it's not an issue of dispersing people. it's a question of seriously hurting people.
FTFA: "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable for whatever reason to move away from the beam?" asked Neil Davison, coordinator of the nonlethal weapons research project at Britain's Bradford University.
"How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"
This is not designed well enough to ensure peaceful dispersing. What would happen if we decided that throwing napalm on the crowd was a good way to disperse? If you don't want to get burned, leave. This has the potential of causing serious damage to people and as far as I'm concerned people are worth a hell of a lot more than property.
so we don't have to destroy a country in order to save it
i suppose there is no room for relativism in the world. however, if there was then i do not understand why the united states is the only country in the world that knows what is right and every one else needs to be saved. please keep your xenophobic and arrogant opinions to yourself. it is not the united states' job to save everyone. we cannot even save ourselves. and even if that was our job, how is forced starvation of a people through sanctions followed up with massive bombing and military occupation helpful? i'm sure the germans thought they could save us during world war two. point is: the united states does not have some sort of righteousness attributed to it just because it is the united states. we murder and plunder and use imperial aggression just as much, if not more, than the next country. if it is wrong for another nation to do it, it is wrong for the united states to do it too. iraq was not about defense and it is not about liberation. if we were interested in liberation we would stop funding brutal dictatorships and training human rights violators in latin america.
However, the very instruments that my code runs in could be used by bioterrorists to verify that e.g., they have sufficient quantity of whatever virus they're manufacturing to cause harm to a population.
true. but the instruments your code runs were not specifically designed to kill human beings, much unlike that of the defense industry.
the military has a vague code about only attacking valid military targets (like, enemy soldiers, or strategic bases and stuff.) Rushing in and slaughtering a bunch of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers isn't "on".
I really don't get how you can justify work for a defense contractor because "war is necessary" when one of the main reasons war happens so often is because defense contractors can profit off of it. Whether or not war is necessary will be debated for quite some time, however in the mean time, does it not irk you in the slightest that the work you are doing may very well lead to the killing of another human being (probably a civilian)?
Even with the necessity argument, one of the main reasons that war is accepted as necessary by the general masses is because we value our lives over the lives of others. We constantly demonize the actions of nazi soldiers because they were killing innocent people, but how often does the mainstream criticize the US for Hiroshima? If we are going to look at war, I think that it's important to put the human being back into the equation. With technology increasing its presence on the battlefield, we can look more and more casualties for the "enemy" and less and less for us. This will further push the disconnect between the idea of war and the reality of war.
I don't want to sound like a privacy freak, but doesn't it concern anyone to have your early life low-level jobs without security concerns, such as McDonalds, having permanent records of your handprints and maybe other bio data on you? Seems like it's unnecessary to have all that on file.
Slashdot Mirror
it's not an issue of dispersing people. it's a question of seriously hurting people.
FTFA:
"What happens if someone in a crowd is unable for whatever reason to move away from the beam?" asked Neil Davison, coordinator of the nonlethal weapons research project at Britain's Bradford University.
"How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"
This is not designed well enough to ensure peaceful dispersing. What would happen if we decided that throwing napalm on the crowd was a good way to disperse? If you don't want to get burned, leave. This has the potential of causing serious damage to people and as far as I'm concerned people are worth a hell of a lot more than property.
The e-mail is not @aol.com it's @aim.com so the AOL screen name wouldn't give you the same e-mail address anyway.
so we don't have to destroy a country in order to save it
i suppose there is no room for relativism in the world. however, if there was then i do not understand why the united states is the only country in the world that knows what is right and every one else needs to be saved. please keep your xenophobic and arrogant opinions to yourself. it is not the united states' job to save everyone. we cannot even save ourselves. and even if that was our job, how is forced starvation of a people through sanctions followed up with massive bombing and military occupation helpful? i'm sure the germans thought they could save us during world war two. point is: the united states does not have some sort of righteousness attributed to it just because it is the united states. we murder and plunder and use imperial aggression just as much, if not more, than the next country. if it is wrong for another nation to do it, it is wrong for the united states to do it too. iraq was not about defense and it is not about liberation. if we were interested in liberation we would stop funding brutal dictatorships and training human rights violators in latin america.
democracies don't start wars.
mod that up for funny.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/st ory.jsp?story=577151
The Lancet, a British Medical Journal estimated at least 100,000 by October 2004. 120 sounds pretty safe this far into the war.
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_02.php#00335 6
However, the very instruments that my code runs in could be used by bioterrorists to verify that e.g., they have sufficient quantity of whatever virus they're manufacturing to cause harm to a population.
true. but the instruments your code runs were not specifically designed to kill human beings, much unlike that of the defense industry.
Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki
I really don't get how you can justify work for a defense contractor because "war is necessary" when one of the main reasons war happens so often is because defense contractors can profit off of it. Whether or not war is necessary will be debated for quite some time, however in the mean time, does it not irk you in the slightest that the work you are doing may very well lead to the killing of another human being (probably a civilian)?
Even with the necessity argument, one of the main reasons that war is accepted as necessary by the general masses is because we value our lives over the lives of others. We constantly demonize the actions of nazi soldiers because they were killing innocent people, but how often does the mainstream criticize the US for Hiroshima? If we are going to look at war, I think that it's important to put the human being back into the equation. With technology increasing its presence on the battlefield, we can look more and more casualties for the "enemy" and less and less for us. This will further push the disconnect between the idea of war and the reality of war.
I don't want to sound like a privacy freak, but doesn't it concern anyone to have your early life low-level jobs without security concerns, such as McDonalds, having permanent records of your handprints and maybe other bio data on you? Seems like it's unnecessary to have all that on file.