But if the Imperial race wasn't allowed to interact with aliens, how did the "mixed-breed" subraces come to be? I mean, some Imperial Klingon must have gone against Imperial law to produce the first Klingon-Human hybrid; are we supposed to believe that the Imperials entrusted the diplomatic well-being of their race to this illegal bastard?
Probably not. The point is that currently only one country has this plane, and that country isn't currently at risk of losing its homeland to an invader, and knowingly targetting personnel with that gun would be a war crime, and firing milk-carton-sized shells made of a material that you can only get from spent fission reactor fuel rods would be laughably cost-ineffective, it's a safe bet that the A-10 was never intended as an antipersonnel weapon (and has never purposefully been used as such).
Actually, the A-10 is in no way, shape or form an antipersonnel weapon. It was conceived, commissioned, designed, built, and deployed as a dedicated antitank attack plane. That big gun you're drooling over makes it one of the most effective tank-killers on the modern (or any) battlefield.
It's remotely possible that it could be used against personnel as a secondary mission (maybe with bombs), but since personnel are protected from heavy weaponry by both the Geneva Convention and the Warsaw Pact, it's highly doubtful. I know for a fact that the calibre of the gun is far too large to be legally targetted against troops. Furthermore, the milk-crate-sized rounds it uses are far too expensive to expend against anything but big-money targets (where their muzzle velocity and the extreme focus of their penetrating power makes them very cost-effective).
Wow. The thought of Australia being a credible threat due to superior aerospace technology is so... not at all frightening.
Perhaps if they weren't convinced that Cindi Lauper was the acme of fashion, they would frighten me both more and less at the same time.
Re:a good sysadmin is worth a million dollars...
on
Sysadmin Day. Yay.
·
· Score: 2
Fair enough; anyway, the bit about the admin password established right away that she's an idiot.
My mind boggled at the idea of leaving a server turned off for 9 months, especially when there are apparently people who want it to be on. Out of that boggle sprang my initial reply.
I feel very, very sorry for you. Clearly the company you work for has some serious issues.
Re:a good sysadmin is worth a million dollars...
on
Sysadmin Day. Yay.
·
· Score: 2
She also thought that my linux box had the nimda virus, so she turned it off...Hasn't been turned on since.
Who leaves one of their systems turned off for 9 months? It must not have been very important. If one of our developers leaves a system down for 9 months, we re-task it to someone who'll actually use it. And if that developer asks, "whatever happened to box foo?", I'd probably give him some bullshit excuse like "oh it had the Nimda virus, so we had to turn it off".
But then, I don't store my passwords in plaintext fields, so I guess I'm allowed to do things like that.
Well, there's always foresight, of course. But the Internet seems to be breeding a new kind of techno-idiot: a consumer who's supremely confident of their understanding of online transactions and relationships, while at the same time blissfully ingorant of how the whole thing really works.
These people remind me of teenagers who have just received their driver's permits, and are now convinced that they have the driving skill of Mario Andretti combined with the mechanical skill of Mario's pit crew. Then, when they rear-end somebody, they complain that there should have been more cops around to prevent the accident.
CEOs are part of an elite upper class that has no need for plebeian "appreciation days". They get extensive perks, rather impressive salaries, and golden parachutes.
More often than not, they have great responsibilities as well (our CEO has been entrusted with a $12 billion war chest, and a mandate from the board to spend that money on dominating 10 new markets in the next 3-5 years).
When they perform well, I imagine CEOs receive tokens of appreciation far beyond what us grunts could ever imagine. Even when they do poorly, they still enjoy better benefits than the rest of the company.
"CEO Appreciation Day". What a joke.
Please note that I'm not arguing in favor of the existence of god, just expressing my curiousity about the reasoning behind your atheism.
Also, I never said that absence of proof for noexistence counts as proof of existence.
If I may sum up: your belief system consists mainly of not really caring one way or the other, and not having seen any evidence for the existence of god. Its foundation is the negative statement "I do not assume the existence of god", rather than the positive statement "I assume the nonexistence of god".
Finally, you have not encountered any irrefutable proof of existence, and you don't expect to encounter any such proof in your lifetime, thus cementing the irrelevance of the whole issue for you.
Is that correct?
Please take these statements at face value. I'm not trying to push my view (whatever it may be) on you, and I'm not trying to judge your view either.
A lot like us atheists will have a hard time proving there isn't a god.
So then an Atheist's main occupation must be to run around debunking every instance of evidence that "god" does exist. Even if we assume that many instances of such evidence are indeed false (which seems like a reasonable assumption to me), don't you ever worry that sooner or later there will be proofs that you can't refute?
And will you continue to be an atheist after such a point?
Furthermore, since you admit that proof of "Not god" is difficult (logically impossible, I believe) to obtain, then upon what fundamental principles do you base your belief?
And isn't "belief without proof" a definition of "faith" anyway?
And wouldn't that make your brand of atheism simply another faith-based belief system?
And doesn't that make any moral or ethic derived from your atheism equal in value to the morals and ethics of a theist belief system? That is, no more or less true or false than what the Muslims believe, or the Christians believe, or the Freemasons believe?
Regarding your sig: do you really believe that the phrase "one nation, under God", accurately describes the country you're pledging your allegiance to? Or is the pledge for you simply an expression of an ideal state that we may all aspire to, even if it has yet to be established?
Slashdot Mirror
But if the Imperial race wasn't allowed to interact with aliens, how did the "mixed-breed" subraces come to be? I mean, some Imperial Klingon must have gone against Imperial law to produce the first Klingon-Human hybrid; are we supposed to believe that the Imperials entrusted the diplomatic well-being of their race to this illegal bastard?
I do. 3 External, 6 internal. And that's with 2 internal and 2 external drives already occupied. Just get a taller case, next time :)
I've noticed that my browser does not complain when I close paragraphs that I never explicitly opened (like this one).
Probably not. The point is that currently only one country has this plane, and that country isn't currently at risk of losing its homeland to an invader, and knowingly targetting personnel with that gun would be a war crime, and firing milk-carton-sized shells made of a material that you can only get from spent fission reactor fuel rods would be laughably cost-ineffective, it's a safe bet that the A-10 was never intended as an antipersonnel weapon (and has never purposefully been used as such).
Who told you that? The author?
...when he died, I assume this was the other William Gibson.
It's like the paragraph tag. Your browser shouldn't complain if you close a paragraph you never officially opened (like this one).
It's remotely possible that it could be used against personnel as a secondary mission (maybe with bombs), but since personnel are protected from heavy weaponry by both the Geneva Convention and the Warsaw Pact, it's highly doubtful. I know for a fact that the calibre of the gun is far too large to be legally targetted against troops. Furthermore, the milk-crate-sized rounds it uses are far too expensive to expend against anything but big-money targets (where their muzzle velocity and the extreme focus of their penetrating power makes them very cost-effective).
[/nitpick]
Actually, the "pedant" tag references "pedant mode", which is where the pedantry actually takes place.
[/nitpick]
You're probably thinking of the time machine, not the scramjet. Don't worry, though. I get the two confused all the time.
Wow. The thought of Australia being a credible threat due to superior aerospace technology is so... not at all frightening. Perhaps if they weren't convinced that Cindi Lauper was the acme of fashion, they would frighten me both more and less at the same time.
This could only be true if
a) Consumers were literate enought to appreciate well-written stories
and
b) Consumers had enough reading comprehension to understand and remember the solid content of the articles.
Which ones, and when?
Don't tell us, tell this guy. He's the one who's so freaked out about it.
I bet the trolls here wish they could do as well on purpose as you seem to do by accident.
Out my way, we ceded the arcades to aZn riceboys years ago.
I think you misspelled Snow Crash.
Fair enough; anyway, the bit about the admin password established right away that she's an idiot.
My mind boggled at the idea of leaving a server turned off for 9 months, especially when there are apparently people who want it to be on. Out of that boggle sprang my initial reply.
I feel very, very sorry for you. Clearly the company you work for has some serious issues.
Who leaves one of their systems turned off for 9 months? It must not have been very important. If one of our developers leaves a system down for 9 months, we re-task it to someone who'll actually use it. And if that developer asks, "whatever happened to box foo?", I'd probably give him some bullshit excuse like "oh it had the Nimda virus, so we had to turn it off".
But then, I don't store my passwords in plaintext fields, so I guess I'm allowed to do things like that.
These people remind me of teenagers who have just received their driver's permits, and are now convinced that they have the driving skill of Mario Andretti combined with the mechanical skill of Mario's pit crew. Then, when they rear-end somebody, they complain that there should have been more cops around to prevent the accident.
CEOs are part of an elite upper class that has no need for plebeian "appreciation days". They get extensive perks, rather impressive salaries, and golden parachutes. More often than not, they have great responsibilities as well (our CEO has been entrusted with a $12 billion war chest, and a mandate from the board to spend that money on dominating 10 new markets in the next 3-5 years). When they perform well, I imagine CEOs receive tokens of appreciation far beyond what us grunts could ever imagine. Even when they do poorly, they still enjoy better benefits than the rest of the company. "CEO Appreciation Day". What a joke.
Thanks for the reply.
Please note that I'm not arguing in favor of the existence of god, just expressing my curiousity about the reasoning behind your atheism.
Also, I never said that absence of proof for noexistence counts as proof of existence.
If I may sum up: your belief system consists mainly of not really caring one way or the other, and not having seen any evidence for the existence of god. Its foundation is the negative statement "I do not assume the existence of god", rather than the positive statement "I assume the nonexistence of god".
Finally, you have not encountered any irrefutable proof of existence, and you don't expect to encounter any such proof in your lifetime, thus cementing the irrelevance of the whole issue for you.
Is that correct?
Please take these statements at face value. I'm not trying to push my view (whatever it may be) on you, and I'm not trying to judge your view either.
So then an Atheist's main occupation must be to run around debunking every instance of evidence that "god" does exist. Even if we assume that many instances of such evidence are indeed false (which seems like a reasonable assumption to me), don't you ever worry that sooner or later there will be proofs that you can't refute?
And will you continue to be an atheist after such a point?
Furthermore, since you admit that proof of "Not god" is difficult (logically impossible, I believe) to obtain, then upon what fundamental principles do you base your belief?
And isn't "belief without proof" a definition of "faith" anyway?
And wouldn't that make your brand of atheism simply another faith-based belief system?
And doesn't that make any moral or ethic derived from your atheism equal in value to the morals and ethics of a theist belief system? That is, no more or less true or false than what the Muslims believe, or the Christians believe, or the Freemasons believe?
Regarding your sig: do you really believe that the phrase "one nation, under God", accurately describes the country you're pledging your allegiance to? Or is the pledge for you simply an expression of an ideal state that we may all aspire to, even if it has yet to be established?
Too bad this is completely different from Project Gutenberg.