"I spend a month a year working on a commercial fishing boat with a loud diesel engine, and the greatest sound in the world is to hear it turn off," says Damon Vander Lind, the creator of a soothingly quiet trike"
As opposed to a normal trike, which operates with ear-shattering volume?
"You admit that there is a problem. And it's rather obvious that the market isn't fixing it, because this shit's been going on for years. So why do you still push the "let the market decide" line?"
Because while I may agree that the pricing is obscene, I'm honest enough to admit that it doesn't rise to a level that I really give a crap about. Have a problem with inkject cartridges being so expensive? Do what I do - use a laser printer, and forego all the pretty colors that cost so much.
Voila, problem solved.
The "OMFG print cartridges can't be refilled" community is like any other tightly knit, very tightly WOUND group of nerds....pretty much nobody outside the group really cares.
It's not absurd. As a business, they should be free to do this without some government agency crying "that's not fair!"
What it means is that - if cartridge refilling is such a big deal - then there should be a market-opportunity for a startup (or an established company to recognize) to sell printers that cost a little more but whose ink cartidges are simple, cheap, and refillable.
Let the MARKET decide, neh? If it's as big a deal as most people make it out to be (and I think it is... the pricing on cartridges is obscene), then they will be punished by the marketplace.
Now if we could only make sure that they don't get some damn government bailout when they go bankrupt because of their stupid decisions.
"So they accurately predicted that Iraqis would die because of the sanctions, and indeed they did, in droves. Denis Halliday who was running the humanitarian operation resigned, calling the sanctions "genocidal". His successor, Hans von Sponeck also resigned and condemned the sanctions and the effect they were having on the people."
Which is an interesting comment. Some observers believe that the nascent movement that was gaining ground Y2000 to suspend the sanctions regime because of its "inhumanity"* was a large part of the impetus pushing the Bush administration to consider ground action against Iraq. There was a great propoganda push against the sanctions that the 'release' of Saddam's government was predicted in short order - in effect the 'humanitarian' effort started the clock ticking for anyone seriously concerned about Iraq's activities on the world stage.
* one could debate quite some time if a sanctions regime is 'inhumane' when the subject government then deliberately starves its children for the benefit of world news sympathy, or debate if the cri de coeur was merely the disingenuous public face of a powerful group of interests who were making lots of money under the table with the Hussein regime...
More important than the fact that it's "been that way for ages" would be to see the impact it's had on car theft. I would guess it's been significant, thus the impetus from insurers.
As the gamasutra article says - most 'activist games suck'.
I think the lesson there is that people don't really look to their entertainment media to preach to them - they get enough of that crap from everything else from the media to the government, to the doorknockers of all political stripes and agendas.
I liked the redistricting game, because it really does point out the flaws in the *system* in a neutral way - it's a critique of the system, not of a particular side. If it had shown how EVIL Republicans or Democrats specifically are, then I personally wouldn't have bothered to even try it.
Now, that's not to say that every game with (or without) a message doesn't have an agenda somewhere in it, in the assumptions that go into the game, but that's cool. Show of a raw simulation of physics, I'm not sure bias-free programming is every possible.
The question is: where does ernest belief carry one into the realms of propaganda? What is a reasonable effort to model reality (albeit colored by one's own biases) end, and a deliberate (if well-meant) dissimulation in order to advance a political point begin? It's the same question that's been posed in the film industry for years - was "Fahrenheit 9/11" a documentary, or is it a biased political screed? Is "An Inconvenient Truth" an entry-level exposition on a critical issue facing humanity, or is it a Riefenstahlian exercise in the "big lie"?
Maybe it's the interactivity in games that forces the audience to become engaged that makes them less suitable as a propoganda engine. I know no knowledgeable people on either 'side' of the global warming discussion whose viewpoint was even slightly changed by An Inconvenient Truth. Yet I know many UNinformed people who came out convinced that Global Warming is a serious and imminent issue. In that sense it was successful. Could a game accomplish the same thing?
I'm surprised that (at least reading at +3) I haven't seen any comments about the fearful implications of this.
Let's see - if I understand correctly, we've developed the capability to engineer something that can go in and ERASE very specific segments of people's DNA? I'm sure the biowarfare guys are going to have a field day with that. I'm a little concerned about the outlook for the rest of us, however. The White Plague, anyone?
"Look at this list. The problem with it is that it takes things that are NORMAL for intellectuals to try to do and calls them suspicious."...which is precisely why it's FUD.
All of those things ARE 'espionage indicators' and are commonly present when someone is committing or attempting to commit espionage. Then again, breathing, eating food, and wanting sex are all quite common traits of people that might be wanting to commmit espionage.
While I think the image of the omniscient and nearly omnipotent government cabal sneaking through our lives is cute in a 1960's way, on a practical level, these 'indicators' are nearly useless - they apply to so many people (particularly Uni students, as you point out) that their false-positive rate makes them senseless.
...I recall reading a study back in the '90s that said that the most successful combat generals historically were SECOND sons, or at least almost never eldest sons. The speculation was that their upbringing made them particularly inured to stress from an early age.
Dunno if that's true or not, haven't checked for myself. But it sounds credible.
"Borrowing on a credit card is madness, interest-wise."
Not really. There are many no-annual-fee cards out there that charge no interest if you pay it off every month.
So in fact, you MAKE MONEY using a credit card for regular purchases, because your money is sitting in the bank gaining interest through the whole month.
And 'debt' is only an issue if you spend more than you have currently.
Secondly, if you have a pocketful of cash you are mugging bait, and if you are robbed you lose. If you have a credit card you a) have as much cash as you need when you need it. b) if you're robbed, as long as you conscientiously inform the card company, you are not liable for anything charged on it - you're out nothing. c) if you travel, you get the best possible exchange rate, and don't have to be concerned about carrying the 'right' currency.
No, you should be able to use cash for anything you purchase, but IMO using cash instead of a credit card is rather dumb.
Although, I'm guessing, the summary is a touch on the inflammatory side - more likely Dell "can't" sell Ubuntu through it's small business division. We already know that they have different sales, marketing, and prices, I'm not surprised that a decision by one sales channel doesn't/hasn't migrated to others.
More likely it would be correct to say "Dell can't yet sell ubuntu through business channels."
However, I'm rather surprised you let it drop there. When faced with a flunky unable to make a policy decision, crawl up the authority chain until you reach someone who can make the decision. Recite this tale to supervisors, then managers, then division heads, IMO you will find someone who thinks it's as stupid as you do, and arrange to make the 'impossible' possible - and probably fix the issue for others in the meantime (or at least get a fix started).
Then you really find out if it's "Dell can't" or "Dell won't".
I like the idea. In ANY case the ability to draw district lines needs to be removed from the hands of the people that DIRECTLY BENEFIT, ie. Congress. They've shown they are too incompetent to handle it.
Not to be redundant, but I think your point is that when a company hires someone for a creative job, they're gambling. They're paying that person a wage, presuming that the creative output of that person will bring them more revenues than his/her cost.
It's certainly hypocritical for that creative person then to come back later, after they've been successful, and demand more money. The company has absorbed the losses for all the failures, and should keep the benefits of the successes.
"In recent interviews with The Miami Herald and other media, Proenza has strongly criticized leaders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for spending millions of dollars on a public-relations campaign while hurricane forecasters deal with budget shortfalls."
I understand that Bush-bashing rates +1, cool! rating on Slashdot, let's back up a little. While I realize it's easier just to assume there is a "darkly-hooded cabal of evil men"(tm) running our government, let's - for a moment - suppose that they are men and women just like you or me, basically rational, basically GOOD people trying to do the best that they can.
Rewind to Katrina: there were PLENTY of warnings, there was an extraordinarily good degree of accuracy in the predictions, and what happened? People blew it off. The human tragedy - no matter what you have to say about Ray Nagin, the city of New Orleans, the governor, etc - was that PEOPLE didn't get out of the hurricane's way *despite* being warned. And what is that? PUBLIC RELATIONS. Clearly, the agency believes, it has a credibility problem (I'd say it's a human-stupidity problem, but that's just me). So THAT'S their priority.
In a land of shortening budgets (and, for the Constitutionally-impaired out there, it's CONGRESS that sets budgets, not the President) everyone has preferences - this guy wants the new satellite, I'm sure other administrators want more staff, others want more ground observation, and all have very good reasons. BUT NOT EVERYONE CAN GET WHAT THEY WANT. And while I very much abhor much of the Republicans' spending priorities in the last 8 years, I don't see the Democrats RACING to correct them, aside from earmarks for their own districts, ie. business as usual.
So this guy, probably with the best of motives, decides he's not got enough traction internally, and takes his story to the sympathetic press who are slavering for any story that shows the "evil cabal at the top is clearly incompetent".
Yeah, I'd reprimand him too.
OK, just go back to your anti-Bush circle jerk, it's probably more fun than thinking.
"This event took place in Australia, and was reported by an Australian paper; therefore, it was correctly reported in the metric altitude of 530 kilometres. So why was the summary changed by slashdot editors to the imperial unit? Firstly, not everyone who reads this site is American, and secondly, this is an audience of nerds. I think we can handle kilometres! Even the USA's NASA is all metric now. The scientists who developed this scramjet used metric, the country it was tested in used metric, the newspaper that reported it used metric, so how about we keep it that way?"
Oh noes! We've confused the foreigners agin!
Why do you care?
Slashdot is, last time I checked, based in the US. So if they want to change their summaries to imperial units, and that really, really bothers you - don't read it? No, not everyone who reads the site is American. But IIRC most of the guys that write it, ARE. If you can't figure out from that why it was converted, well, starting your own site would be an option.
"Incredibly cool to be able to see something in space and visually identify it."
Sadly, what that means to me is that the ISS is in a stupidly, worthlessly low orbit which will cause it all-too-soon to fall from the sky as space junk, or require constant orbital booster shots.
L5 would have made so much more sense, but then the inadequacies of the POS shuttle would have been even more evident.
Well, I have to confess that I guessed and simply made up a number, knowing with utter certainty that SOMEONE on slashdot would have the time/knowledge to actually figure it out.
You should fight that. If you were traveling what, about 16% of the speed of light toward the stoplight, that "red" light (650nm) would have appeared "green" (550 nm) to you.
Not to mention that there would probably have been relativistic effects making your speed (from your viewpoint) and your speed (from the cop's viewpoint) significantly different!
"The relevant part: Driving Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War and overthrowing his government in 2003 was a brute force objective that was accomplished relatively quickly, for example, but quelling sectarian violence and building support for the current government has been much more difficult because it requires target compliance."
More usefully, one might examine asserted definitions built into the 'study' and realize that military force is simply better at solving brute-force problems (eject that army, destroy that government) than subtle, complex ones (build a Western-style representative and law-based Democracy amongst a clan- and sect-oriented, repressive religious culture).
Gee, who'd have imagined THAT?
Less flippantly, this is one of those points that modern politicians and the people that elect them - so far removed from the realities of war - seem not to understand.
The military (really, any army but here I'm talking about the US military) is NOT "a massive group of well organized and disciplined men and women who can be thrown in any situation to solve it". No. The military has a single role: kill people. Everything that they do outside of that is a testament to their flexibility, training, and intelligence. But their primary role is to kill.
For example: An aircraft carrier is NOT a 'floating civilian airport that happens to have warplanes' - an aircraft carrier is a weapon of war built to deliver aircraft flexibly around the world, so that THEY can employ their killing power against targets land/sea/air.
Before anyone gets upset: I'm NOT saying that the military is murderous, evil, or any such thing. Simply that they are a precision instrument with a SOLE purpose.
It's like a handgun. It is excellently designed to be a portable, easily handled method of delivering lethal force accurately at a short distance. You can't use it to plant corn. You can't use it to build a house. You can't use it to bake a cake, analyze stock markets, or give CPR.
Likewise the military. I would argue the US military is probably the most effective military force ever seen in the history of this planet. This means it is excellent for its task. But it is in the realm of the civilians who constitutionally RUN the government to apply them to tasks correctly, or risk disaster in a host of ways ranging from atrocities to incompetence.
I'm not sure I follow you. Oh sure, I agree that at observable scales from planetary on up to the galaxy itself (I believe it fails thereafter), there seems to be a planar bias which make a sort of logical sense - kind of an astronomic "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"?
However, in the previous poster's comments, he's right too - even conceding a tendency to form solar systems on a plane (and I would guess this is only a TENDENCY, not a majority), even then the odds that a planet would pass directly between it's primary and us would be, well, astronomically large against. Why wouldn't we be interested in planets orbitting outside of this ecliptic? As long as the planet rotates SOME way, there's going to be temperature circulation. And finally, even if it's tidally locked to it's parent (not that I think this has any connection to it's inclination), there's possibly a 'twilight zone' where temperatures would permit water to remain liquid (Mercury's surface temps range from 90 deg K to 700 deg K - with scientists largely believing there is a significant likelihood of water ice in craters around the poles.)
"I don't know what you're trying to prove in your message, but being so disconnected from reality is never a good thing. Maybe you can't wrap your brain around the fact that the long tradition of killing your fellow man has gone on for millennia and isn't all that uncommon. I don't know. I do find your twisted logic, if you can call it that, disturbing."
I'll bite. Perhaps you can set down the Red Bull for a second and read the OP again. His point was (clearly enough to me anyway) NOT that massacres didn't happen in Sudan. His point was that the original article's analysis (you did RTA, yes?) was that this was some sort of panacea, proving genocidal massacres etc BY ITSELF. That's *patently* untrue, and I thought his point was a bit obvious, really.
Apparently not.
There is no question that there is genocide going on in Sudan. But simply overlaying pictures of areas from year to year, and even the subsequent recognition that a village that WAS there has been entirely eradicated, is not ipso facto proof that the village was "massacred". In fact (his point continues) there are SO many possible explanations that the utility of the photos without contextual ground investigation is essentially nil.
I don't think his point is that complicated, nor does it deny the horrific realities of this specific case in any way.
I'd agree in general with most of your points, but I will point out that Disney's Toontown online has been remarkably successful in implementing mechanisms that do make it a (relatively) safe place. Of COURSE, no responsible parent should be letting kids play online without regularly checking what they're doing (or (heavens!) playing WITH them?)
I'm positive that it's intensively moderated, but their in-place systems do a good job. So, for example there IS no text chat except for canned phrases like "let's go!", "you're silly!", "Yes", or "Wait!" - IIRC about 150-200 phrases are reachable through a point/click menu system. The ONLY way that a player can actually chat with another is by the 'secret code' mechanism...if you request the ability to chat with another player, the game will give you each a secret code. There is no way to communicate this in-game*, so you have to share this with each other OUTSIDE the game, ensuring you know each other. When the codes match, you can text chat with that character only. I like that, it's a rather elegant solution that works well. * yes, I'm fully aware that between two colluding parties with an agreed-upon system could nevertheless communicate that code in-game. But this is pretty unlikely to be stumbled upon by the player demographic without coaching.
Slashdot Mirror
"I spend a month a year working on a commercial fishing boat with a loud diesel engine, and the greatest sound in the world is to hear it turn off," says Damon Vander Lind, the creator of a soothingly quiet trike"
As opposed to a normal trike, which operates with ear-shattering volume?
"You admit that there is a problem. And it's rather obvious that the market isn't fixing it, because this shit's been going on for years. So why do you still push the "let the market decide" line?"
Because while I may agree that the pricing is obscene, I'm honest enough to admit that it doesn't rise to a level that I really give a crap about. Have a problem with inkject cartridges being so expensive? Do what I do - use a laser printer, and forego all the pretty colors that cost so much.
Voila, problem solved.
The "OMFG print cartridges can't be refilled" community is like any other tightly knit, very tightly WOUND group of nerds....pretty much nobody outside the group really cares.
It's not absurd.
As a business, they should be free to do this without some government agency crying "that's not fair!"
What it means is that - if cartridge refilling is such a big deal - then there should be a market-opportunity for a startup (or an established company to recognize) to sell printers that cost a little more but whose ink cartidges are simple, cheap, and refillable.
Let the MARKET decide, neh? If it's as big a deal as most people make it out to be (and I think it is... the pricing on cartridges is obscene), then they will be punished by the marketplace.
Now if we could only make sure that they don't get some damn government bailout when they go bankrupt because of their stupid decisions.
"So they accurately predicted that Iraqis would die because of the sanctions, and indeed they did, in droves. Denis Halliday who was running the humanitarian operation resigned, calling the sanctions "genocidal". His successor, Hans von Sponeck also resigned and condemned the sanctions and the effect they were having on the people."
Which is an interesting comment. Some observers believe that the nascent movement that was gaining ground Y2000 to suspend the sanctions regime because of its "inhumanity"* was a large part of the impetus pushing the Bush administration to consider ground action against Iraq. There was a great propoganda push against the sanctions that the 'release' of Saddam's government was predicted in short order - in effect the 'humanitarian' effort started the clock ticking for anyone seriously concerned about Iraq's activities on the world stage.
* one could debate quite some time if a sanctions regime is 'inhumane' when the subject government then deliberately starves its children for the benefit of world news sympathy, or debate if the cri de coeur was merely the disingenuous public face of a powerful group of interests who were making lots of money under the table with the Hussein regime...
More important than the fact that it's "been that way for ages" would be to see the impact it's had on car theft. I would guess it's been significant, thus the impetus from insurers.
As the gamasutra article says - most 'activist games suck'.
I think the lesson there is that people don't really look to their entertainment media to preach to them - they get enough of that crap from everything else from the media to the government, to the doorknockers of all political stripes and agendas.
I liked the redistricting game, because it really does point out the flaws in the *system* in a neutral way - it's a critique of the system, not of a particular side. If it had shown how EVIL Republicans or Democrats specifically are, then I personally wouldn't have bothered to even try it.
Now, that's not to say that every game with (or without) a message doesn't have an agenda somewhere in it, in the assumptions that go into the game, but that's cool. Show of a raw simulation of physics, I'm not sure bias-free programming is every possible.
The question is: where does ernest belief carry one into the realms of propaganda? What is a reasonable effort to model reality (albeit colored by one's own biases) end, and a deliberate (if well-meant) dissimulation in order to advance a political point begin? It's the same question that's been posed in the film industry for years - was "Fahrenheit 9/11" a documentary, or is it a biased political screed? Is "An Inconvenient Truth" an entry-level exposition on a critical issue facing humanity, or is it a Riefenstahlian exercise in the "big lie"?
Maybe it's the interactivity in games that forces the audience to become engaged that makes them less suitable as a propoganda engine. I know no knowledgeable people on either 'side' of the global warming discussion whose viewpoint was even slightly changed by An Inconvenient Truth. Yet I know many UNinformed people who came out convinced that Global Warming is a serious and imminent issue. In that sense it was successful. Could a game accomplish the same thing?
In other news, a simultaneous survey by Pew research showed a complete absence of testicles in survey respondents.
I'm surprised that (at least reading at +3) I haven't seen any comments about the fearful implications of this.
Let's see - if I understand correctly, we've developed the capability to engineer something that can go in and ERASE very specific segments of people's DNA? I'm sure the biowarfare guys are going to have a field day with that. I'm a little concerned about the outlook for the rest of us, however. The White Plague, anyone?
Could you streamline the summary please? I didn't have the attention span to read it all.
"Look at this list. The problem with it is that it takes things that are NORMAL for intellectuals to try to do and calls them suspicious." ...which is precisely why it's FUD.
All of those things ARE 'espionage indicators' and are commonly present when someone is committing or attempting to commit espionage. Then again, breathing, eating food, and wanting sex are all quite common traits of people that might be wanting to commmit espionage.
While I think the image of the omniscient and nearly omnipotent government cabal sneaking through our lives is cute in a 1960's way, on a practical level, these 'indicators' are nearly useless - they apply to so many people (particularly Uni students, as you point out) that their false-positive rate makes them senseless.
FUD.
...I recall reading a study back in the '90s that said that the most successful combat generals historically were SECOND sons, or at least almost never eldest sons. The speculation was that their upbringing made them particularly inured to stress from an early age.
Dunno if that's true or not, haven't checked for myself. But it sounds credible.
TiA: I'm a firstborn, myself.
"Borrowing on a credit card is madness, interest-wise."
Not really.
There are many no-annual-fee cards out there that charge no interest if you pay it off every month.
So in fact, you MAKE MONEY using a credit card for regular purchases, because your money is sitting in the bank gaining interest through the whole month.
And 'debt' is only an issue if you spend more than you have currently.
Secondly, if you have a pocketful of cash you are mugging bait, and if you are robbed you lose.
If you have a credit card you
a) have as much cash as you need when you need it.
b) if you're robbed, as long as you conscientiously inform the card company, you are not liable for anything charged on it - you're out nothing.
c) if you travel, you get the best possible exchange rate, and don't have to be concerned about carrying the 'right' currency.
No, you should be able to use cash for anything you purchase, but IMO using cash instead of a credit card is rather dumb.
Although, I'm guessing, the summary is a touch on the inflammatory side - more likely Dell "can't" sell Ubuntu through it's small business division. We already know that they have different sales, marketing, and prices, I'm not surprised that a decision by one sales channel doesn't/hasn't migrated to others.
More likely it would be correct to say "Dell can't yet sell ubuntu through business channels."
However, I'm rather surprised you let it drop there. When faced with a flunky unable to make a policy decision, crawl up the authority chain until you reach someone who can make the decision. Recite this tale to supervisors, then managers, then division heads, IMO you will find someone who thinks it's as stupid as you do, and arrange to make the 'impossible' possible - and probably fix the issue for others in the meantime (or at least get a fix started).
Then you really find out if it's "Dell can't" or "Dell won't".
I like the idea.
In ANY case the ability to draw district lines needs to be removed from the hands of the people that DIRECTLY BENEFIT, ie. Congress. They've shown they are too incompetent to handle it.
Not to be redundant, but I think your point is that when a company hires someone for a creative job, they're gambling. They're paying that person a wage, presuming that the creative output of that person will bring them more revenues than his/her cost.
It's certainly hypocritical for that creative person then to come back later, after they've been successful, and demand more money. The company has absorbed the losses for all the failures, and should keep the benefits of the successes.
"In recent interviews with The Miami Herald and other media, Proenza has strongly criticized leaders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for spending millions of dollars on a public-relations campaign while hurricane forecasters deal with budget shortfalls."
I understand that Bush-bashing rates +1, cool! rating on Slashdot, let's back up a little.
While I realize it's easier just to assume there is a "darkly-hooded cabal of evil men"(tm) running our government, let's - for a moment - suppose that they are men and women just like you or me, basically rational, basically GOOD people trying to do the best that they can.
Rewind to Katrina: there were PLENTY of warnings, there was an extraordinarily good degree of accuracy in the predictions, and what happened? People blew it off. The human tragedy - no matter what you have to say about Ray Nagin, the city of New Orleans, the governor, etc - was that PEOPLE didn't get out of the hurricane's way *despite* being warned. And what is that? PUBLIC RELATIONS. Clearly, the agency believes, it has a credibility problem (I'd say it's a human-stupidity problem, but that's just me). So THAT'S their priority.
In a land of shortening budgets (and, for the Constitutionally-impaired out there, it's CONGRESS that sets budgets, not the President) everyone has preferences - this guy wants the new satellite, I'm sure other administrators want more staff, others want more ground observation, and all have very good reasons. BUT NOT EVERYONE CAN GET WHAT THEY WANT. And while I very much abhor much of the Republicans' spending priorities in the last 8 years, I don't see the Democrats RACING to correct them, aside from earmarks for their own districts, ie. business as usual.
So this guy, probably with the best of motives, decides he's not got enough traction internally, and takes his story to the sympathetic press who are slavering for any story that shows the "evil cabal at the top is clearly incompetent".
Yeah, I'd reprimand him too.
OK, just go back to your anti-Bush circle jerk, it's probably more fun than thinking.
"This event took place in Australia, and was reported by an Australian paper; therefore, it was correctly reported in the metric altitude of 530 kilometres.
So why was the summary changed by slashdot editors to the imperial unit?
Firstly, not everyone who reads this site is American, and secondly, this is an audience of nerds. I think we can handle kilometres! Even the USA's NASA is all metric now.
The scientists who developed this scramjet used metric, the country it was tested in used metric, the newspaper that reported it used metric, so how about we keep it that way?"
Oh noes! We've confused the foreigners agin!
Why do you care?
Slashdot is, last time I checked, based in the US. So if they want to change their summaries to imperial units, and that really, really bothers you - don't read it? No, not everyone who reads the site is American. But IIRC most of the guys that write it, ARE. If you can't figure out from that why it was converted, well, starting your own site would be an option.
"Incredibly cool to be able to see something in space and visually identify it."
Sadly, what that means to me is that the ISS is in a stupidly, worthlessly low orbit which will cause it all-too-soon to fall from the sky as space junk, or require constant orbital booster shots.
L5 would have made so much more sense, but then the inadequacies of the POS shuttle would have been even more evident.
Well, I have to confess that I guessed and simply made up a number, knowing with utter certainty that SOMEONE on slashdot would have the time/knowledge to actually figure it out.
:)
Teh intarnet for the win!
You should fight that. If you were traveling what, about 16% of the speed of light toward the stoplight, that "red" light (650nm) would have appeared "green" (550 nm) to you.
Not to mention that there would probably have been relativistic effects making your speed (from your viewpoint) and your speed (from the cop's viewpoint) significantly different!
"The relevant part:
Driving Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War and overthrowing his government in 2003 was a brute force objective that was accomplished relatively quickly, for example, but quelling sectarian violence and building support for the current government has been much more difficult because it requires target compliance."
More usefully, one might examine asserted definitions built into the 'study' and realize that military force is simply better at solving brute-force problems (eject that army, destroy that government) than subtle, complex ones (build a Western-style representative and law-based Democracy amongst a clan- and sect-oriented, repressive religious culture).
Gee, who'd have imagined THAT?
Less flippantly, this is one of those points that modern politicians and the people that elect them - so far removed from the realities of war - seem not to understand.
The military (really, any army but here I'm talking about the US military) is NOT "a massive group of well organized and disciplined men and women who can be thrown in any situation to solve it". No. The military has a single role: kill people. Everything that they do outside of that is a testament to their flexibility, training, and intelligence. But their primary role is to kill.
For example: An aircraft carrier is NOT a 'floating civilian airport that happens to have warplanes' - an aircraft carrier is a weapon of war built to deliver aircraft flexibly around the world, so that THEY can employ their killing power against targets land/sea/air.
Before anyone gets upset: I'm NOT saying that the military is murderous, evil, or any such thing. Simply that they are a precision instrument with a SOLE purpose.
It's like a handgun. It is excellently designed to be a portable, easily handled method of delivering lethal force accurately at a short distance. You can't use it to plant corn. You can't use it to build a house. You can't use it to bake a cake, analyze stock markets, or give CPR.
Likewise the military. I would argue the US military is probably the most effective military force ever seen in the history of this planet. This means it is excellent for its task. But it is in the realm of the civilians who constitutionally RUN the government to apply them to tasks correctly, or risk disaster in a host of ways ranging from atrocities to incompetence.
I'm not sure I follow you. Oh sure, I agree that at observable scales from planetary on up to the galaxy itself (I believe it fails thereafter), there seems to be a planar bias which make a sort of logical sense - kind of an astronomic "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"?
However, in the previous poster's comments, he's right too - even conceding a tendency to form solar systems on a plane (and I would guess this is only a TENDENCY, not a majority), even then the odds that a planet would pass directly between it's primary and us would be, well, astronomically large against. Why wouldn't we be interested in planets orbitting outside of this ecliptic? As long as the planet rotates SOME way, there's going to be temperature circulation. And finally, even if it's tidally locked to it's parent (not that I think this has any connection to it's inclination), there's possibly a 'twilight zone' where temperatures would permit water to remain liquid (Mercury's surface temps range from 90 deg K to 700 deg K - with scientists largely believing there is a significant likelihood of water ice in craters around the poles.)
"I don't know what you're trying to prove in your message, but being so disconnected from reality is never a good thing. Maybe you can't wrap your brain around the fact that the long tradition of killing your fellow man has gone on for millennia and isn't all that uncommon. I don't know. I do find your twisted logic, if you can call it that, disturbing."
I'll bite.
Perhaps you can set down the Red Bull for a second and read the OP again.
His point was (clearly enough to me anyway) NOT that massacres didn't happen in Sudan. His point was that the original article's analysis (you did RTA, yes?) was that this was some sort of panacea, proving genocidal massacres etc BY ITSELF. That's *patently* untrue, and I thought his point was a bit obvious, really.
Apparently not.
There is no question that there is genocide going on in Sudan. But simply overlaying pictures of areas from year to year, and even the subsequent recognition that a village that WAS there has been entirely eradicated, is not ipso facto proof that the village was "massacred". In fact (his point continues) there are SO many possible explanations that the utility of the photos without contextual ground investigation is essentially nil.
I don't think his point is that complicated, nor does it deny the horrific realities of this specific case in any way.
(rolls eyes)
Yeah, I'm sure an ASCII reference table is the first thing an 8 year old would think of.
I'd agree in general with most of your points, but I will point out that Disney's Toontown online has been remarkably successful in implementing mechanisms that do make it a (relatively) safe place. Of COURSE, no responsible parent should be letting kids play online without regularly checking what they're doing (or (heavens!) playing WITH them?)
I'm positive that it's intensively moderated, but their in-place systems do a good job. So, for example there IS no text chat except for canned phrases like "let's go!", "you're silly!", "Yes", or "Wait!" - IIRC about 150-200 phrases are reachable through a point/click menu system. The ONLY way that a player can actually chat with another is by the 'secret code' mechanism...if you request the ability to chat with another player, the game will give you each a secret code. There is no way to communicate this in-game*, so you have to share this with each other OUTSIDE the game, ensuring you know each other. When the codes match, you can text chat with that character only. I like that, it's a rather elegant solution that works well.
* yes, I'm fully aware that between two colluding parties with an agreed-upon system could nevertheless communicate that code in-game. But this is pretty unlikely to be stumbled upon by the player demographic without coaching.