"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," McCarthy said.
"The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy," he told Ireland's RTE radio.
Actually, the energy isn't created. It's induced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_induction.... At least, from those two lines, that's how I'd do it. Throw in some capacitors or other form of battery to stabilize the current generated, and you can power a low-consumption device such as a wristwatch or pocket calculator with it. The amount of power generated depends on the strength of the magnets. Strong enough magnets, and you could conceivably power an electric car.... I just wonder how they'd manage to power devices that don't move, like a fridge or a stove, without violating basic physics.:)
No doubt there's ways to make biofuel from kelp or other salt-water plants, too. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anybody doing that, but I do know that there's sugar in kelp and that it can be fermented to produce methane or ethanol.
Actually... magnetic tape lasts a *lot* longer, if it's stored right. Or if it was the first generation before the manufacturers clued in that they can make the tape out of cheaper polymers. But I have a friend who works in restoration at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and there's tapes in their archive that still play perfectly well after more than 50 years. It wasn't actually until the late 1960's/early 1970's that they started using the cheaper polymers, and the tape started sticking to itself if it was stored in a humid/warm environment. Even so, you can resurrect an old tape by baking it for long enough to get the moisture out. Usually they do it over the course of 8-10 hours so they don't burn the tape.:-)
Incidentally, early LP's were made out of steel, and didn't have anywhere near the problems you see in vinyl, either.
I disagree. Slackware is what it is: stable. It's also one of the fastest distros I've ever used. There's a reason it's running on all of my servers. There's *tons* of other distros out there that specialise in bleeding edge. Let them do it.
If you want bleeding edge out of a Slack-based distro, btw, you should check out Zenwalk (http://www.zenwalk.org/). Slack packages are compatible, though they have their own package manager and custom-compiled packages that support dependency checking )while still maintaining compatibility with pkgtool and install/removepkg). The real advantage is when Zen doesn't have a package for what you're looking for... then you can just pop over to slackware.com and grab Pat's version, or over to linuxpackages.net and grab one of theirs.
Yes.... and you're already a Linux user. Likewise, I prefer Slackware. Think about it from the perspective of Grandma who doesn't know what she's doing with computers.
Here, Grandma... this program here will do everything that your Windows box will do. It's got a program that does everything that your Word does, and your e-mail, and your browsing. And it looks like the Windows that you're used to. Why am I showing this to you? Well, Grandma, Windows XP Home and Microsoft Office will cost you about $400. This one's free. I know you're on a fixed income, so I thought you'd like the free choice for that new computer you're buying. Yes... you can do everything you already do on your computer. (don't know about you, but my 84-year old grandmother doesn't care if her computer can run Doom III. As long as it runs Quake, she's happy.)
Here's a thought... download the ISO and try it. You may find you like it, and if you don't, you can easily go back to Ubuntu. There's a torrent and everything. I'm going to set it up on my laptop, since I'm using that as a testbed anyway.
Next to nothing. The power required to maintain a wireless link is minute even compared to the draw from switched-off DVD players, kitchen appliances and bedside clock/radios that still use power-wasting transformers to maintain enough current to keep a clock running. By carpooling every day (which I do) I probably save more energy than 100 households might waste in wireless devices. You need to learn some elementary physics before you're qualified comment on energy usage.
You're right. You can save a whole lot of energy by carpooling, walking, biking, or taking the bus. I already do that. But you need to learn some basic math before you are qualified to comment on the kind of energy savings being discussed. A computer in hibernate mode uses zero energy. That's less than "a minute amount of energy". If my mouse and keyboard are wired, they draw power from the computer. But only when it's on.
You're absolutely right that we're discussing power consumption levels numbered in the single digit watts. My monitor, for example, consumes about 2W when it's in sleep mode (said monitor is an LCD, but let's not get into the energy savings of LCD over CRT displays). 2W really isn't that much at all... 2 joules per second. But... if there's 1 million appliances in sleep mode in a city (and when you consider cities with populations numbering several million, that's a conservative number: off the top of my head, I can think of my VCR, my DVD player, my sattelite receiver, and my monitor, and that's just one person), each consuming 2W of energy, that's 2MW of power generation that could otherwise be conserved. It all adds up, and the power used to charge the batteries in your wireless keyboard and mouse has to come from somewhere. Call me a sceptic, but I very much doubt that the average computer user has a solar panel set up to power their wireless peripherals....
To put things in a little perspective... Ontario is one of the worst polluters in North America, and about 26% of their electricity comes from coal/oil power generation. Think of how many power generators could be shut down if a little energy conservation were done.
Do you realise how little power is required to maintain a minimal bluetooth connection? Get some perspective. Driving a motor vehicle for just a few minutes probably draws vastly more power than a bluetooth device for a few months.
Do you realise how little power is required to maintain a copper connection that's off? You wanna talk percentage increase in power consumption....
5 cables for a 3.1 sound system? It's a 4-speaker system, so you'd be using 4 connections at most for a purely analogue setup, or one cable to a digital receiver if you're using some kind of external AC-3 decoder.
You should switch to USB... the back of my computer has exactly 5 connections total. DVI for display, Analogue-in for sound, Analogue-out for sound (to a stereo receiver), USB (to the 4-way hub in my monitor), and power. I'm using a wireless LAN, with a remote print server that never has to move, the mouse/keyboard are plugged into USB ports on the monitor.
The move to wireless is great for networking, where I can have a power source driving the other end, but if I have to keep putting batteries in stuff like my keyboard and mouse, then it defeats the purpose of freeing myself of wires. I much prefer moving to USB, where I can have one wire to the computer, and plug devices into a hub as I need them. Much easier to get rid of the tangle of wires that way, without the hassle of changing batteries every 5 minutes.
While I know you're not particularly enamoured with Logitech, I really like my TrackMan Wheel trackball. There's probably a reason why they still sell the identical model to what I bought more than 5 years ago. The problem with optical mice is that the quality of the input relies on what you're using as a surface, and it's impossible to calibrate the mouse to be perfect on all surfaces. The trackball is an optical mouse, but it only ever has to scan the ball. As a result, no matter what it's resting on, it's always scanning *the* ideal surface, at *the* ideal distance.
And believe it or not, I use it for gaming. Once you get used to it, the accuracy can't be beat.:)
Last time I installed LimeWire, I was required to click through a page that wouldn't install unless I said that "No, I will not use LimeWire or their services to commit copyright infringement." Admittedly, that was several versions of LW and several reinstalls of my OS ago (I experiment a lot), but I doubt LimeWire would be stupid enough to remove that kind of clickpage.
And yet, there are some truly beautiful PC cases available out there. I bought a new one a couple days ago because I was tired of having a drab tan box taking up desk real estate, as an example (wanted something quieter, too)... ever seen Antec's Lifestyles series of cases? http://www.antec.com/us/pro_en_lifeStyle.html.... mine's an Overture II. Looks really nice, actually, with my black/silver keyboard, silver trackball, and black LCD.
Not a fan of Antec? Thermaltake is making some really nice chassis, too. For me, it was a toss-up between the Antec I bought and Thermaltake's "Bach". Aspire is making some gorgeous PC cases... even Lian Li has given up making cases that are only functional and has started making some really nice-looking cases. Personally, I don't see any problem with encouraging OEM manufacturers to start making computers that look equally nice. Maybe the wording is a little suspect, but if it ultimately leads to more off-the-shelf hardware that looks good as well as works well, then who am I to complain? For the people who are concerned about keeping the price to a minimum, you'll still be able to get the grey box, cheap integrated hardware, and I doubt Ubuntu is going to go away any time soon. (though personally I prefer Slack, I do have to admit that apt-get is the best package management tool out there, which is incredibly important for breaking into the desktop market....)
As an aside, I'm also beta testing Vista 64-bit, and quite honestly, I'm favourably impressed. In the month since I started using it, I've seen exactly one fatal OE, and it didn't bring down the system. The game I was playing crashed, and I was able to restart the game without having to reboot the system, and keep playing. It also has some really nice eye candy... while we all know OS/X had it years ago, it is nice to see MS finally getting on that bandwagon. I probably won't buy it when it's released, but that's more because of the price. I'll probably check my school's MSDN connection and hope there's a version of it there, instead.:-) MS is just trying to rebrand themselves, and I can't fault them for that at all. We've all seen those "I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" commercials.
The Vista installer will run under Vista, and gives you the option to install Vista as an upgrade. They need to work on the wording, but it's entirely possible to reinstall the OS without redoing the apps/userspace.
I speak from experience when I say that even if you do get encryption working right between multiple vendors, you could still run into trouble with performance/usability. I had an encrypted wireless net, and it actually caused me a whole bunch of headaches getting the security to work right under Vista, XP, Slackware (the only one that did exactly what I wanted it to do, actually), 2k, and NetBSD. One system would work right, but another would take 5 minutes to authenticate every time I booted. Another would lose the connection if I wasn't using it. Still others would work, but have incredible lag with each packet because of the encryption/decryption (the computer in question was an Athlon 1.2GHz with 256MB of RAM, running XP Pro).
Ultimately, I killed encryption and turned on MAC filtering and stricter authentication for accessing network resources like the printer, fileserver, and mail. *everything* is a whole lot faster, now, and I have yet to have problems getting a new piece of hardware working on the network since doing that. Yet no doubt, these kind folks described in the article would yell at me for not using encryption....
If you're referring to the Gateway 2185W, It's a 21" LCD. I've got one; it was my warmhappyfuzzyfeeling purchase of the year, and I don't regret it at all. I've got it hooked up to my DVD player's HiDef outputs, DVI from the computer (will never go back to analog for that... colours are *way* crisper), and S-Video from the Sattelite. It's also got a VGA input and an RCA that I'm not using.
If I could change one thing on the monitor, it'd be the cables that came with it. You'd think that for a $600 USD monitor (retail in Canada was $800), they wouldn't cheap out on a DVI cable, but lo... they didn't include one. Cheap bastards.
Expecting members to be friendly towards GLBT is not discriminating. It's recognizing that some of the members of the guild are somewhere on that spectrum, and asking that you be understanding and not an asshole towards them. Conservatevely, 1/10th of the population is *somewhere* on that spectrum, so it's not unreasonable to expect that some of them will play video games, and it's most certainly not discrimination to create an environment where they can feel free to express themselves without fear of repercussions.
You probably don't realize just how prevalent it is, but there seems to be an overwhelming majority in video games who think that words like "gay" and "fag" are perfectly acceptable insults for somebody you don't like. It doesn't exactly create a comfortable environment for people who are queer, and having a guild like this is a good thing.
Contrary to what you seem to be thinking, a GLBT-friendly guild doesn't mean you have to be queer to join. It just means you have to not be an asshole.
The article says nothing about how long they can *sustain* it for. I mean, great. They can transfer 282 GByte in one second. If they can only do it for one second before the system breaks down, then I really don't care. Call me when they make a system that can transfer that data rate indefinitely.
> Do you think their commanding officer says, "Hey! They aren't Gooks. They're feeling people with their > own wives and children and they are just trying to protect them against the evil invaders... we're them."
Actually.... Not exactly the wording I would choose, but the sentiment does actually carry through.
> Do you honestly think that the military is going to let their soldiers read, what amounts to enemy > propaganda on the net?
Nope. Never said that they would. Actually... Internet access is restricted far beyond mere censorship. What I said, however, was that they were worried about what information leaves the base, not what enters the base. And that's because the military is a volunteer organization. People join up because they want to, not because they're drafted, and in general, loyalty isn't really something they need to worry about. Despite appearances, the military is actually *really* careful about not taking people who would end up being a liability. Now granted, my exposure isn't to the American military, but I do know that other militaries in the world train their soldiers to think, and to critically examine the situation. I know somebody who still got in, even though when asked "can you kill?", he told the recruiter point blank "I don't know. I could never kill in cold blood, but I could probably do it if it's a case of my life or yours. Ideally, I hope I never have to find out."
> Soldiers must be desensitized against murder. If they aren't then they can't do their job.
What the military does is not murder. It is not murder to kill somebody that's trying to kill you, and the military goes out of its way to prevent civilian casualties. There's a distinction you're not making here.
> Assume such a rumour is true... Folks, it's always been the job of the military -- any military -- to > brainwash its troops. They train their personell to kill people, hundreds of them, and not feel guilty > about it. They train them to continue doing it and to hate the enemy more than anything else in > existence.
You're full of it. Soldiers are *not*, by any means, trained to be mindless killbots. They are trained to think through the situation, and use deadly force only when it's needed. Sometimes, that choice is made for them, but given the choice, a soldier will usually only fire their weapon in defense.
You need to pull back and think for a second here.... These are people we trust to play with guns. More than that, they get to play with tanks, and RPGs, and rockets, and artillery. We give them expensive toys that are developped specifically to kill people. Expensive toys that are much more effective at killing people than anything you can get as a civilian. Do you honestly believe that the management would be stupid enough to train them to be able to kill without feeling remorse, and to kill without stopping to think about the consequences of their actions?
Website blocking by the military is expectable, but it's not because the brass are a bunch of fascists. It's because the military shouldn't have to worry about soldiers accidentally leaking sensitive information, and because they have limited bandwidth to use and need to make sure that the people who need it have it. They aren't worried about the information that gets into a base, they're worried about the information that leaves it.
In which case, you need to learn to distinguish between being a moron, and being an asshole. And for the record, it's not so much that I'm an asshole as that I don't have any patience for stupidity. If you're going to draw issue with something, then back up your argument. If you're just arguing because you like the sound of your voice, then don't waste my time.
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Actually, the energy isn't created. It's induced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_induction
No doubt there's ways to make biofuel from kelp or other salt-water plants, too. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anybody doing that, but I do know that there's sugar in kelp and that it can be fermented to produce methane or ethanol.
Actually... magnetic tape lasts a *lot* longer, if it's stored right. Or if it was the first generation before the manufacturers clued in that they can make the tape out of cheaper polymers. But I have a friend who works in restoration at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and there's tapes in their archive that still play perfectly well after more than 50 years. It wasn't actually until the late 1960's/early 1970's that they started using the cheaper polymers, and the tape started sticking to itself if it was stored in a humid/warm environment. Even so, you can resurrect an old tape by baking it for long enough to get the moisture out. Usually they do it over the course of 8-10 hours so they don't burn the tape. :-)
Incidentally, early LP's were made out of steel, and didn't have anywhere near the problems you see in vinyl, either.
Not even mentionning that pretty much all of the 2.6 goodies get ported back to 2.4 :-) 2.4.33 was released on August 11, 2006....
I disagree. Slackware is what it is: stable. It's also one of the fastest distros I've ever used. There's a reason it's running on all of my servers. There's *tons* of other distros out there that specialise in bleeding edge. Let them do it.
If you want bleeding edge out of a Slack-based distro, btw, you should check out Zenwalk (http://www.zenwalk.org/). Slack packages are compatible, though they have their own package manager and custom-compiled packages that support dependency checking )while still maintaining compatibility with pkgtool and install/removepkg). The real advantage is when Zen doesn't have a package for what you're looking for... then you can just pop over to slackware.com and grab Pat's version, or over to linuxpackages.net and grab one of theirs.
Once you go XFCE, you never go back...
Last I checked, the census doesn't care about your sexual orientation. Not even sure it's legal for them to ask that question, actually.
Yes.... and you're already a Linux user. Likewise, I prefer Slackware. Think about it from the perspective of Grandma who doesn't know what she's doing with computers.
Here, Grandma... this program here will do everything that your Windows box will do. It's got a program that does everything that your Word does, and your e-mail, and your browsing. And it looks like the Windows that you're used to. Why am I showing this to you? Well, Grandma, Windows XP Home and Microsoft Office will cost you about $400. This one's free. I know you're on a fixed income, so I thought you'd like the free choice for that new computer you're buying. Yes... you can do everything you already do on your computer. (don't know about you, but my 84-year old grandmother doesn't care if her computer can run Doom III. As long as it runs Quake, she's happy.)
Here's a thought... download the ISO and try it. You may find you like it, and if you don't, you can easily go back to Ubuntu. There's a torrent and everything. I'm going to set it up on my laptop, since I'm using that as a testbed anyway.
You're right. You can save a whole lot of energy by carpooling, walking, biking, or taking the bus. I already do that. But you need to learn some basic math before you are qualified to comment on the kind of energy savings being discussed. A computer in hibernate mode uses zero energy. That's less than "a minute amount of energy". If my mouse and keyboard are wired, they draw power from the computer. But only when it's on.
You're absolutely right that we're discussing power consumption levels numbered in the single digit watts. My monitor, for example, consumes about 2W when it's in sleep mode (said monitor is an LCD, but let's not get into the energy savings of LCD over CRT displays). 2W really isn't that much at all... 2 joules per second. But... if there's 1 million appliances in sleep mode in a city (and when you consider cities with populations numbering several million, that's a conservative number: off the top of my head, I can think of my VCR, my DVD player, my sattelite receiver, and my monitor, and that's just one person), each consuming 2W of energy, that's 2MW of power generation that could otherwise be conserved. It all adds up, and the power used to charge the batteries in your wireless keyboard and mouse has to come from somewhere. Call me a sceptic, but I very much doubt that the average computer user has a solar panel set up to power their wireless peripherals....
To put things in a little perspective... Ontario is one of the worst polluters in North America, and about 26% of their electricity comes from coal/oil power generation. Think of how many power generators could be shut down if a little energy conservation were done.
Do you realise how little power is required to maintain a copper connection that's off? You wanna talk percentage increase in power consumption....
5 cables for a 3.1 sound system? It's a 4-speaker system, so you'd be using 4 connections at most for a purely analogue setup, or one cable to a digital receiver if you're using some kind of external AC-3 decoder.
You should switch to USB... the back of my computer has exactly 5 connections total. DVI for display, Analogue-in for sound, Analogue-out for sound (to a stereo receiver), USB (to the 4-way hub in my monitor), and power. I'm using a wireless LAN, with a remote print server that never has to move, the mouse/keyboard are plugged into USB ports on the monitor.
The move to wireless is great for networking, where I can have a power source driving the other end, but if I have to keep putting batteries in stuff like my keyboard and mouse, then it defeats the purpose of freeing myself of wires. I much prefer moving to USB, where I can have one wire to the computer, and plug devices into a hub as I need them. Much easier to get rid of the tangle of wires that way, without the hassle of changing batteries every 5 minutes.
While I know you're not particularly enamoured with Logitech, I really like my TrackMan Wheel trackball. There's probably a reason why they still sell the identical model to what I bought more than 5 years ago. The problem with optical mice is that the quality of the input relies on what you're using as a surface, and it's impossible to calibrate the mouse to be perfect on all surfaces. The trackball is an optical mouse, but it only ever has to scan the ball. As a result, no matter what it's resting on, it's always scanning *the* ideal surface, at *the* ideal distance.
:)
And believe it or not, I use it for gaming. Once you get used to it, the accuracy can't be beat.
Last time I installed LimeWire, I was required to click through a page that wouldn't install unless I said that "No, I will not use LimeWire or their services to commit copyright infringement." Admittedly, that was several versions of LW and several reinstalls of my OS ago (I experiment a lot), but I doubt LimeWire would be stupid enough to remove that kind of clickpage.
And yet, there are some truly beautiful PC cases available out there. I bought a new one a couple days ago because I was tired of having a drab tan box taking up desk real estate, as an example (wanted something quieter, too)... ever seen Antec's Lifestyles series of cases? http://www.antec.com/us/pro_en_lifeStyle.html .... mine's an Overture II. Looks really nice, actually, with my black/silver keyboard, silver trackball, and black LCD.
:-) MS is just trying to rebrand themselves, and I can't fault them for that at all. We've all seen those "I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" commercials.
Not a fan of Antec? Thermaltake is making some really nice chassis, too. For me, it was a toss-up between the Antec I bought and Thermaltake's "Bach". Aspire is making some gorgeous PC cases... even Lian Li has given up making cases that are only functional and has started making some really nice-looking cases. Personally, I don't see any problem with encouraging OEM manufacturers to start making computers that look equally nice. Maybe the wording is a little suspect, but if it ultimately leads to more off-the-shelf hardware that looks good as well as works well, then who am I to complain? For the people who are concerned about keeping the price to a minimum, you'll still be able to get the grey box, cheap integrated hardware, and I doubt Ubuntu is going to go away any time soon. (though personally I prefer Slack, I do have to admit that apt-get is the best package management tool out there, which is incredibly important for breaking into the desktop market....)
As an aside, I'm also beta testing Vista 64-bit, and quite honestly, I'm favourably impressed. In the month since I started using it, I've seen exactly one fatal OE, and it didn't bring down the system. The game I was playing crashed, and I was able to restart the game without having to reboot the system, and keep playing. It also has some really nice eye candy... while we all know OS/X had it years ago, it is nice to see MS finally getting on that bandwagon. I probably won't buy it when it's released, but that's more because of the price. I'll probably check my school's MSDN connection and hope there's a version of it there, instead.
You can...
The Vista installer will run under Vista, and gives you the option to install Vista as an upgrade. They need to work on the wording, but it's entirely possible to reinstall the OS without redoing the apps/userspace.
I speak from experience when I say that even if you do get encryption working right between multiple vendors, you could still run into trouble with performance/usability. I had an encrypted wireless net, and it actually caused me a whole bunch of headaches getting the security to work right under Vista, XP, Slackware (the only one that did exactly what I wanted it to do, actually), 2k, and NetBSD. One system would work right, but another would take 5 minutes to authenticate every time I booted. Another would lose the connection if I wasn't using it. Still others would work, but have incredible lag with each packet because of the encryption/decryption (the computer in question was an Athlon 1.2GHz with 256MB of RAM, running XP Pro).
Ultimately, I killed encryption and turned on MAC filtering and stricter authentication for accessing network resources like the printer, fileserver, and mail. *everything* is a whole lot faster, now, and I have yet to have problems getting a new piece of hardware working on the network since doing that. Yet no doubt, these kind folks described in the article would yell at me for not using encryption....
Points for reading TFA.... If nothing else, this proves that Intel has finally realized that there's far more to speed than MHz....
If you're referring to the Gateway 2185W, It's a 21" LCD. I've got one; it was my warmhappyfuzzyfeeling purchase of the year, and I don't regret it at all. I've got it hooked up to my DVD player's HiDef outputs, DVI from the computer (will never go back to analog for that... colours are *way* crisper), and S-Video from the Sattelite. It's also got a VGA input and an RCA that I'm not using.
If I could change one thing on the monitor, it'd be the cables that came with it. You'd think that for a $600 USD monitor (retail in Canada was $800), they wouldn't cheap out on a DVI cable, but lo... they didn't include one. Cheap bastards.
Oooh ooh! Dibs on the wired cellphone.
Expecting members to be friendly towards GLBT is not discriminating. It's recognizing that some of the members of the guild are somewhere on that spectrum, and asking that you be understanding and not an asshole towards them. Conservatevely, 1/10th of the population is *somewhere* on that spectrum, so it's not unreasonable to expect that some of them will play video games, and it's most certainly not discrimination to create an environment where they can feel free to express themselves without fear of repercussions.
You probably don't realize just how prevalent it is, but there seems to be an overwhelming majority in video games who think that words like "gay" and "fag" are perfectly acceptable insults for somebody you don't like. It doesn't exactly create a comfortable environment for people who are queer, and having a guild like this is a good thing.
Contrary to what you seem to be thinking, a GLBT-friendly guild doesn't mean you have to be queer to join. It just means you have to not be an asshole.
The article says nothing about how long they can *sustain* it for. I mean, great. They can transfer 282 GByte in one second. If they can only do it for one second before the system breaks down, then I really don't care. Call me when they make a system that can transfer that data rate indefinitely.
> That aside, Today's computers are slightly faster then the 1982 Atari...
:)
Ah... but thanks to the magic that is Windows, only slightly.
> Do you think their commanding officer says, "Hey! They aren't Gooks. They're feeling people with their
> own wives and children and they are just trying to protect them against the evil invaders... we're them."
Actually.... Not exactly the wording I would choose, but the sentiment does actually carry through.
> Do you honestly think that the military is going to let their soldiers read, what amounts to enemy
> propaganda on the net?
Nope. Never said that they would. Actually... Internet access is restricted far beyond mere censorship. What I said, however, was that they were worried about what information leaves the base, not what enters the base. And that's because the military is a volunteer organization. People join up because they want to, not because they're drafted, and in general, loyalty isn't really something they need to worry about. Despite appearances, the military is actually *really* careful about not taking people who would end up being a liability. Now granted, my exposure isn't to the American military, but I do know that other militaries in the world train their soldiers to think, and to critically examine the situation. I know somebody who still got in, even though when asked "can you kill?", he told the recruiter point blank "I don't know. I could never kill in cold blood, but I could probably do it if it's a case of my life or yours. Ideally, I hope I never have to find out."
> Soldiers must be desensitized against murder. If they aren't then they can't do their job.
What the military does is not murder. It is not murder to kill somebody that's trying to kill you, and the military goes out of its way to prevent civilian casualties. There's a distinction you're not making here.
> Assume such a rumour is true... Folks, it's always been the job of the military -- any military -- to
> brainwash its troops. They train their personell to kill people, hundreds of them, and not feel guilty
> about it. They train them to continue doing it and to hate the enemy more than anything else in
> existence.
You're full of it. Soldiers are *not*, by any means, trained to be mindless killbots. They are trained to think through the situation, and use deadly force only when it's needed. Sometimes, that choice is made for them, but given the choice, a soldier will usually only fire their weapon in defense.
You need to pull back and think for a second here.... These are people we trust to play with guns. More than that, they get to play with tanks, and RPGs, and rockets, and artillery. We give them expensive toys that are developped specifically to kill people. Expensive toys that are much more effective at killing people than anything you can get as a civilian. Do you honestly believe that the management would be stupid enough to train them to be able to kill without feeling remorse, and to kill without stopping to think about the consequences of their actions?
Website blocking by the military is expectable, but it's not because the brass are a bunch of fascists. It's because the military shouldn't have to worry about soldiers accidentally leaking sensitive information, and because they have limited bandwidth to use and need to make sure that the people who need it have it. They aren't worried about the information that gets into a base, they're worried about the information that leaves it.
In which case, you need to learn to distinguish between being a moron, and being an asshole. And for the record, it's not so much that I'm an asshole as that I don't have any patience for stupidity. If you're going to draw issue with something, then back up your argument. If you're just arguing because you like the sound of your voice, then don't waste my time.