<Ran> Is there anybody there? I am fine.
Just got the damn gas mask off. Sorry
IRC, beating the TV networks since at least 1991...
A given channel, or even entire networks, would often start out pretty free. Dissenting discussion and arguments were allowed, if not encouraged. Users could hold and share their own beliefs without fear of repercussion. It was generally a fun experience. The channel or network would see growth.
But as the community became larger and more established, certain users would often end up becoming ops, and they'd start to enforce their own beliefs upon the entire community. People would start getting kicked or banned unnecessarily for very minor "violations", which most often involved just holding a different opinion than an op.
These kicked or banned users wouldn't come back, those users who liked them would have less incentive to return, and eventually there'd be more people getting booted or leaving than there would be new people coming and returning. The channel withers. If this happens with enough channels, the network withers. As networks wither, IRC itself withers.
Even Reddit opened just a couple years ago their own server @ irc.snoonet.org.
Coding chatbots for IRC is still a really fun way to practice NLP concepts.
39 Scuds were fired, 17 were engaged by Patriots and three were confirmed intercepted. I can't find the figure of how many Patriots were actually launched.
The number of Patriots that struck the ground intact after failed launches / failed interceptions remains classified but is greater than four. Most of the rest self-destructed in flight.
And yet they still successfully sell this system to many countries.
However, I think one of the brilliant things about Iron Dome is the fact that it doesn't try to shoot everything down. If a missile is determined to not threaten anything, it is allowed to crash on its own.
That may not be as big an optimization against opponents with good aim, but the people who fire rockets at Israel are often using old equipment that they can't aim well.
Iron Dome isn't comparable. Iron Dome is made to shoot down short-range rockets and shells. It makes intercepts against slow moving targets at low altitudes. It would not likely have much success against a mach 5 Scud that would spend only a few seconds within Iron Dome's engagement range before impact.
Iron Dome is vastly superior to Patriot in one key area, namely cost. Shooting down cheap Palestinian rockets and mortars at $2 million/missile for Patriot would not be feasible, but at $30-50,000/missile for Iron Dome is completely doable. I don't know what Patriot's success rate would be against these targets, but given its cost, it doesn't matter if it was 100%, it still wouldn't be workable.