i was actually referring mostly to the post above yours, where someone was insisting that Germany faced no threats. Given the current political climate, where people liken Bush to Hitler, it seemed plausible that someone might suggest that we are a threat Germany. It's hard to feel politically secure, as you put it, when so many people are filtering the world through a filter of Bush == Teh Evil therefore the US == Teh Evil, therefore anyone who opposes the US, is opposing Bush, and is therefore Good. Where were the cries of imperialism when Clinton sent our troops into the formerly Yugoslavian republics, or of interventionism with Somalia, or Blood for Oil for Operations Desert Strikes 1 and 2? Some will claim "those were different", but that is a matter of perspective. There was a shift in how the US population felt about involvement in WW2 after Pearl Harbor. It went from "no foreign entanglements" to "let's git the sum' bitches!". Yet, the situation in Europe wasn't any different before or after Pearl Harbor. i'm saying that people politics filter how they see the world. If Gore or Clinton had ordered the overthrow of Saddam, the republicans would have cried out against using US soldiers to play world police... but then eventually gone along with it to have a chance to get into a scrap. But i doubt there would have been all the "no blood for oil" or "end US imperialism" sloganeering.
Don't get me wrong, here, i'm not advocating for Bush, but for seeing the big picture (with as little political filtering as possible). For realizing there was a world before W, and there will be one after (i hope!). For realizing that Germany, and many of our allies do face some real threats, and it isn't the US. We're all guilty of seeing the world through our own filters, but some people don't even try.
[OffTopic]
Right, because Bush is president.... i sometimes forget that the good/bad guy sides flip every time we change presidents. When Obama takes office, we'll be the good guys and Russia will be scary again and terrorists will be called mass murdering religious zealots instead of the freedom fighters critical of US policy they are now.
Japan isn't the only country counting on us. That's why it grinds my gears when some misinformed hippie puts up a chart comparing % of GDP to defense, or defense budgets. Our AoR is most of the world's surface area. We are the defense budget and defense force for almost virtually every democracy. We do it so they don't have to. Germany can have it's wonderful social programs and pacifist outlook because we are protecting them.
[OffTopicPedantry]
The ozone hole shrinks by 30% for a hobby? Or it shrinks 30% per decade?
i think the author meant to say "The ozone hole shrAnk by 30%". ShrinkS is the infinitive.
Tony Hawk skates for a living.
Tony Hawk skated yesterday.
Tony Hawk will skate tomorrow.
If Linux (the community) is serious about taking on M$ in the desktop market, they must offer me something BETTER than Windows. Better meaning easier to install and use. Better as in has more compatible hard and soft ware. Being free as in speech and free as in beer doesn't do me any good if i have to join a LUG to figure out how to install it. Then i can't find any games for it. If i found a game, there isn't a driver for the graphics card needed to run it. It would also help if there was just *Linux*. With M$, if you are a home user, you pick up XP Home and you're done. With Linux there are dozens of pet projects. Choice is only good if i know what i'm choosing between. Will program Y run on distro X? With XP, if i pick up a copy of Halo 2 that says "For Windows XP", i'm pretty sure it's going to work. Pool effort into making one competitive distro, call that Linux. Have your pet distro used by entire dozens of people, but keep it off the radar to prevent confusion. Your time would be better spent making the one distro better, but ah well.
i would like to encourage the use of the term Psionics for mind machine interface. Avionics are electronics related to aviation.
[OffTopic]
"A ZDNet article discusses advances in the translation of brain activity to electronic control being made at MIT"
Awkward sentence construction makes baby Jeebus cry.
A ZDNet article discusses MIT's advances in the translation of brain activity to electronic control.
See, it's more succinct and direct.
Here are the hints that you are using passive voice and other grammatical goofery: has been, being (verb), were.... Your past tense forms of "to be". Using active and direct verbs. Who did what to whom.
i'm a sys admin for a small company, and yes, most of my problems are user ignorance induced. But i figure that laser engineers don't need to have my level of computer skill, because they have me. They don't ask me to build lasers, i don't groan when they ask me to install a printer. i try to teach my lusers as i fix what ever problem they've caused, and sometimes it helps. Some users just assume computers are beyond them (mostly the ladies and older folks).
The first company to implement the following will make a bajillion dollars: Make computers work like video game consoles. You want ot surf the web, insert "Web Surf Disc". Time to write a book report? Insert "Text Editor Disk". Programs could work off ROM chips. Then make it so there are as FEW options as possible. Make it so the user can have one program running at a time. ROM chips will facilitate this nicely. If you copy a bit of text, you can save it to the central OS, then switch to Text Editor (closing Web Surfer), and paste it. Tightly control who can make software and hardware. Less is more. Get the software right before you ship it. Computers are far too powerful for the average luser. My mom doesn't need to be able to set virtual memory. She just wants to type up letters and surf the net a bit. If computers were a simple as toasters and DVD players, we would have a fraction of the problems. Such a system should also cost less, and sell more units.
Carbon
by VNV Nation
(c) Totally stolen from some website
a million points of light ascending to the sky
monuments in darkness
standing watch until the sun will rise
screaming to an emptiness
of how we deified ourselves
with our hands over our eyes
claiming all of creation
what inspires in us this madness
that out existence should be defined
by a light that can't be seen by anyone
what inspires in us this madness
that out existence should be defined
by a light that we can't see
by a light that can't be seen
a million points of light ascending to the sky
monuments in darkness
standing watch until the sun will rise
I can't, I can't see this all as progress
how did we come this far?
when we see ourselves as deities
claim nature for ourselves
by our actions we betray the instincts in our race
by our blindness and stupidity we kill everything
we kill everything
can someone see our self destruction?
are we reminding ourselves that our existence is so delicate
that without this light we are no more
that without this light we've made we are no more
a million points of light
ascending to the sky
monuments in darkness
standing watch
until the sun will rise
we torch the earth until it bleeds
rain ashes from the sky
just to make a light that no one can see
we cut the earth until it bleeds
rain ashes from the sky
just to make a light that no one can see
just to make a light
just to make a light
we kill everything
by our blindness and stupidity
we kill everything
and in a thousand years what will be our legacy
a million lights that no one can see?
a million points of light
Personally, i think the word is worthless. Everything is unique. Why point out what is true of EVERYTHING? "You're unique? So am i. So is everyone else and every electron and photon in the universe. Woopty fucking do. Can i have your autograph?"
It is a case of using the wrong damn word. Unique has a meaning, it doesn't not mean "special" or "unusual", it means "the only thing like itself in the universe". When we use the wrong word we weaken the language. We lose the DIFFERENCE between the word unique and words like "interesting, special, novel, innovative, significant". The word impact has been utterly buggered up by journalists.
Yes, languages change. i get that. However, this isn't a matter of fixing something that was broken, or simplifying something that was needlessly complex. When people say "ya'll" or "yous" they are correcting the problem created when we gave up "thou". i'm cool with that. In the case of impact and unique, people are using the wrong word out of ignorance, laziness or to hijack the significance/power of those words. Verbifying access works because we needed a word for "use my authority to open/control". People say impact when they mean effect because impact sounds important, powerful, shocking and unstoppable. Eventually, that use of impact will lose its effect (so to speak), and we've muddied the word for its original purpose. If every military conflict is a war, then eventually war will cease to be the scary word it should be.
Fewer languages means more people can talk to each other. That's good imho. It means the world is shrinking. If the world becomes small enough, maybe we'll have less reason to hate each other. Or at least we can hate each other for better reasons than not being able to understand each other.
What? Was i supposed to say something about hegemony, imperialism or monoculture? Sorry.
Then maybe the bad guys shouldn't hide behind civilians. Oh right... *we're* the bad guys. i get confused sometimes.
Compare warfare of today with that of WW2, at least the way the US fights. Compare carpet bombing to GPS guided cruise missiles. Compare our training our soldiers to know, obey and be held accountable to the LoAC, versus our enemies. Compare our efforts to develop less than lethal weapons to our enemy's use of bombs in marketplaces.
i was part of the mission planning team for Desert Strike I, under Clinton. They went out of their way to achieve the goals with minimal loss of life (civilian or otherwise). They hit radar sites at night to decrease the chance that anyone would be around. The missiles hit the radars which are some distance away from the control center (where there are people).
Read up on LoAC. If the enemy puts a bomb factory under an orphanage, it becomes a legit target. However, we generally still do everything we can to avoid hitting such targets. Our enemies use this to their advantage. What does the bank robber do to assure his escape? Take a hostage. The cop is obligated to save the hostage's life. Sometimes the our enemies put legit targets inside, under or close to things we are apprehensive about attacking. Evil is nothing, if not pragmatic.
When a maverick missile heads for a T-72, the target is THE TANK, not the people inside it. Our concern is not the man, but the AK 47 he's holding. This is our doctrine. Our goal is to win with minimal risk to ourselves and to innocents. We don't aim for body count. In fact, body count is a waste of effort, both in terms of the effort/return equation and in the moral victory sense. The more damage we do, the worse off we are.
It is easier to blame us for civilian deaths than to blame those who put the civilians at risk. Warfare asks the question: Are you willing to die and kill for your cause? In Desert Storm, the Iraqi army (largely conscripted) answered 'no'. Those who chose to surrender, didn't die. Some chose to fight, some couldn't surrender.
Remember the human shields? Where did Saddam put them? At orphanages? At hospitals? Apartment buildings? No, the put them at legitimate military targets. That's the difference between us and them. We have people willing to use their lives to save innocents, our enemies will exploit that compassion.
Imagine if our soldiers were as evil as you think they are. How would we fight? It would be so much easier to fire a tank round into a crowd to kill the ONE combatant cowering behind them. If there was in IED, we could just drop a daisy cutter on a mosque during services. But instead, we fight with tremendous restraint at a much greater risk and cost to ourselves.
Our soldiers are not ravening monsters, contrary to pop culture opinion. i'm not making the claim that our soldiers are all flawless. Some have committed terrible crimes, and they should be punished, as should their commanders (in chief). But i think it is wrong and intellectually dishonest to vilify our soldiers for partisan reasons. Our soldiers don't switch from good to evil based on who is president. Most of our soldiers are good people. Sometimes being good means doing bad things to bad people. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph...."
If you really care about the civilians, direct your ire toward the enemy. They chose to fight us, they chose to kill and endanger civilians. They could chose to fight honorably, but they know the would lose. They know from Vietnam that if they hide among innocents and drag out the conflict that we will eventually lose heart and leave.
This is where you change the subject to oil and religion..../former USAF Intel//ran the SERE and LoAC class
Which rights did we lose under the Patriot Act? Since 9/11 the only change i've seen is that i have to get to the airport a little earlier. i'm not saying you're wrong, i'm just not sure what rights/liberties we lost, or that we actually lost any.
Security and Convenience are opposing forces. The security of robbers not freely entering my house costs me a bit of time to lock and unlock the door. i have to show a passport to cross borders, in exchange for my government supposedly having the ability to be selective about who enters my country.
"As nobody makes a business of kicking porcupines nobody makes a business of picking on a well armed and well defended people who defend their rights."
Did Al Qaeda kick a porcupine or a fainting sheep? i wonder why they didn't fear us, we've got longer and sharper quills than anyone. Did they know half the population would apologize/sympathize for them? Did they learn from our failure in Vietnam, that if you hide among the civilians and draw out the battle the US will flee? In any case, AQ scored a clear victory. We are afraid and we let them change our policy (the goal of terrorism). They found the perfect way to fight us. We can't hold a government accountable for 9/11 like we could with Pearl Harbor.
So who can we hold accountable? Apparently we only want to blame people for whom we have a name and address. It is easier to blame the cop for not being in the alley where/when you were mugged than the guy who actually mugged you and then melted into the crowd.
We address the symptom by hiring more cops and building more prisons. If we really wanted to win, we'd have to address the root causes, attack the disease, by hiring more teachers and building bigger schools. A similar approach for terrorism might have better results at a lower financial, political and spiritual cost. Use the stick on the guilty, offer carrots to the innocent to keep them from becoming guilty.
Here's a thought: If the game includes a Charisma or Appearance stat, like Vampire: Bloodlines or DDO, then you have to have a high CHR stat to have a good looking avatar. If you are a min/maxing weenie who wants to play the MMORPG equivalent to Red Sonja, you have to spend build points on CHR to have her be hot. So if you want to play the hot elf babe, you'd have sacrifice STR or CON or something else. That would force players to prioritize. Then have all NPC reactions based on CHR, if people play ugly characters (as a result of min/maxing), they will find that NPC won't want to help them. Just like real life.
An engine like Neverwinter Nights, that allows me to create a space, script it, add NPCs, items, set rules, give it a story (if i want). Allow me to make this realm instantial (for single players or groups) or shared (everyone in one instance). Allow me to publish this realm. Allow players to rate each others realms. Popular realms get hosting. Popular designers get more space. Connect the realms through a system of portals, or a hub realm.
Do this and you'll have a WoW killer.
i could design this in greater detail for a few bucks or if i get to put my name on it.
i aspire for the money so i CAN be like Mandela. i can't do much good for the world if i'm sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day. Give me a billion $ and i'll invest it such that i can have a safe/comfortable life and use the rest to help people. Hell, i could do a great deal of good with just a million. All it takes is imagination... and cash. If i had money like Bill, i'd be spending it on charities in the 10s of millions. The interest generated from one billion would change the world in meaningful ways forever.
As long as people use Wikipedia as a starting point, it's just fine. If you cite Wikipedia as your source, well, that's not going to play in any serious sort of product. If you are curious about something, look it up in Wikipedia. Use the sources referenced for any sort of research for school or work. Wikipedia is a fantastic source for sources.
Code seems like something that should be under copyright, not a patent. It's text, not a toothbrush. You can protect your bit of code that causes output X with input Y. But you shouldn't be able to prevent others from coming up with something else that has output X with input Y. Imagine if all car companies had to pay Ford for having a car with a circular steering wheel. i don't know if Ford came up with the steering wheel or not, i'm using it as an example. You should be able to prevent someone from using YOUR unique steering wheel design without permission/compensation (for a reasonable amount of time).
IANAL, and i'm not claiming to know all and see all. This is just my amateur take.
That depends on which movie we're talking about. In the early movies, the laser swords (as Lucas calls them), are swung like heavy two handed swords. In subsequent movies the swords are treated as lighter and faster foils or one handed swords, to speed up the action. More and faster movement is MORE!
It went from "woom... kishhhh! woom woom.... kishhhh!"
To: "kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh!"
We could say that the handles are what determines the weight/speed of the saber, but it seems that the blades themselves, being plamsa trapped in a shield/energy field might have it's weight/speed determined by some sort of magnetic resistance. Insert technobabble here.
Well, what happens when someone with a weak heart/or a healthy heart is shot with an assault rifle?
The article makes some very dishonest and paranoid statements.
i'll grant that cops are a little trigger happy on the tasers, but that might be a matter of adjusting our laws and training. It might also be due to the fact that the media focuses on covering bad news. Where are all the stories of cops using tasers to bring down violent criminals without killing them? The slope isn't always slippery. If i had to choose between feeling a pain ray or feeling a bullet, i'll take the pain ray. Which would you prefer, spraying hot lead down a crowded street to shoot at the one or two hostiles firing from behind civilians or to blast the crowd with a pain ray?
If you were the one pulling the trigger, would you rather cut people in half with a 50 cal or zap them with a pain ray?
Just because a tool can be used for evil, doesn't mean it always will be, or that it eventually will. If it does, you deal with such cases individually. This system will save lives, and likely it will save the lives of our soldiers and civilians. If we teach them well and punish abuses, the predicted problems will be few and far between. While we can still enjoy the advantages of not hosing down a crowd of families to get the bad guys cowering behind them.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome post. i wish i had mods for you.
Where did you come by this information? Specifically, the bits that tie all of these religions together.
i was actually referring mostly to the post above yours, where someone was insisting that Germany faced no threats. Given the current political climate, where people liken Bush to Hitler, it seemed plausible that someone might suggest that we are a threat Germany. It's hard to feel politically secure, as you put it, when so many people are filtering the world through a filter of Bush == Teh Evil therefore the US == Teh Evil, therefore anyone who opposes the US, is opposing Bush, and is therefore Good. Where were the cries of imperialism when Clinton sent our troops into the formerly Yugoslavian republics, or of interventionism with Somalia, or Blood for Oil for Operations Desert Strikes 1 and 2? Some will claim "those were different", but that is a matter of perspective. There was a shift in how the US population felt about involvement in WW2 after Pearl Harbor. It went from "no foreign entanglements" to "let's git the sum' bitches!". Yet, the situation in Europe wasn't any different before or after Pearl Harbor. i'm saying that people politics filter how they see the world. If Gore or Clinton had ordered the overthrow of Saddam, the republicans would have cried out against using US soldiers to play world police... but then eventually gone along with it to have a chance to get into a scrap. But i doubt there would have been all the "no blood for oil" or "end US imperialism" sloganeering.
Don't get me wrong, here, i'm not advocating for Bush, but for seeing the big picture (with as little political filtering as possible). For realizing there was a world before W, and there will be one after (i hope!). For realizing that Germany, and many of our allies do face some real threats, and it isn't the US. We're all guilty of seeing the world through our own filters, but some people don't even try.
In summary, it's not all about you(r post).
[OffTopic] Right, because Bush is president.... i sometimes forget that the good/bad guy sides flip every time we change presidents. When Obama takes office, we'll be the good guys and Russia will be scary again and terrorists will be called mass murdering religious zealots instead of the freedom fighters critical of US policy they are now.
Japan isn't the only country counting on us. That's why it grinds my gears when some misinformed hippie puts up a chart comparing % of GDP to defense, or defense budgets. Our AoR is most of the world's surface area. We are the defense budget and defense force for almost virtually every democracy. We do it so they don't have to. Germany can have it's wonderful social programs and pacifist outlook because we are protecting them.
The Dune books mention plasteel.
[OffTopicPedantry] The ozone hole shrinks by 30% for a hobby? Or it shrinks 30% per decade? i think the author meant to say "The ozone hole shrAnk by 30%". ShrinkS is the infinitive. Tony Hawk skates for a living. Tony Hawk skated yesterday. Tony Hawk will skate tomorrow.
If Linux (the community) is serious about taking on M$ in the desktop market, they must offer me something BETTER than Windows. Better meaning easier to install and use. Better as in has more compatible hard and soft ware. Being free as in speech and free as in beer doesn't do me any good if i have to join a LUG to figure out how to install it. Then i can't find any games for it. If i found a game, there isn't a driver for the graphics card needed to run it. It would also help if there was just *Linux*. With M$, if you are a home user, you pick up XP Home and you're done. With Linux there are dozens of pet projects. Choice is only good if i know what i'm choosing between. Will program Y run on distro X? With XP, if i pick up a copy of Halo 2 that says "For Windows XP", i'm pretty sure it's going to work. Pool effort into making one competitive distro, call that Linux. Have your pet distro used by entire dozens of people, but keep it off the radar to prevent confusion. Your time would be better spent making the one distro better, but ah well.
i would like to encourage the use of the term Psionics for mind machine interface. Avionics are electronics related to aviation.
[OffTopic]
"A ZDNet article discusses advances in the translation of brain activity to electronic control being made at MIT"
Awkward sentence construction makes baby Jeebus cry.
A ZDNet article discusses MIT's advances in the translation of brain activity to electronic control.
See, it's more succinct and direct.
Here are the hints that you are using passive voice and other grammatical goofery: has been, being (verb), were.... Your past tense forms of "to be". Using active and direct verbs. Who did what to whom.
i'm a sys admin for a small company, and yes, most of my problems are user ignorance induced. But i figure that laser engineers don't need to have my level of computer skill, because they have me. They don't ask me to build lasers, i don't groan when they ask me to install a printer. i try to teach my lusers as i fix what ever problem they've caused, and sometimes it helps. Some users just assume computers are beyond them (mostly the ladies and older folks).
The first company to implement the following will make a bajillion dollars: Make computers work like video game consoles. You want ot surf the web, insert "Web Surf Disc". Time to write a book report? Insert "Text Editor Disk". Programs could work off ROM chips. Then make it so there are as FEW options as possible. Make it so the user can have one program running at a time. ROM chips will facilitate this nicely. If you copy a bit of text, you can save it to the central OS, then switch to Text Editor (closing Web Surfer), and paste it. Tightly control who can make software and hardware. Less is more. Get the software right before you ship it. Computers are far too powerful for the average luser. My mom doesn't need to be able to set virtual memory. She just wants to type up letters and surf the net a bit. If computers were a simple as toasters and DVD players, we would have a fraction of the problems. Such a system should also cost less, and sell more units.
You mean... buttons and dials. Oooooh. Very high tech. My computer has touch sensitive controls, a keyboard and a mouse.
{OffTopic}
i thought dinos were extinct. How could there be any that are new?
Carbon by VNV Nation (c) Totally stolen from some website a million points of light ascending to the sky monuments in darkness standing watch until the sun will rise screaming to an emptiness of how we deified ourselves with our hands over our eyes claiming all of creation what inspires in us this madness that out existence should be defined by a light that can't be seen by anyone what inspires in us this madness that out existence should be defined by a light that we can't see by a light that can't be seen a million points of light ascending to the sky monuments in darkness standing watch until the sun will rise I can't, I can't see this all as progress how did we come this far? when we see ourselves as deities claim nature for ourselves by our actions we betray the instincts in our race by our blindness and stupidity we kill everything we kill everything can someone see our self destruction? are we reminding ourselves that our existence is so delicate that without this light we are no more that without this light we've made we are no more a million points of light ascending to the sky monuments in darkness standing watch until the sun will rise we torch the earth until it bleeds rain ashes from the sky just to make a light that no one can see we cut the earth until it bleeds rain ashes from the sky just to make a light that no one can see just to make a light just to make a light we kill everything by our blindness and stupidity we kill everything and in a thousand years what will be our legacy a million lights that no one can see? a million points of light
Personally, i think the word is worthless. Everything is unique. Why point out what is true of EVERYTHING? "You're unique? So am i. So is everyone else and every electron and photon in the universe. Woopty fucking do. Can i have your autograph?"
It is a case of using the wrong damn word. Unique has a meaning, it doesn't not mean "special" or "unusual", it means "the only thing like itself in the universe". When we use the wrong word we weaken the language. We lose the DIFFERENCE between the word unique and words like "interesting, special, novel, innovative, significant". The word impact has been utterly buggered up by journalists.
Yes, languages change. i get that. However, this isn't a matter of fixing something that was broken, or simplifying something that was needlessly complex. When people say "ya'll" or "yous" they are correcting the problem created when we gave up "thou". i'm cool with that. In the case of impact and unique, people are using the wrong word out of ignorance, laziness or to hijack the significance/power of those words. Verbifying access works because we needed a word for "use my authority to open/control". People say impact when they mean effect because impact sounds important, powerful, shocking and unstoppable. Eventually, that use of impact will lose its effect (so to speak), and we've muddied the word for its original purpose. If every military conflict is a war, then eventually war will cease to be the scary word it should be.
"The World's Languages Are Fast Becoming Extinct"
Good.
Fewer languages means more people can talk to each other. That's good imho. It means the world is shrinking. If the world becomes small enough, maybe we'll have less reason to hate each other. Or at least we can hate each other for better reasons than not being able to understand each other.
What? Was i supposed to say something about hegemony, imperialism or monoculture? Sorry.
Then maybe the bad guys shouldn't hide behind civilians. Oh right... *we're* the bad guys. i get confused sometimes.
/former USAF Intel //ran the SERE and LoAC class
Compare warfare of today with that of WW2, at least the way the US fights. Compare carpet bombing to GPS guided cruise missiles. Compare our training our soldiers to know, obey and be held accountable to the LoAC, versus our enemies. Compare our efforts to develop less than lethal weapons to our enemy's use of bombs in marketplaces.
i was part of the mission planning team for Desert Strike I, under Clinton. They went out of their way to achieve the goals with minimal loss of life (civilian or otherwise). They hit radar sites at night to decrease the chance that anyone would be around. The missiles hit the radars which are some distance away from the control center (where there are people).
Read up on LoAC. If the enemy puts a bomb factory under an orphanage, it becomes a legit target. However, we generally still do everything we can to avoid hitting such targets. Our enemies use this to their advantage. What does the bank robber do to assure his escape? Take a hostage. The cop is obligated to save the hostage's life. Sometimes the our enemies put legit targets inside, under or close to things we are apprehensive about attacking. Evil is nothing, if not pragmatic.
When a maverick missile heads for a T-72, the target is THE TANK, not the people inside it. Our concern is not the man, but the AK 47 he's holding. This is our doctrine. Our goal is to win with minimal risk to ourselves and to innocents. We don't aim for body count. In fact, body count is a waste of effort, both in terms of the effort/return equation and in the moral victory sense. The more damage we do, the worse off we are.
It is easier to blame us for civilian deaths than to blame those who put the civilians at risk. Warfare asks the question: Are you willing to die and kill for your cause? In Desert Storm, the Iraqi army (largely conscripted) answered 'no'. Those who chose to surrender, didn't die. Some chose to fight, some couldn't surrender.
Remember the human shields? Where did Saddam put them? At orphanages? At hospitals? Apartment buildings? No, the put them at legitimate military targets. That's the difference between us and them. We have people willing to use their lives to save innocents, our enemies will exploit that compassion.
Imagine if our soldiers were as evil as you think they are. How would we fight? It would be so much easier to fire a tank round into a crowd to kill the ONE combatant cowering behind them. If there was in IED, we could just drop a daisy cutter on a mosque during services. But instead, we fight with tremendous restraint at a much greater risk and cost to ourselves.
Our soldiers are not ravening monsters, contrary to pop culture opinion. i'm not making the claim that our soldiers are all flawless. Some have committed terrible crimes, and they should be punished, as should their commanders (in chief). But i think it is wrong and intellectually dishonest to vilify our soldiers for partisan reasons. Our soldiers don't switch from good to evil based on who is president. Most of our soldiers are good people. Sometimes being good means doing bad things to bad people. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph...."
If you really care about the civilians, direct your ire toward the enemy. They chose to fight us, they chose to kill and endanger civilians. They could chose to fight honorably, but they know the would lose. They know from Vietnam that if they hide among innocents and drag out the conflict that we will eventually lose heart and leave.
This is where you change the subject to oil and religion....
Which rights did we lose under the Patriot Act? Since 9/11 the only change i've seen is that i have to get to the airport a little earlier. i'm not saying you're wrong, i'm just not sure what rights/liberties we lost, or that we actually lost any.
Security and Convenience are opposing forces. The security of robbers not freely entering my house costs me a bit of time to lock and unlock the door. i have to show a passport to cross borders, in exchange for my government supposedly having the ability to be selective about who enters my country.
"As nobody makes a business of kicking porcupines nobody makes a business of picking on a well armed and well defended people who defend their rights."
Did Al Qaeda kick a porcupine or a fainting sheep? i wonder why they didn't fear us, we've got longer and sharper quills than anyone. Did they know half the population would apologize/sympathize for them? Did they learn from our failure in Vietnam, that if you hide among the civilians and draw out the battle the US will flee? In any case, AQ scored a clear victory. We are afraid and we let them change our policy (the goal of terrorism). They found the perfect way to fight us. We can't hold a government accountable for 9/11 like we could with Pearl Harbor.
So who can we hold accountable? Apparently we only want to blame people for whom we have a name and address. It is easier to blame the cop for not being in the alley where/when you were mugged than the guy who actually mugged you and then melted into the crowd.
We address the symptom by hiring more cops and building more prisons. If we really wanted to win, we'd have to address the root causes, attack the disease, by hiring more teachers and building bigger schools. A similar approach for terrorism might have better results at a lower financial, political and spiritual cost. Use the stick on the guilty, offer carrots to the innocent to keep them from becoming guilty.
Here's a thought: If the game includes a Charisma or Appearance stat, like Vampire: Bloodlines or DDO, then you have to have a high CHR stat to have a good looking avatar. If you are a min/maxing weenie who wants to play the MMORPG equivalent to Red Sonja, you have to spend build points on CHR to have her be hot. So if you want to play the hot elf babe, you'd have sacrifice STR or CON or something else. That would force players to prioritize. Then have all NPC reactions based on CHR, if people play ugly characters (as a result of min/maxing), they will find that NPC won't want to help them. Just like real life.
Give me:
An engine like Neverwinter Nights, that allows me to create a space, script it, add NPCs, items, set rules, give it a story (if i want). Allow me to make this realm instantial (for single players or groups) or shared (everyone in one instance). Allow me to publish this realm. Allow players to rate each others realms. Popular realms get hosting. Popular designers get more space. Connect the realms through a system of portals, or a hub realm.
Do this and you'll have a WoW killer.
i could design this in greater detail for a few bucks or if i get to put my name on it.
Welcome to LIFE.
i aspire for the money so i CAN be like Mandela. i can't do much good for the world if i'm sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day. Give me a billion $ and i'll invest it such that i can have a safe/comfortable life and use the rest to help people. Hell, i could do a great deal of good with just a million. All it takes is imagination... and cash. If i had money like Bill, i'd be spending it on charities in the 10s of millions. The interest generated from one billion would change the world in meaningful ways forever.
Word.
As long as people use Wikipedia as a starting point, it's just fine. If you cite Wikipedia as your source, well, that's not going to play in any serious sort of product. If you are curious about something, look it up in Wikipedia. Use the sources referenced for any sort of research for school or work. Wikipedia is a fantastic source for sources.
Rotskied!
Code seems like something that should be under copyright, not a patent. It's text, not a toothbrush. You can protect your bit of code that causes output X with input Y. But you shouldn't be able to prevent others from coming up with something else that has output X with input Y. Imagine if all car companies had to pay Ford for having a car with a circular steering wheel. i don't know if Ford came up with the steering wheel or not, i'm using it as an example. You should be able to prevent someone from using YOUR unique steering wheel design without permission/compensation (for a reasonable amount of time).
IANAL, and i'm not claiming to know all and see all. This is just my amateur take.
That depends on which movie we're talking about. In the early movies, the laser swords (as Lucas calls them), are swung like heavy two handed swords. In subsequent movies the swords are treated as lighter and faster foils or one handed swords, to speed up the action. More and faster movement is MORE!
It went from "woom... kishhhh! woom woom.... kishhhh!"
To: "kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh kissh!"
We could say that the handles are what determines the weight/speed of the saber, but it seems that the blades themselves, being plamsa trapped in a shield/energy field might have it's weight/speed determined by some sort of magnetic resistance. Insert technobabble here.
Well, what happens when someone with a weak heart/or a healthy heart is shot with an assault rifle?
The article makes some very dishonest and paranoid statements.
i'll grant that cops are a little trigger happy on the tasers, but that might be a matter of adjusting our laws and training. It might also be due to the fact that the media focuses on covering bad news. Where are all the stories of cops using tasers to bring down violent criminals without killing them? The slope isn't always slippery. If i had to choose between feeling a pain ray or feeling a bullet, i'll take the pain ray. Which would you prefer, spraying hot lead down a crowded street to shoot at the one or two hostiles firing from behind civilians or to blast the crowd with a pain ray?
If you were the one pulling the trigger, would you rather cut people in half with a 50 cal or zap them with a pain ray?
Just because a tool can be used for evil, doesn't mean it always will be, or that it eventually will. If it does, you deal with such cases individually. This system will save lives, and likely it will save the lives of our soldiers and civilians. If we teach them well and punish abuses, the predicted problems will be few and far between. While we can still enjoy the advantages of not hosing down a crowd of families to get the bad guys cowering behind them.