I think we decided some time ago that "just following orders" wasn't a defense, though. We don't give parasites that eventually kill their hosts a free pass; we should afford no more sympathy to the bureaucrats who trade their convenience for our freedoms. Sure, the bureaucrats in question might not think they are doing harm; neither does an elephant who steps on a mouse. But the mouse is just as dead, regardless of intent. In the same vein, no snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche, but the avalanche victims are just as dead. In your example, maybe they're not totalitarian monsters, but that shouldn't save them from being treated as monsters if the results are the same.
Who gets to decide "fair"? The person doing the harming, or the person harmed?
As for the "thin blue line"... I don't buy it for one second. Good cops who knowingly side with bad cops ARE bad cops. A good cop should treat a bad cop as "you're the asshole that gets me shot at" and go out of his way to burn down the bad cop, but they don't. They pull this "blue brotherhood" crap, conspire to suppress evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses (yes, it happens in the U.S. New Orleans, Chicago, and New York have all had systemic problems with witnesses against rogue cops being murdered by other cops). In so doing, they are no longer cops; they're thugs with badges. They ARE the problem, because they should know better, and took a solemn oath to BE better.
Cops won't change as long as they view themselves as a paramilitary elite, as opposed to citizens protecting citizens. "There's wolves, sheep and sheepdogs", as their saying goes. The function of sheep is to be herded and fleeced at the convenience of the sheepdogs, not the wolves. I have acquaintances in the San Jose police and Santa Clara sheriff's office (uniformed officers, not clerks) and they all have this look-down-their-nose attitudes towards civilians. Sheep indeed. Well, the self-styled "sheepdogs" won't become the best force they can unless they get their asses thoroughly kicked for NOT being the best force they can... by the "sheep".
And if the "sheepdogs" violently suppress the "sheep" when the sheep can't tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf... it's time to eliminate the "sheepdogs". Vigilantism, in its proper definition, arises when the protectors fail, or are themselves the criminals.
"Trained to fight?" No, most police are not trained to "fight". They're trained to shoot at the slightest provocation (though not well), trained to taze, trained to kill barking dogs at the wrong address, and they're trained to call in half the department on any excuse. Mano a mano, they're not much better than anyone else. A hardened street thug who is used to real combat, who from experience knows how to endure a boot to the skull or a knife-cut and keep going anyway, will chew up and spit out the average cop in a straight-up fight.
Cops rely upon intimidation and the ability to bring disproportionate force. If you're not impressed by a badge, if you realize that a cop's gun is no different than a citizen's, and if the cop can't bring in overwhelming force, they're meat and they know it. Why do you think they're trying to eliminate the ability of ANY citizen, honest or not, to resist the whims of ANY cop, honest or not?
Larger wars include archery, slingers (glorified tennis balls), javelins. Archery rules specify 30-pound bows maximum, padded bird blunts, arrow shafts covered with fiber tape to prevent jagged points if they break (some kingdoms disallow wooden shafts altogether and require fiberglass, because fiberglass makes a mushy rather than pointed shape when it breaks), all helms required to have no single opening that you can fit a 1/4" dowel through, no neck-exposure allowed. West-Caid war (California vs. Arizona, etc.) was a great one for that. I think they do that at Pennsic (New England vs. the Rust Belt, battle cry is "Loser gets Pittsburg!"), and Pennsic draws many thousands of fighters annually. It's quite a spectacle.
All of the above info is over a decade stale. Things may have changed, then again, maybe not. I don't know if the SCA still includes archery in wars (it was never universal; wars were announced in advance whether there were any scenarios including archery), but archery was a great way to get inexpensively into SCA war-combat. An archer needed only light body armor and a helm that was the equal of the heavy fighters. Rules are (were?) that an archer was automatically considered dead if a heavy fighter comes within ten feet, which is a good thing, as SCA melee combat is full-power full-speed. You are hitting your opponent as just as hard as your strength allows (the blow has to be hard enough to have caused injury with a real steel weapon against period armor, so such a hit on a lightly armored combatant would certainly break bones, even with SCA rattan weapons); nobody wanted to chance that a heavy would misidentify a light fighter as another heavy through limited visibility and give a full-power hit instead of a token "love tap". However, getting within ten feet isn't easy. Many an archer has happily led a heavy fighter a merry chase under the blazing sun, taunting all the way... to deal with that exercise in frustration, some fighters carried "darts" (small javelins) to smack down cocky archers with.
Good times. Add where else can you hire an entire mercenary company for a keg of home-brew?
Speaking as an ex-"reenactor" (Society for Creative Anachronism, http://www.sca.org/ I can offer the following firsthand observations:
1. The quality of fitting to the individual is probably the single most important factor in how burdensome a given suit of armor is, from the point of view of the ability to move quickly. Leggings are by far the hardest to fit correctly; they also tend to shift around the most in response to movement, so a good fitting can become a bad fitting very quickly.
2. In melee combat, the legs are hit far more often than any target other than the head. Leg armor may be encumbering, but when it comes to hand to hand combat you can't do without it.
3. When faced with archers, an unshielded fighter takes it in the arms and torso more than anywhere else.
4. Breathing difficulties are usually caused by poor ventilation in a closed-face helm, or a side effect of heat. Which brings us to:
5. Overheating is what is going to exhaust you. You're wearing not just armor, but heavy padding as well. The number one factor an SCA medic sees at a large battle is overwhelmingly heat exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration.
The Commonwealth has no real ability to project power. If Australia were invaded, no other Commonwealth nation has the firepower, the assets, the logistics train, or the economic ability to undertake such a huge and difficult mission. Even the United States, with its unquestioned dominance of the seas and the best logistics operations in the world, takes months to years to build up or withdraw military forces on that scale, and as current budgetary crises show, difficulty sustaining the expense. Aircraft carriers and amphibious battle groups are the only means of quickly moving in enough firepower to deter and defeat a major invasion, and aircraft carriers require a supply chain that needs protection the whole way.
Have a look at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service... it pretty much tells the tale. If you add up the tonnage of every other operational aircraft carrier in the world (which maps well to the number of aircraft they sustain), that's still less than 25% of the US capability. And that doesn't even take into account operational expertise
Commonwealth military power consists of domestic defense (land-based air forces, conventional armies) and small expeditionary forces (special forces and sufficient logistics to supply those small special forces groups). Even Great Britain, by a huge margin the most powerful of the Commonwealth nations, has a limited ability to forward-deploy air power and ground troops, and exactly one aircraft carrier; no other Commonwealth nation has even one. Consider the Falklands war. Great Britain had a whole lot more trouble than many people seem to believe, and that was against a country with essentially a third-world army, an air force of a dozen aircraft, and a handful of French-built Exocet missiles. Great Britain's navy is in worse condition now than it was then, and Australia's heavyweight neighbors are much more militarily powerful than Argentina's.
Or to restate, just how would the Commonwealth be able to get its armies and the (literally) millions of tons of equipment and supplies needed to Australia? Quantas? UPS?
There are excellent reasons why Australia has such a hunger for FA-18s and is waiting so eagerly for F-35s. Those aircraft are all that would stand between Darwin and Jakarta if things went badly.
That, and the US navy.
The US, if it really needed to, could have half a thousand first-rate combat aircraft, ten thousand combat-ready Marines, a full armored division, and a couple hundred aircraft-deployed nuclear weapons anywhere in the world within two weeks. This, more than anything else, is the core of US military strength; not the missiles, not the AIr Force (which must operate from land bases) and not the regular land Army. The US is a naval power; indeed, it is the only naval power with a global capability.
All nationalism aside, those are the facts. Waving Australian flags and burning American flags doesn't change that. 50 years from now, who knows what things will be like, but today, that's stark reality.
See Australia, like Canada, is in the fortunate position of having vast untapped natural resource reserves and very low populations compared to their land areas. Therefore these are two countries that will always have a future - provided they continue with relatively stable governments, avoid drowning in debt, and avoid getting invaded. For now their currencies are a shelter.
In other words, the value of Australia and Canada have nothing to do with the people in it, just the dirt under their feet? Is that what you're saying?
Let me know how you're doing when Indonesia realizes it has ten times Australia's population, or China realizes it has fifty times Australia's population, and wants liebestraum and those untapped resources. You may whine about Americans now, but you've got a much bigger problem on your doorstep. Tell me what history teaches happens to nations that are resource-rich but underpopulated, and who don't have (or actively alienate) powerful allies.
Nope, Germany can more than make up for all of that.
Maybe they can, but should they? Will they? It's becoming a real political football in Germany (and other countries like Finland). Some are already wondering how much longer the Eurozone is going to last.
Could it be that doing business in Australia is more expensive than doing business in the U.S.?
Could it be that the Australian government's asinine knuckle-dragging policies with regard to content, censorship and taxation puts an increased burden on content providers?
Could it be that geography plays a role in increasing the price of infrastructure, both in obtaining equipment and in servicing a country the size of the United States but with 1/15th the population?
Could it be that licensing is more expensive in Australia due to the legal environment and actions of Australian IP-holding companies and individuals?
Could it be that Australian currency values and exchange rates vary over time?
Nah. Just mindlessly jump on the Apple-hater bandwagon and demand that the rest of the world subsidize Australia. It's easier, and it's what the mob is doing.
If that's the purpose... the Anti-American League... let 'em finance themselves and do so from outside the country.
I don't mean that 100% sarcastically perhaps 99%. I do see the logic of having a counterweight to the only superpower. But we can't be expected to be the ones that pay for it or voluntarily yield any sovereignty to them, if that's the case.
I also don't see the logic of foreign aid to countries and peoples who despise us. Haters gonna hate, so why bother helping if the helping hand is going to be spat upon?
Can someone please explain why the U.S. should host, subsidize, or be a member of the U.N. given its current condition and activities? In all seriousness, I can think of no reason whatsoever.
It's a system with anonymity (or at least semi-anonymity) and the ability to disguise stacking the deck, either for or against a given product. Of COURSE people are going to try to game it.
Imagine if we spent all the money from the war on space exploration. We'd all be able to leave this planet and not have to worry about what happens back on Earth.
...in which case the wars would be on Mars, the Moon, and Gliese 581d. The stage changes, but the song remains the same.
1. It exists because of spammers. Vent your anger at the spammers, not Blizzard.
2. It exists because spamming for gold sales works (otherwise people wouldn't bother). Vent your anger at gold buyers, not Blizzard.
3. It exists because of guild-looters (people who join guilds, strip the guild vault, and sell the profits). Yes, guilds should manage themselves better; trusting people on the Internet without direct experience to demonstrate that trustworthiness is idiocy. But a looted guild bank generates a lot of direct costs to Blizzard (GM tickets) and indirect costs (people who unsubscribe because of the negative feelings this gives about the game).
4. Freeloaders don't get a vote. Someone on a trial account isn't contributing anything; the purpose is to let the person decide if they want to get the privileges that others pay for (and in the process contribute in a positive way to the multiplayer environment). Trial accounts aren't for YOU, they're for Blizzard as a sales tool. Paid accounts ARE for your benefit (as well as Blizzard's). You're just being given first-hand information (for free) on whether you'd enjoy the game.
Typical "entitlement" attitude. Nobody is "entitled" to free games. Be glad you're being given anything, because you're not owed anything. Think games should be free? Write and host your own, and learn firsthand about just how badly people behave even when what they're being handed is free.
So how long will it be before some pariah-state with primitive space capability, in yet another fit of childish Beloved Leader temper-tantrum-class behavior, launches a canister of one-inch aluminum bearings into crowded orbits to create orbital minefields to destroy satellites and otherwise be a pain in the ass?
Yes, that would be without question an act of war, just like mining sea lanes in international waters would be. Does anyone think that would stop a Beloved Leader from doing it if he could use the war-drums to cling to power?
But if the best code is 9991, then a thief should try it first, which would make it not the best code, which would make something else the best code, which would make some other code the one thieves would try first, which...
But I surely cannot choose the wine in front of me.
Once you have been infected with ANY malware capable of installing code, you're a fool to treat it any way other than requiring a nuke-and-pave. There is just no way of knowing what rootkits have been installed, what re-infection vectors have been put in place, or whether you've gotten everything. Sure, an antivirus product's cleaning function will probably get most of it. Maybe all of it. But there's no way to be sure, short of a full wipe.
So functionally, there really isn't any difference between an infection from this or any other download-capable malware. This one just requires what you really needed to do in the case of an infection anyway.
Rommel lost in North Africa because his supply lines were severely curtailed. He had great trouble getting fuel, food and munitions because of British control of Malta, from which they did an excellent job of intercepting and destroying supply shipping. Even so, Rommel almost made it to Cairo. Whenever the two sides met, if Rommel was well-supplied the Allies had their butts handed to them. The campaign in North Africa was won by the Allies' ability to maintain a logistics structure and to prevent Rommel from doing the same; the battlefield itself always belonged to Rommel whenever he had any ability to fight at all.
It wasn't about "happiness"; the respect-component from his own troops led to much better morale. Rommel's men liked him and would fight harder, hold the lines under greater pressure, etc. The same was not as true on the Allied side; in fact, the higher levels of British command actually considered it a problem that their own men respected Rommel more than they respected their own Montgomery (but then, Montgomery wasn't well-liked by anyone. Excellent logistician, poor field commander, couldn't get along with anyone especially the Yankees). It also manifested in the way each side treated the others' prisoners. Many more captured soldiers (on both sides) went home after the war than would have otherwise if the level of respect and the level of discipline that came with it had not been in place.
Personally, I'm just as glad he lost though.
And at this point, we're pretty thoroughly off-topic.:) Though the original point remains: if our American rulers and senior TSA/DHS management had to endure on a daily basis what they were shoving down the throats of the common man, things would change mighty fast. (Though what creep would want to feel up Nancy Pelosi, I cannot and do not want to imagine).
Precisely. If every senator and congressthing and DHS/TSA employee (right up to the department heads) were required to undergo full "enhanced screening" including grope and scan every single time they entered or exited their offices, I think they might sing a different tune. Hell, we should make a cable TV channel: all politician pat-downs, all the time, where the viewers on an Internet site vote for who gets a strip search and who gets a scan and who has to go back and do it all again. As it is, the privileged few don't have to put up with what they're forcing everyone else to submit to.
During World War II, in North Africa, the German General Erwin Rommel ate the exact same rations and amounts as his men, walked when they walked, etc. That way he knew fist-hand what he was requiring of them. He also demanded that his soldiery behave well when they came into contact with the locals. He had more respect from his men AND the men of the opposing armies than just about any other military figure. Our beloved leaders need to learn more lessons from Rommel, and fewer lessons from Heydrich.
Somebody's gotta do it, they don't have to like it (and I doubt they do), it's not their fault, they need to feed the kids/themselves.
I disagree. The same argument is used for "enhanced interrogators", concentration camp guards and people who extract gold fillings from the pile of skulls. "I needed a job" does not justify "...so I joined the Gestapo, big deal, get off my back."
Yeah, you'll find someone to fill the job. Every society has bottom-feeders, petty little jerks who get off on having a little power over others, and people who just don't give a damn. I'm certainly not going to pretend they warrant respect; they do not. I don't think they do either, so they settle for "oderint dum metuant". Impotent personalities and badges do not mix well, but you can certainly build an internal political police force out of that mix.
When you join the TSA, you know damned well what you're being expected to do to your countrymen. It IS their fault, and to hell with their kids.
Also, the "fix" might be a precedent for other radiation cases which are factually bad (the nonsense about cell phone and WiFi emissions causing cancer, headaches and hippie-ism).
I have a very hard time being sympathetic to TSA agents, but I want this one handled right. Not for the sake of the brownshirts, but because of the potential for bad science. The TSA is already bad policy; let's not compound bad policy with bad science.
You need to realize that the state of mind of the defendant is often the entire point of a case and is the difference between "guilty" and "innocent" (the fancy Latin term is mens rea). So if you act like a dick in court or in the actions surrounding the allegation, you may, in FACT, be convicting yourself by demonstrating your state of mind. The shock jocks demonstrated by their actions just what their state of mind was: malicious, reckless, and unrepentant. From a very real, legally defensible, well-established principle, their may well have pushed the likelihood of their guilt from "not enough proof" to "sufficient proof".
In other words, yes, they got a fair trail, because their behavior demonstrated the facts of the case. If someone is unlikeable, acts like an asshole, etc., is it more or less likely that person acted with malicious intent in the matter at hand? And is it more or less likely that the judge, with his authority to decide upon admissibility of evidence, to approve or deny motions by the lawyers involved, and discretion to decide sentencing, is going to throw the book at an asshole or Mother Teresa?
Today's lesson: don't be a dick. As far as the trial and its outcome is concerned, you'd BETTER be a likeable defendant.
Slashdot Mirror
No villain believes they are a villain.
I think we decided some time ago that "just following orders" wasn't a defense, though. We don't give parasites that eventually kill their hosts a free pass; we should afford no more sympathy to the bureaucrats who trade their convenience for our freedoms. Sure, the bureaucrats in question might not think they are doing harm; neither does an elephant who steps on a mouse. But the mouse is just as dead, regardless of intent. In the same vein, no snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche, but the avalanche victims are just as dead. In your example, maybe they're not totalitarian monsters, but that shouldn't save them from being treated as monsters if the results are the same.
Who gets to decide "fair"? The person doing the harming, or the person harmed?
As for the "thin blue line"... I don't buy it for one second. Good cops who knowingly side with bad cops ARE bad cops. A good cop should treat a bad cop as "you're the asshole that gets me shot at" and go out of his way to burn down the bad cop, but they don't. They pull this "blue brotherhood" crap, conspire to suppress evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses (yes, it happens in the U.S. New Orleans, Chicago, and New York have all had systemic problems with witnesses against rogue cops being murdered by other cops). In so doing, they are no longer cops; they're thugs with badges. They ARE the problem, because they should know better, and took a solemn oath to BE better.
Cops won't change as long as they view themselves as a paramilitary elite, as opposed to citizens protecting citizens. "There's wolves, sheep and sheepdogs", as their saying goes. The function of sheep is to be herded and fleeced at the convenience of the sheepdogs, not the wolves. I have acquaintances in the San Jose police and Santa Clara sheriff's office (uniformed officers, not clerks) and they all have this look-down-their-nose attitudes towards civilians. Sheep indeed. Well, the self-styled "sheepdogs" won't become the best force they can unless they get their asses thoroughly kicked for NOT being the best force they can... by the "sheep".
And if the "sheepdogs" violently suppress the "sheep" when the sheep can't tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf... it's time to eliminate the "sheepdogs". Vigilantism, in its proper definition, arises when the protectors fail, or are themselves the criminals.
"Trained to fight?" No, most police are not trained to "fight". They're trained to shoot at the slightest provocation (though not well), trained to taze, trained to kill barking dogs at the wrong address, and they're trained to call in half the department on any excuse. Mano a mano, they're not much better than anyone else. A hardened street thug who is used to real combat, who from experience knows how to endure a boot to the skull or a knife-cut and keep going anyway, will chew up and spit out the average cop in a straight-up fight.
Cops rely upon intimidation and the ability to bring disproportionate force. If you're not impressed by a badge, if you realize that a cop's gun is no different than a citizen's, and if the cop can't bring in overwhelming force, they're meat and they know it. Why do you think they're trying to eliminate the ability of ANY citizen, honest or not, to resist the whims of ANY cop, honest or not?
Cameras don't make policy. Tyrannical politicians and corrupt-to-the-core police do.
Your policy proposal is close, though. Make the one edit and you're there.
Touché!
Larger wars include archery, slingers (glorified tennis balls), javelins. Archery rules specify 30-pound bows maximum, padded bird blunts, arrow shafts covered with fiber tape to prevent jagged points if they break (some kingdoms disallow wooden shafts altogether and require fiberglass, because fiberglass makes a mushy rather than pointed shape when it breaks), all helms required to have no single opening that you can fit a 1/4" dowel through, no neck-exposure allowed. West-Caid war (California vs. Arizona, etc.) was a great one for that. I think they do that at Pennsic (New England vs. the Rust Belt, battle cry is "Loser gets Pittsburg!"), and Pennsic draws many thousands of fighters annually. It's quite a spectacle.
All of the above info is over a decade stale. Things may have changed, then again, maybe not. I don't know if the SCA still includes archery in wars (it was never universal; wars were announced in advance whether there were any scenarios including archery), but archery was a great way to get inexpensively into SCA war-combat. An archer needed only light body armor and a helm that was the equal of the heavy fighters. Rules are (were?) that an archer was automatically considered dead if a heavy fighter comes within ten feet, which is a good thing, as SCA melee combat is full-power full-speed. You are hitting your opponent as just as hard as your strength allows (the blow has to be hard enough to have caused injury with a real steel weapon against period armor, so such a hit on a lightly armored combatant would certainly break bones, even with SCA rattan weapons); nobody wanted to chance that a heavy would misidentify a light fighter as another heavy through limited visibility and give a full-power hit instead of a token "love tap". However, getting within ten feet isn't easy. Many an archer has happily led a heavy fighter a merry chase under the blazing sun, taunting all the way... to deal with that exercise in frustration, some fighters carried "darts" (small javelins) to smack down cocky archers with.
Good times. Add where else can you hire an entire mercenary company for a keg of home-brew?
Speaking as an ex-"reenactor" (Society for Creative Anachronism, http://www.sca.org/ I can offer the following firsthand observations:
1. The quality of fitting to the individual is probably the single most important factor in how burdensome a given suit of armor is, from the point of view of the ability to move quickly. Leggings are by far the hardest to fit correctly; they also tend to shift around the most in response to movement, so a good fitting can become a bad fitting very quickly.
2. In melee combat, the legs are hit far more often than any target other than the head. Leg armor may be encumbering, but when it comes to hand to hand combat you can't do without it.
3. When faced with archers, an unshielded fighter takes it in the arms and torso more than anywhere else.
4. Breathing difficulties are usually caused by poor ventilation in a closed-face helm, or a side effect of heat. Which brings us to:
5. Overheating is what is going to exhaust you. You're wearing not just armor, but heavy padding as well. The number one factor an SCA medic sees at a large battle is overwhelmingly heat exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration.
The Commonwealth has no real ability to project power. If Australia were invaded, no other Commonwealth nation has the firepower, the assets, the logistics train, or the economic ability to undertake such a huge and difficult mission. Even the United States, with its unquestioned dominance of the seas and the best logistics operations in the world, takes months to years to build up or withdraw military forces on that scale, and as current budgetary crises show, difficulty sustaining the expense. Aircraft carriers and amphibious battle groups are the only means of quickly moving in enough firepower to deter and defeat a major invasion, and aircraft carriers require a supply chain that needs protection the whole way.
Have a look at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service ... it pretty much tells the tale. If you add up the tonnage of every other operational aircraft carrier in the world (which maps well to the number of aircraft they sustain), that's still less than 25% of the US capability. And that doesn't even take into account operational expertise
Commonwealth military power consists of domestic defense (land-based air forces, conventional armies) and small expeditionary forces (special forces and sufficient logistics to supply those small special forces groups). Even Great Britain, by a huge margin the most powerful of the Commonwealth nations, has a limited ability to forward-deploy air power and ground troops, and exactly one aircraft carrier; no other Commonwealth nation has even one. Consider the Falklands war. Great Britain had a whole lot more trouble than many people seem to believe, and that was against a country with essentially a third-world army, an air force of a dozen aircraft, and a handful of French-built Exocet missiles. Great Britain's navy is in worse condition now than it was then, and Australia's heavyweight neighbors are much more militarily powerful than Argentina's.
Or to restate, just how would the Commonwealth be able to get its armies and the (literally) millions of tons of equipment and supplies needed to Australia? Quantas? UPS?
There are excellent reasons why Australia has such a hunger for FA-18s and is waiting so eagerly for F-35s. Those aircraft are all that would stand between Darwin and Jakarta if things went badly.
That, and the US navy.
The US, if it really needed to, could have half a thousand first-rate combat aircraft, ten thousand combat-ready Marines, a full armored division, and a couple hundred aircraft-deployed nuclear weapons anywhere in the world within two weeks. This, more than anything else, is the core of US military strength; not the missiles, not the AIr Force (which must operate from land bases) and not the regular land Army. The US is a naval power; indeed, it is the only naval power with a global capability.
All nationalism aside, those are the facts. Waving Australian flags and burning American flags doesn't change that. 50 years from now, who knows what things will be like, but today, that's stark reality.
anti-American screed
Sure, buddy,
See Australia, like Canada, is in the fortunate position of having vast untapped natural resource reserves and very low populations compared to their land areas. Therefore these are two countries that will always have a future - provided they continue with relatively stable governments, avoid drowning in debt, and avoid getting invaded. For now their currencies are a shelter.
In other words, the value of Australia and Canada have nothing to do with the people in it, just the dirt under their feet? Is that what you're saying?
Let me know how you're doing when Indonesia realizes it has ten times Australia's population, or China realizes it has fifty times Australia's population, and wants liebestraum and those untapped resources. You may whine about Americans now, but you've got a much bigger problem on your doorstep. Tell me what history teaches happens to nations that are resource-rich but underpopulated, and who don't have (or actively alienate) powerful allies.
Nope, Germany can more than make up for all of that.
Maybe they can, but should they? Will they? It's becoming a real political football in Germany (and other countries like Finland). Some are already wondering how much longer the Eurozone is going to last.
Could it be that doing business in Australia is more expensive than doing business in the U.S.?
Could it be that the Australian government's asinine knuckle-dragging policies with regard to content, censorship and taxation puts an increased burden on content providers?
Could it be that geography plays a role in increasing the price of infrastructure, both in obtaining equipment and in servicing a country the size of the United States but with 1/15th the population?
Could it be that licensing is more expensive in Australia due to the legal environment and actions of Australian IP-holding companies and individuals?
Could it be that Australian currency values and exchange rates vary over time?
Nah. Just mindlessly jump on the Apple-hater bandwagon and demand that the rest of the world subsidize Australia. It's easier, and it's what the mob is doing.
FRUNGY FRUNGY FRUNGY It is, after all, the sport of kings.
> EX E800
> GO ASM
I don't mean that 100% sarcastically perhaps 99%. I do see the logic of having a counterweight to the only superpower. But we can't be expected to be the ones that pay for it or voluntarily yield any sovereignty to them, if that's the case.
I also don't see the logic of foreign aid to countries and peoples who despise us. Haters gonna hate, so why bother helping if the helping hand is going to be spat upon?
Can someone please explain why the U.S. should host, subsidize, or be a member of the U.N. given its current condition and activities? In all seriousness, I can think of no reason whatsoever.
It's a system with anonymity (or at least semi-anonymity) and the ability to disguise stacking the deck, either for or against a given product. Of COURSE people are going to try to game it.
Imagine if we spent all the money from the war on space exploration. We'd all be able to leave this planet and not have to worry about what happens back on Earth.
...in which case the wars would be on Mars, the Moon, and Gliese 581d. The stage changes, but the song remains the same.
People are people. And that means war.
For those who don't like this policy:
1. It exists because of spammers. Vent your anger at the spammers, not Blizzard.
2. It exists because spamming for gold sales works (otherwise people wouldn't bother). Vent your anger at gold buyers, not Blizzard.
3. It exists because of guild-looters (people who join guilds, strip the guild vault, and sell the profits). Yes, guilds should manage themselves better; trusting people on the Internet without direct experience to demonstrate that trustworthiness is idiocy. But a looted guild bank generates a lot of direct costs to Blizzard (GM tickets) and indirect costs (people who unsubscribe because of the negative feelings this gives about the game).
4. Freeloaders don't get a vote. Someone on a trial account isn't contributing anything; the purpose is to let the person decide if they want to get the privileges that others pay for (and in the process contribute in a positive way to the multiplayer environment). Trial accounts aren't for YOU, they're for Blizzard as a sales tool. Paid accounts ARE for your benefit (as well as Blizzard's). You're just being given first-hand information (for free) on whether you'd enjoy the game.
Typical "entitlement" attitude. Nobody is "entitled" to free games. Be glad you're being given anything, because you're not owed anything. Think games should be free? Write and host your own, and learn firsthand about just how badly people behave even when what they're being handed is free.
So how long will it be before some pariah-state with primitive space capability, in yet another fit of childish Beloved Leader temper-tantrum-class behavior, launches a canister of one-inch aluminum bearings into crowded orbits to create orbital minefields to destroy satellites and otherwise be a pain in the ass?
Yes, that would be without question an act of war, just like mining sea lanes in international waters would be. Does anyone think that would stop a Beloved Leader from doing it if he could use the war-drums to cling to power?
But if the best code is 9991, then a thief should try it first, which would make it not the best code, which would make something else the best code, which would make some other code the one thieves would try first, which ...
But I surely cannot choose the wine in front of me.
Once you have been infected with ANY malware capable of installing code, you're a fool to treat it any way other than requiring a nuke-and-pave. There is just no way of knowing what rootkits have been installed, what re-infection vectors have been put in place, or whether you've gotten everything. Sure, an antivirus product's cleaning function will probably get most of it. Maybe all of it. But there's no way to be sure, short of a full wipe.
So functionally, there really isn't any difference between an infection from this or any other download-capable malware. This one just requires what you really needed to do in the case of an infection anyway.
Rommel lost in North Africa because his supply lines were severely curtailed. He had great trouble getting fuel, food and munitions because of British control of Malta, from which they did an excellent job of intercepting and destroying supply shipping. Even so, Rommel almost made it to Cairo. Whenever the two sides met, if Rommel was well-supplied the Allies had their butts handed to them. The campaign in North Africa was won by the Allies' ability to maintain a logistics structure and to prevent Rommel from doing the same; the battlefield itself always belonged to Rommel whenever he had any ability to fight at all.
It wasn't about "happiness"; the respect-component from his own troops led to much better morale. Rommel's men liked him and would fight harder, hold the lines under greater pressure, etc. The same was not as true on the Allied side; in fact, the higher levels of British command actually considered it a problem that their own men respected Rommel more than they respected their own Montgomery (but then, Montgomery wasn't well-liked by anyone. Excellent logistician, poor field commander, couldn't get along with anyone especially the Yankees). It also manifested in the way each side treated the others' prisoners. Many more captured soldiers (on both sides) went home after the war than would have otherwise if the level of respect and the level of discipline that came with it had not been in place.
Personally, I'm just as glad he lost though.
And at this point, we're pretty thoroughly off-topic. :) Though the original point remains: if our American rulers and senior TSA/DHS management had to endure on a daily basis what they were shoving down the throats of the common man, things would change mighty fast. (Though what creep would want to feel up Nancy Pelosi, I cannot and do not want to imagine).
Precisely. If every senator and congressthing and DHS/TSA employee (right up to the department heads) were required to undergo full "enhanced screening" including grope and scan every single time they entered or exited their offices, I think they might sing a different tune. Hell, we should make a cable TV channel: all politician pat-downs, all the time, where the viewers on an Internet site vote for who gets a strip search and who gets a scan and who has to go back and do it all again. As it is, the privileged few don't have to put up with what they're forcing everyone else to submit to.
During World War II, in North Africa, the German General Erwin Rommel ate the exact same rations and amounts as his men, walked when they walked, etc. That way he knew fist-hand what he was requiring of them. He also demanded that his soldiery behave well when they came into contact with the locals. He had more respect from his men AND the men of the opposing armies than just about any other military figure. Our beloved leaders need to learn more lessons from Rommel, and fewer lessons from Heydrich.
Somebody's gotta do it, they don't have to like it (and I doubt they do), it's not their fault, they need to feed the kids/themselves.
I disagree. The same argument is used for "enhanced interrogators", concentration camp guards and people who extract gold fillings from the pile of skulls. "I needed a job" does not justify "...so I joined the Gestapo, big deal, get off my back."
Yeah, you'll find someone to fill the job. Every society has bottom-feeders, petty little jerks who get off on having a little power over others, and people who just don't give a damn. I'm certainly not going to pretend they warrant respect; they do not. I don't think they do either, so they settle for "oderint dum metuant". Impotent personalities and badges do not mix well, but you can certainly build an internal political police force out of that mix.
When you join the TSA, you know damned well what you're being expected to do to your countrymen. It IS their fault, and to hell with their kids.
Also, the "fix" might be a precedent for other radiation cases which are factually bad (the nonsense about cell phone and WiFi emissions causing cancer, headaches and hippie-ism).
I have a very hard time being sympathetic to TSA agents, but I want this one handled right. Not for the sake of the brownshirts, but because of the potential for bad science. The TSA is already bad policy; let's not compound bad policy with bad science.
You need to realize that the state of mind of the defendant is often the entire point of a case and is the difference between "guilty" and "innocent" (the fancy Latin term is mens rea ). So if you act like a dick in court or in the actions surrounding the allegation, you may, in FACT, be convicting yourself by demonstrating your state of mind. The shock jocks demonstrated by their actions just what their state of mind was: malicious, reckless, and unrepentant. From a very real, legally defensible, well-established principle, their may well have pushed the likelihood of their guilt from "not enough proof" to "sufficient proof".
In other words, yes, they got a fair trail, because their behavior demonstrated the facts of the case. If someone is unlikeable, acts like an asshole, etc., is it more or less likely that person acted with malicious intent in the matter at hand? And is it more or less likely that the judge, with his authority to decide upon admissibility of evidence, to approve or deny motions by the lawyers involved, and discretion to decide sentencing, is going to throw the book at an asshole or Mother Teresa?
Today's lesson: don't be a dick. As far as the trial and its outcome is concerned, you'd BETTER be a likeable defendant.