But they will make it easier and easier for us to kill and kill and kill
How strange it is, then, that as we get better and better at killing, we seem to be more and more reluctant to do it.
and open the doors to even more horrible forms of warfare than those we practise now.
You want to talk about horrible forms of warfare, go look at what cultures of times past used to do. Genghis Khan would be a good starting point.
We are about to perform the Standford Prison Experiment with our entire society, with the West in the role of arbitrarily powerful jailers and everyone else as a prisoner.
The stanford prison experiment tested the reaction of a single individual being ordered around by an authority figure, in a controlled setting. It has no baring on large populations, especially within democratic societies.
We do it because we like it, not because it works
Killing a guy who plans to kill you tends to work quite well. If there are other, more efficient ways of dealing with the problem, then great - you'll find that even most soldiers prefer a peaceful solution. We don't actually LIKE being shot at. But it has to be a real solution, not just a delaying tactic which puts off the problem for future generations to deal with.
Except that you generally want to see who you are shooting at.
Not so much in modern combat. By the time you got close enough to make a visual ID, you'd be dead already. IFF takes care of identifying friendlies and most non-hostiles, and if you're in a hostile area everything else is fair game.
Now if you can get an UAV to do that....
As I said, I don't think cannon are terribly important in UAV's meant for air-to-air combat, but I think it's only a matter of time before they start fitting UAV's with cannons for ground-attack roles. Aircraft like the A-10 or the Apache are awesome for what they do, but flying them is inherently much more dangerous because they're vulnerable to attack from the ground. There's no reason why UAV's couldn't fill those roles some day.
But if they advertise unlimited service they shouldn't be able to sneak behind the customer's backs and slip on limitations.
I agree with that 100%. I've always hated their advertising gimmicks - I once got in a heated argument with a Rogers Cable representative on that very issue.
We weren't discussing marketing, though. I agree - if they want to put caps on the service they need to change the way they advertise, but I still think they should be free to set whatever caps they choose.
Actually they are, presenting facts via selective bias is lying just as surely as presenting outright lies. It is no different than a partial quote or quote out of context that conveys a message that is different than reality.
No. A selective bias is involved in any exchange of information. It is simply not feasible, if not impossible, to document every single aspect of any complex concept.
For example, the US propoganda of the russian military is that after the 'collapse' anyone can easily buy nukes for 10-50k from the corrupt, evil, and incompetent russian military.
Nope. I've never heard any such statements made by any government official. Although I see what you're doing here - you're presenting your OWN bit of "selective bias".
There are small arms but I think you will find the U.S. military illegally traded as many if not more arms both during and after the cold war. In fact, by all credible accounts the U.S. military/government is the largest legal and illegal arms dealer in the world.
And no again! The AK-47 is THE most numerous firearm in the world today.
Funny, but there's no way the human race will still be that stupid 10,000 years from now. Either we'll died out before then, or we'll have to learn to be more rational as a species.
The thing is, "God did it" doesn't give you any equations or principles. String theory, while it may turn out to be completely wrong, at least gives us something to test.
Considering I use 250 megabytes a month on my iphone while at work, and that doesn't include the wifi usage. 20 gb doesn't seem so much
So get a plan with a bigger cap. My point was that it's silly to complain about having to use bandwidth in order to check your usage. If your cap is larger, then the percentages are even lower, which makes my point stronger.
Stop to actually add up what is being used by regular geeks, and teenagers. it is just plain scary how fast it does add up.
I know, I use in excess of 80 gigs a month myself. That has nothing to do with that you were talking about earlier, though.
Area 51 was the fuel for imagination, the "what if" moments that it gave rise to
It stopped being fuel for my imagination right about the time I turned 14, and realized that most of the theories were complete garbage.
If you want to fuel your imagination, buy yourself a telescope and gaze into the heavens. The universe can inspire more awe and wonder than any crazy theory made up about a nondescript patch of desert in the middle of the US.
It's not meant to debunk any crazy theories. Despite the self-importance that conspiracy theorists like to ascribe to themselves, the government really doesn't give a damn what they think.
The reason this information is being released is because it's classified status has finally expired, and a few of the people who worked on these projects are happy to finally be able to tell others about them. That's it, that's all. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were part of the development team for the SR-71, you'd feel some justifiable pride in being part of the project, and would want to share the information with others. It's human nature, not some complex CIA plot to get rid of conspiracy theorists.
That's a straw man argument because, in fact, its not actually a response to any of the points I made
No, it's not a straw man, because it does address the argument you've made. You were arguing that nuke plants are a "bad thing" because of problems with the waste. The people who have responded have shown you that the waste problems can probably be eliminated. Just because you keep calling their demolition of your argument a "straw man", that doesn't mean it's so.
Now, please, just stop. You've embarrassed yourself enough for one day. I've read the entire thread from start to finish, and I can truthfully say that you've gone from voicing a reasonable concern, to making yourself look like a drooling moron. Every comment you've made has been more wince-worthy than the previous one.
Why is defending the russian military flamebait and insulting them +5 insightful?
It's not flamebait - just stupid. But there's no "-1 Stupid" mod, so some people abuse the flamebait mod.
Buying into US propoganda much?
First off, the words "propaganda" and "lies" are not interchangeable. Propaganda simply means information intended to convey a certain point of view - it can be either factual or made up.
And, second, we don't need US propaganda in order to judge the Russian military. There are plenty of other sources, all of which draw similar conclusions.
Eh? "Environmental Armageddon"? From mining oil sands? Why do I get the idea that this guy probably spends his weekends standing on a street-corner, with a placard and a megaphone?
The issue is bandwidth, but really, this is a work of fiction. Every other year newer kit is dropped on the market that allows higher bandwidth through the same strand of glass.
And new equipment requires more money. Not only that, but every year the average USAGE goes up. As more bandwidth becomes available, more bandwidth gets used. It's the laws of supply and demand at their purest.
Try to figure out ow much of your monthly bandwidth you have used without using more bandwidth
It takes maybe 500 kilobytes of data in order to check your usage. Assuming you check it 20 times a month, that's 10 megabytes. If you have a 20 gigabyte cap, that's 0.05% of your alloted monthly usage. Doesn't seem like a big sacrifice. Maybe they could increase the cap to 20.01 gigabytes, just so people like you won't complain:)
Uh, no... no it's not. Water is a molecule - H20. When we "use it", we don't actually destroy the molecular bond - we just move it from one place to another, and contaminate it a little. Unless you're actually splitting molecules in order to create hydrogen, the Earth's supply of water is essentially unlimited. So when you pay your water bill, you're really paying for a service rather than a resource - same as when you pay your internet bill.
Not that I agree with these insane price structures, but I have to admit, comparing data delivery to water delivery is actually a pretty good analogy. It certainly makes sense to charge more for higher usage.
My mistake. Even with that correction, you still haven't provided any evidence.
Besides that, do you think there is a difference between a new settlement, and expansion of an old settlement if it displaces people who already live there in exactly the same way?
No difference. I just find it amusing that you're completely incapable of admitting that you've made an error.
Meanwhile you claim that black is white, up is down, and "The Palestinians" violated the ceasefire.
Thank you for giving me an easy reason to - once again - dismiss you. If that's the best argument you can make, then perhaps we'd better set-aside this discussion until you've had some time to mature. Take care.
No, you were talking about Israel building new settlements every day. A claim which you've yet to document.
As for what WE are talking about, it's got nothing to do with expansion. I've dismissed that point entirely. Even if you were 100% right on that one point, it would still be irrelevant, as I've already explained. Here's the quote:
... even leaving those things aside, you're being pedantic anyway, since civilians building houses and civilians killing other civilians are two completely different things.
This where you have to imagine what things would be like if America had continued with it's policy of Manifest Destiny [wikipedia.org] where they were determined to conquer the entire northern continent. If they had, we would be at war with them, and probably we would be full of American "settlements".
And if I had some ham, I could make a ham and cheese sandwich. If I had some cheese.
Again you have been misinformed [youtube.com].
Heh. Right. "splinter terrorist organization". Well that makes it a whole lot better, doesn't it? Hey, technically the Taliban weren't responsible for 9/11 - it was the work of a "splinter terrorist organization". And the US wasn't bombed by Germany at Pearl Harbour, so why didn't they just focus on the Japanese?
Well please post the rest of the list, because both of your examples are invalid. The first refers to a proposed settlement (ie. it hasn't been built) and the second refers to an expansion of existing settlements. Neither article disproves what I said, and neither one of them does anything to support your claim.
Imagine if Americans were removing Canadians from their houses on the border, bulldozing them, and building settlements on the land.
Given that the state of relations between Canada and the US is completely different, your analogy is inapplicable.
If we had been at war for 60 years, and if Canadians were regularly launching rockets at New York and teaching their children from infancy to hate Americans, then you might have a point. But under such circumstances, the American actions would pale in comparison, and would also be barely worth mentioning.
It's about the only thing worth mentioning.
Nonsense. If the Palestinians were willing to stick to a ceasefire agreement, and sat down to work out a workable compromise, Israel would be more than happy to abandon either all or the vast majority of their settlements. As I said, this has been shown numerous time in various conflicts. This fight isn't over land, but religion and ideology. If Israel abandoned all settlements tomorrow, can you seriously tell me that you believe Hamas and Hezbollah would cease all of their attacks?
Well, leaving aside the fact that you're just plain wrong since no new settlements have been built for quite some time... and forgetting the fact that Israel has repeatedly (starting in the 80's, continuing until 2005) demonstrated it's willingness to remove such settlements in order to reach a negotiated peace agreement... even leaving those things aside, you're being pedantic anyway, since civilians building houses and civilians killing other civilians are two completely different things.
Yeah, technically it's "problematic" in the same sense that a fist-fight between a Palestinian and an Israeli might be problematic, but compared to the real problems it's not even worth mentioning.
Body-counts aren't an indicator of progress, unless your goal is genocide.
However, such low casualty figures definitely are indicative of the fact that these clashes are a low-intensity conflict rather than outright war. Casualties during the Six Day War were 10 times higher, and the following war of attrition cost the Egyptians some 5,000 deaths. That turned out to be enough killing to convince every state in the region to make peace with Israel. The only ones still causing problems are the Palestinians and Hezbollah. As long as Israel is held back by "the international community", the situation is unlikely to improve.
lol. Is that what's got your panties in a bunch? I'm not advocating genocide, you silly twat. "Finish the job" means exactly what it says. Achieve a decisive victory which will put a stop to further attacks, and allow a negotiated settlement which both sides can live with.
Look, if you're having trouble understanding things, just ask. Behaving like a petulant child won't get you anywhere.
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How strange it is, then, that as we get better and better at killing, we seem to be more and more reluctant to do it.
You want to talk about horrible forms of warfare, go look at what cultures of times past used to do. Genghis Khan would be a good starting point.
The stanford prison experiment tested the reaction of a single individual being ordered around by an authority figure, in a controlled setting. It has no baring on large populations, especially within democratic societies.
Killing a guy who plans to kill you tends to work quite well. If there are other, more efficient ways of dealing with the problem, then great - you'll find that even most soldiers prefer a peaceful solution. We don't actually LIKE being shot at. But it has to be a real solution, not just a delaying tactic which puts off the problem for future generations to deal with.
Not so much in modern combat. By the time you got close enough to make a visual ID, you'd be dead already. IFF takes care of identifying friendlies and most non-hostiles, and if you're in a hostile area everything else is fair game.
As I said, I don't think cannon are terribly important in UAV's meant for air-to-air combat, but I think it's only a matter of time before they start fitting UAV's with cannons for ground-attack roles. Aircraft like the A-10 or the Apache are awesome for what they do, but flying them is inherently much more dangerous because they're vulnerable to attack from the ground. There's no reason why UAV's couldn't fill those roles some day.
That would be why I said "essentially unlimited".
I agree with that 100%. I've always hated their advertising gimmicks - I once got in a heated argument with a Rogers Cable representative on that very issue.
We weren't discussing marketing, though. I agree - if they want to put caps on the service they need to change the way they advertise, but I still think they should be free to set whatever caps they choose.
No. A selective bias is involved in any exchange of information. It is simply not feasible, if not impossible, to document every single aspect of any complex concept.
Nope. I've never heard any such statements made by any government official. Although I see what you're doing here - you're presenting your OWN bit of "selective bias".
And no again! The AK-47 is THE most numerous firearm in the world today.
Three strikes - you're out!
Yah, that's the problem - every theology ever invented can be summed up with one line of code:
If ($cause == $unknown) { exit("God did it!); }
Of course, they all like to pretty it up by adding comments and redefining meaningless variables, but the end result is the same.
Funny, but there's no way the human race will still be that stupid 10,000 years from now. Either we'll died out before then, or we'll have to learn to be more rational as a species.
The thing is, "God did it" doesn't give you any equations or principles. String theory, while it may turn out to be completely wrong, at least gives us something to test.
So get a plan with a bigger cap. My point was that it's silly to complain about having to use bandwidth in order to check your usage. If your cap is larger, then the percentages are even lower, which makes my point stronger.
I know, I use in excess of 80 gigs a month myself. That has nothing to do with that you were talking about earlier, though.
It stopped being fuel for my imagination right about the time I turned 14, and realized that most of the theories were complete garbage.
If you want to fuel your imagination, buy yourself a telescope and gaze into the heavens. The universe can inspire more awe and wonder than any crazy theory made up about a nondescript patch of desert in the middle of the US.
It's not meant to debunk any crazy theories. Despite the self-importance that conspiracy theorists like to ascribe to themselves, the government really doesn't give a damn what they think.
The reason this information is being released is because it's classified status has finally expired, and a few of the people who worked on these projects are happy to finally be able to tell others about them. That's it, that's all. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were part of the development team for the SR-71, you'd feel some justifiable pride in being part of the project, and would want to share the information with others. It's human nature, not some complex CIA plot to get rid of conspiracy theorists.
No, it's not a straw man, because it does address the argument you've made. You were arguing that nuke plants are a "bad thing" because of problems with the waste. The people who have responded have shown you that the waste problems can probably be eliminated. Just because you keep calling their demolition of your argument a "straw man", that doesn't mean it's so.
Now, please, just stop. You've embarrassed yourself enough for one day. I've read the entire thread from start to finish, and I can truthfully say that you've gone from voicing a reasonable concern, to making yourself look like a drooling moron. Every comment you've made has been more wince-worthy than the previous one.
It's not flamebait - just stupid. But there's no "-1 Stupid" mod, so some people abuse the flamebait mod.
First off, the words "propaganda" and "lies" are not interchangeable. Propaganda simply means information intended to convey a certain point of view - it can be either factual or made up.
And, second, we don't need US propaganda in order to judge the Russian military. There are plenty of other sources, all of which draw similar conclusions.
Eh? "Environmental Armageddon"? From mining oil sands? Why do I get the idea that this guy probably spends his weekends standing on a street-corner, with a placard and a megaphone?
Hopefully that won't be the case for the Colbert Commode ... gay astronauts in zero-g sex probably isn't the image NASA wants to project.
Yes, I understand aquifers, thanks. A good analogy would be saying that you can't get a decent fiber connection at the top of the rocky mountains.
Data requires routing.
Ditto. You don't really think that this webpages just magically materialized out of thin air, do you?
So does data. If you don't have a connection, you can't use it. Duh.
Which has nothing to do with the point you're trying to make.
Guess you've never heard of backhoes cutting trunks?
HAH!
And new equipment requires more money. Not only that, but every year the average USAGE goes up. As more bandwidth becomes available, more bandwidth gets used. It's the laws of supply and demand at their purest.
It takes maybe 500 kilobytes of data in order to check your usage. Assuming you check it 20 times a month, that's 10 megabytes. If you have a 20 gigabyte cap, that's 0.05% of your alloted monthly usage. Doesn't seem like a big sacrifice. Maybe they could increase the cap to 20.01 gigabytes, just so people like you won't complain :)
Uh, no ... no it's not. Water is a molecule - H20. When we "use it", we don't actually destroy the molecular bond - we just move it from one place to another, and contaminate it a little. Unless you're actually splitting molecules in order to create hydrogen, the Earth's supply of water is essentially unlimited. So when you pay your water bill, you're really paying for a service rather than a resource - same as when you pay your internet bill.
Not that I agree with these insane price structures, but I have to admit, comparing data delivery to water delivery is actually a pretty good analogy. It certainly makes sense to charge more for higher usage.
My mistake. Even with that correction, you still haven't provided any evidence.
No difference. I just find it amusing that you're completely incapable of admitting that you've made an error.
Thank you for giving me an easy reason to - once again - dismiss you. If that's the best argument you can make, then perhaps we'd better set-aside this discussion until you've had some time to mature. Take care.
Yes.
No, you were talking about Israel building new settlements every day. A claim which you've yet to document.
As for what WE are talking about, it's got nothing to do with expansion. I've dismissed that point entirely. Even if you were 100% right on that one point, it would still be irrelevant, as I've already explained. Here's the quote:
And if I had some ham, I could make a ham and cheese sandwich. If I had some cheese.
Heh. Right. "splinter terrorist organization". Well that makes it a whole lot better, doesn't it? Hey, technically the Taliban weren't responsible for 9/11 - it was the work of a "splinter terrorist organization". And the US wasn't bombed by Germany at Pearl Harbour, so why didn't they just focus on the Japanese?
You can't seriously be that naive.
Well please post the rest of the list, because both of your examples are invalid. The first refers to a proposed settlement (ie. it hasn't been built) and the second refers to an expansion of existing settlements. Neither article disproves what I said, and neither one of them does anything to support your claim.
Given that the state of relations between Canada and the US is completely different, your analogy is inapplicable.
If we had been at war for 60 years, and if Canadians were regularly launching rockets at New York and teaching their children from infancy to hate Americans, then you might have a point. But under such circumstances, the American actions would pale in comparison, and would also be barely worth mentioning.
Nonsense. If the Palestinians were willing to stick to a ceasefire agreement, and sat down to work out a workable compromise, Israel would be more than happy to abandon either all or the vast majority of their settlements. As I said, this has been shown numerous time in various conflicts. This fight isn't over land, but religion and ideology. If Israel abandoned all settlements tomorrow, can you seriously tell me that you believe Hamas and Hezbollah would cease all of their attacks?
Well, leaving aside the fact that you're just plain wrong since no new settlements have been built for quite some time ... and forgetting the fact that Israel has repeatedly (starting in the 80's, continuing until 2005) demonstrated it's willingness to remove such settlements in order to reach a negotiated peace agreement ... even leaving those things aside, you're being pedantic anyway, since civilians building houses and civilians killing other civilians are two completely different things.
Yeah, technically it's "problematic" in the same sense that a fist-fight between a Palestinian and an Israeli might be problematic, but compared to the real problems it's not even worth mentioning.
Body-counts aren't an indicator of progress, unless your goal is genocide.
However, such low casualty figures definitely are indicative of the fact that these clashes are a low-intensity conflict rather than outright war. Casualties during the Six Day War were 10 times higher, and the following war of attrition cost the Egyptians some 5,000 deaths. That turned out to be enough killing to convince every state in the region to make peace with Israel. The only ones still causing problems are the Palestinians and Hezbollah. As long as Israel is held back by "the international community", the situation is unlikely to improve.
lol. Is that what's got your panties in a bunch? I'm not advocating genocide, you silly twat. "Finish the job" means exactly what it says. Achieve a decisive victory which will put a stop to further attacks, and allow a negotiated settlement which both sides can live with.
Look, if you're having trouble understanding things, just ask. Behaving like a petulant child won't get you anywhere.
Yeah, we Zionist Space Lizards are a dangerous bunch. You should see if David Icke is interested in signing up for an account.