I remember reading some analytical piece back in Fall 01 speculating about the motive. It was saying that the source was most likely from the defense industry, and so whoever sent it may have been trying to show how vulnerable we are to chemical attacks. It may have been a desperate attempt to get the kind of chemical/biological defense measures in place the sender was trying to implement in other ways.
Re:How to cut internet piracy by 80%
on
UK P2P Fight Brewing
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Yeah, all the free music from Beethoven can't hold a candle to Britney Spears.
Red Hat calls MS' interoperability tools as vaporware, then says that cloud computing will run on Linux. Cloud computing doesn't even have a working definition more than two people are willing to agree on, so how is that not vaporware?
TFA says the X-40 was the predecessor to the X-37. I'm guessing X-38 was a typo (I know, hard to beleive a/. summary would have a mistake). The X designation is for experimental. Other aircraft receive a letter designation for its role once it goes into production: F for fighter, B for bomber, etc. Maybe this will be the S-37 (space) or O-37 (orbital)?
UFO sightings does this explain? Military planes take 20 or more years of testing, and TFA says they've flowin it before. So how many times did someone in the Southwest spot one and say, "That ain't no plane. It's movin way too fast!"
I have not had to deal with it in my family yet, and I pray to FSM I never have to.
When studies showed a link between aluminum and Alzheimer's, that was enough to get me to stop drinking anything in an aluminum can and to stop wrapping my sandwiches in aluminum foil. I don't know if there's a real link, but it's not the kind of risk I'm going to take. Aluminum isn't good for you anyway, so it can't hurt to cut down your intake.
It's hard to think of a scarier disease than one where you slowly lose your mental faculties. I'd take almost any other disease over Alzheimer's.
Re:ah, for a moon landing flame war...
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 2, Funny
That's just ridiculous. Mars has an atmosphere. You can clearly see the dust immediately settling after the astronauts step, indicating there is no atmosphere. Am I expected to believe they built a huge vaccuum chamber on Mars? What kind of fool do you take me for...for which you take...that for which...For what kind of fool do you take me?
In Soviet Russia, redundant obligatory jokes use YOU!
Re:ah, for a moon landing flame war...
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 1
You must be new here.
Re:ah, for a moon landing flame war...
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 0
I love xkcd but hadn't seen that particular strip. The Louis Armstrong line had me giggling like a little schoolgirl at work.
Re:ah, for a moon landing flame war...
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 4, Funny
Exactly. The moon landing was obviously filmed in a studio in the Hollow Earth. Gravity is lower inside the Earth, since there is more mass on all sides, so it was the perfect location to fake the landing. It was also filmed inside the largest vaccuum chamber ever built to replicate the lack of air on the moon. I don't understand why more people haven't realized these obvious truths.
Are you trying to tell me that the constantly changing field of electro-magnetic radiation pouring through my laptop does not always match up precisely to the five bars in the display? Frankly, I find that hard to believe.
There have been shifts before. When the Republican Party formed and grew, the Whig Party numbers declined, like rats fleeing a sinking ship. If another party formed with a strong popular base, there would likely be a tipping point where its growth would be unstoppable. Given the decline in strong support for both parties, a new party starting and gaining ground doesn't seem entirely impossible to me. The Green and Libertarian Parties don't quite have it right, but maybe something like them.
I won't argue the USofA is in a state of decline. The America that won WWII and put a man on the moon is gone.
All very good points. The U.S. public is largely unaware of what is going on here, but the governement is not to blame IMHO. The Public Affairs Office (PAO) issues hundreds of press releases a day (in fact, an unclassified summary of every single operation is written up every single day and sent to the PAO for release), however reporters are mostly only interested in casualties and deaths. Schools getting built are accurately reported and issued to the media but go unreported. Every report on something positive ends with how many soldiers died that day. Yes, there are startingly few outright critical reports in the mainstream media of the war, but I think that is mostly due to reporters tryig to stay in good graces with the White House so they continue to get leaked information, scoops, etc. They still paint the war as negatively as possible. The truely telling things about the war are never found in the press, like the fact there are 10 out of 18 provinces now under Iraqi Provincial Control (with another 6 on schedule to be turned over by the end of 2008), or the total number of foriegn fighters coming through Syria (where almost all foriegn fighters come through) every month is 50-60. These figures do not support the Iraq-as-Vietnam unwinable perpetual quagmire picture they want to paint, and are never reported. As such, I think the subtle bias in reporting is much more damaging than an outright stinging critique. This way, people have no idea the positions they hold are based on distorted information.
As for being involved, I think it's time we leave. Either things will get better, or more likely I think, Iran and Al Qaeda will both claim victory (in different ways, and perhaps not publicly) and end up fighting each other for control of Iraq. Let them.
Well, you obviously know much more about what's going on than I do. I just work in Iraq as an intelligence analyst...what do you do again?
The terrorists we've arrested are largely foreigners, so it's tough for me to accept them as "patriots". They indiscrimantly kill innocent Iraqis, which is the big reason behind the Anbar awakening. There have also been several that I know of that showed up in Iraq and realized it was all a mistake: the U.S. was doing the right thing, and the violence was due to Sunni vs Shia strife. It's a shame we don't get their stories out more.
U.S. troops in Iraq, including snipers, wear what we call "uniforms". Terrorists don't. Rules of Armed Conflict recognize combatants that wear uniforms. Is that clear enough of a distinction for you?
And let's not forget why the U.N. didn't approve the invasion. French officials were on the take in the Oil for Food program and France was selling MRBMs, which were forbidden under the UN resolutions it was approving. We were NEVER going to get their approval, or the approval of the numerous other countries participating in the corrupt Oil for Food program. Iraq violated over 20 U.N. resolutions with no repurcussions in sight, freely murdered their own people with chemical weapons, sponsored terrorist groups for over 20 yeas, and somehow Bush ended up the bad guy for taking a stand, actually doing something about it, and stopping it all.
And BTW, Congress voted overwhelmingly to support the president in sending troops to Iraq. Only in your vivid imagination is Bush responsible for everything you see bad in the world.
Well, there's over 20,000 people in U.S. custody in Iraq right now (not including several thousand more in Iraqi custody), the vast majority of which I would call terrorists (caught in direct action against U.S. troops, confirmed IED makers, snipers, members of almost every middle-eastern terrorist group, etc). We haven't even caught ONE million, let alone several, so your ratio must have been pulled from your AC troll ass.
The ratio is 3-1 alerts to false alarms. That is, 4 events, three of which are real and one a false positive. Given the real events for which security personnel are going to be looking (mugging, rape, vandalism, etc), it would quite a while before 4 total events come to pass and only one of those was a false alarm. I would not call that crying wolf.
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The year of the Linux game console is here!
I remember reading some analytical piece back in Fall 01 speculating about the motive. It was saying that the source was most likely from the defense industry, and so whoever sent it may have been trying to show how vulnerable we are to chemical attacks. It may have been a desperate attempt to get the kind of chemical/biological defense measures in place the sender was trying to implement in other ways.
Yeah, all the free music from Beethoven can't hold a candle to Britney Spears.
Well, SlashDev seems to think so.
Red Hat calls MS' interoperability tools as vaporware, then says that cloud computing will run on Linux. Cloud computing doesn't even have a working definition more than two people are willing to agree on, so how is that not vaporware?
Kinda like how Enterprise flew from the back of a 747
They flew an AIRCRAFT CARRIER on the back of a 747? How did I miss that?
TFA says the X-40 was the predecessor to the X-37. I'm guessing X-38 was a typo (I know, hard to beleive a /. summary would have a mistake). The X designation is for experimental. Other aircraft receive a letter designation for its role once it goes into production: F for fighter, B for bomber, etc. Maybe this will be the S-37 (space) or O-37 (orbital)?
UFO sightings does this explain? Military planes take 20 or more years of testing, and TFA says they've flowin it before. So how many times did someone in the Southwest spot one and say, "That ain't no plane. It's movin way too fast!"
I have not had to deal with it in my family yet, and I pray to FSM I never have to.
When studies showed a link between aluminum and Alzheimer's, that was enough to get me to stop drinking anything in an aluminum can and to stop wrapping my sandwiches in aluminum foil. I don't know if there's a real link, but it's not the kind of risk I'm going to take. Aluminum isn't good for you anyway, so it can't hurt to cut down your intake.
It's hard to think of a scarier disease than one where you slowly lose your mental faculties. I'd take almost any other disease over Alzheimer's.
That's just ridiculous. Mars has an atmosphere. You can clearly see the dust immediately settling after the astronauts step, indicating there is no atmosphere. Am I expected to believe they built a huge vaccuum chamber on Mars? What kind of fool do you take me for...for which you take...that for which...For what kind of fool do you take me?
That's the slashdot paradox. Somehow linked websites' servers crash from 1 million+ geeks simultaneously failing to RTFA.
In Soviet Russia, redundant obligatory jokes use YOU!
You must be new here.
I love xkcd but hadn't seen that particular strip. The Louis Armstrong line had me giggling like a little schoolgirl at work.
Exactly. The moon landing was obviously filmed in a studio in the Hollow Earth. Gravity is lower inside the Earth, since there is more mass on all sides, so it was the perfect location to fake the landing. It was also filmed inside the largest vaccuum chamber ever built to replicate the lack of air on the moon. I don't understand why more people haven't realized these obvious truths.
Are you trying to tell me that the constantly changing field of electro-magnetic radiation pouring through my laptop does not always match up precisely to the five bars in the display? Frankly, I find that hard to believe.
There have been shifts before. When the Republican Party formed and grew, the Whig Party numbers declined, like rats fleeing a sinking ship. If another party formed with a strong popular base, there would likely be a tipping point where its growth would be unstoppable. Given the decline in strong support for both parties, a new party starting and gaining ground doesn't seem entirely impossible to me. The Green and Libertarian Parties don't quite have it right, but maybe something like them.
I won't argue the USofA is in a state of decline. The America that won WWII and put a man on the moon is gone.
You must be new here.
All very good points. The U.S. public is largely unaware of what is going on here, but the governement is not to blame IMHO. The Public Affairs Office (PAO) issues hundreds of press releases a day (in fact, an unclassified summary of every single operation is written up every single day and sent to the PAO for release), however reporters are mostly only interested in casualties and deaths. Schools getting built are accurately reported and issued to the media but go unreported. Every report on something positive ends with how many soldiers died that day. Yes, there are startingly few outright critical reports in the mainstream media of the war, but I think that is mostly due to reporters tryig to stay in good graces with the White House so they continue to get leaked information, scoops, etc. They still paint the war as negatively as possible. The truely telling things about the war are never found in the press, like the fact there are 10 out of 18 provinces now under Iraqi Provincial Control (with another 6 on schedule to be turned over by the end of 2008), or the total number of foriegn fighters coming through Syria (where almost all foriegn fighters come through) every month is 50-60. These figures do not support the Iraq-as-Vietnam unwinable perpetual quagmire picture they want to paint, and are never reported. As such, I think the subtle bias in reporting is much more damaging than an outright stinging critique. This way, people have no idea the positions they hold are based on distorted information.
As for being involved, I think it's time we leave. Either things will get better, or more likely I think, Iran and Al Qaeda will both claim victory (in different ways, and perhaps not publicly) and end up fighting each other for control of Iraq. Let them.
Well, you obviously know much more about what's going on than I do. I just work in Iraq as an intelligence analyst...what do you do again?
The terrorists we've arrested are largely foreigners, so it's tough for me to accept them as "patriots". They indiscrimantly kill innocent Iraqis, which is the big reason behind the Anbar awakening. There have also been several that I know of that showed up in Iraq and realized it was all a mistake: the U.S. was doing the right thing, and the violence was due to Sunni vs Shia strife. It's a shame we don't get their stories out more.
U.S. troops in Iraq, including snipers, wear what we call "uniforms". Terrorists don't. Rules of Armed Conflict recognize combatants that wear uniforms. Is that clear enough of a distinction for you?
And let's not forget why the U.N. didn't approve the invasion. French officials were on the take in the Oil for Food program and France was selling MRBMs, which were forbidden under the UN resolutions it was approving. We were NEVER going to get their approval, or the approval of the numerous other countries participating in the corrupt Oil for Food program. Iraq violated over 20 U.N. resolutions with no repurcussions in sight, freely murdered their own people with chemical weapons, sponsored terrorist groups for over 20 yeas, and somehow Bush ended up the bad guy for taking a stand, actually doing something about it, and stopping it all.
And BTW, Congress voted overwhelmingly to support the president in sending troops to Iraq. Only in your vivid imagination is Bush responsible for everything you see bad in the world.
Just use a human femur. Heh heh...get it...femur? Ah, nevermind.
Well, there's over 20,000 people in U.S. custody in Iraq right now (not including several thousand more in Iraqi custody), the vast majority of which I would call terrorists (caught in direct action against U.S. troops, confirmed IED makers, snipers, members of almost every middle-eastern terrorist group, etc). We haven't even caught ONE million, let alone several, so your ratio must have been pulled from your AC troll ass.
The ratio is 3-1 alerts to false alarms. That is, 4 events, three of which are real and one a false positive. Given the real events for which security personnel are going to be looking (mugging, rape, vandalism, etc), it would quite a while before 4 total events come to pass and only one of those was a false alarm. I would not call that crying wolf.
My god, a reasoned and well-thought out post, and it actually got modded insightful. I thought I was still on slashdot...