All of the sharpshooters I knew were freaks, just like in bad Hollywood movies. Extreme introverts who don't talk much, and have a strange look in their eyes. Maybe they were normal once and maybe the war got to them... Who knows.
I'd bet they were like that to start with.
It's not war that gets to you; you start training beforehand.
And the scary bit is this: had I not been very careful to appear normal in the psych test (which was fairly easy to do, since we'd had the test explained in detail in high school psychology class two years before) so as to slip out with minimum hassle, I could have been talking about myself instead of my friend. Hell, we even look alike.
Turning into a professional army, i.e. not every healthy adult male will have to serve and lose some six months of his life for some silly rite of passage that the army seems to be.
We nearsighted ones are considered incapable of serving in the military, which is just as well as far as I'm concerned.
Though from 2008 on, the army is going pro anyway, so I no longer care at all.
Anyway, I agree with you as far as marksmanship goes; I wasn't too bad myself when I tried.
Oh, forgot one more thing: my friend was assigned to sharpshooters because of his psych profile: he's just psychotic enough to be able to kill someone from far away and not care, which is apparently how our sharpshooters are selected.
"It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms."
I would think that the soldiers made the mistakes willingly to avoid to let the "army not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.". Why the would like to save the Army (instead of their families) if they think tell are going to die?
Maybe because they are brainwashed?
From what little army personnel I've known, they've all been pretty brainwashed in the-Army-is-always-right manner.
My friend, who is almost as near-sighted as I am, was placed in sharpshooters.
He told the recruiting officer it must have been a mistake, only to hear the answer: "The Army makes no mistakes."
He then showed him his eye prescription, only to hear: "That must have been a mistake."
I can't imagine the total amount of emails was smaller than the total amount of letters...
Oh I can.
Emails can be traced back to the sender. If I was going to threaten someone, a "real" letter would have much more impact and be non-tracable. (Unless of course you write your address on the top, in which case the proof of "crazy" has already been made.)
'corse[sic] you'd have to take a few basic precautions: never, ever touch the paper/envelope. Use a common type of printer (no handwritten stuff for analysis, naturally) and don't lick the envelope or stamp, so they've got no DNA. Post it where there are no surveillance cameras, preferably at night to reduce the chance of witnesses.
Have I forgotten anything?
Nah. Post it in broad daylight, when it's crowded, along with two or five more letters.
Look busy and in a hurry; no-one will remember you, and even if you're recorded, what, you posted several letters. Can they find them all?
If you should send it at night, any witness would be more likely to remember you. If you send it during the rush hour, though many would see you, no-one would care.
OTOH, use Tor. Open a gmail or similar free account. Send a threat. KTNXBYE!
Well, if I'm missing out on the significance of that, kindly do explain it to me.
As I said before, abstraction is not an unknown concept (no pun intended).
I don't find it odd in the least that monkeys were able to learn several simple symbols.
OTOH, the thing that may prove to be more interesting than the stated conclusion is that certain meanings may be contained within certain neurons.
Now, how many concepts can a neuron contain? Is our memory indeed holographic, as some contend (stimulating a certain neuron will trigger a certain memory, but removal of that neuron will not erase the memory, if I recall my classes on human memory correctly), or is it something weirder still?
That they can associated numerals with numbers IS to say that they find numerals meaningful. It's to say that they're capable of that level of abstraction, when it comes to numerical values.
Oh, come on.
Unless they're proposing that Arab numerals are directly, non-symbolically related to the numerical concepts they represent, the only thing they've proved is that yay, primates are capable of learning some symbols.
If the same neurons react to quantity(3) and to symbol(3) with no previous training, then this discovery will revolutionize our schooling systems, not to mention cognitive science, semiotics and linguistics.
If, on the other hand, this included some training beforehand, then I fail to see what's the big deal.
Seems like the guy arguing that it's really no hassle at all a week or two ago wasn't really right.
Surprise, surprise.
Face it, people: when software manufacturers do this kind of thing, the only reasonable option is to pirate their software (if you really have to use it). Because you not only pay premium money otherwise, but have to keep on proving you'd paid.
Just because you paid, you are a suspect for "stealing".
I know inertia is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, but this model is ridiculous... it has to break sometime.
(Then again, I say that about religion as well, and yet...)
Slashdot Mirror
All of the sharpshooters I knew were freaks, just like in bad Hollywood movies. Extreme introverts who don't talk much, and have a strange look in their eyes. Maybe they were normal once and maybe the war got to them... Who knows.
I'd bet they were like that to start with.
It's not war that gets to you; you start training beforehand.
And the scary bit is this: had I not been very careful to appear normal in the psych test (which was fairly easy to do, since we'd had the test explained in detail in high school psychology class two years before) so as to slip out with minimum hassle, I could have been talking about myself instead of my friend. Hell, we even look alike.
Turning into a professional army, i.e. not every healthy adult male will have to serve and lose some six months of his life for some silly rite of passage that the army seems to be.
Well, I'm pretty sure no stable black holes will form before winter solstice, 2012.
As I already wrote somewhere in this discussion, I am considered incapable of serving in the armed forces because I'm too near-sighted.
Which is perfectly fine by me.
To Croatian army, it does matter.
We nearsighted ones are considered incapable of serving in the military, which is just as well as far as I'm concerned.
Though from 2008 on, the army is going pro anyway, so I no longer care at all.
Anyway, I agree with you as far as marksmanship goes; I wasn't too bad myself when I tried.
Oh, forgot one more thing: my friend was assigned to sharpshooters because of his psych profile: he's just psychotic enough to be able to kill someone from far away and not care, which is apparently how our sharpshooters are selected.
That may well be a legitimate concern, but the guy would still get shot.
And that's even though we'd all die in a few minutes anyway.
Actually, I find it that this comic sums it up pretty nicely.
I would think that the soldiers made the mistakes willingly to avoid to let the "army not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.". Why the would like to save the Army (instead of their families) if they think tell are going to die?
Maybe because they are brainwashed?
From what little army personnel I've known, they've all been pretty brainwashed in the-Army-is-always-right manner.
My friend, who is almost as near-sighted as I am, was placed in sharpshooters.
He told the recruiting officer it must have been a mistake, only to hear the answer: "The Army makes no mistakes."
He then showed him his eye prescription, only to hear: "That must have been a mistake."
Catch-22 anyone?
I'm surprised none of them pulled out a pistol and shot the guy making the request.Me too.
I certainly would have.
Then again, I am not really army material...
Totally offtopic, but related to your .sig: I only have 3 degrees of separation (maybe even 2) from George W.
Not really something to brag about, but funny how it seems to work: I'm not even an American.
Oh I can.
Emails can be traced back to the sender. If I was going to threaten someone, a "real" letter would have much more impact and be non-tracable. (Unless of course you write your address on the top, in which case the proof of "crazy" has already been made.)
'corse[sic] you'd have to take a few basic precautions: never, ever touch the paper/envelope. Use a common type of printer (no handwritten stuff for analysis, naturally) and don't lick the envelope or stamp, so they've got no DNA. Post it where there are no surveillance cameras, preferably at night to reduce the chance of witnesses.
Have I forgotten anything?
Nah. Post it in broad daylight, when it's crowded, along with two or five more letters.
Look busy and in a hurry; no-one will remember you, and even if you're recorded, what, you posted several letters. Can they find them all?
If you should send it at night, any witness would be more likely to remember you. If you send it during the rush hour, though many would see you, no-one would care.
OTOH, use Tor. Open a gmail or similar free account. Send a threat. KTNXBYE!
... so what's the big deal then?
Well, if I'm missing out on the significance of that, kindly do explain it to me.
As I said before, abstraction is not an unknown concept (no pun intended).
I don't find it odd in the least that monkeys were able to learn several simple symbols.
OTOH, the thing that may prove to be more interesting than the stated conclusion is that certain meanings may be contained within certain neurons.
Now, how many concepts can a neuron contain? Is our memory indeed holographic, as some contend (stimulating a certain neuron will trigger a certain memory, but removal of that neuron will not erase the memory, if I recall my classes on human memory correctly), or is it something weirder still?
You are, of course, quite right.
We have decided to focus on laptops instead.
Desktops are for Anonymous Cowards.
</troll>
In a word: No.
That's purely cultural.
Though I do wonder why so many OC people are obsessed with threes.
In a word: No.
That's purely cultural.
Though I do wonder why so many OC people are obsessed with threes.
In a word: No.
That's purely cultural.
Though I do wonder why so many OC people are obsessed with threes.
Sixty-nine with Seven of Nine?
Well, something about me is hard-wired for that, but I don't think neurons are the obvious answer...
It's one... two... many... lots.
Oh, come on.
Unless they're proposing that Arab numerals are directly, non-symbolically related to the numerical concepts they represent, the only thing they've proved is that yay, primates are capable of learning some symbols.
If the same neurons react to quantity(3) and to symbol(3) with no previous training, then this discovery will revolutionize our schooling systems, not to mention cognitive science, semiotics and linguistics.
If, on the other hand, this included some training beforehand, then I fail to see what's the big deal.
In that case, just call it the FSM.
And instead of .torrent, files will have an .appendage extension.
Arrrr!
Hell, I've been a Gnome user from the beginning, and I've grown increasingly disappointed with each new version of Gnome after 1.4.
However, there were several things keeping me on Gnome - primarily some of the applets, most of all the dictionary.
Then they crippled its options as well. And now this.
I don't know whether I'll default to KDE 4 or E17 or something completely different, but I think Gnome has seen the last of me.
Oh, well.
Seems like the guy arguing that it's really no hassle at all a week or two ago wasn't really right.
Surprise, surprise.
Face it, people: when software manufacturers do this kind of thing, the only reasonable option is to pirate their software (if you really have to use it). Because you not only pay premium money otherwise, but have to keep on proving you'd paid.
Just because you paid, you are a suspect for "stealing".
I know inertia is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, but this model is ridiculous... it has to break sometime.
(Then again, I say that about religion as well, and yet...)
Actually, the title just made me whistle "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman".
No, they don't.
It comes free with their Macs.
But if they patent it, anyone else who wants to make money that way has to pay IBM first.
I wonder if IBM sees that as a great opportunity to make loads of money from, say, Microsoft?
Oh, they're good at this.
So, the question is: will there be an anonymizer GPS network?
So that they may be able to know the number of cars in each location, but not the owner of each car?
Though I'd love to see mandatory GPS tracking of vehicles. Automated speed tickets, hit-and-run driver identification etc. etc.