> But, after RTS taken off, good turn-based game seems to disappear. I really miss these turn
based ones...
I miss the old SSI games. But now that I'm thinking about it...
...y'know what I want in a TBS? I want someone to stop trying to provide me with a wacky skinned interface where I have to guess what things are widgets and what things are just decoration. I want to use the boring old scrollbars that my eye is trained to reach for, and the boring old drop-down menus. I don't wanna read yellow-on-blue, or red-on-dark-grey, just plain ol' black-on-white in my text boxes will do me just fine.
Instead of funky interfaces at whatever resolutions (800x600 - ack, MOO3 sux0rz!) the funky GUI was designed for, I want it to run in the standard 'Doze, OS/X, or WindowManglerOfMyChoice, at whatever resolution I'm running now.
Use the time wasted on cutesy interfaces to build in topographical maps with 20m resolution, and the ability to integrate the game with topo maps from wherever I find 'em.
And a helluva strong AI. And a toggle to turn on/off the "real" military symbols (you know, those funky little ovals with "X"s in 'em, instead of cutesy tanks. (Funny note - last weekend's war coverage used the real symbology on a Spanish/Mexican/Latino local TV station. Didn't see 'em once on a US network, which tells you something pretty depressing about those respective channels' assessment of their target audiences' clue level. Manuel Labor is assumed to be enclued enough to read the maps, but Joe Sixpack ain't:)
But scrap the cutesy interfaces, and gimme a real warfighting sim. Let me zoom out and issue orders at the division/brigade level, let me zoom in and watch at the platoon level. (OK, I'm normally a TBS guy, but I'd be willing to accept some level of RTSness here to prevent me from trying to micromanage everything.)
Between newscasts, I wanna try Gulf War I without Schwartzkopf's left-hook. I wanna try various Gulf War II scenarios based on what I'm seeing (and not seeing) in the news and see what works, what fails, and what falls in between.
Sure, this is a niche market, but maybe that's the future of gaming anyways? Radio's gone niche - one channel per music genre, even if they're all owned by ClearChannel. TV's gone niche - there are sports channels, war channels, fluff channels, pr0n channels. The web's gone niche - nobody goes to a "portal" to "see all the web" - they go to a few sites they trust. So why not gaming?
> I dare anyone to try and do "Rameses", "So Far", or "Spider And Web" as a 3D adventure and have them have the same impact.
Long as we're at it: Infocom's Trinity and A Mind Forever Voyaging.
(The klein bottle sequence in Trinity would be cool to see someone try to render, though... but without spoiling anything, the important part of the klein bottle was that it was too big to render.:)
AMFV beat that, though, because the most important parts of the game had nothing to do with graphics. You couldn't render AMFV and make it work - like the best horror flicks, what mattered was what was left out, and how your mind filled in the blanks.
> I saw one of these in practice at a Sun field office. It's very cool to see people insert their card through and have their desktop appear on their screens without logging in.
Which is neat. However, if this is the marketing spiel...
> In todays corporate environment of people being rather mobile throughout the corporation, I'm surprised it hasn't caught on outside of Sun. Of course it precludes having a personalized workspace and a place to call "yours", but
See yesterday's thread on "How [not to] improve employee morale"
> perhaps combining the idea of "home base" no matter where you are along with a personalized workspace would be something I'd like to have.
Not trolling here - sincerely curious - why?
Humans are tribal animals, creatures of habit. The notion that a chunk of dirt (or carpet, or a computer) is "yours" is a very old ans powerful one.
On paper, it works - "my" computer is identical to everyone else's, so it doesn't matter which one I sit in front of.
In reality, it doesn't. The computer is "mine", because it's got my stickynotes on it (I don't use the things myself, but many users do), and it's on "my" desk. The desk is "mine" because it's got my papers, stuffed penguin, CD coaster, and double-sized coffee mug on it. It's in "my" cubicle because it's got my Dilbert page-a-day thingy on it, and "my" despair.com calendar on the wall. If I had to move into "someone else's" cubicle (the one with the calendar featuring cute little puppies), I'd freak.
Hoteling was a buzzword for a while, but how many companies can do it effectively without destroying morale?
Like any technical solution that requires a "paradigm shift" in a worker's attitude towards himself and his place in the company (and hoteling is definitely such a thing), unless you can get everyone to guzzle the Kool-Aid simultaneously, you're going to have a morale problem. No matter how good it sounds on paper.
> The primary point of Shock and Awe is psychological. It's the opposite of being stealthy. The US wants Saddam and the Iraqi Army to know that we can destroy anything we want when we want.
And as long as we're at it, embedding reporters with military units appears to have been a brilliant decision.
I go to work, I come home, I flip on any channel, and while the talking heads provide voiceover, I see a guy in a HumVee, looking ahead at a Bradley, and behind at a line of Abrams tanks, and they roll unopposed for hours. No doubt that Iraqi troops are seeing/hearing the same thing.
> The US wants pants-shitting terror to befall those who oppose us.
Both the footage from Baghdad and the hours of live "here we are rolling through the desert" both combine to provide that effect.
A glance at the quality of the surrendering troops confirms it. Damn, I feel sorry for those guys - they're not just underequipped, they're unequipped. What bastard of a commander could send guys in that condition out to fight? (Yeah, I know, Saddam is precisely that kind of bastard, I'm just ranting.)
> Surrender is a vastly preferable option to a close encounter with a MOAB.
I'm no weapons expert, and it's hard to tell due to not being able to know distances/scale from the TV footage, but the amount of fuel in some of those explosions leads me to speculate that any doubters have just had their doubts "resolved". Wow.
The more I think about it, the more I'm beginning to appreciate that "Shock and Awe" do not mean what the media want them to mean.
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."
Sun Tzu, Art of War
And going to the paper that seems to be the source of the Shock and Awe terminology:
Rapid Dominance will strive to achieve a dominance that is so complete and victory is so swift, that an adversary's losses in both manpower and material could be relatively light, and yet the message is so unmistakable that resistance would be seen as futile.
Key words here: adversary's losses in both manpower and material could be relatively light
The paper is a long read, but it's extremely insightful.
The paper describes many ways of inflicting Shock and Awe on an opposing force, and they do not necessarily require the complete and utter (military) devastation of the opposing force.
(Then again, just as I was about to click "Submit", I saw most of the government buildings in Baghdad get the absolute shit blown out of 'em. Consider me shocked and awed either way.:)
> "Scud" is now used (in this country, the UK) to mean any Iraqi missile capable of targetting a near by foreign country but not necessarily reliable enough to hit the city it was aimed at. In a technical sense it is a particular type of Soviet (?) missile sold to the Iraqis a long time ago.
True - but the whole point of Blogging is to get past those kinds of inaccuracies.
Those who know better owe it to others, when posting, to get their facts straight, even when the media doesn't. Or at least to use the media screwups as rules for drinking games, like "take one sip/shot for every mention of a weapons system that doesn't/can't exist."
(One exception - I let the misnomer "F-117 stealth bomber" when they mean "fighter" slide, because hey, it really is a ground attack aircraft. "B-2 stealth fighter" gets the customary sip, of course, and "B-117" is right out. Haven't heard that one yet, but if I do, I say that's worth a full shot.:)
I'm sure I'll be playing again tonight. For the record, the first drink of the game is always a toast to the troops, for whom it most definitely ain't a game. Gallows humor is all well and good, but I strive to keep a sense of perspective.
> In america, when someone quotes the free republic you stop paying attention to them, and slowly back away from them.
Very true:)
Believe me, if I'd had a URL pointing to the Fox news transcript, I'd have used that instead!
What FR is useful for, however, is pretty quick debunking of screwups. If some dork announces a 99% lossless compression or unbreakble crypto snake-oil, there are 250,000 Slashdotters ready to jump on it. If Blix says something inane about being surprised the Iraqis have certain weapon systems or capabilities, there are about 50,000 Freepers ready to do the same.
But having been duly - and rightfully - LARTed on my comment calling 'em "Scuds", I'm chalking up the "Scud" thing to the "fog of war" effect, or rather, "the blog of war". What's the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the words "Hans Blix" and "SRBM" in the same newscast? "Scud", of course. When they could have been any one of several short range Iraqi missile systems.
Sorta like the newscaster who talked about F-18s returning "without their Tomahawk cruise missiles". (F-18s don't carry Tomahawks. They can carry guided bombs or other air-to-ground missiles, however) She'd been hearing about cruise missiles all night, and when she heard that F-18s had returned from a strike mission, she blixed out.
The reigning champ for that is CNN showing the Shuttle breaking up as it re-entered at "18 Times The Speed Of Light". Even the newsie talking about F-18s and Tomahawks is mild in comparison.
> You are ignorant. The missiles fired were not scuds. Once again showing that Americans will eat as truth and piece of propaganda thrown there way.
My bad. I should have said "SRBMs of unknown type [with ranges possibly in excess of those permitted under UN Resolution 6whatever that "ended" Gulf War 1]". I brainfarted (or fell for propaganda:) and wrote "Scuds". But seriously - thanks for calling me on that.
> well - there's no way to know they are Scuds, could be El-Samouds (sic) you can't really tell what a missile is while it's in the air apart from how high and how far it goes (it's not like they have photos.... unless your expecting it) - and both of those sorts of missiles have those sorts of ranges.
Actually, if all you know is how high/far/fast it's going, you can have a pretty damn good idea of what kind of missile it is.
> Of course that time it turned out afterwards that what he was saying was bullshit and they'd missed every single one (or got only 10% depending on which report you beleive)
The Pentagon took serious flak for the lack of coverage last time around. I think that (internally) they've also realized this was a mistake -- their ability to keep a decent historical record was compromised. There's much of Gulf War I that will never be known to the public or military historians - the history was never recorded, and is now lost.
A good military learns from its mistakes.
Based on what I've seen so far, namely the current news coverage consisting of multiple independent reporters embedded with troops, I think we've done that -- there's going to be an infinitely better historical record this time, and as a happy bonus, there'll be a lot less room for the kinds of bullshit to which you've objected.
> said during the interview with Dan Rather that he will NOT set the wells on fire and I believed him. My trust in Saddam is now shattered. Going to see my shrink.
And Hans Blix said this morning that he was surprised that Saddam had any Scuds either!
B-b-b-b-but the inspections were working!
(Sure, they were working if Blix defined "working" as "every day my inspectors continue to find nothing, I can keep my cushy UN job", Anyone who's watched an Andersen conslutant on an IT project should have seen through Blix's snowscreen from Day One.)
> Second best? What was the best? Kennedy against Kruschev?
In my tipsy state last night, I was thinking "second best" as "leaves room for #4" as best psyop.
As for history, I'm not sure if Cuba was a PsyOp, or just honest-to-gawd good brinksmanship (on both sides). Then again, the best PsyOps are the ones that nobody figures out:)
But if I had to pick just one, I'd say D-Day - the campaign to convince the Germans that Calais was the real target, and that the landings at Normandy didn't matter. The Germans concentrated their forces 100 miles away from Normandy, and spent most of D-Day waiting for Army Group Patton" - an army group that didn't even exist.
Germany would have lost the war anyway, and D-Day was bloody enough as it was - but that operation probably saved thousands of lives and in so doing, hastened the end of WW2 in Europe by months.
> Most of his troops will surrender en masse anyways. It's only the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard forces that have any semblance of real military training and equipment.
I concur.
The $64,000,000 question is, if there's ambiguity as to whether their leader is alive or not, what kind of will to fight will they still have by the time our troops get there?
Not enough info here for me to even guess. (And I don't have a need to know.)
> Somehow the constructive side of the Pentagon's use of these satellites eludes me:-)
*lol*, yes, it was an amusing choice of words:)
But seriously, having a large technological edge over your opponent allows you to reduce civilian casualties in war.
Suppose satellite (GPS) guided bombs and satellite (spy) pictures relayed by satellite (communications) allowed us to whack Saddam last night and to prove we'd done so to the world - including Iraqi soldiers. The war could be over by this time tomorrow.
(In fact, based on what I saw on the news and the blogs overnight, even if half of it eventually turns out to be disinfo/psyops, I'm still just about ready to wager that this war will be over by this time next week.)
> I'm drunk already. >
> Saddam just used the word "zionist" three times in his "You missed me NYAAAA" speech on CNN.
Yeah, who the fuck *was* that guy? The guy with the grey moustache, no chin dimple, and the glasses who didn't even look like Hussein, and whose speech didn't even mention - in any detail that would confirm he survived it - the attack?
(And why did he use a double for a taped speech?!?!)
1) We played a hunch with good intel, and cold smoked his ass. The war's already over. (CNN goes into mourning at the loss of ratings points.)
2) Either "Scenario #1 and we missed" (bummer!), or we had no idea where he was, but we lobbed a few missiles into the middle of nowhere in the hopes that Saddam's troops will surrender en masse because they think we nailed him. (We take advantage of the situation and rack up the second best psyop ever.)
3) Either scenario #2 or #1, but Saddam survives, but in his paranoia, he uses a lousy double and a pre-taped speech, and quite by accident, convinces his own troops that we nailed him. We win without firing a shot. (History's Fastest Foot-Bulleting.)
4) We play Scenario #1 or #2, and we don't really care because our analysis of the guy gives good odds that he'll be dumb enough counter it with the foot-bulleting of #3. We win without firing a shot, and somebody deserves a Medal of Honor for Best. Psyop. Ever.
I, of course, am also drunk. I give 10% odds for #1, 75% odds for the "we missed" version of #2, 10% odds for the "it was all PsyOps" version of #2 4% for #3, and 1% for #4. Y'all heard it here first. Off for more beer and pizza.
> Is that maggot-eaten sack of whale drek still getting a gazillion pieces of snailmail every day?
Ahem.
I represent the Cetacean Fecal Matter Anti-Defamation League. Please retract at once your defamatory comments against whale dreck.
I have also been informed by the Head Maggot of the Fly Larva Anti-Defamation League that although his members will gleefully chow down on any form of cetacean poop ranging from Dolphin Doo to Blue Whale Bombs, they'd definitely draw the line at Ralsky's carcass. They've got standards, y'know.
> In related news, after more objective study, it has been postulated, pointy objects that are hot and thrusted hurt more than unthrusted cold pointy objects.
Looking at my spam this morning, it appears there's a happy middle ground. Pointy objects that are merely warm and thrusted don't hurt at all, and are in fact, lots of fun.
> Its one big fucking joke, if the end result wasn't so damn serious - A global Deflationary Depression.
Then stay out of debt - don't buy a $500K house because it'll be worth $50K two years from now. Instead, put up with a crappy apartment and save $10K a year, so that you can buy a house for pocket change two years down the road from somebody who did go into debt to buy it today.
(If you think inflation is the problem - do the opposite - leverage yourself to buy a $500K house now, and mortgage it to the hilt, because in two years, your house will be worth $5M, you'll be making $1M/year, and groceries will cost $20/pound, against which your $500K mortgage is peanuts.)
Disclaimer: I don't believe either of these scenarios is likely. I believe we'll continue to have low to moderate inflation, because the Fed will print any amount of money it has to in order to stave off the deflationary spiral the original poster fears. The Fed will also clamp down hard to prevent hyperinflation, as the "go ahead, rack up the $500K mortgage because it'll be peanuts to pay back" scenario doesn't work too well for the banks either:)
The moral of the story is that for any economic forecast, there are ways to hedge yourself.
Just as most of us regularly monitor and anticipate developments in technology in order to keep our career plans current, we owe it to ourselves to do the same as regards economic and sociopolitical developments.
(And if you really think Sun's outsourcing to India is gonna boost profit margins to the stratosphere, why not share in the gains by becoming an owner of Sun, through the purchase of SUNW stock?)
> The FTC already filed a complaint [ftc.gov] and had a preliminary injunction [ftc.gov] against Childs back in April. See the press release [ftc.gov] for more information. The article mentions he lives by Riverside drive in an apartment, could be with Linda Lightfoot [superpages.com], the woman mentioned in the complaints with him?
Rules of spam:
0) Spam is theft.
1) Spammers lie.
2) If you think a spammer's telling the truth, see Rule #1.
3) Spammers are stupid.
Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid.
So when I read this:
"To Internet users who complain that their e-mail inboxes are crammed with ads for products and services they would never purchase, Childs' response is, "Quit your whining. I'm asking you, how stressful is it to push the delete button? We have become a nation of crybabies."
I immediately thought "This asshat wants me to Just Hit Delete. Every time I've heard that excuse, the guy saying it has been either lying (Rule #1), or stupid (Rule #3). This guy sounds like both. (Corollary). So I'll lay odds that this guy's a spammer."
I was just about to Google for the proof, when you did all the leg-work by posting the FTC links. Thanks. J00 r0x0r!
> > I'm no sysadmin, but I'm sure it would be possible for block certain ports, report heavy
downloaders etc > >
Major ISPs should do this? Bye bye internet. > >That is, until it takes off in China. Then we'd get the mother of all firewalls between East and West, the West censoring warez and the East censoring politics.
So you're saying "start buying stock in transpacific cable-laying companies today":-)
I can't wait to hear what he's got in store for Who Gives A Fuck 2003. (The complete WGAF library would probably make a pretty good guide to pop culture and military history of the last quarter of the 20th century, now that I think about it.)
Speaking of which - first Google hit on "who gives a fuck john valby" reveals something to tide you over while you look for those tapes.
> Great, now I have to dig my tapes of "Sit on a Happy Face" and "Dr. Dirty goes to Pixieland" from under the seat.
> Well, I know you were being facetious, but honestly, you remember the last war - we saw tracer fire going up, and occasional bright thingies going down, followed - sometimes - by bright flashes of light. Did we see any actual detonations? Nah, not close enough. Any killing or maiming? Again, not close enough. Plus, the missiles didn't always explode - there were duds.
I'm ripping off David Brin's "Transparent Society" and Electric Sheep's fascinating Spiders
series here, but I think it would be particularly cool - for the next big war, maybe 10 years from now when the entire planet is covered in some sort of wireless communications grid - to have ultra-small form factor machines with webcams ("gridcams?") and wireless access points, dropped en masse over the battlefield.
Feeds from these autonomous cameras could be relayed into the grid, and individuals - civilian and military - could observe the war through any one of these gadgets.
I'm not entirely keen on the security implications of the idea, but it'd sure make life hard for anybody - on either side - who wanted to get a little war-crime action in on the side.
Given a theater with a wireless mesh/grid for communications, bombing out the communications infrastructure ceases to be an option -- collateral damage would be prohibitive. In such an environment, it may be better strategy to accept the principle of always-on communications as part of the environment, and to take advantage of it rather than try to shut it down.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey! Whaddya mean by "show" and "token"? It wasn't *that* big!
I miss the old SSI games. But now that I'm thinking about it...
Instead of funky interfaces at whatever resolutions (800x600 - ack, MOO3 sux0rz!) the funky GUI was designed for, I want it to run in the standard 'Doze, OS/X, or WindowManglerOfMyChoice, at whatever resolution I'm running now.
Use the time wasted on cutesy interfaces to build in topographical maps with 20m resolution, and the ability to integrate the game with topo maps from wherever I find 'em.
And a helluva strong AI. And a toggle to turn on/off the "real" military symbols (you know, those funky little ovals with "X"s in 'em, instead of cutesy tanks. (Funny note - last weekend's war coverage used the real symbology on a Spanish/Mexican/Latino local TV station. Didn't see 'em once on a US network, which tells you something pretty depressing about those respective channels' assessment of their target audiences' clue level. Manuel Labor is assumed to be enclued enough to read the maps, but Joe Sixpack ain't :)
But scrap the cutesy interfaces, and gimme a real warfighting sim. Let me zoom out and issue orders at the division/brigade level, let me zoom in and watch at the platoon level. (OK, I'm normally a TBS guy, but I'd be willing to accept some level of RTSness here to prevent me from trying to micromanage everything.)
Between newscasts, I wanna try Gulf War I without Schwartzkopf's left-hook. I wanna try various Gulf War II scenarios based on what I'm seeing (and not seeing) in the news and see what works, what fails, and what falls in between.
Sure, this is a niche market, but maybe that's the future of gaming anyways? Radio's gone niche - one channel per music genre, even if they're all owned by ClearChannel. TV's gone niche - there are sports channels, war channels, fluff channels, pr0n channels. The web's gone niche - nobody goes to a "portal" to "see all the web" - they go to a few sites they trust. So why not gaming?
Long as we're at it: Infocom's Trinity and A Mind Forever Voyaging.
(The klein bottle sequence in Trinity would be cool to see someone try to render, though... but without spoiling anything, the important part of the klein bottle was that it was too big to render. :)
AMFV beat that, though, because the most important parts of the game had nothing to do with graphics. You couldn't render AMFV and make it work - like the best horror flicks, what mattered was what was left out, and how your mind filled in the blanks.
Which is neat. However, if this is the marketing spiel...
> In todays corporate environment of people being rather mobile throughout the corporation, I'm surprised it hasn't caught on outside of Sun. Of course it precludes having a personalized workspace and a place to call "yours", but
See yesterday's thread on "How [not to] improve employee morale"
> perhaps combining the idea of "home base" no matter where you are along with a personalized workspace would be something I'd like to have.
Not trolling here - sincerely curious - why?
Humans are tribal animals, creatures of habit. The notion that a chunk of dirt (or carpet, or a computer) is "yours" is a very old ans powerful one.
On paper, it works - "my" computer is identical to everyone else's, so it doesn't matter which one I sit in front of.
In reality, it doesn't. The computer is "mine", because it's got my stickynotes on it (I don't use the things myself, but many users do), and it's on "my" desk. The desk is "mine" because it's got my papers, stuffed penguin, CD coaster, and double-sized coffee mug on it. It's in "my" cubicle because it's got my Dilbert page-a-day thingy on it, and "my" despair.com calendar on the wall. If I had to move into "someone else's" cubicle (the one with the calendar featuring cute little puppies), I'd freak.
Hoteling was a buzzword for a while, but how many companies can do it effectively without destroying morale?
Like any technical solution that requires a "paradigm shift" in a worker's attitude towards himself and his place in the company (and hoteling is definitely such a thing), unless you can get everyone to guzzle the Kool-Aid simultaneously, you're going to have a morale problem. No matter how good it sounds on paper.
Saddam: (dejectedly) *sigh*
IraqiGeek: Dude, you look really depressed. Are you okay?
Saddam: I guess so. Recent events. You know. I'm very worried.
IraqiGeek: Yeah, I hear ya...
Saddam: I mean, what if this really is the last night I have to grind my citizens into the dust?
IraqiGeek: (*incredulous*) *huh*? (thinking to himself) At least you'll be gone in time for me catch the last episode of "Farscape"...
>
> Um, he's an asshole?
Hey! My brown starfish is insulted by that :)
And as long as we're at it, embedding reporters with military units appears to have been a brilliant decision.
I go to work, I come home, I flip on any channel, and while the talking heads provide voiceover, I see a guy in a HumVee, looking ahead at a Bradley, and behind at a line of Abrams tanks, and they roll unopposed for hours. No doubt that Iraqi troops are seeing/hearing the same thing.
> The US wants pants-shitting terror to befall those who oppose us.
Both the footage from Baghdad and the hours of live "here we are rolling through the desert" both combine to provide that effect.
A glance at the quality of the surrendering troops confirms it. Damn, I feel sorry for those guys - they're not just underequipped, they're unequipped. What bastard of a commander could send guys in that condition out to fight? (Yeah, I know, Saddam is precisely that kind of bastard, I'm just ranting.)
> Surrender is a vastly preferable option to a close encounter with a MOAB.
I'm no weapons expert, and it's hard to tell due to not being able to know distances/scale from the TV footage, but the amount of fuel in some of those explosions leads me to speculate that any doubters have just had their doubts "resolved". Wow.
And going to the paper that seems to be the source of the Shock and Awe terminology:
Key words here: adversary's losses in both manpower and material could be relatively light
The paper is a long read, but it's extremely insightful.
The paper describes many ways of inflicting Shock and Awe on an opposing force, and they do not necessarily require the complete and utter (military) devastation of the opposing force.
(Then again, just as I was about to click "Submit", I saw most of the government buildings in Baghdad get the absolute shit blown out of 'em. Consider me shocked and awed either way. :)
"a protest sign attacks Bush directly"
"God picks a side"
Are these guys nuts, or are they just alcoholics with livers made of titanium? :-)
True - but the whole point of Blogging is to get past those kinds of inaccuracies.
Those who know better owe it to others, when posting, to get their facts straight, even when the media doesn't. Or at least to use the media screwups as rules for drinking games, like "take one sip/shot for every mention of a weapons system that doesn't/can't exist."
(One exception - I let the misnomer "F-117 stealth bomber" when they mean "fighter" slide, because hey, it really is a ground attack aircraft. "B-2 stealth fighter" gets the customary sip, of course, and "B-117" is right out. Haven't heard that one yet, but if I do, I say that's worth a full shot. :)
I'm sure I'll be playing again tonight. For the record, the first drink of the game is always a toast to the troops, for whom it most definitely ain't a game. Gallows humor is all well and good, but I strive to keep a sense of perspective.
Very true :)
Believe me, if I'd had a URL pointing to the Fox news transcript, I'd have used that instead!
What FR is useful for, however, is pretty quick debunking of screwups. If some dork announces a 99% lossless compression or unbreakble crypto snake-oil, there are 250,000 Slashdotters ready to jump on it. If Blix says something inane about being surprised the Iraqis have certain weapon systems or capabilities, there are about 50,000 Freepers ready to do the same.
But having been duly - and rightfully - LARTed on my comment calling 'em "Scuds", I'm chalking up the "Scud" thing to the "fog of war" effect, or rather, "the blog of war". What's the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the words "Hans Blix" and "SRBM" in the same newscast? "Scud", of course. When they could have been any one of several short range Iraqi missile systems.
Sorta like the newscaster who talked about F-18s returning "without their Tomahawk cruise missiles". (F-18s don't carry Tomahawks. They can carry guided bombs or other air-to-ground missiles, however) She'd been hearing about cruise missiles all night, and when she heard that F-18s had returned from a strike mission, she blixed out.
The reigning champ for that is CNN showing the Shuttle breaking up as it re-entered at "18 Times The Speed Of Light". Even the newsie talking about F-18s and Tomahawks is mild in comparison.
My bad. I should have said "SRBMs of unknown type [with ranges possibly in excess of those permitted under UN Resolution 6whatever that "ended" Gulf War 1]". I brainfarted (or fell for propaganda :) and wrote "Scuds". But seriously - thanks for calling me on that.
Actually, if all you know is how high/far/fast it's going, you can have a pretty damn good idea of what kind of missile it is.
> Of course that time it turned out afterwards that what he was saying was bullshit and they'd missed every single one (or got only 10% depending on which report you beleive)
The Pentagon took serious flak for the lack of coverage last time around. I think that (internally) they've also realized this was a mistake -- their ability to keep a decent historical record was compromised. There's much of Gulf War I that will never be known to the public or military historians - the history was never recorded, and is now lost.
A good military learns from its mistakes. Based on what I've seen so far, namely the current news coverage consisting of multiple independent reporters embedded with troops, I think we've done that -- there's going to be an infinitely better historical record this time, and as a happy bonus, there'll be a lot less room for the kinds of bullshit to which you've objected.
And Hans Blix said this morning that he was surprised that Saddam had any Scuds either!
B-b-b-b-but the inspections were working!
(Sure, they were working if Blix defined "working" as "every day my inspectors continue to find nothing, I can keep my cushy UN job", Anyone who's watched an Andersen conslutant on an IT project should have seen through Blix's snowscreen from Day One.)
Ah well, ignorance is Blix.
In other news, pro wrestling is fixed.
In my tipsy state last night, I was thinking "second best" as "leaves room for #4" as best psyop.
As for history, I'm not sure if Cuba was a PsyOp, or just honest-to-gawd good brinksmanship (on both sides). Then again, the best PsyOps are the ones that nobody figures out :)
But if I had to pick just one, I'd say D-Day - the campaign to convince the Germans that Calais was the real target, and that the landings at Normandy didn't matter. The Germans concentrated their forces 100 miles away from Normandy, and spent most of D-Day waiting for Army Group Patton" - an army group that didn't even exist.
Germany would have lost the war anyway, and D-Day was bloody enough as it was - but that operation probably saved thousands of lives and in so doing, hastened the end of WW2 in Europe by months.
I concur.
The $64,000,000 question is, if there's ambiguity as to whether their leader is alive or not, what kind of will to fight will they still have by the time our troops get there?
Not enough info here for me to even guess. (And I don't have a need to know.)
*lol*, yes, it was an amusing choice of words :)
But seriously, having a large technological edge over your opponent allows you to reduce civilian casualties in war.
Suppose satellite (GPS) guided bombs and satellite (spy) pictures relayed by satellite (communications) allowed us to whack Saddam last night and to prove we'd done so to the world - including Iraqi soldiers. The war could be over by this time tomorrow.
(In fact, based on what I saw on the news and the blogs overnight, even if half of it eventually turns out to be disinfo/psyops, I'm still just about ready to wager that this war will be over by this time next week.)
>
> Saddam just used the word "zionist" three times in his "You missed me NYAAAA" speech on CNN.
Yeah, who the fuck *was* that guy? The guy with the grey moustache, no chin dimple, and the glasses who didn't even look like Hussein, and whose speech didn't even mention - in any detail that would confirm he survived it - the attack?
(And why did he use a double for a taped speech?!?!)
1) We played a hunch with good intel, and cold smoked his ass. The war's already over. (CNN goes into mourning at the loss of ratings points.)
2) Either "Scenario #1 and we missed" (bummer!), or we had no idea where he was, but we lobbed a few missiles into the middle of nowhere in the hopes that Saddam's troops will surrender en masse because they think we nailed him. (We take advantage of the situation and rack up the second best psyop ever.)
3) Either scenario #2 or #1, but Saddam survives, but in his paranoia, he uses a lousy double and a pre-taped speech, and quite by accident, convinces his own troops that we nailed him. We win without firing a shot. (History's Fastest Foot-Bulleting.)
4) We play Scenario #1 or #2, and we don't really care because our analysis of the guy gives good odds that he'll be dumb enough counter it with the foot-bulleting of #3. We win without firing a shot, and somebody deserves a Medal of Honor for Best. Psyop. Ever.
I, of course, am also drunk. I give 10% odds for #1, 75% odds for the "we missed" version of #2, 10% odds for the "it was all PsyOps" version of #2 4% for #3, and 1% for #4. Y'all heard it here first. Off for more beer and pizza.
Ahem.
I represent the Cetacean Fecal Matter Anti-Defamation League. Please retract at once your defamatory comments against whale dreck.
I have also been informed by the Head Maggot of the Fly Larva Anti-Defamation League that although his members will gleefully chow down on any form of cetacean poop ranging from Dolphin Doo to Blue Whale Bombs, they'd definitely draw the line at Ralsky's carcass. They've got standards, y'know.
Looking at my spam this morning, it appears there's a happy middle ground. Pointy objects that are merely warm and thrusted don't hurt at all, and are in fact, lots of fun.
Then stay out of debt - don't buy a $500K house because it'll be worth $50K two years from now. Instead, put up with a crappy apartment and save $10K a year, so that you can buy a house for pocket change two years down the road from somebody who did go into debt to buy it today.
(If you think inflation is the problem - do the opposite - leverage yourself to buy a $500K house now, and mortgage it to the hilt, because in two years, your house will be worth $5M, you'll be making $1M/year, and groceries will cost $20/pound, against which your $500K mortgage is peanuts.)
Disclaimer: I don't believe either of these scenarios is likely. I believe we'll continue to have low to moderate inflation, because the Fed will print any amount of money it has to in order to stave off the deflationary spiral the original poster fears. The Fed will also clamp down hard to prevent hyperinflation, as the "go ahead, rack up the $500K mortgage because it'll be peanuts to pay back" scenario doesn't work too well for the banks either :)
The moral of the story is that for any economic forecast, there are ways to hedge yourself.
Just as most of us regularly monitor and anticipate developments in technology in order to keep our career plans current, we owe it to ourselves to do the same as regards economic and sociopolitical developments.
(And if you really think Sun's outsourcing to India is gonna boost profit margins to the stratosphere, why not share in the gains by becoming an owner of Sun, through the purchase of SUNW stock?)
Disclosure: I have no position in SUNW.
Rules of spam:
0) Spam is theft.
1) Spammers lie.
2) If you think a spammer's telling the truth, see Rule #1.
3) Spammers are stupid.
Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid.
So when I read this:
I immediately thought "This asshat wants me to Just Hit Delete. Every time I've heard that excuse, the guy saying it has been either lying (Rule #1), or stupid (Rule #3). This guy sounds like both. (Corollary). So I'll lay odds that this guy's a spammer."
I was just about to Google for the proof, when you did all the leg-work by posting the FTC links. Thanks. J00 r0x0r!
>
> Major ISPs should do this? Bye bye internet.
>
>That is, until it takes off in China. Then we'd get the mother of all firewalls between East and West, the West censoring warez and the East censoring politics.
So you're saying "start buying stock in transpacific cable-laying companies today" :-)
FUCK YES!
I can't wait to hear what he's got in store for Who Gives A Fuck 2003. (The complete WGAF library would probably make a pretty good guide to pop culture and military history of the last quarter of the 20th century, now that I think about it.)
Speaking of which - first Google hit on "who gives a fuck john valby" reveals something to tide you over while you look for those tapes.
> Great, now I have to dig my tapes of "Sit on a Happy Face" and "Dr. Dirty goes to Pixieland" from under the seat.
KNOCK KNOCK!
(Who's there?)
EMERSON!...
I'm ripping off David Brin's "Transparent Society" and Electric Sheep's fascinating Spiders series here, but I think it would be particularly cool - for the next big war, maybe 10 years from now when the entire planet is covered in some sort of wireless communications grid - to have ultra-small form factor machines with webcams ("gridcams?") and wireless access points, dropped en masse over the battlefield.
Feeds from these autonomous cameras could be relayed into the grid, and individuals - civilian and military - could observe the war through any one of these gadgets.
I'm not entirely keen on the security implications of the idea, but it'd sure make life hard for anybody - on either side - who wanted to get a little war-crime action in on the side.
Given a theater with a wireless mesh/grid for communications, bombing out the communications infrastructure ceases to be an option -- collateral damage would be prohibitive. In such an environment, it may be better strategy to accept the principle of always-on communications as part of the environment, and to take advantage of it rather than try to shut it down.