seriously I hope this is more than some extensive Oblivion mods. Loved me some fallout tactics.
Either this is the greatest troll of all time, or you really missed out. Go and play Fallout. Then play Fallout 2. You'll realise why the rest of us pretty much gave Tactics a miss.
Now, I give it ten minutes before some old bugger with a three-digit ID comes along and tells me to play Wasteland.
If USA owes this foolish amount of money, but no-one dares to ask for it back because of the military and economic power - then USA effectively owns the world, and might as well just declare itself debt free, and carry on living off the backs of its slaves.
The USA could default on its debt, sure. Nobody would be able to invade and take what they are owed, so in that sense they'd get away with it. But the following would happen:
1) American-owned assets abroad would immediately be seized. Ask Iceland about that.
2) Nobody would be willing to lend the US government anything again for a long time.
The 2005 attacks which, I should point out, were NOT stopped by the near blanketed amount of cameras in the area. (Although it did accelerate the investigation as to who was involved after the fact)
Actually, it turned out after those events that a lot of the cameras in London don't really work as advertised. Quite coincidentally, the cameras in Stockwell tube station, and on the train where the police restrained Jean Charles de Menezes before shooting him seven times in the head, weren't working. Astonishing. Two completely separate CCTV systems, both of which happened to fail just when the police were doing something monstrous and embarrassing. What terrible bad luck.
If you want to know what your ideal market would look like, look at the 19th century. Unfettered capitalism is human suffering and wage slavery, and that is a historical fact.
That's no different to what we have today. Do you think grinding, desperate poverty and Dickensian labour conditions have gone away? We've just outsourced them. The child labourers are no longer in the mines and mills of Yorkshire - they're in the factories in east Asia. The starving are no longer in Ireland - they're in Africa.
We never abolished poverty; indeed we denounced as Communists anyone who ever tried. Instead we arranged the world economy so that, unlike the Victorian rich, we would never have to look the poor in the face as we went about our rich daily lives.
But they were talking about quantum key exchange. Assuming that they're then using a standard symmetric key to encrypt the link it's still theoretically breakable, just the key exchange that isn't.
Let the key be at least as long as the message itself; then you have a one-time pad, which is unbreakable.
I've always wondered what type of encryption was used in Star Trek episodes when it was announced that there was an encrypted subspace channel for Picard.
Along similar lines, remember in episode 25 of TOS, where just before beaming down to the planet Captain Kirk opened up a safe in his quarters? I always wondered what the combination was.
That doesn't always work. Some visiting leaders of political parties from allied nations occasionally get the full treatment. For some strange reason this poor guy tends to trigger every terrorism watch list going, even when he's on his way to meet with the President.
I'm getting really tired of hearing about their healthcare plans, taxes, and Iraq/Iran/Pakistan over and over. There are so many other issues they could hit, if they refuse to answer questions on those issues them move on for god's sake!
Move on to a different subject, since healthcare, taxes, and war aren't THAT important that we really need to insist on getting an answer? Or move on to a different pair of candidates?
And that's why you would never see entire states move to postal voting only.
I should bloody well hope not. Immediately after the rules were changed in the UK, so that postal votes were available to anybody who asked for one, without them having to give a good reason why they couldn't vote in person, a great saga of electoral fraud began. Including intimidation campaigns by thugs - of course, entirely without the knowledge of the candidate in question.
Weaken the secrecy of the ballot, and these crooks will take the opportunity to rig elections.
We have web based banking. Why not web based voting?
Risk of fraud. Under the current system I can't go out and bribe, blackmail or threaten voters, because I have no way of determining whether or not they voted as I asked. 'Vote for X or I break your legs' doesn't work if I cannot find out whether or not any given person actually did vote for X. But while you can take steps to ensure that the polling booth is private, you can't say the same for an internet terminal whose location you do not know and whose configuration you do not control. For all you know the voter's boss is watching him as he votes for the candidate who will restrict workers' rights and remove regulations on abusive bosses.
The moment there's a way a person can prove who they voted for to a third party, the secret ballot is dead.
But those kids can't drive themselves to school at age 15, or age 14, etc. Why do they need to drive themselves to school once they hit 16? What has changed so much that we need to endanger teenagers and others on the road with drivers that are too young?
What has changed is that all the TV shows involving high school kids aged 16+ portray them as driving to school themselves. Usually in cars manufactured by someone who has paid for product placement. The brand may well be name-checked repeatedly. So clearly they have to have cars, otherwise they'll be, like, SOOOOOO socially dead, mom! You don't UNDERSTAND! YOU'RE RUINING MY LIFE! BAWWWWW!
You should be able to take home as much as the bartenders and waitresses did on the night you played.
Perhaps rather more than that would be fair. The band are expected to bring their own instruments, amplifiers and speakers, while the rest of the staff are not expected to provide the equipment necessary for their roles. The band make a greater investment in their role in the evening, and so ought to receive a greater dividend of the proceeds.
Oh nice, a link to Aljazeera. That will really look great in the server log.
What's the problem with al-Jazeera? They're about the only independent Arabic-language station there is, consisting in large part of ex-BBC staff who went their own way after the World Service shut down their Arabic branch. Everyone else is under the thumb of some government or other. Are we not in favour of freedom of speech and information here? Plenty of Arab governments have tried from time to time to silence al-Jazeera, and so have the Americans, occasionally with GPS-guided explosives, yet they're still going - must be doing something right.
What are they thinking with Call of Duty style regenerating health? Seriously...
That the player-character is a nano-engineered cyborg superman and that automatic damage repair is the absolute first thing that UNATCO would have installed in all its agents?
Why doesn't a black hole collapse onto itself and disappear since it attracts everything in its vicinity? IOW, why do black holes have sizes?
All the mass of a black hole is compacted into an extremely small region at the centre - possibly infinitely small, but at the very least as small as physics allows matter to get. This is the singularity.
When we speak of the size of a black hole, we're actually referring to the region around that central object from which nothing can escape. As you approach the black hole, the gravitational field gets stronger and stronger, and there's a point of no return at which the escape velocity reaches c, the speed of light. Nothing nearer the hole than this can ever escape. This we call the event horizon - because no events beyond the horizon can ever be observed from outside. The more massive the hole, the further out the event horizon: look up 'Schwarzschild radius' for the equation.
The result of this is that any singularities in the universe are expected to be hidden behind event horizons, and cannot be seen. It's occasionally suggested that a naked singularity might form - for instance, a black hole might be spinning so fast as to counteract the effect of gravity and allow the singularity to be viewed from outside. This could have extremely bizarre results for the universe as a whole, so most physicists expect there to be some kind of 'cosmic censorship' principle that ensures that this does not happen. What we're looking at here is one way in which that might happen.
Have you ever heard about "you can solve everything through love" philosophy?
Yeah, I heard something like that.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing you can sing that can't be sung, nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game; it's easy. There's nothing you can make that can't be made, no-one you can save that can't be saved, nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time; it's easy. There's nothing you can know that isn't known, nothing you can see that isn't shown, nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be; it's easy.
I'm not sure how practical that is as advice. As an example of the rhetorical concept of tautology, sure...
Lets return to the earth, have half of us killed, and go back to hunting venison like we very well used to before some assholes started to chat about this "civilization" crap we are in right now.
If we tried to live as hunter-gatherers, we'd need to kill off a whole lot more than half of us. World population is now something like 6.6 billion. We didn't reach 3 billion until 1961. In 4000 BC, about the time civilisation was really getting going in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the population of the world was more like 20 million. That's the kind of figure you're looking at for a world of hunter-gatherers. About the same as the population of New York city.
Why would I buy security equipment from a company who gave the source code to the Chinese government?
Because it shows that company is confident enough in their product that they believe nobody will break it even with access to the source code? The Chinese government already have the source code for GPG, TrueCrypt and OpenSSL. Doesn't stop people using them.
A good crypto system should have one secret and one secret only: the key. The workings of the cryptosystem should not need to be secret. In fact, it's better that they be open - that way everybody can examine it and confirm for themselves that it is sound. A closed-source cryptosystem - well, you've only the vendor's word for it that the algorithm is any good.
What exactly is open source software? Do I really need to be able to compile this on my TI99/4A?
If you're an awesome enough hacker to take code written for Windows on x86 and compile it on a TI99/4A, then go to. The problem here is that the licence forbids it to be used on non-Windows platforms, not that it's difficult in practice to do so.
As much as I love Pirate Bay, the central website model can't last.
I don't see why not. The Internet is still growing, but America's hegemony is in decline. Is the day going to come when the USA at the behest of its media cartels successfully enforces its law on every nation? If not, all that has to happen is that someone in a free country sets up a tracker index.
Sorry, TPB guys, but I don't believe you're not making a *phenomenal* amount of money from this thing.
I can quite readily believe they're not making money doing it. Where's the funding going to come from? Advertising? Well, maybe, but (a) all advertisers know that TPB's audience consists by definition of people too cheap to pay for stuff, (b) most mainstream firms probably won't want to be seen as associated with such a notorious site, and (c) I bet the frequency of Adblock Plus among TPB users is pretty damn high.
I suppose they sell the odd bit of merchandise from the kopimi store, but that must only barely cover their costs.
Full disclosure: I don't actually have the faintest idea what kind of advertisements they show on TPB. Adblock Plus, y'see. So I suppose it could be argued that I'm pirating TPB itself:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Either this is the greatest troll of all time, or you really missed out. Go and play Fallout. Then play Fallout 2. You'll realise why the rest of us pretty much gave Tactics a miss.
Now, I give it ten minutes before some old bugger with a three-digit ID comes along and tells me to play Wasteland.
The USA could default on its debt, sure. Nobody would be able to invade and take what they are owed, so in that sense they'd get away with it. But the following would happen:
1) American-owned assets abroad would immediately be seized. Ask Iceland about that.
2) Nobody would be willing to lend the US government anything again for a long time.
Wasn't the country founded by murderous piratical raiders who liked to turn up out of the blue, kill a lot of people and nick their stuff?
Actually, it turned out after those events that a lot of the cameras in London don't really work as advertised. Quite coincidentally, the cameras in Stockwell tube station, and on the train where the police restrained Jean Charles de Menezes before shooting him seven times in the head, weren't working. Astonishing. Two completely separate CCTV systems, both of which happened to fail just when the police were doing something monstrous and embarrassing. What terrible bad luck.
Lisa, I would like to buy your rock.
That's no different to what we have today. Do you think grinding, desperate poverty and Dickensian labour conditions have gone away? We've just outsourced them. The child labourers are no longer in the mines and mills of Yorkshire - they're in the factories in east Asia. The starving are no longer in Ireland - they're in Africa.
We never abolished poverty; indeed we denounced as Communists anyone who ever tried. Instead we arranged the world economy so that, unlike the Victorian rich, we would never have to look the poor in the face as we went about our rich daily lives.
Let the key be at least as long as the message itself; then you have a one-time pad, which is unbreakable.
Along similar lines, remember in episode 25 of TOS, where just before beaming down to the planet Captain Kirk opened up a safe in his quarters? I always wondered what the combination was.
Dr. Dan Streetmentioner would like to interview you for a book on tense formations which he wioll haven been writing.
That doesn't always work. Some visiting leaders of political parties from allied nations occasionally get the full treatment. For some strange reason this poor guy tends to trigger every terrorism watch list going, even when he's on his way to meet with the President.
Move on to a different subject, since healthcare, taxes, and war aren't THAT important that we really need to insist on getting an answer? Or move on to a different pair of candidates?
I should bloody well hope not. Immediately after the rules were changed in the UK, so that postal votes were available to anybody who asked for one, without them having to give a good reason why they couldn't vote in person, a great saga of electoral fraud began. Including intimidation campaigns by thugs - of course, entirely without the knowledge of the candidate in question.
Weaken the secrecy of the ballot, and these crooks will take the opportunity to rig elections.
Risk of fraud. Under the current system I can't go out and bribe, blackmail or threaten voters, because I have no way of determining whether or not they voted as I asked. 'Vote for X or I break your legs' doesn't work if I cannot find out whether or not any given person actually did vote for X. But while you can take steps to ensure that the polling booth is private, you can't say the same for an internet terminal whose location you do not know and whose configuration you do not control. For all you know the voter's boss is watching him as he votes for the candidate who will restrict workers' rights and remove regulations on abusive bosses.
The moment there's a way a person can prove who they voted for to a third party, the secret ballot is dead.
What has changed is that all the TV shows involving high school kids aged 16+ portray them as driving to school themselves. Usually in cars manufactured by someone who has paid for product placement. The brand may well be name-checked repeatedly. So clearly they have to have cars, otherwise they'll be, like, SOOOOOO socially dead, mom! You don't UNDERSTAND! YOU'RE RUINING MY LIFE! BAWWWWW!
Perhaps rather more than that would be fair. The band are expected to bring their own instruments, amplifiers and speakers, while the rest of the staff are not expected to provide the equipment necessary for their roles. The band make a greater investment in their role in the evening, and so ought to receive a greater dividend of the proceeds.
What's the problem with al-Jazeera? They're about the only independent Arabic-language station there is, consisting in large part of ex-BBC staff who went their own way after the World Service shut down their Arabic branch. Everyone else is under the thumb of some government or other. Are we not in favour of freedom of speech and information here? Plenty of Arab governments have tried from time to time to silence al-Jazeera, and so have the Americans, occasionally with GPS-guided explosives, yet they're still going - must be doing something right.
That the player-character is a nano-engineered cyborg superman and that automatic damage repair is the absolute first thing that UNATCO would have installed in all its agents?
All the mass of a black hole is compacted into an extremely small region at the centre - possibly infinitely small, but at the very least as small as physics allows matter to get. This is the singularity.
When we speak of the size of a black hole, we're actually referring to the region around that central object from which nothing can escape. As you approach the black hole, the gravitational field gets stronger and stronger, and there's a point of no return at which the escape velocity reaches c, the speed of light. Nothing nearer the hole than this can ever escape. This we call the event horizon - because no events beyond the horizon can ever be observed from outside. The more massive the hole, the further out the event horizon: look up 'Schwarzschild radius' for the equation.
The result of this is that any singularities in the universe are expected to be hidden behind event horizons, and cannot be seen. It's occasionally suggested that a naked singularity might form - for instance, a black hole might be spinning so fast as to counteract the effect of gravity and allow the singularity to be viewed from outside. This could have extremely bizarre results for the universe as a whole, so most physicists expect there to be some kind of 'cosmic censorship' principle that ensures that this does not happen. What we're looking at here is one way in which that might happen.
Yeah, I heard something like that.
I'm not sure how practical that is as advice. As an example of the rhetorical concept of tautology, sure...
If we tried to live as hunter-gatherers, we'd need to kill off a whole lot more than half of us. World population is now something like 6.6 billion. We didn't reach 3 billion until 1961. In 4000 BC, about the time civilisation was really getting going in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the population of the world was more like 20 million. That's the kind of figure you're looking at for a world of hunter-gatherers. About the same as the population of New York city.
Because it shows that company is confident enough in their product that they believe nobody will break it even with access to the source code? The Chinese government already have the source code for GPG, TrueCrypt and OpenSSL. Doesn't stop people using them.
A good crypto system should have one secret and one secret only: the key. The workings of the cryptosystem should not need to be secret. In fact, it's better that they be open - that way everybody can examine it and confirm for themselves that it is sound. A closed-source cryptosystem - well, you've only the vendor's word for it that the algorithm is any good.
http://www.opensource.org/trademark
If you're an awesome enough hacker to take code written for Windows on x86 and compile it on a TI99/4A, then go to. The problem here is that the licence forbids it to be used on non-Windows platforms, not that it's difficult in practice to do so.
I don't see why not. The Internet is still growing, but America's hegemony is in decline. Is the day going to come when the USA at the behest of its media cartels successfully enforces its law on every nation? If not, all that has to happen is that someone in a free country sets up a tracker index.
I can quite readily believe they're not making money doing it. Where's the funding going to come from? Advertising? Well, maybe, but (a) all advertisers know that TPB's audience consists by definition of people too cheap to pay for stuff, (b) most mainstream firms probably won't want to be seen as associated with such a notorious site, and (c) I bet the frequency of Adblock Plus among TPB users is pretty damn high.
I suppose they sell the odd bit of merchandise from the kopimi store, but that must only barely cover their costs.
Full disclosure: I don't actually have the faintest idea what kind of advertisements they show on TPB. Adblock Plus, y'see. So I suppose it could be argued that I'm pirating TPB itself :-)