The lyrics are slightly more than just the the Lord's Prayer translated: it significantly repeats some sections and alters the overall order quite a bit. Someone at Civfantaics put up a transcription with an OK translation, Baba Yetu A native speaker later put up a a much better translation. of some of the sections.
That covers the song pretty well, so I won't re-tread that, but the the Swahili language Lord's Prayer I Googled didn't match up with the song, or the version in my bible, so here it is for anyone interested:
(Mathayo 6, 9-13):
Baba yetu uliye mbinguni: Jina lako litukuzwe. Ufalme wako ufike. Utakalo lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni. Utupe leo chakula chetu tunachohitaji. Utusamehe makosa zetu, kama nasi tunavyowasamehe waliotukosea. Usitutie katika majaribu, lakini utuokoe na yule Mwovu.
[The optional doxology, which isn't in the text follows,] Kwa kuwa ufalme ni wako, na nguvu, na utukufu, hata milele.
Sony has clung to the abysmal DualShock analog-stick layout* and the awful split d-pad for THREE console generations now, are you really surprised to see this?
*Yes, fanboys, the layout sucks. It is historical fact that Sony tacked the analog sticks on as an afterthought, placing them where they are only because there was no room anywhere else on the original "digital" controller. If that was actually a good location for controls, the digital buttons would have been there already.
This may be my American sensibilities showing through, but what I want to know is why, for the love of god, the European standard for fuel economy is liters/100km? Why not km/liter, which is a much more convenient format for any sort of day-to-day use, and is in keeping with the standard format measurement of efficiency (Output/Input)?
What advantage does using L/100km convey? I am honestly interested
By your standard, a person in a coma or an infant are not to be granted rights.
There are some well respected philosophers of ethics who argue for essentially that very viewpoint. Peter Singer is probably the most famous. Interestingly, Singer is also a big animal-rights proponent.
As disgusting as I find some of his views, I have to admit they are logically consistent within his (what I consider warped) ethical framework.
I didn't find anything with a few cursory Google searches, but I would honestly like to see a source for that. Who is getting compensation?
As far as I have heard, the US was paying for medical treatment for the children who were hurt, which is good, but that was the extent of it. I could see them getting additional, non-medical financial compensation. Beyond that, I would be very surprised.
Was the US right to kill the Reuters journalists? You phrase it as if they were specifically targeted (not true) and were identifiable as journalists (also not true).
They broke the rules of their own profession and employer by willingly embedding themselves with a group of armed insurgents in a combat zone, without ID or notifying their superiors. It was a sad accident that two journalists got killed, but the military isn't to blame.
You may have forgotten that this was news BEFORE the video was leaked. There was an inquiry and a report. The facts were already known, leaking the video didn't add anything but graphic sensationalism and fuel for anti-American propaganda.
Had Assange just released the video as it was, I would have less of a problem with him. He is a bad man because he deliberately left out all that context while presenting the video in a highly sensationalist manner, manipulated to look like a cover-up of a civilian massacre. I'll ask you: How does twisting the truth make him a "good guy"?
Every time I post on this, I get modded toll by somebody with an agenda, but I think it's important so I try again.
Assange is a narcissist. He isn't doing anything honorable by dumping all this classified stuff. Leaking information which reveals wrongdoing is noble, wholesale dumping of classified material is chaos. Some secrets are secret for good reasons. For example:
What good comes from leaking the cables of a diplomat clandestinely investigating human rights abuses? It simultaneously gave the oppressive regime a reason to be more oppressive and the names of people to go after, but Assange knows best - people have a right to know! See WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive
How about undermining a democratic reformer in Zimbabwe? Did that do any good? I have a good friend in Zimbabwe, he's in enough danger already just for supporting the MDC. Now a cleptocratic tyrant has the excuse he needs to hold on to power, prolonging the misery of an entire country, and my friend might end up in jail, or dead. But I suppose the death and deprivation of faceless Africans won't keep Julian up at night.
Oddly, one case where Mr. Assange saw fit to withhold information was the "Collateral Murder" video. Not because it could endanger somebody, but because it didn't fit with the narrative he constructed. Rather than objectively present the video with the relevant context, he purposefully left out any mention of the convoy that was approaching or the attacks that had recently occurred that same day, implying that the helicopter was just randomly firing at a group of people. He implies that the pilot's identification of weapons was incorrect, but fails to provide a copy or even a link to the report (which was released, though names are redacted), which details fun facts like the RPGs and AKs they found on and around the "civilians". He doesn't mention that the Reuters employees had not told anyone where they were going to be, and were not wearing ANY press identification. I could go on...
The point is that Assange has always had an agenda, and it certainly isn't exposing government wrongdoing, or even presenting the uncolored, unfiltered truth (if it doesn't suit him). I don't know why so many people here idolize him.
For some reason, I read your original post in the voice of "Debbie Downer" and I actually thought you were being pretty darn funny.
Then I read your response, and realized you are being serious.
...or ARE you?
Maybe your sense of humor is overly-strict. Maybe you're just having a bad day. Maybe you're the next Andy Kaufman, goofing us all with a lecture on what makes jokes funny. I'm too tired to figure it out, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Responding to jokes like Debbie Downer because you don't think they are funny does not add anything to the conversation. Responding, as you did, in perfect sincerity is worthy of a/. WHOOSH.
Defending your post with a checklist of what a joke requires to be funny just makes you look even MORE stiff and grumpy. If you don't like/. humor, set your preferences to down-rank +funny mods or just scroll down.
I'll give you the benefit of doubt though. We all have bad days. I've groaned at horrible jokes and typed out bitter responses only to be saved by the "cancel" button. I've also missed obvious jokes and written stuff so dumb I wish I could erase it. Preview and Cancel are my friends now.
Now, if you'd signed your original post " - Debbie Downer" THAT would have been funny!
Also unpaid hospital bills don't get charged to taxpayers - it gets charged to the megacorp or HMO that owns the ER. So it's basically a burden on the rich, which is how it should be, rather than on the workers who are probably poor (else they'd have insurance).
This is a nice class-warfare dream, but in reality, unpaid ER bills either get passed on to EVERYONE's bill, rich and poor (this just bankrupts the uninsured poor even faster) and/or offset by cutbacks in the ER budget (which means longer wait time for everyone).
The catch 22 is that people don't pay the bill because it is too expensive, but if everyone paid the bills, the price would come down.
/Emergency Departments are tremendously expensive to operate, so I doubt they would ever be cheap, but the % of patients who pay nothing is high enough to have a significant effect.
I never said that the people in the van were insurgents. They may have been unarmed (the hidden children certainly were). However, the driver of the van ceased to be a civilian when he picked up insurgents. It may be ugly and brutal, but it is not a war crime to shoot unarmed combatants. Everyone else in the crowd was armed or in such close proximity to a weapon that you can't seriously argue they were non-combatants. Especially not when they were setting up an ambush.
I'll repeat this since people constantly ignore the facts: Iraqis were specifically instructed NOT to remove insurgents from the battlefield, and warned that such actions would be considered hostile and would draw fire.
Wikileaks left out massive amounts of widely available and crucial background information then editorialized the hell out of the video. It was a hatchet job pure and simple. I'm as sad as the next guy that innocent children were hurt, but the fact that so many people STILL believe this was some sort of civilian massacre saddens me.
Not only did I watch the video, I read the report and looked at the photos that were recovered from the camera.
TL:DR version - A group of insurgents was lingering near an intersection waiting to ambush an approaching convoy. The helicopter took them out. When a van came by to gather the wounded, it fired on that too. Sadly, unidentified and unauthorized journalists embedded with the insurgents also died, and the insurgent van contained hidden children who were injured.
More specifically:
You are right in that the helicopter was out of range from the group on the ground, but it was not firing in self defense, rather to protect a convoy that was approaching the location of the insurgents. This was a convoy that had already been attacked not far from this area, which is why the helicopter was scouting the route ahead. People don't just innocently loiter outside with rifles and RPGs, not even in Iraq.
You are wrong about the RPG. The helicopter pilot did mistake the camera lens for an RPG launcher, but there was at least one RPG launcher recovered at the scene with multiple rounds, and quite a few rifles. Now you can claim that the entire platoon lied in their write-ups, but I don't think such a conspiracy would have held together.
As for firing at the van, picking up wounded insurgents was considered a hostile act. You can debate the right or wrong of that policy, but it was the policy, and the Iraqis knew about it.
I know I'm no professional, but some people who are (Christopher Nolan for example) seem to think it isn't worth the cinematic trade-off. I love the way Nolan's films look. If he thinks 3D would limit him more than benefit, I'm inclined to believe he's telling the truth and not just a neo-Luddite.
Sure, 2D is a kludge when it comes to representing the world, but until we develop a Star Trek-style holodeck and suitable recording devices, stereoscopic "3D" is just as much a kludge. It is an imperfect approximation of how we see the world through our own eyes. It works better in some situations than in others, but I think that sometimes it is better to just forgo an effect rather than have it work poorly.
I'll admit it is possible to do 3D well/right even in a dialog-centric movie, but you haven't addressed my main concern: My (non-professional) understanding, and the GGGP's worry, is that there are shots that Just Don't Work in 3D. Thus, making the choice to go 3D places limitations - possibly painful, possibly insignificant - on the cinematography. It is a trade-off. Unlike bacon, 3D does not automagically make things better, and I don't want it to be the default "because we can" choice.
Personally, I find 3D to break my sense of immersion about as often as it increases it, so I'm pretty skeptical towards it. If new technology and techniques solve these problems, great.
HD was really only a game changer for television people*, who if anything could just change from lower-rez TV techniques to film ones. Sure, costs go up for more detailed CGI and physical models, but I highly doubt any technique that is practical in 480 became impractical in 1080p. In regards to 3D, I agree that in certain situations it can add to the sense of immersion. The problem is it can also detract from immersion. If you want part of the movie 3D for the benefit, then you either turn it on and off, or film the whole thing 3D. As the GP said, this obliges one to restrict the way scenes are filmed to avoid having the 3D break immersion. Who knows, technology and techniques might evolve in a way I haven't thought about, but outside of action movies, I don't foresee 3D ever adding enough to make up for this. I just don't see how it might benefit a dialog-centric drama or comedy.
*HD resolution is far below what you get with even 35mm film, it is only now that 4k digital cameras are coming out that things are comparable. IMAX is still far beyond anything but digital still cameras.
I have no more mod points, so I'll post. I've often tried to state the same thing, but you articulated it better than I have been able.
I think directors will mostly outgrow the "random stuff flying at audience" gimmick as the novelty wears off. After that, I think they will realize that unlike previous technology jumps, 3D doesn't give directors and cinematographers more freedom to be creative, it restricts them to filming in a way that "works in 3D".
/God help us if Paul "Shakey-cam" Greengrass ever start filming in 3D
I realized after I hit "Submit" that my long-winded screed about prescriptions wasn't really all that on-topic to your post. I'd just seen some of that sentiment earlier in the thread, plus I'm tired and grumpy and vented on you.
Somewhat related, I'm tired because I got up early this morning to volunteer at a free clinic...
Actually, I pretty much completely agree with your post. I know both types of doctors. Very few are completely uninterested in making money, but the vast majority of them value good patient care over the extra money they could get from being profit-driven assholes.
Goddamnitsomuch, I hate this meme... You're either a troll or supremely ignorant.
Doctors don't make ANY money from writing prescriptions. They never have, aside from the days of yore when doctors personally purchased the ingredients to mix up and sell*. Even then, it wasn't long before chemists/pharmacists took that over.
They can bill for exams, tests and procedures, but in the USA, Canada, UK and (AFAIK) all of Europe, they don't get anything for writing a prescription. NOTHING. They don't even get to bill for the paper it is written on (which has security features and can be surprisingly expensive).
There have been some rare (and I mean rare) cases of kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies to doctors. The only examples I know about are for chemotherapy drugs costing thousands of dollars per dose, e.g. an oncologist getting money for putting all his patients on drug A over competitor's drug B, which wasn't necessarily cheaper or more effective. The people involved were caught fairly quickly and punished severely.
This only happened because the base cost of the drug was very high (many chemo drugs are wickedly hard to make), the markup is high (to recoup massive development costs), AND the market is small (Only oncologists treating a specific subset of cancer patients, possibly only a few thousand people). The profit of a handful of additional sales was enough to tempt people into breaking the law. The odds of this happening with mass market drugs are practically nil. No doctor is going to take that kind of personal risk unless there is significant money involved, and a company is not likely to spend that money and take a huge legal risk to drive sales of XYZ antibiotic up from 500,000/year to 500,100/year.
Seriously, this meme needs to die. As for getting gifts and other non-money compensation, in the USA, drug companies aren't even giving out free pens and post-its anymore, and that wasn't done based on number of prescriptions written anyhow.
*Snake-oil salesman were/are sometimes doctors, and thus could have "prescribed" something to the scam victim, but it's not a traditional doctor/patient relationship.
Please type harder. That doesn't change the fact that they blew up a bunch of civilians who were not up to anything malicious.
Once again, they were not civilians. Weapons were seen ON THE VIDEO, and the ground forces that came up later found several weapons, including AKs and RPGs within reach of pretty much all the bodies. This is all in the report that you don't want to read.
Assuming they were armed, and going to attack a convoy, why was it that NOT ONE OF THEM got a shot off at the chopper? COMMON FUCKING SENSE would seem to dictate that they would probably SHOOT BACK.
First, except for the cameramen, they were armed. Secondly, they were about to attack an approaching convoy on the ground, and that is where they were focusing. Third, the helicopter was engaging from a long, long way off. You can tell this by the long delay from the time you hear gunfire to the impact of the helicopter's fire. The helicopter was hundreds of meters away, circling the area. If they noticed it at all, they could not have known that the helicopter was targeting them. Had they seen it and wanted to shoot at it, they would have realized it was out of range for their weapons.
People like you are such morons that even when the truth is on fucking film, right in front of you, you'll try to find ways to not believe it.
People like you are quick to believe a biased and sensationalist presentation of the video, while refusing to do any investigation into the facts. Way to not read the report I linked. Since you haven't bothered to look at the facts even when I laid them out, I'm not sure why I even bother.
It was a tragedy that the journalists died, but the US soldiers were not blame. The journalists were embedded, without any identification and without telling their news-bosses, in an insurgent group about to attack. They put themselves in harms way, and harm found them.
Re:Hindsight is useless. So try foresight next tim
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How Did Wikileaks Do It?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I wish I could type harder to get this to show up in HUGE FREAKING LETTERS, since some troll-mod put you up +insightful.
They did have weapons, which were positively identified before the helicopter fired. The only ambiguity was that they did not identify the cameras as such. The journalists were NOT wearing identification vests. It was not a group of unarmed civilians. IT WAS NOT A GROUP OF UNARMED CIVILIANS!!!1!!eleventyone THEY WERE ABOUT TO ATTACK A CONVOY.
Read the report before you keep repeating this uninformed drek
You are still assuming the Army, at some level, did something wrong, probably as a result of the bias added to the video. Everything else I've read comes to the conclusion that it was justified. This was not a gathering for tea and cake, they were armed insurgents who were about to attack a convoy. Wikileaks set this up so one sided that this one crucial fact gets lost.
I may sound like a dick for saying it, but it's the truth: the journalists are to blame for their own deaths. It was a risk they willingly took, embeding with active insurgents, apparently without telling the appropriate people where they were and without their Blue "PRESS" body-armor on to ID them. Even if they had their vests on, the insurgents were still threatening a convoy, and thus a valid target. The known presence of a journalist does not convey immunity to a group of active combatants.
The Army's response might as well be "lol, ur guys wuz with the enemy. That's where we shoot, so don't do it. Srsly, Kthnx"
I have a ton of sympathy for the children, but the blame for that lies squarely on the person who put them in a van and drove them into a combat area. They were barely even visible with the zoomed-in enhanced video, and even then I'm not sure I would have said "children" if the video didn't label them for me. It is completely unreasonably to expect the soldiers to have known they were present.
Re:Who cares how? The better question is why the b
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How Did Wikileaks Do It?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In other words, if the chain of command mistakenly believes you've got a rocket launcher, the ROE permit an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack.
Mistakenly? I'm pretty sure he said they found not one, but TWO RPG launchers and warheads.
The wikileaks video is heavily biased. As others have said, they should have just released the unedited video and let people decide for themselves.
I am making a distinction between a "natural monopoly", and a "sanctioned monopoly". I agree that public utilities make sense with a natural monopoly like power or water where it makes sense to only run one set of pipes or wires.
Where I disagree is that I do not think communications is a natural monopoly, but a government sanctioned monopoly. I do not think it is unfeasible to have multiple sets of data lines. One: because we saturate the data system in ways we do not saturate the water or power systems, and two: because companies are willing to compete, and data lines are not so huge that we cannot find space for those that wish to compete. Running multiple data lines is far, far less burdensome than running multiple water lines or power grids, and the cost of entry would pretty much limit the max number of competitors to the current major players. It's highly unlikely we'd end up with 20 different sets of lines anywhere.
I make my assertion that telecoms are not necessarily natural monopolies like power or water utilities based on the fact that multiple companies have run telecom lines*. That a company was willing to invest in their own lines when the competition is already entrenched means there is not an unnatural barrier to competition.
If you say having two sets of cable is a doubling of effort, I'll respond by saying it's a doubling of bandwidth. A home user cannot feasibly use more power or water than one company can provide, so having two water mains or electrical mains offers little benefit even if companies were willing to build, but it's pathetically easy to use all the bandwidth an ISP offers. ISPs are constantly bemoaning how congested they are, and more data lines = less congestion. Cable lines are also far, far less disruptive to run than power or water when you can just hop on existing poles.
*I'm fairly sure that when you have 2 separate cable boxes that means two sets of lines, but as I said, I don't live there and I'm not sure this is the case everywhere. Another poster commented about how cable doesn't have the bandwidth to carry both companies signals separately because they each utilize almost all of it, so there's that to consider.
Slashdot Mirror
The lyrics are slightly more than just the the Lord's Prayer translated: it significantly repeats some sections and alters the overall order quite a bit. Someone at Civfantaics put up a transcription with an OK translation, Baba Yetu
A native speaker later put up a a much better translation. of some of the sections.
That covers the song pretty well, so I won't re-tread that, but the the Swahili language Lord's Prayer I Googled didn't match up with the song, or the version in my bible, so here it is for anyone interested:
(Mathayo 6, 9-13):
Baba yetu uliye mbinguni:
Jina lako litukuzwe.
Ufalme wako ufike.
Utakalo lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni.
Utupe leo chakula chetu tunachohitaji.
Utusamehe makosa zetu,
kama nasi tunavyowasamehe waliotukosea.
Usitutie katika majaribu,
lakini utuokoe na yule Mwovu.
[The optional doxology, which isn't in the text follows,]
Kwa kuwa ufalme ni wako, na nguvu, na utukufu, hata milele.
Sony has clung to the abysmal DualShock analog-stick layout* and the awful split d-pad for THREE console generations now, are you really surprised to see this?
*Yes, fanboys, the layout sucks. It is historical fact that Sony tacked the analog sticks on as an afterthought, placing them where they are only because there was no room anywhere else on the original "digital" controller. If that was actually a good location for controls, the digital buttons would have been there already.
This may be my American sensibilities showing through, but what I want to know is why, for the love of god, the European standard for fuel economy is liters/100km? Why not km/liter, which is a much more convenient format for any sort of day-to-day use, and is in keeping with the standard format measurement of efficiency (Output/Input)?
What advantage does using L/100km convey? I am honestly interested
By your standard, a person in a coma or an infant are not to be granted rights.
There are some well respected philosophers of ethics who argue for essentially that very viewpoint. Peter Singer is probably the most famous. Interestingly, Singer is also a big animal-rights proponent.
As disgusting as I find some of his views, I have to admit they are logically consistent within his (what I consider warped) ethical framework.
I didn't find anything with a few cursory Google searches, but I would honestly like to see a source for that. Who is getting compensation?
As far as I have heard, the US was paying for medical treatment for the children who were hurt, which is good, but that was the extent of it. I could see them getting additional, non-medical financial compensation. Beyond that, I would be very surprised.
Thanks for the analogy, it is often far too hard to convince people that context is everything, and partial truths can be worse than outright lies.
Although a better comparison in this situation would be an undercover cop shot by the homeowner during a break-in by actual armed criminals.
Was the US right to kill the Reuters journalists? You phrase it as if they were specifically targeted (not true) and were identifiable as journalists (also not true).
They broke the rules of their own profession and employer by willingly embedding themselves with a group of armed insurgents in a combat zone, without ID or notifying their superiors. It was a sad accident that two journalists got killed, but the military isn't to blame.
You may have forgotten that this was news BEFORE the video was leaked. There was an inquiry and a report. The facts were already known, leaking the video didn't add anything but graphic sensationalism and fuel for anti-American propaganda.
Had Assange just released the video as it was, I would have less of a problem with him. He is a bad man because he deliberately left out all that context while presenting the video in a highly sensationalist manner, manipulated to look like a cover-up of a civilian massacre. I'll ask you: How does twisting the truth make him a "good guy"?
Every time I post on this, I get modded toll by somebody with an agenda, but I think it's important so I try again.
Assange is a narcissist. He isn't doing anything honorable by dumping all this classified stuff. Leaking information which reveals wrongdoing is noble, wholesale dumping of classified material is chaos. Some secrets are secret for good reasons. For example:
What good comes from leaking the cables of a diplomat clandestinely investigating human rights abuses? It simultaneously gave the oppressive regime a reason to be more oppressive and the names of people to go after, but Assange knows best - people have a right to know! See WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive
How about undermining a democratic reformer in Zimbabwe? Did that do any good? I have a good friend in Zimbabwe, he's in enough danger already just for supporting the MDC. Now a cleptocratic tyrant has the excuse he needs to hold on to power, prolonging the misery of an entire country, and my friend might end up in jail, or dead. But I suppose the death and deprivation of faceless Africans won't keep Julian up at night.
Oddly, one case where Mr. Assange saw fit to withhold information was the "Collateral Murder" video. Not because it could endanger somebody, but because it didn't fit with the narrative he constructed. Rather than objectively present the video with the relevant context, he purposefully left out any mention of the convoy that was approaching or the attacks that had recently occurred that same day, implying that the helicopter was just randomly firing at a group of people. He implies that the pilot's identification of weapons was incorrect, but fails to provide a copy or even a link to the report (which was released, though names are redacted), which details fun facts like the RPGs and AKs they found on and around the "civilians". He doesn't mention that the Reuters employees had not told anyone where they were going to be, and were not wearing ANY press identification. I could go on...
The point is that Assange has always had an agenda, and it certainly isn't exposing government wrongdoing, or even presenting the uncolored, unfiltered truth (if it doesn't suit him). I don't know why so many people here idolize him.
For some reason, I read your original post in the voice of "Debbie Downer" and I actually thought you were being pretty darn funny.
Then I read your response, and realized you are being serious.
Maybe your sense of humor is overly-strict. Maybe you're just having a bad day. Maybe you're the next Andy Kaufman, goofing us all with a lecture on what makes jokes funny. I'm too tired to figure it out, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Responding to jokes like Debbie Downer because you don't think they are funny does not add anything to the conversation. Responding, as you did, in perfect sincerity is worthy of a /. WHOOSH.
Defending your post with a checklist of what a joke requires to be funny just makes you look even MORE stiff and grumpy. If you don't like /. humor, set your preferences to down-rank +funny mods or just scroll down.
I'll give you the benefit of doubt though. We all have bad days. I've groaned at horrible jokes and typed out bitter responses only to be saved by the "cancel" button. I've also missed obvious jokes and written stuff so dumb I wish I could erase it. Preview and Cancel are my friends now.
Now, if you'd signed your original post
" - Debbie Downer"
THAT would have been funny!
Also unpaid hospital bills don't get charged to taxpayers - it gets charged to the megacorp or HMO that owns the ER. So it's basically a burden on the rich, which is how it should be, rather than on the workers who are probably poor (else they'd have insurance).
This is a nice class-warfare dream, but in reality, unpaid ER bills either get passed on to EVERYONE's bill, rich and poor (this just bankrupts the uninsured poor even faster) and/or offset by cutbacks in the ER budget (which means longer wait time for everyone).
The catch 22 is that people don't pay the bill because it is too expensive, but if everyone paid the bills, the price would come down.
I never said that the people in the van were insurgents. They may have been unarmed (the hidden children certainly were). However, the driver of the van ceased to be a civilian when he picked up insurgents. It may be ugly and brutal, but it is not a war crime to shoot unarmed combatants. Everyone else in the crowd was armed or in such close proximity to a weapon that you can't seriously argue they were non-combatants. Especially not when they were setting up an ambush.
I'll repeat this since people constantly ignore the facts: Iraqis were specifically instructed NOT to remove insurgents from the battlefield, and warned that such actions would be considered hostile and would draw fire.
Wikileaks left out massive amounts of widely available and crucial background information then editorialized the hell out of the video. It was a hatchet job pure and simple. I'm as sad as the next guy that innocent children were hurt, but the fact that so many people STILL believe this was some sort of civilian massacre saddens me.
Not only did I watch the video, I read the report and looked at the photos that were recovered from the camera.
TL:DR version - A group of insurgents was lingering near an intersection waiting to ambush an approaching convoy. The helicopter took them out. When a van came by to gather the wounded, it fired on that too. Sadly, unidentified and unauthorized journalists embedded with the insurgents also died, and the insurgent van contained hidden children who were injured.
More specifically:
You are right in that the helicopter was out of range from the group on the ground, but it was not firing in self defense, rather to protect a convoy that was approaching the location of the insurgents. This was a convoy that had already been attacked not far from this area, which is why the helicopter was scouting the route ahead. People don't just innocently loiter outside with rifles and RPGs, not even in Iraq.
You are wrong about the RPG. The helicopter pilot did mistake the camera lens for an RPG launcher, but there was at least one RPG launcher recovered at the scene with multiple rounds, and quite a few rifles. Now you can claim that the entire platoon lied in their write-ups, but I don't think such a conspiracy would have held together.
As for firing at the van, picking up wounded insurgents was considered a hostile act. You can debate the right or wrong of that policy, but it was the policy, and the Iraqis knew about it.
I know I'm no professional, but some people who are (Christopher Nolan for example) seem to think it isn't worth the cinematic trade-off. I love the way Nolan's films look. If he thinks 3D would limit him more than benefit, I'm inclined to believe he's telling the truth and not just a neo-Luddite.
Sure, 2D is a kludge when it comes to representing the world, but until we develop a Star Trek-style holodeck and suitable recording devices, stereoscopic "3D" is just as much a kludge. It is an imperfect approximation of how we see the world through our own eyes. It works better in some situations than in others, but I think that sometimes it is better to just forgo an effect rather than have it work poorly.
I'll admit it is possible to do 3D well/right even in a dialog-centric movie, but you haven't addressed my main concern: My (non-professional) understanding, and the GGGP's worry, is that there are shots that Just Don't Work in 3D. Thus, making the choice to go 3D places limitations - possibly painful, possibly insignificant - on the cinematography. It is a trade-off. Unlike bacon, 3D does not automagically make things better, and I don't want it to be the default "because we can" choice.
Personally, I find 3D to break my sense of immersion about as often as it increases it, so I'm pretty skeptical towards it. If new technology and techniques solve these problems, great.
HD was really only a game changer for television people*, who if anything could just change from lower-rez TV techniques to film ones. Sure, costs go up for more detailed CGI and physical models, but I highly doubt any technique that is practical in 480 became impractical in 1080p. In regards to 3D, I agree that in certain situations it can add to the sense of immersion. The problem is it can also detract from immersion. If you want part of the movie 3D for the benefit, then you either turn it on and off, or film the whole thing 3D. As the GP said, this obliges one to restrict the way scenes are filmed to avoid having the 3D break immersion. Who knows, technology and techniques might evolve in a way I haven't thought about, but outside of action movies, I don't foresee 3D ever adding enough to make up for this. I just don't see how it might benefit a dialog-centric drama or comedy.
*HD resolution is far below what you get with even 35mm film, it is only now that 4k digital cameras are coming out that things are comparable. IMAX is still far beyond anything but digital still cameras.
I have no more mod points, so I'll post. I've often tried to state the same thing, but you articulated it better than I have been able.
I think directors will mostly outgrow the "random stuff flying at audience" gimmick as the novelty wears off. After that, I think they will realize that unlike previous technology jumps, 3D doesn't give directors and cinematographers more freedom to be creative, it restricts them to filming in a way that "works in 3D".
I realized after I hit "Submit" that my long-winded screed about prescriptions wasn't really all that on-topic to your post. I'd just seen some of that sentiment earlier in the thread, plus I'm tired and grumpy and vented on you.
Somewhat related, I'm tired because I got up early this morning to volunteer at a free clinic...
Actually, I pretty much completely agree with your post. I know both types of doctors. Very few are completely uninterested in making money, but the vast majority of them value good patient care over the extra money they could get from being profit-driven assholes.
Goddamnitsomuch, I hate this meme... You're either a troll or supremely ignorant.
Doctors don't make ANY money from writing prescriptions. They never have, aside from the days of yore when doctors personally purchased the ingredients to mix up and sell*. Even then, it wasn't long before chemists/pharmacists took that over.
They can bill for exams, tests and procedures, but in the USA, Canada, UK and (AFAIK) all of Europe, they don't get anything for writing a prescription. NOTHING. They don't even get to bill for the paper it is written on (which has security features and can be surprisingly expensive).
There have been some rare (and I mean rare) cases of kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies to doctors. The only examples I know about are for chemotherapy drugs costing thousands of dollars per dose, e.g. an oncologist getting money for putting all his patients on drug A over competitor's drug B, which wasn't necessarily cheaper or more effective. The people involved were caught fairly quickly and punished severely.
This only happened because the base cost of the drug was very high (many chemo drugs are wickedly hard to make), the markup is high (to recoup massive development costs), AND the market is small (Only oncologists treating a specific subset of cancer patients, possibly only a few thousand people). The profit of a handful of additional sales was enough to tempt people into breaking the law. The odds of this happening with mass market drugs are practically nil. No doctor is going to take that kind of personal risk unless there is significant money involved, and a company is not likely to spend that money and take a huge legal risk to drive sales of XYZ antibiotic up from 500,000/year to 500,100/year.
Seriously, this meme needs to die. As for getting gifts and other non-money compensation, in the USA, drug companies aren't even giving out free pens and post-its anymore, and that wasn't done based on number of prescriptions written anyhow.
*Snake-oil salesman were/are sometimes doctors, and thus could have "prescribed" something to the scam victim, but it's not a traditional doctor/patient relationship.
Please type harder. That doesn't change the fact that they blew up a bunch of civilians who were not up to anything malicious.
Once again, they were not civilians. Weapons were seen ON THE VIDEO, and the ground forces that came up later found several weapons, including AKs and RPGs within reach of pretty much all the bodies. This is all in the report that you don't want to read.
Assuming they were armed, and going to attack a convoy, why was it that NOT ONE OF THEM got a shot off at the chopper? COMMON FUCKING SENSE would seem to dictate that they would probably SHOOT BACK.
First, except for the cameramen, they were armed. Secondly, they were about to attack an approaching convoy on the ground, and that is where they were focusing. Third, the helicopter was engaging from a long, long way off. You can tell this by the long delay from the time you hear gunfire to the impact of the helicopter's fire. The helicopter was hundreds of meters away, circling the area. If they noticed it at all, they could not have known that the helicopter was targeting them. Had they seen it and wanted to shoot at it, they would have realized it was out of range for their weapons.
People like you are such morons that even when the truth is on fucking film, right in front of you, you'll try to find ways to not believe it.
People like you are quick to believe a biased and sensationalist presentation of the video, while refusing to do any investigation into the facts. Way to not read the report I linked. Since you haven't bothered to look at the facts even when I laid them out, I'm not sure why I even bother.
It was a tragedy that the journalists died, but the US soldiers were not blame. The journalists were embedded, without any identification and without telling their news-bosses, in an insurgent group about to attack. They put themselves in harms way, and harm found them.
I wish I could type harder to get this to show up in HUGE FREAKING LETTERS, since some troll-mod put you up +insightful.
They did have weapons, which were positively identified before the helicopter fired. The only ambiguity was that they did not identify the cameras as such. The journalists were NOT wearing identification vests. It was not a group of unarmed civilians. IT WAS NOT A GROUP OF UNARMED CIVILIANS!!!1!!eleventyone THEY WERE ABOUT TO ATTACK A CONVOY.
Read the report before you keep repeating this uninformed drek
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29468022/6-2nd-Brigade-Combat-Team-15-6-Investigation
You are still assuming the Army, at some level, did something wrong, probably as a result of the bias added to the video. Everything else I've read comes to the conclusion that it was justified. This was not a gathering for tea and cake, they were armed insurgents who were about to attack a convoy. Wikileaks set this up so one sided that this one crucial fact gets lost.
I may sound like a dick for saying it, but it's the truth: the journalists are to blame for their own deaths. It was a risk they willingly took, embeding with active insurgents, apparently without telling the appropriate people where they were and without their Blue "PRESS" body-armor on to ID them. Even if they had their vests on, the insurgents were still threatening a convoy, and thus a valid target. The known presence of a journalist does not convey immunity to a group of active combatants.
The Army's response might as well be "lol, ur guys wuz with the enemy. That's where we shoot, so don't do it. Srsly, Kthnx"
I have a ton of sympathy for the children, but the blame for that lies squarely on the person who put them in a van and drove them into a combat area. They were barely even visible with the zoomed-in enhanced video, and even then I'm not sure I would have said "children" if the video didn't label them for me. It is completely unreasonably to expect the soldiers to have known they were present.
In other words, if the chain of command mistakenly believes you've got a rocket launcher, the ROE permit an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack.
Mistakenly? I'm pretty sure he said they found not one, but TWO RPG launchers and warheads.
The wikileaks video is heavily biased. As others have said, they should have just released the unedited video and let people decide for themselves.
I am making a distinction between a "natural monopoly", and a "sanctioned monopoly". I agree that public utilities make sense with a natural monopoly like power or water where it makes sense to only run one set of pipes or wires.
Where I disagree is that I do not think communications is a natural monopoly, but a government sanctioned monopoly. I do not think it is unfeasible to have multiple sets of data lines. One: because we saturate the data system in ways we do not saturate the water or power systems, and two: because companies are willing to compete, and data lines are not so huge that we cannot find space for those that wish to compete. Running multiple data lines is far, far less burdensome than running multiple water lines or power grids, and the cost of entry would pretty much limit the max number of competitors to the current major players. It's highly unlikely we'd end up with 20 different sets of lines anywhere.
I make my assertion that telecoms are not necessarily natural monopolies like power or water utilities based on the fact that multiple companies have run telecom lines*. That a company was willing to invest in their own lines when the competition is already entrenched means there is not an unnatural barrier to competition.
If you say having two sets of cable is a doubling of effort, I'll respond by saying it's a doubling of bandwidth. A home user cannot feasibly use more power or water than one company can provide, so having two water mains or electrical mains offers little benefit even if companies were willing to build, but it's pathetically easy to use all the bandwidth an ISP offers. ISPs are constantly bemoaning how congested they are, and more data lines = less congestion. Cable lines are also far, far less disruptive to run than power or water when you can just hop on existing poles.
*I'm fairly sure that when you have 2 separate cable boxes that means two sets of lines, but as I said, I don't live there and I'm not sure this is the case everywhere. Another poster commented about how cable doesn't have the bandwidth to carry both companies signals separately because they each utilize almost all of it, so there's that to consider.