I don't know guys...why should I get an X-box for this when Doom 3 is coming to our PCs in a couple of years? Doom 3 is way more impressive to me than Halo.
"When you fly planes over a country and drop bombs from them, it's unrealistic to think that they will not kill civilians."
No reported civilian casualties so far. But my point was that we're specifically trying to avoid hitting civilians. Most of them are evacuating the cities anyway.
"We can pick our targets as carefully as we like, but it's inevitable to have "collateral damage" - are you really trying to deny this?"
Actually, I WILL deny that it is "inevitable." In fact, I have a feeling the Taliban regime will fall in the coming week.
If civilians are killed, it will be tragic, but we had 6,000 of ours killed without warning. These guys have had a month to cooperate and knew the consequences.
"Maybe "most USsians" do actually believe we're going to kill not a single Afghani civilian, but I hope they're not so deluded."
So you WANT them to kill civilians? I'm confused.
"We're either operating on the basis that some number of civilian deaths is acceptable, or we're complete idiots."
Of course there is the potential for some civilian casualties. We can play "what if" all day. It doesn't accomplish anything.
""nobody likes these fundamentalist etc etc" so you think we're doing Afghanis a favor by bombing them? get real."
What do you suggest? A message has to be sent that terrorist acts will not be tolerated, and governments will not be allowed to protect the prime suspects of such attacks.
"and don't give me this "i know it's cool and hip" crap - I gave a fairly-well-reasoned argument and you respond by dismissing it as some knee-jerk countercultural opinion."
Can you blame me? There are a lot of university pseudo-hippies who think Ghandi philosophies work against an enemy that genuinely believes you are an enemy of Allah.
"How bout I dismiss your opinion as knee-jerk bloodthirsty nationalism, not caring to reason out the actual effects of our military actions as long as it feels like we're doing something?"
You could do that, but you'd be wrong.
I don't get why people like you assume nobody has thought out the effects of military actions. Most people don't want war. But it is necessary. I don't think people like being attacked with planes either.
"Don't fucking patronize me. I could see the cloud from where the towers used to be and I knew damned well that I or any of my friends could've been in there and died."
A friend of mine actually did die there.
"It's not a question of defending ourselves - there is no defending ourselves by any amount of military mobilization in this situation."
What a ridiculous statement. Of course it's a question of defending ourselves. By eliminating terrorists and "those who harbor them," we're eliminating the threat to a large degree. We will likely never totally be rid of terrorists--there are always wackos--but we can get rid of state-sponsored terrorism wherever we can.
"Overthrowing the Taliban and doing whatever-we-want to bin Laden won't change the fact that a terrorist can kill a few hundred whenever and a few thousand in certain situations."
But it will change the potential for such an attack to happen.
"Pure and simple, it's a choice between Bush flexing some muscles and Bush not getting reelected."
You see, this tired political cynicism is just so old and out of place right now. This isn't about reelection, this is about 6,000 of our fucking civilians getting killed. It's the job of the President to do what we want when 90% of the population wants to eliminate the threat. Should we do nothing? What would you propose we do? Surgical attacks seem to be the best solution at this point. They were given ample warning of our possible attacks, unlike at WTC.
Nobody is saying eliminating the Taliban is the perfect solution. Nobody has ever said that. But it is the best solution right now. These people can't even decide whether they know where Bin Laden is or not. Negotiations are over.
"It's interesting how most of us USsians are willing to see a few Afghan civilians (realistically, probably a few thousand) die because their government is (we think) guilty of harboring terrorists..."
Does anyone bother following anything? Bush and other leaders have made it quite clear that we are specifically targeting military installations of the Taliban and Al Queda.
None of this "we think" crap. We know who did this. Even Bin Laden implicated himself in the released video today.
I think it's funny that a few Slashdotters are calling this an act of war against Afghanistan, as if we are attacking the country as a whole.
I think all those humanitarian efforts sort of show that perhaps we DON'T want Afghani civilians killed, despite what you'd love to believe so that you can rant some more and feel independent. In fact, we feel sorry for those people. CNN has been running that one documentary endlessly in the past weeks. Most Americans have now seen the oppression of the Taliban from first-hand accounts.
I think you are out-of-touch when you say "most of us USians." Our targets are the Taliban and Al Queda. We've been quite clear about this. Even Bush made sure to point this out in his speech today. Unless you've done a survey of "most USians," get real.
We've given them a whole month to hand over a prime suspect in an attack on the United States. They made their choice, and now they are facing the consequences. Meanwhile, support for their regime is dwindling fast by the people of Afghanistan themselves. Nobody likes these fundamentalist cowards and wackos who use religion to kill and oppress their own people.
I know it's "cool" and "hip" to always oppose what the government is doing, but the terrorists attacked our CIVILIANS. You are a civilian. Bin Laden makes no distinction between a soldier and you. If you were in one of the towers, his organization would have succeeded in killing you. And they would have been happy about it. So this isn't an issue of the government now, it's an issue of attack on innocent American citizens such as yourself.
Maybe you don't want to defend yourself, but I think the current fad of trendy pacifism stems from one thing: fear of sacrifice. It's as though you just thought freedom was some inherent thing that always seems to exist by itself, and all you had to do in life was play your PS2 and post on Slashdot. Guess what? Sometimes you have to fight for things. Nobody likes to, but sometimes you have to.
This small pacificism "movement" will burn out and be forgotten anyways. I think most people are quite willing to defend their country from further attacks by eradicating the threat. I am, anyway.
"Sure the geeks will still be able to obtain it, from ripping themselves or through obscure P2P clients, but the vast majority of people won't be able to get their hands on the MP3s, and that's all that really matters for the RIAA. The DMCA will take care of the misfits."
All it takes is a couple of geeks to make mp3s from the CDs, release it on IRC, and then it's available to everyone.
Witness how easily Marilyn Manson's last album was spread everywhere a month before release, or more recently Tool's Lateralus a week before release. And these were CDs not even released yet!
They can stop 99%, but all it takes is 1% to make it available for the other 99%.
My college has always encouraged group work, from programming projects to network designing. Usually, it's left up to the group to weed out the dead weight. If someone is slacking, the others will just kick them out of the group.
"Come on Hemos, this isn't a patent on pausing. It's a patent on the concept of freezing a live feed and buffering the incoming picture, and then continuing to play a time-delayed picture."
What you just described, sir, is what we in the technical field of TV and movie watching would call "pausing."
If you wait a little while (a day at the most) you can read the story from our local Carlsbad paper at http://www.current-argus.com Just go to the Carlsbad section on the main page.
I wonder if the rest of Carlsbad's attitude towards WIPP will be affected after this.
As far as keeping up with current trends and computer technology, I don't think programmers would have that much of a problem. I know a few programmers over 30 that have kept up with the times (one of them is a big Linux fan). Especially the programmers now, where we're growing up used to a world where change is quick and constant especially with the Internet, and you just naturally learn the habit of keeping up with things all the time and accepting changes. I'd think you'd have to be able to do that to be a programmer anyway. I don't think it's that big of a deal--if you stay productive and continue to be a valuable asset to the company, why would they give you the boot?
Well, then, by that reasoning, let's sue Microsoft because of the "LOVEBUG" virus. Even though it's a user that wrote the virus, it's Microsoft's fault, right? Then we'll sue the makers of FTP programs because they have people who upload and download illegal software. After that, let's sue the store owner that sold the guns to the guy who went and killed his family one night. And then we'll sue McDonald's for making hot coffee that a customer spilt on herself. It's not the individual's fault, right? It's the people who provided the opportunity to do wrongdoing and didn't take you by your little hand and tell you step by step what is right or wrong, smart or stupid? The fact is, the users who shared Metallica mp3's knew right from wrong. THEY did the illegal thing. What the FUCK does Napster have to do with the people who committed wrongdoing? Lars actually said on MTV that he felt that Napster "encouraged" downloading of Metallica songs. How the fucking hell did Napster encourage downloading of anything illegal? By providing the means? Give me a fucking break. How stupid and illogical can one get? Besides, everytime you start up Napster, ever since the first version came out, there has always been a big red warning that tells you not to use Napster for illegal means. It says quite clearly that if it receives reports of any wrongdoing it will gladly take appropriate action. Napster actually DISCOURAGED illegal use. It's not Napster's fault the users did anything illegal. Geez, think of how many people would get sued if we held them responsible for whatever illegal activity took place by users of their services or products, be it a piece of software, a gun, an automobile, beer, cigarettes, computers, phones, credit cards, cameras, knives, cassette decks, VCRs, and much, much more. What if you held a concert and was sued because some drunken idiot in the mosh pit got a broken arm? Is it his fault for making the choice to mosh, or is it your fault for creating the environment that caused his injury? Who really caused it? This country is getting so fucked up because of this ridiculous kind of thinking. YOU are responsible for your OWN actions. And you're NOT responsible for other people's actions that you had no part of. Napster had NOTHING to do with what their users did. Imagine how fucked up this country would be if this mode of thinking took over. I have an idea--let's sue Metallica because a few kids back in the 80's killed themselves after listening to "Fade to Black". Anyone else remember that issue back in the day? Ironic that Metallica argued the same thing I am arguing--they weren't responsible for what their listeners did, much the same way that Napster isn't responsible for what it's users do. Napster isn't a mommy, it doesn't need to teach you right and wrong. It is simply an excellent music distribution method that I use for my own band. If users use it illegally--fine, go after them (although the way Metallica did go after them is a whole other discussion itself). I'm appalled Metallica is trying to shut Napster itself down, but also not really worried because Napster is a dead issue anyway, Gnutella is where it's at--it can't be sued because it's not centrally controlled. My band is taking full advantage of the internet medium to distribute its music, and no misinformed, technologically-challenged Lars Ulrich is gonna stop us. Fuck the RIAA; hell, even the government has realized how money-grubbing this organization is. As stated in a story on E!Online earlier this month (I submitted the story but it never got accepted), the prices of CD's were ordered to be lowered, due to findings showing that despite the ease of production and the fact that cassette equivalents have gone down in price, CD's have gone UP in price, by several dollars in fact. Remember buying CD's for 9.99? Even 12.99? Forget it nowadays. Everything boils down to money; it explains the motives behind this whole issue, behind everything. It all leads back to the greed of the RIAA, the record companies--and now, Metallica...protecting their "art" from being "commoditized" by freely-trading Napster users, so that they can instead be commoditized by being sold in a mega-mall for $20 a pop. That is art to Metallica.
Geez, what would you people do without me here to keep you in line?
What "reasonable request"? Metallica sent Napster 60,000 pages of paper instead of a few measly floppy disks. I'd be more than happy to slap that request right back in the face of Metallica, I'm not gonna waste my fucking time parsing 60,000 sheets of paper when they can't even write to a lousy disk or two (or even e-mail the damn list to me, shit).
Why is nobody suing Lycos? http://mp3.lycos.com is a service that provides easy access to illegal mp3's, I've used it many times before. Shit, let's sue radio because it makes it easy to tape music for yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know guys...why should I get an X-box for this when Doom 3 is coming to our PCs in a couple of years? Doom 3 is way more impressive to me than Halo.
Letting yourself get worked up over the celebration of a fun little holiday like Halloween has gotten the better of you. Were you born an adult?
Lighten up! People like you tend to not have very many friends, because you take things more seriously than Denzel Washington.
- bonch
stay animated
Especially since the word "who" is used...
"So you WANT them to kill civilians? I'm confused."
Meant to say, "So you WANT them to want to kill civilians?"
"When you fly planes over a country and drop bombs from them, it's unrealistic to think that they will not kill civilians."
No reported civilian casualties so far. But my point was that we're specifically trying to avoid hitting civilians. Most of them are evacuating the cities anyway.
"We can pick our targets as carefully as we like, but it's inevitable to have "collateral damage" - are you really trying to deny this?"
Actually, I WILL deny that it is "inevitable." In fact, I have a feeling the Taliban regime will fall in the coming week.
If civilians are killed, it will be tragic, but we had 6,000 of ours killed without warning. These guys have had a month to cooperate and knew the consequences.
"Maybe "most USsians" do actually believe we're going to kill not a single Afghani civilian, but I hope they're not so deluded."
So you WANT them to kill civilians? I'm confused.
"We're either operating on the basis that some number of civilian deaths is acceptable, or we're complete idiots."
Of course there is the potential for some civilian casualties. We can play "what if" all day. It doesn't accomplish anything.
""nobody likes these fundamentalist etc etc" so you think we're doing Afghanis a favor by bombing them? get real."
What do you suggest? A message has to be sent that terrorist acts will not be tolerated, and governments will not be allowed to protect the prime suspects of such attacks.
"and don't give me this "i know it's cool and hip" crap - I gave a fairly-well-reasoned argument and you respond by dismissing it as some knee-jerk countercultural opinion."
Can you blame me? There are a lot of university pseudo-hippies who think Ghandi philosophies work against an enemy that genuinely believes you are an enemy of Allah.
"How bout I dismiss your opinion as knee-jerk bloodthirsty nationalism, not caring to reason out the actual effects of our military actions as long as it feels like we're doing something?"
You could do that, but you'd be wrong.
I don't get why people like you assume nobody has thought out the effects of military actions. Most people don't want war. But it is necessary. I don't think people like being attacked with planes either.
"Don't fucking patronize me. I could see the cloud from where the towers used to be and I knew damned well that I or any of my friends could've been in there and died."
A friend of mine actually did die there.
"It's not a question of defending ourselves - there is no defending ourselves by any amount of military mobilization in this situation."
What a ridiculous statement. Of course it's a question of defending ourselves. By eliminating terrorists and "those who harbor them," we're eliminating the threat to a large degree. We will likely never totally be rid of terrorists--there are always wackos--but we can get rid of state-sponsored terrorism wherever we can.
"Overthrowing the Taliban and doing whatever-we-want to bin Laden won't change the fact that a terrorist can kill a few hundred whenever and a few thousand in certain situations."
But it will change the potential for such an attack to happen.
"Pure and simple, it's a choice between Bush flexing some muscles and Bush not getting reelected."
You see, this tired political cynicism is just so old and out of place right now. This isn't about reelection, this is about 6,000 of our fucking civilians getting killed. It's the job of the President to do what we want when 90% of the population wants to eliminate the threat. Should we do nothing? What would you propose we do? Surgical attacks seem to be the best solution at this point. They were given ample warning of our possible attacks, unlike at WTC.
Nobody is saying eliminating the Taliban is the perfect solution. Nobody has ever said that. But it is the best solution right now. These people can't even decide whether they know where Bin Laden is or not. Negotiations are over.
"It's interesting how most of us USsians are willing to see a few Afghan civilians (realistically, probably a few thousand) die because their government is (we think) guilty of harboring terrorists..."
Does anyone bother following anything? Bush and other leaders have made it quite clear that we are specifically targeting military installations of the Taliban and Al Queda.
None of this "we think" crap. We know who did this. Even Bin Laden implicated himself in the released video today.
I think it's funny that a few Slashdotters are calling this an act of war against Afghanistan, as if we are attacking the country as a whole.
I think all those humanitarian efforts sort of show that perhaps we DON'T want Afghani civilians killed, despite what you'd love to believe so that you can rant some more and feel independent. In fact, we feel sorry for those people. CNN has been running that one documentary endlessly in the past weeks. Most Americans have now seen the oppression of the Taliban from first-hand accounts.
I think you are out-of-touch when you say "most of us USians." Our targets are the Taliban and Al Queda. We've been quite clear about this. Even Bush made sure to point this out in his speech today. Unless you've done a survey of "most USians," get real.
We've given them a whole month to hand over a prime suspect in an attack on the United States. They made their choice, and now they are facing the consequences. Meanwhile, support for their regime is dwindling fast by the people of Afghanistan themselves. Nobody likes these fundamentalist cowards and wackos who use religion to kill and oppress their own people.
I know it's "cool" and "hip" to always oppose what the government is doing, but the terrorists attacked our CIVILIANS. You are a civilian. Bin Laden makes no distinction between a soldier and you. If you were in one of the towers, his organization would have succeeded in killing you. And they would have been happy about it. So this isn't an issue of the government now, it's an issue of attack on innocent American citizens such as yourself.
Maybe you don't want to defend yourself, but I think the current fad of trendy pacifism stems from one thing: fear of sacrifice. It's as though you just thought freedom was some inherent thing that always seems to exist by itself, and all you had to do in life was play your PS2 and post on Slashdot. Guess what? Sometimes you have to fight for things. Nobody likes to, but sometimes you have to.
This small pacificism "movement" will burn out and be forgotten anyways. I think most people are quite willing to defend their country from further attacks by eradicating the threat. I am, anyway.
Then they morph into Mighty Megazord Death and do battle with a sweaty guy in a rubber suit. Every. Single. Episode.
"Sure the geeks will still be able to obtain it, from ripping themselves or through obscure P2P clients, but the vast majority of people won't be able to get their hands on the MP3s, and that's all that really matters for the RIAA. The DMCA will take care of the misfits."
All it takes is a couple of geeks to make mp3s from the CDs, release it on IRC, and then it's available to everyone.
Witness how easily Marilyn Manson's last album was spread everywhere a month before release, or more recently Tool's Lateralus a week before release. And these were CDs not even released yet!
They can stop 99%, but all it takes is 1% to make it available for the other 99%.
My college has always encouraged group work, from programming projects to network designing. Usually, it's left up to the group to weed out the dead weight. If someone is slacking, the others will just kick them out of the group.
Wow. Putting arrogant people in their place is now considered "flamebait." Thanks for the unjustly lowered karma, guys...
"Come on Hemos, this isn't a patent on pausing. It's a patent on the concept of freezing a live feed and buffering the incoming picture, and then continuing to play a time-delayed picture."
What you just described, sir, is what we in the technical field of TV and movie watching would call "pausing."
I'm a member of MENSA, too, and I think you're ridiculous.
But it should be synonymous with accepting criticism, as it should be with any position at a big public company like Nintendo.
If you wait a little while (a day at the most) you can read the story from our local Carlsbad paper at http://www.current-argus.com Just go to the Carlsbad section on the main page.
I wonder if the rest of Carlsbad's attitude towards WIPP will be affected after this.
That sucks. I liked Kuro5hin. What's weird is www.np2k.com, a Natalie Portman fan site, was being smurfed hardcore yesterday.
Why in God's name is this modded down? This is the second "mis-modding" I've seen on this article.
The sad thing is, the previous post got modded down for some reason.
Except that the Church of Satan is the only church to refuse tax-exempt status.
The Church of Satan is the only church to refuse tax-exempt status.
Half-Life was built on the Q1 engine. And it ended up being better than the Q2 engine...
As far as keeping up with current trends and computer technology, I don't think programmers would have that much of a problem. I know a few programmers over 30 that have kept up with the times (one of them is a big Linux fan). Especially the programmers now, where we're growing up used to a world where change is quick and constant especially with the Internet, and you just naturally learn the habit of keeping up with things all the time and accepting changes. I'd think you'd have to be able to do that to be a programmer anyway. I don't think it's that big of a deal--if you stay productive and continue to be a valuable asset to the company, why would they give you the boot?
Well, then, by that reasoning, let's sue Microsoft because of the "LOVEBUG" virus. Even though it's a user that wrote the virus, it's Microsoft's fault, right? Then we'll sue the makers of FTP programs because they have people who upload and download illegal software. After that, let's sue the store owner that sold the guns to the guy who went and killed his family one night. And then we'll sue McDonald's for making hot coffee that a customer spilt on herself. It's not the individual's fault, right? It's the people who provided the opportunity to do wrongdoing and didn't take you by your little hand and tell you step by step what is right or wrong, smart or stupid? The fact is, the users who shared Metallica mp3's knew right from wrong. THEY did the illegal thing. What the FUCK does Napster have to do with the people who committed wrongdoing? Lars actually said on MTV that he felt that Napster "encouraged" downloading of Metallica songs. How the fucking hell did Napster encourage downloading of anything illegal? By providing the means? Give me a fucking break. How stupid and illogical can one get? Besides, everytime you start up Napster, ever since the first version came out, there has always been a big red warning that tells you not to use Napster for illegal means. It says quite clearly that if it receives reports of any wrongdoing it will gladly take appropriate action. Napster actually DISCOURAGED illegal use. It's not Napster's fault the users did anything illegal. Geez, think of how many people would get sued if we held them responsible for whatever illegal activity took place by users of their services or products, be it a piece of software, a gun, an automobile, beer, cigarettes, computers, phones, credit cards, cameras, knives, cassette decks, VCRs, and much, much more. What if you held a concert and was sued because some drunken idiot in the mosh pit got a broken arm? Is it his fault for making the choice to mosh, or is it your fault for creating the environment that caused his injury? Who really caused it? This country is getting so fucked up because of this ridiculous kind of thinking. YOU are responsible for your OWN actions. And you're NOT responsible for other people's actions that you had no part of. Napster had NOTHING to do with what their users did. Imagine how fucked up this country would be if this mode of thinking took over. I have an idea--let's sue Metallica because a few kids back in the 80's killed themselves after listening to "Fade to Black". Anyone else remember that issue back in the day? Ironic that Metallica argued the same thing I am arguing--they weren't responsible for what their listeners did, much the same way that Napster isn't responsible for what it's users do. Napster isn't a mommy, it doesn't need to teach you right and wrong. It is simply an excellent music distribution method that I use for my own band. If users use it illegally--fine, go after them (although the way Metallica did go after them is a whole other discussion itself). I'm appalled Metallica is trying to shut Napster itself down, but also not really worried because Napster is a dead issue anyway, Gnutella is where it's at--it can't be sued because it's not centrally controlled. My band is taking full advantage of the internet medium to distribute its music, and no misinformed, technologically-challenged Lars Ulrich is gonna stop us. Fuck the RIAA; hell, even the government has realized how money-grubbing this organization is. As stated in a story on E!Online earlier this month (I submitted the story but it never got accepted), the prices of CD's were ordered to be lowered, due to findings showing that despite the ease of production and the fact that cassette equivalents have gone down in price, CD's have gone UP in price, by several dollars in fact. Remember buying CD's for 9.99? Even 12.99? Forget it nowadays. Everything boils down to money; it explains the motives behind this whole issue, behind everything. It all leads back to the greed of the RIAA, the record companies--and now, Metallica...protecting their "art" from being "commoditized" by freely-trading Napster users, so that they can instead be commoditized by being sold in a mega-mall for $20 a pop. That is art to Metallica.
Geez, what would you people do without me here to keep you in line?
What "reasonable request"? Metallica sent Napster 60,000 pages of paper instead of a few measly floppy disks. I'd be more than happy to slap that request right back in the face of Metallica, I'm not gonna waste my fucking time parsing 60,000 sheets of paper when they can't even write to a lousy disk or two (or even e-mail the damn list to me, shit).
Why is nobody suing Lycos? http://mp3.lycos.com is a service that provides easy access to illegal mp3's, I've used it many times before. Shit, let's sue radio because it makes it easy to tape music for yourself.
You actually think bands can make millions off of RECORD SALES?!? HAAHAAHAHAAAHAAAHAAAAA!!! Performance revenues are where it's at.