Thanks for injecting some fanaticism into the discussion.
What if the world were far more complex and far more nuanced than your reductionist viewpoint would have us believe?
I think your viewpoint as expressed above sheds more light on you than it does on the problems you purport to be talking about. This isn't Hollywood, and it's not an episode of Scooby-fucking-Doo. You'd be better off spending your time learning that the world isn't populated with cardboard cutouts of cartoon heros and villains.
(According to the script, now comes the part where you remind us that, George Bush, when unmasked, cackled, "If it wasn't for you meddling kids, I'd rule the world! Yeah! The world, see!?" And then he clapped his bowler on his head, put his monocle in his pocket, and did a little jitterbug towards stage left.)
Oh, I see - you're upset about IMPRECISE ESTIMATES!!!ONE!!!1111!ONE!
I'm sorry that my casual selection of random statistics wasn't as rigorously vetted and scrupulously accurate as the random statistics of the poster I replied to. Would you feel better if I said, "By halving the number of convoys, we could increase the number of patrols by 27.33... (repeating, of course) percent!" After all, randomly selected statistics are random. But 27.3 (repeating) sounds SO much more official.
Or would you care to offer ACTUAL NUMBERS and predict the increase using that? Otherwise, you're yelling about somebody else's made-up numbers in response to somebody else's made up numbers, while offering nothing of your own other than "Hurr hurr, you're dumb."
If your aim is to overthrow Saddam Hussein or the Taliban by sending in your military and forcing regime change, how exactly will that not involve killing people as a primary function of your mission?
Your reading comprehension seems lacking. You even quoted the part of the GP's post that answered your question:
"Killing is not the goal. Killing is sometimes the means to complete a mission."
There is a difference between means (killing people to achieve some goal) and ends (killing people, full stop).
if you shoot a armed robber in the legs you saved your own life and possibly his.
Is this based on the premise that shooting a man in the legs while he is breaking the law will prevent him from shooting back at you?
Enough with the Hollywood fiction of "shoot them in the legs and incapacitate them". If you draw your weapon, you better plan to kill somebody - you aim and shoot for the center of mass - i.e., the torso - and you shoot to kill. Nobody with the training and understanding of handguns would suggest that "shoot him in the knee" or "shoot him in the face" is the best way to fire your weapon: both of those are smaller targets, and less likely to be hit in an effective way.
Owning a weapon and using it wisely is an immensely weighty responsibility. If you own one and fool yourself into thinking, "Well, I'll just shoot him in the foot so he can't run away, then we'll sit around chatting about his nefarious plans until the police arrive," then you will probably end up dead on the floor in the case you draw your weapon.
The Taliban didn't rise because world powers chose to ignore Afghanistan.
The Soviets left and the US basically ignored Afghanistan during the 90's,
The Taliban rose to power in the 90's, starting with their capture of Kandahar & much of the surrounding area in 1994. I'm not sure that the support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan really should be counted as "world powers taking an interest in Afghanistan."
I know I'll never get on a bumper sticker writing things like that, but somebody needs to call people out when they start parroting sound-bites, clever catch-phrases, and superficial absolutes, rather than discussing the nuance and subtletly involved in a very messy, very analog, and very complex issue.
No, I live in a world where force protection requires a significant amount of man- and firepower, which otherwise could be tasked with patrolling and securing other areas because those troops will not be tied up in escorting convoys through disputed, or even downright hostile, territory.
Yes, in fact, I did notice that, and was remarking on the fact that this story has basically morphed into "APPLE GETS EURO-PEENS FIRED FROM DEY JERBS BECUZ DEYS LATE AGIN!"
As opposed to the far more accurate, and less sensationalist, "A few people overslept for work this morning because their alarms didn't go off when they expected them to."
Countries should avoid going into a war at all costs.
No, countries should understand and be very clear on the principles they consider non-negotiable, that they are willing to fight and die for. Avoiding war 'at all costs' means you might as well just roll over and let the closest despot with a gun take over.
And if it's a democracy, the citizens should educate themselves and stop voting for people who send young men and women to fight and die in engagements that do not match up with the principles that country has decided are worth fighting and dying for.
There's always something worth fighting, and even dying for, if necessary. If the only determining factor in whether or not you go to war is "how much will it cost?" then you have serious moral and ethical problems endemic to your government, and by extension, endemic to your citizenry.
If it's a case where my country has said, "X is worth fighting and dying for," then I want "X" to be achieved at the lowest cost possible - in terms of economics, in terms of lives of my fellow citizens, and in terms of lives of the civilians on the other side, with the business end of the gun pointed at them.
And let's not forget that, given the constraints of the number of soldiers in theater, half the number of fuel convoys to guard means twice as many combat patrols out in the field looking for the guys who are planting the IEDs that are blowing up the convoys.
A couple combat patrols can move a hell of a lot faster and pack a hell of a lot more firepower for their size than fuel & supply convoys can, as well, which also has the benefit of helping move the task from "preventing them from blowing up *this* particular convoy" to "watching closely and preventing them from lining the highways with IEDs in the first place."
I sometimes wonder how often the idea "We could eliminate 100% of American troop casualties if we just kill everybody else in the world. if there is nobody else to fight, then we don't have to send anybody over there, and we eliminate all possibility of getting shot by enemy forces" surfaces in high level discussions.
I'm going to guess just about never, except in your histrionic fever dreams where everybody in the military is an unstoppable bloodthirsty murderer who just wants to kill everybody else around them.
I've got to say, you seem to be the one missing the point. Nowhere in the article does this say it will "eliminate" casualties, or "stop them from bombing our convoys."
By your own math, 10 convoys that would have been blown up didn't get blown up. That equals less casualties. As cited in the article, fewer convoys means less traffic, less congestion, less chance of traffic accidents - costing lives, equipment, and fuel - again, less casualties.
All in all, this is an incremental improvement that translates to saved lives & money. Nobody in the article is claiming that it's going to reduce casualties to zero.
I get that you're suggesting that my position is backwards and mistrustful of technology. So you get a -1, Snarky but Stupid.
Why "Stupid," you ask?
Well, your comment would carry more weight if you had realized that wind-up clocks aren't electrical, Einstein. They're mechanical - as in, springs & gears drive the entire mechanism. Thus an EMP would do nothing to the "delicate circuitry" inside the windup clock... because there is no "delicate circuitry" to disrupt.
You know that people had clocks long before electricity was harnessed as a power source for household devices... right?
Note that I said "get a proper alarm clock for redundancy" - redundancy being the key word there. If you're relying on a single device and your job is *so* sensitive that being late to work once, with no history of tardiness, will get you fired (this was the scenario the troll I responded to suggested), the sensible thing to do is to NOT rely on a single device to make sure you get up on time.
I actually do have a wind-up alarm clock (momentary power drops occur frequently-enough where I live that it's an inconvenience, and before getting the wind-up, I had overslept because a power outage killed my alarm clock), and remembering to wind it when I go to bed is pretty trivial: it sits next to my bed, and the gears make a soft ticking sound, so I can tell quickly if it's running. I also have one of these which has worked well for me so far. It charges my iPhone, and will wake me up to music stored on my iPhone, and is easily grabbed from my bedside in case of an overnight call. And it doesn't rely on the iPhone's time/date functions at all.
Yep, and then we could wait for months while the carriers fart around rolling out an update for your particular phone's version of android. If they ever do get around to it.
I mean, "Yay, android and open source. Boo apple."
Considering this discussion is about VLC on the iPhone, and the licensing terms of the GPL with respect to that software on that platform... yeah, we're talking about the importance of that 'right' to a home user. Who are, incidentally, the vast majority of consumers for the iphone & vlc on the iphone.
If you don't produce software that works, they will buy a competing piece of software.
If nobody produces software that works, they will simply conclude that it can't be done with a computer, and do it the way they always have.
I don't know what fantasy land you live in, but no consumer is going to hire a developer and spend a few thousand dollars having them fix bugs in a handful of 99 cent applications on their 300 dollar phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for injecting some fanaticism into the discussion.
What if the world were far more complex and far more nuanced than your reductionist viewpoint would have us believe?
I think your viewpoint as expressed above sheds more light on you than it does on the problems you purport to be talking about. This isn't Hollywood, and it's not an episode of Scooby-fucking-Doo. You'd be better off spending your time learning that the world isn't populated with cardboard cutouts of cartoon heros and villains.
(According to the script, now comes the part where you remind us that, George Bush, when unmasked, cackled, "If it wasn't for you meddling kids, I'd rule the world! Yeah! The world, see!?" And then he clapped his bowler on his head, put his monocle in his pocket, and did a little jitterbug towards stage left.)
Oh, I see - you're upset about IMPRECISE ESTIMATES!!!ONE!!!1111!ONE!
I'm sorry that my casual selection of random statistics wasn't as rigorously vetted and scrupulously accurate as the random statistics of the poster I replied to. Would you feel better if I said, "By halving the number of convoys, we could increase the number of patrols by 27.33... (repeating, of course) percent!" After all, randomly selected statistics are random. But 27.3 (repeating) sounds SO much more official.
Or would you care to offer ACTUAL NUMBERS and predict the increase using that? Otherwise, you're yelling about somebody else's made-up numbers in response to somebody else's made up numbers, while offering nothing of your own other than "Hurr hurr, you're dumb."
That must make you feel very proud.
Your reading comprehension seems lacking. You even quoted the part of the GP's post that answered your question:
"Killing is not the goal. Killing is sometimes the means to complete a mission."
There is a difference between means (killing people to achieve some goal) and ends (killing people, full stop).
Is this based on the premise that shooting a man in the legs while he is breaking the law will prevent him from shooting back at you?
Enough with the Hollywood fiction of "shoot them in the legs and incapacitate them". If you draw your weapon, you better plan to kill somebody - you aim and shoot for the center of mass - i.e., the torso - and you shoot to kill. Nobody with the training and understanding of handguns would suggest that "shoot him in the knee" or "shoot him in the face" is the best way to fire your weapon: both of those are smaller targets, and less likely to be hit in an effective way.
Owning a weapon and using it wisely is an immensely weighty responsibility. If you own one and fool yourself into thinking, "Well, I'll just shoot him in the foot so he can't run away, then we'll sit around chatting about his nefarious plans until the police arrive," then you will probably end up dead on the floor in the case you draw your weapon.
Doesn't look like anybody read your comment as a joke - perhaps I'm not the one with a flawed sense of humor, hmm?
Were we supposed to slap our knees and let out a big belly laugh? If so, you need to work on your delivery.
The Taliban rose to power in the 90's, starting with their capture of Kandahar & much of the surrounding area in 1994. I'm not sure that the support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan really should be counted as "world powers taking an interest in Afghanistan."
I know I'll never get on a bumper sticker writing things like that, but somebody needs to call people out when they start parroting sound-bites, clever catch-phrases, and superficial absolutes, rather than discussing the nuance and subtletly involved in a very messy, very analog, and very complex issue.
I've got karma to burn, so why not me?
No, I live in a world where force protection requires a significant amount of man- and firepower, which otherwise could be tasked with patrolling and securing other areas because those troops will not be tied up in escorting convoys through disputed, or even downright hostile, territory.
What world do you live in?
I don't think I ever indicated that I thought it would be "easy" or "trivial" to do. Things that are really important are generally not.
Something being "hard to do" does not mean it's impossible, not worth doing, or that it *shouldn't* be done.
Yes, in fact, I did notice that, and was remarking on the fact that this story has basically morphed into "APPLE GETS EURO-PEENS FIRED FROM DEY JERBS BECUZ DEYS LATE AGIN!"
As opposed to the far more accurate, and less sensationalist, "A few people overslept for work this morning because their alarms didn't go off when they expected them to."
No, countries should understand and be very clear on the principles they consider non-negotiable, that they are willing to fight and die for. Avoiding war 'at all costs' means you might as well just roll over and let the closest despot with a gun take over.
And if it's a democracy, the citizens should educate themselves and stop voting for people who send young men and women to fight and die in engagements that do not match up with the principles that country has decided are worth fighting and dying for.
There's always something worth fighting, and even dying for, if necessary. If the only determining factor in whether or not you go to war is "how much will it cost?" then you have serious moral and ethical problems endemic to your government, and by extension, endemic to your citizenry.
If it's a case where my country has said, "X is worth fighting and dying for," then I want "X" to be achieved at the lowest cost possible - in terms of economics, in terms of lives of my fellow citizens, and in terms of lives of the civilians on the other side, with the business end of the gun pointed at them.
And let's not forget that, given the constraints of the number of soldiers in theater, half the number of fuel convoys to guard means twice as many combat patrols out in the field looking for the guys who are planting the IEDs that are blowing up the convoys.
A couple combat patrols can move a hell of a lot faster and pack a hell of a lot more firepower for their size than fuel & supply convoys can, as well, which also has the benefit of helping move the task from "preventing them from blowing up *this* particular convoy" to "watching closely and preventing them from lining the highways with IEDs in the first place."
No, not at all.
I'm going to guess just about never, except in your histrionic fever dreams where everybody in the military is an unstoppable bloodthirsty murderer who just wants to kill everybody else around them.
I've got to say, you seem to be the one missing the point. Nowhere in the article does this say it will "eliminate" casualties, or "stop them from bombing our convoys."
By your own math, 10 convoys that would have been blown up didn't get blown up. That equals less casualties. As cited in the article, fewer convoys means less traffic, less congestion, less chance of traffic accidents - costing lives, equipment, and fuel - again, less casualties.
All in all, this is an incremental improvement that translates to saved lives & money. Nobody in the article is claiming that it's going to reduce casualties to zero.
I get that you're suggesting that my position is backwards and mistrustful of technology. So you get a -1, Snarky but Stupid.
Why "Stupid," you ask?
Well, your comment would carry more weight if you had realized that wind-up clocks aren't electrical, Einstein. They're mechanical - as in, springs & gears drive the entire mechanism. Thus an EMP would do nothing to the "delicate circuitry" inside the windup clock... because there is no "delicate circuitry" to disrupt.
You know that people had clocks long before electricity was harnessed as a power source for household devices... right?
Note that I said "get a proper alarm clock for redundancy" - redundancy being the key word there. If you're relying on a single device and your job is *so* sensitive that being late to work once, with no history of tardiness, will get you fired (this was the scenario the troll I responded to suggested), the sensible thing to do is to NOT rely on a single device to make sure you get up on time.
I actually do have a wind-up alarm clock (momentary power drops occur frequently-enough where I live that it's an inconvenience, and before getting the wind-up, I had overslept because a power outage killed my alarm clock), and remembering to wind it when I go to bed is pretty trivial: it sits next to my bed, and the gears make a soft ticking sound, so I can tell quickly if it's running. I also have one of these which has worked well for me so far. It charges my iPhone, and will wake me up to music stored on my iPhone, and is easily grabbed from my bedside in case of an overnight call. And it doesn't rely on the iPhone's time/date functions at all.
"It" (as in the article) didn't say that. The troll I responded to said that.
Don't say that, you'll ruin the buzz these people are getting from an early morning apple bash. Now why would you want to go and do that? :(
Yep, and then we could wait for months while the carriers fart around rolling out an update for your particular phone's version of android. If they ever do get around to it.
I mean, "Yay, android and open source. Boo apple."
(am I doin it rite?)
It's called an iPhone 4. Just have to live with a minor alarm clock bug.
Now put the cane down gramps, I'm getting off your lawn.
Yes, its a ridiculous story.
Get a proper alarm clock for redundancy if you're in a job so sensitive that oversleeping once will get you fired, even with no history of tardiness.
If you're really paranoid, make it a wind-up clock so you don't have to worry about losing power.
Both parties also oppose murder, rape, and theft.
What's your point? I know you're not naive enough to suggest that a single issue where they overlap makes them substantially the same.
Considering this discussion is about VLC on the iPhone, and the licensing terms of the GPL with respect to that software on that platform... yeah, we're talking about the importance of that 'right' to a home user. Who are, incidentally, the vast majority of consumers for the iphone & vlc on the iphone.
And you think that matters to consumers?
If you don't produce software that works, they will buy a competing piece of software.
If nobody produces software that works, they will simply conclude that it can't be done with a computer, and do it the way they always have.
I don't know what fantasy land you live in, but no consumer is going to hire a developer and spend a few thousand dollars having them fix bugs in a handful of 99 cent applications on their 300 dollar phone.