Don't forget that the Christian* sects took their turn at this too. The Protestant/Catholic wars wreaked havoc across Medieval Europe until the Renaissance and mass education. *waves hands over a thousand years of history*
Science. Education. Freedom. Opportunity.
Support these enough and the rest will eventually take care of itself. Sure, violence still pops up on occasion (e.g. abortion clinic bombings), but it's far less than the indiscriminate and organized slaughter that existed back then.
* I don't mean to imply it was only these two religions. Who can forget the horrible Amish incursions that nearly decimated Pennsylvania in the 70's!
You're not missing out. After being intrigued by the trailer showing the solo campaign and the pretty cool gameplay and graphics, I bought it Saturday and let it download overnight. Installed it this morning and started it up, but the tutorial crashed. Restarted it (remap the keys again because it didn't save them) and launched the campaign mode . . . which is online and multiplayer only. WTF?
Apparently, "campaign mode" now means "goal-oriented multiplayer modes with no story" like conquest while "classic mode" means "standard multiplayer games with no story" such as team deathmatch or capture-the-flag.
Twenty-four hour return policy activated, and good riddance. You'd think with all the cash EA has they could produce an online store half as good as Steam (much as that raises ire for some people), but alas that is not the case.
BTW, that browser extension was the server browser. I have no idea what it bought them to write a bunch of C code in a browser extension rather than packaging it up into a regular executable, but the major downside is that every time you join a server the entire engine has to be loaded and initialized. If these were the good ol' days of 2 second startup times it would be no problem. I gave up on BF4 pretty quick as it got so tiresome waiting for the game to reload every time you switched servers.
The military command lied to Ender by pretending he was still in a training exercise, but they did not lie about the need to "end them." Without communication with the aliens, there was no way for the humans to know that the queens had realized their mistake and were perfectly willing to live in peaceful coexistence. Given the sheer luck that allowed Razer to win the previous battle for Earth, they were reasonably certain Earth would never survive another attack.
It was only later that Ender was able to communicate with the remaining queen and learn the full story. He was upset about being lied to and having caused so much death, but I think he understood why they lied to him. He didn't like it, mind you, but he understood it was the only way to get him (or anyone) to do what he did.
My memory is that Ender was told that they were looking for someone to lead the fleet that had departed for the alien frontier decades before. They simply neglected to tell him that they made their decision and the fleet he was leading in the training exercises was the actual fleet.
Maybe Sweden is different, but here in the U.S. not all civilians are young men. Put aside the fact that the atomic bombs were dropped on civilian centers with little manufacturing capacity (meaning civilians were the target, not collateral damage), there are rules to war.
Yes, something as ugly as war actually has rules that civilized (sic) nations agree to follow even when beating the crap out of each other. Most countries consider the targeting of civilians to be terrorism -- Europe and the U.S. included. Hell, the U.S. claims to be fighting a war against it.
The importance of stories like this one that investigate the results of the bombs is to show that yes, indeed, they were acts of terrorism.
More to your point, the war may end before the young men (and women) can be drafted into the military, so targeting them is wasteful. But in the end, the rules exist so that enemy nations won't do the same thing back to us.
The U.S. was incredibly lucky that the Japanese and Germans were unable to launch attacks on our soil during the war. England had its cities pounded by Germans bombs and rockets, creating a horrible fear among the civilians. The Germans government didn't do this believing they were killing future soldiers. They did it hoping the English civilians would force the government to exit the war. This is terrorism.
The U.S. fire-bombed Japanese cities, causing long-burning fires among the densely packed houses that killed more people than the two atomic bombs. They weren't killing future soldiers -- they were hoping to break their will. Again, terrorism.
If you feel that we need to have all options open to us when fighting a war, then fight to get the Geneva Conventions overturned. But don't cry foul when your soldiers are tortured as prisoners of war or when your dams are bombed to flood your farmlands, causing mass starvation.
The two cities were chosen because they would produce high civilian casualties in a short time, sending a very clear message. This was done to push Japan -- which had already asked to surrender -- into accepting the U.S.'s terms.
For a parallel, look into the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, done so because they were densely packed with wooden houses. The fires that raged through the cities were extremely difficult to contain and put out, resulting in large numbers of deaths. These bombings killed far more civilians than the two atomic bombs.
All of these bombings match the U.S.'s own definition of terrorism, except that the U.S. committed them.
...but targeting civilians for political purposes is terrorism even by the U.S.'s definition. And terrorism used to "win the war" is -- you guessed it! -- terrorism. That Japan was already asking to surrender makes it worse, if that's possible.
Before anyone argues that the use of the two atomic bombs was isolated or necessary, what about the fire-bombing of Japanese cities that killed far more civilians?
Excellent, thank you. I'll pick it up as I'm almost finished with Drugs, Oil, and War by Peter Dale Scott. I highly recommend it as it has a lot of the history that ties together the various actions the U.S. took in Asia and Latin America.
I wish that were true. However, if you compare The Register article to the one in the SF Chronicle, they both use similar language straight out of a Stephen King novel.
According to the Chronicle, the "berserk" and "whacked-out" robot normally "roam[s] from floor to floor dispensing pills," as opposed to simply following a path according to delivery instructions. It "shot past the pharmacy and barged uninvited into the examination room... sending a doctor and patient running for cover."
Cover from what, its wild gunfire? And how does one normally invite a robot into a room? Apparently, "Waldo wouldn't leave." Did they ask nicely? Say "please"?
It's writing like this that shows the true purpose of the news: to tell stories that entertain and frighten in order to drive sales of the papers. They are selling a product -- readers' eyeballs to advertisers -- not dispensing news about events so people are informed. I guess the silver lining is the hope that people will more likely come to realize this.
No worries. I was going to point out my sig but forgot. Having your reply relate directly to your sig is always a nice bit of cosmic alignment.:)
At the time of the first Gulf War, I was barely paying attention to news, let alone reading books and discussing the matters outside of the standard media take. Since then, most of my reading tends to be pre-90's or current day. I should dig up some non-establishment articles of that period -- thanks for the inspiration!
Yes, one of my less-than-progressive co-workers was waxing on about how magnanimous it was of the U.S. (well, Bush in his view) to decide to leave Saudi Arabia at their request. That we are now building "temporary" military bases in occupied Iraq was just a coincidence, absolutely unrelated. *sigh* And of course, this has nothing to do with oil.
My officer sat us down and said, "Look. You're not going to Iraq to be heroes. You're not going because of weapons of mass destruction. You're not going for the purpose of taking out Saddam Hussein. You will be going to Iraq for one reason and one reason only: oil."
-- Lance Corporal Mike Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps, Z Magazine, April 2005
It was a funny one-liner despite perpetuating a grossly ignorant misconception held by many US residents
Actually, it was a funny one-liner because it poked fun at that ignorant misconception.
BTW, I'd love to be able to reference an article about the U.S. making a promise to the Saudis in future discussions. Do you have a link to one? I knew that was one of Osama's complaints (along with supporting Israel and being lenient on gay marriage), but I had know idea the U.S. had made such a promise.
Osama just called to say he's hung up his terrorism hat. We no longer have enough freedom to be worth hating.
Re:Only going to work if it became standard
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
Heck, I think programming actually requires you to "un-learn" touch typing to a certain extent.
I disagree. In my decades of programming in various languages after learning touch-typing (C/C++, Java, Perl, various 4GLs, etc) I have found it to be very useful. For one, I can hit most of the punctuation without looking. As well, I use the keyboard for most every editing task instead of the mouse even when using GUI-based editors.
Sure, if you name all your variables x, i, lp, and zf2 you're percentage of punctuation increases, but that's a bad naming convention anyway. Certainly that Java has been my prevalent language for the past several years has helped, but I found the other languages (except Perl and shell script languages) were similar.
I recommend learning to touch-type the punctuation so you can increase your coding speed. It's not just straight out speed of typing that's affected. When you have to stop your thought process to look down, find a key, and hit it, you take time away from thinking about your code. This causes your bug count to rise which decreases your overall productivity. A better keyboard layout like the SmartBoard or Kenesis would also help.
Re:Only going to work if it became standard
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
Most people who drive a stick can also drive an automatic. The same is true of keyboard layouts and split/non-split keyboards. I use a keyboard where the rows of keys are aligned vertically (no need to twist your fingers or wrist to hit the upper or lower rows), and while I notice the difference on a regular keyboard, it has only a minor speed effect beyond that of being a worse layout.
Note that I'm not addressing the claims of the Dvorak layout being better for your wrists. I suspect that it's true but have nothing to back it up. Switching to the vertically-aligned SmartBoard, however, did eliminate my wrist pain in under a week. As well, my speed and accuracy surpassed my previous levels after a weekend of getting used to the new layout.
It's called Permanent War, and it's great for endless corporate profits! By the way, the War on Sex has been around for a while, only it tends to be targeted exclusively at women sex workers.
Imagine if people owned their personal and financial information and companies had to pay us to use it. In this case, just like when we lose a CD or DVD, Citibank would be forced to pay for the lost information if they wanted to have access to it again. You can bet they'd take more care in shipping it in the future if that were the case.
I'm not saying it should work that way, and I'm certainly not claiming it could in this pro-business climate. But it's an interesting thought experiment.
So imagine that you did read that you were accepted, but in reality your letter of acceptance was predicated upon somebody else ahead of you not accepting? You would start making decisions for an entire month to move, make preparations and get ready for business school at Harvard before receiving your letter of rejection because the person ahead of you chose to attend.
If you did that, you're a dumbass. Seriously, you sneak a peak at your acceptance status and start making life-altering decisions and taking action based on unofficial findings? Dumb ass.
And your answer to that is to "protect" people from their own stupidity? This is one of the problems I have with the War on Drugs: you're too dumb so we're going to protect you from yourself. Oh, and by protect I mean subject you to rape, torture, confinement, and a pissed-off existence for the rest of your life. Aren't you glad we stepped in to save you?
And to top it all off, we're going to make everyone else pay for it! Nice.
Note that I'm not commenting on whether or not Harvard's actions were reasonable -- just your justification of hiding the information.
The key, of course, to avoid debt is to save up for what you want and pay for it in full. Credit is okay as long as you can manage it. Unfortunately, we graduate kids from high school without requiring them to understand how basic personal finances work like checking accounts and credit cards.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that the Christian* sects took their turn at this too. The Protestant/Catholic wars wreaked havoc across Medieval Europe until the Renaissance and mass education. *waves hands over a thousand years of history*
Science. Education. Freedom. Opportunity.
Support these enough and the rest will eventually take care of itself. Sure, violence still pops up on occasion (e.g. abortion clinic bombings), but it's far less than the indiscriminate and organized slaughter that existed back then.
* I don't mean to imply it was only these two religions. Who can forget the horrible Amish incursions that nearly decimated Pennsylvania in the 70's!
C'mon, her workout videos weren't that offensive!
You're not missing out. After being intrigued by the trailer showing the solo campaign and the pretty cool gameplay and graphics, I bought it Saturday and let it download overnight. Installed it this morning and started it up, but the tutorial crashed. Restarted it (remap the keys again because it didn't save them) and launched the campaign mode . . . which is online and multiplayer only. WTF?
Apparently, "campaign mode" now means "goal-oriented multiplayer modes with no story" like conquest while "classic mode" means "standard multiplayer games with no story" such as team deathmatch or capture-the-flag.
Twenty-four hour return policy activated, and good riddance. You'd think with all the cash EA has they could produce an online store half as good as Steam (much as that raises ire for some people), but alas that is not the case.
BTW, that browser extension was the server browser. I have no idea what it bought them to write a bunch of C code in a browser extension rather than packaging it up into a regular executable, but the major downside is that every time you join a server the entire engine has to be loaded and initialized. If these were the good ol' days of 2 second startup times it would be no problem. I gave up on BF4 pretty quick as it got so tiresome waiting for the game to reload every time you switched servers.
Heck, that's just the beginning of the fun and games for the defense and security contractors.
. . . to Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal.
The military command lied to Ender by pretending he was still in a training exercise, but they did not lie about the need to "end them." Without communication with the aliens, there was no way for the humans to know that the queens had realized their mistake and were perfectly willing to live in peaceful coexistence. Given the sheer luck that allowed Razer to win the previous battle for Earth, they were reasonably certain Earth would never survive another attack.
It was only later that Ender was able to communicate with the remaining queen and learn the full story. He was upset about being lied to and having caused so much death, but I think he understood why they lied to him. He didn't like it, mind you, but he understood it was the only way to get him (or anyone) to do what he did.
My memory is that Ender was told that they were looking for someone to lead the fleet that had departed for the alien frontier decades before. They simply neglected to tell him that they made their decision and the fleet he was leading in the training exercises was the actual fleet.
I laughed so hard, I spit up yesterday's milk. And yes, I just spent the last four hours playing cIV.
I for one welcome our new cutscene overlords.
Yes, something as ugly as war actually has rules that civilized (sic) nations agree to follow even when beating the crap out of each other. Most countries consider the targeting of civilians to be terrorism -- Europe and the U.S. included. Hell, the U.S. claims to be fighting a war against it.
The importance of stories like this one that investigate the results of the bombs is to show that yes, indeed, they were acts of terrorism.
More to your point, the war may end before the young men (and women) can be drafted into the military, so targeting them is wasteful. But in the end, the rules exist so that enemy nations won't do the same thing back to us.
The U.S. was incredibly lucky that the Japanese and Germans were unable to launch attacks on our soil during the war. England had its cities pounded by Germans bombs and rockets, creating a horrible fear among the civilians. The Germans government didn't do this believing they were killing future soldiers. They did it hoping the English civilians would force the government to exit the war. This is terrorism.
The U.S. fire-bombed Japanese cities, causing long-burning fires among the densely packed houses that killed more people than the two atomic bombs. They weren't killing future soldiers -- they were hoping to break their will. Again, terrorism.
If you feel that we need to have all options open to us when fighting a war, then fight to get the Geneva Conventions overturned. But don't cry foul when your soldiers are tortured as prisoners of war or when your dams are bombed to flood your farmlands, causing mass starvation.
The two cities were chosen because they would produce high civilian casualties in a short time, sending a very clear message. This was done to push Japan -- which had already asked to surrender -- into accepting the U.S.'s terms.
For a parallel, look into the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, done so because they were densely packed with wooden houses. The fires that raged through the cities were extremely difficult to contain and put out, resulting in large numbers of deaths. These bombings killed far more civilians than the two atomic bombs.
All of these bombings match the U.S.'s own definition of terrorism, except that the U.S. committed them.
Before anyone argues that the use of the two atomic bombs was isolated or necessary, what about the fire-bombing of Japanese cities that killed far more civilians?
Excellent, thank you. I'll pick it up as I'm almost finished with Drugs, Oil, and War by Peter Dale Scott. I highly recommend it as it has a lot of the history that ties together the various actions the U.S. took in Asia and Latin America.
I wish that were true. However, if you compare The Register article to the one in the SF Chronicle, they both use similar language straight out of a Stephen King novel.
According to the Chronicle, the "berserk" and "whacked-out" robot normally "roam[s] from floor to floor dispensing pills," as opposed to simply following a path according to delivery instructions. It "shot past the pharmacy and barged uninvited into the examination room ... sending a doctor and patient running for cover."
Cover from what, its wild gunfire? And how does one normally invite a robot into a room? Apparently, "Waldo wouldn't leave." Did they ask nicely? Say "please"?
It's writing like this that shows the true purpose of the news: to tell stories that entertain and frighten in order to drive sales of the papers. They are selling a product -- readers' eyeballs to advertisers -- not dispensing news about events so people are informed. I guess the silver lining is the hope that people will more likely come to realize this.
At the time of the first Gulf War, I was barely paying attention to news, let alone reading books and discussing the matters outside of the standard media take. Since then, most of my reading tends to be pre-90's or current day. I should dig up some non-establishment articles of that period -- thanks for the inspiration!
Yes, one of my less-than-progressive co-workers was waxing on about how magnanimous it was of the U.S. (well, Bush in his view) to decide to leave Saudi Arabia at their request. That we are now building "temporary" military bases in occupied Iraq was just a coincidence, absolutely unrelated. *sigh* And of course, this has nothing to do with oil.
Actually, it was a funny one-liner because it poked fun at that ignorant misconception.
BTW, I'd love to be able to reference an article about the U.S. making a promise to the Saudis in future discussions. Do you have a link to one? I knew that was one of Osama's complaints (along with supporting Israel and being lenient on gay marriage), but I had know idea the U.S. had made such a promise.
Osama just called to say he's hung up his terrorism hat. We no longer have enough freedom to be worth hating.
I disagree. In my decades of programming in various languages after learning touch-typing (C/C++, Java, Perl, various 4GLs, etc) I have found it to be very useful. For one, I can hit most of the punctuation without looking. As well, I use the keyboard for most every editing task instead of the mouse even when using GUI-based editors.
Sure, if you name all your variables x, i, lp, and zf2 you're percentage of punctuation increases, but that's a bad naming convention anyway. Certainly that Java has been my prevalent language for the past several years has helped, but I found the other languages (except Perl and shell script languages) were similar.
I recommend learning to touch-type the punctuation so you can increase your coding speed. It's not just straight out speed of typing that's affected. When you have to stop your thought process to look down, find a key, and hit it, you take time away from thinking about your code. This causes your bug count to rise which decreases your overall productivity. A better keyboard layout like the SmartBoard or Kenesis would also help.
Note that I'm not addressing the claims of the Dvorak layout being better for your wrists. I suspect that it's true but have nothing to back it up. Switching to the vertically-aligned SmartBoard, however, did eliminate my wrist pain in under a week. As well, my speed and accuracy surpassed my previous levels after a weekend of getting used to the new layout.
It's called Permanent War, and it's great for endless corporate profits! By the way, the War on Sex has been around for a while, only it tends to be targeted exclusively at women sex workers.
I'm not saying it should work that way, and I'm certainly not claiming it could in this pro-business climate. But it's an interesting thought experiment.
"Objection, your honor. zippthorne answered the question for the witness."
You totally rule. :)
If you did that, you're a dumbass. Seriously, you sneak a peak at your acceptance status and start making life-altering decisions and taking action based on unofficial findings? Dumb ass.
And your answer to that is to "protect" people from their own stupidity? This is one of the problems I have with the War on Drugs: you're too dumb so we're going to protect you from yourself. Oh, and by protect I mean subject you to rape, torture, confinement, and a pissed-off existence for the rest of your life. Aren't you glad we stepped in to save you?
And to top it all off, we're going to make everyone else pay for it! Nice.
Note that I'm not commenting on whether or not Harvard's actions were reasonable -- just your justification of hiding the information.
The key, of course, to avoid debt is to save up for what you want and pay for it in full. Credit is okay as long as you can manage it. Unfortunately, we graduate kids from high school without requiring them to understand how basic personal finances work like checking accounts and credit cards.