thanks for your compliment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

What was that, AC troll? I can't hear you... login and try again.

Cruise missile are analogous:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And they have been analogous for decades.

latest and greatest... but even the tomahawk course corrects etc.

As to land mines being banned... debatable. They're still commonly employed by all major powers. What the UN deems bad is frequently irrelevant. Law is what is enforced. And the ban on land mines is not enforced.

liability for software faults... this implies there is legal liability in war... which is generally not the case. Liability is only relevant if the winner decides to take the loser to court. If the winner commits war crimes... what are you going to do to him? Jack or shit?

As to the tech going haywire... sure. And? Any weapons system can do that. Your concern is what, a war machine going nuts and just killing lots of people indiscriminately? You think the military doesn't care if that happens? Believe me, they're the last people to take that lightly because who is likely to be near the fucking thing when it does that? Our own forces. So believe me when I say there will be all sorts of fail safes put in place to keep the thing from going nuts.

Now enemies spoofing sensor or hacking or whatever to confuse the system. Sure. That's just EW. The systems will be designed to deal with assumed level of EW threat. And as the enemy upgrades their EW we'll upgrade our ECC. That's just how weapons tech goes. One side upgrades a weapon and the other side updates armor or tactics or something to counter it. Back and forth.

I don't see your problem with using drones for area denial. What is your concern? that small children will wander into a denied area and eat a computer targeted sniper round to the face?

Mines and these drones are different in that we're not going to just leave them there. They're too expensive to do that and the have mobility so they can reposition themselves. Think of the drones like a mobile mine field. You move those behind the enemy as the anvil and then you move your primary manned force in as the hammer. Gong. I don't understand what the problem is with using the drones that way. They won't maneuver outside of their zone of operation. They'll move around to get shots or avoid counter fire or avoid getting flanked or to get close to an ally drone to provide suppression fire... etc. Whatever the tactical doctrine is... But the point is that they're not ranging around and I wouldn't suggest they be used to attack autonomously. I'd rather suggest they be used to DEFEND autonomously.

Again consider the base defense scenario. I have a mobile command center in contested territory. I am moving my forces deeper into enemy territory and I have a temporary base of operations. Drones are an excellent perimeter defense. First, if they get ambushed which is a common fate for sentries then I just lose a robot. Not a big deal. And now the enemy has revealed themselves near me and no allied soldiers were lost in the surprise. My own forces can now respond with a general awareness of what is going on limiting further allied causalities. The drones also don't get bored, tired, hungry, need to take a shit, etc... the other things sentries normally do that makes them less effective. Lets say the drones go out there, burrow into the ground a little bit with just their sensors poking out... and very very patiently... wait. Maybe the drones can sit there listening and being quite for a week or more. However long the batteries last in standby mode. And when the energy supplies get low, the drones dig themselves out of their holes, and roll back into base to be refueled and go through a maintenance cycle. A replacement drone is sent to replace that drone before it even digs itself out so there is no gap in the defenses.

Just an example. I'm not talking about unleashing autonomous drones on cities to go letting god sort the innocent from the guilty. The damn drone isn't going to be able to tell one thing from another in an environment like that. So you put the drone in simple situations where it is very obvious what is going on and you feel comfortable with the drone engaging anything that moves in that zone.

As to whether or not I'd count my own dead. Of course I would. I'd count them seperately though. I'm not rolling all the numbers together.

I want a number for my own dead.
I want a number for enemy dead.
I want a number of civilians I killed.
I want a number of civilians the enemy killed.
And you might as well throw out some estimates of how many 'excessive deaths" happened MINUS the above numbers. Though I warn you that I"m going to take that stat with fucking bags of rock salt.

As to your statement that you're not moralizing. Okay. Any attempt to morally judge US actions in this thread going forward is going to pointed at and I'm going to ask why you're doing it.

I do not expect i'll have to wait long.

As to the US not directly fighting the Russians and Chinese in vietname. Debatable. Absent Russian and Chinese support the Vietcong would not have been a credible resistance. There was a vibrant supply network. And there was also intelligence provided to them by the Russians and all sorts of other stuff. All of which ignores the point that we were directly fighting the Chinese in Korea and we didn't nuke them. What is more, in Korea we also engaged Russian pilots with some frequency and that didn't lead to nuclear war either.

No one wants a nuclear war... nukes are vastly over rated for their utility in diplomacy. Do you find the French to be formidable military powers? They have nukes. And no one cares.

This implies that people I deem enemy are done arbitrarily and unreasonably and without due consideration. That's not an argument I've seen you even attempt to make. And here you are presuming. Rejected.

And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.

Try.

You instantly fail. And from this you presume I don't care?

To the contrary, you know I care which is why you're trying to pull my heart strings on the issue. You know damn fucking well I care. I simply reject your notion that people the taliban kill are my fault. That's fucking stupid. I reject your number. If you want to cite collateral damage figures then I'll count civilians that I deem civilians that were accidentally killed by US weapons. THAT is what I deem collateral damage. I do not deem enemy actions my OWN collateral damage. that's absurd.

As to what is and is not necessary... that is also something you're going to have to show.

So your extremist point rests on three premises:

1. That I deem people enemy lightly or arbitrarily or without good and just cause.
2. That I do not care about collateral damage which is just fucking stupid.
3. That my actions or the actions I approve of are unnecessary.

You've substantiated none of that.

You are a space hamster and you cannot have our broccoli.

As to your ad hominems... I know what ad hominem is... so... you might as well give that up and try a less silly rhetorical tactic. Your sophistry is frankly really obvious. I'd ask you abandon it and try to make a more legitimate argument. I'm open to other view points. Just not to bullshit.

Assuming I care, I patch/crack it so that it does what I fucking tell it to do.

No, shit for brains. I just got done telling you that I expect any subsequent OS to require tweaking to correct bullshit in it.

I did not say that I could verbatim use the exact same tweaks in 7 forever.

Don't even respond. Just sit down and feel shame.

But they're not actual AI. I mean, you might as well outlaw cruise missiles or why not claymores and mines?

A drone killer doesn't just kill anything in its zone. It has a threat profile its looking for and so far that profile has been so specific that the actual literal target is specified. aka... THAT truck or THAT house or whatever. Its not "stuff that looks like a truck" or "stuff that looks like a house" or "people".

its specific to a DUDE.

now the sort of stuff the military is talking about automating are things like drone tanks that will deploy to zones and then shoot anything that moves in that area... and potentially be able to tell the difference between stuff so they don't just shoot anything. But the problem with not shooting anything that moves is that it would be very easy for a human being to walk up to one of those drone tanks with a big sachel anti tank bomb, put it on the tank and walk away... Boom... end of tank. That's likely not ideal. So you start running into concepts like drone tanks as area denial weapons like mine fields. So they go to an area and they will totally kill anything in that zone that does not squak an IFF. So you can use them for base defense, holding an enemy in pinned by putting the drone tanks on one side of their base and then moving in manned forces on the other side to pincer them between the two. The drone tanks being used to cut off escape.

There are ways to use this...

Another play on the same concept is air defense attack drones. They would engage ANY airplane that enters the zone. Ideally not a commercial airliner full of orphans. But the idea is the air defense drones can operate the way our other drones operate. Long endurance. hanging out over a target all day... Patient. The ground attack air drones are probably going to remain human targeted. I don't really know why we'd change that. The human operations use the close support bombers as artillery in the sky basically. Guy on the ground says "kill that"... and the drone does. And then of course there is the naval model... drone torpedoes that just hang out and wait. Ship enters the waters without squawking an IFF... BOOOM. Again, area denial. Don't want to get hit... stay out of those waters. This could be used to defend harbors in contested territory, seeded behind enemy lines to sow chaos as shipping gets hit with random torpedeos from subs that aren't there. Also very dangerous engagements against well defended naval targets. Send the drone torpedo in slow, deep, and silent. Moving a couple miles an hour... just edging in there... and then when it detects the target... slowly slowly... BOOM. or possibly it latches on to the side of the ship and does something else. The damn thing could hack the enemy ship's network for all I know. Whatever is deemed desirable.

This notion of the terminator killer robots is not how they'll be used. We don't trust them and they're not that smart.

mostly useful for regulating bandwidth... not what I'd call a proper firewall.

I trust no one. Do whatever you want with the OS. If it is in my hands then it will do what I want it to do. It will not phone home. it will not rat me out. It will speak when spoken to and speak to whom I permit it to speak. Period.

No, it isn't the lowest number... it is the number of people we killed.

Your number includes people the Taliban killed and people that neither side killed.

I'm not accepting it. And if I see that number cited again in this discussion I'm going to ignore it.

I reject it.

As to your argument about unintended consequences, you're attempting to moralize the issue. Moralizing requires intent.

If you wish to speak about unintended consequences then all discussion of morality and ethics has to be removed from the discussion as well. Because both require intent. If you want to talk about unintended consequences, that's fine. But that isn't a moral/ethical discussion.

As to the conflict between the instability of one place versus the instability of the world... 250,000 vs 2.5 billion. The US didn't go in there to make the lives of innocent afghans harder. And we have spend a lot of our own lives and a lot of our own money trying to give Afghanistan a better future. We didn't just go in there, kill the enemy, and then leave. We tried to set up a government, secure it, etc. And if successful... could well be worth the losses in human life when measured against slavery under the Taliban.

As to your ex-warsaw pact minus russia... that won't have an impact on Russian aggression. They see everything not themselves as a threat. And keep in mind the eastern europeans HATE the russians. So they're going to be a threat to the Russians on their own... and imagine if they get more advanced weapons etc.

Look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They're working with BAE to produce a next generation stealth tank:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Polish tank. The Poles are not going to be re enslaved by the Russians. The fucking refuse. And we like their spirit. We have seen to it that the Poles have gotten access to advanced Western weapons contractors to jump start their arms industry. Poland is going to be built into the muscle of continental NATO. The British are just barely worth a damn. The rest of NATO besides the US is garbage. The Poles are tough, motivated, and understand that if they don't have some discipline about this they're going to get dominated again.

The Russians keep reliving WW2. They think they're going to get their big tank battle and that it is going to be the same. No. Times have changed. The US scragging something like a thousand tanks while taking almost no losses during gulf war 1... saddam's tanks were old soviet shit. Which is mostly what the Russians still have. Combined tactics are lethal to Russia's war doctrine which is retrograde in all ways.

We are giving the Eastern europeans night vision goggles, anti tank rockets, mines, and various other things that will make a Russian advance into eastern europe too painful for them to stomach.

Will we go to WW3 over Latvia? Funny question. Will Russia? Why do people think nukes are going to fly in a proxy war? Did the US nuke Russia or China in vietnam? We didn't nuke China during the Korean war even though some of our generals REALLY wanted to.

No... there's no WW3 response in Latvia... either from the US or Russia. Russia has said that if pressed by superior conventional forces they reserve the option to use tactical nuclear weapons to break enemy formations. While the US takes the threat seriously, we also have made it known that if he does that it will be an escalation of hostilities that will be met with proportional responses. We have lot of conventional explosives that rival small nukes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Keep in mind furthermore that the US, the Israelis, and even the Germans have introduced defense systems that can shoot artillery shells or missiles out of the sky. So a tactical nuke might not even penetrate our conventional defense net. And the presumption on the Russian's part that we'd even let them get a tactical nuke launcher get that close to our core forces is comical in the first place. A strategic nuke is another matter. If he did that... he could at least reach the target. Would it land? Unknown. But the escalation if he dropped an ICBM on conventional forces that had not entered his territory? Massive escalation. The US would start looking at Russia with shining snake eyes after that. Russia does not want that. The attitude Russia found so threatening from the US was when we were trying to be their friends.

Russia has humiliated the political forces that wanted to be friends. What remains in the US are forces that want to ignore Russia or forces that want to hurt Russia. Russia has seriously damaged US Russian relations with their nonsense. And they are in the inferior position. All bravado aside... they have made a strategic blunder. it is not in the interest of inferior powers to undermine political elements in superior powers that wish them well. The people that want to hurt Russia are looking smart and the people that want to help Russia are looking dumb. This is going to change US posture towards Russia... a great deal of which will be subtle. Contrary to what many say about Americans we are capable of extreme subtly. You don't get to be this powerful without having ways of doing things that aren't obvious. At the very least, the US is going to start undermining the Russian finance, banking, trade, export, import, aid, exchange, etc system. No formal declaration. No great insult. Just a consistent pressure. A choking. Something we can hold indefinitely.

As I said, all the US has to do to win against Russia is wait. Time is on our side. Eastern Europe is evolving rapidly... their economies, their political systems, their civic institutions... and their militaries. Russia is getting weaker. Eastern europe is getting stronger. And Putin's actions in Ukraine and Georgia make it clear that a priority on defense is vital.

Long story short: Russia is fucked. Checkmate in four moves.

Good game.

As to me sounding like an extremist... define what that means. baseless insult are of no value. I could as easily respond that you sound like a space hamster from Neptune who is plotting to steal our peanuts and fresh broccoli.

Your position is an ad hominem. You say because you are X you are wrong. Rejected.

As to whether you would trust me with killer robots... why do you think you get a vote? Who do you think is paying for them? You or me? I'll just leave you with this...
https://youtu.be/Mb4f1xpSu-I?t...

Fun movie... point is... things are proportional. The more insane things get... the more extreme you can expect us to get. Stay reasonable and things stay reasonable. Get crazy... things get crazy.

Choose your poison and drink.

That assumes that what I need customized is offered in the customization options which I do not assume. As of Windows Vista/7, I had to start heavily modifying the OS to de-crapify it. I'm taking that as the new normal at this point.

If the pipe fills and the municipality charges a set fee for running cable then the city will be getting enough money to upgrade the cable.

As to the idea of some company wasting space in the cable with crap... if they're willing to pay for that space they can use it. The city will collect the money and use it to upgrade the cable.

Its not a big deal. Run a 1 foot diameter pipe down the street for busy areas and run a three to six inch pipe for more rural areas.

We should all have gigabit internet that is cheap by now. The cost of bandwidth at the trunk is CHEAP. The costs all happen in the last mile and all the speed slow down happens in the last mile... and none of it is necessary.

Given that all of that can be bypassed... I don't really care.

For one thing, I only install site licenses. MS doesn't fuck with me. For another... I don't let MS workstations through the firewall to any domain I haven't approved. I do not allow my workstation domains to talk to MS. Why would I do that? For what purpose? I download updates to a central server and then push them to the workstations. The workstations do not connect directly to MS and individually download updates for every workstation. That would be stupid. And I'm not letting them through the firewall anyway.

1. You don't set up a live account. That shuts down most of it.
2. Change the host file to redirect most of the bad domains to localhost.
3. There are going to be endless registry hacks to turn things off or change the way they work.
4. programs are going to be released that change things or replace features with something else that does the same thing but is open source etc.

Basically yes.

What are you talking about. What licenses are you talking about here? You're making it sound like MS can nickel and dime basic features and monetize them separately. They're not going to be able to do that. They try that with the corporate world and the corps will go linux and the instant that happens MS is fucked raw because they're never going to switch back.