Walsingham

I hope you'll take this in a spirit of fun, but whenever I think of Belgians I think of Poirot.

Pointless question. It's like 'do you oppose putting corncobs up people's noses for no reason?'

It's a complete myth that closing long threads helps the forums run smoothly. The forum software doesn't store a thread as a whole unit; each post has a unique key and exists independently of a thread, meaning you can make a thread as arbitrarily short or long as you want and it won't speed up or slow down the forum. Man, it would be awesome if I was smart enough to even understand this. I just get told what to enforce. I'm like that sheriff's deputy in the '50s horror film who gets eaten.

You make a good point, Steve. But revolutions are almost ALWAYS bloody, and insurgencies doubly so, as the comrades purge and slaughter moderates and intellectuals.

Tied up with a neat ribbon and continued here.

...Leading on from old thread. So you know, we have to limit thread size to make the forums run smoothly. It was ether this or the blood of countless innocents, and frankly that sounded like too much work.

Thanks for those. Randomn00b, I would suggest that 1. You read the excellent thread debate we had recently on good an evil. Both sides had a good crack at it. 2. I also suspect that to assert there is no such thing as evil is to affirm that you've never seen anything remotely evil. Lucky you.

Indeed. *puff puff* She was not alone by any means.

Well, torture victims have been known to give false confessions to stop the pain - but I believe that those instances were mainly when the persons were subjected to extreme physical abuse. They just tell you any old b*****cks. Whatever they think you want to hear. the only possible good this could do is if you were abstractedly interested in what people thought you wanted to hear. I should also repeat that it isn't just first hand stuff, or even every single first hand professional I've ever met and discussed it with*. It's also in page after page of history. * Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics. Old soldiers discuss toilets facilities. Weirdos discuss torture.

No. What's preposterous is people who've (hopefully) no experience of using it claiming it does. If I hear an NCO with twenty five years and five operational theatres saying that they've seen it applied by dubious types teh world over and it's crap then I believe him. What's your counter-argument? "It works in my head"?

You read any of the reports, mate? He WAS a pretty good guy by all accounts, but he's gone bonkers in a big way. Weak, mumbling, indecisive, then furious. Almost certainly tertiary stage syphilis with associated dementia.

Aside from the fools who used it in the CIA I've never met any professional, police or Army (above the most basic recruits) who regards torture as anything other than wrong. It's not a case of "It's bad, but if only it wasn't." It's a case of it being completely pointless. The quality of information gained under torture is zero. If you want to get anything useful from people you have to talk it out of them. Read Sgt Chris Mackey's "The Interrogator's War" for more on this if you're interested. If any of you wannabe James Bond types think I'm seeing things through rose tinted spectacles, just read some of the stuff which came out of the declassified confessions of Apartheid agents in South Africa. They tried it, and it was total b*****cks.

Thought this story about a female SOE agent might interest you.

No time to catch up, but great article from the CS monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1117/p01s03-woap.html?s=widep Particularly

I think you are disadvantaged thanks to a lack of The Simpsons. In one episode Homer gets made a priest, and he responds by saying he can't be, because he "doesn't even believe in Jebus!" This is comical because of course he goes to church every week and doesn't even know the name of the prophet and son of god. This is played on later by when, in the midst of disaster he cries out piteously for help. "Save me Jebus!" And that's how you ruin a good joke.

On the contrary, most public assassinations are carried out by loners. I refer you to How to Kill. Ted Kennedy, JFK, Reagan, John Lennon. These are the really dangerous people. Thank you for explaining, by the way.

This is a simply cretinous statement. But I'm damned if I'll get drawn into it any further. I refer you simply to every work of economic theory written since 1700. I can only hope they are more clear and persuasive.

originally, neither did i and i had read reports of 3.5 GB so i was hoping. that said, the "3.5 GB" might have been actually "3.5 billion bytes" which is closer to 3.2 GB in reality. once i installed, and got everything going, i was a bit disappointed. there is a big improvement over 2 GB either way. once i go to a 64-bit OS that won't be an issue and i'll likely upgrade to 8 GB as well. from a game standpoint going to 8 GB won't be a big deal, but from a MATLAB standpoint, it will be huge. i have to play a lot of tricks to get simulations to run properly because each vector requires contiguous memory space. when vectors are double-precision, complex (i.e. 128 bits per element) with several million elements and a dozen or so vectors/matrices, even at 4 GB i have a hard time finding contiguous memory blocks that large. taks My attitude to MATLAB s much the same as that of those chimps in that film towards the atomic bomb.

True. But if you hadn't given them away you'd now be worse off. Because at least this way you can : a) expect some help in return. Which is precisely what happened in Katrina as other countries, including the Uk sent aid. b) increased local prosperity means it's easier for you to sell any new tools you make. Otherwise you'd be far worse off, because you'd need desperately to make capital but the market would already be saturated. EDIT: I just realised that we can't even have a disagreement unles you deny the US itself has a national economy which you are part of and which you benefit from. Your personal economy is part of the US economy. The US economy is part of the global economy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7308890.stm Look at the map here. I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't grasped just how big Tibet is. It's the entire South West flank of China!, and especially the largest mass leading towards Afghanistan and the Middle East.

been there done that killed the eight goa'uld that cropped up. What? When?

I don't think security is the issue. One thing that deters profession political assassination is the prospect of discovery and horrendous consequences. If you can make it clear that someone will find any bastards who do such a thing and destroy them and all of their friends that will help. You can see though, that even murder/assassination by bin Laden did not result in effective retribution against the perpetrators but instead in efforts to profit from the deaths by perpetrating other wars of opportunity to achieve other objectives (political control of the Middle East). It's like gang fights. Even the good guys are skum. You can hope that there really are a few good men and because of that it won't happen. I'm sorry, Colrom, but I've fallen foul of the language barrier. Would you mind explaining that again?

I would certainly back any increase in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan. It's the only way a lasting peace can be fashioned - although it's important to understand that reconstruction can only occur within secure areas utilising force. Aid to Israel is an entirely separate issue, and hardly a very simple one. We cannot afford to get into it here. As to the correct allocation of money you have been told several times - and not just by me - how money spent abroad can assist the US economy. I'l try one more time because I don't like quitting. Imagine you are in a Fallout style village and you discover a means of fashioning tools. It is true that you can sell these tools, but after a while you realise only a very people can afford them. If, however, you give away some special kinds of tools, like ploughshares and knives, then the other residents become more effective and prosperous. Thus they own more interesting things of better quality, and you are able to trade your tools at a higher price and in greater volume. If you want to see the above in action I suggest you play the game X3, and tinker with local economies.

Pies! Great hudge scadges of pie. I had a dream about pies last night. Pies and Command and Conquer.

But if i lay a bet on it, maybe the bookies will generate nterest, and raise the issue higher, leading to better security?