not just oil, iraq had a much weaker military than the dprk.

I don't think the US Navy is allowed to attack people on US soil with F18s at the moment. I'm pretty sure the US military in general (aside from the recent change regarding drones) isn't allowed to do that.

If I had the mod points.

this is an old video but very important
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik

throughout time military helmets have had a certain amount of weight to them.

Such systems are about training a pilot to use a real jet. a real jet has an large amount of very small controls.
here's an enthusiast simulator startup video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFb45nPSNs
in a military simulator you can physically interact with all of those switches. so I would guess the military doesn't use VR goggles yet because of the latency and the difficulty of tracking exactly where the pilot's hands are.

I think that's the other way around. at least with race-car games it's the other way around. in those you do several input and physics frames, and render every fourth frame or so. or they can be asynchronous, with the render thread drawing the latest complete physics frame.

Nicely worded.

If I only had the mod points...and there were a "+1 quotable".

Clarification: I've almost always been able to resell my PC games. Only relatively recently has DRM really been difficult to get away from. I've been playing PC games since the early 90s and there was a time without DRM restricted resale.

Almost never?

I've almost _always_ been able to resell my games. Fallout 3 was late 2008, thats the last big bethesda game i can recall without drm. Aside from the past 5 years of drm bs, I'd say being able to resell is the norm. Though I guess if you're younger you may think it's always been this sucky.

Shouldn't really be able to copyright the look on guns.

The utilitarian nature of these objects should make them useful articles
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl103.html
which can't be copyrighted (though I'm sure they're trying).

Various parts could be covered by design patent, but quite allot of cool military hardware should have no patent on it anymore (barret's 1982 rifle shouldn't have any live patents anymore given the 14-20 year lifespan).

Side note on creative IP litigation: In the EA vs. Textron lawsuit. Textron alleges EA, in violating their trade dress, is confusing gamers about Textron's involvement(lack thereof) in the game. Hopefully EA will win on free speech grounds; and then games, like other forms of artistic expression, won't be as encumbered by licensing fees.

you must cache it on your computer and that, in a technical sense, is duplication.

still what you are saying is *probably* right (insofar as no wealthy copyright holder has yet forced the us courts to decide).

it's worse than that. nearly all material on the internet is copyrighted. even this post i am typing. how are you supposed to know if you have my permission to view it?

on the surface this seemed fair to me. if you're under contract, then the phone isn't really your property yet.

but then i remembered that if you break contract they charge you the remainder of their investment in the phone +a little more (just 'cause), and they don't reclaim the phone. so yeah, this is pretty stupid.

I just saw it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz ...Prosecution of the case continued, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, carrying a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million.[50][51] One of Swartz's lawyers revealed prosecutors told him two days before Swartz’s death that "Swartz would have to spend six months in prison and plead guilty to [all] 13 charges if he wanted to avoid going to trial."[52] After Swartz's death, his attorney Marty Weinberg told press that he "nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time", but that bargain failed because "JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not."[53]

Here are the links 50 and 51:
http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/9/534.full
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml

True, he might not have gotten the full 35. I would even feel fine placing a $20 bet that he would get a shorter sentence. For him the stakes were much higher. To me the threat of such a sentence seems like a form of psychological warfare.

Well, even though he was young at 26, he was facing 35 years in prison. So he would have possibly gotten out when he was 61, maybe earlier with good behavior, but who knows.

options:
a) End your life at 26, you'll be remembered well by your accomplishments and won't have to suffer.
b) A stressful slog through a court case that will leave you in jail for a very long time. In jail the boredom is broken periodically by suffering. If you survive jail, you'll get out, when you're elderly, and then maybe you'll be able to re-acclimate to society after you've spent more than half your life a prisoner.

in the article they talk about de-orbiting satelites. so, those were likely the other places.

I wasn't trying to be funny. These kinds of stories are a problem that should be addressed.