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Dave Peterson

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Posts posted by Dave Peterson

  1. I can bet money those security people did that on purpose just to prove a point against the security plans. THEY probably didnt like it for their own reasons, and so they went through this whole thing just to make the headlines. To that extent, the whole thing could have been a fraud. Who the hell would honestly say "You've committed a felony," Beaman says a security screener announced. "And you're considered a terrorist." Even if it looked like a terrorist, which clearly it couldn't have. Sounds like a ploy.

    In fact, Im almost positive that is the case. An anti-bush propaganda attack.

  2. I like it because it isnt all space battles -which themselves become somewhat stagnant, they just sit their and shoot missiles at eachother until one of them blows up-and the pilots just get lauched to their deaths usually. They need some new kinds of action.

    I sort of like the character drama. they overdo it sometimes though, with people shooting their wives and stuff. Past that though, there is some good character buildup, although sometimes its pretty pointless and in the end, no one really learned anything. Baltar's lawyer was amazing, but then Baltar lived and hes just as stupid as before, you would think he would have gotten something redeeming out of it and all.

  3. The current middle east (and for the last hundred + years since before World War 1, has been a timebomb waiting to go off, always at odds with powers on every side. The region is dominated majorly by religous fanatics, becasue the people who arent fanatics dont do anything to stop the fanatics. In the midst of that, dictators and tyrants rise to power, criminal organizations, black markets, terror groups build and thrive without check. Its the "bad-guy HQ of the world", even if there hadn't been 9/11, or afganistan, or iraq, eventually there would have been a meltdown. As difficult as it is, if we fail to keep some stability within iraq and afghanistan, this is all going to start boiling over really fast. With even little threats like North Korea and Iran (little compared to major powers) there is a potential for a bad end to all this, or just a bad begining.

  4. We shouldn't pull out of Iraq as already stated at the top, but the real strategy for victory is not to hunt out every terrorist and muslim extremist, it is to hit them at the top of the line where it will spread down in a sort of chain reaction. This whole thing reminds me a lot of the Terror of the French revolution ...which is ironic because the French refuse to help in this war. The guy at the top, Robespeire, was calling the shots against all the people getting killed because of him, and he used whatever people he could convince to side with him. The current situation sees two major side of the islamic religion pitted against eachother, and the leaders of both sides are egging it on -not just because they truly beleive they are correct to kill the others -but also to get rid of the coalition troops from Iraq, which would be a major political/theocratical victory for one side or the other in the Mideast. It is these leaders that are the ones who control the populace and the dirty-workers who blow themselves up in car bombings, because they follow what is told to them. We have to go for the head, and not the arms.

    At the end of the terror, Robespiere was killed and the terror ended. It wont work the same way here, but logically, eliminating these top people, while extraordinarily difficult in some way might stop the bombings. The radicals would still hate our guts but who cares, they already do, and thats why we have the Patriot Act.

  5. quote:

    Originally posted by rapilot:

    I just don't understand the view that technologic advancement is a bad thing. I also don't buy the argument that says technological advancement is going to allow us to do and control everything because knowledge grows every year. Our astonishment of how we have made much larger than expected advances in computers has made us blind to the lack of technological advancement in other things. Also fear of technology further contributes to the assumption that technological advancement will be infinite and fast. We cannot stop technological advancement, the argument says.

    Technology is usually bad because it is applied before it is very good. Genetic modification of food is a good example. I don't think, however, that genetic engineering is a science that is bad for mankind. Biological science is probably the most important area we can advance in to achieve our ultimate goal of being able to control everything. We can make enormous advances in medicine with bioscience in making nutriceuticals and gene therapy products. The biggest advancement we could make is to understand how every species of life works at the component level. Plants are able to fight off many different diseases. Studying their mechanism of how they do this would give us major insight into making new drugs. Their chemicals can in rare instances even be used as drugs without much modification. To do this we need a species study program like the Apollo space program. The returns are too uncertain and far into the future for private industry to ever undertake such a task. If we don't recognize limits of progress in things such as drugs, then we won't reorganize our society to advance as far as we could. The more limits we can find like these the more corrections we will make so that technological advancement can be maximized.

    The most important thing we need to do to improve things is to do away with any arrogance we have about how great our technological ability is. We can not advance by simply restricting how technology is used. We need to make all new technologies high quality technologies so none of them harm us. If we can direct our awe away from our technologies and to how complex plant and animal life is, our drug industry would stop making crummy drugs where they are embarassed to list their side effects. The same is true with energy technology. We need technology to advance just as much as we need to restrict how it is used, because we can never assume a technology will advance infinitely. Technology will not advance to its maximum unless we find our limits. We need to stop believing our technology will ever have the ability to play god, whether for good or for evil. Knowledge accumulation needs to be allocated with maximum efficiency to get the maximum beneficial result. Every other resource is like that and so is knowledge. Unlimited time and manpower won't cover the shortfall because neither is unlimited.

    I never said anything about technology being bad. In itself, there is no object anywhere that is "bad", even a nuclear bomb, because it is just there. It is who has it, who makes it, how it is used that is the problem. Good technology in the hands of bad people is overall, bad. Also I would say, we are not anywhere near being able to control everything, but we can still manipulate most of it, and soon will be well on our way to more. Another point I have to bring up is, while we may not be able to control the world on every level, we dont have to in order to bring harm to ourselves.

    A question though:What do you think it means for a certain "advancement" or technology to be harmful? Destructive capability perhaps like nuclear weapons? Arent there other factors? Lets take a look at a scenario that is more realistic and pressing, sort of depressing and maybe overdramatized but it is more likely than you might think.

    These days we have an incredible amount of medical knowledge, not all, but an incredible amount still. Good, so we can save lives, that is good. But the realm of medical science has moved to a point where the focus is on money, and on self ease and not life saving as much. Where resources could have been put towards still uncurable diseases like HIV/AIDs, there are clinical abortins, a million pointless drugs and antidepressants that are not needed, and a knowledge that attempts to keep us alive as long as possible, which is the scenario.

    Im not going to spend time finding the sites for this stuff, but you can find it easily. Average lifespan over the past hundred years has nearly gone up by 1/3 now at around 102 or something, or soon to be. It used to be 80. Predictions put it to soon be at around 110. Hopeful people will see it rise every year to be at about 130 in forty years, maybe. Alright, so longer life is better life right? For the people who can afford it...and for those who won't be killed because of this. We never really think about overpopulation as a threat to humanity, unless it is overpopulation of rabbits, therefore we kill them to even it out. No one really seems to understand that we have the same problem as the rabbits, and humans take up a hell of a lot more room. World population is approx 8 billion now, and rising, even thoguh some claim that birth rate is slowing down...but somehow (hmm) population is still rising exponentially. Soon, not only does space become an issue, but jobs, home services like water and electricity...and importantly, food. We are already past an equilibrium point between farmland and cityspace, and the more that balance is lost the more we will suffer. We are having problems with oil and fuel now, what will food shortage bring?

    Longer lives mean more food consumption, more land space being used, more destruction on an enviromental level... it is an endless cycle... and it ends in a bad way too: Food prices will increase, living conditions decrease and then get worse because of economic pressure from the food prices (not to mention any other resources). More resources and land are needed, therefore we cut down more forest space, losing precious oxygen producing trees, animal ecosystems. Greenhouse gases will end up being ignored or patched up with a temporary solution that will fail ultimately. Soon we get an economic chaos, people without jobs, poverty. With more poverty comes more crime, less people to fight the crime, more people angry at the government. What are the solutions to the dilemna? Population laws or find space on the moon (not gunna happen). Population laws, or whatever just makes peopel hate the governments more, eventually there is not much more than anarchy. Local municipalities join together, wars start over everything from land to food. And even here the cycle is still getting worse until eventually, who knows, angry man in China decides America would look better as a crater and decides to nuke us all (although nuclear war at this point would be mercy killing for all but the highest class of people)...SO is this a possiblity...yes, though somewhat unlikely. Could never happen, but it could start in ten years for all we know as a result of what we are doing now...and that is the point. Repercussions.

    You can't live forever, but with technology we can live a lot longer...So is it a good thing?

    En Fin.

  6. Ive only recently started watching the show, most of the episodes I watch online, but my first impressions were ones of amazement. The first one or two I watched, while it was stunningly interesting to watch, I found difficult to follow because of my lack of understanding of the storyline and how Caprica was in Gias' head and such, but I watched the miniseries and a lot of season one and there were times when my jaw dropped just at how amazing the look and feel of the show was.

    I like sci-fi a lot, but there is somethign about this that is a lot more than jsut science fiction. The miniseries was alright, though a bit depressing, but the overall acting and character interaction and emotion was stunning. There is such a feel of some greater thing behind the plot that makes it so epic, even if you see the same things several times over. I like the whole human vs. cylon fight for "who is the more righteous" thing too.

    Ive seen a lot of series like Star Trek and such, some ok and some terrible, but this tops all of them beyond words. Movie quality, every episode! A++

  7. Frozghost: "I think the question really is, "Has mankind's technological development exceeded our ability to manage." I think the answer is an obvious yes."

    That is correct. We will always -as far as we can say, from now on, have what we have, but our control and management and use over that which we have is still not accomplished fully, and yet we are already pushing on towards the next thing.

    "About all that nuclear waste stuff... Probably goes along the same lines as any garbage usage -you can burn it or attempt to recycle some of it or decompose parts of it...whatever. The point is, nuclear power has become a crucial part of modern day living, and it is cleaner, if not safer. We are definately far too dependent on it, but at this point it is too late to avoid that because of our reliance on it.

    Zwecky: "That's what I meant, they are always vitally important, no matter what era we are in. There will always be a mix of evil and good in society, of responsible and irresponsible, there will always be a battle between good and evil desires in each individual, we have to keep fighting to make sure that the arrogant and destructive ones among us do not drown out the responsible and constructive ones, since really bad things happen when good people do nothing."

    Maybe just another bad case of interpretation on my part I apologize, I do agree with you here. We do need to keep those "destructive people" in check, and the only way to do that is to finish the race first, but part of the solution would also be to make sure there is less available at the disposal of those people that could do harm.

  8. "Morally, it means being outraged by an evil act when committed by one individual or group, but excusing the same sort of act (or worse) when committed by another. The mass news media seems to be guilty of this on a whole range of topics. On a more personal level, this is also being a lot more troubled by the evil in the world than by the evil in your own heart. After all, that's the problem you can do most about"

    Hypocrisy, one of the largest silent threats we have now. In general we might say something is bad or inhumane,etc... but inside we are doing the same thing and following the same lines of that which we condemn. If you are against and fighting one thing, you must carry that argument to anything else even slightly related and with no bias or else someone will be able to easily come and say the same as you. That is how most wars are started, and it is usually with hypocritical misunderstanding (took me a while to fully figure that one out).

    Here in America, where we have the best example of personal freedom with technology and society, this entire thing can be seen pretty clearly (since I live in America it is most relevant too to me. We are something of a "modern society of the future", the complete opposite of old cultures where we seem to have come from absolute monarchy to unlimited democracy, a statement of freedom which sadly in modern terms has come to "I can do whatever I want and there is no limit to it." That is the first step in ignorance, and ignorance leads to all the rest and is the root of most problems.

    "Communicating with others via chat rooms and forums gives us a feeling of anonymity and invulnerability - we can invent a whole new identity for ourselves and feel no-one can do anything to us for what we say, hence the anarchy that reigns over most forums. When we meet people in the course of our day, we are often under pressure, in a hurry and tired, hardly conducive to warm human contact. We are increasingly more and more isolated from nature, catching idealised glimpses via adverts and movies."

    So true. I am guilty here, although I was always better at explaining things in written words than through speaking.

    "Yes, we have to sort out our more fundamental issues, but this is irrelevant to our era, or to what the next era will be. There are always those who say we are playing God by advancing in some technological area, but you can't stop science from progressing, you can't stop new discoveries from being made (if you stop, then someone else will overtake you). All we can do is attempt to ensure that the most powerful of these new technologies do not get into the hands of those who would be irresponsible with them, punish those who abuse them, and attempt to make sure that our own use of them is as constructive as possible.

    A difficult task, but if we don't do it, who will?"

    First, I wouldn't say that our elemental beleifs are irrelevant at all to our era, they were relevant to every era and especially so now. It is what is in your head that ultimately determines how you act and how events turn out to be. It also determines the kind of people such as you say next that WILL end up with the "Human power" in their hands. Of course there is no way we can stop advancement of technology, but we can still reform the advancement of how we think and act -that is what is most important and that is what will determine how the entire human race will turn out to be in the future: intelligent but responsible, or arrogant and thoughtless.

  9. Ben: Yes that was more along the lines of where I was going, although there is a great amount of technological and social advancement that goes along with it. All and more of what you listed are very real factors in our dilemna, which on the outside doesnt look quite as bad as it really is.

    Rapilot: I was having a hard time following some of what you said. The problem here is not just technology in general, but how fast we use and progress with it -and also the fact that we cannot find any limit to it, which goes to show a lot of what Ben Zwecky said above. We have to sort out our more fundamental issues before we dive into the next big era...

    "Can we say we know everything so we can call ourselves God. Not even close. Alteast not hear on Earth. Maybe some other planet is better technologically than Earth. This is why we need space travel. Make those warp engines. Bring us to 3000ad. Let us make trade relationships with other planets, build alliances and expand our fleet."

    Aye aye Captain Kirk

  10. Just to clear stuff up, this is not about becoming a religious god or all powerful blow up the stars as we decide kind of thing, it is a more basic way that things seem to have become in our mind and how we have used, not just technology, but our claims on scienctific usage to start us down a bad path. Basically it is a general decline in morality, responsibility, and thought that is what is the problem ... im not talking about nuclear bombs (though that is definately a bad possibility as well)

    Now...where to start?...From the top, right.

    Stingray: You did...read the post right and not just the title? Obviously we are not near god at all, and when i said that I meant it in a not so good way...like we have taken too much power to ourselves and abused it bad. We definately have problems to face, but we tend to take the easy way around them, and we usually end up with a poor solution. Our problems are there to make us learn from them and be better people, not just fix them and forget about them -which in my mind, is not happening.

    Jag: Its not about having all the answers, its about how we are using the knowledge we have. At the moment most of that is being fed into things to, in general, make us less human (please bare with me and I will explain). Think about what we try to do with technology today...a lot is good, for instance, cures for disease..but others are not so good -such as abortions.

    This is not about abortions so I will be short but in general, i think that this is an excellent example of what I am trying to say. Abortions are nothing new (worse a long time ago), but their modern use definately is much more frequent and disturbing (shows how far weve come). At first clinical abortion was meant for just those who needed it, women who would have died otherwise or raped victims..all that. that was a long time ago from our standpoint. What is it now...an escape for carelessness and not thinking (and the very small % of the previous people mentioned). We have an "accidental child" because of poor planning and a lot of times false affection, and then what do we do -a great solution that we love to use -kill it. Destroy our problems and forget about them -and its gotten to a point where people are even more careless because they know, if neccessary, they have options when in trouble because of how available abortions have become. THAT is the recklessness with technology I am talking about. One of many examples.

    Ben: Im glad to see a well stated opinion here, and for the most part, i completely agree with you. It most definately is NOT the fault of what we have and "advancements" that we are having problems... I probably didnt make that clear enough before. Technology is great, its fun and amazing and helpful to a major extent...it is how it is used that is the issue. It is our intentions and use behind technology that is the important thing. I liked the stick example, because it is perfectly true--- it is what you make of it and not what it is itself. And thats true with everything.

    The only problem is, we have the technology now to do a hell of a lot -even blow up the world (as Mr Kim over there in NK is attempting to prove) but it is how we use that power, how we are making use of it that matters. If we could get to a point where everyone is perfect, and everyone thinks before they act, and uses technological and superiority power wisely...then fine, we have no problem...BUt the straight fact is that will never happen, and unless we do something about it, there will be repercussions..some of which we are already feeling. We have the power to clone people, and though we restrain ourselves now from mass production of people...how long until that barrier is broken?

    Heres a little bit of an example:

    Increased urbanization and claiming of land has forced many forest dwelling animals to be secluded in forests and such, we initially end up swiinging the entire system out of alignment. We claim that then there begins to have "overpopulation" of a specific species because they have been forced away from predators or there are too many confined in one area (how ironic isnt it)...lets just say the deer in this case... maybe because they have eaten too many flowers from people's gardens. What is always our solution? Kill them, or more politically correct to say "balance out the population". Most of the job goes to commercial or sport hunters, many of which could care less about the food part of it -which turns the whole thing into a slaughter all for the good of the community... This is the way we deal with most of our problems nowadays...using some quick cheap repair job for our problems. Kill it, tear it down, destroy it.

    Whether this the population leveling is justified or not, it paints a pretty clear picture of what we are...the game controllers of the world. We cause a problem and instead of facing it -whether for monetary or laziness reasons, we take the short way out. In general it shows a disregard for life and for anything that we do. Thats why we have abortions, thats why we have so many "quick do it for you" sort of things...We cant handle the very problems we create.

    Also consider that: Everyday...

    -Upwards of 50,000 people per day are needlessly dying on Earth. These deaths are dictated by the greed of a very few, and the rest of us are not changing it...

    -578 species of the web of life to go extinct. This extinction rate equals one species of life going extinct every 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Millions of people are at work legally day and night, quickly destroying the richest place there is for life on Earth, the Rainforests.

    -We are destroying a land area which is equivalent to the size of the city of Tokyo Japan ( 240 square miles ) every day.

    These were from: [http://www.starvation.net/]

    I dont want to go too deeply into abortion but...

    -Aprox 944,935,000 worldwide so far (mostly in the last twenty years) ... Thats about a Billion Abortions...1/8 of the total population of the planet now. More than half of that is made of +8-12 weeks past conception.

    Numbers a little high? You tell me.

  11. Has Humanity become God?

    A;right not in a literal or religious sense... but these days we have everything we have ever wanted (and more than we could ever need) to both live and survive. We have the answers for everything in scientific terms and mathematical numbers and we have been able to solve and nearly control so much and nearly all of what we once considered to be 'the mysteries of the universe' -or we soon will be.

    This path l think is very dangerous because of not only how much power we have now over everything- we can clone people, genetically alter creatures, travel in space, build or destroy anything we want, possess weapons that could destroy the planet... -but also how fast we are acquiring it.

    I beleive this is going to become the death of not only humanity but the destruction of the good values and morals that we try to hold onto now unless we can do something to change our entire base of society fast.

    ---So what are your thoughts on our 'progress'???

    ---What do you think will become of us and how do you think we will be able to, if we are able to, solve this problem???

  12. "just LedMAO because that that preceeding quote is almost best sarcasm I've ever read. I dunno if you meant it that way tho"

    Sarcasm.

    And yes, while its just North Korea, they are quite a threat, even though their nukes would never make it here if they tried and they probably wouldnt make it three days in a war. But for a crazy guy, it only takes one Dr. Evil momement to shoot off a few ICBMs and blow up a dozen cities, here or is other countries. So...

  13. This is interesting news, of course it was already known but hushed up by the media so more people would blame Bush no doubt- nothing new I suppose though, unfortunately. And it doesnt matter if they were nukes or gas bombs- either is a WMD. It also doesnt matter whether Saddam would or would not have used them against the US or any country for that matter (and who's to say he wouldnt have), but the fact that they exist means that the numerous terrorist cells that operated in Iraq would have had access to them, and that WOULD put the U.S at risk, not to mention whatever other target they might have in mind. And it doesnt matter how lethal the weapons were or were not, remember the Tokyo subway incident- it has to do with how they are used... and thats scary to think about. Who knows what happened the first time UN inspecters went into Iraq, for all we know Saddam gave his terrorist buddy a bunch of WMDs and shipped him out of Iraq?

  14. This is not a problem with the Main server as I know it went down years ago. This is a question about private fleet server m-player. Wraith leader Ben Zwecky was attempting to instruct me in a private server training and after much greif of going through the set up, I finally reached the join Mp server and was asked to enter the CD code/key. (This is the first time Ive tried it) I entered the number with dashes and after a while it says "Cd key is banned!:Contact 3000ad technician" -now I know this is a valid copy because I got it at Target and in a box (I read the thing on the banned Cd-keys) so I was thinking it was because the authentication server was down or something- or maybe just becuase I didnt do this before the main server went down- but if there is still any way to fix this it would be greatly appreciated because I only have UC and I want to play against someone in it. Thanks!

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