I'll admit chance plays a significant role in Risk, but if you really believe that, try using the dice to decide where you place your armies and what countries to attack and I'd beat you 100% of the time.
But see you've reversed the implication. That's "My friend is an enemy of my enemy" and that's normally true. If you assumed the other guy was your "friend" for no reason other than that he was also my enemy, you'd be setting yourself up for an unpleasant surprise.
Ah. So I take it you would consider the statement "Dictionary.com is the only thing you need to have a complete understanding of the English language" to be a fact, since you clearly believe it to be true.
I agree that this is a fact, but not a true fact, since truth be told dictionary.com is a good quick reference but an overall shitty dictionary. The wikipedia page for "fact" includes the definition as something which may be true or false, but the citation is for the print version of the Oxford English Dictionary. I'm not paying for a subscription to their online version just to prove to an AC retard that "search results on the internet" is not the same as "something known to be true" or the opposite for that matter.
Ah, I saw the link in another post of yours. Well i'll be hog barreled, it was "News For Nerds on the Stuff that Matters" (and assuredly authentic due to the inappropriate and inconsistent capitalization).
And no, damnit, you're not allowed to post your opinions! Get of meh internets!
"News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Anyone else remember when that was "News for Nerds ON THE Stuff that Matters?"
No, I don't remember that, and I remember the first day when Chips N' Dips was dead and Slashdot was live. Was it really different? Because I really don't remember it having "on the" in there, which really reduces the punchiness of the tag line and really I doubt would make any difference regarding the content. As if they said "whew, now that we got rid of 'on the' we can start posting irrelevant nerdy stuff, and non-nerdy relevant stuff!"
Anyway, this is a story about Jack Thompson being a nut job in trying to prove he isn't a nut job. JT is a/. whipping-boy due to his long standing aggression against games, and we love to see stories where he makes himself look insane. Yeah, it's like replying to a bad troll, we're only giving him the attention he wants, but still it amuses me. Much like stories about every little decision and motion in SCO's ongoing slow death spiral isn't very important, but simply amusing for those of us who've been watching. The fact that SCO was a major Linux antagonist has given them a position of relevance. Similarly, because he's the "anti-gaming lawyer", JT and his legal antics are a relevant slashdot topic, like it or not. Like we used to say back when someone would complain about an article's appropriateness for slashdot: "It's Rob's site".
Everyone should be at least a little familiar with vi. When the fit hits the shan, sometimes it's all you've got to get out of the doo doo.
As an emacs lover (in that way, M-x make-love), I have to agree with this. I'm not by any means proficient in vi. Thanks to nethack I have the movement keys down, and I can make simple changes to files though it's painful and error-prone. But there have been several occasions where this was the only way to get a system back. And that's just as a 'power user' running a home PC. If you're actually in any kind of IT, learning vi should be required.
Even if you don't accept the terms of the licence, the Law of the Land (Sale of Goods Act 1979, as amended) gives you the right to use the software for its intended purpose. And a contract cannot take away a statutory right.
Not to mention that copyright law itself states that copies made as part of the normal operation of software do not constitute infringement. In other words, you don't need permission to make the copies that must necessarily be made to run the program, so if it's true that EULAs are based on the principle that you do, then they're not necessary to agree to.
Actually, Dada's right about "groupings". I find it appalling that unless you are in a group you simply do not have a voice, let alone identity. We were taught 40-50 years ago (whoops... gave away my age) that the Bill of Rights was written specifically to protect the individual from the state. I really fail to see why: If I own a gun, I must belong to the "Gun owners" group. Or if I smoke tobacco[Smokers' Rights Group], Pot[Libertarian], wear Tie Dye's [Leftist], Use an Apple Computer [Gay], Linux [Smart], Microsoft [Dumb]... you get the point.
You don't have to belong to any of those groups to be any of those things... so what's your point? Do people assume based on your activities that you belong to one of these groups? People assume I'm a democrat or republican based on which politician I'm bashing for their miserable conduct. And... there's no serious repurcutions for that, because of that Bill of Rights thing protecting you. Maybe you own a gun and aren't a member of the NRA or even sympathetic, but it wouldn't matter if you were a member now would it? Because the Bill of Rights protects you. And, at least in theory when the government didn't decide to grab some power, it always has.
Whereas, when it was written, the Bill of Rights only applied to certain people whom society dictated, and there was no "theory" about it they flat out said it did or didn't apply. Never was it written into the Constitution that neither women nor Africans would enjoy the same protections that white males did, but such was the case. And is still the case, just to a much lesser and less explicit extent, at least for those groups that spent literally hundreds of years fighting for their rights. Unfortunately some groups, based solely on the fact that they belong to the group or in some cases are even suspected of belonging, face grave repurcussions.
Look at their website and you'll see that most of their issues are group-based. Unfortunately, since I am am not in prison [Prisoner's rights, Death Penalty, Drug Policy], or have AIDS [HIV/AIDS, Lesbian& Gay Rights], don't pick tomatoes [Immigrant's Rights], not crippled [Disability Rights] , have no vagina [Women's Rights, Lesbian& Gay Rights, Reproductive Rights], Though I am Human [Human Rights], I doubt very seriously that being white, male and own property/business that must surely mean I cannot be human, as they do believe in reverse racism. Which by it's very nature is racist.
Of course the issues are group-based, they're covering a whole country and most of our civil liberties issues by their very nature involve groups of people. Has anyone tried to stop you, as an individual, not based on anything like your race or sexual preference, tried to prevent you from getting married? Of course not. Because the only people that anyone is trying to stop from getting married in this country is homosexuals, a group distinction made by those who are discriminatin. So go figure Lesbian and Gay Rights doesn't involve you, yet somehow the ACLU finds it to still be important anyway.
And being in the group called "property owners", the ACLU has fought on your behalf in fighting the government in Eminent Domain cases. And being in the group called "citizens of the United States of America", the ACLU has as described in this very fucking article fought against warrantless information retrieval and gag-orders.
Is that "party based"? Is that your beef? You just don't agree with homosexual and women's rights? Or do you want a link for [White Male Rights] so you'll feel as equal as our society has already made you since its inception?
By keeping the notion of racism alive and well, reverse racism thrives and they want to codify it into law -or- at least set precedence in law!...
Racism isn't just a notion to some people like it is to you. If you don't realism that actual racism is alive and well, it's because you're a privileged an
The mental image of some geek at his house opening the mail to find a little 40 mm^2 (or whatever the area of a single xeon core is these days) piece of silicon and going "wtf am i going to do with this?!" made me laugh. Thanks:)
It's sad, but I do really think that both being black and being named Barack Hussein Obama pretty much nix any chance of him being elected regardless of any consideration of what kind of president he would be.
But on the other hand, if we do elect a black man whose middle name is the name of an ex-dictator and whose last name is easily confused with that of an international terrorist, I will shed a tear and salute the flag of the greatest country on earth.
I was on the same list. I didn't really think anything about not being able to use the checkin machines until it happened with a second airline. I found out when I asked the ticket agent about it. He made a phone call and said "it's okay now" and gave me my boarding pass with the special "SSSS" marker which means you get extra security screening. As in getting wanded and patted down and having my carry-on searched and rubbed with the cloth swabs that get put in the chemical sniffer. That happened for about the next 4 times I went through airport security. Since then, no problems. I can use the self-checkin terminals and everything.
Anyway, isn't this the same "Total Information Awareness" database that John Poindexter started, and was then canceled due to privacy and security concerns, then started again under a different name and director, then stopped again, and now apparently in action again only to be once again stopped? I have to wonder what they're doing. Are they like a little kid who keeps asking their parents to buy them the toy they want, hoping that maybe the 100th time they ask their dad will say okay just to shut them up? Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.
Helping the satellite reach its full life span, extending the life span of the satellite... what's the difference? Either way the result is the broadcast companies have to launch new satellites less often, and thus they save money.
Uh, I have a number of complaints with the ACLU, but being racist for acknowledging the existence of race and the important issues revolving around it? Sorry, I can't agree. Racism still exists, and if you're going to protect the rights of everyone given the social reality of today then you have to acknowledge that attacks against freedom are often race-based and hence so must the defense. To treat everything as if it only involves an individual when the fundamental issue is that someone doesn't like the group that individual is a part of is to be ineffectual -- just like any time you try to solve a problem without properly identifying what it is. Failing to do so because your personal sense of egalitarianism requires not just judging people based on themselves instead of race, but to ignore that they belong to a race entirely, is foolish in my opinion.
But, uh, I'm making an assumption about what you meant there.
Dogs have been used to sniff out cancer patience for a long time... plus they are a lot more friendly and playful than a laser.
Well you certainly haven't met these new cancer-detecting lasers, then! They're the downright friendliest and cuddliest lasers you've ever seen! And playful? You betcha they're playful! Why you should have seen the young cancer patient Timmy running around and laughing with his new coherent light pal. And Timmy just loves his new eye patch he got after cuddling with his buddy the wrong way. Now he gets to play Pirate all the time! Yar!
I'm tired of activist judges who ignore basic law principles
Basic law principles... like the 4th Amendment. Oh, wait, that's what Congress and the President ignored. Good thing someone is actually about enforcing the law. Too bad there are so many who would throw out our most basic of law -- the Constitution -- the second it inconveniences them.
I don't (or at least am not going to look for one), but I play WoW on Linux using Transgaming's Cedega and since every time a WoW patch comes out there's a good chance something will break, I've been following the forums. There were a number of people who were having problems with the anti-cheating client, and Transgaming told Blizzard about the problem and the resolution was that Blizzard changed their client. This has also gone the other way, with Blizzard helping Transgaming figure out why Cedega wasn't working with WoW anymore so they could fix Cedega.
Blizzard still isn't exactly pro-Linux, but they certainly aren't anti-Linux and even for someone who is Linux neutral this was more than they were required to do.
Re:It's one of those persistent myths
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 1
No, in other words, he intentionally misled using the same kind of technique described in the article, by saying "I can't say specifically that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, but based on 'credible' intelligence I believe that he was". He is very much implying that he believes Saddam was responsible for 9/11, he just put a little caveat at the beginning so that with hindsight he could plausibly claim not to have lied. How can you actually read what he said and not see that the belief you were supposed to walk away with was that Saddam had possibly been involved in plotting 9/11?
Only to complete weasels is intentionally misleading someone different than lying to them. Adding "maybe" to a lie doesn't make it truthful, unless you only care about CYA levels of truth.
Not that you need to be un-weasely to see Bush or Cheney lying. He repeatedly claimed that there were long-standing ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, a claim that the 9/11 Commission found no support for based on the actual intelligence analysis done by our agencies. Yet Bush still said in his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding."
But Iraq was not an ally of al Qaeda, the intelligence available at the time said as much, and ergo Bush was lying in order to establish a false link between the war in Iraq and 9/11. Cheney went even farther and specifically referred to 9/11 terrorists losing their 'geographic base' due to the invasion of Iraq. Here is a good article that details a lot of the contradictions between what the Pres and Veep said and what the intelligence they claimed as their support said.
I'm trying to find the really great one, which occured shortly after the 9/11 commission issued their report which in part said there were no substantive ties between al Qaeda and Iraq. Cheney got all huffy and repeated his assertion that there were longstanding ties, and suggested that the 9/11 commission didn't have all the intelligence that he had so they didn't know what they were talking about. The hilarious part is when his own press secretary had to come out and say that wasn't true, because of course Cheney had cooperated fully with the 9/11 commission and given them all the intelligence he had.
And if you did really pay that much attention, you must know that the invasion of Iraq was absolutely billed as being in response to 9/11. Bush said as much constantly. He was careful never to say that Iraq caused 9/11, he just chose his words to give that impression.
There's a difference between the American people not knowing something and 'knowing' something false because of what their leaders said. If the American people had no idea why we invaded Iraq or why we didn't like Saddam, that would be the ignorance you are saying. When they listen to Bush's speeches and come away with the impression than Saddam plotted 9/11, that's not a random occurrence, it's because they received the intended message.
And if that wasn't the intended message, why did Cheney harp on the alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda at every opportunity?
I mean it sounds like the best we can say is that Bush/Cheney didn't lie, they just manipulated the people into believing falsehoods to further their aims, and I'm not sure why exactly that's supposed to make them look any better.
Of course eventually you need a conventional assault to actually take over territory rather than merely use it as a clandestine base of operations. Unlike guerillas, the ruling government can't simply vanish into the hills whenever someone challenges their claim to a piece of land.
And of course the best way to fight guerillas is through intelligence. Which is the saddest part about Iraq -- we have basically zero intelligence on insurgent groups. Or at least "had", maybe things are a little better now. But certainly at first when the higher-ups were refusing to even acknowledge that there was an insurgency, and wouldn't let anyone who even smelled of Baath party help us, we had zero infiltration. I doubt things are all that much better now, since the only ones who would be able to help us -- native Iraqis -- have largely been disillusioned, while simultaneously the insurgent groups would have gotten tighter.
There are lots of lessons to learn from Vietnam, and not all of them are lessons learned from failure. Sadly, our C-in-C and his underlings don't seem to have learned any of them, and based on his recent comparison seems to have learned only an utterly wrong one: That continuing with the same bone-headed strategy indefinitely is the way to win.
Explain the ass-tastic targeting system described in the reviews, then.
Also, if you're going to give the character a certain kind of "realistic" control intentionally, then you need to intentionally design the environment so that the "realistic" control isn't a hindrance. On this all the reviews seem to be unanimous -- in wide-open spaces with no enemies or objects, the controls are fine. It's just much of the action takes place in tight quarters.
If you're going to give the player a C-130, you don't ask them to do Blue Angel acrobatics. Because if you did, that game would suck.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll admit chance plays a significant role in Risk, but if you really believe that, try using the dice to decide where you place your armies and what countries to attack and I'd beat you 100% of the time.
But see you've reversed the implication. That's "My friend is an enemy of my enemy" and that's normally true. If you assumed the other guy was your "friend" for no reason other than that he was also my enemy, you'd be setting yourself up for an unpleasant surprise.
Ah. So I take it you would consider the statement "Dictionary.com is the only thing you need to have a complete understanding of the English language" to be a fact, since you clearly believe it to be true.
I agree that this is a fact, but not a true fact, since truth be told dictionary.com is a good quick reference but an overall shitty dictionary. The wikipedia page for "fact" includes the definition as something which may be true or false, but the citation is for the print version of the Oxford English Dictionary. I'm not paying for a subscription to their online version just to prove to an AC retard that "search results on the internet" is not the same as "something known to be true" or the opposite for that matter.
See, I'm not inviting you to my Risk game since you already know my strategy.
Ah, I saw the link in another post of yours. Well i'll be hog barreled, it was "News For Nerds on the Stuff that Matters" (and assuredly authentic due to the inappropriate and inconsistent capitalization).
And no, damnit, you're not allowed to post your opinions! Get of meh internets!
"News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Anyone else remember when that was "News for Nerds ON THE Stuff that Matters?"
/. whipping-boy due to his long standing aggression against games, and we love to see stories where he makes himself look insane. Yeah, it's like replying to a bad troll, we're only giving him the attention he wants, but still it amuses me. Much like stories about every little decision and motion in SCO's ongoing slow death spiral isn't very important, but simply amusing for those of us who've been watching. The fact that SCO was a major Linux antagonist has given them a position of relevance. Similarly, because he's the "anti-gaming lawyer", JT and his legal antics are a relevant slashdot topic, like it or not. Like we used to say back when someone would complain about an article's appropriateness for slashdot: "It's Rob's site".
No, I don't remember that, and I remember the first day when Chips N' Dips was dead and Slashdot was live. Was it really different? Because I really don't remember it having "on the" in there, which really reduces the punchiness of the tag line and really I doubt would make any difference regarding the content. As if they said "whew, now that we got rid of 'on the' we can start posting irrelevant nerdy stuff, and non-nerdy relevant stuff!"
Anyway, this is a story about Jack Thompson being a nut job in trying to prove he isn't a nut job. JT is a
The enemy of your enemy is usually also your enemy too.
And if you don't believe that, then we should get a group together to play Risk. For money.
A fact is a statement that can (theoretically) be objectively evaluated as true or false. "AMD chips have stability problems."
As opposed to an opinion, a statement that is only subjectively true or false. "AMD is the best CPU company ever."
The most common usage of "fact" is a statement that has been determined to be true, but the GP was using the other definition to make his point.
Everyone should be at least a little familiar with vi. When the fit hits the shan, sometimes it's all you've got to get out of the doo doo.
As an emacs lover (in that way, M-x make-love), I have to agree with this. I'm not by any means proficient in vi. Thanks to nethack I have the movement keys down, and I can make simple changes to files though it's painful and error-prone. But there have been several occasions where this was the only way to get a system back. And that's just as a 'power user' running a home PC. If you're actually in any kind of IT, learning vi should be required.
Hmm... I find your recommendation insufficient.
Even if you don't accept the terms of the licence, the Law of the Land (Sale of Goods Act 1979, as amended) gives you the right to use the software for its intended purpose. And a contract cannot take away a statutory right.
Not to mention that copyright law itself states that copies made as part of the normal operation of software do not constitute infringement. In other words, you don't need permission to make the copies that must necessarily be made to run the program, so if it's true that EULAs are based on the principle that you do, then they're not necessary to agree to.
Ah, here we go: U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 1, section 117.
Actually, Dada's right about "groupings". I find it appalling that unless you are in a group you simply do not have a voice, let alone identity. We were taught 40-50 years ago (whoops... gave away my age) that the Bill of Rights was written specifically to protect the individual from the state. I really fail to see why: If I own a gun, I must belong to the "Gun owners" group. Or if I smoke tobacco[Smokers' Rights Group], Pot[Libertarian], wear Tie Dye's [Leftist], Use an Apple Computer [Gay], Linux [Smart], Microsoft [Dumb]... you get the point.
...
You don't have to belong to any of those groups to be any of those things... so what's your point? Do people assume based on your activities that you belong to one of these groups? People assume I'm a democrat or republican based on which politician I'm bashing for their miserable conduct. And... there's no serious repurcutions for that, because of that Bill of Rights thing protecting you. Maybe you own a gun and aren't a member of the NRA or even sympathetic, but it wouldn't matter if you were a member now would it? Because the Bill of Rights protects you. And, at least in theory when the government didn't decide to grab some power, it always has.
Whereas, when it was written, the Bill of Rights only applied to certain people whom society dictated, and there was no "theory" about it they flat out said it did or didn't apply. Never was it written into the Constitution that neither women nor Africans would enjoy the same protections that white males did, but such was the case. And is still the case, just to a much lesser and less explicit extent, at least for those groups that spent literally hundreds of years fighting for their rights. Unfortunately some groups, based solely on the fact that they belong to the group or in some cases are even suspected of belonging, face grave repurcussions.
Look at their website and you'll see that most of their issues are group-based. Unfortunately, since I am am not in prison [Prisoner's rights, Death Penalty, Drug Policy], or have AIDS [HIV/AIDS, Lesbian& Gay Rights], don't pick tomatoes [Immigrant's Rights], not crippled [Disability Rights] , have no vagina [Women's Rights, Lesbian& Gay Rights, Reproductive Rights], Though I am Human [Human Rights], I doubt very seriously that being white, male and own property/business that must surely mean I cannot be human, as they do believe in reverse racism. Which by it's very nature is racist.
Of course the issues are group-based, they're covering a whole country and most of our civil liberties issues by their very nature involve groups of people. Has anyone tried to stop you, as an individual, not based on anything like your race or sexual preference, tried to prevent you from getting married? Of course not. Because the only people that anyone is trying to stop from getting married in this country is homosexuals, a group distinction made by those who are discriminatin. So go figure Lesbian and Gay Rights doesn't involve you, yet somehow the ACLU finds it to still be important anyway.
And being in the group called "property owners", the ACLU has fought on your behalf in fighting the government in Eminent Domain cases. And being in the group called "citizens of the United States of America", the ACLU has as described in this very fucking article fought against warrantless information retrieval and gag-orders.
Is that "party based"? Is that your beef? You just don't agree with homosexual and women's rights? Or do you want a link for [White Male Rights] so you'll feel as equal as our society has already made you since its inception?
By keeping the notion of racism alive and well, reverse racism thrives and they want to codify it into law -or- at least set precedence in law!
Racism isn't just a notion to some people like it is to you. If you don't realism that actual racism is alive and well, it's because you're a privileged an
Is intel going to send them a free core?
:)
The mental image of some geek at his house opening the mail to find a little 40 mm^2 (or whatever the area of a single xeon core is these days) piece of silicon and going "wtf am i going to do with this?!" made me laugh. Thanks
Kinda like the guy named Barack Hussein Obama?
It's sad, but I do really think that both being black and being named Barack Hussein Obama pretty much nix any chance of him being elected regardless of any consideration of what kind of president he would be.
But on the other hand, if we do elect a black man whose middle name is the name of an ex-dictator and whose last name is easily confused with that of an international terrorist, I will shed a tear and salute the flag of the greatest country on earth.
I was on the same list. I didn't really think anything about not being able to use the checkin machines until it happened with a second airline. I found out when I asked the ticket agent about it. He made a phone call and said "it's okay now" and gave me my boarding pass with the special "SSSS" marker which means you get extra security screening. As in getting wanded and patted down and having my carry-on searched and rubbed with the cloth swabs that get put in the chemical sniffer. That happened for about the next 4 times I went through airport security. Since then, no problems. I can use the self-checkin terminals and everything.
Anyway, isn't this the same "Total Information Awareness" database that John Poindexter started, and was then canceled due to privacy and security concerns, then started again under a different name and director, then stopped again, and now apparently in action again only to be once again stopped? I have to wonder what they're doing. Are they like a little kid who keeps asking their parents to buy them the toy they want, hoping that maybe the 100th time they ask their dad will say okay just to shut them up? Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.
Helping the satellite reach its full life span, extending the life span of the satellite... what's the difference? Either way the result is the broadcast companies have to launch new satellites less often, and thus they save money.
It has never been a better time to be a rat. no cancer or diabetes and now no paralasys.
Except for the part where they first give you cancer, diabetes, and paralysis.
Uh, I have a number of complaints with the ACLU, but being racist for acknowledging the existence of race and the important issues revolving around it? Sorry, I can't agree. Racism still exists, and if you're going to protect the rights of everyone given the social reality of today then you have to acknowledge that attacks against freedom are often race-based and hence so must the defense. To treat everything as if it only involves an individual when the fundamental issue is that someone doesn't like the group that individual is a part of is to be ineffectual -- just like any time you try to solve a problem without properly identifying what it is. Failing to do so because your personal sense of egalitarianism requires not just judging people based on themselves instead of race, but to ignore that they belong to a race entirely, is foolish in my opinion.
But, uh, I'm making an assumption about what you meant there.
It's a very old piece of paper, too. If I threw it in your face it'd crumble! That'd probably make some people happy.
Dogs have been used to sniff out cancer patience for a long time... plus they are a lot more friendly and playful than a laser.
Well you certainly haven't met these new cancer-detecting lasers, then! They're the downright friendliest and cuddliest lasers you've ever seen! And playful? You betcha they're playful! Why you should have seen the young cancer patient Timmy running around and laughing with his new coherent light pal. And Timmy just loves his new eye patch he got after cuddling with his buddy the wrong way. Now he gets to play Pirate all the time! Yar!
I'm tired of activist judges who ignore basic law principles
Basic law principles... like the 4th Amendment. Oh, wait, that's what Congress and the President ignored. Good thing someone is actually about enforcing the law. Too bad there are so many who would throw out our most basic of law -- the Constitution -- the second it inconveniences them.
I don't (or at least am not going to look for one), but I play WoW on Linux using Transgaming's Cedega and since every time a WoW patch comes out there's a good chance something will break, I've been following the forums. There were a number of people who were having problems with the anti-cheating client, and Transgaming told Blizzard about the problem and the resolution was that Blizzard changed their client. This has also gone the other way, with Blizzard helping Transgaming figure out why Cedega wasn't working with WoW anymore so they could fix Cedega.
Blizzard still isn't exactly pro-Linux, but they certainly aren't anti-Linux and even for someone who is Linux neutral this was more than they were required to do.
No, in other words, he intentionally misled using the same kind of technique described in the article, by saying "I can't say specifically that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, but based on 'credible' intelligence I believe that he was". He is very much implying that he believes Saddam was responsible for 9/11, he just put a little caveat at the beginning so that with hindsight he could plausibly claim not to have lied. How can you actually read what he said and not see that the belief you were supposed to walk away with was that Saddam had possibly been involved in plotting 9/11?
Only to complete weasels is intentionally misleading someone different than lying to them. Adding "maybe" to a lie doesn't make it truthful, unless you only care about CYA levels of truth.
Not that you need to be un-weasely to see Bush or Cheney lying. He repeatedly claimed that there were long-standing ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, a claim that the 9/11 Commission found no support for based on the actual intelligence analysis done by our agencies. Yet Bush still said in his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding."
But Iraq was not an ally of al Qaeda, the intelligence available at the time said as much, and ergo Bush was lying in order to establish a false link between the war in Iraq and 9/11. Cheney went even farther and specifically referred to 9/11 terrorists losing their 'geographic base' due to the invasion of Iraq. Here is a good article that details a lot of the contradictions between what the Pres and Veep said and what the intelligence they claimed as their support said.
I'm trying to find the really great one, which occured shortly after the 9/11 commission issued their report which in part said there were no substantive ties between al Qaeda and Iraq. Cheney got all huffy and repeated his assertion that there were longstanding ties, and suggested that the 9/11 commission didn't have all the intelligence that he had so they didn't know what they were talking about. The hilarious part is when his own press secretary had to come out and say that wasn't true, because of course Cheney had cooperated fully with the 9/11 commission and given them all the intelligence he had.
And if you did really pay that much attention, you must know that the invasion of Iraq was absolutely billed as being in response to 9/11. Bush said as much constantly. He was careful never to say that Iraq caused 9/11, he just chose his words to give that impression.
There's a difference between the American people not knowing something and 'knowing' something false because of what their leaders said. If the American people had no idea why we invaded Iraq or why we didn't like Saddam, that would be the ignorance you are saying. When they listen to Bush's speeches and come away with the impression than Saddam plotted 9/11, that's not a random occurrence, it's because they received the intended message.
And if that wasn't the intended message, why did Cheney harp on the alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda at every opportunity?
I mean it sounds like the best we can say is that Bush/Cheney didn't lie, they just manipulated the people into believing falsehoods to further their aims, and I'm not sure why exactly that's supposed to make them look any better.
Of course eventually you need a conventional assault to actually take over territory rather than merely use it as a clandestine base of operations. Unlike guerillas, the ruling government can't simply vanish into the hills whenever someone challenges their claim to a piece of land.
And of course the best way to fight guerillas is through intelligence. Which is the saddest part about Iraq -- we have basically zero intelligence on insurgent groups. Or at least "had", maybe things are a little better now. But certainly at first when the higher-ups were refusing to even acknowledge that there was an insurgency, and wouldn't let anyone who even smelled of Baath party help us, we had zero infiltration. I doubt things are all that much better now, since the only ones who would be able to help us -- native Iraqis -- have largely been disillusioned, while simultaneously the insurgent groups would have gotten tighter.
There are lots of lessons to learn from Vietnam, and not all of them are lessons learned from failure. Sadly, our C-in-C and his underlings don't seem to have learned any of them, and based on his recent comparison seems to have learned only an utterly wrong one: That continuing with the same bone-headed strategy indefinitely is the way to win.
Explain the ass-tastic targeting system described in the reviews, then.
Also, if you're going to give the character a certain kind of "realistic" control intentionally, then you need to intentionally design the environment so that the "realistic" control isn't a hindrance. On this all the reviews seem to be unanimous -- in wide-open spaces with no enemies or objects, the controls are fine. It's just much of the action takes place in tight quarters.
If you're going to give the player a C-130, you don't ask them to do Blue Angel acrobatics. Because if you did, that game would suck.