Hotlinking images is bandwidth theft.
The above image was used on my article about snipers. I can't remember where the image originally came from, but for years now I've used it on this site. I was checking the site referrer logs for my site recently when I found about 50-60 links from My Space. Weird, I think.
So I started clicking on the links to see what was happening. Of the 50-60 My Space pages, only about a dozen were publicly accessable. Every single one of those accessable by me featured the above image. I'm not worried about copyright issues, as it's not my image in the first place. I'm worried about the unauthorised use of my bandwidth, bandwidth that I pay for. Bandwidth theft, in other words.
Reach Out And Touch Someone.
A study on the evolution of the modern military sniper.
On the wall of the Marine sniper school at Camp Pendleton is a Chinese proverb: "Kill one man, terrorize a thousand."
Ever since man started using projectile weapons he has striven to use them from greater distances. After all, the reason they were invented was to permit hunting from a safe distance. As primitive tribes came into close contact with each other, it was inevitable that there would be disputes, be they cultural differences, hunting rights or any one of a thousand other reasons. Inevitably, in one of these conflicts someone used a weapon that had previously been used only for hunting game. The race was on.
The Arms Race. Man's attempt to kill each other from ever increasing distances with a greater degree of accuracy. Whether it was with the spear, arrow, catapult, firearm or missile, this battle of skill and technology has continued down through the ages and will continue to do so as long as there are two men to argue over something. In the following article I'll be concentrating on the evolution of the modern military sniper starting with the American Revolution.
The day I was shot at.
What a difference 20 years (well, almost) can make. The events that I'm about to describe did happen. If it happened now, it would be all over the national media and there would be a statewide manhunt, with the people concerned more than likely undergoing counselling for years to come. And yet, it wasn't all that big a deal at the time, just something else that contributed to making me who and what I am.
The year was 1986 or thereabouts, I doubt very much if it was any earlier than that, because I'm fairly certain that I was 16, so that makes it late '86, early '87. I grew up on a small farm on the far south coast of NSW, and we were forever scratching to make ends meet. Occasionally, this meant trapping and shooting rabbits for food, as well as what we grew ourselves.