Here’s some open thread fodder that doesn’t have anything to do with you-know-who:
- If you’re wondering why Fukushima Daiichi (plant #1) is a broken mess, while Fukushima Daini (plant #2) achieved cold shutdown, here’s a good article from Asahi Shimbun explaining some of the reasons.
- WoW may soon have “fair trade” gold farmers, which sounds like something out of a Neal Stephenson novel.
- We bombed rebel tanks in Libya because we didn’t know they had them.
I’m sure the rest of you have something to add. Have at it.
Also, too: I forgot to mention that the fat Beagle I’m walking was rolling the front end of his lard-encased fatbody in some awful stink, so I yanked him off, and in doing so, he lost his balance and rolled onto his back. He was like one of those insects that can’t right itself after being placed on its back. After churning his little stick legs mightily for a few seconds, he finally summoned up enough momentum to roll his beer barrel body to one side and struggled back on his legs. I wasn’t fast enough with my phone to get you guys a video, but it was priceless.
stuckinred
We who”
roshan
UFO time!
Note: quite a decent documentary with lots and lots of incredible and amazing instances of encounters with UFOs backed by a reasonable amount of evidence and expertise.
geg6
Yeah, how the hell did we not know that?
What I just saw somewhere else (maybe GOS?) was that the rebels are now painting their artillery and tanks another color. Hopefully, they are choosing some girly color that Qadaffi would be too horrified to let his troops use. Pink would be nice and show up well in a sea of desert brown, I’m thinking.
freelancer
Punchy?
Abe Vigoda?
Charlie Sheen?
Help me out here.
Villago Delenda Est
Voldemort!
(just said that to see Ron Weasley squirm)
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Blucher!
Did you hear the horse?
cleek
@geg6:
yes, it is, in fact, pink.
and now that this info is on the web, loyalists will know how to stop their own vehicles from being bombed.
stuckinred
@geg6: Hell, these dopes start firing in the air every time they see a goddamn camera. Guess what? Rounds that go up eventually come down. They had no armor and then all of the sudden they fired up some tanks they captured and took off. You find that hard to believe? These are well meaning weenies.
Villago Delenda Est
Frankly, I despise both gold farmers and the lazy asswipes who are their clients.
Power-leveling services. This is stupid. It’s like paying someone to watch a movie for you. WTF? The entire point of leveling is to enjoy the journey, AND to learn how to play your character. Back in the old days of SWG, people would pay top dollar for an account that already had a Jedi character on it, before they made Jedi a starting profession. You had to play the game extensively (grind, grind grind) to unlock a Jedi character. The problem with just buying one is you made a total fool out of yourself because more often than not you didn’t know how to play the character properly.
Power leveling is pretty much the same thing. Experience points are only a rough equivalent to actual experience. Go ahead, buy a power-leveled paladin in WoW and make a total ass of yourself fighting the Lich King, and getting your entire raid wiped. I dare you. Go for it.
Tsulagi
Oops.
Sweet Jesus. Pink? Any word yet on accessorizing their armor?
Yutsano
@geg6: The Flamingo Tank Brigade? I smell a meme brewing.
EDIT: Okay who broke the blog?
Will
Any way we can get that ad with the cartoon blonde to say “You’re still using Access to manage statewide elections?”
bemused
Thanks for the great mental image of fat beagle churning it’s legs like a beetle stuck on it’s back. The downside was that in my mind, I was relating the beagle to you-know-who, stuck in the stink.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Leeeroy Jenkins!
Ana Gama
@stuckinred: Time for rounds rationing.
me
Seems it’s as simple as Daiichi 1-3 were built in the early 70’s while Daini and Daiichi 5-6 were built in the late 70’s and 80’s. Those early 70’s reactor designs are all suspect. 4 is different as it was near 3 and defueled.
dr. bloor
The UN was so studiously unapologetic about it that one has to suspect the rebels have been blowing smoke up their ass.
NonyNony
that doesn’t have anything to do with you-know-who
My thoughts also immediately jumped to Lord Voldemort.
I blame free-market boggarts.
joes527
So … Does that mean that the rebels were threatening civilians with the tank? Or that the tank was a threat to our aircraft?
Or are we just blowing up any shit that we can find w/o any regard to mission?
SFAW
Hey, gang, any news on Sullivan today?
Yutsano
Your tax dollars at work: the Coast Guard continues patrols in search of terrorist otters
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
I understood nothing in the first paragraph of that “fair trade” gold article, and then it went downhill from there. Sometimes I feel like a dork for not being more of a dork.
On the other hand, I am enough of a dork to appreciate how cool it is that the Commodore 64 is being re-issued with 21C innards, including optional Blu-Ray.
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY:
Good night, Herr Doktor
jl
I can quit you know who, but I can’t quit the bogus Ryan ‘plan’, or the awful nonsense of the budget negotiations. Apparently, the GOP insists on defunding Planned Parenthood because some part of it, using non federal funds, provides abortions. This hurts their precious moral convictions. I guess my moral convictions about my tax dollars going to start useless illegal and immoral wars are less precious than their moral convictions.
Speaker Boehner says this is not so, but I am working under the reasonable assumption that Boehner is not overly mindful about the truth. The news reports seem to agree with me:
Thanks to the House GOP’s decision to add a policy “rider” defunding women’s health services provider Planned Parenthood to the budget and Democrats’ pushback, abortion has taken center stage in this week’s government shutdown battle.
news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110408/ts_yblog_theticket/abortion-becomes-flashpoint-in-shutdown…
How important is federally funded assistance for provision of medical care for women and children in the US, like breast exams, prenatal care, pap smears, etc? I was curious so I downloaded the handy dandy new version of the OECD Health Statistics key indicators. You be the judge. The lists show countries who have longer and shorter life expectancies at birth for women and men, and at 65 years for women.
The data can be downloaded from
oecd.org/document/16/0,3746,en_2649_37407_2085200_1_1_1_37407,00.html
Life expectancy at birth, women
Longer than US
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Iceland
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Korea
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Shorter than US
Czech Republic
Estonia
Hungary
Mexico
Poland
Slovak Republic
Turkey
Life expectancy at birth, men
Longer than US
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Iceland
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Korea
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Shorter than US
Chile
Czech Republic
Estonia
Hungary
Mexico
Poland
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Turkey
Life expectancy at 65, women
Longer than US
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Finland
Germany
Iceland
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Korea
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Shorter than the US
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Greece
Hungary
Mexico
Poland
Slovak Republic
Turkey
Edit: data are for 2007, the latest year with reasonably complete data
NonyNony
@jl:
No, the GOP insists on defunding because ACORN! NPR! AARP!
Basically Planned Parenthood has at various times worked against the GOP and so it needs to go. This is all about going down the old “enemies list” and doing some payback.
salacious crumb
jeez, and we have money to help a rebel army in Libya that is having child soldiers do the fighting as well.
Stillwater
@joes527: Or are we just blowing up any shit that we can find w/o any regard to mission?
In his posts on this, Larison is pretty clear that the NATO forces are honoring the limits of the resolution and in fact not firing indiscriminately eg., on Qaddafian forces in urban areas. I found that to be a pretty stunning and welcome bit of news, if it’s true.
Corner Stone
We know absolutely nothing about the rebels. And the “save a 100,000 at Srebrenica South” might as well be a vial of white powder for all the truth it contains.
eemom
@stuckinred:
right, “we who”? I thought it’s just NATO now.
Martin
Simplified version is that gamers in the west don’t want to spend time in the game to earn money to buy stuff. So instead they spend actual dollars to buy gold off of other people. There’s enough money in it that there are people in developing countries where playing WoW and earning gold is their job, and there’s a full-blown economy around it.
Blizzard has been opposed to gold farming and the like (mainly because it ruins the game for others) but may be warming up to regulating it and making it a real service. Everything else in the article was some variation on that theme.
Corner Stone
@joes527:
After the rebels complained about response times for NATO air I think this sounds like a little, “Chump don’t want the help, Chump don’t get the help.”
Brachiator
More examples of stupidity going mainstream …
I was in the drug store and reached for some sinus medication, only to see from the label that it was homeopathic. I would have paid money for crap that would do absolutely nothing.
WTF?
I guess this has been happening at pharmacies like CVS for some time now.
How does the FDA let this kind of bullshit go on? I thought we elected adults when we elected Obama.
What’s next, a faith healer sitting next to the pharmacist in case you wanted to be cured by prayer?
JGabriel
So. A 75 year old Georgian (country, not state) woman goes out digging for scrap copper, to sell for food. Her spade digs into a fiber-optic cable, and brings down the internet for 12 hours in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
What I’m wondering is: Given Republican determination to reduce everyone in the bottom 90% to penury and poverty, how long before someone in this country brings down the internet while digging for metal scraps or wild turnips or whatnot?
I’m betting any min… screcshaz;[okjh;ag;hlkgZh;gann/bz
.
cyntax
@jl:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that portion is 3% (according to the GOS). The rest of the money goes to things like cancer screening, contraception, and treating STDs, which are obviously morally horrific. Also, too.
jl
Ah hah! I just noticed that Portugal, with its national health care system, long the laggard in population health among those countries classificed as developed high income countries, has finally caught up to the US in most indicators, except life expectancy for men at age 65, where it still performs slightly worse: 16.8 years for Portugal, versus 17/1 years for the US.
But, hey, gold star for Portugal, and its NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, which has brought Portugal up from something close to middle income less developed country levels of population health in the 1970s!
Relative performance of US on life expectancy for men at age 65 continues to decline. The US now ranks 17 out of 32 countries in the data base, but I guess that is not very relevant to women and child health.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: Well, we know one of them wants to let Qaddafi stay because he wants to keep his shop. And we know a rebel leader “would like to say to you people that NATO did not provide to us what we need.”
Our learning is trickling in.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Martin:
Thank you for the succinct de-dorkification. (I kinda figured it was something along those lines, and probably would have had a better understanding if I’d read the whole article, but when the first part reads like, “bleep blorp bloop,” it’s hard to be motivated to forge on.) It’s actually an interesting concept, that a whole sub-economy can spring up among online game players to the benefit of those in poorer countries.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Response times from when someone on the ground in the same military service calls for help to when rounds actually land on the target are dicey, at best. This is with your own artillery, mind you…without a doubt the most responsive fire support around, at least in the US Army, where it’s been developed over the past 70 years. Air strikes? Even more problematic. Cross languages, nationalities, with rebels who have limited knowledge of the system? Another mass of layers of complexity.
This stuff sounds really simple to dilettantes like that asswipe Kristol, who have no actual fucking military experience, but the devil is, as always, in the details.
daveNYC
@Martin:
They should just do what Eve Online does. Have an in-game market for time codes. Person in real life buys a time code for a free month of the game using cash money, then sells that code to someone in the game for in-game currency.
Lazy person turns cash into gold, hard-core gamer person turns gold into a free month of the game, and all the money goes to the game company. It won’t get rid of gold farmers, but it will take the wind out of their sails.
Villago Delenda Est
@cyntax:
Well, they all have to do with the Devil’s playground, the genitals, you know.
stuckinred
@Villago Delenda Est: It would be easier to explain “pissing up a slack line” to these knuckle heads.
Martin
@Brachiator:
FDA used to regulate those, but Ray-gun changed that. IIRC, it’s on the to-do list of things to change, but that’ll require funding, and that’s not gonna happen with the retards in the House.
ranger3
Keep in mind that the government shutdown is the fault of all those sluts who can’t keep their legs closed. And Obama was born in Kenya, too.
If the Democrats can’t win big in 2012, I am for real moving to Australia or Canada or wherever the fuck I need to go to get away from these freaks.
singfoom
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, I don’t get buying gold or anything in WoW. It’s a game, you need to play it to get good at it.
Plus, once you get to the level cap, making gold is super easy if you know what to auction and have reasonable prices.
The weird thing about that article is that it’s still against Blizzard’s TOS, so whether the guy who farmed it at the end is paid well or not is kind of a moot point.
Judas Escargot
@Brachiator:
Shh. Don’t give them any ideas.
Martin
@daveNYC: My understanding (from the guys I know who work there) is that they’re going to do something fairly similar along those lines. Blizzard will get a cut of the transaction, provide an easy, risk-free, and sanctioned way to complete the transaction, and by legitimizing the market by giving those guys in China an approved mechanism to do what they do, likely wipe out the bots and other groups in the process.
Apple’s app store is apparently the inspiration. People are willing to pay if you make it easy to pay. Blizzard will simply provide that middle layer.
Ana Gama
@ranger3: I hear New Zealand is quite nice.
freelancer
@Brachiator:
Dude, the JREF has given CVS an award this year for their promotion of medical BS.
Brachiator
@Martin:
If we blame Reagan for this, then we have to ask where the fuck Clinton or other presidents were to correct this. Do we really need an act of Congress rather than a regulatory action?
Skeptical Science gave CVS pharmacy an award for their stupidity.
And apparently Oprah’s boy Dr Oz is pushing homeopathy, too.
Meanwhile, the House tries to prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules, bowing to the wishes of media and telcom companies. Amazing.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m not sure how you mean this so I’ll just expound a little.
And say that this is what I’ve been saying since we started this imbroglio. Asking rebels to call in close air support is not exactly going to result in an outcome that smells like victory.
For even our/NATO’s vastly superior air power it’s going to take Boots Onna Ground(tm) !! to finish off Gaddafi’s military.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Brachiator:
Dunno if homeopathic decongestants are worth a damn, but I do know that zinc lozenges are considered a homeopathic treatment for head colds (you take ’em at the first sign of a scratchy throat), and I swear by those things. Using those, I haven’t had a full-blown cold for years, and I always used to get sick at least once or twice a year.
I do wish, though, we could ban the manufacture and sale of pseudophedrine. There are other meds for congestion available, and getting that off the market would put a helluva big squeeze on our meth industry.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Crap. Post attempt got moderated.
This should not be on a to-do list. It should have been on a “done and done” list since at least the Clinton administration.
ranger3
@Ana Gama: I hear that too. Canadian girls are without exception hotter than the sun. So there’s that to consider. But if you’ve ever gone drinking with Australians, you know that they like to party.
But I don’t have a passport and we don’t have a federal government anymore so I’m fucked.
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: So you’re going with the vaunted “Trickle Down Theory of Warfare”.
Lee
@Will:
I read a entry at the GOS about how the blond claimed that Access did not save the data when she exited.
I’ve worked with Access since it was first released. I can tell you without a doubt that is 100% pure bullshit. It ALWAYS prompts you if you want to save your data before you exit even if there are no dirty records. If it did not save the data it was because she clicked “No” when prompted.
I really hope they are able to fund a recount.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
The phenomenon you describe is known as “backhoe fade”. If you want to find a buried fiber optic cable, you bring out a backhoe, and put it to work in the vicinity. It will find the fiber optic cable, and sever it. A techie friend of mine proposed going hiking in a wilderness, but taking a short length of fiber optic cable with him. In the event he got lost, he’d bury the cable, and some backhoe would find it…and him!
protected static
A Cory L Doctrow novel, actually…
Villago Delenda Est
@singfoom:
Once you’ve hit the level cap, obtaining more gold is not only easy through the auction house, but just through the process of running some daily quests.
All of my capped toons have gold in their accounts numbering in the thousands. If you don’t spend your gold like a poet on payday, you’ll have more than enough to finance basic ingame activities and to buy gear you can’t otherwise obtain through looting or quest rewards.
ranger3
@cyntax: As I said… if these sluts could just keep their legs closed and have babies through immaculate conception like they’re supposed to, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Dennis SGMM
@Martin:
Gold farming? Darn. I haven’t played an MMORPG since Ultima Online and gold farming or grinding a character would never have occurred to me – assuming that it could even be done in UO.
If you don’t play the game then you don’t know the game. Someone may be able to buy a buffed-up character or the best weapons, armor, spells, charms, but that won’t make them a capable player. How sad that for some folks it’s more about ego than it is about the gameplay.
stuckinred
@joes527: That is the fucking mission!
cyntax
@Villago Delenda Est:
And there’s the rub.
[I promise not to quit my day job, but don’t forget to tip your waitress]
Martin
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama: Zinc has been shown to help, but too much can destroy your sense of smell.
And pseudophedrine most definitely does work and there’s really no suitable alternative to it. Perhaps we could stop treating the drug war with the same failed supply-side remedies as the GOP promotes for the economy and try some demand-side solutions instead?
Lee
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama:
First off it won’t do jack shit to the meth industry as it is now getting imported from Mexico. Second as a family of allergy suffers (my youngest is the worst) only with pseudophedrine is spring tolerable.
The other drug I assume you are referring to is Phenylephrine. The drug companies admit that it’s efficacy is far below that of pseudophedrine.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Asking rebels to call for close air support is a formula for FAIL. For example, how do the rebels specify where they want the bombs to drop? Do they use the same coordinate system we do? Are you assuming that they do? If you do make such an assumption (ASSUME – Makes an ASS out of U and ME!) then, again, you’re courting FAIL.
You have to have at least a liaison with them to actually make the fire request. The Army doesn’t have guys who talk to the Air Force for close air support. There are Air Force guys in Army HQs who actually do this. They speak Air Force…Army guys speak Army. Also, as was reported in Grenada, Army and Air Force radios are not frequency compatible, and I doubt if they’re crypto compatible, too.
You will need boots on the ground (and all the peril associated with that) to give the rebels close air support.
Lee
@Martin:
I thought that “Zinc destroying your smell” thing was debunked awhile back.
stuckinred
@Villago Delenda Est: Spooks can do it.
Lee
@Villago Delenda Est:
You might want to reference conflicts that were actually this century or even in the last decade of the previous century.
They have worked out the frequency/crypto problems.
stuckinred
@Lee: And they probably don’t even need phone cards to call in support from a pay phone anymore!
Corner Stone
@stuckinred: Call up Tom Clancy and see if his Mr. Clark is available.
NonyNony
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama:
Exactly.
Just like banning the manufacture and sale of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine has put a big squeeze on those industries.
If by “big squeeze” you mean “price supports from Uncle Sam”, that is.
Lee
@stuckinred:
LOL A Heartbreak Ridge reference. I have not thought about that movie in a very long time.
cyntax
@ranger3:
Punishing sluts–a time honored, American tradition since 1692.
If I learned anything yesterday (other than that John doesn’t abide by safewords), it’s that everyone’s life in America would be a whole lot easier if some people had been less uptight as kids, and maybe then they would have got laid more:
We’re gonna need more scarlet “A’s;” these harlots ain’t gonna brand themselves.
stuckinred
“Shortages were not the only communications problems found during the invasion of Grenada; interoperability was another. For example, uncoordinated use of radio frequencies prevented radio communications between Marines in the north and Army Rangers in the south. As such, interservice communication was prevented, except through offshore relay stations, and kept Marine commanders unaware for too long that Rangers were pinned down without adequate armor. In a second incident, it was reported that one member of the invasion force placed a long distance, commercial telephone call to Fort Bragg, N.C. to obtain C-130 gunship support for his unit which was under fire. His message was relayed via satellite and the gunship responded.”
freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/829758/posts
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Martin: @cyntax:
Yeah, I know the nasal-spray formulation was a fiasco. But I only use one lozenge every 3 – 4 hours all of maybe the 2 or 3 days a year I get that scratchy feeling.
I don’t like pseudoephedrine for the insomnia it gives me, and have in the past managed congestion just fine with (non-zinc) nasal sprays. But as Lee calls to mind, that’s not a likely option for allergy sufferers, on account of the rebound effect.
Didn’t know they were importing the stuff for meth, already. Shoulda figured.
Martin
@Lee: Someone should tell the FDA if it has been.
Brachiator
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama:
I don’t think zinc would be considered to be homeopathic, which is stuff which typically has zero active ingredients.
Pseudophedrine has bona fide uses. It can’t be helped if it is also used in illegal industries.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lee:
Lee, does this change the point, in any way, about the rebels needing US or NATO personnel to process their air strike requests?
You need boots on the ground. Period. No other way to make it timely.
stuckinred
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t you think the common use of “boots on the ground” is infantry?
scav
@JGabriel: When I first read about that little old Georgian lady, I instantly conjured up asiangrrrl with another of her rusty implements giving us much needed break from the insanity.
Villago Delenda Est
@stuckinred:
Well, if you’re being charitable, then “boots on the ground” is infantry.
I take a more expansive view. If you have ANY American personnel on the ground in any function, they are at risk. Heck, as we saw in the first few days, even guys in the air can find their boots touching the ground if their aircraft decides to malfunction in some way.
The spooks can call in the air strikes, but they still have to be physically present with the rebels. That makes them combatants…fair game for the Qaddafi loyalists under any reasonable interpretation of the laws of war. If they are in civilian clothing, not uniforms, furthermore, they’re spies, therefore the quaint Geneva Conventions don’t even apply to them…as if the Qaddafi loyalists aren’t going to treat them exactly as the deserting coward malassministration treated “foreign fighters”.
freelancer
@Corner Stone:
Clark is busy heading up Ryan’s extra-governmental Cheney-esque death sqads.
Chet
OMG.
Look, if it’s a WoW thread, nobody wants to read your endless “OMG you gamers with your crazy bleep-bloop moon language!” It’s not cute anymore that you don’t know what World of Warcraft is, or that you’ve never heard of dwarves or druids. 12 million people play World of Warcraft. Your grandmother plays. (I know because she tanked my heroic last night.) It’s a video game. It happens in one of those “Lord of the Rings” type fantasy worlds where people swear oaths and fight with swords and spend gold coins like in Ye Olden Days. Like Shakespeare, only awesome.
If you literally know nothing about that nobody wants to hear from you. It’s not cute anymore that the word “wizard” sounds to you like it’s from a foreign language. It’s been almost 80 years since Tolkien! Even normal people, now, are supposed to know what an elf is.
Joseph Nobles
Bachmann blinks. Warning: link to Red State, but that’s where her message is published.
sukabi
@Lee: isn’t there an “auto save” feature, ie,the software performs a “save” on the open doc every 5 minutes or so, or a couple of minutes after changes have been made… most MS products have that without even asking IF you want to save…
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Martin:
Yeah, that’s the nasal preparations. Since I don’t put the lozenges up my nose, I figure I’m good. Heh.
Corner Stone
@Chet: God damn son. The studio for remakes of “Leave Britney Aloooone!!” videos are two doors further down the hall.
Lee
@Villago Delenda Est:
No, but that what you stated is still incorrect.
Further more you correct but for the wrong reasons. The reason we would need someone to call in the strikes is I am sure we are hesitant to put our radios in hands that are not necessarily friendly.
To call in an air-strike you need basically three things. Where you are, where the bad guy is now and where he is heading (or where the bad guy is when the bombs are available).
Trust me if a Marine can call in an air-strike anyone can (Marine 84-90).
daveNYC
@freelancer: Aw man, you’re shitting me. This is what the series has come to? Heck, Clear and Present Danger dealt with a milder form of extra-legal action against drug lords in a relatively harsh manner. Now they’re just going to a 24 style fantasy setting?
I’m just going to truncate the series to stop at Sum of All Fears. Just like there are only two Alien movies and no Matrix sequels.
Villago Delenda Est
@freelancer:
It’s Section 31.
That’s pretty much what it is.
Chet
Certainly blubbery Chris Crocker whining is about as annoying as the endless legions of “LOLZ don’t understand what you gamers are talking about with your bleeps and your bloops!” that emerge
every
single
time
John Cole or Ta-Nehisi Coates say something Warcrafty.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Chet:
Glad you could get that off your chest. You must feel better, now.
Like I said, I do sometimes feel like a dork for not being more of a dork (in the old sense of the word, I’m well aware that games like WoW are now considered mainstream).
Me, I just didn’t get the gene to enjoy that genre of entertainment. I saw LotR and about all of the Harry Potter flix and couldn’t tell ya a single thing that happened in any of ’em, except that one gal got hot as she got older. But you probably didn’t wanna hear that, either.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lee:
The Marine is at least operating off the same coordinate system as the USAF (or the Navy, even) for his maps. Are the Libyan rebels? There is of course the issue of handing our radios over to them, too.
We’re back to ASSUME, my man.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: A rising war tide lifts all factions!
Corner Stone
@Chet: The only thing more annoying than people who know the name of that video guy are people who come in and complain about people complaining about gamers.
Corner Stone
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama: Sometimes a vibrant comments section is hard.
joes527
@Villago Delenda Est:
There was some country a few years back that mad a HUGE point about how illegal combatants have no protections whatsoever and deserve everything they get.
Corner Stone
And great. Now the ad at the top is of WoW instead of Michelle Bachmann and her crazy eyes I love so.very.much.
Lee
@sukabi:
Yes there is an auto-save feature. In some products it is more robust than others. The problem is that it does not auto-restore the data. If you want to restore from an auto-save you have to not have opened the program since the auto-save and then find the auto-save file then open from THAT file.
I believe Word has/had a feature/add-on that was a bit more robust that would auto-save every 5 minutes to a specified location with a unique file name. So you would have a directory with thousands of the auto-saves.
Corner Stone
“No NATO! I need you to bomb THAT way! Not THAT way!”
“Listen to me NATO person! Bomb to my LEFT! MY LEFT!!”
Gravenstone
@cleek:
Operation: Petticoat called. They want their intellectual property back.
Chet
@Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama:
Who do you expect gives a shit, Sturdy? When John Cole posts about politics, how many people come in and say “OMG I just don’t have the gene to care if someone is a Democrat or a Republican!”
If WoW isn’t something you’re interested in, you really don’t have to tell us. We don’t need to know. Honestly! We’ll figure it out from the fact that you never, ever talk about World of Warcraft. We’re smart like that.
Lee
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m pretty sure lat/long is universal and thanks to GPS it is pretty easy to determine your lat/long.
stuckinred
@Corner Stone: Help him, help HIM.
cyntax
@Lee:
Technically, your correct: anyone can call in an airstrike.
Managing to call in an airstrike that hits the target without killing friendlies? That takes a lot of training and practice.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Corner Stone:
I haven’t been flamed, er, vibrantly addressed in ages (I learned to watch the drama, not be the drama, and limit my interactions with hot heads). It makes me wanna party like it’s 1999 again.
Corner Stone
@Lee: As evidenced by the awfully dead rebel tanks NATO just blew to fuck and back.
Brachiator
@protected static:
Didn’t know much about Doctorow, but heard a very engaging interview he did earlier this week with Leo Laporte.
Very interesting guy.
freelancer
@Corner Stone:
God Damnit,
LeeroyCorner Stone!Villago Delenda Est
@Lee:
Um, who in the US military uses lat/long to call in airstrikes? Or artillery strikes? If the GPS automatically translates lat/long (assuming the rebels have the instrumentation, of course…another assumption) to UTM coordinates, then you might be able to pull it off.
Also, your Marine example presupposes that training in how to call in an air strike. Do the rebels have this training? Also, knowledge of how to transmit lat/long or UTM coordinates to get the bombs to hit the right place. In English, in proper jargon, which is as you must know as a Marine how these guys talk. Jargon is shorthand used to communicate tersely in tense situations. Like when you’re under fire.
We’ve got a lot of assumptions. Do we really want to go there?
joes527
@Corner Stone: So the thing is … I thought that the UN mandate was about protecting civilians. How did we get from there to bombing shit on the rebels’ say so?
Either “protecting civilians” was just stage dressing for “War! Fuck Yeah!”, or the international community is getting played. (evidently quite contentedly)
srv
Who, exactly, are they going to ask? The rebels don’t even know who is in charge:
cyntax
@Corner Stone:
Where’d you meet my 2nd Lt?
PeakVT
From the Asahi article:
Safety has to be the top priority at nuclear plants. Safety cost money. Costs reduce profit. Profit is the purpose of private corporations.
Guess what should come next.
Corner Stone
@joes527: The rebels quite openly refuse to engage Gaddafi’s forces at this point. And by now whatever supply chain they had or were improvising has to be depleted.
Gaddafi has trained military with an in place supply chain.
IMO, the most likely outcome possible is an outside force putting combat forces incountry. Or Gaddafi will slowly roll up the entire country again.
And then we’ll ask your questions again and see if we find any answers.
Villago Delenda Est
@cyntax:
First question one of my E-5s asked me, as a fresh out of officer basic butterbar, was “Sir, do you know how to read a map?”
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
“Oh, shit! You did exactly what I told you to do!”
cyntax
@Villago Delenda Est:
Most dangerous thing on the battlefield: a butter bar with a map and a compass.
That and the call-sign for DivArty.
Brachiator
I’m wondering which activity brought in the most revenue?
freelancer
@cyntax:
“I’m calling in a fire mission.”
cyntax
@freelancer:
The more things change…
Still, that was a great series.
quaker in a basement
so I yanked him off,
Oh my. You’re very kind to your pets.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@protected static:
If people haven’t read it yet, run out and read For the Win.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Villago Delenda Est: have you read anything about tigole’s new game? Dual hub, one hub like second life where you can buy property, and a second hub that is a FPS, like a day job.
Many oppos.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Chet: TNC buys gold. I’ve seen his toon. He is a scrub priest.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone:
yeah, right. Dude has no friends, the MB are gonna osmote weapons and training across the border, and Qaradawi put a deathfatwah on him.
@Corner Stone: The airpower is waaaaaay up high. They use ATD and ATR to target.
All the T-72 target sigs look the same from up there.
Give ’em some Abrams and it wont happen again.