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As I understand it, countries that have hosted the Olympic Games have to treat the rings and other IOC symbols as hardcoded famous trademarks
Yeah, another example of how copyrights and trademarks can never die; 776 BC and it still hasn't expired.
But the truth is, making guns in a new caliber and making ammunition to match is easy enough that some hobbyists do it in their garage.
Yup. And a lot of times, those self-packed loads fail. Gunpowder mixture is the wrong type, wasn't packed tight enough, moisture, grease, etc. I've seen these hobbyists you speak of; All of them have at least one story of how they ruined their gun because their custom ammo was shit. You do it amateur, you get amateur results. But hey, don't let me stop you from taking your custom-built guns and ammo into a combat situation...
There are, apparently (I Am Not A Military Expert), valid military reasons to make your guns and ammunition incompatible with the enemy's. America and the rest of NATO were the first to use 5mm-caliber small arms - the M16, FAMAS, L86, etc. are all chambered for a standard 5.56mm round, and I believe most even have compatible magazines.
The "valid military reason" is called "economy of scale". We don't want to blow their budget on ammo, and by happy coincidence, our allies don't either.
Iran is simply doing the same thing. Instead of using NATO-standard 7.62mm miniguns, 20mm autocannons, 40mm grenade launchers or 2.75" rockets, they'll use ones that are just slightly incompatible, but nearly identical in performance.
That would be stupid. Iran doesn't have much of a defense industry; they rely on importing arms. It makes no sense to outfit some of your military with Mark I whatchamagigies and some of them with the incompatible Mark II whatchamagigies. There are few things more damning than sitting next to three full ammo boxes, and not one round that'll fit the only gun you have.
One reason is economics - trying to stimulate their own arms industry,
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to stimulate your industry: That's a purely American thing. In the rest of the world, you steal tech, duplicate it, and save yourself the R&D costs. See also: North Korea, China, India, Egypt, Iraq...
Another could be that they are more concerned about being invaded, rather than invading others. You are, after all, more likely to be the one capturing supplies, rather than having your supplies captured, when you are on the attack.
The traditional response to this is to decentralize your weapons depots, caches, and supply lines, and to be as covert as possible. Every ground war we've fought against similarily sized and equipped militaries has been massively asymetrical, and the enemy wears us down by hit and run tactics (which we invented), and urban guerilla warfare. They don't give two shits how much you capture, as long as they've got just enough left to keep costing us economically. They know if we invade, we're out a few more trillion dollars -- and our economy just can't handle that right now (it couldn't before!). Stop thinking like this is conventional warfare: It isn't. It hasn't been since the 70s.
History would seem to bear this view out - during the Cold War, neither side used intercompatible ammunition, and as it turns out, neither side much wanted to invade the other.
History remembers that it doesn't really matter what ammo you use, as long as you've got a fuckton of it. And by ammo, I mean nukes.
The most notable case of cross-compatible weaponry was in WW2, when the British designed the Sten gun to use the same ammunition as the German MP40. And guess what (spoiler alert)? Britain later invaded Germany!
Yeah, why would a country who's factories were burning, a third of its population dead or injured, and entire cities leveled want to put their limited resources towards making sure they could use whatever ammo was available. The mind boggles.
OK, that's probably a massive simplification of things (remember, IANAME), but still, look at things from Iran's view for a second.
I am looking at things from Iran's point of view. I think you should go work for them. The kind of advice you're spouting could set them back an extra decade, easy. Save us a lot of money so we wouldn't have to build IED-resistant personnel carriers, missile defense platforms, and more stealth tech to give us a greater force multiplier.
, Iran's locally-grown Cobras will be armed with 'different types of home-made caliber guns, rockets and missiles,' according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. 'All the phases of designing and manufacturing of the chopper have been done inside the country and the helicopter enjoys some capabilities which make it preferable to Apache Choppers,' says Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari. Iranian officials stress that Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country,
So, basically, you're copying 40 year old tech from your enemies, but because you can't buy the bullets or missiles to shoot, you're going to arm them with whatever you can cobble together. It's like Junkyard Wars, only with dictators instead of teams. Yeah... I can see why they say we shouldn't perceive it as a threat... but it's not because they're dangerous or anything. They'll probably kill more of their pilots in training flights than we would with a bombing run or twenty.
You just don't get it. Mobile is going to hire Steve Ballmer to crush them. With a chair.
Only if they can get more developers, developers, developers, developers. And considering the next iteration of their operating system's programming tools is full of limitations, limitations, limitations, limitations, I'm guessing even a supertanker filled with Ballmers and chairs won't be enough to convince anyone to develop for CrippleOS(tm) (aka Windows 8). And as has been learned many times over by everyone but Microsoft; It doesn't matter how awesome your product is... if you don't have people developing applications for it, it dies on the launch pad.
The thing people like a lot of the times is that microsoft offers support, they have it stuck in their head that if you spend money on it, it must be better than a free alternative.
I've worked for several Fortune 500 companies. Support has nothing to do with the decision: Exclusionary contracts do. Microsoft offers huge discounts to businesses that agree not to use a competitor's product. They also regularily check for compliance and there are large fines for any company caught using open source software. Management often parrots what Microsoft says to tell the tech workers who question the policy, but if you ask the right people the right questions, you'll find out the company you're working for entered into an exclusive contract with Microsoft, and that was one of the conditions.
Also, rational, thinking girls, which we find appealing, end up switching teams (like yourself) so after a while
Riiiight, my sexuality is a fad and with the right penis, I'll "switch teams" again. Sexuality does not work that way.
...destroying their ability to connect with women, and therefore threatening the future of our entire species.
For 20,000 years, men have been busy beating each other and other animals to a pulp, engaging in risky behaviors, being generally anti-social, and treating women like dirt. If they're playing video games and watching porn instead of those things, I think we're going to be just fine, thanks.
And as for being unable to connect with women, they haven't been able to do that since we crawled down from the trees. Somehow, dick still manages to meet vagina. People will keep having sex no matter how bad it is, because bad sex is worse than no sex... and really, if you're going to be a straight woman, once you've weaned yourself off Disney propaganda, your standards drop dramatically. Look at how many of us married fat dudes who beach themselves on couches.
The human species is in no danger of going extinct... despite yearly predictions of the end of the world. Which is disappointing really... it means I'll probably have to pay back my student loans. -_-
Just a guess, but maybe they want the unit to remain secretive?
Which is fine when you're conducting foreign intelligence operations. However, the FBI's charter is to investigate private citizens within the United States. Given their track record, I don't think anything they do should be opaque:
They consider anyone who protests the government a terrorist, recently helped bust protesters for terrorism in Chicago -- which in actuality they were busting them for making beer. In their own home. They break federal laws so often that they had to change the laws so the FBI could continue to get convictions -- they still conceal evidence from defense attorneys to this day, and increasingly call such evidence off limits "due to national security". The FBI was instrumental in the passage and current use of the Patriot Act, which prevents citizens from even knowing the evidence presented against them, as the Constitution prescribed. I could go on, but really, I think you get the point: The FBI is one of the most corrupt law enforcement agencies in the world. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country worldwide. The Innocence Project routinely finds people who have been sitting 20 or 30 year prison terms for crimes they can prove beyond reasonable doubt they did not commit. The FBI's response has been to open case files and monitor everyone who comes in contact with the project. Anyone who shows the FBI as a corrupt organization quickly finds themselves facing trumped up charges of tax evasion, drugs, or even copyright infringement: Whatever it takes to silence their critics.
I mean, I could go on... it's not hard to find examples of FBI agents engaging in activities that in any other civilized country would be grounds for imprisonment... and that was pre-9/11. Since then, they've enjoyed practically blanket-immunity for civil rights violations, and it shows. Any citizen of this country that thinks the FBI is anything but a bunch of thugs with a huge budget and no ethical constraints is deluding themselves.
NIH Study Finds That Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death.
In other news, death is avoidable.
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.