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Comment by pydave | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand your "spike this deal" idiom. I can't make sense of an analogy to a spiked drink (rufie) or spiked football (scoring a point). The closest I can find is "spike somebody's guns" meaning "to spoil someone's plans". Do you mean someone wanted to prevent you from using RSA's patent in the JVM?

(I initially assumed you meant "force this deal".)

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Sorry, it means to 'deny successful execution of the plan'. Originally spiking gun barrels a modern example was environmentalists driving spikes into old growth redwood trees that would cause massive damage to a chain saw blade should a logger try to harvest tree. Generally doing something which prevents a deal from actually working to make up for the fact that you were unsuccessful in preventing the deal from being agreed to in the first place.

Let's get our terms right. Tree-spikers are not environmentalists, they are vicious extremists. They are terrorists. The spikes don't just damage saw blades, they send sharp steel shards flying in all directions with the intent to to seriously injure or kill loggers or sawmill workers.

I can only say that I stopped at "they are terrorists."

Everyone is a terrorist.

No argument on substance; someone who has no problem maiming or murdering in order, not even to save the life of a tree, but merely to punish people for having in some way been associated with a tree's demise, so places himself far beyond any civilized pale. Such a person deserves at the very least a stiff term in prison; should he succeed in his vile endeavor, he is best rewarded with a cigarette, if he wants one, and a nice sunny place to stand and enjoy it. (In case that's not sufficiently clear, I am talking about execution by firing squad.)

But you might want to avoid that word 'terrorist'. It tends to give people an excuse to shut off their brains and feel good about it, where convoluted rhetoric like mine tends to serve as an attractive nuisance ("I could give up on this, but then whoever wrote it might look smarter than me") for long enough to get a point across.

Advocating extreme violence (an execution with a firing squad) for a group as a punishment for violence( against tree loggers). Amazing hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy, sir? You astonish me. Is it hypocrisy to suggest that the punishment for maiming or murder, with the vilest of malice aforethought, should be judicial execution? -- a life, ended quickly and without suffering, for a life irrevocably ruined or destroyed in gory, agonizing horror? I think not!

Again, any evidence these people are maiming and murdering? Any at all? I found one reference to a possible injury.

You are willing to execute these people based upon logging company hearsay and propaganda.

See, the idea is you spike the trees you want to SAVE and then you tell the logging company you spiked them ASAP so they DON'T CUT DOWN THE TREES YOU ARE TRYING TO SAVE.

No, I am willing to execute them, to the extent of volunteering for the firing squad, without any interest in mine being the rifle loaded with a blank -- if they succeed in maiming or murdering. I notice my previous comment was not clear on this point, and am glad of the opportunity to clarify it now. The mere attempt, in my estimation, merits only a term in prison, as with any other deliberate but unconsummated attempt to inflict grievous harm upon another person, in the absence of extreme provocation such as the need to defend oneself from attack.

Interesting view point. What, pray tell, would you find a suitable punishment for a rapist, murderer or serial killer?

Much the same: imprisonment for the attempt, execution for the success. I suspect you will take this response as cause for horror at my unthinkable whatever-you-call-it in equating the gravity of a tree spiker's crime with rape and murder. If so, then you will be no less amazed than am I at the idea that the crimes of such saboteurs are of any less gravity than those of anyone else who, lest the nature of tree spiking be forgotten, sets out to maim or murder, or -- hardly less grave, or more permissible -- to use the threat of such mayhem, occurring at random, to enforce their will.

So let's consider armored car security. They will shoot people who take the bank's money. If I, perfectly reasonably, want some money, they will shoot me. So the banks who employ armored car guards are terrorists who should be imprisoned or executed!

Do you seriously equate armored car guards with tree spikers? I can't imagine you mean your comment to be taken at face value, but I also can't imagine any other meaning with which you might have loaded it.

Well, as far as I know, environmentalists who spike trees let the logging companies know. Their goal is to save the trees after all NOT kill lumberjacks.

Any evidence that these "vicious extremists" have actually killed anybody? As in any at all? Because I can't find any references.

The etymology is indeed 'spike the guns'. Usually spiking was done to prevent the enemy from seizing and using one's own ordnance, rather than an act of sabotage by the enemy.

The 'spike' was a nail driven into the barrel, usually perpendicular to the bore.

As a Cold War aside: an AP round from the A-10's GAU-8 cannon could actually spike the barrel of a T-62 tank! But whilst this was demonstrated in controlled environments it wasn't really a practical form of attack...

To spike a gun seems to be a rare event. Gun crews could spike a gun to prevent it being turned on their own forces, but it meant they could not reuse it either when the cavalry left (which usually meant your whole army was running away)

Cavalry were supposed to carry such equipment but it seems it was rare they did, and rarer they got down off a horse in the middle of a firefight.

So it's (from a minor bit of googling) looking like a tactic more honoured in the breach than the observance. Anyone else?

An interesting HN-like back and forth on this subject is below: http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=233539

Oh and it's driving a steel wedge into the touch hole so the cannon cannot be fired - not, as seems to be implied on this amazingly tangential thread, driven into ridiculously hardened cannon walls.

Or you know a bit of thermite on the breech block works well.

I'm pretty sure thermite was in enter after cavalry charges stopped being a good idea (well actually as Poland infamously charged Nazi tanks, maybe not)

In the modern context it is standard protocol to not leave important equipment in a functioning state. So, lets say you got ambushed and there was no chance of getting a tow truck in time before being overrun, for example, you would toss a thermate incendiary on top of the radios and one on top of the engine, thus denying the enemy the use of the vehicle or the knowledge of the radio mechanisms or encryptions on it.

verb: spike;

1. impale on or pierce with a sharp point.

(of a newspaper editor) reject (a story) by or as if by filing it on a spike. "the editors deemed the article in bad taste and spiked it"

stop the progress of (a plan or undertaking); put an end to. "he doubted they would spike the entire effort over this one negotiation"

historical: render (a gun) useless by plugging up the vent with a spike.

From https://www.google.com/#q=define+spike

The historical reference is to putting a spike in an enemy's cannon barrel, which should render any attempts to use the cannon to catastrophically fail, as cannons generally had to be well-cast/flawless to operate under their loads.

In British english it's fairly standard; my first analogy-thought is to spiking a news story.

Does one not 'spike the football' in the NFL to stop the clock?

(Searching for "spike this deal" finds two kinds of usages: people making a play on words in advertisements for volleyball and football products, and people talking about ruining a deal on purpose.)

It's presumably a variant on the historic journalistic use of 'spike a story' where the editor would decide not to run a story, and the typewritten manuscript was places on a metal spike.

With what do you kill the undead? A wooden spike.

> rufie

Roofie? Or something else?

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