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Comment Re:Two sides to a coin (Score 1) 279

What the previous responder said, basically. Psychological attention is different from psychiatric: the latter comes when the former fails or is not present, and takes the form of chill pills, Valium, and other exotic sedatives and anti-psychotics, while the former takes the form of a couch and an attentive ear (sometimes with a persuasive voice added).

As drinkypoo put it, take care VS "take care".

Comment Re:Two sides to a coin (Score 0) 279

1) Not "extra-screwed", but "given extra attention", in both senses of the phrase: a soldier's job deserves extra compensation and benefits, not just to them, but their next-of-kin as well; however, by its very nature, it also merits extra scrutiny so his access to automatic weapons and other lethal implements doesn't lead to any sort of incident, simply because such an incident, owing to his superior training and equipment, is much more dangerous than any rampage by a civilian.

2) By the same logic, your death ten seconds after reading this reply (if you ever will) would be equally inconsequential. Yet I'm sure you and your loved ones would disagree with that. No loss of life is inconsequential, not even from a political standpoint.

3) Yes, we get rapid access to a lot more information than, say, 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. Your point is...?
I would say that rational people can filter out what's a danger to them and what's not, as well as the degree of danger posed. A terror attack in the US won't mean much to me, yet, being European, one in the UK, France, or Germany will make me start worrying due to the greater proximity and ease of movement in the EU.

4) Like I pointed out, I'm not American. And anyway, generalization never leads to anything good...

5) Most of your post had nothing to do with my quote. Your point was...?

Comment Re:Two sides to a coin (Score 2) 279

I never said all veterans are violent, nor that he committed violence. And it's also true that there are those who get sick of violence during their tour. But it's also true that military training is geared towards desensitizing towards violence and heightening aggression, in preparation for combat situations, as well as imparting knowledge of guerrilla warfare, insurgency, basic demolitions, etc. for operation in enemy territory. Should a person prepared in such a way exhibit radical views, the stage is set for ugly things to happen, basically he becomes a powder keg waiting for the right moment to act, unless psychological attention (and not necessarily psychiatric) is given.

Comment Two sides to a coin (Score 5, Insightful) 279

On the one hand, such an operation can be justified in that persons with military training and radical political views make for a volatile and dangerous group: heightened aggression coupled with access to weapons and knowledge of weapon use, explosives, and demolition can lead to nasty results.

On the other hand, there are very few excuses the denying due process, and proactive observation is certainly not one of them.

Comment Re:Gotta be there (Score 1) 81

What Dyinobal said: the server cluster employs time dilation to cope with the load of many characters present in one system or constellation (one level up from systems in the three-tier location system) - the greater the load, the greater the slowdown (which, by the way, is only indicated to players by a small dial on the screen, not an actual slowdown). In extreme cases, such as the 1000+-ship Battle of Asakai, the system or constellation may be moved to a separate server node to avoid crashing the entire cluster the game runs on.

Comment Gotta be there (Score 5, Interesting) 81

For most of the content in EVE, you simply need to be there, on site, to experience it to its fullest.
Sure, you can watch a live stream of the Battle of Asakai, where enough ships were present to instate a time dilation factor of 90%, and force the movement of the system to its separate physical node, but it doesn't capture the pure awe at the number and size of ships, the cacophony of fleet chatter, and such.
You can read a comic about how a young, intrepid explorer (yours truly, in fact...) went through a decaying wormhole to explore the hostile system on the other side, forgetting about the 1-hour timer, then found that the wormhole vanished, forcing him to take the "clone express" home, but it doesn't capture the terror upon finding no trace of your exit, and the realization that you're alone in a hostile system, with no chance of rescue, and any moment, hostiles may come hunting for your little frigate.
You can read about how an organized wormhole raid got stuck inside when their salvaging Noctis went through the low-mass wormhole first (instead of yours truly's scanner ship, which could have found the new exit), followed by some combat ships before the wormhole vanished, stranding the rest of the fleet outside, but it doesn't really do justice to the uproarious laughter of the fleet, then the creeping dread that the enemy knows we've arrived and are actively hunting us, and we don't know where to run, nor the relief when our commanding officer begins negotiations for the location of the new exit, and we return to known space 10 million credits poorer, but with our ships intact.

Most content in EVE is like real life - you gotta be there to fully appreciate the joke/story.

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