Thursday, November 10, 2005

Army confirms use of white phosphorus for city combat. IT'S TRUE. THERE ARE CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ. The U.S. Army confirms it. And so do the Marines, who are having their big birthday today (though historically the birthday has been flexible). Where, or where, oh where, are the international war-crimes tribunals when you need them? [Wolfesblog] Of course white phosphorus rounds are not actually chemical weapons. Claiming they are is just like the tactic used by anti-freedom politicians of talking about "assault weapons" to mislead the ignorant. Using trickery and deception doesn't help those of us who are opposed to the war--it's just sinking to the level of our enemies. comment () trackback ()  4:00:15 PM     Military Uses for Silly String. Really: I'm a former Marine I in Afghanistan. Silly string has served me well in Combat especially in looking for IADs, simply put, booby traps. When you spray the silly string in dark areas, especially when you doing house to house fighting. On many occasions the silly string has saved me and my men's lives. And: When you spray the string it just spreads everywhere and when it sets it lays right on the wire. Even in a dark room the string stands out revealing the trip wire. [Schneier on Security] That's a good trick to know. It can be used by rebels too--the military uses flares and mines with trip wires. comment () trackback ()  3:53:39 PM     Ask John Smedley About Star Wars Galaxies. Late last week, Sony Online Entertainment announced a fundamental revamp in the way that the Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG will be played. The Everquest-like autoattacking gameplay and multitudes of player classes are being removed. This marks the most dramatic change ever made to a MMOG already live, and Sony Online President John Smedley is willing to take questions from the Slashdot community about the changes. One question per comment, and we'll send the ten best questions on to Mr. Smedley. We'll post his answers as soon as they're returned. More details are available below, as are some preliminary responses from Mr. Smedley about the broad picture they're aiming for. [Slashdot] Apparently Sony wasn't satisfied with driving off many long-time players (including me) with their previous redesign of the game. Now they're getting rid of the last traces of the original system and making it just like every other generic level-based MMORPG. Naturally this won't prompt me to renew my subscription. In fact, Sony Online Entertainment has done such a good job of demonstrating bad faith and incompetence that I dropped my Matrix Online subscription when SOE bought it. comment () trackback ()  3:43:08 PM

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