No, Americans have about as much success as any army of a democracy getting along with the natives, if not a little more success then others. The fact that American occupation forces tend to leave fairly quickly or at least go hold up on a base and stop all operations inside of that nation (South Korea, Germany, exc.) minimizes the antagonism compared to say when an Israeli occupation force shows up. You know that if the Americans show up, they are already thinking about getting the fuck out. Coming from a multi-ethnic nation as a multi-ethnic army also offers an extra layer of tolerance against racism. That isn't to imply it doesn't happen, just that Americans tend to be more fortified against it then an ethnically homogenous nation's army.
The only people that really excel above and beyond the US as occupiers are the British. The British excel because they have had centuries of experience administrating many large and powerful colonial governments that ruled over natives. The British have learned how to be overlord and keep the natives pissed off level down to a minimum.
In the opening months of the war, there was a stark contrast between the British occupied areas and the American occupied areas. The largest issue is not so much that the Americans or British are brutal as occupiers. Both are well disciplined armies that try and refrain harming civilians.
The key difference is that when the Americans showed up in a city, they had no fucking clue what to after all the enemies were killed. They didn't know how to bring law and order. They didn't know who to talk to about setting up a new city government. They didn't know what to fix first to keep the civilian population happy. Hell, they didn't even know how to run a roadblock.
There is more then one horrific story about how US marines and army men were told to set up a roadblock by the higher levels. The problem was that no one knew how to set up a roadblock. In the first few weeks of the war the US inflicted horrific civilian causalities because of poorly designed road blocks. They would just throw a few vehicles across the road, try and wave people down to stop, then panic and open fire on those who suddenly accelerated. As it turns out, seeing as US roadblock, panicking, and accelerating, and subsequently getting shot by US military who thought they were under attack as a very common reaction from Iraqi civilians. It wasn't until weeks later that they learned how to set up barricades to forces cars to slow down.
The British on the other hand had done this all before and knew exactly what they were doing. The British army is well designed to fight in their former colonies against an army mixed with the non-combatants. The US army on the other hand was an army designed to fight in the open fields of Germany against a massive Russian army with every sane civilian having long since fled the area.
If there is a morbid silver lining to the Iraq war, it is that the US is becoming very skilled at acting as an occupation army with hostile insurgents mixed within the population. If the Iraq war was to happen again tomorrow, the US would probably be just as skilled as the British in dealing with civilians on the battlefield.
I was hearing a discussion about this topic on the BBC the other day, and one of the panel members made an excellent point: the same criticism ID'ers make about evolution can be made of a ton of other scientific theories (in all sciences, not just biology), so why aren't those theories criticized as well? They aren't because evolution is the typical battleground in the cultural war between religious and secular US, not Relativity or Gravity.
What theories are being taught that are like ID? Relativity? Are you joking me? You are comparing relativity with ID?
Relativity will predict the motion of almost any celestial body you can name. There are a few where (super massive particles) where relativity breaks down, but any class that teaches relativity will teach you that the combination of quantum mechanics and relativity produces impossible answers.
ID though? Ha! ID doesn't predict one single thing. ID predicts absolutely nothing. ID isn't science. When ID is able to predict a SINGLE thing, we can elevate it up to the level of hypothesis. Until then, it doesn't even achieve the level of hypothesis, much less a theory.
ID belongs at Sunday school and it should stay there. I don't care if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Zeus, God, Thor, or whoever the hell is the creator. Just keep your beliefs in your spaghetti bowl, Mt. Olympus, Church, warrior hall, or whatever. The science class is for science and theories.
Are you joking? Macro-evolution is easy to disprove. Show that the fossile record is faked would disprove it pretty handily. Having aliens appear in the sky and changing one speices into another would disprove evolution. The list is almost endless in the ways you can disprove macro-evolution. We just don't think about most of those ways because they are stupid and not going to happen. If angels float down from heaven and suddenly turn one species into another species evolution will be dead and ID will be taken very seriously. Until that happens, ID is a joke that will continue to be laughed out of courts and scientific journals.
Certainly in Alabama there might be a judge he will rule in favor of ID. The problem is that all roads lead away from Alabama in terms of courts. Everything stops at the Supreme Court. Those guys take their job seriously and will not think twice to murder ID (yes, even the Republican justices). ID has no legs. If they ever get a legal victory, it will almost certainly be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court where it absolutely will be struck down.
ID is dead. The only thing that can bring it back to life is if ID gets some credit in some serious scientific journals. Unless a scientist catches said intelligent designer in the act of designing, it will never be taken seriously.
The ID folks can continue to fight this stupid battle, and the courts can continue to offer damning verdicts. The ID folks should stay at church. Trying to bring this shit into federally and state funded schools is a battle they will never win.
The smack down was pretty complete and thorough in this case. The school bored members specifically said that they wanted to teach ID for religious reasons. That in it of itself killed them. The judge then went further and called ID a load of shit. The fact that the bored members were motivated by religious convictions is undisputable. I doubt there will be an appeal.
What I imagine will happen is that they move and hope to find a challenge that they can actually defend. What is defendable? I have no idea. I will be amazed if an ID challenge gets as high as the supreme court before being smacked down in the next 10 years. Even if they managed to get it to the Supreme Court, you can pretty much guarantee that the Supreme Court would smack them down. The Supreme Court (yes, even the Republicans) take this stuff very seriously and will step on it regardless of their personal feelings.
IDs only hope is to conduct a scientifically verifiable experiment. I laugh at the prospects of ID ever getting published in Nature. If scientists record the hand of God, Zeus, UFOs, or His Noodleness spontaneously converting one species to another spices, we will all eat our words. Until then, the ID folks can expect to be laughed out of court and any scientific journal of any repute.
Personally, I hope they try again. Reading some of damning excerpts from this ruling makes the whole exercise seem worthwhile.
Check up on how Germany became fascist sometime. The chain of events that led them into fascism is not all that dissimilar from some of our own social and political movements. We're just lucky enough to have an environment that is less tolerant of them, for now at least. Most Germans certainly weren't fascists... they simply allowed it to happen. That's the mistake we can't afford to repeat.
I agree, check up on how Germany became fascist some time and realize that the US could never go down that road. The US constitution is far too strong to allow any sort of true fascism to creep up. You couldn't give a president dictatorial powers even if 70% of the nation wanted to. In order to change the constitution, it takes a super majority of the population to agree to any such changes. Amending the constitution is damn hard and the only way to significantly change the governing structure of the US.
If you tried to legally bring about some fascist state, you would then need to get past the hundreds of NGOs that do nothing but obsesses over civil and political liberties. Further, you need to deal with the fact that American culture is deeply rooted in certain ideals in freedom and have the power to remove any government every four years. Not only would you have to amend the constitution, but you would have to remove sections of it are so deeply rooted in American culture that the idea that they could ever be removed is laughable. The poor dumb bastard that suggests changing any amendment in the bill of rights is going to be lynched.
Trying to achieve a fascist state illegally (IE, not amending the constitution) is utterly impossible. The secret service would turn on any president that tried to stay past his term. If the secret service didn't do it, the police would. If the police didn't, the people would. If the people didn't, the military would. People don't understand how key the US military is to preserving the US democracy. The US military is built from the ground up to follow the constitution first and foremost. Hell, during the Katrina disaster the US military refused to enter the city and provide order despite the begging of the mayor because it is forbidden by the constitution.
All this also utterly ignores the fact that the number of immigrants obtaining citizenship in the US is orders of magnitudes higher then many parts of Europe. An immigration bill is trying to be kicked through to set up to increase border security to reduce illegal immigration. It almost failed because a large minority wanted to add a measure that would legalize the status of many current illegal immigrants. That is not the actions of a fascist state in the making.
People. Yes yes, we all hate Bush. Don't worry as he is on his way out. Take a breather. He isn't a fascist, and fascism isn't at hand. The nation is not descending into any shape or form of fascism. The civil and political liberties that US citizens have blow most nations out of the water. The tolerance that US has for immigration puts most of Europe to shame. The US is one of the oldest democracies in the world and isn't going anywhere. At worst, it will elect a moderate Republican to office next election. No, that isn't fascism, it is just irritating. I am not saying current policies are good, but calling them fascist is like calling a proposal to raise spending on social security communist. It is stupid.
The army already makes extensive use of robots to investigate and disarm IEDs. If they come across something that looks suspicious, they send out this tracked robot about the size of a dog with a gripper arm and a camera. They can investigate the IED with the camera. If they determine it to be an IED, they can give the robot a block of C4 in its gripper arm. The robot takes the C4 to the IED, drops it, backs off, and then they blow the IED.
I imagine the robot they used in this lab is a tad bit more expensive then the disposable IED robots that army uses.
We're no longer producing nuke'cler weapons? Why, just because the government promises they're not? Grow up.
No, you can believe that we are no longer producing them because we have plenty. There isn't a need to build any more. The only thing the US is doing in terms of nuclear weapons right now is R&D in how to build better ones, maintaining the current stock pile, and slowly dropping the number of overall weapons.
Certainly the US is still doing R&D, but R&D is long term project aimed at preparing for an unknown threat far in the future. For all of the threats that exist today and within the next 20 years or so, the US has more then enough weapons and then some. The US could flatten Russia, China, and the EU at the same time, though granted, Russia and the EU could flatten the US back (and even China could offer a little hurt).
I imagine it got modded as a troll because it is an uninformative one line post that adds nothing to the conversation. A dozen other people have mentioned that Hubble, but have done so while taking the time to at least use the world "Hubble" in their post. No, it probably isn't a troll, but it doesn't deserve any positive mods.
You are right, there are some alternatives. ATOD and EVE are both good examples of MMORPGs that have broken the mold. You could also throw in Second Life, Puzzle Pirates, and a few others to the grab bag of 'not games where you sit around trying to level up'. None of those really reach for the holy grail of MMORPGs though.
The closest game to reach for the holy grail of MMORPGs was the original Ultima Online. I doubt many people remember, but the original game design of UO called for a completely dynamic and open world. They wanted to make it so that if you killed all the wolves in a forest, the bunny population would explode. If you cut down all the trees too quickly, they wouldn't grow back. If you wanted to stop a lawless band, you were supposed to form up a posy and go take them out. They wanted to see governments naturally form, cities created, and in general create an online WORLD. It was a miserable failure of course. That isn't to say UO failed to be a good game. On the contrary, UO was a massive success. Hell, I think it is still marching forward today. They just had to set the Holy Grail down and realize that they didn't yet have the capability to do what they wanted. They drastically watered down the original game design and have continued to move away from that original design ever since they opened.
The challenge of building an open world is that you are trying to set in place a few basic rules that eventually lead to a stable system. UO failed to achieve an open and free world because their original base rules led to a chaotic system that ran out of control. What is sad is that even with our superior computing power and massive amount of insight as to how people operate online, no one has even tried to create something approaching an open world that generates its own content since UO's failed attempt. Hell, it appears that no one has been able even develop a stable economy, much less a stable online society with hard coding a set of absolute rules which everyone must follow (IE, don't kill each other).
That said, there is some hope that we are learning lessons. WoW for instance has managed to produce the closest thing to a stable economy yet. Granted, the economy is mind numbingly simple, but even EQ with its simple economy couldn't keep inflation down, so there are some signs of slow progress.
My biggest issue with the current MMORPG industry is their fear of even trying to take some tentative steps forward. When they do attempt to step forward they do it through the most bumbling and incompetent methods. Any economist could have looked at the SWG economy and told the designers that it was going to implode. I wish MMORPGs would be a little more daring and talk to more experts on human behavior. When you have geeks try and code an economy or social system, you get broken economies like SWG and EQ, PvP gank-fests like early UO.
Combine daring and the willingness to consult true experts, and I think someone could produce a more open an interesting world then the current crap out there.
I doubt most people are going to be able to connect the two. Even if they did connect the two, if stem cell research is as hopefull as it appears, the constant drum beat of advances in the field will drowned out this one set back.
Further, the only real issue at hand is federal funding of stem cell research. State and private funding have never been at issue. Sure, Alabama and Mississippi might struggle with whether or not to fund stem cell research, California and Massachusetts on the other hand don't. That isn't to say that federal funding isn't a nice thing to have for this type of stuff, just that it is only an obstacle, not a barrier.
I think in the long run it isn't going to matter. We are finding better ways to develop stem cells beyond embryonic methods. For better or for worse, as a population as a whole we always are going to feel a little moral queasiness about using fertilized eggs. If there is a way to get around it, we are going to use it. There is already a lot of promising research out there that suggests that this entire thing is going to end up being a non-issue as there are other sources of stem cells that are just as good as embryonic stem cells.
Technology solves a lot of moral problems. Infanticide is a good example. Infanticide was considered a morally acceptable practice throughout most of human history. People considered it immoral to bring a child into the world if it meant potentially killing others to feed that extra mouth. Today, in most developed nations infanticide is completely illegal and the morality implications are not pondered. Developed nations have more then enough food and institutions that will take unwanted infants, hence the moral question of infanticide has been rendered moot.
In my opinion, abortion, embryonic stem cells, and a whole host of societal problems are eventually going to go the way of infanticide. Technology is just going to simply solve the majority of problems associated with this questions. That isn't to down play how we have to struggle with those issues today, just to point out that the struggle won't last forever. In the end, neither those that advocate a pragmatic approach nor those who are trying to uphold some moral code win. In the end technology wins and shuts them both up.
The piece about using one of the lab assistance eggs is a 'morality' issue, and I agree not a very big one. Who cares where the egg came from?
The much larger issue that isn't just a morality issue is that it looks like he faked much of his evidence. This part has nothing to do with the morality. It looks like a bunch of the evidence presented was faked and the author has since withdraw his paper. While the study hasn't been disproved, it seems pretty clear that there were either grievous errors or it was a fake. Either way, it is no longer to be considered a valid study.
Non-Gamer kills the skeleton for the 100th times: "Uh, why am I killing skeletons again?"
Gamer: "To get to level 5!"
Non-Gamer: "What do I get at level 5?"
Gamer: "Improved fireball man!"
Non-Gamer: "What do I do with the improved fireball?"
Gamer: "Shit, man, you need improved fireball if you want to get to level 6."
Non-Gamer: "So I am getting to level 5 so I can get to level 6?"
Yeah... better you just not show non-gamers what MMORPGs are all about. Unless they addict easily, they are probably just going to think you are insane and need to get out more.
MMORPGs are a bad habit that I kicked a while ago. Wake me up when someone grows a pair and offers something new... and by new I don't mean prettier graphics or a refinement of the old formula. If you can stip the core game play down to "killing stuff to get to the next level", count me out.
First, this is Slashdot, it is okay to say the word fuck. What this. Fuck fuck fuck fuck, shit fuck shit fuck, cock. See? You don't need to censor yourself. Sure, you be modded down, but well, fuck the mods. Getting the most karma doesn't make you win.
Second, my point was about an already bought in market and what it takes to break into that market. If you are arguing that Microsoft/MTV can break into the current market without breaking into the iPod, you are fooling yourself. Yes, people can sell off their iPods on e-bay, but that comes at an immediate loss of value. If John Doe bought an iPod for 300 dollars last year, it is worth maybe 50 dollars today. He can't simply swap his old iPod for the next best thing. The fact of the matter is that Apple owns the current market through iPods. Even if people were to stop buying iPods tomorrow, they will still own the market for at least a year or two simply because people don't drop their MP3 players on eBay over night. Apple has this market "locked in". It isn't going anywhere for some time to come. If you don't like the word "locked in", then let me rephrase it as "locked out". The rest of the market that is fighting over the table scraps of non-iPod mp3 players are locked out of the iPod, and most the market owns an iPod that they are not going to part with until time devalues them more.
Third, as for me personally, I do want alternative pricing options. Let me clarify a little more. I want alternative pricing options beyond buying CDs or buying from iTunes. It isn't the DRM that I give a shit about. It isn't even the price. It is the entire model. I don't want to buy each and every drop of music. In the same way I don't own a single DvD but do subscribe to netflixs, I want to not own any music, but subscribe to a service that will let me dig into their database of music for as long as I am a member. Namely, I want a Napster style all you can eat monthly fee. This is something that neither record stores nor iTunes offers.
This is an example of an alternative pricing method. If Microsoft/MTV could offer such alternative pricing methods inside of the iPod market, they could potentially break off a piece of iTunes business. I imagine I am not alone in being revolted at paying a hundred dollars if I want to download a 100 random songs, load them up on my mp3 player, then get rid of them after I am done.
Point stands: if you're swallowing your principles already, who cares if you're dealing with MS or the Mafia?
Wowa there! I think it is time to reset our moral compass.
I don't like my best friend's girl friend because she is a dumb ditz. I also don't like Hitler because he conducted mass genocide and plunged the world into war. Hitler deserved to die. My friend's girlfriend, as irritating as her mindless prattle can be, doesn't deserve to die. See, we can have varied levels of dislike.
My dislike of MTV and Microsoft is pretty mild compared to say the Russian mafia, because you, you know, the Russian mafia kills and enslaves people. Microsoft on the other hand makes shitty software while MTV peddles mindless crap to the lowest common denominator.
My principles against MTV and Microsoft is that I don't like their products. My principles against the Russian Mafia is that they kill people. If you can't see how perhaps those two things are not equal...
Too bad it isn't just MTV that sucks. Have you tried watching the Discovery Channel? When in the hell did science become purely about building fucking motorcycle. I swear that they play absolutely nothing except motorcycle building reality TV shows and the occasional MythBusters. It makes me fucking hate TV. I can't wait until the day that everything is on demand. I figure once everything is on demand one of two things will happen:
1) The good shows will get their moment in the sun and execs won't be able to kill them. It will be clear that people like good programing, not the latest reality TV crap fest. I am happy as good shows become easy to find and I never half to even flip past a shitty show again.
2) All the good shows get killed because most people are dim witted idiots that love the latest shit flung at us by execs. I never ever watch a shitty show again because I give up TV. As a positive side effect, I will also never worry about low voter turn out in the US as it is clear the shit flinging idiots probably shouldn't be mucking up the system with their inane opinion as to who should be the leader.
This is going to be a failed experiment by MTV and Microsoft unless they realize what Apple has that no one else does. Appple has control of the iPod. If you have an iPod, you can't use DRMed WMA. If MTV and Microsoft think that they are going to make a substantial profit off in the saturated field of non-iPod MP3 players, they are insane. The money is in a service that can compete for the iPod, in addition to other MP3 players.
What MTV and Microsoft has to do to get their foot in the door is offer a service that works with iPods AND offers a different pricing model then iTunes. That is the only way they can possibly compete with iTunes. Anything short of this is going to result in them fighting every other online music company for that tiny sliver of remaining non-iPod users.
I personally would jump at an all you can eat service for my iPod. Hell, I would jump at any sort of pricing options that or ability to escapes AAC lock in for my iPod. I got my iPod as a gift. I would love it if there was a way to escape Apple's monopoly short of throwing out a $300 piece of equipment. If MTV and Microsoft, as much as I loath the both of them, can do it I'll jump. It isn't like I have any love for Apple either.
If they have a plan to defeat Apple, then this will be newsworthy. If they are just jumping in on Napster's model and hoping to sell via the shitty MTV brand, this is a yawner that no one is going to give a shit about.
At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority".
You have never owned a cat, have you? You could have the fattest and most well fed cat on the earth, and that vicious creature will still merrily kill anything smaller then it just for shits and giggles. In fact, not only do they kill the poor critter, but if they can, they will terrorize it before they kill it. You have never seen sadism until you have seen a cat corner a creature smaller then it.
If anything, the poor critters of the earth should be thankful that they got smart monkeys with some level of empathy towards each other and other critters rather then a race of smart cats.
Claims that humans are any different in their destructive impulses from other animals are down right silly. If any base emotion separates humanity from other animals, it is empathy. No other animal I know of keeps pets simply because we enjoy the company of other non-human species. No animal I know of tries to feed and help those outside of its social group. No animal I know of shows any sort of restraint or preservationist feeling when dealing with the environment.
If there is a difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom, it isn't in aggression or joy in killing. Many other animals merrily murder anything outside of its immediate social circle. Hell, many other animals merrily murder anything INSIDE its social circle. If there is some base desire that humanity holds that other animals appear to lack, it is the empathy to RESTRAIN from giving into base desires for aggression and destruction of those that are outside of our social circle.
Really? Then why do they insist on segregating India's civilian and military facilities as part of the Indo-US nuke cooperation treaty (or whatever it is called). And why do they ban import of equipment that is dual use to any non-designated nuke power?
The facility in question is used to shoot down nukes. India's facilities are used to make them. The DoD doesn't have much worry that the civilians working the radio telescope will use the information they might see to build nukes. While radio telescopes might not create nukes, nuclear power plants in foreign nations can, hence the regulation as to what and who the US is willing to sell technology that can be used to make nukes. You worked in the word dual use, but other then that, these are two completely separate issues.
Further, you are just proving my point. Take US federal dollars paid for by US tax payers and you are going to get strings attached. That is just the reality of taking American tax payer money or working with the US federal government.
Nano-materials are generally not a problem. Even in the worst case scenario where it turns out that nanotubes are as bad or worse the asbestos, it wouldn't mean much.
Open up your computer, peek in, and realize that almost everything you see in there was made using a horribly toxic process, could probably kill you if you tried to eat it, and would probably do bad things if you ground it up and tried to breathe it in. The nice thing is that all that stuff is in a nice solid state that isn't going to cause you any problems unless you do something stupid like grind it up and snort it.
Nano-materials are the same. Could breathing in carbon nanotubes give you lung cancer like asbestos? Sure. That said, it isn't worth the lost sleep until someone decides to line the walls of your house with carbon nanotubes. I wouldn't want my walls lined with arsenic either, but I don't care that my computer has some in it.
Further, you need to realize that the number of people doing 'true' nanotechnology where they are building novel and new molecules that we truly don't understand are very few, and of these few, even fewer are even thinking about products. Most of the 'nano' technology we hear about is just dumb mundane shit that provides no danger. People throw a little TiO2 into a material and call it "nano-technology" for the investors.
Right now, the only people that this stuff should concern should be researchers handling this stuff. Speaking as someone who DOES work with carbon nanotubes, you need to realize that we already treat this stuff seriously. We work with nanotubes in an aqueous solution such that it isn't going to float into anyone's lungs. On the very rare occasion when we work with this stuff when it is dry (looks like a black powder), this stuff is treated like powdered cancer and all precautions are taken.
The moral of the story? If you are a researcher and you are working with fullerenes, treat them with respect so you don't die in 20 years from lung cancer. If you are an average Joe, don't worry, you don't need to petition politicians to save you from the evil nano-technology yet. If someone wants to offer you buckyball memory or nanotubes transistors in your computer, relax, smile, and enjoy your spiffy new toy. When someone offers you nano-tube walls and buckyball insulation, THEN you can start to take these concerns seriously.
...people are surprised that a project getting multi-million dollar funding is going to be also be occasionally used by the DoD because it has some military utility? Really people, there is an easy way out if you don't like the idea of the DoD getting a utility out of this dish in exchanger for millions of tax payer dollars: Raise the money yourself.
What is happening is just common sense. There is an expensive project that will benefit scientists. At the same time, the DoD is undergoing a project that will need that exact same piece of equipment. We can either build two of these things and set tax payers back a small hunk of change, or we can build one. Take government money, and take the strings attached.
Now while making government funded facilities duel use makes perfect sense, you can easily argue that this whole Star Wars thing is a big waste of time and money. I personally wouldn't mind a nice big cozy shield of lasers or what not to knock the unlikely ballistic nuke out of the sky. That said, there is a cost benefit analysis that goes along with this. If an impenetrable shield of d00m could be erected for the cost of one month worth of operations in Iraq, I would say go for it. If instead it is going to cost enough bankrupt the nation, obviously it isn't worth spending money on such a remote danger.
Summary: Duel use facilities when getting government funding to save tax payers: Good. Star Wars in general: Maybe not so good.
My spending on music (online or CD) has slowly been dropping. I am down to maybe a couple CDs a year and nothing online. This shit is simply too much though.
Fuck it.
I am not going to buy another piece of music until this worthless industry gets its shit together and removes their head from their ass hole. Sueing over posting the fucking lyrics to a song?
Fuck this industry all together. There are other less stupid ways of entertaining myself. Music doesn't have a monopoly on recreation. I'll stick to free commercial free podcasts and forget everything else. I won't even listen to the radio (not that it isn't shit anyways) simply because I don't want to support the bastards even in theory by listening to commercials.
Are my last few dollars drying up for this worthless industry going to have any impact at all? Hell no. That said, I know I will feel a lot less slimier not giving these shit heads a cent.
My first impression was that not only did they tip thier hand, but now everyone and their dog will attempt to post code, and that this was a stupid idea. Thinking on it now, this very well could be an excellent method of trapping more then one shit head at a time.
Publicize the information so that other people can also figure out the algorithm. Don't give it away, just let out of enough so that a dedicated person can reach the same conclusion. Now just wait and nab every single bastard dumb enough to try and post code for Sober to get. While you are at it, switch off every website in question when its time to upload comes up. Not only do you cripple the virus's ability to upload, but you catch everyone stupid enough to try and abuse it.
Granted, catching someone based off domain registration probably is not trivial, but I wouldn't be surprised if the feds have something up their sleeve.
Why on earth did they release this information? I can see telling the date of the next attack, but explaining how the author communicates with the virus just seems dumb. It doesn't help anyone except for the guy who knows that his methods have been spotted. Now you know that if he decides to upload to one of his websites he is going to assume that he is going to be tracked. This just means that he is going to make sure he is covert in doing it. If they had withheld this information, they might have been able to catch him in the act without him knowing and busted the little fascist shit head.
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No, Americans have about as much success as any army of a democracy getting along with the natives, if not a little more success then others. The fact that American occupation forces tend to leave fairly quickly or at least go hold up on a base and stop all operations inside of that nation (South Korea, Germany, exc.) minimizes the antagonism compared to say when an Israeli occupation force shows up. You know that if the Americans show up, they are already thinking about getting the fuck out. Coming from a multi-ethnic nation as a multi-ethnic army also offers an extra layer of tolerance against racism. That isn't to imply it doesn't happen, just that Americans tend to be more fortified against it then an ethnically homogenous nation's army.
The only people that really excel above and beyond the US as occupiers are the British. The British excel because they have had centuries of experience administrating many large and powerful colonial governments that ruled over natives. The British have learned how to be overlord and keep the natives pissed off level down to a minimum.
In the opening months of the war, there was a stark contrast between the British occupied areas and the American occupied areas. The largest issue is not so much that the Americans or British are brutal as occupiers. Both are well disciplined armies that try and refrain harming civilians.
The key difference is that when the Americans showed up in a city, they had no fucking clue what to after all the enemies were killed. They didn't know how to bring law and order. They didn't know who to talk to about setting up a new city government. They didn't know what to fix first to keep the civilian population happy. Hell, they didn't even know how to run a roadblock.
There is more then one horrific story about how US marines and army men were told to set up a roadblock by the higher levels. The problem was that no one knew how to set up a roadblock. In the first few weeks of the war the US inflicted horrific civilian causalities because of poorly designed road blocks. They would just throw a few vehicles across the road, try and wave people down to stop, then panic and open fire on those who suddenly accelerated. As it turns out, seeing as US roadblock, panicking, and accelerating, and subsequently getting shot by US military who thought they were under attack as a very common reaction from Iraqi civilians. It wasn't until weeks later that they learned how to set up barricades to forces cars to slow down.
The British on the other hand had done this all before and knew exactly what they were doing. The British army is well designed to fight in their former colonies against an army mixed with the non-combatants. The US army on the other hand was an army designed to fight in the open fields of Germany against a massive Russian army with every sane civilian having long since fled the area.
If there is a morbid silver lining to the Iraq war, it is that the US is becoming very skilled at acting as an occupation army with hostile insurgents mixed within the population. If the Iraq war was to happen again tomorrow, the US would probably be just as skilled as the British in dealing with civilians on the battlefield.
I was hearing a discussion about this topic on the BBC the other day, and one of the panel members made an excellent point: the same criticism ID'ers make about evolution can be made of a ton of other scientific theories (in all sciences, not just biology), so why aren't those theories criticized as well? They aren't because evolution is the typical battleground in the cultural war between religious and secular US, not Relativity or Gravity.
What theories are being taught that are like ID? Relativity? Are you joking me? You are comparing relativity with ID?
Relativity will predict the motion of almost any celestial body you can name. There are a few where (super massive particles) where relativity breaks down, but any class that teaches relativity will teach you that the combination of quantum mechanics and relativity produces impossible answers.
ID though? Ha! ID doesn't predict one single thing. ID predicts absolutely nothing. ID isn't science. When ID is able to predict a SINGLE thing, we can elevate it up to the level of hypothesis. Until then, it doesn't even achieve the level of hypothesis, much less a theory.
ID belongs at Sunday school and it should stay there. I don't care if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Zeus, God, Thor, or whoever the hell is the creator. Just keep your beliefs in your spaghetti bowl, Mt. Olympus, Church, warrior hall, or whatever. The science class is for science and theories.
Are you joking? Macro-evolution is easy to disprove. Show that the fossile record is faked would disprove it pretty handily. Having aliens appear in the sky and changing one speices into another would disprove evolution. The list is almost endless in the ways you can disprove macro-evolution. We just don't think about most of those ways because they are stupid and not going to happen. If angels float down from heaven and suddenly turn one species into another species evolution will be dead and ID will be taken very seriously. Until that happens, ID is a joke that will continue to be laughed out of courts and scientific journals.
Certainly in Alabama there might be a judge he will rule in favor of ID. The problem is that all roads lead away from Alabama in terms of courts. Everything stops at the Supreme Court. Those guys take their job seriously and will not think twice to murder ID (yes, even the Republican justices). ID has no legs. If they ever get a legal victory, it will almost certainly be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court where it absolutely will be struck down.
ID is dead. The only thing that can bring it back to life is if ID gets some credit in some serious scientific journals. Unless a scientist catches said intelligent designer in the act of designing, it will never be taken seriously.
The ID folks can continue to fight this stupid battle, and the courts can continue to offer damning verdicts. The ID folks should stay at church. Trying to bring this shit into federally and state funded schools is a battle they will never win.
The smack down was pretty complete and thorough in this case. The school bored members specifically said that they wanted to teach ID for religious reasons. That in it of itself killed them. The judge then went further and called ID a load of shit. The fact that the bored members were motivated by religious convictions is undisputable. I doubt there will be an appeal.
What I imagine will happen is that they move and hope to find a challenge that they can actually defend. What is defendable? I have no idea. I will be amazed if an ID challenge gets as high as the supreme court before being smacked down in the next 10 years. Even if they managed to get it to the Supreme Court, you can pretty much guarantee that the Supreme Court would smack them down. The Supreme Court (yes, even the Republicans) take this stuff very seriously and will step on it regardless of their personal feelings.
IDs only hope is to conduct a scientifically verifiable experiment. I laugh at the prospects of ID ever getting published in Nature. If scientists record the hand of God, Zeus, UFOs, or His Noodleness spontaneously converting one species to another spices, we will all eat our words. Until then, the ID folks can expect to be laughed out of court and any scientific journal of any repute.
Personally, I hope they try again. Reading some of damning excerpts from this ruling makes the whole exercise seem worthwhile.
Uh... you realize that Footloose was a fictional movie, right?
Check up on how Germany became fascist sometime. The chain of events that led them into fascism is not all that dissimilar from some of our own social and political movements. We're just lucky enough to have an environment that is less tolerant of them, for now at least. Most Germans certainly weren't fascists... they simply allowed it to happen. That's the mistake we can't afford to repeat.
I agree, check up on how Germany became fascist some time and realize that the US could never go down that road. The US constitution is far too strong to allow any sort of true fascism to creep up. You couldn't give a president dictatorial powers even if 70% of the nation wanted to. In order to change the constitution, it takes a super majority of the population to agree to any such changes. Amending the constitution is damn hard and the only way to significantly change the governing structure of the US.
If you tried to legally bring about some fascist state, you would then need to get past the hundreds of NGOs that do nothing but obsesses over civil and political liberties. Further, you need to deal with the fact that American culture is deeply rooted in certain ideals in freedom and have the power to remove any government every four years. Not only would you have to amend the constitution, but you would have to remove sections of it are so deeply rooted in American culture that the idea that they could ever be removed is laughable. The poor dumb bastard that suggests changing any amendment in the bill of rights is going to be lynched.
Trying to achieve a fascist state illegally (IE, not amending the constitution) is utterly impossible. The secret service would turn on any president that tried to stay past his term. If the secret service didn't do it, the police would. If the police didn't, the people would. If the people didn't, the military would. People don't understand how key the US military is to preserving the US democracy. The US military is built from the ground up to follow the constitution first and foremost. Hell, during the Katrina disaster the US military refused to enter the city and provide order despite the begging of the mayor because it is forbidden by the constitution.
All this also utterly ignores the fact that the number of immigrants obtaining citizenship in the US is orders of magnitudes higher then many parts of Europe. An immigration bill is trying to be kicked through to set up to increase border security to reduce illegal immigration. It almost failed because a large minority wanted to add a measure that would legalize the status of many current illegal immigrants. That is not the actions of a fascist state in the making.
People. Yes yes, we all hate Bush. Don't worry as he is on his way out. Take a breather. He isn't a fascist, and fascism isn't at hand. The nation is not descending into any shape or form of fascism. The civil and political liberties that US citizens have blow most nations out of the water. The tolerance that US has for immigration puts most of Europe to shame. The US is one of the oldest democracies in the world and isn't going anywhere. At worst, it will elect a moderate Republican to office next election. No, that isn't fascism, it is just irritating. I am not saying current policies are good, but calling them fascist is like calling a proposal to raise spending on social security communist. It is stupid.
The army already makes extensive use of robots to investigate and disarm IEDs. If they come across something that looks suspicious, they send out this tracked robot about the size of a dog with a gripper arm and a camera. They can investigate the IED with the camera. If they determine it to be an IED, they can give the robot a block of C4 in its gripper arm. The robot takes the C4 to the IED, drops it, backs off, and then they blow the IED.
I imagine the robot they used in this lab is a tad bit more expensive then the disposable IED robots that army uses.
We're no longer producing nuke'cler weapons? Why, just because the government promises they're not? Grow up.
No, you can believe that we are no longer producing them because we have plenty. There isn't a need to build any more. The only thing the US is doing in terms of nuclear weapons right now is R&D in how to build better ones, maintaining the current stock pile, and slowly dropping the number of overall weapons.
Certainly the US is still doing R&D, but R&D is long term project aimed at preparing for an unknown threat far in the future. For all of the threats that exist today and within the next 20 years or so, the US has more then enough weapons and then some. The US could flatten Russia, China, and the EU at the same time, though granted, Russia and the EU could flatten the US back (and even China could offer a little hurt).
I imagine it got modded as a troll because it is an uninformative one line post that adds nothing to the conversation. A dozen other people have mentioned that Hubble, but have done so while taking the time to at least use the world "Hubble" in their post. No, it probably isn't a troll, but it doesn't deserve any positive mods.
You are right, there are some alternatives. ATOD and EVE are both good examples of MMORPGs that have broken the mold. You could also throw in Second Life, Puzzle Pirates, and a few others to the grab bag of 'not games where you sit around trying to level up'. None of those really reach for the holy grail of MMORPGs though.
The closest game to reach for the holy grail of MMORPGs was the original Ultima Online. I doubt many people remember, but the original game design of UO called for a completely dynamic and open world. They wanted to make it so that if you killed all the wolves in a forest, the bunny population would explode. If you cut down all the trees too quickly, they wouldn't grow back. If you wanted to stop a lawless band, you were supposed to form up a posy and go take them out. They wanted to see governments naturally form, cities created, and in general create an online WORLD. It was a miserable failure of course. That isn't to say UO failed to be a good game. On the contrary, UO was a massive success. Hell, I think it is still marching forward today. They just had to set the Holy Grail down and realize that they didn't yet have the capability to do what they wanted. They drastically watered down the original game design and have continued to move away from that original design ever since they opened.
The challenge of building an open world is that you are trying to set in place a few basic rules that eventually lead to a stable system. UO failed to achieve an open and free world because their original base rules led to a chaotic system that ran out of control. What is sad is that even with our superior computing power and massive amount of insight as to how people operate online, no one has even tried to create something approaching an open world that generates its own content since UO's failed attempt. Hell, it appears that no one has been able even develop a stable economy, much less a stable online society with hard coding a set of absolute rules which everyone must follow (IE, don't kill each other).
That said, there is some hope that we are learning lessons. WoW for instance has managed to produce the closest thing to a stable economy yet. Granted, the economy is mind numbingly simple, but even EQ with its simple economy couldn't keep inflation down, so there are some signs of slow progress.
My biggest issue with the current MMORPG industry is their fear of even trying to take some tentative steps forward. When they do attempt to step forward they do it through the most bumbling and incompetent methods. Any economist could have looked at the SWG economy and told the designers that it was going to implode. I wish MMORPGs would be a little more daring and talk to more experts on human behavior. When you have geeks try and code an economy or social system, you get broken economies like SWG and EQ, PvP gank-fests like early UO.
Combine daring and the willingness to consult true experts, and I think someone could produce a more open an interesting world then the current crap out there.
I wouldn't worry much.
I doubt most people are going to be able to connect the two. Even if they did connect the two, if stem cell research is as hopefull as it appears, the constant drum beat of advances in the field will drowned out this one set back.
Further, the only real issue at hand is federal funding of stem cell research. State and private funding have never been at issue. Sure, Alabama and Mississippi might struggle with whether or not to fund stem cell research, California and Massachusetts on the other hand don't. That isn't to say that federal funding isn't a nice thing to have for this type of stuff, just that it is only an obstacle, not a barrier.
I think in the long run it isn't going to matter. We are finding better ways to develop stem cells beyond embryonic methods. For better or for worse, as a population as a whole we always are going to feel a little moral queasiness about using fertilized eggs. If there is a way to get around it, we are going to use it. There is already a lot of promising research out there that suggests that this entire thing is going to end up being a non-issue as there are other sources of stem cells that are just as good as embryonic stem cells.
Technology solves a lot of moral problems. Infanticide is a good example. Infanticide was considered a morally acceptable practice throughout most of human history. People considered it immoral to bring a child into the world if it meant potentially killing others to feed that extra mouth. Today, in most developed nations infanticide is completely illegal and the morality implications are not pondered. Developed nations have more then enough food and institutions that will take unwanted infants, hence the moral question of infanticide has been rendered moot.
In my opinion, abortion, embryonic stem cells, and a whole host of societal problems are eventually going to go the way of infanticide. Technology is just going to simply solve the majority of problems associated with this questions. That isn't to down play how we have to struggle with those issues today, just to point out that the struggle won't last forever. In the end, neither those that advocate a pragmatic approach nor those who are trying to uphold some moral code win. In the end technology wins and shuts them both up.
The piece about using one of the lab assistance eggs is a 'morality' issue, and I agree not a very big one. Who cares where the egg came from?
The much larger issue that isn't just a morality issue is that it looks like he faked much of his evidence. This part has nothing to do with the morality. It looks like a bunch of the evidence presented was faked and the author has since withdraw his paper. While the study hasn't been disproved, it seems pretty clear that there were either grievous errors or it was a fake. Either way, it is no longer to be considered a valid study.
Non-Gamer kills the skeleton for the 100th times:
"Uh, why am I killing skeletons again?"
Gamer:
"To get to level 5!"
Non-Gamer:
"What do I get at level 5?"
Gamer:
"Improved fireball man!"
Non-Gamer:
"What do I do with the improved fireball?"
Gamer:
"Shit, man, you need improved fireball if you want to get to level 6."
Non-Gamer:
"So I am getting to level 5 so I can get to level 6?"
Yeah... better you just not show non-gamers what MMORPGs are all about. Unless they addict easily, they are probably just going to think you are insane and need to get out more.
MMORPGs are a bad habit that I kicked a while ago. Wake me up when someone grows a pair and offers something new... and by new I don't mean prettier graphics or a refinement of the old formula. If you can stip the core game play down to "killing stuff to get to the next level", count me out.
First, this is Slashdot, it is okay to say the word fuck. What this. Fuck fuck fuck fuck, shit fuck shit fuck, cock. See? You don't need to censor yourself. Sure, you be modded down, but well, fuck the mods. Getting the most karma doesn't make you win.
Second, my point was about an already bought in market and what it takes to break into that market. If you are arguing that Microsoft/MTV can break into the current market without breaking into the iPod, you are fooling yourself. Yes, people can sell off their iPods on e-bay, but that comes at an immediate loss of value. If John Doe bought an iPod for 300 dollars last year, it is worth maybe 50 dollars today. He can't simply swap his old iPod for the next best thing. The fact of the matter is that Apple owns the current market through iPods. Even if people were to stop buying iPods tomorrow, they will still own the market for at least a year or two simply because people don't drop their MP3 players on eBay over night. Apple has this market "locked in". It isn't going anywhere for some time to come. If you don't like the word "locked in", then let me rephrase it as "locked out". The rest of the market that is fighting over the table scraps of non-iPod mp3 players are locked out of the iPod, and most the market owns an iPod that they are not going to part with until time devalues them more.
Third, as for me personally, I do want alternative pricing options. Let me clarify a little more. I want alternative pricing options beyond buying CDs or buying from iTunes. It isn't the DRM that I give a shit about. It isn't even the price. It is the entire model. I don't want to buy each and every drop of music. In the same way I don't own a single DvD but do subscribe to netflixs, I want to not own any music, but subscribe to a service that will let me dig into their database of music for as long as I am a member. Namely, I want a Napster style all you can eat monthly fee. This is something that neither record stores nor iTunes offers.
This is an example of an alternative pricing method. If Microsoft/MTV could offer such alternative pricing methods inside of the iPod market, they could potentially break off a piece of iTunes business. I imagine I am not alone in being revolted at paying a hundred dollars if I want to download a 100 random songs, load them up on my mp3 player, then get rid of them after I am done.
Point stands: if you're swallowing your principles already, who cares if you're dealing with MS or the Mafia?
Wowa there! I think it is time to reset our moral compass.
I don't like my best friend's girl friend because she is a dumb ditz. I also don't like Hitler because he conducted mass genocide and plunged the world into war. Hitler deserved to die. My friend's girlfriend, as irritating as her mindless prattle can be, doesn't deserve to die. See, we can have varied levels of dislike.
My dislike of MTV and Microsoft is pretty mild compared to say the Russian mafia, because you, you know, the Russian mafia kills and enslaves people. Microsoft on the other hand makes shitty software while MTV peddles mindless crap to the lowest common denominator.
My principles against MTV and Microsoft is that I don't like their products. My principles against the Russian Mafia is that they kill people. If you can't see how perhaps those two things are not equal...
Too bad it isn't just MTV that sucks. Have you tried watching the Discovery Channel? When in the hell did science become purely about building fucking motorcycle. I swear that they play absolutely nothing except motorcycle building reality TV shows and the occasional MythBusters. It makes me fucking hate TV. I can't wait until the day that everything is on demand. I figure once everything is on demand one of two things will happen:
1) The good shows will get their moment in the sun and execs won't be able to kill them. It will be clear that people like good programing, not the latest reality TV crap fest. I am happy as good shows become easy to find and I never half to even flip past a shitty show again.
2) All the good shows get killed because most people are dim witted idiots that love the latest shit flung at us by execs. I never ever watch a shitty show again because I give up TV. As a positive side effect, I will also never worry about low voter turn out in the US as it is clear the shit flinging idiots probably shouldn't be mucking up the system with their inane opinion as to who should be the leader.
This is going to be a failed experiment by MTV and Microsoft unless they realize what Apple has that no one else does. Appple has control of the iPod. If you have an iPod, you can't use DRMed WMA. If MTV and Microsoft think that they are going to make a substantial profit off in the saturated field of non-iPod MP3 players, they are insane. The money is in a service that can compete for the iPod, in addition to other MP3 players.
What MTV and Microsoft has to do to get their foot in the door is offer a service that works with iPods AND offers a different pricing model then iTunes. That is the only way they can possibly compete with iTunes. Anything short of this is going to result in them fighting every other online music company for that tiny sliver of remaining non-iPod users.
I personally would jump at an all you can eat service for my iPod. Hell, I would jump at any sort of pricing options that or ability to escapes AAC lock in for my iPod. I got my iPod as a gift. I would love it if there was a way to escape Apple's monopoly short of throwing out a $300 piece of equipment. If MTV and Microsoft, as much as I loath the both of them, can do it I'll jump. It isn't like I have any love for Apple either.
If they have a plan to defeat Apple, then this will be newsworthy. If they are just jumping in on Napster's model and hoping to sell via the shitty MTV brand, this is a yawner that no one is going to give a shit about.
At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority".
You have never owned a cat, have you? You could have the fattest and most well fed cat on the earth, and that vicious creature will still merrily kill anything smaller then it just for shits and giggles. In fact, not only do they kill the poor critter, but if they can, they will terrorize it before they kill it. You have never seen sadism until you have seen a cat corner a creature smaller then it.
If anything, the poor critters of the earth should be thankful that they got smart monkeys with some level of empathy towards each other and other critters rather then a race of smart cats.
Claims that humans are any different in their destructive impulses from other animals are down right silly. If any base emotion separates humanity from other animals, it is empathy. No other animal I know of keeps pets simply because we enjoy the company of other non-human species. No animal I know of tries to feed and help those outside of its social group. No animal I know of shows any sort of restraint or preservationist feeling when dealing with the environment.
If there is a difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom, it isn't in aggression or joy in killing. Many other animals merrily murder anything outside of its immediate social circle. Hell, many other animals merrily murder anything INSIDE its social circle. If there is some base desire that humanity holds that other animals appear to lack, it is the empathy to RESTRAIN from giving into base desires for aggression and destruction of those that are outside of our social circle.
Really? Then why do they insist on segregating India's civilian and military facilities as part of the Indo-US nuke cooperation treaty (or whatever it is called). And why do they ban import of equipment that is dual use to any non-designated nuke power?
The facility in question is used to shoot down nukes. India's facilities are used to make them. The DoD doesn't have much worry that the civilians working the radio telescope will use the information they might see to build nukes. While radio telescopes might not create nukes, nuclear power plants in foreign nations can, hence the regulation as to what and who the US is willing to sell technology that can be used to make nukes. You worked in the word dual use, but other then that, these are two completely separate issues.
Further, you are just proving my point. Take US federal dollars paid for by US tax payers and you are going to get strings attached. That is just the reality of taking American tax payer money or working with the US federal government.
Nano-materials are generally not a problem. Even in the worst case scenario where it turns out that nanotubes are as bad or worse the asbestos, it wouldn't mean much.
Open up your computer, peek in, and realize that almost everything you see in there was made using a horribly toxic process, could probably kill you if you tried to eat it, and would probably do bad things if you ground it up and tried to breathe it in. The nice thing is that all that stuff is in a nice solid state that isn't going to cause you any problems unless you do something stupid like grind it up and snort it.
Nano-materials are the same. Could breathing in carbon nanotubes give you lung cancer like asbestos? Sure. That said, it isn't worth the lost sleep until someone decides to line the walls of your house with carbon nanotubes. I wouldn't want my walls lined with arsenic either, but I don't care that my computer has some in it.
Further, you need to realize that the number of people doing 'true' nanotechnology where they are building novel and new molecules that we truly don't understand are very few, and of these few, even fewer are even thinking about products. Most of the 'nano' technology we hear about is just dumb mundane shit that provides no danger. People throw a little TiO2 into a material and call it "nano-technology" for the investors.
Right now, the only people that this stuff should concern should be researchers handling this stuff. Speaking as someone who DOES work with carbon nanotubes, you need to realize that we already treat this stuff seriously. We work with nanotubes in an aqueous solution such that it isn't going to float into anyone's lungs. On the very rare occasion when we work with this stuff when it is dry (looks like a black powder), this stuff is treated like powdered cancer and all precautions are taken.
The moral of the story? If you are a researcher and you are working with fullerenes, treat them with respect so you don't die in 20 years from lung cancer. If you are an average Joe, don't worry, you don't need to petition politicians to save you from the evil nano-technology yet. If someone wants to offer you buckyball memory or nanotubes transistors in your computer, relax, smile, and enjoy your spiffy new toy. When someone offers you nano-tube walls and buckyball insulation, THEN you can start to take these concerns seriously.
...people are surprised that a project getting multi-million dollar funding is going to be also be occasionally used by the DoD because it has some military utility? Really people, there is an easy way out if you don't like the idea of the DoD getting a utility out of this dish in exchanger for millions of tax payer dollars: Raise the money yourself.
What is happening is just common sense. There is an expensive project that will benefit scientists. At the same time, the DoD is undergoing a project that will need that exact same piece of equipment. We can either build two of these things and set tax payers back a small hunk of change, or we can build one. Take government money, and take the strings attached.
Now while making government funded facilities duel use makes perfect sense, you can easily argue that this whole Star Wars thing is a big waste of time and money. I personally wouldn't mind a nice big cozy shield of lasers or what not to knock the unlikely ballistic nuke out of the sky. That said, there is a cost benefit analysis that goes along with this. If an impenetrable shield of d00m could be erected for the cost of one month worth of operations in Iraq, I would say go for it. If instead it is going to cost enough bankrupt the nation, obviously it isn't worth spending money on such a remote danger.
Summary:
Duel use facilities when getting government funding to save tax payers: Good.
Star Wars in general: Maybe not so good.
My spending on music (online or CD) has slowly been dropping. I am down to maybe a couple CDs a year and nothing online. This shit is simply too much though.
Fuck it.
I am not going to buy another piece of music until this worthless industry gets its shit together and removes their head from their ass hole. Sueing over posting the fucking lyrics to a song?
Fuck this industry all together. There are other less stupid ways of entertaining myself. Music doesn't have a monopoly on recreation. I'll stick to free commercial free podcasts and forget everything else. I won't even listen to the radio (not that it isn't shit anyways) simply because I don't want to support the bastards even in theory by listening to commercials.
Are my last few dollars drying up for this worthless industry going to have any impact at all? Hell no. That said, I know I will feel a lot less slimier not giving these shit heads a cent.
My first impression was that not only did they tip thier hand, but now everyone and their dog will attempt to post code, and that this was a stupid idea. Thinking on it now, this very well could be an excellent method of trapping more then one shit head at a time.
Publicize the information so that other people can also figure out the algorithm. Don't give it away, just let out of enough so that a dedicated person can reach the same conclusion. Now just wait and nab every single bastard dumb enough to try and post code for Sober to get. While you are at it, switch off every website in question when its time to upload comes up. Not only do you cripple the virus's ability to upload, but you catch everyone stupid enough to try and abuse it.
Granted, catching someone based off domain registration probably is not trivial, but I wouldn't be surprised if the feds have something up their sleeve.
Why on earth did they release this information? I can see telling the date of the next attack, but explaining how the author communicates with the virus just seems dumb. It doesn't help anyone except for the guy who knows that his methods have been spotted. Now you know that if he decides to upload to one of his websites he is going to assume that he is going to be tracked. This just means that he is going to make sure he is covert in doing it. If they had withheld this information, they might have been able to catch him in the act without him knowing and busted the little fascist shit head.