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Comment Re:More mind numbing web based games? (Score 1) 67

To be fair, it would not be too hard to implement a game like FTL in flash. It's a text based adventure + static small scale RTS combat. All of these are done on much more complex level in flash today.

Probably easier than implementing it in bastardized version of javascript as was done here.

Comment Re:Meanwhile, for people who need a browser (Score 1) 67

Pale Moon sits on top of ESR, and they had to switch to a different identifier for the browser because they aren't going with australis insanity.

So far, they appear to be fine. You may want to check them out if you want to keep most of your plugins working, and your interface PC-centric rather than tablet-centric that mozilla is gunning for.

Comment Re:Not the same thing at all. (Score 2) 381

To be fair, I think this is the problem with general population more than anything. With success of vaccines people forgot that there are actually crippling and lethal infectious diseases. They may intellectually understand it, but there's very little understanding on everyday life level. The current panic underscores it as well - first people underreact and now they are overreacting.

CDC is supposed to be professionals trained for this kind of a situation, but they're not immune to being well off for last half a century.

Comment Re:WMDs? Chemical weapons? Wait, what? (Score 1) 376

This is correct. However air fuel bomb is in some cases an adequate replacement for a tactical nuclear warhead because the detonation "epicentre" is spread much wider, which means that if your task is to hit a limited area (which is usually the purpose of the low yield tactical nuclear weapons), air fuel bombs can serve as a functional replacement.

One has to remember that destructive force of a tactical nuclear weapon falls off very quickly as range from epicentre increases. Modern MBTs are designed to survive just a short distance from it and come with thick enough armour to make neutron bomb unfeasible as well (main reason why NATO dropped neutron bombs from their list of countermeasures to Soviet tank rush in the 1970s and started to look for alternatives by increasing yields on tactical nuclear weapons).

One has to remember that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strategic bombs, not tactical ones, as a result, the comparison here is flawed. A comparable (in terms of destructive yield) nuclear weapon is going to be something among these lines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Comment Re:WMDs? Chemical weapons? Wait, what? (Score 2) 376

As a trained combat medic, you do not understand what you're talking about.

"Weapons of MASS destruction" are named that way because they cause massive destruction over large area quickly. In case of potent modern chemical weapons, modus operandi is to not even bother going in to save those in the hit areas. Instead you set up decontamination camps on the edges of contaminated zone and wait to decontaminate those who manage to get out. You do NOT "neutralize" chemical weapons once they are dispersed, because it's largely pointless to try to do so. Whatever is inside the hit zone is assumed dead or dying until chemicals disperse to reasonably safe levels and you can enter the area to check out who is still alive.

Conventional weapons like machineguns lack this capability completely. Arguably the only weapon that has this capability in conventional arsenal is a large enough air fuel bomb. And even then, it hits the scalability problem, where the biggest air fuel bomb in existence is still far inferior to a comparable strategic nuclear, biological or chemical weapon on a similar delivery platform. At best, air fuel bombs can be tactical weapons, on par with modern tactical nuclear weapons, while lacking their main advantage of being physically compact.

Finally, by your measuring stick of what defined "WMD" most of the actually functional and used biological weapons are not WMDs either. Because in most cases, weaponised biological agent is designed to function just like a weaponised chemical agent. It is designed to have a quick localized impact, which quickly diminishes over time to enable attacking force to conquer the region. This is how Japanese, the biggest users of biological weapons in human history did it, and this is how most biological weapons are designed to work.

Comment Re:Designed in US, Built in EU, Filled in Iraq (Score 1) 376

This is the stuff that US supplied to Saddam to counter Iran, and that he ended up using on Kurds. It's not a secret. It's just that like many of the other most potent negative things about US public image that would actually remind people that West's talking about "human right", "non-proliferation" and other similar goals in merely to ensure that countries we want to be weak enough to bomb or invade never get those. When it's countries we want to beef up against potential geopolitical opponent, they get those weapons from us, like Iraq did.

Those of us knowledgeable of history and warfare knew of this entire time. We're seeing the same thing going in Syria right now, where they are already bombing the areas where IS took out air defence bases, now that Syria no longer has functional chemical weapons arsenal to deter such attacks.

IS didn't get production capabilities however, because they were long gone. When Saddam went rogue (from his Western handlers' point of view), most of know how was lost by Iraq and much of crucial equipment could not be repaired and replaced. As a result when US invaded Iraq, they didn't find any weapons or production plants. All they found was old chemical weapons production and storage sites in various states of disrepair and abandonment, some of which weren't cleaned up. These are apparently where the soldiers the article is talking about got hurt.

Comment Re:Transition period? (Score 1) 259

I believe you'll have to make the argument how it has no contribution to the economy, as European Council itself disagrees with you. Reminder: economy is more than "direct effect granted by this tax". Since this is Ireland, the original I in PIGS, you'll have to be doubly careful in explaining how you arrived at this conclusion.

Considering that European Council is one of the most politically and economically experienced groups of people in the world, you'll have to present some rock solid evidence if you want that claim to stick.

Comment Re:Transition period? (Score 1) 259

Yes. That's why I advocate it. That's why pretty much everyone in European countries that suffered from this advocate it.

But if you bring a risk of crashing someone's economy down because of it, you're not going to get anyone to close the loopholes. It's a shortsided and utterly stupid strategy to do so. Everyone still has their sovereign right to legislate their own tax code.

That is why European Council took the line they took. Slow, stable, so that there's a chance of it actually happening, instead of quick, crashy and resulting in a massive push back from locals that will have to suffer another crash.

That's is the problem I have with you and your types. You are full on tunnel vision in any ideology you take. You are utterly incapable of seeing the big picture, or the cost of your ideology. It's enough that your ideology is "correct" and everything else needs to be bulldozed out of the way.

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