Except those people didn't ALL disappear completely, AND even those who did mostly left behind records of previous existence. Which could later be tallied up to come to that estimate.
Again, key word being LATER. Not in first 24 hours.
Also, there is a slight difference between a natural disaster that even though it is immense takes time to happen and an atomic bomb detonated over a city, obliterating it in a fraction of a second.
Except no towns were obliterated in Japan. All those catastrophic images that keep repeating on TV are mostly farm land being swept over. In Sendai itself it was just earthquake damage, tsunami didn't reach the actual city as it is on higher ground then its eastern outskirts. No catastrophic fires, no power outage... See for yourself here. (webcam images from yesterday, don't know how long they will be up.) Note the grayed out image at 14:47, one minute into the earthquake.
When they've burst out with the 88.000 (eighty-eight-thousand) people missing in Japan, which they've supposedly picked up from Kyodo news agency. Which then got copy/pasted all over the internet by every damn blogger and news agency out there. So now, it gets parroted around like it is a fact. It turns out... it was a typo. Or a mistranslation. Or a googling error considering that some reports mention it as 110.000 missing.
BREAKING NEWS: Death toll from Japan quake rises to 110, 350 missing: police Note... 200-300 bodies found in Sendai after quake, 88 others killed...
See? Right there. "110, 350 missing"! *headdesk*
And here I thought that one would actually have to know how to read if one wanted to be a BBC journalist.
FFS... 88000 people can't go "missing" in such a short time. It's technically impossible. Why?! Well, besides the fact that 88000 people take up quite a lot of space and someone would pretty fucking soon notice them and proclaim them dead or found (identified or not) - you can't really know that there are 88000 people missing unless you can actually account for 88000 names. Or at least 88000 bodies.
And it takes a bit longer than 24 hours to compile a list of 88000 actual humans. Let's say that it takes 5 minutes for a person to fill out a "missing persons" form, and for someone else to input that into a database. If the reports were coming in non-stop from 100 locations that would make it 4400 minutes just to gather all the reports ( 88000 reports divided by 100 locations times 5 minutes i.e. (88000/100)*5 ). That comes out to about 3 days of non-stop report gathering alone. It would actually take about 10 times that, at least.
There simply was not enough time yet to gather that kind of actual data.
And again... If you know of 88000 actual people (Name, date of birth, address etc.) that are missing - just look for a really big pile of people somewhere. Pretty sure you'll find a lot of them there.
Well... unless there were aliens involved. Then all bets are off. Except the one with the time it would take to compile a list of 88000 names and addresses.
Ah-huh... and next you're going to argue that Franco Nero was not a real Val Verdian dictator. Or Scotsman.
They've built the entire air traffic control system, then physically cut into the lines (as in with an axe and a shovel), used social engineering (which fooled even Miles O'Brien into ignoring all other instruments) to guide in the airplane during low visibility conditions AND they press some buttons, turn some dials and click on some screen with a light pen - and you call that "clicking on an icon"?
Sorry, but that is nowhere near a kid plugging in her laptop to land the airplane, OR just "clicking on an icon". At least they've provided SOME footing for the suspension of disbelief. Unlike say... Electric Dreams. Loved that movie, particularly the music but it is complete and utter fantasy.
They had a complete air traffic control system set up in that church. Not just "a computer".
You want bad - Die Hard 4.0. Exploding computers (with actual explosives built into the computer) that are used to kill hackers who were unknowingly working for the badguys. Explosives activate whey you press the "Delete" key. FBI rounding up "top hackers". Badguys pulling off a Dr. Evil as a key part of their plan (they televise a CGI video of the Capitol exploding). "Traced" IPs showing up with the name of the user. Timothy Olyphant remotely moving a webcam in Kevin Smith's basement. Everything that Justin Long does during the movie. Including something-something-satellite-something-that works during a complete power failure across the East Coast and that only the hackers use. The grand plan:
In case of a total computer systems failure—such as the one Gabriel manufactured—every critical personal and financial record across the country is sent to servers there to create a backup. Gabriel's men take over the facility and start downloading a copy. Warlock is also able to explain Gabriel's motivation: a talented hacker, he was once a top expert for the NSA. However, he was fired and his reputation was tarnished when he tried to sound the alarm about America's vulnerability to cyber-warfare.
And they do that by downloading 500 terabytes via USB in about 2 minutes. To a portable drive.
Try this if you want an approximate reaction. Put a magnet in the microwave for one second. Spoiler: Nothing exciting happens.
Magnetic influence from a solar flare on Earth's magnetic field could be adequately compared to the effect that a spray of water from a garden hose would have on a boulder. A very short spray and a very large boulder. Also, you are actually trying to move the boulder, not just getting it wet.
Also comparable: put a tiny magnet on one side of a large room and wave at it with a larger magnet from the other side of the room. Wave only once.
It won't remove all of the apple plugs (nothing short of carpet bombing of the Slashdot HQ would do that), but it should significantly reduce the number of non-stories you'll be seeing in the future.
So, everybody to some extent takes the word of others as truth.... That's why it is unwise to simply accept big subjects with many parts, like evolution, as true and inerrant. You wind up believing work from a scientist who may or may not have exhaustively researched the work, combined with many others, and accepting it all without question since it sounds reasonable and either agrees with your assumptions, or disagrees with a belief you dislike.
"My pappy used to say..." is not a valid scientific assumption, proof or reference.
I.e. When a chemist dilutes a concentrated substance in water he/she doesn't use water "cause someone told him/her that water dilutes" but because it is a SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN METHOD for dilution of that particular substance. Cause, many substances are NOT soluble in water. Which was again, scientifically proven. Through repeatable experimentation and observation based on scientific rules, facts and theories. Which are again based on those same rules of provable experimentation etc.
There is no "believing" in science. It all has to be proven and provable. Again and again and again. Sure, you may ACCEPT already EXISTING PROOFS and results and you wouldn't be wrong doing that as long as they were proven in a properly controlled manner. Or, you can go and get your own proofs and results, then let other experts re-check your data and results and if there are no errors - you can use your own if you don't trust the already proven data. That's the beauty of science. It is so fucking constant that it borders on boring.
Belief and faith are gambles that humans find necessary when they CAN'T PROVE something, but still need some form of assurance - being insecure little monkeys that we are. Be it god, love or the ASL of the person you just met online. Once it is a proven FACT though - there is no need for faith. It's a fact. Your belief won't do a lick of difference to change it. You can "believe" that the sky is actually colored in a red and white checkered pattern all you want - that will not make it true. Nor will your lack of "belief" that it is blue (usually... from human perspective) make it change its color. It simply doesn't work that way.
And what do you think happens when people save money (they don't put it under their mattresses)? It goes in the bank.
No it doesn't. Not "rich money" anyway (which is the kind that "gets saved" in this case). Poor(er) people keep their savings in the bank. Rich "invest" in tax shelters. And since "money has no nationality" it often goes outside the economy that you were trying to boost.
Poor money can't afford to get itself spent on real-estate projects in Dubai.
How anyone can look at the Reagan era and say "trickle down" didn't work is laughable. 19 straight years of Dow growth (1981-1999), after 20 flat years.
The tax cuts of 1981 and 1986 were followed by significant, though not huge, upswings in the economy.
However, as William Gale of the Brookings Institution has pointed out, "The simple fact is that business and household saving did not rise in the 1980s...." There was increased investment due to "an inflow of foreign capital. But by the mid- 1980s, net investment had receded to its earlier levels." Economic growth in the 1980s was real, but it came from the normal upswing of the business cycle, made more forceful by huge deficits that bolstered economy-wide purchasing power (or "aggregate demand"). Moreover, the growth of those years provided a lot of feed for the horses but didn't do much for the sparrows. After-tax corporate profits rose by close to 60% between 1980 and 1989, while average hourly earnings in 1989 were slightly below their 1980 level and 10% below their 1973 peak. (All this is after adjustment for inflation.)
Throughout the decade, income distribution worsened: In 1980, the top 5% of households were obtaining 3.7 times as much total income as the bottom 20%, but by 1989 this elite group was receiving five times as much as that (much larger) bottom group. So much for any "trickle down" from the tax changes of the 1980s.
Also, considering that people often conflate it with supply-side economics - it should be noted that SSE also mostly fails to fulfill its promises. Cause, when you take this in account, and have an open mind to this, you come to this conclusion.
In 2003, the Wall Street Journal declared the debate over supply-side economics to have ended "with a whimper" after extensive modeling performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) failed to support the most extreme claims of supply-side policies.[2]... This research undermines the claim that tax cuts can completely compensate for the initial loss of revenue due to the cut, but does acknowledge that resulting growth from the tax cut does replace some of the lost revenue, and the CBO has come under fire for using low estimates.
They are (as someone pointed above) creating an artificial line in front of you at the register so that each item goes unnecessarily through many hands before you finally pay for it. Although, it would be more accurate to say that the line is actually between the person stocking the shelves and you taking the item off the shelve.
And since this analogy has gone off the deep end, lets start a new one. With cars, as it is the custom of the realm.
It's like having an army of midgets in your car that follow each of your actions that you perform in order to drive a car (turning wheel, pushing pedals, pressing various buttons...) with a series of actions that take place picoseconds after your action - which actually tell your car what you want from it to do. I.e. You push the gas pedal to accelerate, and a hundred midgets pushes a hundred pedals until the last midget in the line pushes the pedal that actually makes the car drive faster.
Since those midgets are really fast, you never actually see them - until you look at the gas and maintenance bills. Which are higher than what they should be, cause you are actually carpooling an army of freeloading midgets.
Except taxes are collected post facto (there has to be a transaction in order for it to be taxable) while the middle-man he is talking about is increasing the cost of the transaction by inserting itself INTO the transaction so that you can't complete the transaction at all without paying the middle-man.
Also... besides the fact that taxes can be deducted, reduced, returned etc. etc. taxes are the blood that makes and keeps the civilization alive. Middle-men are parasites. Nothing more, nothing else.
1. Put a clearly visible grade of the article. Visible to users, not just editors. It should be the first thing you see once you open a certain page. 2. NEVER delete an article. EVER! 3. Don't delete the content out of the article. Create an "unchecked or unverifiable content" section of the article somewhere on the bottom and let all the things that don't pass the grade just sit there. BUT DON'T DELETE THEM!
On a scale of 1 to 10, 0 to 100% notability, 1 to 9000... whatever. Simply slap a big red "CAUTION: Information written here may not actually be fact checked."-sticker on top of the article and leave it be.
Give the article a chance to be improved - not removed.
In a group of 10 people, 50% of them being of below average intelligence, it's only 5 people who are dumber than the average intelligence of that randomly chosen group. Get a group of a couple of thousand random people together, and the numbers go up. Get a group as large and as random as "consumers in USA" and you are practically guaranteed that about half of them will be making really dumb choices. And about 15% will make REALLY retarded choices.
...you are paying for watts spent. You should be allowed to know both the lumen AND the watt count of your light bulbs and to choose according to your needs and desires.
As for "OMG! Incandescent light bulbs are being banned by the gubement!" - I say "Good riddance". About every third one I bought in last five years wouldn't last longer than six months. Other two would follow it in couple of months. I'm guessing everyone simply reduced their quality control to "can it be turned on" in order to keep up with the ultra-cheap Chinese ones.
I also recall at least Germany having a problem with a government that systematically rounded up what they considered undesirables and putting them to death...
You mean like what "Americans" did to the "Indians"? Or if you want to limit it to later 20th century - those "Americans" of darker complexion. You know what's the BEST part? Germans had several constitutions until they got the current one. They also had a complete madman running the place at the time. USA-ians did their genocides with the very same constitution that is in use today. Including all those single-digit amendments. All democracial like...
The 2nd amendment isn't about hunting, self defense, or casual target shooting - it is about the ability for the citizenship to revolt against the government.
You mean like the "Indians" did? Oh yeah... that worked great for them. And they were actually able to shoot down the cavalry - now the cavalry has much greater range than what is even remotely available to civilians. Also, flamethrowers...
Slashdot Mirror
Spared me explaining that.
Except those people didn't ALL disappear completely, AND even those who did mostly left behind records of previous existence.
Which could later be tallied up to come to that estimate.
Again, key word being LATER. Not in first 24 hours.
Also, there is a slight difference between a natural disaster that even though it is immense takes time to happen and an atomic bomb detonated over a city, obliterating it in a fraction of a second.
Except no towns were obliterated in Japan. All those catastrophic images that keep repeating on TV are mostly farm land being swept over.
In Sendai itself it was just earthquake damage, tsunami didn't reach the actual city as it is on higher ground then its eastern outskirts. No catastrophic fires, no power outage...
See for yourself here. (webcam images from yesterday, don't know how long they will be up.)
Note the grayed out image at 14:47, one minute into the earthquake.
Sure, there was damage, there are dead and missing, but only 605 dead and 784 missing so far.
But, after an 8.9 earthquake and a tsunami, that's nothing.
Even those figures combined don't come to 50% of Japan's daily mortality rate of about 3500.
When they've burst out with the 88.000 (eighty-eight-thousand) people missing in Japan, which they've supposedly picked up from Kyodo news agency.
Which then got copy/pasted all over the internet by every damn blogger and news agency out there. So now, it gets parroted around like it is a fact.
It turns out... it was a typo. Or a mistranslation. Or a googling error considering that some reports mention it as 110.000 missing.
BREAKING NEWS: Death toll from Japan quake rises to 110, 350 missing: police Note ... 200-300 bodies found in Sendai after quake, 88 others killed ...
See? Right there. "110, 350 missing"!
*headdesk*
And here I thought that one would actually have to know how to read if one wanted to be a BBC journalist.
FFS... 88000 people can't go "missing" in such a short time. It's technically impossible. Why?!
Well, besides the fact that 88000 people take up quite a lot of space and someone would pretty fucking soon notice them and proclaim them dead or found (identified or not) - you can't really know that there are 88000 people missing unless you can actually account for 88000 names. Or at least 88000 bodies.
And it takes a bit longer than 24 hours to compile a list of 88000 actual humans.
Let's say that it takes 5 minutes for a person to fill out a "missing persons" form, and for someone else to input that into a database.
If the reports were coming in non-stop from 100 locations that would make it 4400 minutes just to gather all the reports ( 88000 reports divided by 100 locations times 5 minutes i.e. (88000/100)*5 ).
That comes out to about 3 days of non-stop report gathering alone.
It would actually take about 10 times that, at least.
There simply was not enough time yet to gather that kind of actual data.
And again... If you know of 88000 actual people (Name, date of birth, address etc.) that are missing - just look for a really big pile of people somewhere.
Pretty sure you'll find a lot of them there.
Well... unless there were aliens involved. Then all bets are off.
Except the one with the time it would take to compile a list of 88000 names and addresses.
You insensitive cold!
Cowboy Bebop who is always at his computer.
Ah-huh... and next you're going to argue that Franco Nero was not a real Val Verdian dictator. Or Scotsman.
They've built the entire air traffic control system, then physically cut into the lines (as in with an axe and a shovel), used social engineering (which fooled even Miles O'Brien into ignoring all other instruments) to guide in the airplane during low visibility conditions AND they press some buttons, turn some dials and click on some screen with a light pen - and you call that "clicking on an icon"?
Sorry, but that is nowhere near a kid plugging in her laptop to land the airplane, OR just "clicking on an icon".
At least they've provided SOME footing for the suspension of disbelief. Unlike say... Electric Dreams.
Loved that movie, particularly the music but it is complete and utter fantasy.
They had a complete air traffic control system set up in that church. Not just "a computer".
You want bad - Die Hard 4.0.
Exploding computers (with actual explosives built into the computer) that are used to kill hackers who were unknowingly working for the badguys. Explosives activate whey you press the "Delete" key.
FBI rounding up "top hackers".
Badguys pulling off a Dr. Evil as a key part of their plan (they televise a CGI video of the Capitol exploding).
"Traced" IPs showing up with the name of the user.
Timothy Olyphant remotely moving a webcam in Kevin Smith's basement.
Everything that Justin Long does during the movie. Including something-something-satellite-something-that works during a complete power failure across the East Coast and that only the hackers use.
The grand plan:
In case of a total computer systems failure—such as the one Gabriel manufactured—every critical personal and financial record across the country is sent to servers there to create a backup. Gabriel's men take over the facility and start downloading a copy. Warlock is also able to explain Gabriel's motivation: a talented hacker, he was once a top expert for the NSA. However, he was fired and his reputation was tarnished when he tried to sound the alarm about America's vulnerability to cyber-warfare.
And they do that by downloading 500 terabytes via USB in about 2 minutes. To a portable drive.
Try this if you want an approximate reaction. Put a magnet in the microwave for one second.
Spoiler: Nothing exciting happens.
Magnetic influence from a solar flare on Earth's magnetic field could be adequately compared to the effect that a spray of water from a garden hose would have on a boulder.
A very short spray and a very large boulder. Also, you are actually trying to move the boulder, not just getting it wet.
Also comparable: put a tiny magnet on one side of a large room and wave at it with a larger magnet from the other side of the room. Wave only once.
...along with kdawson.
It won't remove all of the apple plugs (nothing short of carpet bombing of the Slashdot HQ would do that), but it should significantly reduce the number of non-stories you'll be seeing in the future.
You know... like the above mentioned Jozsef Szajer.
Who also has problems with spelling...
Thanx Steve! God bless you! Get back to Apple, for the benefit of all of us! You are a genious!
So, everybody to some extent takes the word of others as truth. ...
That's why it is unwise to simply accept big subjects with many parts, like evolution, as true and inerrant.
You wind up believing work from a scientist who may or may not have exhaustively researched the work, combined with many others, and accepting it all without question since it sounds reasonable and either agrees with your assumptions, or disagrees with a belief you dislike.
"My pappy used to say..." is not a valid scientific assumption, proof or reference.
I.e. When a chemist dilutes a concentrated substance in water he/she doesn't use water "cause someone told him/her that water dilutes" but because it is a SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN METHOD for dilution of that particular substance.
Cause, many substances are NOT soluble in water. Which was again, scientifically proven.
Through repeatable experimentation and observation based on scientific rules, facts and theories.
Which are again based on those same rules of provable experimentation etc.
There is no "believing" in science.
It all has to be proven and provable. Again and again and again.
Sure, you may ACCEPT already EXISTING PROOFS and results and you wouldn't be wrong doing that as long as they were proven in a properly controlled manner.
Or, you can go and get your own proofs and results, then let other experts re-check your data and results and if there are no errors - you can use your own if you don't trust the already proven data.
That's the beauty of science. It is so fucking constant that it borders on boring.
Belief and faith are gambles that humans find necessary when they CAN'T PROVE something, but still need some form of assurance - being insecure little monkeys that we are.
Be it god, love or the ASL of the person you just met online. Once it is a proven FACT though - there is no need for faith. It's a fact.
Your belief won't do a lick of difference to change it.
You can "believe" that the sky is actually colored in a red and white checkered pattern all you want - that will not make it true.
Nor will your lack of "belief" that it is blue (usually... from human perspective) make it change its color.
It simply doesn't work that way.
And what do you think happens when people save money (they don't put it under their mattresses)? It goes in the bank.
No it doesn't. Not "rich money" anyway (which is the kind that "gets saved" in this case).
Poor(er) people keep their savings in the bank. Rich "invest" in tax shelters.
And since "money has no nationality" it often goes outside the economy that you were trying to boost.
Poor money can't afford to get itself spent on real-estate projects in Dubai.
How anyone can look at the Reagan era and say "trickle down" didn't work is laughable. 19 straight years of Dow growth (1981-1999), after 20 flat years.
Quite easily actually...
The tax cuts of 1981 and 1986 were followed by significant, though not huge, upswings in the economy.
However, as William Gale of the Brookings Institution has pointed out, "The simple fact is that business and household saving did not rise in the 1980s...." There was increased investment due to "an inflow of foreign capital. But by the mid- 1980s, net investment had receded to its earlier levels."
Economic growth in the 1980s was real, but it came from the normal upswing of the business cycle, made more forceful by huge deficits that bolstered economy-wide purchasing power (or "aggregate demand"). Moreover, the growth of those years provided a lot of feed for the horses but didn't do much for the sparrows. After-tax corporate profits rose by close to 60% between 1980 and 1989, while average hourly earnings in 1989 were slightly below their 1980 level and 10% below their 1973 peak. (All this is after adjustment for inflation.)
Throughout the decade, income distribution worsened: In 1980, the top 5% of households were obtaining 3.7 times as much total income as the bottom 20%, but by 1989 this elite group was receiving five times as much as that (much larger) bottom group. So much for any "trickle down" from the tax changes of the 1980s.
Also, considering that people often conflate it with supply-side economics - it should be noted that SSE also mostly fails to fulfill its promises.
Cause, when you take this in account, and have an open mind to this, you come to this conclusion.
In 2003, the Wall Street Journal declared the debate over supply-side economics to have ended "with a whimper" after extensive modeling performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) failed to support the most extreme claims of supply-side policies.[2] ...
This research undermines the claim that tax cuts can completely compensate for the initial loss of revenue due to the cut, but does acknowledge that resulting growth from the tax cut does replace some of the lost revenue, and the CBO has come under fire for using low estimates.
But Hitler was gay... I mean, just look at that get up...
He was a rather clueless hipster.
It's so feature-filled that I can do anything!
Anything at all. The only limit is yourself.
Up a narrow staircase?
Limbs CAN be useful for such tasks.
Wasn't he the drummer of that band Alfred Ainstein used to be in?
They are (as someone pointed above) creating an artificial line in front of you at the register so that each item goes unnecessarily through many hands before you finally pay for it.
Although, it would be more accurate to say that the line is actually between the person stocking the shelves and you taking the item off the shelve.
And since this analogy has gone off the deep end, lets start a new one. With cars, as it is the custom of the realm.
It's like having an army of midgets in your car that follow each of your actions that you perform in order to drive a car (turning wheel, pushing pedals, pressing various buttons...) with a series of actions that take place picoseconds after your action - which actually tell your car what you want from it to do.
I.e. You push the gas pedal to accelerate, and a hundred midgets pushes a hundred pedals until the last midget in the line pushes the pedal that actually makes the car drive faster.
Since those midgets are really fast, you never actually see them - until you look at the gas and maintenance bills.
Which are higher than what they should be, cause you are actually carpooling an army of freeloading midgets.
Except taxes are collected post facto (there has to be a transaction in order for it to be taxable) while the middle-man he is talking about is increasing the cost of the transaction by inserting itself INTO the transaction so that you can't complete the transaction at all without paying the middle-man.
Also... besides the fact that taxes can be deducted, reduced, returned etc. etc. taxes are the blood that makes and keeps the civilization alive.
Middle-men are parasites. Nothing more, nothing else.
1. Put a clearly visible grade of the article. Visible to users, not just editors. It should be the first thing you see once you open a certain page.
2. NEVER delete an article. EVER!
3. Don't delete the content out of the article. Create an "unchecked or unverifiable content" section of the article somewhere on the bottom and let all the things that don't pass the grade just sit there. BUT DON'T DELETE THEM!
Be inclusive - not exclusive.
Grade the articles.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 0 to 100% notability, 1 to 9000... whatever.
Simply slap a big red "CAUTION: Information written here may not actually be fact checked."-sticker on top of the article and leave it be.
Give the article a chance to be improved - not removed.
You were tolkien a little funny there.
And besides, everyone knows that JRRT wasn't smokin no joints. He used a pipe for Iluvatar's sake.
It is simply normal distribution and the increase of the population.
In a group of 10 people, 50% of them being of below average intelligence, it's only 5 people who are dumber than the average intelligence of that randomly chosen group.
Get a group of a couple of thousand random people together, and the numbers go up.
Get a group as large and as random as "consumers in USA" and you are practically guaranteed that about half of them will be making really dumb choices.
And about 15% will make REALLY retarded choices.
...you are paying for watts spent.
You should be allowed to know both the lumen AND the watt count of your light bulbs and to choose according to your needs and desires.
As for "OMG! Incandescent light bulbs are being banned by the gubement!" - I say "Good riddance".
About every third one I bought in last five years wouldn't last longer than six months. Other two would follow it in couple of months.
I'm guessing everyone simply reduced their quality control to "can it be turned on" in order to keep up with the ultra-cheap Chinese ones.
I also recall at least Germany having a problem with a government that systematically rounded up what they considered undesirables and putting them to death...
You mean like what "Americans" did to the "Indians"? Or if you want to limit it to later 20th century - those "Americans" of darker complexion.
You know what's the BEST part? Germans had several constitutions until they got the current one. They also had a complete madman running the place at the time.
USA-ians did their genocides with the very same constitution that is in use today. Including all those single-digit amendments.
All democracial like...
The 2nd amendment isn't about hunting, self defense, or casual target shooting - it is about the ability for the citizenship to revolt against the government.
You mean like the "Indians" did? Oh yeah... that worked great for them. And they were actually able to shoot down the cavalry - now the cavalry has much greater range than what is even remotely available to civilians. Also, flamethrowers...