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The story Slashdot won't run:

San Bernardino shooting: Attacker pledged allegiance to ISIS, officials say

... as the San Bernardino, California, attack was happening, female shooter Tashfeen Malik posted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook ...

At least Muslims here in the US are condemning the San Bernardino attack. The other week when the guy in Colorado shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic Christians were cheering.

The story Slashdot won't run:

San Bernardino shooting: Attacker pledged allegiance to ISIS, officials say

... as the San Bernardino, California, attack was happening, female shooter Tashfeen Malik posted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook ...

sword.

Yep, two dead and two wounded. Compare that to the current 14 dead.

Okay, how about this one then: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/...

Twenty-nine people were killed and 130 were injured. Body count high enough for you? No guns required or involved.

It's not guns. It's assholes. And personally, I think it's the media splashing this shit all over everything, giving people ideas. But that's just an IMHO.

--fyngyrz*

* Posting anon due to mod points - c'mon slashdot, there's no good reason for that, and never has been.

I guess it could minimize fatalities, but I'm thinking of a bunch of armed people firing at each other in a relative small place and wondering if as many people would end up struck by "friendly" bullets as by the mass shooters.

Your imagination doesn't match reality.

Given how media favors gun control, every single incident where a citizen killed bystanders with "friendly fire" would be widely reported on as evidence for guns causing more harm than good.

Instead, there is silence on that topic because citizens using guns in self defense save lives.

When "highly trained" police officers shoot nine innocent civilians when trying to shoot a suspect, what are the chances that Joe Blow (who hasn't been to the range since he got his concealed carry permit) will avoid collateral damage?

But there's something weird going on here. The first officer apparently pulled his stick all the way back and made the plane climb at a rate of more than 10,000 ft/min before it stalled. That's a pretty insane maneuver and I can't find a rational explanation for it no matter what his training was. It's not an "inappropriate response" but rather a completely unprovoked action for no good reason whatsoever.

Apparently pilot-to-pilot communication might have been a problem. From a CNN article:

[The Malasian accident investigator] also said the cockpit voice recorder showed confusing instructions from the captain to the co-pilot who was manning the controls at the time.

"The most interesting part that could be heard from the CVR is that whenever the plane went up, the captain said 'pull down.' ... To go down, the captain has to say 'push,' while to go up, the captain has to say 'pull' in reference to moving the side stick handle."

According to this: "He will keep his majority stake in Facebook, and thus voting control, for the foreseeable future." I doubt there will be much change anytime soon.

I tend to limit my comments to things I know a lot about. But this is the first time I've ever been called a troll. Makes me feel like a true member of the Slashdot community. };->

I would consider you a member in good standing - you have a highly moderated post and don't seem to know much about the FISA court.

What is the FISA court?
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

You'll know you've stepped up your game when you regularly get modded down for posting factual, relevant material about the topic being discussed.

Mr. Iger, who actively lobbies for more more H-1B visas was the 2d highest paid executive in the country. http://money.cnn.com/gallery/n...

In the wake of the Disney H-1Beeing, he got a raise: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Note that Mr. Iger's salary is more than that of the 320 Disney workers who got H-1Bed COMBINED.

And if you total the on-paper savings of replacing those Americans with H-1B workers, it adds up to about what Mr. Iger's RAISE was that year.

You DO realize that he's moving to Qatar right? The worst school in America isn't gonna be as religiously batshit and backasswards as a country under Sharia.

you mean they might speak as fact about something without even googling it? http://www.lifeinqatar.com/Pag...

Obama invaded Iraq and created a vacuum?

Umm, yeah, that's EXACTLY what Obama did by withdrawing from Iraq despite it not being stable.

Who knew?

Damn near anyone living on the third planet from the Sun - the one with a blue sky. What color is the sky on your planet?

Which is why Obama has been so insistent on minimizing the severity of what ISIS is doing - ISIS is on HIM as it was OBAMA'S decision to withdraw US troops from Iraq, which allowed ISIS to grow.

Because ISIS goes back to before Obama was even President.

And now he's forced to send them back into a worse situation then was there when he pulled them out.

But he isn't strong enough to admit he was WRONG to pull US troops from Iraq.

Or did you forget John McCain saying he would be willing to leave US troops in Iraq for 100 years?

Let me guess - you're against higher taxes too?

Irrelevant strawman from a petulant child. No wonder you're trying to deflect blame from Obama - who also gets petulant when he doesn't get what he wants.

FWIW, the marginal corporate tax rate in the US is 35%.

And the effective corporate tax rate in the US is about 12%

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/0...

You DO realize that he's moving to Qatar right? The worst school in America isn't gonna be as religiously batshit and backasswards as a country under Sharia.

I'm not aware of anybody arguing to keep out legitimate Syrian war refugees.

Ahem.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11...

http://www.nydailynews.com/new...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/...

He lost all credibility with Jar Jar Binks

You know, in the CNN article I read about this, Lucas said the character he most identified with and would want to be was Jar Jar. Seriously.(look at the final few lines of the article)

http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/04/25/rs-pulitzer-winner-leaves-journalism.cnn

If you watch the interview, you'll hear that the reporter mumbles the question (in a loud room) about "a database to track the Muslims in this country", and when he later asks "how would it work", Trump responds "it would stop people from coming to this country illegally". That doesn't sound like they are talking about the same thing.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/poli...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/... Clearly there could be the rise of a charismatic egomaniac who preys on the fears and hatred of the conservatives, making groups out to be the scapegoats (Muslims, gays, immigrants... at least it's not Jews this time around). Everything Trump says about these groups are the same things that Goebbels and Hitler were saying about Jews. We are witnessing the rise of the radical fascists Europe had to deal with 80 years ago. How in the hell are people so damn fucking stupid not to learn from history?

Simple. Americans don't learn history anymore. Especially Republicans. They call history "revisionism" and, if you are well-versed in history, you are called an "elitist".

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/...

Clearly there could be the rise of a charismatic egomaniac who preys on the fears and hatred of the conservatives, making groups out to be the scapegoats (Muslims, gays, immigrants... at least it's not Jews this time around). Everything Trump says about these groups are the same things that Goebbels and Hitler were saying about Jews. We are witnessing the rise of the radical fascists Europe had to deal with 80 years ago. How in the hell are people so damn fucking stupid not to learn from history?

Yes, the marketing campaign is flawless. My next car will be a Tesla, and my decision is based only on the articles published here on /.

I'm also planning on getting a Tesla as my next vehicle.

It's largely because of context. I *hate* how my dealership inserts itself between me an my purchase and tries to siphon off money for itself. I went through the trouble of looking for the *same* model and make of my previous purchase between two dealers - and got two "rock bottom" prices that were $1000 different. I know they were "rock bottom" prices, because the dealership told me so.

There's also the reliability context. GM has a problem with its ignition switches, denies the problem for a decade, and once a hundred deaths occur fixes the issue without telling anyone, and backdates the paperwork in an attempt to hide the issue.

For the longest time I couldn't rationalize Tesla stock analysis in the financial news. It's almost as if the analysts were looking at Tesla as a black box company: they make some product, have some capitalization, have some profit/loss, and it's a good/bad buy.

As near as I can figure, the financial analysts have an algorithm that actually looks at Tesla as a black box company and makes an heuristic estimate of whether it's a good buy or not. Periodically, an analyst chooses Tesla for review and then rationalizes the heuristic output based on whatever news has recently happened.

(I think that's how all financial analysis is done, actually. It's always "markets are *up* because of $X, markets are *down* following $Y", and so on. It makes the reader think that market fluctuations are caused by these newsworthy events.)

No one in the financial news seems to clue in that the company is building a battery factory, or that the cars had (at the time) the highest rating on Consumer Reports, or that they own a nationwide chain of chargers (and are building more), or even that they are currently selling electric vehicles.

Nope - none of that matters. Porsche plans to make an electric vehicle, and Tesla's stock tanks.

Apparently, in the financial markets context doesn't matter.

But if you look at the context, Tesla is the best product on the market.

uh... he was voted in twice.

It is not a vote, if the winner is known with 146% certainty ahead of time. (Time for Russians to recognize that too, by the way.) Syrian elections last year were a sham.

If that's not legitimising his position, what is?

Easy: a vote, that takes place after multiple challengers are allowed to campaign — unmolested — before the poll and where the vote-count raises no questions of large-scale manipulation (small-scale abuses are inevitable).

You don't have to go work for the competition, but they can be used as a good reason to make the change. Remember in 2007, when Microsoft was making smartphones, and Apple wasn't? Then Apple came out with the iPhone and stole the market from MS, despite MS having a multi-year headstart. 5 years later, MS's share of mobile devices is literally a rounding error compared to the iPhone, and Apple's iPhone business is bigger than the entirety of Microsoft. http://money.cnn.com/gallery/t... Three years later, things aren't looking any better for MS.

No matter how niche your area is, there is money to be made there, right? Therefore, you're not invulnerable. All it'll take is a couple ex-Tumblr or ex-Square or ex-Stripe or ex-Uber people to see the market and decide they want it, and they'll release a sexy product and take it overnight.

Alternately: quit, and start your own company with some ex-Tumblr or ex-Square or ex-Stripe or ex-Uber people. :-)

The main reason for population growth right now is medicine and longer lifespans. If everyone would just die at 30 from an ingrown toenail infection, population wouldn't be growing. Also, there is a lot of unused space on Earth. You could fit 7 billion people in less than a quarter the area of the US with the same population density of Seattle. Africa alone has enough arable land to feed 7 billion people. Considering most people don't live in the US, this would seem like a lot of growing space.

Today it was announced that the NIH has decided to retire all of their research chimps:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/19/...

Like these folks.

Like these folks.

This is a feel good measure, the very definition of "slacktivism".

Reporting twitter accounts from people most likely fanboying from their comfortable homes in the west is nothing, how long until they create another account? 1 hour, 2 hours?

When one look back and look at the most remarkable hacks against high profile targets (like the one Saudi Aramco suffered in 2012.) it puts in context that this kind of initiative is well intentioned but naive and a waste of time for the volunteers.

There has been quite a bit published in the news about people being killed in Syria and Iraq. I don't know what news you are reading, but I have seen it all over Fox, CNN, and BBC.

Here is the reports of the Kurds retaking Sinjar for the Yazidi people who were attacked by ISIS:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/11/...

Kobani was all over the news, how did you miss it?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/...

This story has been all over the news, of course there are things that we in the west miss out on, and some of that is due to the violence of war itself, not all the news actually get out.

There has been quite a bit published in the news about people being killed in Syria and Iraq. I don't know what news you are reading, but I have seen it all over Fox, CNN, and BBC.

Here is the reports of the Kurds retaking Sinjar for the Yazidi people who were attacked by ISIS:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/11/...

Kobani was all over the news, how did you miss it?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/...

This story has been all over the news, of course there are things that we in the west miss out on, and some of that is due to the violence of war itself, not all the news actually get out.

Now what the attacks on Paris has to do with this, I'm at a complete loss to understand.

This whole subthread started, when it was implied, that the West in general — and the US in particular — aren't any better than ISIS and is equally outrage-worthy. This incident was offered as proof of that.

My point is, it proves the opposite. We are better, because the "collateral murder" incident is clearly an outrage to most of us — with Pentagon trying to hide it — while the Paris murders are something, the enemy is proud of and publicizes it as much as they can.

You broke the country, you bought it. Get your lazy arses back in there and finish the job.

The cooler heads here didn't want to leave Iraq so early, but we are saddled with a President — whom you awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize (a stupid act, which progressives still would not acknowledge as a mistake) — who does not think, there is true evil in the world... Or, if there is, it is his own country. You can blame us for electing him, but his victory was not without your help. Twice.

Oh yes I'm sure ISIS believe themselves to be fighting for god and all sorts of good things especially when they're hooked on Captagon. But what they are fighting for is an islamic caliphate where they see themselves as the warriors who brought this caliphate into being entrenched firmly at the top, and everyone else their slaves paying tribute in goods and women. While this is not necessarily evil if you happen to be in charge of this caliphate, it certainly is evil to today's current social order. While the western system is far from perfect it attempts to reward individual effort and permit individual expression. I for one am not prepared to see this situation change and if I have to be called "extremist" for this view by ignorant fools then so be it. It's easy to say there's no absolutes and no black and white, but in war you only get to pick one side or the other.

What kind of property tax are you talking about? Property tax is levied on your house in the US. Other kinds exist (Missouri, for example, taxes the value of your car), but they're not what we mean when we talk about property taxes.

We use property taxes to pay for local school districts, and numerous other municipally-funded things (for example, lots of American cities do not have enough money to pay for police, which means people move out, which means that house prices go down, which means there's even less money for police, etc. This is what happened to Detroit). In extreme cases (such as the aforementioned Detroit) your annual property tax payment will be more then your house payment. But in other places (such as the deep South, where they are morally oppose to using taxation to pay for anything) it can be as low as $1 per $300 of a home's value.

Here's a CNN Story on it. The map can flip between dollar costs and costs as a percent of your house's value. In most places lots of people live it's 1.5-2.5%, but Cali is lower because of Proposition 13, which sets a maximum rate of 1% of your home's assessed value. It's a bit old (2011), but it should give an interested non-American some clue has to how the US Property tax system functions.

As you can imagine, the "assessed value" bit means that there's a lot of gamesmanship in when the City reassesses your home. If you can get it to happen during the bottom of a down market you do, and if they try to do it during an upswing you fight it. A second bit of Prop 13 actually made it very difficult for a City to reassess a home's value (and thus jack up the property tax bill) except when you sell or you build a new house on the lot. When it was passed the Silicon Valley property price boom was in full swing, and cities were notorious for pricing Senior citizens out of their homes by reassessing the property values, which brought the tax bill above what they could afford to pay.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11...

The article they refer to is this one:

https://azelin.files.wordpress...

Didn't have the stomach to read it in one go. It's written from a revanchist religious point of view and it lays every single failure since the fall of the Ottoman empire of the Islamic world to get its house in order and rise from a violently squabbling mob at the West's door. Apparently we have been doing Satan's work on them.

Their preferred response is "savagery", according to the author of that pamphlet. I think we can see what he means..

Somehow I don't see us working out our differences with them through reasoned debate.

It's a religious sect writ large, and it's one huge pitcher of cool-aid they've got there.

The only good news seems to be that this little masterpiece doesn't seem to base itself on the authority of Islamic texts per se. As far as I can see, it's based on an interpretation of Islam that's driven by an revanchist view of history.

That ought to give us something to work with when dealing with radicalising youths (their main supply of manpower).

Revanchism and envy are probably easier to deal with than straight-up religion.

But note that France does not conduct any drone strikes,

France was bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/...

I don't like ISIS, they've done horrible things, but if you attack someone, you can reasonably expect him to attack you back.

the two issues have nothing to do with each other, and there should be no doubt that terrorist attacks like in Paris are even more heinous crimes than any drone strikes anyone could imagine.

If I were Syrian I would have a hard time understanding why it's more henious to machine-gun down 100 people in a theater than it is to kill 100 people with a drone strike at, say, a wedding.

As I said, its a question of the intentions.

That's a distinction without a difference.

If I were a Syrian, I wouldn't care whether my wife and children were killed by someone who was intending to kill them or who just killed them as collateral damage.

If you drop a bomb, you know what's going to happen.

Religion provides for a number of things:

• Helps people cope with loss and the certainty of death
• Social infrastructure, including baseline values and morals
• Aid to the needy (impoverished, addicts)
• Sense of purpose

Don't underestimate the value of such a thing. There is a reason why most dominant societies throughout history have had religious infrastructure.

The problem here isn't simply religion, it is the expression of intolerant religion. The reformations of Christianity/etc incorporated tolerance directly into their belief systems, and once Islam does that (and takes direct responsibility for their militant factions, as an Egyptian president once declared in a speech), the world will be a much safer place.

What do you think?

Paris attacks: At least 153 killed in gunfire and blasts, French officials say

You literally make no sense at all. What are you trying to say!? If i take you literally, you're saying "nobody is innocent", a cliche that you only hear from "the evil terrorist mastermind" in third-rate action movies.

The world is full of war. There are armed conflicts all over the globe, many are low-intensity ones that flare up occasionally. And you may have a hard time believing this, but not all of them have been caused by western intervention. In fact, something like this
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10...
is possible precisely due to lack of western involvement.

These conflicts have nothing to do with me. But, according to your reasoning, it'd be ok if I'm gunned down when I'm having a few beers with friends.

Couple of other things you didn't mention:

1. Muslims are simply going to force the "natives" to become the minority via population control.
With Open Gates: The forced collective suicide of European nations

2. The silent majority ARE the problem.

3. Major US News Station are also part of the problem, such as Faux News. i.e. CNNi put together an award winning one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in Bahrain and then refused to show it on CNNi. (CNNi "officially" give the excuse it was only "commissioned for CNN US")

On 19 June 2011 at 8pm, CNN's domestic outlet in the US aired "iRevolution" for the first and only time. The program received prestigious journalism awards, including a 2012 Gold Medal from New York Festival's Best TV and Films. Lyon, along with her segment producer Taryn Fixel, were named as finalists for the 2011 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. A Facebook page created by Bahraini activists, entitled "Thank you Amber Lyon, CNN reporter | From people of Bahrain", received more than 8,000 "likes".

Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary. Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision. To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi.

Maybe this video will help you, some schmuck lighting up a news chopper, caught on film. It doesn't take much, particularly at night. In the video, when the laser hits just right, the entire canopy lights up green. Even through the video camera, the light shows as very, very bright, bright enough to burn the eyelid and cornea leading to blindness (which is not cool when you need to be piloting an aircraft).

It should be common knowledge by now that this is stupid stupid shit. It's only sheer luck that this idiocy hasn't incapacitated a pilot to the point that the aircraft went down.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/1...

Do you have any other accidents that you can point to the Google car being at fault? It isn't like the Google Lexus can drive through the two cars in front of it.

The US are already spying on Germany.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07...

This just in:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/09/...

I work in Climate Science the models suck! The problem here is anyone who questions anything is instantly labeled a 'denier'. So many that have publicly tied their careers to this new religion, they can't bring themselves to admit they don't know as much as they think they do. They ignore any evidence that might contradict there view. And in fact actively suppress any real questioning of there findings. They completely leave out data from remote sensing and Arco buoys because it shows no warming. They openly declare that last year was the 'hottest on record' even though buried in the study the conclusion reached isn't even beyond the uncertainty in their measurements. Taking the uncertainty into account last year was either the hottest or the coldest on record! They also always assume the sun's energy is constant and ignore it almost completely. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/13/... It all about money and funding. And if you want to continue to publish, you have to follow the party line.

Look what ELSE we can blame on "climate change":

Climate change is killing our sex drive, bringing down U.S. birth rate, study says

There are so many things that can dampen your sex drive: You have a headache, you're tired, it's too hot outside.

According to a study, the last of those mojo-killers -- and the climate change that is causing more scorching hot days -- could be bringing down the birth rate in the United States.

So, can't get laid?

IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF THE SELFISH WHITEYS DRIVING SUVS!!!

</SARCASM>

Jesus H. Fucking Christ, and people wonder where the "deniers" come from.

Here's a clue: Chicken Little.

Here's another clue: Boy who cried "Wolf!"

As an Israeli citizen I must say that I am embarrassed by netanyahu. He is a racist buffoon who surrounds himself with like minded individuals.

My absolute favourite glimpse into his true self was his attempt to blame the Palestinians for the Holocaust: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10... Apparently poor old Hitler only wanted to expel the Jews until the evil Palestinians convinced Hitler to exterminate them. It's hard to believe he hates the Palestinians so much that he was willing to practically exonerate Hitler of the guilt of having conceived and initiated the Holocaust. I never thought I'd see the day when the Chancellor of Germany made a public a press statement correcting the Historical revisionism of the Prime Minister of Israel regarding who exactly conceived the idea of the Holocaust. Then Moshe Yaalon goes on a IDF radio station and distances himself from Netanyahu's utterances by claiming that of course the Holocaust was Hitler's idea but the Palestinian Authority is still based on the legacy of the Nazis which is only marginally less extreme than Netanyahu's claim. A lot of the people in Gaza who'd really like the privilege to choose their own government live under the guns of theocratic thugs and only have a choice between Hamas and Hamas but you guys have a choice between Netanyahu and more moderate people. Why do you guys keep electing these bozos?

it may still not be worth it from the perspective of the lending institution to give you a higher credit limit if you are regularly not paying them interest.

If a lending institution gives me an $800 credit limit and denies me an increase to buy an $853.86 TV, it won't see its share of the swipe fee on that purchase. Instead, I'm more likely to buy it with a checking account through the Cirrus or Plus debit card network, which has a much lower swipe fee, and probably even from another bank on principle.

Valerie Plame was NOT outed by Bob Novak, nor by Dick Cheney or Scooter Libby. The leaker confessed to Patrick Fitzgerald (the independent prosecutor) long before Fitzgerald nailed Libby.

It is a well-documented historical FACT that the leaker was Colin Powell's assistant Richard Armitage (NOT a Cheney stooge or ally). Fitzgerald went on to prosecute and jail Libby for having a different recollection of a phone call from that of the other person on the line at the time (a "crime" with no proof or documentation and which was not part of what he was charged to investigate) and NOT for leaking Plame's name, which Libby did not in fact do. I am NOT a fan of Bush or Cheney or anybody else involved on either side in this affair - I just detest false history being passed-around until it becomes so "accepted" that more people believe it than believe in the actual facts (for this reason, I am a HUGE fan of Buzz Aldrin punching-out the moon-hoaxer who used to follow him around (smile))

Oh, and note to all you Cheney-haters who still cite the Plame case: Valerie Plame was NOT an undercover CIA agent in the field when she was "outed"; she was working in a comfortable office in Washington D.C. and plenty of people knew who she was. Are any of you "outraged" that President Obama "outed" our actual under-cover CIA station chief in Kabul Afghanistan????? Yeah, I thought so. Your faux-outrage over the Plame matter was just a political tactic - you people cared nothing for Plame or national security - if you did you'd be calling for Obama to be prosecuted and jailed as many of you were clamoring for with Cheney over Plame.

How about Lindsey Graham?

Note that Brennan himself shows anger and concern at the hacking of his E-mail:

"I was certainly outraged by it," Brennan said Tuesday at an intelligence conference at George Washington University when asked about his reaction to learning of the hack. "I certainly was concerned about what people might try to do with that information," Brennan added. "I was also dismayed at how some of the media handled it, and the inferences that were in there."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/...

The point is: it doesn't matter whether the information is or is not valuable, what matters is that Brennan thought it was valuable and apparently thought it was secure in an AOL account.

> Very similar to our current president.

Don't you mean our previous president? Oh, wait, Cheney didn't actually let Bush control things until he and his cronies had f*cked things beyond recognition. Say what you want about Obama, he's fresh air and sunshine compared to Cheney/Bush. Before W., no deficit, great economy, no Iraq war. After W., record deficit, tax-payer bank bailouts, job losses, total Iraq quagmire. And one other thing, like Fiorina, Bush was a business failure (excepting only as managing general partner of a baseball team) before the GOP came calling. With Fiorina, the GOP is following the exact same playbook.

That would be the NSA...

Where do you think the US beta-tested its surveillance infrastructure other than early revisions of the Great Firewall via CSCO, GOOG, MSFT, and YHOO back in 2000-2006?