These were non-uniformed combatants who were fighting - they definitely wanted our soldiers dead, and they did not belong to any one side. What the hell would you do with them?
If they're not soldiers, then they're criminals. Assault With A Deadly Weapon. Manslaughter. Attempted Murder. Making an Affray. Riot. Conspiracy to Cause Explosions. Destruction of Property. Hell, throw in some violations of the civil aviation code while you're at it. There are plenty of things they're guilty of, if what they did wasn't a legitimate act of war.
In which case you arrest, charge and try them, and if they are found guilty you sentence them to a punishment of some kind; otherwise, you let them go.
If your life was saved due to someone pulling another person's (not a normal person, someone who takes joy in seeing women and children burning alive) fingernails out with pliers, would you complain?
Trust me, Guantanimo is not where they send Brittish computer hackers.
No, just British businessmen they kidnapped in the Gambia. The conspiracy theory on that one keeps getting deeper, btw: looks like al-Rawi was sold out to the Yanks by MI5...
No they aren't. If they were prisoners of war, then the Geneva Convention would apply. If they were prisoners of war, they would have been released once the war ended (are we still at war with Afghanistan? Didn't think so...)
They're 'unlawful combatants', a new classification invented by the Americans which is roughly synonymous with 'unpersons'.
Actually, the first time around they voted for the other guy. But, having had Bush as accidental president for four years, they clearly liked what they saw, and approved of his behaviour, because the second time they did vote for him.
Which is, when you think about it, fucking terrifying.
The problem is that stuff like this DOES NOT help fight terrorism, as the NSA would content.
No, that's not the problem. The problem is that they're spying on their own people as a matter of course, eavesdropping on our communications, reading our mail.
Whether or not it helps fight terrorism is irrelevant. Even if it could prevent another September 11th, it would still be unacceptable.
I hope that those soldiers were not storing weird photos involving prisoners...
If soldiers have been abusing prisoners, I'd prefer them to photograph themselves doing it and then store those photographs on disks which are later stolen and leaked to the press.
Otherwise, how will we ever know what our armed representatives abroad are doing in our names?
Heck, I just installed Baldur's Gate II on my PC to play (never played it before) since there was nothing out there that I wanted to spend $40-60 on.
Well, you may have been gaming less recently, but if you've just installed BGII and haven't played it before... kiss your spare time goodbye, and we'll see you some time next year, OK?
I've never gotten the logic of this position, who is it that you trust enough to be physically present but not enough not to take any pictures?
Keep honest men honest. You trust these people enough for them to work there, but nobody's perfect. Every man has his price; some bribe, or blackmail, or threat, which will make him turn traitor.
Very well; let us suppose you work in the secret weapons facility, with your camera phone, trusted not to photograph anything. Should you decide to become a spy, it would be easy: photograph the secret gizmo, MMS it to the Kremlin using a throwaway PAYG account, ditch the phone, job done. What will your bribe level be?
Now suppose you work there, but camera phones are utterly forbidden on pain of a trip to Cuba. There are airport-style scanners all over the place. There's a phone inspector on the front door. Should you decide to become a spy you run a very real risk of being caught at it. What's your bribe level now?
Security isn't all or nothing. Regulations like this make it that much harder for the opposition to get its information. It increases the amount they have to offer as a bribe, or the severity of the threat they must make - putting them at risk of being caught themselves.
(Windows makes an AIDS patient look healthy in comparison, tactless, but true)
Now, come on. With rigourous daily use of a cocktail of modern antimalware utilities, a Windows machine can be kept fit and healthy for years before finally succumbing. AIDS patients, OTOH...
"Risk", "framework", "synergies", whatever, all have their place.
Hmm. "Risk": certainly. Perfectly good word for something that happens in business on a daily basis. I've no quarrel with "risk".
"Framework": again, no problem, though you might perhaps prefer to use words like "structure" or "system" in some circumstances.
"Synergies": uh-oh. Sailing close to the wind here. That's a word that doesn't say so very much about the policy you're describing, as it says about you. It says 'I'm using fashionable management speak: promote me! I'm part of the club, just like you, boss!'
While as a complete evil bastard I perceive the great potential advantages of whoring the English language for my own purposes, as a geek I loathe the very idea of corrupting communication in this way. Which, perhaps, is why management speak hurts so much. It tears me up inside!
Aaaaarrrrgggghhh! That's the one that does my head in. That's the one that's like fingernails on a blackboard to me. WHAT THE HELL BECAME OF THE PERFECTLY GOOD ENGLISH VERB 'TO DO', FUCKERS?
May Lucifer and Cthulhu devour the souls of all PHBs who use 'action' as a verb, over a candlelit dinner date!
I would do obscene things for something on the level of say Quake, but with a light gun for my firing (and view independant of gun). I'd sit in front of my big screen, jerry-rig whatever control system I had to, and bask in the heavenly glow of light-gun ultraviolence.
The Quake source code was released years ago, and the internet's awash with fan-made hacks of it. Let's see... you'd want a joystick for motion around the map, and a mouse for targetting; a gyro mouse if you can get one, for Revolution-style control. It sounds entirely doable. I wonder if anyone has?
* vanishes off in the direction of Google, 'cos this does indeed sound like fun... *
whats with all this duck hunt hate? that game was AWESOME...
It was damn good, but a bit easy.
I played it to death when I first got my NES (the SMB / Duck Hunt pack) and ended up getting to level 30 or so most times I played.
Then I bought To The Earth.
Holy crap. I have never, ever played a harder game. That damn thing was insane. The speed and accuracy it demanded even to finish the first level were already inhuman. Finishing the game, though...
But I did. I finished the game, and got good enough that I finished it most times.
Then I played Duck Hunt again.
Got bored at some ridiculously high level and never touched the Zapper again for years. Shooting things had been reduced to the level of 'solved problem':-)
Picked up To The Earth again a few months ago, actually. Got slaughtered. My reactions have gone all to hell...
Still something happened at t = 0. If this wasn't caused by something that happened before that moment (since you claim there is no before), how did it happen? What caused it?
There you go again with 'caused'... Why? The principle of causality is just one more law of physics, closely related to relativity and the lightspeed limit. You wouldn't expect gravity as we know it to apply in a hypothetical domain outside the Universe, or Maxwell's equations to hold true. What's so special about cause and effect?
These are the questions that boggle the normal mind and need an answer before accepting a theory as wild as the Big Bang.
The normal mind ought to read up on relativity, then.
A better way to pose the question is 'why does the Universe exist?' - rather than 'what caused the Big Bang?'. Asking in terms of why doesn't assume an extension of the timeline past the singularity; however, it still won't get you any good answers... Even the speculative results of string theory (braneworld, multiverse, bubbles, whatever) aren't too useful here, because you might ask why that should exist. In the end, the general question 'why is there anything at all?' is probably not scientifically answerable. We might discover the laws that run the Universe, but still we likely couldn't say why there should be a Universe for them to run. Unless the equations are somehow so utterly compelling that the universe just had to be - which is hard to envisage.
Excuse me, but doesn't being "hot" imply (potential) movement and therefore the existence of time?
A reasonable point: what I should have said is that the density and temperature of the Universe increase asymptotically towards infinity as the time approaches zero. At the singularity itself several quantities become undefined. In addition, once the density and temperature reach sufficiently high values we enter the domain of quantum gravity, which is currently very poorly understood.
Britain - which has been at war with most of Europe for most of it's history
Not so. Over the course of the last thousand or so years, we've had wars at one time or another with just about every last country in Europe, but for most of our history we've been happily at peace with most of Europe, at war with some of it, and fighting alongside some more of it.
Which of this is not one of the seven dwarves? * Doc * Sleepy * Bashful * Horsey
Um. Dwarves? Dwarves are, y'know, heavily bearded guys with massive axes who go around hiring halfling burglars to help them plunder a dragon's hoard, have inherent resistance to the major deleterious effects of Rings of Power, and do a nice line in erotic mithril underwear.
What you've got hold of there, on the other hand, are dwarfs.
Logic seems to dictate that either you assume you've got no idea what existed at T 0 and stop claiming there was nothing
Who's claiming there was nothing? As I understand it, there never was a time when the Universe didn't exist.
otherwise, you have to separate the ideas "change" and "time", i.e. define timeless change (since going from nothing to something constitutes a change).
Again, what changed? At time t=0, there was the entire Universe, in a very hot and dense state. At times t > 0, there is still the entire Universe, in progressively cooler and sparser states.
I don't see where we've gone from 'nothing' to 'something'. I think you're implicitly assuming a time t 0 where there is 'nothing', and from which there's been a change. But there's no such time, and so there's no prior state 'nothing' to change from... To define the concept of 'change' you really need a framework of time, or at least of some continuous parameter, in which it can happen. And that just isn't there with the beginning of time itself.
Slashdot Mirror
If they're not soldiers, then they're criminals. Assault With A Deadly Weapon. Manslaughter. Attempted Murder. Making an Affray. Riot. Conspiracy to Cause Explosions. Destruction of Property. Hell, throw in some violations of the civil aviation code while you're at it. There are plenty of things they're guilty of, if what they did wasn't a legitimate act of war.
In which case you arrest, charge and try them, and if they are found guilty you sentence them to a punishment of some kind; otherwise, you let them go.
I very much hope that I would.
I am not saying that the ends justify the means
Oh yes you are.
No, just British businessmen they kidnapped in the Gambia. The conspiracy theory on that one keeps getting deeper, btw: looks like al-Rawi was sold out to the Yanks by MI5...
No they aren't. If they were prisoners of war, then the Geneva Convention would apply. If they were prisoners of war, they would have been released once the war ended (are we still at war with Afghanistan? Didn't think so...)
They're 'unlawful combatants', a new classification invented by the Americans which is roughly synonymous with 'unpersons'.
Any particular half you have in mind?
Actually, the first time around they voted for the other guy. But, having had Bush as accidental president for four years, they clearly liked what they saw, and approved of his behaviour, because the second time they did vote for him.
Which is, when you think about it, fucking terrifying.
That wasn't malicious. That extra 'R' was just a longstanding typo that they got around to correcting.
A bit like the way they've left the extra 'L' out of the slogan on the money.
No, that's not the problem. The problem is that they're spying on their own people as a matter of course, eavesdropping on our communications, reading our mail.
Whether or not it helps fight terrorism is irrelevant. Even if it could prevent another September 11th, it would still be unacceptable.
If soldiers have been abusing prisoners, I'd prefer them to photograph themselves doing it and then store those photographs on disks which are later stolen and leaked to the press.
Otherwise, how will we ever know what our armed representatives abroad are doing in our names?
Well, you may have been gaming less recently, but if you've just installed BGII and haven't played it before... kiss your spare time goodbye, and we'll see you some time next year, OK?
How much does a good old-fashioned external serial-port modem cost these days?
Mine was about 20 quid, IIRC. I remember just pointing kppp at /dev/ttyS0 and I was away. None of this hassle.
Keep honest men honest. You trust these people enough for them to work there, but nobody's perfect. Every man has his price; some bribe, or blackmail, or threat, which will make him turn traitor.
Very well; let us suppose you work in the secret weapons facility, with your camera phone, trusted not to photograph anything. Should you decide to become a spy, it would be easy: photograph the secret gizmo, MMS it to the Kremlin using a throwaway PAYG account, ditch the phone, job done. What will your bribe level be?
Now suppose you work there, but camera phones are utterly forbidden on pain of a trip to Cuba. There are airport-style scanners all over the place. There's a phone inspector on the front door. Should you decide to become a spy you run a very real risk of being caught at it. What's your bribe level now?
Security isn't all or nothing. Regulations like this make it that much harder for the opposition to get its information. It increases the amount they have to offer as a bribe, or the severity of the threat they must make - putting them at risk of being caught themselves.
Kind of irrelevant, though. Red Hat 6 is antiquated. Slackware 3 is antediluvian. And the discussion here is of Windows as opposed to MacOS X.
Now, come on. With rigourous daily use of a cocktail of modern antimalware utilities, a Windows machine can be kept fit and healthy for years before finally succumbing. AIDS patients, OTOH...
No, wait, hang on, perfect analogy :-)
Hmm. "Risk": certainly. Perfectly good word for something that happens in business on a daily basis. I've no quarrel with "risk".
"Framework": again, no problem, though you might perhaps prefer to use words like "structure" or "system" in some circumstances.
"Synergies": uh-oh. Sailing close to the wind here. That's a word that doesn't say so very much about the policy you're describing, as it says about you. It says 'I'm using fashionable management speak: promote me! I'm part of the club, just like you, boss!'
While as a complete evil bastard I perceive the great potential advantages of whoring the English language for my own purposes, as a geek I loathe the very idea of corrupting communication in this way. Which, perhaps, is why management speak hurts so much. It tears me up inside!
Aaaaarrrrgggghhh! That's the one that does my head in. That's the one that's like fingernails on a blackboard to me. WHAT THE HELL BECAME OF THE PERFECTLY GOOD ENGLISH VERB 'TO DO', FUCKERS?
May Lucifer and Cthulhu devour the souls of all PHBs who use 'action' as a verb, over a candlelit dinner date!
Yeah. You could probably use a simpler control system, come to think of it...
(Hint: fireball was B. Press A and you jump.)
It is indeed. It's even more fun when you have TWO light guns. Plug both in, start up two-player mode, one gun in each hand...
The Quake source code was released years ago, and the internet's awash with fan-made hacks of it. Let's see... you'd want a joystick for motion around the map, and a mouse for targetting; a gyro mouse if you can get one, for Revolution-style control. It sounds entirely doable. I wonder if anyone has?
* vanishes off in the direction of Google, 'cos this does indeed sound like fun... *
It was damn good, but a bit easy.
I played it to death when I first got my NES (the SMB / Duck Hunt pack) and ended up getting to level 30 or so most times I played.
Then I bought To The Earth.
Holy crap. I have never, ever played a harder game. That damn thing was insane. The speed and accuracy it demanded even to finish the first level were already inhuman. Finishing the game, though...
But I did. I finished the game, and got good enough that I finished it most times.
Then I played Duck Hunt again.
Got bored at some ridiculously high level and never touched the Zapper again for years. Shooting things had been reduced to the level of 'solved problem' :-)
Picked up To The Earth again a few months ago, actually. Got slaughtered. My reactions have gone all to hell...
There you go again with 'caused'... Why? The principle of causality is just one more law of physics, closely related to relativity and the lightspeed limit. You wouldn't expect gravity as we know it to apply in a hypothetical domain outside the Universe, or Maxwell's equations to hold true. What's so special about cause and effect?
These are the questions that boggle the normal mind and need an answer before accepting a theory as wild as the Big Bang.
The normal mind ought to read up on relativity, then.
A better way to pose the question is 'why does the Universe exist?' - rather than 'what caused the Big Bang?'. Asking in terms of why doesn't assume an extension of the timeline past the singularity; however, it still won't get you any good answers... Even the speculative results of string theory (braneworld, multiverse, bubbles, whatever) aren't too useful here, because you might ask why that should exist. In the end, the general question 'why is there anything at all?' is probably not scientifically answerable. We might discover the laws that run the Universe, but still we likely couldn't say why there should be a Universe for them to run. Unless the equations are somehow so utterly compelling that the universe just had to be - which is hard to envisage.
Excuse me, but doesn't being "hot" imply (potential) movement and therefore the existence of time?
A reasonable point: what I should have said is that the density and temperature of the Universe increase asymptotically towards infinity as the time approaches zero. At the singularity itself several quantities become undefined. In addition, once the density and temperature reach sufficiently high values we enter the domain of quantum gravity, which is currently very poorly understood.
Not so. Over the course of the last thousand or so years, we've had wars at one time or another with just about every last country in Europe, but for most of our history we've been happily at peace with most of Europe, at war with some of it, and fighting alongside some more of it.
Oh, come on.
* drinks enormous amount of lager to get in right mood for this *
An SOOOOOOOO Sally c'n waaaait, she knows it'sh too laaaaaaate an she's walkin' on by-y-y... 'er shoul shlidesh awaaaaaaay....
* falls over *
Um. Dwarves? Dwarves are, y'know, heavily bearded guys with massive axes who go around hiring halfling burglars to help them plunder a dragon's hoard, have inherent resistance to the major deleterious effects of Rings of Power, and do a nice line in erotic mithril underwear.
What you've got hold of there, on the other hand, are dwarfs.
Who's claiming there was nothing? As I understand it, there never was a time when the Universe didn't exist. otherwise, you have to separate the ideas "change" and "time", i.e. define timeless change (since going from nothing to something constitutes a change).
Again, what changed? At time t=0, there was the entire Universe, in a very hot and dense state. At times t > 0, there is still the entire Universe, in progressively cooler and sparser states.
I don't see where we've gone from 'nothing' to 'something'. I think you're implicitly assuming a time t 0 where there is 'nothing', and from which there's been a change. But there's no such time, and so there's no prior state 'nothing' to change from... To define the concept of 'change' you really need a framework of time, or at least of some continuous parameter, in which it can happen. And that just isn't there with the beginning of time itself.