This rationale is a lie, of course. China couches their real aim in a moral sleeve. Their real aim is nothing more than protecting their fascist government from the revolution that's coming, to keep the ruling party in power and shield it from criticism and challenge.

It's the same lie that Hugo Chavez spoke recently in creating his state police designed to conduct a "war on crime" when the simple fact is that it simply ends up creating a secret police that answers to Chavez alone and will end up reinforcing his power.

The same lie that Obama spoke about insuring millions and reducing the deficit by taking over health care. Never ends with these politicians.

People will look back on your joke and laugh and your stupendous naivete... sometime in the year 3876 >_>

Are you at all familiar with history? It's filled with skirmishes, one after the other, all over the world, with brief pockets of peace--and that was -before- nuclear weapons. On the balance, nuclear weapons have prevented far more war than they've caused skirmishes, precisely because they've kept the big boys from tumbling. The really destructive wars have always been when the reigning powers strive for survival.

Beyond all that, the reason we don't have peace should be manifestly clear: how can we have world peace when we don't have peace between individual nations, and how can we have peace between nations when we don't have peace between political parties, and how can we have peace between political parties when we don't have peace between individuals, and how can we have peace between individuals when we don't have peace in our mind, nor within the human heart?

The real cause of war is us, each and every one of us. World peace cannot be achieved while we remain human, while we have the same nature we find ourselves now with. And the only upcoming opportunity to change human nature involves transcending the flesh during the technological singularity. If we're lucky, the nuclear standoff will create just enough peace to get us there in one peace and the exodus from the flesh can begin.

While we retain the flesh we will war eternally with our own desires. That war within ourselves is the same struggle and difficulty that becomes war on the macro scale between nations. But, in the virtual world there is no shortage of property, thus wars over property can end. In the virtual world there is no shortage of food, or comfort, or anything material one can desire. Every human need can be met in an instant, because we control our environment totally, and for virtually zero cost. ...Look for my future novel incorporating these details in a bookstore near you (in a few years :)

Fire hoses are already heat-resistant woven material + a rubber liner. They get wet and have to be dried because they're there when tons of water are being sprayed in all directions at a fire. And, if firefighters are doing their job right, you'll never see a line running through a fire, ever. That would mean they've been cut off by the flame and have bigger problems than a line in the fire. Although, I wonder if that's ever happened and a hole got burned in the line resulting in catastrophic loss of water pressure which would then make it pretty hard to escape again.

There is some research on this in Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers", specifically how age affects spors performance. It turns out that an extremely large number of professional athletes across various sports are all born within certain dates which corresponds to cutoffs for that particular sport.

What's important is to get an extra year of development before you enter at the same level. So, people born just before the cut-off are the best off.

The same is true of academic life. The better off children, both socially and intellectually are those whom are slightly older, yet competing in the same grade. That small advantage begins to snowball with time until it becomes an insurmountable barrier.

Getting your child into school earlier is a mistake, so may be advancing kids a grade. Anyway, check out the book, lots more info in there.

Perhaps he meant, you know, smallpox. That -is- worse.

I started out as kids do, performing simple hunt'n'peck maneuvers. By the time I hit high-school it was well ingrained. At age 19, I wrote a novel of over 1,000,000 characters over a 1.5 year period, averaging four hours a day of just typing. That burned the keyboard layout into me (I would -never- go DVORAK).

Even now, I don't even have to look at the keyboard to type near perfectly, long as my wrists remain still on the rest I don't lose my place. I can even type just as perfectly with my eyes closed or in a dark room by centering on the F and J keys to start. My style is now a mastered form of hunt'n'peck, hunt'n'peck taken to the Nth degree, massively improved through perfect memorization of the keyboard layout and ingrained muscle-memory, such that I can type now about 80 words per minute. It's simply 'think and the words are typed' at this point, as natural as speaking or writing with a pen.

There came a time once that I thought I should improve my typing speed by learning to do real touch-typing the way professional typists must learn. So, I picked up a 'teach me typing' program, and diligently went through the courses for quite some time. I think it was 'Mario Teaches Typing' :P It had which finger you were supposed to use and all that jazz, and I did what it asked to the letter. Used the proper fingers, and arranged my hands as asked.

Only one hitch: my hands began to hurt, a lot. I noticed there was a large amount of unnatural stretching and contortion compared to my mastered hunt'n'peck method in order to reach the key with the 'proper finger', the one the program demanded I use. Now, I didn't simply give up, I wanted to master this technique, I was committed. But, after a month of daily practice I couldn't take it anymore. I was nearly as fast while touch-typing, but my hands were killing me.

I realized then why typists get carpel-tunnel syndrome and the like. Dogmatic touch-typing it terrible for your hands! You need to be able to relax your hands as your type, not stretch and contort them unnaturally. I went back to my freestyle typing and never looked back.

My typing can realistically be called freestyle because, based on what combination of letters and words I'm typing, it could be any number of fingers that are available at the moment to type that key. The difference is, I know I have to hit that key, and it happens quite naturally. I don't use my pinkies to type at all (well, maybe to hit shift), but I use everything else. That's probably the difference between my speed and a professional typist, since 80 WPM isn't really something to sneeze at but a pro typist can hit 50% faster.

But, now I'm attempting to turn myself into a professional author, and typing has become my primary skill, my devotion, my life. I'm glad I never took the touch-typing route! I'm quite certain that I will never develop carpel tunnel or repetitive strain injuries because my hands are relaxed, my fingers don't contort, and typing is done in perfectly natural motion. No overextended fingers, no awkward combinations. No pain.

That's my experience. That's the wisdom I've gained.

And if you split a 120hz signal 4 ways, you get a corresponding decrease in emitted light by half as well. So, the screen would appear half as bright for those 2 players than if just one person were viewing.

Elder Scrolls is very much a complete world. But, what you say is insightful. I like the idea of AI's playing an RTS while you play a unit in the war. That could create non-repeating gameplay. Very cool.