Greenpeace is not credible because they are not reasonable. Even some of the founding members have left the organization over the years due to the increasingly extreme nature of their positions. If Greenpeace had its way modern life as we know it would not exist, they even proposed banning all bleach (which is totally crackpot) despite the enormous benefits to mankind from continued use of this and other power disinfectant chemicals. The biggest problem with Greenpeace is Greenpeace itself and until they manage to clean their own house of extreme and uncompromising people they will continue to marginalize and render their own efforts on other more reasonable positions completely ineffective. The other posters are right, the message that other companies will take from this is, "Don't give Greenpeace any credibility by actually speaking to them, no matter what you say or do it will only cost money and be more trouble than it is worth."
Or you could just use NoScript. If you are waiting for the all of the self-proclaimed web designers and developers out there to change their ways then you are likely going to be waiting for a very long time. Firefox + AdBlock + NoScript...accept no substitutes.
You would very quickly fall into disfavor with the locals
What are they going to do about it exactly? We could tell them to pound sand. It is high time that we stopped occupying countries and attempting to convert the natives to our ways of thinking. However, that does not mean that we should not punish those who threaten our interests on the high seas. Who will hear the complaints of Somali locals living off the pirate economy? The world ignored Darfur, they will ignore complaining Somalis too.
True or not, it's brazen disregard for how other people see things that causes really really bad things for America.
Piracy is not acceptable I don't care how they see things. If they continue then we should mine their coasts and warn all foreign vessels with legitimate business to avoid Somali waters and stick to the corridors or convoys established by the navies of the world protecting our vital economic interests.
Not a whole lot in this world is purely black and white.
I don't want to argue with them and I sure as heck don't want to understand them. They can keep their hell-hole of a country (no need for us to go there and occupy) but if they continue to pirate shipping then we should blow them out of the water. We could easily beat these pirates if the Europeans and Americans would stop pussy footing around and just use some good old WWII convoy protection tactics, shoot em in the head, and stopping wringing our collective hands about it. Somalia is a brutal, violent, and nasty place that requires a violent solution. Why pretend otherwise?
In the United States, the effect of a bankruptcy discharge is to eliminate only the debtor's personal liability and not the in rem liability for a secured debt to the extent of the value of collateral (i.e. they can generally seize personal property pledged as collateral for debts subject to a few exceptions such as one's primary residence and retirement accounts which cannot be seized). Certain taxes owed to the Federal, state, or local governments, government guaranteed student loans, and child support obligations cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. However, from what I understand (IANAL) depending upon the filling, Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 (which is much harder to file now because of recent revisions to US bankruptcy law sponsored by credit card companies), any unsecured personal debts, except those described above, are discharged and secured creditors get the collateral that was pledged and that debt is discharged. Court judgments, with the exception of child support payments which are a special case, are by definition unsecured debts and so they probably would be discharged in a Chapter 7 (or possibly even a Chapter 11, subject to partial payment) bankruptcy, but again IANAL and courts sometimes legally define things in ways that are different from the rest of society.
At the local hardware store for 10 Dollars a piece or what?
That might actually have worked out better (and cheaper too). One problem with NASA is that they frequently go to the trouble and expense of designing a special space version of a common tool, even when a specially designed tool is probably not needed, and then spend even more money fixing the defects in their custom designed tool (which the consumer and commercial equivalents worked out decades ago). Perhaps the most well known example is the space pen. Many engineering hours were spent developing a liquid ink pen that would write (and not leak) in zero gravity. What did the Soviets do? They took a pencil instead of a pen.
can they really be blamed for shoddy coding done by third parties?
Yes they can and here is why:
If a program is going to allow addons then the communications between the addons and the main application should be conducted entirely through interfaces in order to preserve abstraction and enforce Design by Contract principles. In this way addons are allowed to plug into the application at precise locations controlled by the main application and to interact with the main application abstractly and in precisely defined and limited ways. Some people might argue that this is too limiting, but it has been my experience in developing software in this style that well designed interface contracts can support a wealth of valuable features while maintaining plug-ability and abstraction throughout the software stack. So I don't buy "It's the addons fault" since the addons, ultimately, can only do things which the main application framework has allowed them to do whether intentionally, through good abstraction, or unintentionally from poor addon framework design.
The issue of RIAA RICO has been discussed at least twice before here and here on Slashdot and Ars wrote an article last year explaining why a RICO suit was unlikely to succeed against the RIAA, scumbags though they may be.
The lawyers for the RIAA and their members probably took one look at the all-star defense witness list and immediately filed delaying motion(s) to reduce the chance that all of them, who are college professors and industry experts with busy schedules after all, would be able to reappear again on the delayed date. Or in other words, they (the RIAA) are simply trying to throw a wrench into scheduling machinery in the hopes that one or more of the all-star expert witnesses for the defense will have a scheduling conflict on the new date and be unable to appear. A cheap shot from the masters of the cheap shot...the RIAA. At what point does an annoying and vexatious accuser simply go away? There was a time, not so long ago after all, when being a persistent and annoying busybody got one into more trouble than it was worth.
Wow, somebody sure has a chip on their shoulder. However, ask yourself this. If banks could make loans and sell them to someone else, be that Fanny and Freddy (i.e. the Federal Government because really they are one and the same and the market treats them as such), or investors who took leave of their good sense (there was no shortage of those either) for the present value of the loan then why wouldn't they do that? As long as they can find someone willing to buy the debt they don't really care how bad the borrower is and why should they? Once they sell it down the river they have most of the eventual profit from originating the loan and none of the risk of actually holding it to maturity. The government encouraged this behavior both by providing access to the federal reserve AND by threatening to withdraw or restrict that access, under the CRA and by virtue of their implied government power to punish the banks who didn't step into line, to any bank that didn't play by the rules of the politicians (i.e. either you loan money to my constituents or I will cut your bank out of the loop). The banks were forced to play the game as best as they could within the boundaries set by the government.
since if someone in government were ever corrupt, they could fine you speciously, jail you without trial or due process, seize your home via eminent domain, or just plain kill.
All of which can and has occurred in countries which place some other principles above those of individual liberty. Once a society says, "the rights of the individual will be respected only so long as they do not conflict with the interests of the state," then the first steps have been taken towards the gulag, arbitrary seizure of property, and even just plain killing all in service of "the greater good". It has happened before and it could happen again as long as some people are willing to use coercive methods, which are utterly opposed to freedom, to achieve their goals.
If they can't refute your arguments, they will try to stop you from arguing. Most anti-socialist arguments on Slashdot get modded down. Socialists aren't smart enough or educated enough to argue their case, so they mod you down in the hopes that no one sees how badly their philosophy fails. Most socialists are only capable of parroting back other people's arguments, so when you present them with an argument they haven't seen before, they don't know what to do. I think socialist indoctrination must cause brain damage, because very few socialists can actually think for themselves.
That is interesting to hear coming from an Alaskan. I was under the impression that people kept voting for Stevens all of these years precisely because he brought home so much bacon which he was really only able to do because he was among the most senior members in the entire United States Senate. In the United States Senate political power is directly proportional to seniority because seniority determines committee appointments and chairmanships. So, you do realize that for the next decade at least (and probably two or more) Alaska will have much more junior senator(s) who will not be able to bring home nearly as much bacon as Alaskans have become accustomed to under Stevens who managed to get back ~$1.68 for every $1 that Alaskans sent to the federal government. In a lower population state like Alaska without very senior senators the situation might become more like it is California right now where we get back around ~$0.54 for every $1 that we send to the federal government because we have relatively junior senators compared to many other states.
The use of a server located in Russia for C&C of the botnet is probably not as desirable as a US based host because of the large numbers of companies and ISPs which either black hole China and Russia entirely or subject traffic coming from and going to those parts of the Internet to much greater firewall scrutiny. I can see why they wanted the US server hosting in the first place while keeping the Russian datacenter as the backup plan.
Even if all of the original scientific goals and plans for the ISS had been achieved, which would have been very ambitious indeed, it would still be an inefficient and wasteful expenditure of limited scientific and research and develop funds compared to alternative scientific uses. I am not personally qualified to decide what precisely would be the best combination of alternative uses of those monies, but neither is any other individual currently living on this planet. However, I am reasonably certain that the scientists of the world could have collectively and independently made much better use of the funds that went into what was essentially, as you pointed out, a space-cowboy style stunt. Until we have somewhere interesting to go and something like warp drive to get us there we really shouldn't be spending much at all on manned space flight.
Petraeus himself is trying to minimize incidental casualties, and part of this effort is putting more decision power in the hands of lower level soldiers in the field who have the power to recognize targets.
He is making changes to the standing orders (aka "the rules of engagement") to allow more flexibility, but that does not change the fact that soldiers, especially individual riflemen, are following orders concerning when to shoot and when to do something else. They are professionals after all, not a bunch of trigger happy yokels (despite what certain bloggers would have us believe).
Differentiating between "bad guys" and "good guys" is not only important morally, it is a vital part of our current anti-insurgence strategy.
Generals like Petraeus make those sorts of decisions. The foot soldiers carry out the orders as instructed. The types of judgments made by an individual rifleman are likely to be concrete within the context of his orders (i.e. I am taking fire from a direction so I will report that up the chain of command and then return fire). The officers do the thinking, not the grunts.
Petraeus received a Ph.D. studying this stuff, and while he isn't a foot soldier, this kind of intellectual work is vital.
Generals are specialized soldiers with more advanced education and training and PhDs are becomming more common among general grade officers in our military (may eventually become a de-facto requirement for promotion, but who can say for sure). I think that Petraeus is doing an excellent job and I have a great degree of confidence in his abilities as a professional soldier and military leader. By almost all accounts (MoveOn.org not withstanding) he is an excellent general and a credit to our nation and the uniform.
but why is it that everything today has to be re-imagined as darker, more filled with violence and sexier?
Films are in many ways reflections of the times in which they were made and many of the films made post 9/11 have displayed an increasing level of cynicism, violence, and sex because that is the direction that the world seems to be going in right now as a result of the clash of civilizations and the intersection of religion and secularism. Dark films for dark times if you will.
Inflation is a tax [lewrockwell.com] on the middle and lower class.
Bingo! That is exactly correct and beginning in the mid 1960s and continuing on through the early to mid 1980s that was a very serious tax indeed which was compounded and made even worse for the middle class by the relative stagnation of wages as compared to that inflation from about 1978 onwards. This is one of the main reasons why the children of the boomers (generation X) and their children (generation Y) are having a harder time achieving the levels of prosperity that the boomers did when they were that age. The boomers, who are strong politically, will attempt to prop up high housing prices by whatever means necessary, including wholesale government intervention, to protect their "golden years" in spite of the increasing difficulties experienced by their children who are burdened with debts or living at a lower standard than their parents did. The housing correction, to bring prices back in line with what wages dictate that people are able to afford, is a necessary step in restoring the prosperity of our nation, but the boomers, as usual, will probably force the government to intervene to protect their retirement self interest. The boomers will probably be remembered as the first generation in American history to leave the country to their children in worse shape than it was bequeathed to them by their parents of the WWII generation.
The smart investor has contingency orders or even chains of orders in place to be executed immediately when triggered by certain events (such as a precipitous and sudden drop in price below a certain threshold). Although this will not completely protect an investment which is falling like a rock from losing value it does provide some measure of protection against bad news without being insider trading. It is also possible to purchase derivatives which insure against a loss in exchange for regular premiums so that the total amount of risk that one wishes to take in a given investment can be very finely controlled. These types of measure foreclose any possibility of insider trading indictment because even if you hear about insider news and your trades are executed soon afterward in response to events you can successfully defend the sales by arguing (correctly) that you had placed orders contingent upon those events long before you became privy to the insider information (so long as you don't change them before the public at large becomes privy to the good or bad news).
Don't tell me you don't understand what a "bad guy" is. I'm not going to sit here and argue about what the target actually is. To the fighter on the ground, the target is a bad guy. Why sit here and worry about terminology?
This is one reason, among many, why the American Military does NOT want a return to the draft. They do not want lefty intellectual types who are going to sit there in the middle of fire fight and agonize over whether or not to pull the trigger or, even worse, argue with their officers. In combat soldiers follow orders or they get themselves and their fellow soldiers killed, plain and simple. If someone can't or won't pull the trigger when ordered then they should do themselves and our soldiers a favor and not enlist in the military.
One should never underestimate the ability of militias or irregular fighters to adapt and acquire advanced weapons or technology. For example, the Tamil Tigers Air Force have in recent years surprised and embarrassed the Sri Lankan government by acquiring and modifying several light aircraft for bombing missions. The regular Sri Lankan Air Force and Army, despite being equipped with relatively modern fighter jets and anti-aircraft artillery, have been unable to stop continuing attacks of jury rigged bombers run by a bush league air force.
Have you ever thrown hand grenades? The typical response of a target, providing that they detect the threat and there is time to act (which there will be if you are waiting for the video feed to be acquired so that you can check for the bad guys before detonating remotely), is to either get out of the way (jump into or behind cover or just run) OR pick up the grenade and throw it as far away as possible (preferably in the direction that it came from, although that is not always possible). It is therefore common practice for users to arm the grenade (pull the pin and flip the safety) prior to a delayed throw so as to allow the enemy as little time as possible to react (ideally the grenade lands close to or on the enemy and then immediately explodes with zero reaction time allowed). The other desirable features of modern hand grenades include cheapness, ruggedness, and reliability. Anything which lessens those or other essential features will likely NOT be looked upon favorably by the military.
I was under the impression that very high power lasers, like the one in TFA, were generally chemical lasers powered by a chemical reaction and not an external source of power. If the laser can be powered by a cartridge of chemical reactants then the HMMWV probably could carry enough cartridges for a reasonable number of shots provided that the laser weapon itself can hold up under the strain (lighter vehicle mounted laser probably means less durable or only good for a very limited number of shots before it needs to be replaced) and doesn't weight too much more than the 40mm grenade launcher or the.50 machine gun.
Slashdot Mirror
Greenpeace is not credible because they are not reasonable. Even some of the founding members have left the organization over the years due to the increasingly extreme nature of their positions. If Greenpeace had its way modern life as we know it would not exist, they even proposed banning all bleach (which is totally crackpot) despite the enormous benefits to mankind from continued use of this and other power disinfectant chemicals. The biggest problem with Greenpeace is Greenpeace itself and until they manage to clean their own house of extreme and uncompromising people they will continue to marginalize and render their own efforts on other more reasonable positions completely ineffective. The other posters are right, the message that other companies will take from this is, "Don't give Greenpeace any credibility by actually speaking to them, no matter what you say or do it will only cost money and be more trouble than it is worth."
Or you could just use NoScript. If you are waiting for the all of the self-proclaimed web designers and developers out there to change their ways then you are likely going to be waiting for a very long time. Firefox + AdBlock + NoScript...accept no substitutes.
You would very quickly fall into disfavor with the locals
What are they going to do about it exactly? We could tell them to pound sand. It is high time that we stopped occupying countries and attempting to convert the natives to our ways of thinking. However, that does not mean that we should not punish those who threaten our interests on the high seas. Who will hear the complaints of Somali locals living off the pirate economy? The world ignored Darfur, they will ignore complaining Somalis too.
True or not, it's brazen disregard for how other people see things that causes really really bad things for America.
Piracy is not acceptable I don't care how they see things. If they continue then we should mine their coasts and warn all foreign vessels with legitimate business to avoid Somali waters and stick to the corridors or convoys established by the navies of the world protecting our vital economic interests.
Not a whole lot in this world is purely black and white.
I don't want to argue with them and I sure as heck don't want to understand them. They can keep their hell-hole of a country (no need for us to go there and occupy) but if they continue to pirate shipping then we should blow them out of the water. We could easily beat these pirates if the Europeans and Americans would stop pussy footing around and just use some good old WWII convoy protection tactics, shoot em in the head, and stopping wringing our collective hands about it. Somalia is a brutal, violent, and nasty place that requires a violent solution. Why pretend otherwise?
In the United States, the effect of a bankruptcy discharge is to eliminate only the debtor's personal liability and not the in rem liability for a secured debt to the extent of the value of collateral (i.e. they can generally seize personal property pledged as collateral for debts subject to a few exceptions such as one's primary residence and retirement accounts which cannot be seized). Certain taxes owed to the Federal, state, or local governments, government guaranteed student loans, and child support obligations cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. However, from what I understand (IANAL) depending upon the filling, Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 (which is much harder to file now because of recent revisions to US bankruptcy law sponsored by credit card companies), any unsecured personal debts, except those described above, are discharged and secured creditors get the collateral that was pledged and that debt is discharged. Court judgments, with the exception of child support payments which are a special case, are by definition unsecured debts and so they probably would be discharged in a Chapter 7 (or possibly even a Chapter 11, subject to partial payment) bankruptcy, but again IANAL and courts sometimes legally define things in ways that are different from the rest of society.
At the local hardware store for 10 Dollars a piece or what?
That might actually have worked out better (and cheaper too). One problem with NASA is that they frequently go to the trouble and expense of designing a special space version of a common tool, even when a specially designed tool is probably not needed, and then spend even more money fixing the defects in their custom designed tool (which the consumer and commercial equivalents worked out decades ago). Perhaps the most well known example is the space pen. Many engineering hours were spent developing a liquid ink pen that would write (and not leak) in zero gravity. What did the Soviets do? They took a pencil instead of a pen.
Sovereignty is tested in battle not in court. The UK could destroy sealand at any time should it become bothersome or refuse to cooperate.
now THAT is a funny analogy. I almost fell out my chair laughing at that one. Please someone with points...mod the AC up.
can they really be blamed for shoddy coding done by third parties?
Yes they can and here is why:
If a program is going to allow addons then the communications between the addons and the main application should be conducted entirely through interfaces in order to preserve abstraction and enforce Design by Contract principles. In this way addons are allowed to plug into the application at precise locations controlled by the main application and to interact with the main application abstractly and in precisely defined and limited ways. Some people might argue that this is too limiting, but it has been my experience in developing software in this style that well designed interface contracts can support a wealth of valuable features while maintaining plug-ability and abstraction throughout the software stack. So I don't buy "It's the addons fault" since the addons, ultimately, can only do things which the main application framework has allowed them to do whether intentionally, through good abstraction, or unintentionally from poor addon framework design.
The issue of RIAA RICO has been discussed at least twice before here and here on Slashdot and Ars wrote an article last year explaining why a RICO suit was unlikely to succeed against the RIAA, scumbags though they may be.
The lawyers for the RIAA and their members probably took one look at the all-star defense witness list and immediately filed delaying motion(s) to reduce the chance that all of them, who are college professors and industry experts with busy schedules after all, would be able to reappear again on the delayed date. Or in other words, they (the RIAA) are simply trying to throw a wrench into scheduling machinery in the hopes that one or more of the all-star expert witnesses for the defense will have a scheduling conflict on the new date and be unable to appear. A cheap shot from the masters of the cheap shot...the RIAA. At what point does an annoying and vexatious accuser simply go away? There was a time, not so long ago after all, when being a persistent and annoying busybody got one into more trouble than it was worth.
Wow, somebody sure has a chip on their shoulder. However, ask yourself this. If banks could make loans and sell them to someone else, be that Fanny and Freddy (i.e. the Federal Government because really they are one and the same and the market treats them as such), or investors who took leave of their good sense (there was no shortage of those either) for the present value of the loan then why wouldn't they do that? As long as they can find someone willing to buy the debt they don't really care how bad the borrower is and why should they? Once they sell it down the river they have most of the eventual profit from originating the loan and none of the risk of actually holding it to maturity. The government encouraged this behavior both by providing access to the federal reserve AND by threatening to withdraw or restrict that access, under the CRA and by virtue of their implied government power to punish the banks who didn't step into line, to any bank that didn't play by the rules of the politicians (i.e. either you loan money to my constituents or I will cut your bank out of the loop). The banks were forced to play the game as best as they could within the boundaries set by the government.
since if someone in government were ever corrupt, they could fine you speciously, jail you without trial or due process, seize your home via eminent domain, or just plain kill.
All of which can and has occurred in countries which place some other principles above those of individual liberty. Once a society says, "the rights of the individual will be respected only so long as they do not conflict with the interests of the state," then the first steps have been taken towards the gulag, arbitrary seizure of property, and even just plain killing all in service of "the greater good". It has happened before and it could happen again as long as some people are willing to use coercive methods, which are utterly opposed to freedom, to achieve their goals.
If they can't refute your arguments, they will try to stop you from arguing. Most anti-socialist arguments on Slashdot get modded down. Socialists aren't smart enough or educated enough to argue their case, so they mod you down in the hopes that no one sees how badly their philosophy fails. Most socialists are only capable of parroting back other people's arguments, so when you present them with an argument they haven't seen before, they don't know what to do. I think socialist indoctrination must cause brain damage, because very few socialists can actually think for themselves.
There. fixed it for you. Isn't ad-hominem fun?
Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.
That is interesting to hear coming from an Alaskan. I was under the impression that people kept voting for Stevens all of these years precisely because he brought home so much bacon which he was really only able to do because he was among the most senior members in the entire United States Senate. In the United States Senate political power is directly proportional to seniority because seniority determines committee appointments and chairmanships. So, you do realize that for the next decade at least (and probably two or more) Alaska will have much more junior senator(s) who will not be able to bring home nearly as much bacon as Alaskans have become accustomed to under Stevens who managed to get back ~$1.68 for every $1 that Alaskans sent to the federal government. In a lower population state like Alaska without very senior senators the situation might become more like it is California right now where we get back around ~$0.54 for every $1 that we send to the federal government because we have relatively junior senators compared to many other states.
The use of a server located in Russia for C&C of the botnet is probably not as desirable as a US based host because of the large numbers of companies and ISPs which either black hole China and Russia entirely or subject traffic coming from and going to those parts of the Internet to much greater firewall scrutiny. I can see why they wanted the US server hosting in the first place while keeping the Russian datacenter as the backup plan.
Too bad, it could have been useful.
Even if all of the original scientific goals and plans for the ISS had been achieved, which would have been very ambitious indeed, it would still be an inefficient and wasteful expenditure of limited scientific and research and develop funds compared to alternative scientific uses. I am not personally qualified to decide what precisely would be the best combination of alternative uses of those monies, but neither is any other individual currently living on this planet. However, I am reasonably certain that the scientists of the world could have collectively and independently made much better use of the funds that went into what was essentially, as you pointed out, a space-cowboy style stunt. Until we have somewhere interesting to go and something like warp drive to get us there we really shouldn't be spending much at all on manned space flight.
Petraeus himself is trying to minimize incidental casualties, and part of this effort is putting more decision power in the hands of lower level soldiers in the field who have the power to recognize targets.
He is making changes to the standing orders (aka "the rules of engagement") to allow more flexibility, but that does not change the fact that soldiers, especially individual riflemen, are following orders concerning when to shoot and when to do something else. They are professionals after all, not a bunch of trigger happy yokels (despite what certain bloggers would have us believe).
Differentiating between "bad guys" and "good guys" is not only important morally, it is a vital part of our current anti-insurgence strategy.
Generals like Petraeus make those sorts of decisions. The foot soldiers carry out the orders as instructed. The types of judgments made by an individual rifleman are likely to be concrete within the context of his orders (i.e. I am taking fire from a direction so I will report that up the chain of command and then return fire). The officers do the thinking, not the grunts.
Petraeus received a Ph.D. studying this stuff, and while he isn't a foot soldier, this kind of intellectual work is vital.
Generals are specialized soldiers with more advanced education and training and PhDs are becomming more common among general grade officers in our military (may eventually become a de-facto requirement for promotion, but who can say for sure). I think that Petraeus is doing an excellent job and I have a great degree of confidence in his abilities as a professional soldier and military leader. By almost all accounts (MoveOn.org not withstanding) he is an excellent general and a credit to our nation and the uniform.
but why is it that everything today has to be re-imagined as darker, more filled with violence and sexier?
Films are in many ways reflections of the times in which they were made and many of the films made post 9/11 have displayed an increasing level of cynicism, violence, and sex because that is the direction that the world seems to be going in right now as a result of the clash of civilizations and the intersection of religion and secularism. Dark films for dark times if you will.
If you are a stockholder in a company, can the SEC consider you an insider under the law if an insider calls you and asks you to keep a secret?
So don't take his call or simply say, "La, La, La...I'm not listening!" when he tries to give you insider information.
Inflation is a tax [lewrockwell.com] on the middle and lower class.
Bingo! That is exactly correct and beginning in the mid 1960s and continuing on through the early to mid 1980s that was a very serious tax indeed which was compounded and made even worse for the middle class by the relative stagnation of wages as compared to that inflation from about 1978 onwards. This is one of the main reasons why the children of the boomers (generation X) and their children (generation Y) are having a harder time achieving the levels of prosperity that the boomers did when they were that age. The boomers, who are strong politically, will attempt to prop up high housing prices by whatever means necessary, including wholesale government intervention, to protect their "golden years" in spite of the increasing difficulties experienced by their children who are burdened with debts or living at a lower standard than their parents did. The housing correction, to bring prices back in line with what wages dictate that people are able to afford, is a necessary step in restoring the prosperity of our nation, but the boomers, as usual, will probably force the government to intervene to protect their retirement self interest. The boomers will probably be remembered as the first generation in American history to leave the country to their children in worse shape than it was bequeathed to them by their parents of the WWII generation.
The smart investor has contingency orders or even chains of orders in place to be executed immediately when triggered by certain events (such as a precipitous and sudden drop in price below a certain threshold). Although this will not completely protect an investment which is falling like a rock from losing value it does provide some measure of protection against bad news without being insider trading. It is also possible to purchase derivatives which insure against a loss in exchange for regular premiums so that the total amount of risk that one wishes to take in a given investment can be very finely controlled. These types of measure foreclose any possibility of insider trading indictment because even if you hear about insider news and your trades are executed soon afterward in response to events you can successfully defend the sales by arguing (correctly) that you had placed orders contingent upon those events long before you became privy to the insider information (so long as you don't change them before the public at large becomes privy to the good or bad news).
Don't tell me you don't understand what a "bad guy" is. I'm not going to sit here and argue about what the target actually is. To the fighter on the ground, the target is a bad guy. Why sit here and worry about terminology?
This is one reason, among many, why the American Military does NOT want a return to the draft. They do not want lefty intellectual types who are going to sit there in the middle of fire fight and agonize over whether or not to pull the trigger or, even worse, argue with their officers. In combat soldiers follow orders or they get themselves and their fellow soldiers killed, plain and simple. If someone can't or won't pull the trigger when ordered then they should do themselves and our soldiers a favor and not enlist in the military.
One should never underestimate the ability of militias or irregular fighters to adapt and acquire advanced weapons or technology. For example, the Tamil Tigers Air Force have in recent years surprised and embarrassed the Sri Lankan government by acquiring and modifying several light aircraft for bombing missions. The regular Sri Lankan Air Force and Army, despite being equipped with relatively modern fighter jets and anti-aircraft artillery, have been unable to stop continuing attacks of jury rigged bombers run by a bush league air force.
Have you ever thrown hand grenades? The typical response of a target, providing that they detect the threat and there is time to act (which there will be if you are waiting for the video feed to be acquired so that you can check for the bad guys before detonating remotely), is to either get out of the way (jump into or behind cover or just run) OR pick up the grenade and throw it as far away as possible (preferably in the direction that it came from, although that is not always possible). It is therefore common practice for users to arm the grenade (pull the pin and flip the safety) prior to a delayed throw so as to allow the enemy as little time as possible to react (ideally the grenade lands close to or on the enemy and then immediately explodes with zero reaction time allowed). The other desirable features of modern hand grenades include cheapness, ruggedness, and reliability. Anything which lessens those or other essential features will likely NOT be looked upon favorably by the military.
I was under the impression that very high power lasers, like the one in TFA, were generally chemical lasers powered by a chemical reaction and not an external source of power. If the laser can be powered by a cartridge of chemical reactants then the HMMWV probably could carry enough cartridges for a reasonable number of shots provided that the laser weapon itself can hold up under the strain (lighter vehicle mounted laser probably means less durable or only good for a very limited number of shots before it needs to be replaced) and doesn't weight too much more than the 40mm grenade launcher or the .50 machine gun.