced car, which it clearly wasn't [because Olds patented his a dozen years earlier]. Neither of those truths devalue the significance of Ford's assembly line and Model T... but they were not "innovative" so much as "done better".
It is, though, ironic that those who defend Apple so often fail to acknowledge others (Nokia and BlackBerry, in particular) and totally fail to recognize other people doing now what Apple did then: Samsung, for example, has done some really great things with a Wacom-based tablet phone (the Note & Note 2); I think an arbitary other company could do it better, but they haven't yet, so... Samsung holds that crown (for now).
You don't scale performance linearly...
The statement that 32GB/s Fibre Channel would take "just under 4 minutes" to transfer 1TB is bogus: doubling line speed doesn't double transfer rate. Actually, the figures presented show the reality:
Quadrupling Ethernet from 10Gb/s to 40Gb/s increases performance 373%, not 400%. So using THAT metric, 32GB/s FC would take four minutes and 15 seconds, although "just over" would be accurate. "Just under" is not.
Re: @Malcolm
@ShelLuser your response, while undoubtedly excellent, makes the chronic error of failing to address what I ACTUALLY wrote about, which was the PRODUCTION READY remark (emphasis added, since you missed it the first time). I would have thought my "few petabytes" remark may have been a clue that I am well aware that ZFS is a _different_ sort of beast (including a volume-manager substitute), even if the article hadn't pointed that out anyway.
As to the remarks about online FS recovery tools, I can honestly say that I've been involved with industrial-strength (well, OK, military-industrial strength) XFS filesystems for the past 15 years and have never felt the lack. Possibly this is related to the quality of the hardware being used?
Anyway, as the watchful may have noticed, I absolutely acknowledge the virtues of ZFS. Unfortunately, until/unless it becomes part of a standard distro, it's not a lot of use.
Dude, just because the Solaris world lagged behind for so long, don't over-exaggerate the (undoubted) virtues of ZFS. We've had XFS, which is unquestionably a solid FS to use if you only have a few petabytes to worry about!
Units and comparisons...
At the risk of point out El Reg's own guidelines, altitude of aircraft (especially, but not exclusively when operating in US and European airspace) are reported in FEET. Feel free to quote meters for those who like such things, but the applicable unit is FEET!
And, while we're at it, a two class 747-400 doesn't really carry 524 passengers; to get that many people in, you need to use short-haul style "business class" seats, the sort of thing that British Airways calls "Club Europe". For serious long-haul flights, which is what the 747-400 is designed for, a more typical two-class layout yields something like 406 passengers (e.g. the Qantas 747-400 fleet here: http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/aircraft-seat-map-boeing-744/global/en describes a variety of seat plans, all in the 350-406 passenger range. Plus, of course, about 20 crew.
Re: Why do people put forward the idea that iPads are good for art?
@Mage: spot on. Also, David Hockney did not learn using an iPad, he learned all sorts of "traditional" methods, and using his skill and experience he effectively exploits the capabilities of that particular tool. Someone whose learning is limited to the iPad is going to be unprepared for (e.g.) charcoal, oil paints, fine pencil work, and sculpture...
No, it is you.
What the blacklists do is use the Reverse DNS request as a well-defined protocol for sending a query to obtain more information about the IP address. Under no circumstances does the RBL supplier actually provide Reverse DNS information, merely whether or not they have reason to believe the IP address is associated with spam.
So rather than asking "who is 12.77.1.2?" expecting the answer "HOUSE.WITH.TASTY.BEER.COM", the DNS query to Spamhaus returns "Contains Processed Pork" or "dunno, never 'eard of 'im".
Re: Will the iPhones be unlocked?
In my experience, EVERY T-Mobile handset is unlockable, and they will readily unlock it for you on request.
The only caveats are reasonable ones to avoid intermediaries buying phones, unlocking them, and selling them on, which (in practice) T-Mo tends to implement them as "phone must have been activated on the network for 30 days or more", and "account must be in good standing"... BUT I have known them to waive the "30 days" bit.
Re: bet the company?
Dear Dominic,
Sony didn't invent the Video recorder, Ampex did. Of course, Ampex then marketed stuff _with_ Sony, with the result that you're probably going "Amp-who?". Naturally, Ampex *also* shot itself in the foot several times, but possibly not as often as, say, HP did!
Not quite right anymore
The "lightning-fast painting" method is old hat these days, due to the large amount space required for the lightning. Nowadays the imps just flip little doors in front of colored flames open and closed. This explains the lower quality of TV nowadays, since the imps are bored.
Part of my frustration with this ridiculous drama is that it seems at least possible that there was only _one_ off-color remark, the one about dongles. Richards goes to great lengths to try to establish a "hostile environment" in which that "joke" was the final straw, but there's at least a possibility that the "fork his repo" comment was completely devoid of innuendo, and was simply a statement of opinion as to the value of the individual's work. (Think about it: how can "forking HIS repo" be hostile to WOMEN? Forking _hers_, sure, but if there's innuendo at work here, it's innuendo from a man about sex with a man).
The ensuing efforts by many to suggest that she didn't over-react because there really is hostility to women at many tech events miss the point: the appropriate response to hostility among intelligent people isn't MORE hostility, it's calm confrontation.
Turing's Machine is quite similar to Schrodinger's Cat: they were both created as thought experiments that illustrate some profound truths. Of course, Shrody's moggie is less directly relevant to other experiments than a Turing Machine is...
HOWEVER, while Alan Turing deserves plenty of credit, Konrad Zuse managed to build a Turing-Complete machine in 1941. Herr Zuse principal mistake is that he accomplished this remarkable feat while being German; unfortunately, Herr Zuse failed to implement the technique of his fellow-countryman, Herr von Braun, of applying a retroactive Americanization, so we can now spend hours arguing about something that happened 5 or 6 years later.
As to Mr. Fry: I am reminded of Douglas Adam's description of The Guide: it may be wrong, but it is at least _definitively_ wrong.
(No matter what The Fry Chronicles say, Apple did not invent the WIMP interface. Just sayin').
Re: Technical Matter
Nope: salvage applies to aircraft, too, so why not rockets?
Clearly, these are abandoned wreckage so may be salved like any other wreck. The fact that the recovered items are headed for Canaveral suggests that Uncle Sam is not unhappy about this.
To be fair, IF the accuses is, uh, guilty-ish, a plea bargain might be the most satisfactory solution.
Remember, in a fair number of cases (including, I believe, this one) the actual facts are not really in question. The issues that would effect the outcome of any trial are things like can the evidence be used against the defendant? or did the defendant's actions meet all the requirements of the crime?, etc.
@Turtle: There are some things we _have_ to take as true, because they were submitted under penalty of perjury to the court.
For example, we have to take as true the fact that the Government (i.e. Heymann) argued that the evidence (from the search of the laptop, etc.) should not be excluded because the Government hadn't had possession of the equipment, therefore the clock should not have been running.
But IF the email described in the complaint exists and contains the information narrated in the complaint, the Government is in a bit of trouble: they said they didn't have the equipment, but they knew they did.
So does that email exist, and does it say what they claim it says? Well, it beggers belief that a lawyer would file that complaint without having a copy of the email in question, so it seems far more likely than not that, yes, the email exists and the email says what they claimed it said, and therefore the gov. is in trouble.
What remains to be seen is whether the trouble that the government is in was a result of (a) malice (b) incompetence or (c) an honest mistake.
Re: Sigh...
And the article isn't even consistent: there's a reference to U-2s bumbling along at 70,000 feet, which is, what, 9 meters or something?
Re: Type A and B ports
Another has remarked about USB OTG (my phone support *8* USB drives simulatenously, so some kind of powered hub is probably in order -- although I can plug a thumbdrive into a cable for exFAT goodness).
The obvious reason for the "B" port is debugging and development and general "this is how the device works". That "A" port is most likely there to support removable memory: it is infinitely easier to work on a system where you can remove the boot device and stick it into a host to fix whatever it is that you just broke.
(And the serial port is so you can instruct the thing to boot off the USB port, natch!)
Re: RS232 is still relevant
Ok, @ian 22, what's confusing about baud? On a single level line (e.g. RS232) 9600 baud is 9600bps which is 960 octets per second. On an analog line with four distinct carrier frequencies (e.g. four audio tones) you get 9600 baud is 38400 bits per second or 3840 octets per. Each "baud" might consist of a chord of four tones...
Possibly interesting: 1000Base-T (gigabit) Ethernet can carry 2Gb/s (1GB/s in each direction) and is implemented as four 250Megabaud lines so the overall connection is 1Gigabaud and 2Gb/s...
Or possibly not.
Re: Still with the tincy-wincy liddle screen?
Sadly for your "argument", Samsung currently has two, not one, flagship phones (that whole "choice" thing, see?): the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note 2. Want to hazard a guess what including the Note 2 figures with the S III ones does to the ranking? Thought not.
Also unfortunate for your position is that once the iPhone 5 launched, the iPhone 4 became the cheaper option, so rational people would expect it sell very well; what seems to be missing (surprise!) is an analysis of which phones sell best in that price segment, including the older Samsung products (S II, for example).
Re: Still with the tincy-wincy liddle screen?
My laptop does have one, and why would you not want one?
"Need" is a stupid criteria around smartphones, for pete's sake!
Re: Sony still quite cool with me
The notion that Canon makes "better" bodies requires some qualification: what is the metric you're using? And do you mean "there is at least one Canon body that is better than any Nikon body" or "every Canon body is better than the equivalent -- for some value of equivalent -- Nikon"?
Your observation was certainly true prior to the Nikon D3's launch, but by and large these days the field is a lot closer, by which I mean there are no definitive answers: depending on preference or usage, one or the other brand may deliver the goods.
I call BS on the "it's too sleek for USB 3.0" thing. The entry level Samsung Chromebook has a 3.0 port.
Re: Equality?
What a fool! Marriage is blind to every characteristic (height, age-above-a-minimum, skin color, intelligence) save one (gender). What rational basis is there for including that one but not any of the others?
Quite.
Re: But look who they are up against...
Of course they should. Pretending otherwise is naive and stupid. Naturally, they shouldn't let business imperatives dictate their conclusions, but they have a duty to consider the social and economic consequences of any decision they make.
Despite many "conservative" pundit's assertions, judges have always had the job of both deciding the law and the remedy -- the biblical Solomon is seen to be doing this.
Re: baseless suspicion
Ah, sorry, you either missed my point or I expressed it poorly! I'm not suggesting that Koh is equally biased, but that the appearance of bias to one side or another can be countered with the claim of apparent bias towards the other.
It is an article of faith that federal judges are not biased (even when the notion is manifestly unsustainable). So this is an issue of appearance, not fact.
I have a completely baseless suspicion that Judge Lucy Koh was selected for this whole Samsung / Apple thing since she is a Northern Californian (thus supposedly pro Apple) of Korean descent (thus supposedly pro Samsung).
No, it's not pocket money, but it is a solid acknowledgement that the jury's award is (in its entirety) in jeopardy.
What this ruling states is that about 45% of the jury's figure came from an invalid legal theory. What it does not do is try to address whether the rest of the damages calculation was tainted, which is the subject of an appeal process. So in the appellate court proceedings, Samsung will be starting from the position that everyone (except Apple) agrees that the jury screwed up, which is pretty good place to start.
And don't forget that one of the "patents" on which Apple is still (in theory) getting damages is in the process of being invalidated (the '915 patent). If it is invalidated (on the basis that there is a metric shedload of prior art), then the damage award continues to head south...
Re: Bathroom?
For the same reason Brits use "W.C." a lot: it's what it's called. Brit's have a stupidly arrogant habit of pretending their particular name for something is somehow correct, while American's are largely oblivious to the fact that there may be different names other than the ones they use.
But the fact is that the floorplan of the store in question should have a space labelled "bathroom" and it doesn't. The fact that you think that "bathroom" means "room with bath" is all exciting and stuff, but I rather strongly suspect that you have thrown things that aren't waste paper into a waste paper basket, and you only rarely put dust in a dustbin.
Posted in Larry Ellison buys airline
Re: 1500m Runway - More Than Enough
Funny you should mention the Gulfstream V, since that is Larry's plane! The aircraft lives at San Jose International (SJC), which is just under 2100nm from Lanai. Given the G-V's max range is 5800nm, it's clear that you can operate LNY-SJC with no more than 75% of the fuel that the G-V can hold, which makes it's take-off weight something like 80% of MTOW, which makes the runway length acceptable for the hop across to California.
Re: But look who they are up against...
While your opposition to government involvement in marriage is rational, it's not going to go away because the very same people who oppose others getting what they have (e.g. "conservatives") will oppose removing "their" privilege.
So the choices are: allow any two people to join together for socio-legal purposes, or create arbitrary rules as to which pairings are allowed and which are not. We've already decided that prohibiting pairings based on skin color is not acceptable, so all we're left with is this bizarre fascination with what two other people do together, allegedly on the basis that one group's pairings is irredeemably harmed by a completely unrelated couple's choices.
Re: Really
Gil Grissum, you are a disgusting bigot.
In Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE (for a start) it's a "don't tell because they will execute you if you do" thing.
Given that homosexuality is recognized by real scientists as an inherent (rather than learned) trait, this amounts to exactly the same thing as executing (say) left handed people for being left handed.
