Home-built 747 Simulator

James Morris writes: "This is a cool hack: some guy is building a 747 simulator in his backyard." This is one of the most impressive even while in progress, but the other projects linked from this site set a tough standard.

Comments

Re:TERRORIST TRAINER

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You are either dumb, or the most brilliant troll to grace slashdot's commentary. Honestly.

You had for the first two lines, if I had had mod points, you would have been modded up before I read the third. How? Are you some kind of idiot savant, that can say something brilliant one moment, and then something utterly retarded the very next? Or was this some ingenious scheme of yours, to take the crown of trolldom?

They're gonna mod me down to -1 on this, but it needs to be said.

There is much rhetoric about how we should spend more money on "curing the disease and not the sympton". In general, such a principle sometimes means the person saying it is just a little less dim than the person next to him. But in this case, it is nothing more than a blatant case of cliche-mongering. Islamic terrorism (and by no means do I mean all muslims are terrorists, or that there are not other flavors of terrorism) is an incredibly complex social phenomena, hidden beneath layers and layers of political faction-meistering, diplomatic bullshit, and danger to human life. Very few researchers can even get near the subject, and those that do are threatened and/or ignored. But even then, there is something that is obvious to those who care to try understanding this.

There is no single cause, nor small set of causes, that we might reduce or stifle, that could prevent terrorism in a meaningful way. Nada, nothing. It is like asking what truly causes a nice summer day... lots of things, is the answer. Insanely complex weather and climate patterns build up over periods of time going back to the birth of our planet, all interlocking, dependent on each other, and chaotic in a mathematical way. What can we do to prevent a nice summer day? Not much. No amount of money, effort or willpower will do it.

But if I'm wrong, and there is some simple answer that my tiny little brain can't wrap itself around, why hasn't anyone ever said so in a public way? Why don't you?

Wanna know how you can get rid of this sort of terrorism? I'll tell you how, but with one caveat. It's not something that I could do, or be part of. It's something that I would protest to the point of being thrown in prison for treason or something. And undoubtedly, it's something that you aren't even willing to read all the way through.

We simply wipe them out.

Not like Bush did, tossing a few smart bombs here and there. No, we nuke every living thing in Afghanistan. We bribe China, if necessary, so they don't get pissy about it. Then we move on down the line. Iran, Iraq. Egypt. Libya. And then, for a finale, we obliterate Saudi Arabia. We leave nothing alive. Especially Mecca. We make sure that only cockroaches can survive the pilgrimage. Of course, we'll have to send our own muslims to internment camps, but that's nothing we haven't done before. Maybe we'd even build them a "Mecca USA" and put political pressure on the religious leaders to start pitching that, or else. And of course, irradiated petroleum isn't very cool, so we'd have to have an alternative for it. But this, this would prevent terrorism.

Terrorists, by their nature, are impossible to stop. There are no limiting factors to their behavior. Not even their own religion is a limiting factor, a mullah that would denounce terrorism and plead with them to not commit such, would be viewed as weak, and unwilling to do Allah's work. Even if Binladen did so himself, some miraculous change of heart, most of his followers would splinter off, and continue this.

We, on the other hand, have many such limiting factors. For instance, we (hopefully) would never perform the actions I detailed above, that would fix the situation. We're susceptible to diplomatic pressures. We like our oil too much. We have ethical concerns. In other words, we're fucked.

Please, if you have any grand insights, on how to remove the causes, reply to this. If nothing else, I'll find it entertaining.

I find this rather of bad taste

[dario_moreno]

given what happened to the China Airlines
747 yesterday. Or should I post a joke
saying "does it include a random number generator
sparking an explosion in the fuel tanks "?