I should mention, I still intend to get a MacBook Pro later on this year around Xmas. But for $1065 there was just no fucking reason I could not buy the Dell, which will go to my wife as her gaming doesn't go beyond AOE3 in performance reqs.
Read my post right above yours - the x1400 is fine for Doom 3/BF2 on medium settings, but you REALLY need to trim the fuck out of the Oblivion.ini settings (and install Shaja's/Loreroth's LOD distance textures replacement mods) to get Oblivion running quasi-decently on the x1400.
I strongly suspect that this is not the case with the x1600.
I've been jonesing for a MacBook Pro so that I can try OSX, but unfortunately the prices of a new Dell are just too good to pass up.
Comparison:
Apple MacBook Pro:
Display: 15.4" Widescreen 1440x900 Video card: ATI x1600 128MB Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz RAM: 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 667MHz HDD: 100GB 7200RPM (7200RPM is very important to me, I don't care about size) NIC: built-in 802.11G, Bluetooth 2.0, and 10/100/1000 NIC DVD: DVD +/- RW with slot load
Cost: $2300
Dell E1505 during 20% off sale, with free 1GB RAM upgrade, with $450 coupon on machines over $1499:
Display: 15.4" Widescreen 1280x800 with True-Life option Video Card: ATI x1400 256MB (closest I could get to the x1600) Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz RAM: 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 533MHz (667 not an option) HDD: 60GB 7200RPM (as stated, I care about drive speed more than space) NIC: built-in 802.11G, Bluetooth 2.0, 10/100 NIC, and v.92 modem DVD: DVD +/- RW with dual-layer burner
Cost: $1065 after coupon, free shipping.
The latter machine is sitting on my desk right now. The display is by far the best I've ever seen.
Here's what I miss with the Dell: Slightly lower-resolution display - the True-Life option on the Dell MORE than makes up for this. Puts my $600 desktop 2001FP to shame. Significantly slower videocard - I have to turn off specular mapping to play Oblivion at 25FPS on the Dell. This hurts. Slightly slower RAM - I don't care. Less HDD space - I run a tight ship and have never used over 30GB in my life. Could care less. No Gigabit option for the NIC - I don't use Gigabit at home. The DVD doesn't slot-load - vanity points only, but I care a little bit. No backlit keyboard - vanity points again, I care a little bit. Can't run OSX legally - this is huge, thank God I'm really really competent at optimizing and securing the hell out of XP.
Here's what I miss with the Apple: The amazing Samsung display - this is huge. The 256MB RAM on the video card - this will be significant for BF2 at LAN parties. The modem - I don't care. Might come in handy once, ever. No dual-layer burning on the DVD - this is a big deal, as the reason I use so little HDD space is because I put media files on DVDs.
All told, I'd probably prefer the Apple *if* I could jump to $2800 and get the 2GHz model with the ATI x1600 256MB.
Meanwhile I've paid 46% of what I would've paid for a near-equivalent machine. --Ryvar
That's the partial video, the full video is here, free registration - which does not require you to validate your email address so any garbage works - is required.
Wife just got a brand new T43 from work - and I gotta say that it absolutely blows my Inspiron away in terms of weight, performance, heat management and most especially 'solidity' (despite being lighter). Heretofore they've done well with what IBM gave them, hopefully this isn't where they start fucking up.
Easier to implement, and more likely, the program could just quit out immediately without an Internet connection.
And yet, I have observed through doing this with an increasingly high number of programs, that auto-Internet-registration installs will still function perfectly normally while unplugged from the Internet, and not bother trying to connect again to register once the machine is back online - nor is the functionality of the installed product reduced. This applies about 95% of the time in my experience. I doubt that it will be much different after the implementation of DRM/widespread TCM. Why? Developer laziness/shipping crunch. Thank God that the same companies which are so totalitarian about how their products can be used are the ones that usually enforce shipping dates to the detriment of their products.
Ultimately I think a lot of this DRM technology - specifically remote attestation - is going to result in me changing my habits in one minor regard - I'll be putting the wireless router on top of my desk, rather than under, with the ports facing me so I can easily unplug my computer. In the majority of cases, problem solved.
Yes and no. This is based off my own vague memory of what was recent theory about seven years ago in our cog. sci. class, so take it with a large grain of salt: there's a background 'noise' to the brain that slowly reduces the number of synaptic connections per neuron over time, which in theory would cause you to forget things. You have to think about a topic every once in a while - or think about something stored in a neural connection in close proximity at the actual physical level (thus activating the entire localized region) - to refresh the connection and keep it intact. New connections would be fresher and further from fading, but would not be as firmly etched into the overall neuro-semantic topology as the older memories. Put differently: older memories lose details more easily but are harder to remove entirely (without rearranging the entire local topology), whereas fresher memories are more firmly attached to their details but easier to forget entirely.
Why couldn't it be that our understanding of how gravity scales over interstellar distances is completely offbase? When we see things like the Pioneer anomaly giving slight indications that our understanding of gravity over large non-interstellar distances may be flawed, then why wouldn't we assume that gravity simply doesn't scale over extremely long distances? I don't know enough to intelligently debate this with an astronomy student, but from here dark matter and dark energy look like a gigantic fudge factor stemming from a lack of understanding about the nature of gravity over large distances - analogous to the need for Relativity for accurately modeling the effects of extreme velocities. The thing that really caps it for me is that - and I'm not physicist either - we haven't found the graviton (the boson responsible for the gravitational force) either. It seems like our whole understanding of gravity is flawed and that we shouldn't be inventing phenomena to explain it (ie the 'ether' of yesteryear) until we're sure that isn't the case.
The point you're missing is that the first world doesn't have an infinite amount of resources to spend on third world development. Wouldn't it make more sense to take the enormous amount of money that would be spent on these laptops to help out third world countries who are doing pretty well and instead spend it on food and water for those third world countries which are hellholes?
This is brutal, perhaps, but population in an uneducated society increases exponentially, which results in a not-quite-as-exponential demand for resources. I say not quite because resources are finite and thus the margin by which each person in the society survives grows slimmer with every successive generation. In short, providing resources without education only exacerbates the problems of a third-world nation and leads to a greater amount of suffering experienced by a greater number of individuals.
Now take a look at the massive geriatric health care problems most non-USA first-world nations are facing and understand that this problem exists because the surest way to stymie breeding is through education. Many of these nations have, unlike the USA, socialized healthcare which ensures that their lower classes survive long enough to become major burdens upon the healthcare system due to geriatric issues. Compounding the problem, many of these nations provide free or heavily government-subsidized higher education (far moreso than the US) which compounds the negative population growth problem.
To put it in simple terms the US isn't facing a geriatric healthcare crisis because our lower classes are undereducated enough to provide a slow but steady population increase and they tend to die young from lack of access to proper preventative medical care but not so young that we haven't sucked them for all the surplus labor and resources they can feed into the economy.
I'm not sure if there are really any easy answers here, but checking the the massive population explosions of second-world nations (China, India) seems like a universal good for everyone - hellholes and struggling non-hellholes alike - because it reduces demand, or at least diminishes the acceleration of demand.
The idea of an anti-patent patent trust is as old as the hills, but to see this much corporate clout behind it was unthinkable not five years ago. It feels like there's been a sea-change and I like it. More important than helping IBM and Sony fight Microsoft, if this idea gained momentum it could seriously roll back a lot of the current technical stagnation on account of software/algorithm patents.
Ghillie suits utilizing evaporated aluminum minimize the IR signature of the person wearing them. Thwarting thermal vision required a change of tactics and slightly more specialized gear on the sniper's part - which is exactly what will happen with acoustic tracking devices. Muffling the report of the gunshot down to nearly nothing can be performed without significantly altering the ballistics of the bullet being fired by using conventional suppressors. Which means that this particular technology can be defeated more or less for 'free' where 'free' equals hundreds of hours in training to adjust to the subtle ballistic effects of a suppressor and the weight of said suppressor. What can't be reduced for free is the 'zipping' sound from the bullet exceeding the soundbarrier (all common bullets except.45ACP do this). To do that requires the use of special subsonic ammunition with extremely poor ballistics. No more one-shot kills on Taliban fighters from a mile and a half off (second from bottom).
Most of the better online poker players can play several different tables simultaneously, which drastically cuts down the amount of time necessary to log one million hands.
I really, really, REALLY hope they were dumb enough to make that speaker software-accessible from the OS in any way, shape, or form. Because if they did, I know what I'm doing to every display model in every computer store in a fifteen mile radius.
Programmable buttons, too? How about changing buttons on display models to conjure up goatse/lastmeasure?
I agree completely. Stopping power is about inertia and heavy bullets with a very large profile when viewed from the front. Energy transference is total when a bullet is halted within the target, so too high a velocity can be problematic (of course, low velocity makes for terrible in-flight ballistics)..45ACP is *wonderful* for this purpose, and certainly deserves the 'man-stopper' nickname. It makes for the perfect self-defense handgun round (since you're not likely to be facing people with ballistic vests). As an additional benefit, as the only mainstream naturally sub-sonic round it is wonderful when accompanied by a large silencer. You can use standard ammunition without worrying about the sonic crack, whereas most other rounds have to use a low-power version to be effectively silenced.
I don't even know where to begin here, let's go line by line:
I'm not sure I believe that - the rounds currently deployed to the US Army for their M16s are intended to tear an opponent apart, since an opponent who dies instantly can't continue to fight injured, or worse, charge and set off a bomb.
No, M855 - used by the M16A2 and up (A3, A4), is built to shatter after passing 4" of flesh, and does this quite well provided the weapon firing the round has a 16" barrel. Weapons with shorter barrels have less time over which to induce force upon the projectile thus resulting in a lower muzzle velocity and less fragmentation. This is one of the complaints about the M4 (14") and Colt Commando (11")
Here is an image of what M855 does within a gel block that has the same consistency as muscle tissue: M855 wound cross-section
They're also built to knock the target off their feet to prevent a charging enemy.
Again this is incorrect. No round short of.50 BMG (used by.50cal sniper rifles and machineguns) is really capable of knocking a man over, especially not a charging one. Here is a list of the most common types of modern rifle ammunition and their kinetic energy - I'll leave the math as an exercise to the reader, but none of these would knock a 150lb. man running at 10mph over backwards, or even begin to. Bear in mind that unlike M855 (5.56x45mm) most of the higher-power rounds pass through the target completely without imparting the lion's share of their kinetic energy. Knockdown is due to tissue trauma and pain, if anything, and is rarely a factor when shooting an opponent.
M-16 rounds are nasty - they have a hollowed out section on one side so that upon a collision, they drastically change shape. This causes them to travel through the body with an increased angular velocity spinning the way though the targets internals
This is vaguely correct but misleading. The small ring in the side of an M855 bullet that exists where the bullet protrodues from the neck of the cartridge does induce a tumbling motion, but upon yawing 90 degrees within the flesh of the target the bullet typically shatters with at less 50% of the bullet mass fragmenting. There reason for this is not to spin the bullet through the target's internals, but rather to create a larger internal surface area to the wound itself, in order to maximize bleeding. The tissue trauma and kinetic energy doctrines of wound theory are largely ignore by 5.56x45mm largely because of the desire to incapacitate rather than kill targets precisely because each soldier wounded means two people busied (the soldier and a doctor/nurse/rescuer). The bullet that most closely describes what you're saying is the 5.45x39mm round fired in the AK-74, the successor to the AK-47. The Afghans in the 80s referred to them as 'poison bullets' for this reason.
If you've ever seen a target dummy shot with an M-16 round, the hole going in is the size you'd expect it to be - you can fit your hand in the hole on the other side. People who get shot in the arms with an M-16 will lose the arm, go into shock (and thus completely exit the battle) and almost certainly die shortly thereafter.
This is, again, garbage. The large holes are due to fragmentation, not tumbling, and the shock is induced by the maximized blood loss, not straight tissue trauma. I don't know who told you the above but they don't know the first thing about wound theory.
Keep in mind that the United States and European armies are the only military forces that don't use disposable regiments and therefor have large support structures for injured troops. The Chinese army is beginning to move this direction, but historically have no problem with wars of attrition.
That's true enough. Chinese firearms have historically been utter shit.
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The E1505 ships with Media Center by default, which supports SMP. Home Edition is not an option, presumably for this reason.
--Ryvar
I should mention, I still intend to get a MacBook Pro later on this year around Xmas. But for $1065 there was just no fucking reason I could not buy the Dell, which will go to my wife as her gaming doesn't go beyond AOE3 in performance reqs.
--Ryvar
Read my post.
The Dell is sitting on my desk right now. Arrived 5 days after I placed the order with free shipping. The charge on my credit card is $1067.
Read my post right above yours - the x1400 is fine for Doom 3/BF2 on medium settings, but you REALLY need to trim the fuck out of the Oblivion.ini settings (and install Shaja's/Loreroth's LOD distance textures replacement mods) to get Oblivion running quasi-decently on the x1400.
I strongly suspect that this is not the case with the x1600.
--Ryvar
I've been jonesing for a MacBook Pro so that I can try OSX, but unfortunately the prices of a new Dell are just too good to pass up.
Comparison:
Apple MacBook Pro:
Display: 15.4" Widescreen 1440x900
Video card: ATI x1600 128MB
Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz
RAM: 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 667MHz
HDD: 100GB 7200RPM (7200RPM is very important to me, I don't care about size)
NIC: built-in 802.11G, Bluetooth 2.0, and 10/100/1000 NIC
DVD: DVD +/- RW with slot load
Cost: $2300
Dell E1505 during 20% off sale, with free 1GB RAM upgrade, with $450 coupon on machines over $1499:
Display: 15.4" Widescreen 1280x800 with True-Life option
Video Card: ATI x1400 256MB (closest I could get to the x1600)
Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz
RAM: 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 533MHz (667 not an option)
HDD: 60GB 7200RPM (as stated, I care about drive speed more than space)
NIC: built-in 802.11G, Bluetooth 2.0, 10/100 NIC, and v.92 modem
DVD: DVD +/- RW with dual-layer burner
Cost: $1065 after coupon, free shipping.
The latter machine is sitting on my desk right now. The display is by far the best I've ever seen.
Here's what I miss with the Dell:
Slightly lower-resolution display - the True-Life option on the Dell MORE than makes up for this. Puts my $600 desktop 2001FP to shame.
Significantly slower videocard - I have to turn off specular mapping to play Oblivion at 25FPS on the Dell. This hurts.
Slightly slower RAM - I don't care.
Less HDD space - I run a tight ship and have never used over 30GB in my life. Could care less.
No Gigabit option for the NIC - I don't use Gigabit at home.
The DVD doesn't slot-load - vanity points only, but I care a little bit.
No backlit keyboard - vanity points again, I care a little bit.
Can't run OSX legally - this is huge, thank God I'm really really competent at optimizing and securing the hell out of XP.
Here's what I miss with the Apple:
The amazing Samsung display - this is huge.
The 256MB RAM on the video card - this will be significant for BF2 at LAN parties.
The modem - I don't care. Might come in handy once, ever.
No dual-layer burning on the DVD - this is a big deal, as the reason I use so little HDD space is because I put media files on DVDs.
All told, I'd probably prefer the Apple *if* I could jump to $2800 and get the 2GHz model with the ATI x1600 256MB.
Meanwhile I've paid 46% of what I would've paid for a near-equivalent machine.
--Ryvar
That's the partial video, the full video is here, free registration - which does not require you to validate your email address so any garbage works - is required.
--Ryvar
Given what EA has done to the gaming industry I was really, really hoping they would implode before they got a clue.
--Ryvar
Heh, when I was reading this the fortune that appeared at the bottom of the page - right underneath your comment - was:
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. -- Eric Hoffer
Cute coincidence.
--Ryv
Word from those who have played the preview recently is that the draw distance and popins on the Xbox 360 are horrible.
Wife just got a brand new T43 from work - and I gotta say that it absolutely blows my Inspiron away in terms of weight, performance, heat management and most especially 'solidity' (despite being lighter). Heretofore they've done well with what IBM gave them, hopefully this isn't where they start fucking up.
--Ryv
Nuclear power = genocide of all life forms a kilometer under Nevada's mountains.
First they came for the anaerobic bacteria, and I said nothing because I was not an anaerobic bacteria . . .
--Ryv
Easier to implement, and more likely, the program could just quit out immediately without an Internet connection.
And yet, I have observed through doing this with an increasingly high number of programs, that auto-Internet-registration installs will still function perfectly normally while unplugged from the Internet, and not bother trying to connect again to register once the machine is back online - nor is the functionality of the installed product reduced. This applies about 95% of the time in my experience. I doubt that it will be much different after the implementation of DRM/widespread TCM. Why? Developer laziness/shipping crunch. Thank God that the same companies which are so totalitarian about how their products can be used are the ones that usually enforce shipping dates to the detriment of their products.
--Ryvar
Ultimately I think a lot of this DRM technology - specifically remote attestation - is going to result in me changing my habits in one minor regard - I'll be putting the wireless router on top of my desk, rather than under, with the ports facing me so I can easily unplug my computer. In the majority of cases, problem solved.
--Ryvar
Yes and no. This is based off my own vague memory of what was recent theory about seven years ago in our cog. sci. class, so take it with a large grain of salt: there's a background 'noise' to the brain that slowly reduces the number of synaptic connections per neuron over time, which in theory would cause you to forget things. You have to think about a topic every once in a while - or think about something stored in a neural connection in close proximity at the actual physical level (thus activating the entire localized region) - to refresh the connection and keep it intact. New connections would be fresher and further from fading, but would not be as firmly etched into the overall neuro-semantic topology as the older memories. Put differently: older memories lose details more easily but are harder to remove entirely (without rearranging the entire local topology), whereas fresher memories are more firmly attached to their details but easier to forget entirely.
Something along those lines, at any rate.
--Ryvar
Almost sounds liked a journaled filesystem with the most recent records corrupt, doesn't it?
--Ryvar
Stupid question for you, then:
Why couldn't it be that our understanding of how gravity scales over interstellar distances is completely offbase? When we see things like the Pioneer anomaly giving slight indications that our understanding of gravity over large non-interstellar distances may be flawed, then why wouldn't we assume that gravity simply doesn't scale over extremely long distances? I don't know enough to intelligently debate this with an astronomy student, but from here dark matter and dark energy look like a gigantic fudge factor stemming from a lack of understanding about the nature of gravity over large distances - analogous to the need for Relativity for accurately modeling the effects of extreme velocities. The thing that really caps it for me is that - and I'm not physicist either - we haven't found the graviton (the boson responsible for the gravitational force) either. It seems like our whole understanding of gravity is flawed and that we shouldn't be inventing phenomena to explain it (ie the 'ether' of yesteryear) until we're sure that isn't the case.
--Ryv
The point you're missing is that the first world doesn't have an infinite amount of resources to spend on third world development. Wouldn't it make more sense to take the enormous amount of money that would be spent on these laptops to help out third world countries who are doing pretty well and instead spend it on food and water for those third world countries which are hellholes?
This is brutal, perhaps, but population in an uneducated society increases exponentially, which results in a not-quite-as-exponential demand for resources. I say not quite because resources are finite and thus the margin by which each person in the society survives grows slimmer with every successive generation. In short, providing resources without education only exacerbates the problems of a third-world nation and leads to a greater amount of suffering experienced by a greater number of individuals.
Now take a look at the massive geriatric health care problems most non-USA first-world nations are facing and understand that this problem exists because the surest way to stymie breeding is through education. Many of these nations have, unlike the USA, socialized healthcare which ensures that their lower classes survive long enough to become major burdens upon the healthcare system due to geriatric issues. Compounding the problem, many of these nations provide free or heavily government-subsidized higher education (far moreso than the US) which compounds the negative population growth problem.
To put it in simple terms the US isn't facing a geriatric healthcare crisis because our lower classes are undereducated enough to provide a slow but steady population increase and they tend to die young from lack of access to proper preventative medical care but not so young that we haven't sucked them for all the surplus labor and resources they can feed into the economy.
I'm not sure if there are really any easy answers here, but checking the the massive population explosions of second-world nations (China, India) seems like a universal good for everyone - hellholes and struggling non-hellholes alike - because it reduces demand, or at least diminishes the acceleration of demand.
--Ryv
Close, but more of a burnt sienna.
--Ryv
The idea of an anti-patent patent trust is as old as the hills, but to see this much corporate clout behind it was unthinkable not five years ago. It feels like there's been a sea-change and I like it. More important than helping IBM and Sony fight Microsoft, if this idea gained momentum it could seriously roll back a lot of the current technical stagnation on account of software/algorithm patents.
Color me cautiously hopeful.
--Ryv
Ghillie suits utilizing evaporated aluminum minimize the IR signature of the person wearing them. Thwarting thermal vision required a change of tactics and slightly more specialized gear on the sniper's part - which is exactly what will happen with acoustic tracking devices. Muffling the report of the gunshot down to nearly nothing can be performed without significantly altering the ballistics of the bullet being fired by using conventional suppressors. Which means that this particular technology can be defeated more or less for 'free' where 'free' equals hundreds of hours in training to adjust to the subtle ballistic effects of a suppressor and the weight of said suppressor. What can't be reduced for free is the 'zipping' sound from the bullet exceeding the soundbarrier (all common bullets except .45ACP do this). To do that requires the use of special subsonic ammunition with extremely poor ballistics. No more one-shot kills on Taliban fighters from a mile and a half off (second from bottom).
--Ryvar
There are times when it seems like it would be handy.
"So can I spend $220 million in building bridges to uninhabited islands in my state?" Link
"No, we're going to the moon and fuck you."
--Ryv
Most of the better online poker players can play several different tables simultaneously, which drastically cuts down the amount of time necessary to log one million hands.
--Ryv
They actually put a speaker in there?
I really, really, REALLY hope they were dumb enough to make that speaker software-accessible from the OS in any way, shape, or form. Because if they did, I know what I'm doing to every display model in every computer store in a fifteen mile radius.
Programmable buttons, too? How about changing buttons on display models to conjure up goatse/lastmeasure?
--Ryvar
I agree completely. Stopping power is about inertia and heavy bullets with a very large profile when viewed from the front. Energy transference is total when a bullet is halted within the target, so too high a velocity can be problematic (of course, low velocity makes for terrible in-flight ballistics). .45ACP is *wonderful* for this purpose, and certainly deserves the 'man-stopper' nickname. It makes for the perfect self-defense handgun round (since you're not likely to be facing people with ballistic vests). As an additional benefit, as the only mainstream naturally sub-sonic round it is wonderful when accompanied by a large silencer. You can use standard ammunition without worrying about the sonic crack, whereas most other rounds have to use a low-power version to be effectively silenced.
--Ryvar
I don't even know where to begin here, let's go line by line:
.50 BMG (used by .50cal sniper rifles and machineguns) is really capable of knocking a man over, especially not a charging one. Here is a list of the most common types of modern rifle ammunition and their kinetic energy - I'll leave the math as an exercise to the reader, but none of these would knock a 150lb. man running at 10mph over backwards, or even begin to. Bear in mind that unlike M855 (5.56x45mm) most of the higher-power rounds pass through the target completely without imparting the lion's share of their kinetic energy. Knockdown is due to tissue trauma and pain, if anything, and is rarely a factor when shooting an opponent.
I'm not sure I believe that - the rounds currently deployed to the US Army for their M16s are intended to tear an opponent apart, since an opponent who dies instantly can't continue to fight injured, or worse, charge and set off a bomb.
No, M855 - used by the M16A2 and up (A3, A4), is built to shatter after passing 4" of flesh, and does this quite well provided the weapon firing the round has a 16" barrel. Weapons with shorter barrels have less time over which to induce force upon the projectile thus resulting in a lower muzzle velocity and less fragmentation. This is one of the complaints about the M4 (14") and Colt Commando (11")
Here is an image of what M855 does within a gel block that has the same consistency as muscle tissue:
M855 wound cross-section
They're also built to knock the target off their feet to prevent a charging enemy.
Again this is incorrect. No round short of
M-16 rounds are nasty - they have a hollowed out section on one side so that upon a collision, they drastically change shape. This causes them to travel through the body with an increased angular velocity spinning the way though the targets internals
This is vaguely correct but misleading. The small ring in the side of an M855 bullet that exists where the bullet protrodues from the neck of the cartridge does induce a tumbling motion, but upon yawing 90 degrees within the flesh of the target the bullet typically shatters with at less 50% of the bullet mass fragmenting. There reason for this is not to spin the bullet through the target's internals, but rather to create a larger internal surface area to the wound itself, in order to maximize bleeding. The tissue trauma and kinetic energy doctrines of wound theory are largely ignore by 5.56x45mm largely because of the desire to incapacitate rather than kill targets precisely because each soldier wounded means two people busied (the soldier and a doctor/nurse/rescuer). The bullet that most closely describes what you're saying is the 5.45x39mm round fired in the AK-74, the successor to the AK-47. The Afghans in the 80s referred to them as 'poison bullets' for this reason.
If you've ever seen a target dummy shot with an M-16 round, the hole going in is the size you'd expect it to be - you can fit your hand in the hole on the other side. People who get shot in the arms with an M-16 will lose the arm, go into shock (and thus completely exit the battle) and almost certainly die shortly thereafter.
This is, again, garbage. The large holes are due to fragmentation, not tumbling, and the shock is induced by the maximized blood loss, not straight tissue trauma. I don't know who told you the above but they don't know the first thing about wound theory.
Keep in mind that the United States and European armies are the only military forces that don't use disposable regiments and therefor have large support structures for injured troops. The Chinese army is beginning to move this direction, but historically have no problem with wars of attrition.
That's true enough. Chinese firearms have historically been utter shit.
--Ryvar