Think Total War (which when I first heard about it, I thought already was what I wanted; big bummer that was), but with the 'mission' stuff (spying, asassination, etc) done as a FPS, like Deus Ex or Thief (although I never played that), instead of the lame 'watch the movie and wait till the computer has rolled the dice'.
That combination of battlefield simulation, resource management and small scale personal actions (stealing, killing, spying) would be totally awesome. And all the technology is there already. Just combing Total War with the Half-life (or Unreal, or Thief, or...) engine and voila! Instant hit! Well, I'd shelf over 50 euros for that (which I think is too much money for most games out there).
Anyone who has played Sword of the Samurai (old EGA (or VGA?) game on the PC) should know what I'm talking about.
"Die Unschuldsvermutung heißt im Kern, dass wir lieber zehn Schuldige nicht bestrafen, als einen Unschuldigen bestrafen. Der Grundsatz kann nicht für die Gefahrenabwehr gelten. Wäre es richtig zu sagen: Lieber lasse ich zehn Anschläge passieren, als dass ich jemanden, der vielleicht keinen Anschlag begehen will, daran zu hindern versuche? Nach meiner Auffassung wäre das falsch."
What he says is basically this:
The innocence principle means that we would rather let 10 guilty men free than punish 1 innocent man. However, this cannot be applied to terrorist activity.
Can you also say: rather 10 terrorist attacks unstopped, than stopping someone who perhaps doesn't want to commit a terrorist act? My belief is that this is false.
Well, I see where he's coming from with that quote. But the question is in how far are you willing to go to stop terrorist acts. In my personal opinion in most countries we have already gone too far, and have started venturing into 1984-esque territories.
And on-topic to the main post: if the boycot is broad enough I'll bet he does notice. But when in recent times have boycotts worked to get attention?
Using something like subversion or any other version control system for such a task just leads to Yet Another Homebrew Administration System, that will probably lead your successors to tears and insanity. Use tools already there, and that are pertinent to the job.
version control; logging; multiple users; secure authentication; and integrity checking. All those features you need are mostly already there in puppet: http://puppet.reductivelabs.com/ (and maybe also in cfengine, but that's a nightmare). And the development on puppet is really picking up steam at the moment.
Problem for your situation is that it has no Windows or Novell support as of yet, but recently work on Windows at least seems to have started. And if your first priority is mainly config file management: that part should be fairly trivial.
I'd like to see a remake of the EGA game "Sword of the Samurai". Now, "Shogun: Total War" goes a long way towards this already and I love the game. What they failed to copy was the gameplay for the in-between kinda FP missions, where you got to assassinate high-placed adversaries. In "Sword" you got to do this all yourself, in "Shogun" these were removed in favour of stupid throw of the dice cut-scenes with no influence by the player.
So basically I want a game that has elements of the Total War series combined with FPS elements for sneaky assassin missions. And maybe a KOTOR type swordfight mission to protect your daimyo's honour in 1-on-1 combat. I'd play that. Actually, I'd buy that...
Exactly. I'm at this moment just starting out with Rome: Total War and it has me hooked. Thing is, the predecessor, Shogun: Total War was awesome for its day too. The one in between, Medieval: Total War I skipped, but now I'm thinking maybe I should look at that too. But first Rome.
On another note, when Shogun came out I thought it was a revamp of the game (EGA-era I think it was) Sword of the Samurai. Sword has sort of the same premise of Shogun, namely, conquer Japan, and had sort of the same components, in that you could fight wars, but also kill adversaries and stuff. At the time I was a bit disappointed with Shogun because the one-on-one missions done by spies and stuff were no longer player-controlled. You just clicked 'go' and hoped the dice would fall your way. While in Sword you got to do the act yourself, as in infiltrate the mansion of a daimyo, find him stealthily (or not) and kill him yourself. That was a big part of the appeal of the game: so many different arenas you had to be good in.
Now I was thinking, wouldn't it be totally cool if they did that with the Total War series? Give one of your assasins the order to kill a general and there you go into a FPS-style mission where you have to do the deed yourself. Now, I would totally buy the game that implemented that!
Even better, just replace FireFox's icon with IE's... They'll just think IE changed its look and feel and thank Microsoft for making their life better.
This is probably nitpicking on something only used to illustrate a point in relation to computer science, but, apart from the very true rebuttal in the other reply to this post, I need to point out that 'science' is absolutely NOT a black and white field.
It's a common misconception that everything pertaining to 'science' and 'scientific fact' is indeed just that, fact, and thus set in stone for ever.
One look at the '50, 100 & 150 years ago from scientific american' page in that publication is enough to realise how often 'scientific fact' is utterly and completely, and often laughably, wrong. And it would be beyond hubris to think in our day and age it is any different.
At the shop I work at, this is common practice with drives that give absolutely nothing when connected to power. That is, given the drive is a fairly recent one, and therefore still has a stack of brothers in inventory. Often works too. Swap board, hook it up with a blank HD, pull a copy of the data, unswap the board and ditch the bad HD.
Funny, I followed this workshop two years ago in a somewhat smaller form (I think). It was organised by the same people though, Paul van Susante I remember.
It was fun to do, but the technical level was pretty low as we were mostly second or third year students. It was also framed in a multi-cultural frame, so there were a lot of side issues dealing with foreign students. And it was a lot shorter.
But it was fun, probably one of the funnest things I did that year. It also sparked my interest in the other disciplines here at the Technical University (I am studying Civil Engineering). I still have this vague idea of combining something like this into my thesis, but I can't really come up with a good basis for that (yet)...
Good to see they're still hammering away at this. I for one would sign on for a stint on a lunar base yesterday, if I could...
Exactly. The thing Hal Plotkin is calling for in his piece is not that all you/. reading geeks and IT professional (and all the rest of the internet savvy people) vote this way or that. You probably are all aware of who to vote for or not. That's not the issue.
The issue here is all those people that don't frequent sites like/. (and more and more of the more mainstream news/media sites that are carrying stories these days denouncing these idiocies in US law), but instead are still the run-of-the-mill couch-potatoes sitting in front of their TV sets during prime-time.
TV is still the way to go, if you want to get a message to the masses. Pay (and pay heavily) to get your ad campaign directed against one or two misguided politicians on TV during prime-time and we'll see how the voting goes.
OK, here's a question approaching this from the other side. I know a local band that in my opinion has the potential to appeal to quite a number of people. Due to intra-band relational shit they've been out of it for a year or so, but are now starting to pick up steam again in a slightly different configuration.
Because of where this band operates (the lowlands), it's unlikely that they'll be able to reach over the Atlantic through the normal channels, and I've been thinking that the way to go for them would be the internet. Seeing as what they're after at the moment is exposure (as opposed to huge profits, a little money would be interesting, though), what would be the best way to get attention to their gig?
I understand the first stop would be a good website that announces their presence on the world of music... but what then?
They already have the bare-bones website up 'n' running (it needs A LOT of work, though), but how do you get the people coming in, and possibly paying a small amount for the tracks they like and download?
Nope, not just water on earth. In fact, Galileo found evidence for liquid water in the most unlikely of places, namely on three of Jupiters moons. Of those Ganymede and Europa are fair certainties. Callisto probably also has liquid water, but maybe only ice.
Okay, I'll give you that... But I think the article about software engineering for the space shuttle had it right. The reason there's so much buggy code out there is because coders don't pay any (or enough, anyway) attention to the fases of the coding process before the actual code-writing. If you spend enough time designing (as in specifications, etc) before coding you can get pretty close to flawless code....
Why is it that in most other disciplines the process of creating something is regulated in detail, while coders always just seem to hack their way through till it works? We need a change of attitude.
By the way: I'm as bad as the next guy... I love to hack, I hate the design-process
I agree with your comment that the current mix of GIF and JPG are adequate for the net at the moment. But to say that therefore every new format should be ignored and viewed as redundant is just a bit to much. The net is certainly not yet at the end of it's develpment and I wonder if it ever will be. I hope not. And new formats and proposals are key to keeping the net developing, growing and being what it should.
I don't think it's a reasonable decision. Let me also state right here that I'm not fully clear on my own stand regarding these types of "vigilante" sites. I agree that these sites could cause a lot of unjust situations and a lot of pain for some people not deserving it.
On the other hand, I quote: CrimeNet offers details on 4000 convicted criminals gleaned from newspapers and court records. So what's next? No more jurors who have been known to read the paper, watch the news, follow court decisions, etc.? Because in theory, everyone could get the information on the site by doing their own (albeit extensive) research.
So what's the fuss about? The info could have been printed on paper and then distributed. It's not as easy, but if someone threw a lot of dough against it I guess you could get some coverage.
So, theoretically the jury should have been able to get the info via other media or means... So if you're not sequestering the jury somewhere away from all outside influences, you're doing something wrong anyway, right?
Okay, so they've found a ( or another ) way to - possibly - produce higher capacity, faster memory. But then again, all they've managed to do as far as I can make up from the ( at some points funny ) babelfish translation is to get tiny coated gold-pellets to retain electrons until queried... Okay, so you've got a few ( or maybe just one? ) bits to play with. That's still a long, long way off from a 128 MB module, ain't it?
And also: come on guys! Gold, for crying out loud! Why not just use platinum if you're going to go expensive... I mean, then just do it right, right? What the hell will you have to lay down for one of these? For materials alone you'd have to pay a pretty buck, I suppose.
God, but that was one letter I just went completely tingly over while reading.
Good show, good show!
Good letter. To the point, attacking in a very smart, but very civilized ( and might I add, humanly understandable ) way. And points to the lawyer ( or... team, firm, whatever ) for coming up with such a succint list of questions. Just lob that ball right on over to the other side and let's see 'm return it, right? I just can't wait to read their response...
Just goes to show how little I know about these things... [..] through an Arrowpoint CS-800 (which replaced the CS-100 that blew up last week) Do you really mean to say that one of those arrowpoints is a piece of junk after a DDos? Or did this have to do with something else?
Well, since my ignorance is now fully established, I'll just say I think you've got some nice stuff there...
You're right. And apart from that package you'll see that if you get the standard platform SDK for Windows (freely downloadable) it includes a whole section dedicated to "getting ready for 64-bit Windows".
I needed this because I'm kinda forced to produce an application for Windows as an asignment (for my study to become a civil engineer). It didn't really say it that obviously, but I think that they'll go mad if I come up with a linux-app. Come to think of it... It would be fun to see what they'd do...
By the way: at the moment I nearly always boot up to Windows 2000. And if I'm completely honest: it does it's job quite well. I haven't had a crash since I installed it...
The thing you're forgetting is that all knowledge about effects of nuclear explosions on health and the environment were discovered by trial and error. In other words: experiments were carried out and effects were recorded and analyzed. And human test-subjects were used, too! Not always with the subjects knowing it. And no, I'm not just talking about the big, bad, ugly soviets. The US military were brilliant when it came to testing new weapons... (see their idea to use drugs as weapons)
Which is of course also the reason that these civil engineers could propose these kind of things: most (if not all) of the results were classified. So generally people only knew it was dangerous, but they had no idea how dangerous or long-lasting the effects were.
And then of course: the people suggesting these things probably knew absolutely nothing about nuclear physics. These guys were most probably civil engineers or maybe just politicians.
Sometimes public paranoia isn't so farfetched, even when there isn't any paranoia at all. Let me explain that with an accident that shook up the Netherlands yesterday.
Around midday a fire broke out on or near a fireworks storage facility situated in the middle of a neighbourhood in a town in the east of the country (Enschede, if you're wondering). At first the firefighters that responded to the call thought it wasn't that big a deal (or probably didn't know any better) and calmly kept the people at a small distance while trying to douse the flames. Luckily (well, not for him, actually) a reporter from local television lived just around the corner and taped the whole event. Suddenly the fire apparantly took hold of some bigger ammo and quite a show started. Of course everyone kinda panicked a bit and started to put a bit more distance between them and the fire. Then it got hold of even bigger ammo and the explosion that followed shook the whole neighbourhood up, shattering windows, blowing away roof-tiles and generally creating panic. That was one big explosion and quite spectaculair to see on tv. Of course everyone who was looking at that point decided it was probably better to not be there. And good idea too, because it turned out that "big" explosion wasn't big after all, because five minutes later the truly big explosion followed. The guy filming it had carefully stepped outside again, standing just in front of his doorway when the blast occured. The only thing you see on the tape is a huge fireball forming, then the camera falters for five seconds and then returns with the guy lying on the ground a few meters inside his house. From around four or five in the afternoon national television showed that film a million times. Later also film shot after the ensuing fires and general havoc had somewhat died down was shown. For about 500 meters around the blast not one house was recognizable as such. The whole neighbourhood (around 2000 people) had been evacuated. The whole city was shook up and a great part of it also suffered damage from the blast and falling debris.
Well, to come to the point here: the residents that lived around that facility weren't paranoid about anything. But many will now cry out that they should have been, and that this kind of thing should never have been given the chance to happen. I agree. But it also shows one thing people generally don't understand: nothing in this world is a certainty! The facility had all the papers and was checked regularly by the fire department. And I think they took all precautions against something like this that they could. And still it happened. Poeple need to start to understand that risks are a part of life.
I just realized this is kinda off-topic... Sorry about that...
Slashdot Mirror
That's one game I still want to see.
Think Total War (which when I first heard about it, I thought already was what I wanted; big bummer that was), but with the 'mission' stuff (spying, asassination, etc) done as a FPS, like Deus Ex or Thief (although I never played that), instead of the lame 'watch the movie and wait till the computer has rolled the dice'.
That combination of battlefield simulation, resource management and small scale personal actions (stealing, killing, spying) would be totally awesome. And all the technology is there already. Just combing Total War with the Half-life (or Unreal, or Thief, or...) engine and voila! Instant hit! Well, I'd shelf over 50 euros for that (which I think is too much money for most games out there).
Anyone who has played Sword of the Samurai (old EGA (or VGA?) game on the PC) should know what I'm talking about.
What he says is basically this:
Well, I see where he's coming from with that quote. But the question is in how far are you willing to go to stop terrorist acts. In my personal opinion in most countries we have already gone too far, and have started venturing into 1984-esque territories.
And on-topic to the main post: if the boycot is broad enough I'll bet he does notice. But when in recent times have boycotts worked to get attention?
Using something like subversion or any other version control system for such a task just leads to Yet Another Homebrew Administration System, that will probably lead your successors to tears and insanity. Use tools already there, and that are pertinent to the job.
version control; logging; multiple users; secure authentication; and integrity checking. All those features you need are mostly already there in puppet: http://puppet.reductivelabs.com/ (and maybe also in cfengine, but that's a nightmare). And the development on puppet is really picking up steam at the moment.Problem for your situation is that it has no Windows or Novell support as of yet, but recently work on Windows at least seems to have started. And if your first priority is mainly config file management: that part should be fairly trivial.
These days it's just a few commands:
and then finally:
and then either have the puppet server autocert the new machine or do it by hand (for the paranoid)...
So, about 5 minutes, I'd think.
Check out puppet, it's really a great (albeit a bit new) project: http://puppet.reductivelabs.com/
I'd like to see a remake of the EGA game "Sword of the Samurai". Now, "Shogun: Total War" goes a long way towards this already and I love the game. What they failed to copy was the gameplay for the in-between kinda FP missions, where you got to assassinate high-placed adversaries. In "Sword" you got to do this all yourself, in "Shogun" these were removed in favour of stupid throw of the dice cut-scenes with no influence by the player.
So basically I want a game that has elements of the Total War series combined with FPS elements for sneaky assassin missions. And maybe a KOTOR type swordfight mission to protect your daimyo's honour in 1-on-1 combat. I'd play that. Actually, I'd buy that...
Exactly. I'm at this moment just starting out with Rome: Total War and it has me hooked. Thing is, the predecessor, Shogun: Total War was awesome for its day too. The one in between, Medieval: Total War I skipped, but now I'm thinking maybe I should look at that too. But first Rome.
On another note, when Shogun came out I thought it was a revamp of the game (EGA-era I think it was) Sword of the Samurai. Sword has sort of the same premise of Shogun, namely, conquer Japan, and had sort of the same components, in that you could fight wars, but also kill adversaries and stuff. At the time I was a bit disappointed with Shogun because the one-on-one missions done by spies and stuff were no longer player-controlled. You just clicked 'go' and hoped the dice would fall your way. While in Sword you got to do the act yourself, as in infiltrate the mansion of a daimyo, find him stealthily (or not) and kill him yourself. That was a big part of the appeal of the game: so many different arenas you had to be good in.
Now I was thinking, wouldn't it be totally cool if they did that with the Total War series? Give one of your assasins the order to kill a general and there you go into a FPS-style mission where you have to do the deed yourself. Now, I would totally buy the game that implemented that!
Even better, just replace FireFox's icon with IE's... They'll just think IE changed its look and feel and thank Microsoft for making their life better.
It's what I did...
This is probably nitpicking on something only used to illustrate a point in relation to computer science, but, apart from the very true rebuttal in the other reply to this post, I need to point out that 'science' is absolutely NOT a black and white field.
It's a common misconception that everything pertaining to 'science' and 'scientific fact' is indeed just that, fact, and thus set in stone for ever.
One look at the '50, 100 & 150 years ago from scientific american' page in that publication is enough to realise how often 'scientific fact' is utterly and completely, and often laughably, wrong. And it would be beyond hubris to think in our day and age it is any different.
At the shop I work at, this is common practice with drives that give absolutely nothing when connected to power. That is, given the drive is a fairly recent one, and therefore still has a stack of brothers in inventory. Often works too. Swap board, hook it up with a blank HD, pull a copy of the data, unswap the board and ditch the bad HD.
Customers love you, if it works.
Funny, I followed this workshop two years ago in a somewhat smaller form (I think). It was organised by the same people though, Paul van Susante I remember.
It was fun to do, but the technical level was pretty low as we were mostly second or third year students. It was also framed in a multi-cultural frame, so there were a lot of side issues dealing with foreign students. And it was a lot shorter.
But it was fun, probably one of the funnest things I did that year. It also sparked my interest in the other disciplines here at the Technical University (I am studying Civil Engineering). I still have this vague idea of combining something like this into my thesis, but I can't really come up with a good basis for that (yet)...
Good to see they're still hammering away at this. I for one would sign on for a stint on a lunar base yesterday, if I could...
I think he means the market for optical data storage in general... Seeing as Philips was the one inventing the CD, this seems about right...
Exactly. The thing Hal Plotkin is calling for in his piece is not that all you /. reading geeks and IT professional (and all the rest of the internet savvy people) vote this way or that. You probably are all aware of who to vote for or not. That's not the issue.
/. (and more and more of the more mainstream news/media sites that are carrying stories these days denouncing these idiocies in US law), but instead are still the run-of-the-mill couch-potatoes sitting in front of their TV sets during prime-time.
The issue here is all those people that don't frequent sites like
TV is still the way to go, if you want to get a message to the masses. Pay (and pay heavily) to get your ad campaign directed against one or two misguided politicians on TV during prime-time and we'll see how the voting goes.
OK, here's a question approaching this from the other side. I know a local band that in my opinion has the potential to appeal to quite a number of people. Due to intra-band relational shit they've been out of it for a year or so, but are now starting to pick up steam again in a slightly different configuration.
Because of where this band operates (the lowlands), it's unlikely that they'll be able to reach over the Atlantic through the normal channels, and I've been thinking that the way to go for them would be the internet. Seeing as what they're after at the moment is exposure (as opposed to huge profits, a little money would be interesting, though), what would be the best way to get attention to their gig?
I understand the first stop would be a good website that announces their presence on the world of music... but what then?
They already have the bare-bones website up 'n' running (it needs A LOT of work, though), but how do you get the people coming in, and possibly paying a small amount for the tracks they like and download?
BTW, they have some six tracks up for download
Nope, not just water on earth. In fact, Galileo found evidence for liquid water in the most unlikely of places, namely on three of Jupiters moons. Of those Ganymede and Europa are fair certainties. Callisto probably also has liquid water, but maybe only ice.
.,@
Check out some of these:
Europa, wet and wild
Titan, Mars, and other E.T.-nurseries
Overview: The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons
xchg
The "good people" of this town probably weren't counting on anyone really finding out about this on a national level, [...]
.,@
Boy, do I hope they get wind of this discussion here. It'd freak the hell out of 'm...
;-)
xchg
Okay, I'll give you that... But I think the article about software engineering for the space shuttle had it right. The reason there's so much buggy code out there is because coders don't pay any (or enough, anyway) attention to the fases of the coding process before the actual code-writing. If you spend enough time designing (as in specifications, etc) before coding you can get pretty close to flawless code....
.,@
Why is it that in most other disciplines the process of creating something is regulated in detail, while coders always just seem to hack their way through till it works? We need a change of attitude.
By the way: I'm as bad as the next guy... I love to hack, I hate the design-process
xchg
I agree with your comment that the current mix of GIF and JPG are adequate for the net at the moment.
.,@
But to say that therefore every new format should be ignored and viewed as redundant is just a bit to much. The net is certainly not yet at the end of it's develpment and I wonder if it ever will be. I hope not.
And new formats and proposals are key to keeping the net developing, growing and being what it should.
xchg
I don't think it's a reasonable decision.
.,@
Let me also state right here that I'm not fully clear on my own stand regarding these types of "vigilante" sites. I agree that these sites could cause a lot of unjust situations and a lot of pain for some people not deserving it.
On the other hand, I quote: CrimeNet offers details on 4000 convicted criminals gleaned from newspapers and court records.
So what's next? No more jurors who have been known to read the paper, watch the news, follow court decisions, etc.? Because in theory, everyone could get the information on the site by doing their own (albeit extensive) research.
xchg
So what's the fuss about?
.,@
The info could have been printed on paper and then distributed. It's not as easy, but if someone threw a lot of dough against it I guess you could get some coverage.
So, theoretically the jury should have been able to get the info via other media or means...
So if you're not sequestering the jury somewhere away from all outside influences, you're doing something wrong anyway, right?
xchg
Okay, so they've found a ( or another ) way to - possibly - produce higher capacity, faster memory.
.,@
But then again, all they've managed to do as far as I can make up from the ( at some points funny ) babelfish translation is to get tiny coated gold-pellets to retain electrons until queried... Okay, so you've got a few ( or maybe just one? ) bits to play with. That's still a long, long way off from a 128 MB module, ain't it?
And also: come on guys! Gold, for crying out loud! Why not just use platinum if you're going to go expensive... I mean, then just do it right, right?
What the hell will you have to lay down for one of these? For materials alone you'd have to pay a pretty buck, I suppose.
xchg
God, but that was one letter I just went completely tingly over while reading.
.,@
Good show, good show!
Good letter. To the point, attacking in a very smart, but very civilized ( and might I add, humanly understandable ) way.
And points to the lawyer ( or... team, firm, whatever ) for coming up with such a succint list of questions. Just lob that ball right on over to the other side and let's see 'm return it, right?
I just can't wait to read their response...
xchg
Just goes to show how little I know about these things...
.,@
[..] through an Arrowpoint CS-800 (which replaced the CS-100 that blew up last week)
Do you really mean to say that one of those arrowpoints is a piece of junk after a DDos? Or did this have to do with something else?
Well, since my ignorance is now fully established, I'll just say I think you've got some nice stuff there...
xchg
You're right. And apart from that package you'll see that if you get the standard platform SDK for Windows (freely downloadable) it includes a whole section dedicated to "getting ready for 64-bit Windows".
.,@
I needed this because I'm kinda forced to produce an application for Windows as an asignment (for my study to become a civil engineer). It didn't really say it that obviously, but I think that they'll go mad if I come up with a linux-app.
Come to think of it... It would be fun to see what they'd do...
By the way: at the moment I nearly always boot up to Windows 2000. And if I'm completely honest: it does it's job quite well. I haven't had a crash since I installed it...
xchg
The thing you're forgetting is that all knowledge about effects of nuclear explosions on health and the environment were discovered by trial and error. In other words: experiments were carried out and effects were recorded and analyzed. And human test-subjects were used, too! Not always with the subjects knowing it. And no, I'm not just talking about the big, bad, ugly soviets. The US military were brilliant when it came to testing new weapons... (see their idea to use drugs as weapons)
.,@
Which is of course also the reason that these civil engineers could propose these kind of things: most (if not all) of the results were classified. So generally people only knew it was dangerous, but they had no idea how dangerous or long-lasting the effects were.
And then of course: the people suggesting these things probably knew absolutely nothing about nuclear physics. These guys were most probably civil engineers or maybe just politicians.
xchg
Sometimes public paranoia isn't so farfetched, even when there isn't any paranoia at all.
.,@
Let me explain that with an accident that shook up the Netherlands yesterday.
Around midday a fire broke out on or near a fireworks storage facility situated in the middle of a neighbourhood in a town in the east of the country (Enschede, if you're wondering). At first the firefighters that responded to the call thought it wasn't that big a deal (or probably didn't know any better) and calmly kept the people at a small distance while trying to douse the flames.
Luckily (well, not for him, actually) a reporter from local television lived just around the corner and taped the whole event. Suddenly the fire apparantly took hold of some bigger ammo and quite a show started. Of course everyone kinda panicked a bit and started to put a bit more distance between them and the fire.
Then it got hold of even bigger ammo and the explosion that followed shook the whole neighbourhood up, shattering windows, blowing away roof-tiles and generally creating panic. That was one big explosion and quite spectaculair to see on tv. Of course everyone who was looking at that point decided it was probably better to not be there. And good idea too, because it turned out that "big" explosion wasn't big after all, because five minutes later the truly big explosion followed.
The guy filming it had carefully stepped outside again, standing just in front of his doorway when the blast occured. The only thing you see on the tape is a huge fireball forming, then the camera falters for five seconds and then returns with the guy lying on the ground a few meters inside his house.
From around four or five in the afternoon national television showed that film a million times. Later also film shot after the ensuing fires and general havoc had somewhat died down was shown.
For about 500 meters around the blast not one house was recognizable as such. The whole neighbourhood (around 2000 people) had been evacuated. The whole city was shook up and a great part of it also suffered damage from the blast and falling debris.
Well, to come to the point here: the residents that lived around that facility weren't paranoid about anything. But many will now cry out that they should have been, and that this kind of thing should never have been given the chance to happen.
I agree.
But it also shows one thing people generally don't understand: nothing in this world is a certainty! The facility had all the papers and was checked regularly by the fire department. And I think they took all precautions against something like this that they could. And still it happened. Poeple need to start to understand that risks are a part of life.
I just realized this is kinda off-topic... Sorry about that...
xchg