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... if the professors look like this.

There is a huge difference between wearing a wedding ring and going outside wearing clothes one otherwise would only see in the worst kinkfest porn flicks out there.

There is a huge difference between referring to your spouse as your husband/wife, and being over-the-top physical with your partner simply because you know it makes people react.

With regards to bringing pictures to work.. I don't care about the gender of your spouse! Feel free to bring that picture of you and your special someone to keep you happy and motivated at work, so long as it doesn't look like this.

Did you seriously not get my point? Do you really think wearing a ring, a token of love and commitment which frankly any gay couple can wear without anyone reacting, compares in terms of self-degradation, attention whoring and offensiveness to this?

What about all the gay men out there who for some reason I cannot fathom act 10 times more feminine than any female ever has, and vice versa? I don't deliberately go around "acting straight", talking about being straight, dressing in a stereotypical straight manner.. Why do many (not all, never said that!) gays go to crazy extremes to differentiate themselves from the rest of the world because they were once treated badly for being different, then complain about being seen as different? I fail to see how this circular reasoning of "acting different because you are seen as different, because you act different.." is going to make life better for anyone.

Of course I know gay people. How can I not, they are as much a part of everyday life as anyone possessing any other genetic (assuming genes are at least in part responsible) trait!

I don't discriminate against them for being born gay. That would be incomprehensibly stupid, and contrary to /. opinion at the moment, I am not. I do however find it weird that someone who claims to be discriminated against feel the need to not only express what makes them different but express it to such an extreme that one cannot help but noticing!

I assume that if I were attracted to men, my personality would still be for the most part the same as it is today. I fail to see how I would feel the urge to shove my sexuality down everyones collective throat any more than I currently try to make an unmissable point of being heterosexual.

Nope. The spots are only partly genetically based, also depends on development and a range of other factors. Much like the first cloned cats were a different colour from the original.

Out of interest though, here's Snuppy, and another shot and here's the dog he was cloned from (on the left).

Sorry about the delay, I've been very busy. And now this has become ridiculously long. I hope you don't mind.

The case could be made that Iraq was already a breeding ground for terrorists, which is the reason we went there in the first place.

Already a breeding ground? The incredible chaos we see now in Iraq is impossible under extremely harsh and cruel dictatorships like Saddam's. Such a chaos would be possible only if a revolution were imminent. But in that case the invasion would have been unnecessary. If people see their children starve to death and don't revolt there's a very strong iron fist keeping order. Any claim that Saddam's Iraq suffered a similar chaos under Saddam would completely invalidate what we have been told about the extreme cruelty of the dictatorship.

Note that today there are terrorist attacks several times a week, with many people getting killed every time. The kidnapping of locals has become an industry, financing and strengthening a growing mafia. To avoid the danger of these kidnappings, higher education professionals like doctors and engineers flee the country, leading to "brain drain", that is, there are too few people in some professions.

Health Now: Kidnappings Bleed Iraq of Doctors
Global Policy Forum: Abductions Surge in Iraq
China Economic Net: Common Iraqis concerned about image as kidnappings surge

What you have said resonates with some of my concerns over the operations in Afghanistan,

I agreed with the war on Afghanistan. That country did not have the tremendous potential for post-war chaos that Iraq had. The war on Afghanistan made sense from the start.

The only mistake, but a horrible mistake, was when the US decided not to finish its work in Afghanistan, and thinned out its forces there, to turn its attention on Iraq instead. A tremendous mistake, with far more dire consequences than when the previous war on Iraq was left unfinished.

I've always said that we should never give in to them, (e.g. if they ask for release of some prisoner, or kidnap someone) don't give in to their demands, because it only legitimizes their actions, and probably encourages others to follow their example.

I agree. Giving in to kidnapper's demands would strongly encourage more kidnappings, by showing that kidnappings are profitable and give power. There would be more and more kidnappings all the time.

It's important to remember that the terrorists are not organised as one strong cooperating mafia. They are an unorganised chaos of disparate small groups without central coordination. There are conflicts and violence between them. Giving in to kidnappers one group would make a myriad of other groups think "Hey, we can try that too." Maybe even a competition for proving their "valor". Nightmare.

But the case September 11th attacks was different, the terrorists clearly wanted to kill Americans, and keep on doing so, but for what purpose? To keep us out of Saudi Arabia?

I suppose it's possible, but if that were their goal they could come much closer to achieving it by turning their anger much more against the government of Saudi Arabia than they have done, and by inciting revolt in Saudi Arabia, and by making threats and ultimatums before attacking, and so on.

I believe more in a combination of anger and despair, along with a lust for power among the leaders. Anger and despair is a dangerous combination. I think very likely it's a feeling of deep despair and frustration with the poverty and the inferior status of their countries and peoples as opposed to the West. There's probably a lot of mob rage, the kind of collective anger that turns into lynching. I also think many of the leaders are drugged

In the 1980s, IBM opened representative offices in Beijing and Shanghai, followed in 1992 by establishment of the IBM China Company Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM World Trade Corporation. The IBM China Research Laboratory was established in Beijing in 1995. Today, IBM China has offices in 11 cities and operates eight joint venture companies in China.
--PrimeUR

IBM built and operates a chip packaging plant in China (registration site), a Research Laboratory in China, and is eyeing upward of a 50 percent share of China's market for business computers. Even IBM mainframes are big in China

IBM is creating a chip ecosystem in China and expects that Asian manufacturers will represent the bulk of the new Power licensees

The owners of the DVD patents have been battling the Chinese makers to extract very high royalties. They have succeeded in harming this industrial sector. Here's one story. This is a great example of how all the value is moving to IP, and what the stakes are in today's IP wars.

Just think - of the $50 purchase price, $27 goes to patent owners and only $1 in profit goes to the factory owners!