Well the insurgency is facing three reasons why they won't win.
A commander-in-chief who is committed to this conflict. Our training of the Iraqi National Army so they can stand up to the insurgents when we leave. The fact that most of the insurgents are driven to fight by our very prescence. When we leave, much of the motivation for the majority of terrorist groups in Iraq leaves with us.
The US has basiacally set it up so that no matter what the outcome they "Lose". The only outcome where the US can save face and claim a victory is if they make Iraq into the Middle eastern Japan. A stable western style democratic state. If they withdraw at any point before this the world will see the US as running away and the insurgents winning. If the US stays for 20 years this would also be seen as a lose. As time goes by this little war has greatly tarnished America's reputation due to a lot of things it didn't do (liek restoring law and order quickly) as well and greatly diminishing peoples perception of US military supuriority. In the end it has hurt america a lot and as a close american ally it hurts me to see this. Dispose of your inept leadership quickly. Thank god you have a two term limit.
How can you argue they are doing rather well when they have not made any progress to their strategic goal? At best, they are moving sidewards. However by the progress we are making, I would argue that we are moving forwards and they are delaying the inevitable: the point at which we leave a free Iraq with a military equipped to defend themselves.
They are a civillian militia whose aim is merely to cause trouble. This strategic goal is being achieved very well. They are not a organized military force with grand strategic goals. Their only aim is to irritate the americans enough so that they leave. This was the same goal the viet kong had(although the Viet Kong had better organization) and while the Amricans call vient nam a "draw" it was very obviously a crushing defeat for america which heavily influenced Americas policies for the last three decades.
Government's (formal tribes) do reduce the percentage of dead and disabled when compared to pre-historic tribal anarchy. But this is just because there are fewer tribes to fight with each other, the fundemental "tribal instinct" is still the driving force
I agree in spirit with most of your post. The above sentence being the exception. The older tribal/feaudal systems tended to ritualize their combat reducing it's impact on those involved because of practical reasons. Since it took between 4-10 peasants/surfs/farmers to support 1 full tiem soldier they often wanted to reduce any collateral damage because it reduce the value of waging war if the spoils (lands/workers) were destroyed in the proccess. Most wars of antiquity have been fought by full time soldiers. Many part of the gentry or nobility. In fact Feaudalism is build on the hereditary monopoly of arms.
This ritualized combat involved fewer people and often had guidelines such as buishido/chivary ect.. to reduce the impact of war. It's not to say it wasn't brutal, only that it impacted a smaller percentage of the populace and often the wars themselves would become formal events that had strict guidlines on what was appropriate. Although notable exceptiosn being the Mongul conquests which obliterated 60% of the chinese populace, or the romance of the three kingdoms which also obliterated about 2/3 of the chinese population.
Modern warfare is far more destructive due to the reduction in the number of workers needed to support a war effort and the all encampassing nature of warfare. World war I and II were by far the most destructive human engineered events since the romane of the three kindoms in china. It involved nearly all "citizens" and our methods kill quicker with the opportunity for a lot more collateral damage. Our "Formal tribes" have greatly increased the percentage of dead/dismembered in a war since "nationalism" and "real war" are tools of the modern nation state and incite much more brutal warfare.
If people dressed up as hobbits and wizards for Lord of the Rings and as Jedis and Sith for Star Wars, does that mean people will be showing up for the MGS premeire in cardboard boxes and mullets?
I'd be happy just so long as enough girls dressed as sniper wolf.
It's much more exciting to be swarmed by 7 or 8 nameless mooks who die at the end of your sword than to spend 1/2 hour chasing down one guy who keeps hiding behind cover, shooting you from the back, and running away when injured.
Err.. you just described the boss fight with The End in MGS:3. it was however fun.
A solution to start making serious money would be to port the games available in MAME32 to run on the XBox. This would involve offering a nominal fee to every owner of each old ROM, setting up a good team to write the emulator code, and figure out the pricing scheme (hint: make it really low). I still have fun with Elevator Action, Double Dragon, and the like, so I think there's definitely a market; I also wouldn't think twice about investing $20-50 in a collection of the oldies that I liked. I've already purchased SmashTV in the "Coin-Op Classics" section, and I'm waiting for SF2:Hyper to finally get released. More of these games would make me happy, especially if some were graphically updated to be shown in full HD glory.
The fallacy your running on is that 1- everyone is like you and likes old arcade games 2- that everyone is willing to pay for them 3- that online live subscribers will make a significant portion of the 360 audience.
As the xbox has shown few people want to be online. This fact is due to a skill difference factor as well as the fear of griefers and just the lack of time to get good enough to have fun there. There is a market for it but it isn't that significant. The whole dependency on live to lead the xbox to profitability will fail because MS is operating under the same fallcies.
Thanks..... the ps1 and ps2 were not selling at a loss initially?
Sony did not sell them at much of a loss and since they made virtually every part in house the price of the systems decreased quickly and dramatically. I suspect the PS2 were sold at a loss for only the first 6 mo or so while the PSX was problably profitabel very soon after launch.
These are two different skill sets. While any monkey can use a firearm, it will not protect you against a trained assassin that observes your movements and launches a suprise attack.
sniper > above monkey with a rifle > samarai > ninja On a well cut grass field
Sniper > ninja > above monkey with a rifle > Samarai in a heavy brush
Sniping is essentially a ninja with a rifle. Not any monkey can be a sniper. But a good sniper can take out any number of of the three other groups above.
A few weeks of generic military rifle training will teach anyone all they need to know to use a rifle effectively. The US Army does a pretty effective job teaching rifle skills in basic training. I had never handled anything other than a b-b gun as a kid, and by the time rifle training was done in basic, I qualified expert with the M-16.
Could I hit a target every time at 1000 yards? Probably not. You solve that problem by making sure you have more than one round at your disposal. You don't need to hit a target with every shot as long as you have a full clip. Three-round groups don't hurt too much either.
This is known as spray and pray. Fairly effective at about 20 m almost a lottery at 50m and hopelessly outgunned against a marksman of any calibur at 100m. The longest snipe was 2,430m by Master Corporal Arron Perry of the Canadian armed forces on a moving target (a moving target as well). At that range regaurdless of the rifle you use you will be pwned by a trained sniper and snipers aren't easily trained.
The other part is the assertion that it was a mistake for Microsoft NOT to have raised prices. I don't know that to be the case. Regardless of MSRP, the Xbox 360 WAS the "hot" product of the 2005 holiday shopping season. I'd assume Microsoft's leadership is pretty pleased with that, even if some middlemen did take home some profit that theoretically could have been theirs.
If by hot you mean "sold less then all of their competitors" Then yes it was a hot product. But in that case, Zima was also a hot product for 2005 as was the N-gage.
My issue with the article is that he says at the end, "I[n] some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux," but never says what those ways are.
It will require double the ram, and tripple the processor power. As well it will pop up errors in new and exciting ways. It will also run word, solitaire, and excel 50% faster then an xbox on any machine you load it on.
"Liangzai's" point, if I may be so bold, is that there's nothing in your post that every Chinese citizen doesn't already know. In fact, most people in China (particularly among the urban middle class) probably know more about the Tiananmen Square protests of '89 than the average American knows about Kent State in '70.
I agree. I am a ex Chinese national and I see becoming like the states would be several steps backwards for China. A better target would be Canada or some european countries, possible Sweden. The Us is quickly becoming a pseudo corprate oliogracy.
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (2).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (3).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (4).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Flamebait (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (3).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (2).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (1).
lol. I'd like it to be -1 informative if you can. I have karma to burn. I guess we have some sensative HP/compaq employees out there. Your workstations (liek Dells) are great hardware but your home systems are a nightmare to use and support.
From my personal experience as a consumer and as a tech HP/compaq computers are garbage. Dell computers are alright is slighty over priced while Sony and Apple are asthetically pleasing but over priced. If HP/compaq is gaining on Dell it must mean the consumers have gotten dumber and nothing more.
The rally started as a government approved anti-corruption rally. But during the rally it changed into a pro democracy rally. The rally was brutally stopped and the party members involved with approving it were punished.
The PS2's success was built on a wide selection of genres with a few killer apps such as FFX, Grand Turismo, Metal gear solid.
The Xbox's success however is built exclusively on FPS and sports titles with almost everythign else being fairly weak. They had 1 killer app that was Halo/Halo2.
Too many people get their science from fiction books. Mars has too little gravity and Venus has too long of a day to create an Earth-like planet out of them.
The long day (and lack of water) might be solved by smashing icy astroids into venus at just the right angle to get it to spin (taking enormous amounts of energy... but possible). Once the spin is sufficient we coudl use bacteria/nanobots to convert the c02 into carbonate formes and the increases rotation might cause a Magnetosphere to form? I'm not even close to knowlegable about this but it seems plausible.
Actually, I seem to recall reading back in freshman Psych (umpty-leven years ago) of a study that showed that people who are deprived of environmental cues to the time of day tend to settle into a 27- to 28-hour pattern of activity. (Can't seem to find any links to such a study at the moment, though, so it's entirely possible I'm misremembering. Or maybe I just need sleep.)
The study was partially discreditted, something about certain exstrenal ques giving them a pattern of 27.
You sick fuck. You obviously have no idea why you should get married. HINT: It's ALL about love. Money should have nothing to do with it on either side. If it does, you have two sad and sorry victims of capitalist propaganda. I married my wife because I love her and she did the same with me. I don't make much money and she doesn't care. We live comfortably enough, have a great sex life and have made it to our late 30s and early 40s with only one kid (in 2004 and planned in advance) in 16 years of sex. But outside of the sex we love to actually BE with each other. I don't run screaming from the house to hang out with my male friends because she's just too much fun to hang out with no matter what we do. And she doesn't run screaming from me because she has a good time with me.
Little note: Marriage has nothign to do with love it started as a property contract between a man and the family of a girl. It's shifted a bit over the last 200 years (yes the chaneg was very recent). Even now it's more about propperty then about love since the state doens't care if you love the one you marry.
I play a lot of warcraft 3 and all my friends play it too but I know the FF series completely outstrips warcraft 3 in sales. So whil your Halo parties might be more common in your circle of friends it means nothign because the FF series tends to sell in numbers as great or greater then any of the two halo games. And there have been 10 single player FF series. That would mean it a far greater success so far then the Halo series has been. And actually, the FF series has been the king makers for the last 3 generations. Which ever platform has had it has come out on top. In the last 4 it has been with the winner.
Bioware is no longer affiliated with Atari. The retarded suits fucked Bioware over and Bioware severed ties. Bioware now self publishes. So if they do work on NW2 this wont' affect them.
Exactly how many muslims do you think there are in the world?
The answer: 1.2 billion. That's more than the number of people in China. If they were all violent radicals as you describe we'd be in the midst of a World War III in proportions that would absolutely dwarf WWI and II combined.
Except 300 million of those 1.2 billion are hated and hate the rest. Of those 900 million left they are divided on political and sectatarian lines. In total the military capability of those 1.2 billion is marginally greater then India. With technology that is 10-20 years behind those of any of the western nations and co-ordination and organization inferior to the American Boy Scouts.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the insurgency is facing three reasons why they won't win.
A commander-in-chief who is committed to this conflict.
Our training of the Iraqi National Army so they can stand up to the insurgents when we leave.
The fact that most of the insurgents are driven to fight by our very prescence. When we leave, much of the motivation for the majority of terrorist groups in Iraq leaves with us.
The US has basiacally set it up so that no matter what the outcome they "Lose". The only outcome where the US can save face and claim a victory is if they make Iraq into the Middle eastern Japan. A stable western style democratic state. If they withdraw at any point before this the world will see the US as running away and the insurgents winning. If the US stays for 20 years this would also be seen as a lose. As time goes by this little war has greatly tarnished America's reputation due to a lot of things it didn't do (liek restoring law and order quickly) as well and greatly diminishing peoples perception of US military supuriority. In the end it has hurt america a lot and as a close american ally it hurts me to see this. Dispose of your inept leadership quickly. Thank god you have a two term limit.
How can you argue they are doing rather well when they have not made any progress to their strategic goal? At best, they are moving sidewards. However by the progress we are making, I would argue that we are moving forwards and they are delaying the inevitable: the point at which we leave a free Iraq with a military equipped to defend themselves.
They are a civillian militia whose aim is merely to cause trouble. This strategic goal is being achieved very well. They are not a organized military force with grand strategic goals. Their only aim is to irritate the americans enough so that they leave. This was the same goal the viet kong had(although the Viet Kong had better organization) and while the Amricans call vient nam a "draw" it was very obviously a crushing defeat for america which heavily influenced Americas policies for the last three decades.
Government's (formal tribes) do reduce the percentage of dead and disabled when compared to pre-historic tribal anarchy. But this is just because there are fewer tribes to fight with each other, the fundemental "tribal instinct" is still the driving force
I agree in spirit with most of your post. The above sentence being the exception. The older tribal/feaudal systems tended to ritualize their combat reducing it's impact on those involved because of practical reasons. Since it took between 4-10 peasants/surfs/farmers to support 1 full tiem soldier they often wanted to reduce any collateral damage because it reduce the value of waging war if the spoils (lands/workers) were destroyed in the proccess. Most wars of antiquity have been fought by full time soldiers. Many part of the gentry or nobility. In fact Feaudalism is build on the hereditary monopoly of arms.
This ritualized combat involved fewer people and often had guidelines such as buishido/chivary ect.. to reduce the impact of war. It's not to say it wasn't brutal, only that it impacted a smaller percentage of the populace and often the wars themselves would become formal events that had strict guidlines on what was appropriate. Although notable exceptiosn being the Mongul conquests which obliterated 60% of the chinese populace, or the romance of the three kingdoms which also obliterated about 2/3 of the chinese population.
Modern warfare is far more destructive due to the reduction in the number of workers needed to support a war effort and the all encampassing nature of warfare. World war I and II were by far the most destructive human engineered events since the romane of the three kindoms in china. It involved nearly all "citizens" and our methods kill quicker with the opportunity for a lot more collateral damage. Our "Formal tribes" have greatly increased the percentage of dead/dismembered in a war since "nationalism" and "real war" are tools of the modern nation state and incite much more brutal warfare.
If people dressed up as hobbits and wizards for Lord of the Rings and as Jedis and Sith for Star Wars, does that mean people will be showing up for the MGS premeire in cardboard boxes and mullets?
I'd be happy just so long as enough girls dressed as sniper wolf.
It's much more exciting to be swarmed by 7 or 8 nameless mooks who die at the end of your sword than to spend 1/2 hour chasing down one guy who keeps hiding behind cover, shooting you from the back, and running away when injured.
Err.. you just described the boss fight with The End in MGS:3. it was however fun.
A solution to start making serious money would be to port the games available in MAME32 to run on the XBox. This would involve offering a nominal fee to every owner of each old ROM, setting up a good team to write the emulator code, and figure out the pricing scheme (hint: make it really low). I still have fun with Elevator Action, Double Dragon, and the like, so I think there's definitely a market; I also wouldn't think twice about investing $20-50 in a collection of the oldies that I liked. I've already purchased SmashTV in the "Coin-Op Classics" section, and I'm waiting for SF2:Hyper to finally get released. More of these games would make me happy, especially if some were graphically updated to be shown in full HD glory.
The fallacy your running on is that
1- everyone is like you and likes old arcade games
2- that everyone is willing to pay for them
3- that online live subscribers will make a significant portion of the 360 audience.
As the xbox has shown few people want to be online. This fact is due to a skill difference factor as well as the fear of griefers and just the lack of time to get good enough to have fun there. There is a market for it but it isn't that significant. The whole dependency on live to lead the xbox to profitability will fail because MS is operating under the same fallcies.
Thanks..... the ps1 and ps2 were not selling at a loss initially?
Sony did not sell them at much of a loss and since they made virtually every part in house the price of the systems decreased quickly and dramatically. I suspect the PS2 were sold at a loss for only the first 6 mo or so while the PSX was problably profitabel very soon after launch.
These are two different skill sets. While any monkey can use a firearm, it will not protect you against a trained assassin that observes your movements and launches a suprise attack.
sniper > above monkey with a rifle > samarai > ninja On a well cut grass field
Sniper > ninja > above monkey with a rifle > Samarai in a heavy brush
Sniping is essentially a ninja with a rifle. Not any monkey can be a sniper. But a good sniper can take out any number of of the three other groups above.
A few weeks of generic military rifle training will teach anyone all they need to know to use a rifle effectively. The US Army does a pretty effective job teaching rifle skills in basic training. I had never handled anything other than a b-b gun as a kid, and by the time rifle training was done in basic, I qualified expert with the M-16.
Could I hit a target every time at 1000 yards? Probably not. You solve that problem by making sure you have more than one round at your disposal. You don't need to hit a target with every shot as long as you have a full clip. Three-round groups don't hurt too much either.
This is known as spray and pray. Fairly effective at about 20 m almost a lottery at 50m and hopelessly outgunned against a marksman of any calibur at 100m. The longest snipe was 2,430m by Master Corporal Arron Perry of the Canadian armed forces on a moving target (a moving target as well). At that range regaurdless of the rifle you use you will be pwned by a trained sniper and snipers aren't easily trained.
The other part is the assertion that it was a mistake for Microsoft NOT to have raised prices. I don't know that to be the case. Regardless of MSRP, the Xbox 360 WAS the "hot" product of the 2005 holiday shopping season. I'd assume Microsoft's leadership is pretty pleased with that, even if some middlemen did take home some profit that theoretically could have been theirs.
If by hot you mean "sold less then all of their competitors" Then yes it was a hot product. But in that case, Zima was also a hot product for 2005 as was the N-gage.
I Taste.. Danger. Kif bring me the mouth wash.
My issue with the article is that he says at the end, "I[n] some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux," but never says what those ways are.
It will require double the ram, and tripple the processor power. As well it will pop up errors in new and exciting ways. It will also run word, solitaire, and excel 50% faster then an xbox on any machine you load it on.
"Liangzai's" point, if I may be so bold, is that there's nothing in your post that every Chinese citizen doesn't already know. In fact, most people in China (particularly among the urban middle class) probably know more about the Tiananmen Square protests of '89 than the average American knows about Kent State in '70.
I agree. I am a ex Chinese national and I see becoming like the states would be several steps backwards for China. A better target would be Canada or some european countries, possible Sweden. The Us is quickly becoming a pseudo corprate oliogracy.
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (2).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (3).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (4).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Flamebait (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (3).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (2).
HP?, posted to Dell's Marketshare Decline Due to Intel?, has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (1).
lol. I'd like it to be -1 informative if you can. I have karma to burn. I guess we have some sensative HP/compaq employees out there. Your workstations (liek Dells) are great hardware but your home systems are a nightmare to use and support.
From my personal experience as a consumer and as a tech HP/compaq computers are garbage. Dell computers are alright is slighty over priced while Sony and Apple are asthetically pleasing but over priced. If HP/compaq is gaining on Dell it must mean the consumers have gotten dumber and nothing more.
I still prefer to put my own together.
The rally started as a government approved anti-corruption rally. But during the rally it changed into a pro democracy rally. The rally was brutally stopped and the party members involved with approving it were punished.
The PS2's success was built on a wide selection of genres with a few killer apps such as FFX, Grand Turismo, Metal gear solid.
The Xbox's success however is built exclusively on FPS and sports titles with almost everythign else being fairly weak. They had 1 killer app that was Halo/Halo2.
Too many people get their science from fiction books. Mars has too little gravity and Venus has too long of a day to create an Earth-like planet out of them.
The long day (and lack of water) might be solved by smashing icy astroids into venus at just the right angle to get it to spin (taking enormous amounts of energy... but possible). Once the spin is sufficient we coudl use bacteria/nanobots to convert the c02 into carbonate formes and the increases rotation might cause a Magnetosphere to form? I'm not even close to knowlegable about this but it seems plausible.
Actually, I seem to recall reading back in freshman Psych (umpty-leven years ago) of a study that showed that people who are deprived of environmental cues to the time of day tend to settle into a 27- to 28-hour pattern of activity. (Can't seem to find any links to such a study at the moment, though, so it's entirely possible I'm misremembering. Or maybe I just need sleep.)
The study was partially discreditted, something about certain exstrenal ques giving them a pattern of 27.
So long as the person you may or may not love is the opposite gender of you, of course.
In my country that doesn't matter. So long as you don't mind payign higher taxes you can get married.
You sick fuck. You obviously have no idea why you should get married. HINT: It's ALL about love. Money should have nothing to do with it on either side. If it does, you have two sad and sorry victims of capitalist propaganda. I married my wife because I love her and she did the same with me. I don't make much money and she doesn't care. We live comfortably enough, have a great sex life and have made it to our late 30s and early 40s with only one kid (in 2004 and planned in advance) in 16 years of sex. But outside of the sex we love to actually BE with each other. I don't run screaming from the house to hang out with my male friends because she's just too much fun to hang out with no matter what we do. And she doesn't run screaming from me because she has a good time with me.
Little note: Marriage has nothign to do with love it started as a property contract between a man and the family of a girl. It's shifted a bit over the last 200 years (yes the chaneg was very recent). Even now it's more about propperty then about love since the state doens't care if you love the one you marry.
I play a lot of warcraft 3 and all my friends play it too but I know the FF series completely outstrips warcraft 3 in sales. So whil your Halo parties might be more common in your circle of friends it means nothign because the FF series tends to sell in numbers as great or greater then any of the two halo games. And there have been 10 single player FF series. That would mean it a far greater success so far then the Halo series has been. And actually, the FF series has been the king makers for the last 3 generations. Which ever platform has had it has come out on top. In the last 4 it has been with the winner.
Bioware is no longer affiliated with Atari. The retarded suits fucked Bioware over and Bioware severed ties. Bioware now self publishes. So if they do work on NW2 this wont' affect them.
Exactly how many muslims do you think there are in the world?
The answer: 1.2 billion. That's more than the number of people in China. If they were all violent radicals as you describe we'd be in the midst of a World War III in proportions that would absolutely dwarf WWI and II combined.
Except 300 million of those 1.2 billion are hated and hate the rest. Of those 900 million left they are divided on political and sectatarian lines. In total the military capability of those 1.2 billion is marginally greater then India. With technology that is 10-20 years behind those of any of the western nations and co-ordination and organization inferior to the American Boy Scouts.
The muslim world HAS to learn to play nicely with the rest of the world or face becoming marginalized
That's not gonna happen as long as a) the rest of the world needs oil, and b) the muslim world is sitting on most of it.
That means in 40 years no one will care (40 years is the estimated middle east oil reserve at current utilization rates).