Military technology: Magic bullets • Hacker News Board

Re: Military technology: Magic bullets

#91

Post by grannyg00se » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 8:45 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #71

grannyg00se wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always seems so absurd to me that there are rules around wartime killing. Once you acknowledge that it is acceptable to take another person's life for profit you really have little credibility for laying out rules of fairness.

You were on your way to an interesting point until you made the implicit claim that war is always about profit. For pretty much every war, that isn't true for at least one side, and often for both.

Obviously one side isn't necessarily in it for profit, they could simply be defending the other side's actions. But the instigator is usually in it for profit.

Re: Military technology: Magic bullets

#92

Post by grannyg00se » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

icegreentea wrote: post #46

grannyg00se wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always seems so absurd to me that there are rules around wartime killing. Once you acknowledge that it is acceptable to take another person's life for profit you really have little credibility for laying out rules of fairness.

Well, most of the rules aren't about killing per se, but rather wounding. And most of the rules are in place so that the stakes of fighting never gets high enough that we would all have to stop fighting. For example, the Geneva Protocol that bans chemical and biological weapons pretty much because aside from killing, those who were wounded were an enormous burden, and terrible for morale (aside from any ethical reaso…

"Long story short, nearly all rules of war exist because they are beneficial to abilities of the parties to conduct war. The rules do no exist to make killing fair."

That actually makes perfect sense. Although I find it rather disturbing.

Re: Military technology: Magic bullets

#93

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 12:58 AM UTC

gvb wrote: post #84

robotresearcher wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have it wrong. An accelerometer measures acceleration. Users usually calibrate the device at rest to get a good estimate of G so that it can be subtracted from accelerations measured later. Is that what you mean?

No. A falling object is at "0G", it is "weightless" (in a "drop seat" type carnival ride, when the ride triggers, you have no force on your butt). A bullet is a falling object after it leaves the gun. You cannot measure earth's gravitational attraction from the bullet's frame of reference because it is 0. Therefore, you cannot use earth's gravitational attraction to measure the bullet's spin rate because the value is…

Sure, once the bullet is moving ballistically you can't measure G. My argument was with the statement that accelerometers measure changes in acceleration. They don't.