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Community Giveaways / SteamGifts Giveaway: Devil May Cry Key

« Last post by wraith808 on November 01, 2013, 07:19 PM »

I picked up a MB, and it came with a free copy of DmC: Devil May Cry on Steam (49.99 value)

Not really interesting to me, so I put it up on SteamGifts.

http://www.steamgift...vJ/dmc-devil-may-cry

I'm going to let it go for a week... if there are no entries, I'll just make it a regular SteamGifts giveaway.

1. Get a steam account
http://store.steampowered.com

2. Join the Donation Coder group on Steam

PM  "wraith808","Deozaan", or "lanux128" your steam name, and tell him/her you want to join  the group.
http://steamcommunit...groups/DonationCoder

3. Log in to http://www.steamgifts.com via your  steam-account

4. Enter the giveaway

5. Follow the steamgifts rules and read the FAQ: http://www.steamgift...b/faq-and-guidelines

6. The entrants will have to post their forum profile as a comment on the giveaway.

Note that the Steam community for DC is not a general purpose community- it's for active members of DonationCoder.

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on November 01, 2013, 01:29 PM »

The 'we' used there is the greater we.  Which, indeed, unless you're actively doing something about it...

Well, there's two sides, not three.

And on the revelation front, the guardian has posted a new piece:

http://www.theguardi...ns-decoded#section/1

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 31, 2013, 08:24 AM »

Oh, I knew the page was old... which was actually one of the reasons that I used that page.

This *isn't* new.  (Which we seem to agree on).

It's just that ... we ignored it.

That's why I didn't think it was tinfoil hat material.

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 30, 2013, 10:58 PM »

Just a few years ago you were a kook if you talked about the NSA data centers, e.g. the mega-center in Utah. Now? Not so much. Seems the tinfoil hat crowd had a point after all.

-Renegade (October 30, 2013, 09:51 PM)

I didn't think it ever was a tinfoil hat... they just weren't as paranoid as they should have been.

http://www.nsawatch.org/echelonfaq.html

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 30, 2013, 09:32 PM »

^ The question I'd ask is ... why?  It seems like a lot to risk for little gain. So is it merely that the NSA is now a reasonable target for such allegations for other reasons?

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General Software Discussion / CryptoLocker and CryptoPrevent

« Last post by wraith808 on October 30, 2013, 12:52 PM »

MakeUseOf has an article on CryptoLocker and CryptoPrevent, and though I don't quote the linkbait title, it does bring up an interesting question.

If you do fall victim to cryptolocker, and payment does work, is it ethical to pay?

(CryptoLocker was also discussed in the Bitcoin thread)

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 30, 2013, 08:59 AM »

You're right. This is straying off topic.

-Renegade (October 29, 2013, 10:38 PM)

I will add, however, there's truth, and there's ways of communicating the same.  Since all of us have been on the wrong side of this at one time or another, it would seem that a bit of respect in communicating this wouldn't be out of order.  Just a reminder would be good.

David Cameron threatened on Monday to act to stop newspapers publishing what he called damaging leaks from former U.S. intelligence operative Edward Snowden.

"If they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it will be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act," Cameron told parliament.

More on this story over at Techdirt.


I'm wondering how many more heavy handed attempts will be made at derailing the revelations before somebody with access to the documents decides to do a preemptive mass data dump of the entire remaining collection?
 

-40hz (October 29, 2013, 02:01 PM)

Well, it's a bit less heavy handed than the US would probably be in such a situation.  At least people aren't disappearing.  Yet.  That's a bit of progress, right?

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Living Room / Re: Facebook Requiring Government ID?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 02:33 PM »

They got some explaining to do .. NSAy what?

-Stoic Joker (October 29, 2013, 02:12 PM)

You owe me a keyboard! 

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 02:32 PM »

There is a big difference between spurious omission and answering a simple yes or no question incorrectly. The first simply allows one to hold back a few cards ... And the other is a flat out lie.

-Stoic Joker (October 29, 2013, 02:19 PM)

This.

Personally, I'm bad at either, which is the reason that I hate to bargain, and hate to barter.  I just set what I'm interested in and say it... and if the person hedges or tries to bargain, I walk away.

That isn't to say that I question the morals or approach of anyone who does it differently.  I'm just aware that people are good at that, and are able to do that with proficiency, and alter my approach correspondingly.

Diplomacy is a question of degrees in a lot of cases, and coming to such a common ground.  You may respect someone that is open, earnest, and honest on a personal level.  But that person will not make a good diplomat IMO.  You have to be able to walk that line between your country's interests, and bargaining in good faith.

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 01:57 PM »

I think that many don't echo your sentiments, however, and view his service as somewhat less than someone who put boots on ground in the face of enemy aggression.

But I consider him more a tragic figure than a hero. As I do all the patriotic and highly honorable men and women who have served this country in needless conflicts orchestrated by those who put their own interests and agendas ahead of those of their nation.

Seeing people (both allies and adversaries) die over half-truths and untruths will take its toll on anyone with a shred of humanity still left inside them. Small wonder so many have come back from conflicts such as this one with serious emotional and mental issues. Small wonder so many who live in the region of conflict will also live out their lives similarly scarred.

-40hz (October 29, 2013, 01:37 PM)

This I can definitely get on board with.  We seem to wash them with the same colors and end up with ribbons on our cars, and tip jars to support our troops, branding them in the same way that the threat boards of the theater of combat does to a different extent when they're looked at as resources and casualties rather than people whose lives and deaths have a very real impact on the country.

We calk about the cognitive dissonance of waging war from behind a screen at increasing distances... I think that there is more of a cognitive dissonance between those that wage war as enlisted and those that formerly waged war under the same terms.  Because it seems that the men to a large extent become less important when that man isn't you.

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Living Room / Re: Can someone do a quick Photoshop gag for me?

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 01:20 PM »

You should do you John and Joan... make a family portrait 

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Living Room / Re: Musician Lou Reed has died

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 10:17 AM »

Neil Gaiman on Lou Reed: 'His songs were the soundtrack to my life'

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 10:15 AM »

Out of curiosity - why there?

It would be more efficient and cost effective to keep it in Nevada. No shipping charges! And certainly more secure in that there would be no risk at all of a command unit being destroyed - or even  worse, captured by the enemy. IIUC these systems use satellite communications for their control systems - so physical location of the commander doesn't seem to be all that important. (It certainly isn't for the "hitman" drones operating in Pakistan and other places.)

-40hz (October 29, 2013, 08:43 AM)

I'm not sure why there... but I'd assume that for the same reason that is pointed out in the article that you linked... link latency.  He was performing flyovers at the base to accompany patrols and reinforce base security.  Link latency would be a problem, I'd think, especially when lives are on the line.  It's of little importance if the drone lands safely to be recovered when the link goes out if there's no one to recover it.

And does the reason lessen the fact that he is now on foreign soil in enemy territory?  And that he volunteered for deployment?

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 29, 2013, 08:22 AM »

That wasn't my intent when I posted it for sure... it was more the merging of the technology and the warrior, and the psychological effects thereof.  I think that the medals isn't off-base with the international aspects of DC IMO.  But it does point towards the attitude and conversations that surround the use of the drones, i.e. that it isn't really worthy of mention as battle and isn't worthy of recognition as battle, which I dispute.

Especially given that at times, the combatant in question isn't 5000 miles away... as when the soldier in the article above deployed to Iraq.

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 10:26 PM »

"Trust, but Verify."

Why is that maxim such a powerful statement?

True, there does have to be a certain level of trust.  But lying by omission is still lying- but not necessarily bad faith.  So having a budget of $500 on a purchase, and not telling the other person your true budget or telling a different budget and driving a hard bargain based on that, prepared to if it comes to the wall to increase that amount... is that lying?  Or good bargaining tactics?

Do you lay everything on the table?  Trusting that the other person will do the same?  Or do you do your own due diligence and drive the hardest deal possible?  Where does that line lie?  True, you shouldn't deal in bad faith... but what's bad faith to one person isn't necessarily to the other.  Especially when you're dealing with different cultures and different aims. 

It's not as black and white as it may appear, IMO.

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Living Room / Re: Yay! New Laws for Crowdfunding!

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 10:19 PM »

But back to the issue at hand:

There's a better (IMO) breakdown on Forbes.  Specifically:

• Crowdfunding caps an amount an issuer can raise to $1 million in any 12-month period.
• Crowdfunding caps the amount a person can invest in all crowdfundings over a 12-month period at 10% of annual income or net worth (incomes of $100,000 or more) or the greater of $2,000 or 5% of annual income or net worth (incomes of less than $100,000).
• Crowdfunding must be done through a registered broker-dealer or registered “funding portal.” Broker-dealers and funding portals may not solicit investments, offer investment advice or compensate employees based on sales. Traditional investment banks have shown little interest in crowdfunding, leading to speculation that crowdfunding will be facilitated by lesser-known financial institutions with little or no retail investment track record.
• Crowdfunding requires a disclosure document to be filed with the SEC at least 21 days prior to first sale, and requires scaled financial disclosure, including audited financial statements for raises of over $500,000.
• Unlike Regulation D Rule 506 private placements to accredited investors following the JOBS Act, crowdfunding does not allow advertising except solely to direct investors to the appropriate broker/funding portal.
• Annual reports must be filed with the SEC by a company which completes a crowdfunding round.

These rules are specifically about control, not fraud.  In fact, there's nothing in there to do anything with fraud, other than limit the amount that an individual project can bilk people for.  In the meantime, it puts a burden that the smaller companies can't even afford to take on for the amounts of money we're talking about, and there are no exemptions.

I might be reading that wrong... but it appears that Forbes agrees with that take on it.

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 09:52 PM »

An air-conditioned trailer in Nevada is not "at risk in combat' in any real sense of the word. And certainly not the same thing as being stationed on a US military base in an area of conflict on foreign soil.

-40hz (October 28, 2013, 09:28 PM)

Did you not see what I quoted?  He wasn't in Nevada.  He was in Iraq.  That is an area of conflict on foreign soil, right?

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 08:17 PM »

In my small corner of the universe, you draw it at the place where "at risk" becomes real. Military personnel at sea stations or over hostile airspace are definitely at risk. As are the missile silo commanders and crew who know (with certainty) that either a first-strike or retaliatory missile has already targeted them and will be heading their way - and is guaranteed to impact long before they could get beyond the radius of total destruction.

Sitting in an air conditioned and totally secure command area someplace in Virginia and remotely piloting an unmanned aircraft? Hmm...that seems a somewhat different a type of 'valor' to me. Sure, it serves a necessary function in a military operation. But it seems more to me like somebody acting responsibly and doing the job they're being paid to do rather than serving bravely or with valor. Right up there with the guys packing medical supplies and MREs back in the US for the folks over there.

-40hz (October 28, 2013, 08:07 PM)

The closest Bryant ever got to “real” combat—the roadside bombs and mortar fire experienced by combat troops—was after volunteering to deploy to Iraq. He spent the scorching summer and fall of 2007 stationed at the airfield in Balad, flying Predators on base-defense missions—scanning the area for insurgents.

Does that change it at all?  Or not because he's not out in the field?  Especially since bases have been attacked and military personnel killed... or is that still not close enough?

(And I'm really wondering... not just throwing things out there.  Seeing things from a different perspective of a dissenter is a good part of debate that people sometimes miss )

And what if it was a different sort of service badge... would that be acceptable?  Or is it just off the table in general as some seem to think?

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 08:05 PM »

A rather revealing and self-defining statement about one's personal standards and integrity.

-IainB (October 28, 2013, 08:33 AM)

Not really. Just a sociological observation. Not all lies are created equal. We all tell lies as we negotiate our daily existences. You don't believe me? Try for a day not to tell a lie like in the movie Liar Liar. When your missus asks you the next time "Does my bum look big in this?", just go ahead and say yes and see what happens...

-dr_andus (October 28, 2013, 11:14 AM)

I think you'd be surprised. I tell my wife exactly what I think and she appreciates it. I don't have to lie.

But in the case you outlined, the subtext is more along the lines of, "This makes my butt look a bit big, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd simply compliment me so that I feel better." The actual words are merely a small portion of the communication.

But even if we tell white lies in our daily lives, that doesn't excuse black lies in public office. Public office doesn't have that subtext communication that we have in our more intimate conversations with those close to us.

-Renegade (October 28, 2013, 07:29 PM)

But, in the context of those negotiations, even if they are allies, they are jockeying for advantage.  That might be mutual advantage, but if it's not, that's ok too in many cases.

In bargaining and bartering and all such interactions, the truth is not as much of a consideration in the things that the person that you're bargaining with is telling you than your own truth and perceptions are.

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 07:23 PM »

While I will agree that the introduction of mortality and the visceral nature of being there is different, that still doesn't excuse IMO the denigration of any that serve in any capacity.  I'll just never get that.  There are also those that are in the conflict that are there for different reasons- they aren't all heroes, no matter what acts they perform.  Then there are those that are heroes, but are in the capacity of execution of the wrong thing.

There's also the fact that some of these people who are being denigrated for their part are preventing very real casualties on the ground.  For instance, if there wasn't the jamming screw up in the example in the article and they'd been able to tell the soldiers, "hey, there's an IED on the ground there", that would have saved real casualties.  And I'm sure that has happened in other cases.  Is that contribution to be denigrated?  And once you start making these sorts of distinctions... where do you draw the line?  What about sailors on a battleship giving offshore support?  What about pilots of a bomber?  Soldiers manning missile stations?

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 04:18 PM »

^ What about the fact that he *was* diagnosed with PTSD?  And the new studies quoted in the article, i.e.

It was an unexpected diagnosis. For decades the model for understanding PTSD has been “fear conditioning”: quite literally the lasting psychological ramifications of mortal terror. But a term now gaining wider acceptance is “moral injury.” It represents a tectonic realignment, a shift from a focusing on the violence that has been done to a person in wartime toward his feelings about what he has done to others—or what he’s failed to do for them. The concept is attributed to the clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who in his book Achilles in Vietnam traces the idea back as far as the Trojan War. The mechanisms of death may change—as intimate as a bayonet or as removed as a Hellfire—but the bloody facts, and their weight on the human conscience, remain the same. Bryant’s diagnosis of PTSD fits neatly into this new understanding. It certainly made sense to Bryant. “I really have no fear,” he says now. “It’s more like I’ve had a soul-crushing experience. An experience that I thought I’d never have. I was never prepared to take a life.”

In 2011, Air Force psychologists completed a mental-health survey of 600 combat drone operators. Forty-two percent of drone crews reported moderate to high stress, and 20 percent reported emotional exhaustion or burnout. The study’s authors attributed their dire results, in part, to “existential conflict.” A later study found that drone operators suffered from the same levels of depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol abuse, and suicidal ideation as traditional combat aircrews. These effects appeared to spike at the exact time of Bryant’s deployment, during the surge in Iraq. (Chillingly, to mitigate these effects, researchers have proposed creating a Siri-like user interface, a virtual copilot that anthropomorphizes the drone and lets crews shunt off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.)

What if it has less to do with mortality than it does morality?

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 01:36 PM »

It's the pig vs chicken scenario.  But to be fair, war, no matter if you're not directly in harms way, is hell.  Different people have differing contributions to the effort, but to denigrate these particular warriors seems unfair, and more leaning towards the old service rivalries, when without the drone intel (taking the assassinations off the table) their hazard levels would be much higher.

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Living Room / Re: Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 12:48 PM »

That was a strikingly human perspective on drone warfare. It didn't really change my opinions of drones at all, but goddamn. It was a pretty emotional explanation of what the operators go through and their thought processes.

-p3lb0x (October 28, 2013, 12:41 PM)

The fusion of technology and human as an extension of firepower- we see the modern warrior on the ground and all of the equipment and technology making him into the techno-warrior.  But this... it seems more the definition of the warrior of a technological age.

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Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 12:23 PM »

A rather revealing and self-defining statement about one's personal standards and integrity.

-IainB (October 28, 2013, 08:33 AM)

Not really. Just a sociological observation. Not all lies are created equal. We all tell lies as we negotiate our daily existences. You don't believe me? Try for a day not to tell a lie like in the movie Liar Liar. When your missus asks you the next time "Does my bum look big in this?", just go ahead and say yes and see what happens...

-dr_andus (October 28, 2013, 11:14 AM)

^ This. 

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Living Room / Confessions of a drone warrior

« Last post by wraith808 on October 28, 2013, 12:02 PM »

Confessions of a Drone Warrior

He was an experiment, really. One of the first recruits for a new kind of warfare in which men and machines merge. He flew multiple missions, but he never left his computer. He hunted top terrorists, saved lives, but always from afar. He stalked and killed countless people, but could not always tell you precisely what he was hitting. Meet the 21st-century American killing machine. who's still utterly, terrifyingly human

More at link

“It’s like playing Dungeons & Dragons,” says Bryant. “Roll a d20 to see if you hit your target.” His training inspector, watching over his shoulder, would count down to impact and say, “Splash! You killed everyone.”

Within a few months he “went off” to war, flying missions over Iraq at the height of the conflict’s deadliest period, even though he never left Nevada.

There's a level of cognitive dissonance there that is ... staggering in it's implications.

“I kind of finished the night numb,” Bryant says. “Then you just go home. No one talked about it. No one talked about how they felt after anything. It was like an unspoken agreement that you wouldn’t talk about your experiences.”

Other members of his squadron had different reactions to their work. One sensor operator, whenever he made a kill, went home and chugged an entire bottle of whiskey. A female operator, after her first shot, refused to fire again even under the threat of court martial. Another pilot had nightmares after watching two headless bodies float down the Tigris. Bryant himself would have bizarre dreams where the characters from his favorite game, World of Warcraft, appeared in infrared.

What really strikes me from the recollections is that PTSD doesn't seem to require you to be on the ground, and this has a real effect on the so-called drone warriors also; one that's not being front and center.  Like executioners or anyone who deals in push button death.

He constructed a darkly appropriate syllabus for his occupation. He read the dystopian sci-fi classic Ender’s Game, about children whose violent simulated games turn out to be actual warfare. Then came Asimov, Bryant pondering his Three Laws of Robotics in an age of Predators and Hellfires. A robot may not injure a human being….

The future of authors' dark imaginations on stage today in our military.  Where has technology taken us?