"Taiwan having nuclear weapons is one of the things that would cause the China to attack [wikipedia.org]. "
Waiting until your opponent to obtain nuclear weapons, and then launching your attack because he now possesses the means to annihilate you would be highly irrational. Even if your opponent only possesses enough nukes to hit your dozen largest cities that's a pretty big downside to attacking them.
Most rational Americans would refrain from launching an invasion of North Korea even if they knew that North Korea had just 1 nuke, and that nuke could only be used against South Korea. Ousting a dictator may be a nice thing to do but not over the bodies of a million dead South Koreans.
Does the PRC leadership seriously believe that their population would be willing to suffer tens of millions of dead and ruining their economy for the purpose of conquering Taiwan? I doubt it. They may talk the talk, but they are not so insane as to risk their positions of privilege on such a stupid undertaking.
>Hardly "Conservative" principles, which are all about security, surveillance and greater police powers.
Security, surveillance, and greater police powers would be fascist, not conservative. Conservatism is generally associated with small government and individual liberty.
Is this Alaskan Village totally eco-friendly, using solar panels, dogsleds and paddled kayaks for all their energy needs? Or do at least some of the villagers consume fossil fuels (either directly by burning them in their gasoline/diesel engines or oil furnaces, or indirectly by consuming electricity generated from coal or buying bananas transported from the tropics on jet planes)? If they do use fossil fuels then they should sue themselves...
Human beings identify themselves with a "tribe" and disagree with/fight other tribes. Examples might be Sunni tribe versus Shiite, French versus German, etc. To stop human beings from fighting wars with each other, you need to get them to see themselves as part of the "humanity" tribe. The best way to get that to happen is to create a non-human threat to all humanity which will unite us all against it.
An earth killing asteroid will suffice (for a while), an alien invasion, or... an army of robots?:)
At $15/month, WoW subscription costs about $.50/day. Expansion for $40 every 2 years works out to another $.06 per day, so say $0.56 per day total.
Guild Wars cost is about $40 to buy an expansion every 6 months, or about $0.25/day.
So, the difference in dollar cost between the 2 games is about $0.30/day. I would argue that if that amount of money is a more significant factor to you than which game you enjoy playing more, then you should play neither and instead spend the time earning more money.:)
I'm not an expert on religion, but I've heard that there are some Christians who believe in some sort of apocalyptic scenario in which mankind is wiped out, Christ returns to bring the "saved" to heaven and the rest are left behind to go to hell.
So I'm not sure why you think those who claim to be Islamist fundamentalist (which is a state of mind, and IMHO impossible to verify) are somehow less trustworthy than those who claim to be Christian fundamentalists. It was those who claimed to be Christians, after all, who are the only people in all of human history to have deliberately used nuclear weapons on civilian targets.
If Iranians launched a nuclear missile at Tel-Aviv then they are screwed regardless of whether the nuke "misfires" or not. As soon as Israel perceived that Iran was actively trying to annihilate them with nukes there would be a massive Israeli nuclear response that would no doubt leave millions of Iranians dead, and most of the rest as refugees from their burning and radioactive cities.
Or do you think that Israel would just sit there and give Iran a second shot?
The whole scenario is unlikely for the same reason that the USSR and the U.S. never had a nuclear exchange: there is no winner in nuclear war. Does nobody remember "War Games"? The way you win is by not playing...
Of course Iran cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, as they have no experience with them and as a result might misuse them. Only a country that has had the experience of deliberately using nuclear weapons to target and destroy civilian populations has the knowledge necessary to use them appropriately.
You don't need a payphone to provide anonymous information the next day. Just post it as "AC" on slashdot.:)
Given the right in the U.S. legal system for the accused to confront his accuser, I'm not sure that anonymous tips would be that helpful to the prosecution.
If you're afraid of an armed gang showing up at your house sometime in the distant future during a trial, then I don't think you're a candidate for showing the courage to act against the armed gang that is 100 feet away beating someone up right now. I think that you're far more likely to mind your own business entirely, and rationalize the victim of the violence as probably just another thug or prostitute getting what he/she deserves.
So you see someone getting violently attacked. If your number one concern is to help the victim ASAP, then I would think that given the choice between A) whipping out your cellphone and dialing 911 to summon help, or B) looking for a payphone, running to it, (possibly asking whoever is using phone to hang up for an emergency), and dialing 911, I would think that you would choose option A.
Why would you be concerned about possibly getting "roped into the case" when someone's life is in jeopardy?
The expression "You can't please all of the people all of the time" is correct. In a population of 6+ billion, you will always find some people who will hate you for something you say, do, believe, or don't say, don't do, or don't believe.
However, I believe the set of people who will hate you (enough to want to kill random members of your society) for perceiving you to be guilty of "rampant consumerism" is much smaller than the set who will hate you for having soldiers in your armed forces killing/raping/torturing members of their society. So, when choosing a course of action I'd recommend taking into account just how many people it may utterly piss off.
U.S. Federal Prosecutors serve "at the pleasure of the President". If he thinks that the prosecutors aren't investigating the opposition aggressively enough, he can fire them and appoint replacements who will. And it's all legal.
I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right, but those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Y'all might want to take out a 0 point refi and upgrade to at least a wood frame...:)
Good gameplay requires that the player be presented with interesting choices. If a tank character can kill a hundred mobs at a time with no risk by just doing the same routine over and over, then that's not interesting. I can understand why the developers would want to fix that.
What I can't understand is why professional game designers would create such a system in the first place. Since they create the rules, it's hard to fathom how they would be unable to see how their game system would work out once players min/max their characters. Unless, the game designers just threw the game together without thinking ahead...
I think that the term "near miss" is accurate. The noun used is "miss", which is correct as the planes did miss each other. The adjective "near" indicates that they did not miss each other by a great distance. Using the noun "hit" would be an inaccurate description of the incident, as a hit did not occur.
To call the incident a "near miss" is not saying "the planes nearly missed" which is using an adverb and verb rather than adjective and noun.
A fundamental security principle with client/server architectures is that the client should never be trusted. That is, the client is "the enemy".
Given that the passport document is in the hands of an untrustworthy source, it seems that placing trust in the passport is a bad thing, regardless of what information is encoded and how it is stored in the passort. If I put the name "George W. Bush" in my forged passport, stored with my RFID encoded image, iris scan, and fingerprints (which I would have no difficulty obtaining), am I now trusted to be GWB?
If you're going to have biometric scanners, why not lookup the information in a networked database to determine who the person is, regardless of what piece of paper they are carrying?
They really need some "wow" to boost the bottom line this year. I'm sure that there was pressure on Blizzard to get this door for the holiday buying season.
Was I doing it wrong? I put my monitor 10 feet outside my window (as far as the cable would reach), ran the sim, then started shooting with my.22 from the windowsill. Was I supposed to use a special bulletproof monitor? Darn these realistic sims can be expensive!
Politicians make lots of promises. Promises are cheap ways to buy votes.
The more relevant question would be: How many countries have reduced their emissions over the last 1, 3, and 5 years? That indicates a real commitment, rather than just paying lip service to sway the gullible.
Look at Canada, for example. It signed. But Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have been growing every year. Canadians are not tightening their belts in order to reduce CO2 emissions. That would require sacrifice.
DINGO: Oh, wicked, bad, naughty, evil Zoot! Oh, she is a naughty
person, and she must pay the penalty -- and here in Castle
Anthrax, we have but one punishment for setting alight the
grail-shaped beacon. You must tie her down on a bed and spank her!
GIRLS: A spanking! A spanking!
DINGO: You must spank her well. And after you have spanked her,
you may deal with her as you like. And then, spank me.
VARIOUS GIRLS: And spank me. And me. And me.
DINGO: Yes, yes, you must give us all a good spanking!
Why don't they have a 2005 target? Why did they set the implementation date so far into the future? If reducing CO2 emissions is important, shouldn't those concerned start reducing today?
The answer, of course, is that many of the politicians who have signed on to Kyoto have done so for short term political gain. It makes everyone feel good that something is being done, while they don't actually have to do anything painful.
If push comes to shove and people are actually forced to curtail their lifestyle in 2012 in order to comply with the protocol, then you will see those people dropping out of it. After all, there are no penalties for dropping out. So, if you have to choose between spending billions of dollars to reduce C02 production, or buy CO2 credits from Russia for billions of dollars, or drop out and keep your money, which one will the voters choose?
The only way that Kyoto will be complied with is if technology improves (e.g. more fuel efficient vehicles and energy production) to the point where painful choices are not required. And that improvement will happen regardless of Kyoto.
Conrad and Bean? Never heard of them.
on
Apollo 12 at 35
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Apollo 12 was unforunately sandwiched between two much more famous missions: 11 and 13. I will never remember the names of those on 12, but names like Armstrong, Aldrin, and Hanks I will never forget.
Slashdot Mirror
"Taiwan having nuclear weapons is one of the things that would cause the China to attack [wikipedia.org]. "
Waiting until your opponent to obtain nuclear weapons, and then launching your attack because he now possesses the means to annihilate you would be highly irrational. Even if your opponent only possesses enough nukes to hit your dozen largest cities that's a pretty big downside to attacking them.
Most rational Americans would refrain from launching an invasion of North Korea even if they knew that North Korea had just 1 nuke, and that nuke could only be used against South Korea. Ousting a dictator may be a nice thing to do but not over the bodies of a million dead South Koreans.
Does the PRC leadership seriously believe that their population would be willing to suffer tens of millions of dead and ruining their economy for the purpose of conquering Taiwan? I doubt it. They may talk the talk, but they are not so insane as to risk their positions of privilege on such a stupid undertaking.
1. Get the government to grant you a monopoly on providing communications service.
2. Charge high fees to your (trapped) customers.
3. Profit!
Free (or cheap) Wifi has to be eliminated as part of step #1.
>Hardly "Conservative" principles, which are all about security, surveillance and greater police powers. Security, surveillance, and greater police powers would be fascist, not conservative. Conservatism is generally associated with small government and individual liberty.
Is this Alaskan Village totally eco-friendly, using solar panels, dogsleds and paddled kayaks for all their energy needs? Or do at least some of the villagers consume fossil fuels (either directly by burning them in their gasoline/diesel engines or oil furnaces, or indirectly by consuming electricity generated from coal or buying bananas transported from the tropics on jet planes)? If they do use fossil fuels then they should sue themselves...
Human beings identify themselves with a "tribe" and disagree with/fight other tribes. Examples might be Sunni tribe versus Shiite, French versus German, etc. To stop human beings from fighting wars with each other, you need to get them to see themselves as part of the "humanity" tribe. The best way to get that to happen is to create a non-human threat to all humanity which will unite us all against it.
:)
An earth killing asteroid will suffice (for a while), an alien invasion, or... an army of robots?
Pope John Paul forgave Galileo for what exactly? Forgave him for being unjustly persecuted and placed under arrest by the Catholic Church?
It would seem to me it is the Church that needs to ask for forgiveness from Galileo, not give it.
At $15/month, WoW subscription costs about $.50/day. Expansion for $40 every 2 years works out to another $.06 per day, so say $0.56 per day total.
:)
Guild Wars cost is about $40 to buy an expansion every 6 months, or about $0.25/day.
So, the difference in dollar cost between the 2 games is about $0.30/day. I would argue that if that amount of money is a more significant factor to you than which game you enjoy playing more, then you should play neither and instead spend the time earning more money.
I'm not an expert on religion, but I've heard that there are some Christians who believe in some sort of apocalyptic scenario in which mankind is wiped out, Christ returns to bring the "saved" to heaven and the rest are left behind to go to hell. So I'm not sure why you think those who claim to be Islamist fundamentalist (which is a state of mind, and IMHO impossible to verify) are somehow less trustworthy than those who claim to be Christian fundamentalists. It was those who claimed to be Christians, after all, who are the only people in all of human history to have deliberately used nuclear weapons on civilian targets.
If Iranians launched a nuclear missile at Tel-Aviv then they are screwed regardless of whether the nuke "misfires" or not. As soon as Israel perceived that Iran was actively trying to annihilate them with nukes there would be a massive Israeli nuclear response that would no doubt leave millions of Iranians dead, and most of the rest as refugees from their burning and radioactive cities.
Or do you think that Israel would just sit there and give Iran a second shot?
The whole scenario is unlikely for the same reason that the USSR and the U.S. never had a nuclear exchange: there is no winner in nuclear war. Does nobody remember "War Games"? The way you win is by not playing...
Of course Iran cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, as they have no experience with them and as a result might misuse them. Only a country that has had the experience of deliberately using nuclear weapons to target and destroy civilian populations has the knowledge necessary to use them appropriately.
You don't need a payphone to provide anonymous information the next day. Just post it as "AC" on slashdot. :)
Given the right in the U.S. legal system for the accused to confront his accuser, I'm not sure that anonymous tips would be that helpful to the prosecution.
If you're afraid of an armed gang showing up at your house sometime in the distant future during a trial, then I don't think you're a candidate for showing the courage to act against the armed gang that is 100 feet away beating someone up right now. I think that you're far more likely to mind your own business entirely, and rationalize the victim of the violence as probably just another thug or prostitute getting what he/she deserves.
So you see someone getting violently attacked. If your number one concern is to help the victim ASAP, then I would think that given the choice between A) whipping out your cellphone and dialing 911 to summon help, or B) looking for a payphone, running to it, (possibly asking whoever is using phone to hang up for an emergency), and dialing 911, I would think that you would choose option A.
Why would you be concerned about possibly getting "roped into the case" when someone's life is in jeopardy?
The expression "You can't please all of the people all of the time" is correct. In a population of 6+ billion, you will always find some people who will hate you for something you say, do, believe, or don't say, don't do, or don't believe.
However, I believe the set of people who will hate you (enough to want to kill random members of your society) for perceiving you to be guilty of "rampant consumerism" is much smaller than the set who will hate you for having soldiers in your armed forces killing/raping/torturing members of their society. So, when choosing a course of action I'd recommend taking into account just how many people it may utterly piss off.
U.S. Federal Prosecutors serve "at the pleasure of the President". If he thinks that the prosecutors aren't investigating the opposition aggressively enough, he can fire them and appoint replacements who will. And it's all legal.
:)
I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right, but those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Y'all might want to take out a 0 point refi and upgrade to at least a wood frame...
Good gameplay requires that the player be presented with interesting choices. If a tank character can kill a hundred mobs at a time with no risk by just doing the same routine over and over, then that's not interesting. I can understand why the developers would want to fix that. What I can't understand is why professional game designers would create such a system in the first place. Since they create the rules, it's hard to fathom how they would be unable to see how their game system would work out once players min/max their characters. Unless, the game designers just threw the game together without thinking ahead...
Sometimes the pilots are not quite as interested in safely reaching the destination as the passengers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/02/blackwater.afghan.crash/
I think that the term "near miss" is accurate. The noun used is "miss", which is correct as the planes did miss each other. The adjective "near" indicates that they did not miss each other by a great distance. Using the noun "hit" would be an inaccurate description of the incident, as a hit did not occur. To call the incident a "near miss" is not saying "the planes nearly missed" which is using an adverb and verb rather than adjective and noun.
Given that the passport document is in the hands of an untrustworthy source, it seems that placing trust in the passport is a bad thing, regardless of what information is encoded and how it is stored in the passort. If I put the name "George W. Bush" in my forged passport, stored with my RFID encoded image, iris scan, and fingerprints (which I would have no difficulty obtaining), am I now trusted to be GWB?
If you're going to have biometric scanners, why not lookup the information in a networked database to determine who the person is, regardless of what piece of paper they are carrying?
Vivendi Universal Games lost a lot of money last year, and the year before, and so on. See http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/14/news_61073 51.html.
They really need some "wow" to boost the bottom line this year. I'm sure that there was pressure on Blizzard to get this door for the holiday buying season.
Was I doing it wrong? I put my monitor 10 feet outside my window (as far as the cable would reach), ran the sim, then started shooting with my .22 from the windowsill. Was I supposed to use a special bulletproof monitor? Darn these realistic sims can be expensive!
Politicians make lots of promises. Promises are cheap ways to buy votes.
The more relevant question would be: How many countries have reduced their emissions over the last 1, 3, and 5 years? That indicates a real commitment, rather than just paying lip service to sway the gullible.
Look at Canada, for example. It signed. But Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have been growing every year. Canadians are not tightening their belts in order to reduce CO2 emissions. That would require sacrifice.
GIRLS: A spanking! A spanking!
DINGO: You must spank her well. And after you have spanked her, you may deal with her as you like. And then, spank me.
VARIOUS GIRLS: And spank me. And me. And me.
DINGO: Yes, yes, you must give us all a good spanking!
GIRLS: A spanking! A spanking!
DINGO: And after the spanking, the oral sex.
GIRLS: Oral sex! Oral sex!
GALAHAD: Well, I could stay a BIT longer.
Why don't they have a 2005 target? Why did they set the implementation date so far into the future? If reducing CO2 emissions is important, shouldn't those concerned start reducing today?
The answer, of course, is that many of the politicians who have signed on to Kyoto have done so for short term political gain. It makes everyone feel good that something is being done, while they don't actually have to do anything painful.
If push comes to shove and people are actually forced to curtail their lifestyle in 2012 in order to comply with the protocol, then you will see those people dropping out of it. After all, there are no penalties for dropping out. So, if you have to choose between spending billions of dollars to reduce C02 production, or buy CO2 credits from Russia for billions of dollars, or drop out and keep your money, which one will the voters choose?
The only way that Kyoto will be complied with is if technology improves (e.g. more fuel efficient vehicles and energy production) to the point where painful choices are not required. And that improvement will happen regardless of Kyoto.
Apollo 12 was unforunately sandwiched between two much more famous missions: 11 and 13. I will never remember the names of those on 12, but names like Armstrong, Aldrin, and Hanks I will never forget.