Paintball training for the military is kind of like teaching BASIC to people who need to learn C/C++... Developing a reflex of aiming higher at even close range target because you have to account for the arc of the paintball will probably get you killed in a real firefight. Maybe close-quarters-combat training could use them but I think they train with real guns with blank adapters and lasers on the barrels (and presumably laser detectors on the vest and helmet).
To go even further would be to have the DVD's not only have cut scenes that could be reintegrated or existing scenes merely selectively shortened, but uncut versions of scenes already there (turn that quick cut into a lingering shot)- even alternate takes, and multitrack audio that could also be reassembled- so the amateur editor could completely remake the film.
They would be open source movies.
Of course, the film would have to come with a dozen DVD's instead of one or two.
This is something that has been repeated many times here on/., and I've heard it from others who bothered to read any of those classics, like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Brave New World didn't need a state of perpetual war because the populace was kept blissfully sedated, and nobody was born smarter than the job they'd have to do- if they were smart enough to know what was going on they'd be in a position to benefit from the situation anyway.
I think the administration is painfully aware that 90% approval ratings have only one direction to go- way down- as soon as the war's over. It happened to Bush Sr. and Churchill too, so this war has to be extended as long as possible to maintain a militarized economy, repress domestically, etc., and get that all important re-election.
Probably that speech Bush gave a couple weeks ago is the groundwork for an 'Eisenhower Doctrine' with 'terrorism' in the place of communism. I think the large scale military part of this whole thing will fall apart before the end of the Afghanistan exercise, but the CIA and their cohorts are going to return to the tactics that got us into this mess in the first place- maybe more 'blowback' down the road will encourage further military confrontations.
I guess I'm kind of rambling here (on Slashdot, god forbid)- but it's somewhat comforting that a real perpetual war would neither be sustainable economically or tolerable domestically- but some kind of glimmering conflict somewhere all the time is probably par for the 'new kind of war'/'new world order' or what-have-you.
As soon as someone ends their first tapped call the feds will have to start tapping every other phone in an ever expanding radius of how far the person might have gone since their last call.
Perhaps we should just scrap this antiquated phone-and-tap system and have everyone log into some central authority before contacting any other person.
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Stalking could be defeated pretty trivially if the system also logged who was accessing which cameras. If an individual was frequently monitoring cameras pointed at another person, the stalkee could be alerted. They could check for a possible criminal history, maybe alert the police, blacklist them, keep them flagged in case of future abuses.
Or they(or software agents in their care) could reciprocate in kind, in turn alerting the person who started the whole thing. It could emerge as a sort of cybernetic eye-contact, perhaps to be avoided by polite strangers.
The stalker could guess at the threshold at which their victim is detecting possible watchers, and limit their viewing time according. Or an covert organization could rotate different viewers in and share the data, so that no one viewer would appear imprudent from their target's point of view.
Computing/personnel resources would ultimately limit who would be able to do the one-sided type of surveillance- it'd be governments, corporations, or any manner of NGO's, but beyond the means of average individuals.
If music companies had some real interest in online distribution maybe they could try and release a more feature laden product to compete with somebody's plain vanilla cd rip- a music format could be extended so to include the lyrics within the song file(or has this been done already?), and to really go that extra mile the text could be synced to the music, for karaoke or follow-the-bouncing-ball.
Imagine after passing such legislation domestically, the the US government might force similar laws upon other countries (otherwise they'd be 'harboring or aiding terrorists', and US'd threaten war and sanctions), or even went as far as to have all keys relinquished to some international anti-terrorism force controlled largely by the US?
Somewhat offtopic is the many operating systems courses (like at UW) that have projects that involve modification of Linux kernel code- and no consideration is given to the GPL at all. Perhaps making all the students work freely available would make it difficult to assign the same homework in later quarters, but that's no excuse...
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Paintball training for the military is kind of like teaching BASIC to people who need to learn C/C++... Developing a reflex of aiming higher at even close range target because you have to account for the arc of the paintball will probably get you killed in a real firefight. Maybe close-quarters-combat training could use them but I think they train with real guns with blank adapters and lasers on the barrels (and presumably laser detectors on the vest and helmet).
To go even further would be to have the DVD's not only have cut scenes that could be reintegrated or existing scenes merely selectively shortened, but uncut versions of scenes already there (turn that quick cut into a lingering shot)- even alternate takes, and multitrack audio that could also be reassembled- so the amateur editor could completely remake the film.
They would be open source movies.
Of course, the film would have to come with a dozen DVD's instead of one or two.
The whole alien story was patched together from newsclippings and memos pinned to the corkboard behind Jeff Bridge's desk.
K-PAX was some company's name on the coffee cup!
This is something that has been repeated many times here on /., and I've heard it from others who bothered to read any of those classics, like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Brave New World didn't need a state of perpetual war because the populace was kept blissfully sedated, and nobody was born smarter than the job they'd have to do- if they were smart enough to know what was going on they'd be in a position to benefit from the situation anyway.
I think the administration is painfully aware that 90% approval ratings have only one direction to go- way down- as soon as the war's over. It happened to Bush Sr. and Churchill too, so this war has to be extended as long as possible to maintain a militarized economy, repress domestically, etc., and get that all important re-election.
Probably that speech Bush gave a couple weeks ago is the groundwork for an 'Eisenhower Doctrine' with 'terrorism' in the place of communism. I think the large scale military part of this whole thing will fall apart before the end of the Afghanistan exercise, but the CIA and their cohorts are going to return to the tactics that got us into this mess in the first place- maybe more 'blowback' down the road will encourage further military confrontations.
I guess I'm kind of rambling here (on Slashdot, god forbid)- but it's somewhat comforting that a real perpetual war would neither be sustainable economically or tolerable domestically- but some kind of glimmering conflict somewhere all the time is probably par for the 'new kind of war'/'new world order' or what-have-you.
As soon as someone ends their first tapped call the feds will have to start tapping every other phone in an ever expanding radius of how far the person might have gone since their last call.
Perhaps we should just scrap this antiquated phone-and-tap system and have everyone log into some central authority before contacting any other person.
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
-Hermann Goering, Hitler's #2 man
Stalking could be defeated pretty trivially if the system also logged who was accessing which cameras. If an individual was frequently monitoring cameras pointed at another person, the stalkee could be alerted. They could check for a possible criminal history, maybe alert the police, blacklist them, keep them flagged in case of future abuses.
Or they(or software agents in their care) could reciprocate in kind, in turn alerting the person who started the whole thing. It could emerge as a sort of cybernetic eye-contact, perhaps to be avoided by polite strangers.
The stalker could guess at the threshold at which their victim is detecting possible watchers, and limit their viewing time according. Or an covert organization could rotate different viewers in and share the data, so that no one viewer would appear imprudent from their target's point of view.
Computing/personnel resources would ultimately limit who would be able to do the one-sided type of surveillance- it'd be governments, corporations, or any manner of NGO's, but beyond the means of average individuals.
If music companies had some real interest in online distribution maybe they could try and release a more feature laden product to compete with somebody's plain vanilla cd rip- a music format could be extended so to include the lyrics within the song file(or has this been done already?), and to really go that extra mile the text could be synced to the music, for karaoke or follow-the-bouncing-ball.
Imagine after passing such legislation domestically, the the US government might force similar laws upon other countries (otherwise they'd be 'harboring or aiding terrorists', and US'd threaten war and sanctions), or even went as far as to have all keys relinquished to some international anti-terrorism force controlled largely by the US?
Look up some clear channel stations near you, call them, and request one of those songs- and then repeat until satisfied- then report back here.
Until then, it sounds like a nasty rumor.
Somewhat offtopic is the many operating systems courses (like at UW) that have projects that involve modification of Linux kernel code- and no consideration is given to the GPL at all. Perhaps making all the students work freely available would make it difficult to assign the same homework in later quarters, but that's no excuse...