Amusing. At this point the US education system is so broken and inflated that many people just can't afford higher education at all. Are you just saying "well fuck them, serves them right for not being rich"? Why would the best education be locked away from people who might benefit from it the most? A lot of the Ivy League students are quite subpar, but they have rich parents. What's logical about that? Nothing.
And you think this is going to fix the system? Go to a state school or do well enough in school that one of those Ivy League schools offers you an all expenses paid trip to the good life. I grew up poor. I worked my way through school. I was a full time student while I worked full time. There is absolutely no reason to drop $25,000 a semester on some private school. If you're as poor then you'll likely qualify for Pell grants (though in my case I did not) and federally backed student loans (I did qualify for the loans). If you just throw free federal money to all the students and, by extension, the schools, do you think costs will go down? Hell no. Everyone will reach out their hand and say "More please." If you're talking about instituting tuition cost reform then there is no need for a program like this anyway.
This is actually a really good idea. However, it does need some limits, particularly with regard to tuition prices. This proposal will give universities to raise tuition prices like mad. We need to place some serious restrictions on those.
A decent idea? I don't think so. A decent idea is going to a school you can actually afford. I have no interest in paying for you to go to Embry Riddle or Fullsail college. If you want to drop $100k a year going to Harvard, you can pay for it. I am not going to pay a tax to cover your educational choices. You want to go to that fancy school? You can pay for it. If you can't understand personal finance well enough to understand that you'll be burdened with debt for the rest of your life if you take out a $200,000 loan to become a history major then perhaps you should just go to a vocational school.
Now if you only had to pay that tax until you repaid the amount you spent, plus interest, then that makes a lot more sense to me. But at that point you're basically just talking about a federally backed student loan.
Those Chinese spies could steal the slashdot beta code!
They stole the code to Slashdot Beta six months ago. And you don't see them using it anywhere because they determined that it was a western plot to devalue the entire Chinese economy. There's just no other explanation.
I thought South Korea mostly welcomed people who were defecting from the north. If the North was trying to launch an attack of any significance I wouldn't expect the IR system would have a hard time identifying it.
Due to incident after incident the Korean troops have to be very careful who they let across the DMZ.
If MOOC believes that offering education from the world's top university benefits all of humanity, there is a simple solution. Move the company offshore, or obtain a foreign partner.
The irony with treating this as banned with regards to certain countries that we are not on good terms with is that educational opportunities are very limited in those countries. Having access to education and the exposure to new ideas it brings is an opportunity to change those societies from within. Other than the industrial-military complex, who doesn't benefit from that?
They can certainly prevent US based universities from sharing that information with Coursera if they do not follow US export regulations.
We would also take apart old/broken TV sets that were awaiting disposal, and other electronics.
You were lucky you survived. Those old TVs had huge amounts of energy stored in those big can capacitors; a CRT TV doesn't have to be plugged in to kill you. All it takes is touching it in the wrong place.
We knew enough not to mess with the caps. We actually were scavenging for vacuum tubes. My dad used to be an electrician and we had all sorts of components laying around the house.
Many children misbehave when you force them to follow rules outside of the non aggression principle. From my experience, it's like a Chinese finger trap, the more you try to control them, the more they do the opposite of what you want. Coercion works for some children early on but rebellious behaviour eventually surfaces, usually in their teens which is when some parents have difficulty.
My most valuable lesson as a parent is don't control you children. Guide them. If they don't please you with their choices, don't punish them, it's ineffective and it will make them resent you.
So what do you do when they don't do their chores? Or their homework? Or they beat up their little sibling?
Yes. Now imagine how bad their toys must have been before, if tires are an improvement.
Seriously? I would have loved to play with those tires in elementary school. In fact, I can tell you right now that the best week of the year during my childhood was always the week the city allowed you to dump all your trash in the street for pickup. We would most certainly play with old tires during that time. We would also take apart old/broken TV sets that were awaiting disposal, and other electronics. I had all sorts of fun fancy toys at home, but I always preferred being creative with random every day junk. You could satisfy all sorts of curiosity that you were not allowed to indulge in with your toys at home.
The NSA claims that it doesn't steal trade secrets from foreign companies in order to give US businesses a competitive edge.
Maybe I misread or am misremembering the quote I read this morning but the gist was this: "We (the NSA) do not use Foreign Intelligence Services to spy on Foreign Corporations and/or steal trade secrets.
My interpretation is: "Of course we don't use foreign assets for that, we use US assets to spy for US companies"
well, don't leave us hanging. after all that pontification, you could have at least given us the right question, and the answer, and the evidence to back it up! jeez!
Giving the answer doesn't seem to work well in practice.
As an experiment, I'm trying to encourage people to find the answer for themselves. My theory is that, by leaving you hanging you will have incentive to find the answer in systemic mode. The incentive comes from the need to fulfill an unanswered question, and phrasing it as a question puts the reader in systemic mode.
Your response indicates emotional involvement (annoyance), so I take that as (at least partial) success: the technique can foster involvement on the part of the reader.
Thanks for the feedback - I'll make note of it.
(And no, this isn't a jab. I'm completely serious.)
People don't even read the summaries here, let alone the articles. What makes you think anyone is going to bother doing the research? Especially if, as you seem to believe, they have preconceived notions that bias their views on the matter? They will discount you as a troll, disregard your commentary, and continue on in their beliefs.
Overthrowing an oppressive government (what the second amendment is about) requires modern military hardware. In this age, that means tanks, RPGs and military aircraft. When the Supreme Court rules that private ownership of these must be allowed then I will believe that it is handling the Second Amendment "correctly".
Your state militia has everything it needs in order to overthrow an oppressive government. If the Federal government tried to overstep its bounds, and the states stood up for their rights, they would be able to match the federal government with nearly equivalent hardware (I do realize most National Guard units are the last units to be upgraded to the latest and greatest hardware).
That being said - I believe that the second amendment is referring specifically to an individual's rights. And even if it is not explicit in writing, it is explicit in context. There was no "Delaware National Guard" back in the days of the drafting of the bill of rights. The militia, or minutemen, were compromised of citizens who owned and stored their arms at home. That is what they considered a militia. Regular citizens who pick up their rifles and defend themselves. In fact, Switzerland does have military grade artillery and other such weapons in the basements and barns of regular citizens. I don't see a lot of gun violence in Switzerland. Every able bodied male in Switzerland has to serve in the military for a brief period of time, also. Is it their gun training that reduces their gun violence, is it their culture, a combination of the two, or something else? Who knows. But the access to guns alone is not the issue. I am sure there are plenty of cultural, educational, and economic factors that play into the US crime rate.
No way you used a blackberry keyboard. I have fat fingers and can type many times faster on the blackberry keyboard than on any other smartphone keyboard, be that physical or touch screen. _The_ best thing about blackberries is the keyboard. Although I have to say the new blackberry OS is pretty good, too. Shame it's too late.
I agree with the GP. The keyboard on the blackberry is terrible. You must not really have fat fingers or you know some secret that we do not. I can barely type on the blackberry. Give me a touchscreen with a good autocorrect or Swype and I can type pretty fast on a smart phone. I have turned down a work phone on more than one occasion to avoid the Blackberry. Thankfully most companies don't use them anymore.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where the instantaneous gratification of signing up for these services means people don't take the time to read these ToS. Let's be honest, who has ever taken the time (myself included) to read the Tos, EULA, etc of a product or service.
Are you kidding me? IT has nothing to do with instant gratification at all. If I read the EULA or ToS for every single event I went to, for every piece of software I used, or for every online service I had to use for one reason or another, I would never get past boot up on my computer. The ToS on the operating system alone are typically 80+ pages of legalese that mean absolutely nothing to most people. When I bought my house, I read the entire mortgage contract from start to finish. It was 15 pages of legalese and it took me over 2 hours to adequately review the paperwork. That is exactly why I feel like a EULA or ToS should be completely unbinding (other than perhaps the release of liability and what not).
my parents had a dog that could tell when my brother (diabetic) had low blood sugar. They had three dogs at that time and one of them would bark in the middle of the night if he was low. He could somehow tell while sleeping in their bedroom that he was having trouble from across the house. My guess is that his scent changed and the dog was especially sensitive to it, but that is pure speculation on my part.
Not being argumentative here -- was is the same dog that barked all of the time? Maybe one detected it, alerting another who then actually alerted you? (Doesn't matter, I know.) More to the point: dogs have accurate noses, but how fast does smell travel? (One,
two,
three,
four.) I presume it was quiet at night; it could also have been sounds that the dogs were hearing (breathing, coughing, slight moaning, whatever.)
No way to test and doesn't really matter; I'm just glad you had a dog that would alert you of the problem. I've heard stories of dogs "acting strangely" and somehow alert their owners before a heart attack or other critical events, so not unheard of. And we're a chemical machine; it makes sense that we'd give off odd smells if things are going badly.
My dog tells me of the critical problem that he thinks his stomach is almost empty -- but I think he learned that from the cat. Not nearly as impressive as yours.
Sorry I had meant to specify that it was the same dog every time. The other dogs did not seem to notice the difference, even though they slept closer to his room. The three dogs slept in different rooms, though this sometimes happened during the day when they were wandering around the house as well. After he alerted, if you opened the door to let that particular dog out, he would run to my brother's door and bark outside of it until someone went in to check on him. My current dog definitely does not do anything of that nature. She can definitely tell when I am not feeling well, though. Normally she is the neediest dog on the planet. When I am sick, she just lays at my feet and tries not to bother me. That is probably just her reading my body language, though.
Why do we insist on speculating that animals have all of these magical abilities, like the ability to tell which way is north, ability to tell when an earthquake is coming, ability to tell when a person has cancer, etc. Humans are animals too, and yet we can't do any of these things (without tools). Frankly, I think the people who say animals can do these things are just full of crap.
Different species have different senses, and levels of senses. Your eyesight is much, much keener than a dog's, although not as good as an eagle's; your sense of smell is much better than the eagle's, but nowhere near as good as the dog's. And the way brains with very different structures process the information is different too. Is that really so difficult to believe?
And further to that note: my parents had a dog that could tell when my brother (diabetic) had low blood sugar. They had three dogs at that time and one of them would bark in the middle of the night if he was low. He could somehow tell while sleeping in their bedroom that he was having trouble from across the house. My guess is that his scent changed and the dog was especially sensitive to it, but that is pure speculation on my part.
I suspect the dogs just don't like staring into the sun then they poo. I'd also speculate that since streets and walls tend to be aligned with the cardinal directions there's an overall alignment augmentation due to their surroundings. finally if they like to poo in a shadow of a tree then likely they may face back to the tree and thus have a bias to north or south alignments.
My dog is very particular. She spends 5-10 minutes looking for the perfect place to go on walks. She will not go close to home at all. We often walk on trails and not roads, or on the beach. Now that I think about it, she does usually face north when she goes. I take her first thing in the morning, before the sun is high in the sky, and it is often obscured by trees / buildings. I also take her again in the late afternoon / early evening (depending on season) and she is predictable as can be. I'll try and pay more attention to it, but even when she goes on the E/W road in front of our place she is usually facing towards or away from the center of the street.
In what way? By printing a gun from 1911? I'm thinking the patent on that ran out more than a few years ago, which just happens to be why the 1911 is so popular. Anyone can make their own version, even if it is an exact copy of the original.
My guess is the cost of the 1911 itself. You can buy a top of the line 1911 for under $2k. So this 3D printed one for almost $12k should be the golden gun from a Bond movie.
Almost. I would place it roughly in the category of the F20 Tigershark, but with modernized avionics and greater weapon load and flexibility. It doesn't have a long range, but that only really becomes a problem when you are concerned with attack missions rather than defending your country.
I think that depends on the threat. Personally I would rather engage a hostile air force as far away from home territory as possible. If I can intercept them 200 miles away from their target its a lot better than having to wait until they are only 50 miles from target and perhaps capable of launching their attack. Plus Brazil is a large country and may need to scramble fighters from all over in the event of a real honest to goodness surprise attack. Of course I say all of that without doing a time on station comparison between the two aircraft.
What the fuck? You're still outright making stuff up. But let's just say for a second you weren't. Why did the Apache pilot fire? are you actually telling me he could tell they were uniformed but couldn't tell that a camera wasn't an RPG? Seriously, you're making that stupid an argument?
I would suggest you work on your reading comprehension skills. I was making the statement that these people were INSURGENTS. Not militia. That militia members, authorized to carry weapons openly in the streets (perhaps including RPGs, machine guns, and other weapons forbidden by the occupying army) wore uniforms. The people in the video were not wearing uniforms. They were deemed to have hostile intent, in compliance with the Rules of Engagement. This means that they are, per the link I provided an unlawful combatant. By having hostile intent they (from the link I provided earlier): "engage[ed] in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war." You understand what that means, right? They were non-uniformed and acting in a hostile manner. If you do not agree with that definition, perhaps you should take it up at the Hague and not with me.
"In fact anyone who is not uniformed is considered, by the Geneva convention, to be an unlawful combatant."
That's not even what the link you provided says. Again, you're making stuff up.
Again see my text from above. IF you engage in hostile acts, and you're not wearing a uniform, you're an unlawful combatant. It does not matter what organization or country you are from.
"No, I do not think you should just blow everything up."
So why defend exactly that if you don't believe it?
I am defending those pilots who did what they were supposed to do. I do not believe that they exercised bad judgement. They did not carpet bomb the city of Baghdad. They killed some innocent civilians, yes, but they also killed armed men that those civilians were associating with.
"However, I do not believe that the average citizen would rush in there and try and provide aid in the middle of a firefight."
It wasn't the middle of a firefight. The Apache let off a few devastating bursts and that was it. I don't think a militant would rush in with his fucking child in the van either for what it's worth.
The Apache was still circling overhead. There were still US troops in the process of securing the area. Whether or not there was a lull in the fighting I would consider that to be the middle of a fight. Would you walk into the middle of a police engagement where they just fired off a few shots and then were looking for additional suspects? You would probably avoid it.
"I do not believe the average citizen would go into the scene of a recent firefight while the attack helicopter that executed the attack was still orbiting overhead."
You really have no idea do you? The helicopter was over a km away. Unless he saw it fire he'd almost certainly not have known what had even caused the devastation - it might just as well have looked like the aftermath of an IED or a mortar strike to the average civilian.
I know that the sound of the 30mm cannon on the Apache is distinctively different than the sound of an IED or a mortar strike. Also, from my memory, they approached the scene in such a way to make it obvious that they were concerned about their safety. I have a hard time believing they were unaware of what happened. Furthermore, I have worked with Apaches at night. You can hear them from 1km away. They use technology to confuse the location of them. You would not be able to point one out of the sky at night. But you know its in the area. This attack happened during the day, and the aircraft was circling overhead. A person would have to be oblivious to be unaware of the aircraft's presence.
I think Wikipedia is whatever the biases of the last editor who edited that section are.
I doubt that such a strong pro US military bias could stand in that Wikipedia page unless there was source material to back it up. However, I'm not going to claim that I looked through the revision history of this article.
But you're still missing the point, even if armed it doesn't matter. There was nothing illegal about being armed, Iraq was full of local militia who were legitimately armed. Merely being armed wasn't a green light to fire at will.
Legitimate militia were uniformed. In fact anyone who is not uniformed is considered, by the Geneva convention, to be an unlawful combatant. In fact, once a person has been determined to be an unlawful combatant, they are not accorded the same rights as a uniformed member of an armed force.
While it was legal for Iraqis to keep weapons in their homes and businesses there was no provision that specifically indicated they were allowed to walk the streets with weapons. And in fact, many of the weapons that were listed in the Wikipedia article are specifically banned by the regulation that allowed Iraqis to keep certain weapons indoors. You can see the list here at the NY Times where it says: "prohibited to most people: machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, antiaircraft guns, mortars, land mines and grenades."
Then there's a case of the van where there was without question absolutely no way to tell if it was full of armed insurgents or not. Even if you do believe that the Apache pilots should be able to fire on people for no other reason than that they are armed you can't argue that they had the same excuse for firing on the van.
The van was not engaged until it interacted with the dead/wounded people on the ground. As I mentioned, such activity marked you as an enemy combatant according to the rules of engagement. It was not an ambulance, and was not carrying any markings that would protect it through the Geneva convention. Who the hell brings their van with children out to a battle with the enemy still orbiting overhead in a helicopter? Where is the sense in that?
"Even if they did not actively engage the troops first, they were not allowed to be armed in the streets of Baghdad. Only military personnel were allowed weaponry."
This is a flat out lie. Stop making shit up.
The US actively supported some armed militias and encouraged them, so you couldn't even be further from the truth. Then there's non-military contractors, security guards and so forth.
As mentioned above the militia wore uniforms. Contractors and security guards wear uniforms. If you'd ever seen a US Civilian Contractor working in Afghanistan or Iraq you'd see that they wear basically the same outfits as the soldiers, but with markings indicating that they are civilians. Even media personnel that were embedded with the troops wore markings indicating who they were and why they were there. The two media personnel with the insurgents chose not to wear the marked clothes for whatever reason.
You can disagree all you want, you'd still be wrong. Civilians and enemy combatants are well defined, civilians can be armed, merely being armed doesn't make them enemy combatants. Similarly, guys getting out of vans as they pass an area and see someone wounded are more than allowed to try and help injured people, that does not make you an enemy combatant by anyone's rules. Go actually read the US rules of engagement I linked instead of continuing to make shit up.
Did you read them? Did you see a date specifying when those rules of engagement were active? You understand that the
"They were providing close air support for troops on the ground that were under active engagement. It does not matter if the Apache itself is under direct threat from any potential RPG. The ground troops were under direct threat."
There's so many things wrong with your statement here:
- The troops could not be under active engagement because the cameraman had a camera, not an RPG
- The troops were not under direct threat when the Apache fired because they were not near enough the scene at that point
First of all the camera was not identifiable as a camera when the attack started. Secondly, unless you think that Wikipedia is pro US Military, the Wikipedia article on the attack clearly states:
In the first strike, the crew of the two Apaches directed 30mm cannon fire at a group of nine to eleven men in the path of advancing U.S. Army ground troops. Some were armed with RPGs, AKMs, some carried extra RPG warheads with no launcher, while others may have been unarmed.
And indeed you can see the armed people in the gun sight video from the helicopter.
What the Apache pilot did was attempt pro-active killing under the suspicion they might be a threat when they were in range. That's not the same as protecting allies under "active engagement". See my cop example - should cops shoot anyone with a gun in their vehicle, just in case they might be a threat? It's absurd, it's nonsense.
I bet you would find it to be a little less nonsensical if it was you on the ground being shot at by insurgents. It's easy for you to judge from 8000 miles away. And in any case, they were clearly armed. Even if they did not actively engage the troops first, they were not allowed to be armed in the streets of Baghdad. Only military personnel were allowed weaponry.
"Obviously you do not know what the rules of engagement were at that time in Iraq."
Obviously you don't. But obviously I do. See above link. What you went on to describe doesn't even fit into rules of engagement. Rules of engagement don't describe what civilians can and can't do, only what makes a valid target and civilians are explicitly never a target otherwise the US' rules of engagement would be in direct breach of the geneva convention and that would make any US soldiers following it war criminals.
I disagree. The rules of engagement do declare what a civilian can and cannot do. In this case, one is considered an enemy combatant if they render aid to insurgency in the middle of a firefight. Therefore a civilian cannot render aid. Only an enemy combatant can. Therefore the rules strictly dictate that a civilian cannot provide aid. This was no secret to the Iraqis.
"Did you have the audio muted on the video? You could hear the ground personnel in contact with the close air support. You could also see these groups actively engaging the troops on the ground."
I think you watched completely the wrong video because what you're describing is not what was on the unedited feed.
Seriously, check your facts before you post in future. Between pretending things are in the video which aren't, and pretending that the rules of engagement aren't now widely publicised you've merely exposed yourself as spouting as much nonsense as Cold Fjord.
I'm at work and cannot watch the video again at the moment - but I do distinctly remember seeing weapons. And again, from Wikipedia (when talking about the Hellfire missile strike) it says "In a third strike the helicopter team fired three AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to destroy a building they believe is the source of enemy gunfire." So even if that video does not show anything but the weapons, it is clearly known that the troops on the ground were facing enemy fire.
Slashdot Mirror
Amusing. At this point the US education system is so broken and inflated that many people just can't afford higher education at all. Are you just saying "well fuck them, serves them right for not being rich"? Why would the best education be locked away from people who might benefit from it the most? A lot of the Ivy League students are quite subpar, but they have rich parents. What's logical about that? Nothing.
And you think this is going to fix the system? Go to a state school or do well enough in school that one of those Ivy League schools offers you an all expenses paid trip to the good life. I grew up poor. I worked my way through school. I was a full time student while I worked full time. There is absolutely no reason to drop $25,000 a semester on some private school. If you're as poor then you'll likely qualify for Pell grants (though in my case I did not) and federally backed student loans (I did qualify for the loans). If you just throw free federal money to all the students and, by extension, the schools, do you think costs will go down? Hell no. Everyone will reach out their hand and say "More please." If you're talking about instituting tuition cost reform then there is no need for a program like this anyway.
This is actually a really good idea. However, it does need some limits, particularly with regard to tuition prices. This proposal will give universities to raise tuition prices like mad. We need to place some serious restrictions on those.
A decent idea? I don't think so. A decent idea is going to a school you can actually afford. I have no interest in paying for you to go to Embry Riddle or Fullsail college. If you want to drop $100k a year going to Harvard, you can pay for it. I am not going to pay a tax to cover your educational choices. You want to go to that fancy school? You can pay for it. If you can't understand personal finance well enough to understand that you'll be burdened with debt for the rest of your life if you take out a $200,000 loan to become a history major then perhaps you should just go to a vocational school.
Now if you only had to pay that tax until you repaid the amount you spent, plus interest, then that makes a lot more sense to me. But at that point you're basically just talking about a federally backed student loan.
Those Chinese spies could steal the slashdot beta code!
They stole the code to Slashdot Beta six months ago. And you don't see them using it anywhere because they determined that it was a western plot to devalue the entire Chinese economy. There's just no other explanation.
I thought South Korea mostly welcomed people who were defecting from the north. If the North was trying to launch an attack of any significance I wouldn't expect the IR system would have a hard time identifying it.
Due to incident after incident the Korean troops have to be very careful who they let across the DMZ.
If MOOC believes that offering education from the world's top university benefits all of humanity, there is a simple solution. Move the company offshore, or obtain a foreign partner.
The irony with treating this as banned with regards to certain countries that we are not on good terms with is that educational opportunities are very limited in those countries. Having access to education and the exposure to new ideas it brings is an opportunity to change those societies from within. Other than the industrial-military complex, who doesn't benefit from that?
They can certainly prevent US based universities from sharing that information with Coursera if they do not follow US export regulations.
We would also take apart old/broken TV sets that were awaiting disposal, and other electronics.
You were lucky you survived. Those old TVs had huge amounts of energy stored in those big can capacitors; a CRT TV doesn't have to be plugged in to kill you. All it takes is touching it in the wrong place.
We knew enough not to mess with the caps. We actually were scavenging for vacuum tubes. My dad used to be an electrician and we had all sorts of components laying around the house.
Many children misbehave when you force them to follow rules outside of the non aggression principle. From my experience, it's like a Chinese finger trap, the more you try to control them, the more they do the opposite of what you want. Coercion works for some children early on but rebellious behaviour eventually surfaces, usually in their teens which is when some parents have difficulty.
My most valuable lesson as a parent is don't control you children. Guide them. If they don't please you with their choices, don't punish them, it's ineffective and it will make them resent you.
So what do you do when they don't do their chores? Or their homework? Or they beat up their little sibling?
Yes. Now imagine how bad their toys must have been before, if tires are an improvement.
Seriously? I would have loved to play with those tires in elementary school. In fact, I can tell you right now that the best week of the year during my childhood was always the week the city allowed you to dump all your trash in the street for pickup. We would most certainly play with old tires during that time. We would also take apart old/broken TV sets that were awaiting disposal, and other electronics. I had all sorts of fun fancy toys at home, but I always preferred being creative with random every day junk. You could satisfy all sorts of curiosity that you were not allowed to indulge in with your toys at home.
Does the hardware have good Linux drivers?
Don't worry! Driver support is baked right into SE Linux ;)
The NSA claims that it doesn't steal trade secrets from foreign companies in order to give US businesses a competitive edge.
Maybe I misread or am misremembering the quote I read this morning but the gist was this: "We (the NSA) do not use Foreign Intelligence Services to spy on Foreign Corporations and/or steal trade secrets.
My interpretation is: "Of course we don't use foreign assets for that, we use US assets to spy for US companies"
We have a Nest and love it.
I would buy one if there was a mode to "ignore any adjustment by 15 year old daughter."
lock the thermostat and adjust it via your phone or computer. Then she can't do a thing.
well, don't leave us hanging. after all that pontification, you could have at least given us the right question, and the answer, and the evidence to back it up! jeez!
Giving the answer doesn't seem to work well in practice.
As an experiment, I'm trying to encourage people to find the answer for themselves. My theory is that, by leaving you hanging you will have incentive to find the answer in systemic mode. The incentive comes from the need to fulfill an unanswered question, and phrasing it as a question puts the reader in systemic mode.
Your response indicates emotional involvement (annoyance), so I take that as (at least partial) success: the technique can foster involvement on the part of the reader.
Thanks for the feedback - I'll make note of it.
(And no, this isn't a jab. I'm completely serious.)
People don't even read the summaries here, let alone the articles. What makes you think anyone is going to bother doing the research? Especially if, as you seem to believe, they have preconceived notions that bias their views on the matter? They will discount you as a troll, disregard your commentary, and continue on in their beliefs.
Overthrowing an oppressive government (what the second amendment is about) requires modern military hardware. In this age, that means tanks, RPGs and military aircraft. When the Supreme Court rules that private ownership of these must be allowed then I will believe that it is handling the Second Amendment "correctly".
Your state militia has everything it needs in order to overthrow an oppressive government. If the Federal government tried to overstep its bounds, and the states stood up for their rights, they would be able to match the federal government with nearly equivalent hardware (I do realize most National Guard units are the last units to be upgraded to the latest and greatest hardware).
That being said - I believe that the second amendment is referring specifically to an individual's rights. And even if it is not explicit in writing, it is explicit in context. There was no "Delaware National Guard" back in the days of the drafting of the bill of rights. The militia, or minutemen, were compromised of citizens who owned and stored their arms at home. That is what they considered a militia. Regular citizens who pick up their rifles and defend themselves. In fact, Switzerland does have military grade artillery and other such weapons in the basements and barns of regular citizens. I don't see a lot of gun violence in Switzerland. Every able bodied male in Switzerland has to serve in the military for a brief period of time, also. Is it their gun training that reduces their gun violence, is it their culture, a combination of the two, or something else? Who knows. But the access to guns alone is not the issue. I am sure there are plenty of cultural, educational, and economic factors that play into the US crime rate.
No way you used a blackberry keyboard. I have fat fingers and can type many times faster on the blackberry keyboard than on any other smartphone keyboard, be that physical or touch screen. _The_ best thing about blackberries is the keyboard. Although I have to say the new blackberry OS is pretty good, too. Shame it's too late.
I agree with the GP. The keyboard on the blackberry is terrible. You must not really have fat fingers or you know some secret that we do not. I can barely type on the blackberry. Give me a touchscreen with a good autocorrect or Swype and I can type pretty fast on a smart phone. I have turned down a work phone on more than one occasion to avoid the Blackberry. Thankfully most companies don't use them anymore.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where the instantaneous gratification of signing up for these services means people don't take the time to read these ToS. Let's be honest, who has ever taken the time (myself included) to read the Tos, EULA, etc of a product or service.
Are you kidding me? IT has nothing to do with instant gratification at all. If I read the EULA or ToS for every single event I went to, for every piece of software I used, or for every online service I had to use for one reason or another, I would never get past boot up on my computer. The ToS on the operating system alone are typically 80+ pages of legalese that mean absolutely nothing to most people. When I bought my house, I read the entire mortgage contract from start to finish. It was 15 pages of legalese and it took me over 2 hours to adequately review the paperwork. That is exactly why I feel like a EULA or ToS should be completely unbinding (other than perhaps the release of liability and what not).
my parents had a dog that could tell when my brother (diabetic) had low blood sugar. They had three dogs at that time and one of them would bark in the middle of the night if he was low. He could somehow tell while sleeping in their bedroom that he was having trouble from across the house. My guess is that his scent changed and the dog was especially sensitive to it, but that is pure speculation on my part.
Not being argumentative here -- was is the same dog that barked all of the time? Maybe one detected it, alerting another who then actually alerted you? (Doesn't matter, I know.) More to the point: dogs have accurate noses, but how fast does smell travel? (One, two, three, four.) I presume it was quiet at night; it could also have been sounds that the dogs were hearing (breathing, coughing, slight moaning, whatever.) No way to test and doesn't really matter; I'm just glad you had a dog that would alert you of the problem. I've heard stories of dogs "acting strangely" and somehow alert their owners before a heart attack or other critical events, so not unheard of. And we're a chemical machine; it makes sense that we'd give off odd smells if things are going badly. My dog tells me of the critical problem that he thinks his stomach is almost empty -- but I think he learned that from the cat. Not nearly as impressive as yours.
Sorry I had meant to specify that it was the same dog every time. The other dogs did not seem to notice the difference, even though they slept closer to his room. The three dogs slept in different rooms, though this sometimes happened during the day when they were wandering around the house as well. After he alerted, if you opened the door to let that particular dog out, he would run to my brother's door and bark outside of it until someone went in to check on him. My current dog definitely does not do anything of that nature. She can definitely tell when I am not feeling well, though. Normally she is the neediest dog on the planet. When I am sick, she just lays at my feet and tries not to bother me. That is probably just her reading my body language, though.
Why do we insist on speculating that animals have all of these magical abilities, like the ability to tell which way is north, ability to tell when an earthquake is coming, ability to tell when a person has cancer, etc. Humans are animals too, and yet we can't do any of these things (without tools). Frankly, I think the people who say animals can do these things are just full of crap.
Different species have different senses, and levels of senses. Your eyesight is much, much keener than a dog's, although not as good as an eagle's; your sense of smell is much better than the eagle's, but nowhere near as good as the dog's. And the way brains with very different structures process the information is different too. Is that really so difficult to believe?
And further to that note: my parents had a dog that could tell when my brother (diabetic) had low blood sugar. They had three dogs at that time and one of them would bark in the middle of the night if he was low. He could somehow tell while sleeping in their bedroom that he was having trouble from across the house. My guess is that his scent changed and the dog was especially sensitive to it, but that is pure speculation on my part.
I suspect the dogs just don't like staring into the sun then they poo. I'd also speculate that since streets and walls tend to be aligned with the cardinal directions there's an overall alignment augmentation due to their surroundings. finally if they like to poo in a shadow of a tree then likely they may face back to the tree and thus have a bias to north or south alignments.
My dog is very particular. She spends 5-10 minutes looking for the perfect place to go on walks. She will not go close to home at all. We often walk on trails and not roads, or on the beach. Now that I think about it, she does usually face north when she goes. I take her first thing in the morning, before the sun is high in the sky, and it is often obscured by trees / buildings. I also take her again in the late afternoon / early evening (depending on season) and she is predictable as can be. I'll try and pay more attention to it, but even when she goes on the E/W road in front of our place she is usually facing towards or away from the center of the street.
In what way? By printing a gun from 1911? I'm thinking the patent on that ran out more than a few years ago, which just happens to be why the 1911 is so popular. Anyone can make their own version, even if it is an exact copy of the original.
My guess is the cost of the 1911 itself. You can buy a top of the line 1911 for under $2k. So this 3D printed one for almost $12k should be the golden gun from a Bond movie.
Efficiency is generally sufficient. A house's whole roof can generally power it.
I use my spare bedroom to host an Amazon AWS edge location, you insensitive clod! I need a lot more than a roof full of solar!
Almost. I would place it roughly in the category of the F20 Tigershark, but with modernized avionics and greater weapon load and flexibility. It doesn't have a long range, but that only really becomes a problem when you are concerned with attack missions rather than defending your country.
I think that depends on the threat. Personally I would rather engage a hostile air force as far away from home territory as possible. If I can intercept them 200 miles away from their target its a lot better than having to wait until they are only 50 miles from target and perhaps capable of launching their attack. Plus Brazil is a large country and may need to scramble fighters from all over in the event of a real honest to goodness surprise attack. Of course I say all of that without doing a time on station comparison between the two aircraft.
"Legitimate militia were uniformed."
What the fuck? You're still outright making stuff up. But let's just say for a second you weren't. Why did the Apache pilot fire? are you actually telling me he could tell they were uniformed but couldn't tell that a camera wasn't an RPG? Seriously, you're making that stupid an argument?
I would suggest you work on your reading comprehension skills. I was making the statement that these people were INSURGENTS. Not militia. That militia members, authorized to carry weapons openly in the streets (perhaps including RPGs, machine guns, and other weapons forbidden by the occupying army) wore uniforms. The people in the video were not wearing uniforms. They were deemed to have hostile intent, in compliance with the Rules of Engagement. This means that they are, per the link I provided an unlawful combatant. By having hostile intent they (from the link I provided earlier): "engage[ed] in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war." You understand what that means, right? They were non-uniformed and acting in a hostile manner. If you do not agree with that definition, perhaps you should take it up at the Hague and not with me.
"In fact anyone who is not uniformed is considered, by the Geneva convention, to be an unlawful combatant."
That's not even what the link you provided says. Again, you're making stuff up.
Again see my text from above. IF you engage in hostile acts, and you're not wearing a uniform, you're an unlawful combatant. It does not matter what organization or country you are from.
"No, I do not think you should just blow everything up."
So why defend exactly that if you don't believe it?
I am defending those pilots who did what they were supposed to do. I do not believe that they exercised bad judgement. They did not carpet bomb the city of Baghdad. They killed some innocent civilians, yes, but they also killed armed men that those civilians were associating with.
"However, I do not believe that the average citizen would rush in there and try and provide aid in the middle of a firefight."
It wasn't the middle of a firefight. The Apache let off a few devastating bursts and that was it. I don't think a militant would rush in with his fucking child in the van either for what it's worth.
The Apache was still circling overhead. There were still US troops in the process of securing the area. Whether or not there was a lull in the fighting I would consider that to be the middle of a fight. Would you walk into the middle of a police engagement where they just fired off a few shots and then were looking for additional suspects? You would probably avoid it.
"I do not believe the average citizen would go into the scene of a recent firefight while the attack helicopter that executed the attack was still orbiting overhead."
You really have no idea do you? The helicopter was over a km away. Unless he saw it fire he'd almost certainly not have known what had even caused the devastation - it might just as well have looked like the aftermath of an IED or a mortar strike to the average civilian.
I know that the sound of the 30mm cannon on the Apache is distinctively different than the sound of an IED or a mortar strike. Also, from my memory, they approached the scene in such a way to make it obvious that they were concerned about their safety. I have a hard time believing they were unaware of what happened. Furthermore, I have worked with Apaches at night. You can hear them from 1km away. They use technology to confuse the location of them. You would not be able to point one out of the sky at night. But you know its in the area. This attack happened during the day, and the aircraft was circling overhead. A person would have to be oblivious to be unaware of the aircraft's presence.
"And I've already established that the
I may be wrong. but you appear to have deleted your initial comment which started this thread.
Can you say why? I was entertained by the argument but now I can't re-assess your initial position based on your arguments.
I have no solid opinion on the matter so please don't construe this as sarcasm.
I didn't really start the collateral murder thread. I was just stating my thoughts on the matter. My original comment is here
I think Wikipedia is whatever the biases of the last editor who edited that section are.
I doubt that such a strong pro US military bias could stand in that Wikipedia page unless there was source material to back it up. However, I'm not going to claim that I looked through the revision history of this article.
But you're still missing the point, even if armed it doesn't matter. There was nothing illegal about being armed, Iraq was full of local militia who were legitimately armed. Merely being armed wasn't a green light to fire at will.
Legitimate militia were uniformed. In fact anyone who is not uniformed is considered, by the Geneva convention, to be an unlawful combatant. In fact, once a person has been determined to be an unlawful combatant, they are not accorded the same rights as a uniformed member of an armed force.
While it was legal for Iraqis to keep weapons in their homes and businesses there was no provision that specifically indicated they were allowed to walk the streets with weapons. And in fact, many of the weapons that were listed in the Wikipedia article are specifically banned by the regulation that allowed Iraqis to keep certain weapons indoors. You can see the list here at the NY Times where it says: "prohibited to most people: machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, antiaircraft guns, mortars, land mines and grenades."
Then there's a case of the van where there was without question absolutely no way to tell if it was full of armed insurgents or not. Even if you do believe that the Apache pilots should be able to fire on people for no other reason than that they are armed you can't argue that they had the same excuse for firing on the van.
The van was not engaged until it interacted with the dead/wounded people on the ground. As I mentioned, such activity marked you as an enemy combatant according to the rules of engagement. It was not an ambulance, and was not carrying any markings that would protect it through the Geneva convention. Who the hell brings their van with children out to a battle with the enemy still orbiting overhead in a helicopter? Where is the sense in that?
"Even if they did not actively engage the troops first, they were not allowed to be armed in the streets of Baghdad. Only military personnel were allowed weaponry."
This is a flat out lie. Stop making shit up.
The US actively supported some armed militias and encouraged them, so you couldn't even be further from the truth. Then there's non-military contractors, security guards and so forth.
As mentioned above the militia wore uniforms. Contractors and security guards wear uniforms. If you'd ever seen a US Civilian Contractor working in Afghanistan or Iraq you'd see that they wear basically the same outfits as the soldiers, but with markings indicating that they are civilians. Even media personnel that were embedded with the troops wore markings indicating who they were and why they were there. The two media personnel with the insurgents chose not to wear the marked clothes for whatever reason.
You can disagree all you want, you'd still be wrong. Civilians and enemy combatants are well defined, civilians can be armed, merely being armed doesn't make them enemy combatants. Similarly, guys getting out of vans as they pass an area and see someone wounded are more than allowed to try and help injured people, that does not make you an enemy combatant by anyone's rules. Go actually read the US rules of engagement I linked instead of continuing to make shit up.
Did you read them? Did you see a date specifying when those rules of engagement were active? You understand that the
"They were providing close air support for troops on the ground that were under active engagement. It does not matter if the Apache itself is under direct threat from any potential RPG. The ground troops were under direct threat."
There's so many things wrong with your statement here:
- The troops could not be under active engagement because the cameraman had a camera, not an RPG
- The troops were not under direct threat when the Apache fired because they were not near enough the scene at that point
First of all the camera was not identifiable as a camera when the attack started. Secondly, unless you think that Wikipedia is pro US Military, the Wikipedia article on the attack clearly states:
And indeed you can see the armed people in the gun sight video from the helicopter.
What the Apache pilot did was attempt pro-active killing under the suspicion they might be a threat when they were in range. That's not the same as protecting allies under "active engagement". See my cop example - should cops shoot anyone with a gun in their vehicle, just in case they might be a threat? It's absurd, it's nonsense.
I bet you would find it to be a little less nonsensical if it was you on the ground being shot at by insurgents. It's easy for you to judge from 8000 miles away. And in any case, they were clearly armed. Even if they did not actively engage the troops first, they were not allowed to be armed in the streets of Baghdad. Only military personnel were allowed weaponry.
"Obviously you do not know what the rules of engagement were at that time in Iraq."
Obviously you don't. But obviously I do. See above link. What you went on to describe doesn't even fit into rules of engagement. Rules of engagement don't describe what civilians can and can't do, only what makes a valid target and civilians are explicitly never a target otherwise the US' rules of engagement would be in direct breach of the geneva convention and that would make any US soldiers following it war criminals.
I disagree. The rules of engagement do declare what a civilian can and cannot do. In this case, one is considered an enemy combatant if they render aid to insurgency in the middle of a firefight. Therefore a civilian cannot render aid. Only an enemy combatant can. Therefore the rules strictly dictate that a civilian cannot provide aid. This was no secret to the Iraqis.
"Did you have the audio muted on the video? You could hear the ground personnel in contact with the close air support. You could also see these groups actively engaging the troops on the ground."
I think you watched completely the wrong video because what you're describing is not what was on the unedited feed.
Seriously, check your facts before you post in future. Between pretending things are in the video which aren't, and pretending that the rules of engagement aren't now widely publicised you've merely exposed yourself as spouting as much nonsense as Cold Fjord.
I'm at work and cannot watch the video again at the moment - but I do distinctly remember seeing weapons. And again, from Wikipedia (when talking about the Hellfire missile strike) it says "In a third strike the helicopter team fired three AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to destroy a building they believe is the source of enemy gunfire." So even if that video does not show anything but the weapons, it is clearly known that the troops on the ground were facing enemy fire.