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10:19 Eastern Standard Time, 11/12/01

Jet Crash in NYC Borough of Queens

ABC News

Plane Down Near JFK Airport

N E W Y O R K, Nov. 12 _ An American Airlines jet departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport crashed in a heavily populated section of the New York City borough of Queens at 9:17 a.m. ET, emergency officials said, and there was no report on the number of passengers and crew on board.

The jet, an Airbus 300, departed JFK at 9:15 a.m., officials said, when it crashed into an area populated with many homes and businesses. The American Airlines web site said Flight 587 was headed for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The plane crashed near Beach 129th Street and Newport Avenue, in the Rockaways section of Queens. There were no reports of injuries at the scene.

Thick black smoke could be seen billowing above the crash site for miles and several buildings were said to be on fire. Emergency crews raced to the scene.

Harriet Cohen, a Queens resident who lives near the airport and about 10 blocks from the crash site, said she was eating breakfast in her home when she thought she heard the Concorde leaving the airport. After hearing a terrible bang, she told her husband: "Oh my, I think it must have broken the sound barrier." But then the house shook, Cohen said. "I looked outside, and 10 blocks from us, there was black thick smoke rising up into the sky."

Minutes after the crash, all three New York City-area airports _ Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark _ were closed. Airports in Washington, D.C., remained open.

The incident comes two months after two hijacked jets rammed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan killing about 4,500.


An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?

New York Times, 7:03, 11/12/01:

November 12, 2001

Homes in Queens on Fire

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

EW YORK -- An American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed Monday morning in the Queens section of New York, and buildings reportedly were on fire in the neighborhood.

The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be seen miles away.

All metro area airports were closed following the crash, in the Rockaways section of Queens.

The mayor canceled his morning events and headed to the scene.

One eyewitness reported debris falling from sky, and told the Fox News Channel four homes were on fire.

Another told CNN he was 40 blocks away and saw "Just a lot of smoke. Tons and tons of smoke. You can see emergency vehicles heading to area. Lots of people are standing in the streets. It's very tense."

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

The crash came two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, which was destroyed by two Boeing 767s hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport. One of the planes was operated by American, the other by United.


An explanation of how the U.S. got into this mess: What should be the Response to Violence?

but without "intelligence" we'd be a lot worse off than we are with it.

The CIA may do some distasteful things, but you can't condemn them all for that, and you are definitely enjoying some protection from the agency.


I have to respectfully disagree. I feel that the CIA had it's uses at one time, and likely did the USA some good (whether they did more good than harm, I will never know). But to me the CIA* is like "closed-source government". I can't see how they work. I can't even be sure of what results are directly attributable to them. If a leader of some small country mysteriously dies (or dies without apparent mystery), I can't be sure that my government had no hand in the matter.

Am I enjoying protection from the agency? I don't know. I do feel (now more than ever) that I need to be protected from it. And that is just sad.

Read the document that moved me from being merely ambivalent to having fairly strong doubts in the "secret" departments of the US gov. here.

*The NSA, FBI and much of the military operations all seem to fit the bill here. The CIA was just the focus of this discussion.

Nepal could use our help. It is a very poor country. The ruling family was so abusive that their own son, the crown prince, killed them.

CNN: NEPAL. Report paints picture of prince's drunken rampage, June 4, 2001

Nepal's 48-hour king dies after royal massacre, June 3, 2001

"The former Crown Prince Dipendra was admitted to hospital late on Friday with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound after reportedly slaughtering most of his family with an assault rifle as they sat around a dinner table."

Nepal's King orders massacre probe amid riots.

"Analysts say Gyanendra now faces a struggle to restore the role of the monarchy as a pillar of stability in the country of 22 million people where Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has faced violent street protests against his rule.


What should be the Response to Violence?

I agree with Zo0ok and swb.

But this strikes me: Although what they have said is strongly negative, it is almost an endorsement of Microsoft because it is not strongly negative enough. In my experience, Microsoft is far, far worse than anyone has said.

The world does not deal with abusiveness well. People just let it continue, and hope the abuser will stop.

Suggestion: We should have an Ask Slashdot in which everyone posts their worst experiences with Microsoft. We could send the best posts to the justice department. We could also use the best posts to educate people.

Here's something I would post: There are artificial resource limits in Windows 95, 98, and ME that cause Windows to crash when the limit is reached. These are called GDI and USER resources. Some of the crashing is actually caused by DELIBERATE design. No matter how much memory you have, Windows will still crash if you reach these limits. One of them is 128K bytes. That's right. 128k. Another is 2 megabytes.

Remember, even though Microsoft was found to have broken the law, the company has been allowed to continue for years, exactly as before. The damage Microsoft has continued to do can never be fixed.


What should be the Response to Violence?

Writers must meet deadlines. The often are not given the time to learn everything they need to know. So, they string together some nice-sounding phrases. Sometimes, for a few sentences in a row, they sound like they understand the subject. Then they say something that shows they don't really:

That is why Microsoft has always sold its operating system cheaply and has done everything to make life easy for programmers.

"Make life easy" as in artificial limits on resources in Windows 95, 98, and ME. Later this,

Microsoft will continue to be a kinder giant, predicts Rick Sherlund of Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, if only because "the whole world is watching".

He called Microsoft kind. Oh yeah. They probably both have Microsoft stock they would like to sell at less of a loss.

Then this:

It does not help Microsoft's credibility that its new-found faith in openness does not seem to apply to Windows itself.

Whoops, not kind. More "kindness":

Microsoft's concept of openness is reminiscent of a funnel: easy to get into, but hard to get out of. Visual Studio .NET allows programmers to write software in many different programming languages. But the code the tool generates runs only on .NET.

Sometimes writers just use their imagination:

To convince the world that it will henceforth compete on the quality of its products alone, Microsoft must do something more radical. One possibility would be to accept the kind of antitrust settlement that would clearly signal a shift.


What should be the Response to Violence?

Also see The War Powers Act of 1973.

I think that most of the corruption comes from agencies of the U.S. government that are allowed to break the law, secretly. This article is about that: What should be the Response to Violence?


Invalid form key: RY1U5tMMTq !

Not time to emigrate. Time to protest.

Don't let the abusers wear you down.

U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

Why Microsoft is About to Lose: The Slashdot story is called, Why Linux is About to Lose. Journalistic fairness demands that the other side get attention. DCE/RPC.net lists numerous projects that will replace Microsoft: Open Source Win 2000 directory services, an MS-Exchange clone for Unix, an MS SQL clone, a .NET logon service, and others.


Jon, respectfully, it amazes me how much open source people under-communicate.

I took your post above (#2451850) and re-wrote it, using exactly the same information. My version is 100 times stronger. You call your post a tangent. How can what you said be a tangent? It is EXTREMELY relevant. It changes everything.

There are legitimate times to stand on the rooftops and shout. This is one of them, it seems to me.


U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

Could these be used to detect an individual person?


I'm getting a lot of Invalid form key errors: Invalid form key: CuhZiMm1UB !

U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

In my opinion, Intel was TERRIBLE at making and marketing consumer products. They would sell a product with important details still buggy.

For example, I bought an Intel computer video camera. There was software to record videos, but there was no way to compress them so that the videos could be sent by email.

There was software to record audio, but there was no way to pause the recording. Each period of recording had to be a separate file.

Intel sold a PCMCIA network adapter that didn't work with Sony laptops. There was a piece of paper in the box that said to visit a particular web site. The site said that the adapter did not work with laptops using a particular chipset. The main site for the product did not mention this, however, and there was no link between the two..


U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

I agree with what you said, Jon, but some people are moving to Linux nevertheless. It's good to focus, not on what cannot be done now, but on what CAN be done.

Check out this Linux success story: The "semi-official" distribution of the K12Linux Project. Here is a quote from that site:

"The Multnomah Education Service District has successfully moved most of it's core network services to Linux. Linux powers dns, dhcp, mail relays, proxy servers, web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers, and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, ftp, and file servers. Tickled with our success, we have started work on putting Linux workstations in the classroom. More on that to come!" [my emphasis]

Check out this site about putting Linux workstations in the classroom:

K-12Linux Project.

Here is a quote:

"We have FREE Xeon and Celeron processors to give to schools participating in STRUT and K12LTSP. See the applications page for more information."


U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

Some friends here run a server farm for a school district. They switched to Linux on ALL their servers. They say that the maintenance required with Linux is far less. And, of course, there is no software upgrade cost. A Microsoft sales person called and asked why they had not done any business recently.

It seems to me that the reason for Microsoft's increased abusiveness is that every top Microsoft executive has plenty of experience seeing 5 years ahead. They know they don't have long. So, they want to gouge everyone as much as possible now.

The referenced article says that Linux can compete in the server market. You can be sure that, if there are people on staff that know Linux, there will be constant attempts to put Linux on desks.

The article said, Linux boosters insist that if free downloads and pass-arounds were counted, that figure would be even higher; and they're probably right.

Probably??? Certainly.

Conversely, Linux managed only 1.5 percent of shipments in the desktop market in 2000. And that sliver is unlikely to grow in 2001.

Except, of course, the Chinese and Thai and maybe Indian governments are switching to open source software, partly because they are afraid of possible back doors in U.S. software. Only the governments of 2 billion people. And some state and city governments in the United States. And... And...

Desktop computer users care about what they can do on their machines. They want reliability, simplicity, access to popular software, and the ability to communicate easily with other users.

More nonsense. Many work users have computers dedicated to one task. If they don't want that one task to crash, if they don't want Bill Gates coming around and deciding on new ways of abusing them, they can do what?

As for its programs, Windows and Word sometimes drive me nuts.

Is that because they are buggy and quirky, and have numerous security risks due to low-quality source code?


Secret U.S. hostile action tries to enhance oil profits. See the new section, "Avoid the common mistakes" in What should be the Response to Violence?

The Thai language has 77 letters (or 76?), and requires complicated marks that go above the letters. So, all word processing software must be modified anyway. Thailand is a good country to begin with Open Source software.


What should be the Response to Violence?

These AI competitions do not test the intelligence of the computer. They test whether the humans are robotic.

Many people make themselves into robots, almost. They push themselves to accomplish. They try to avoid their emotional conflict. They don't give themselves time to be themselves. They don't have complicated involvement with other people. After a few years of doing things in an anti-human way, anyone would become a little bit robotic.

Such people are not good judges of human intelligence.


U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

The quote by Ken Thompson at the bottom of the article referenced in the Slashdot story is from a very interesting speech, Reflections on Trusting Trust.

Here is the quote:

"I have watched kids testifying before Congress. It is clear that they are completely unaware of the seriousness of their acts. There is obviously a cultural gap. The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked. The press must learn that misguided use of a computer is no more amazing than drunk driving of an automobile."


What should be the Response to Violence?

Microsoft Word does not have a method of adjusting the spacing between letters while you are looking at the letters on the screen.

Adjusting the letter spacing is called kerning. Kerning is necessary when the letter pair "Aw" is used in a large size, for example. If the spacing between these two is not adjusted, there will be too much white space.

Some font styles have kerning built in, but these internal tables are never perfect in all cases. Some font styles used for large headlines have no built-in kerning.

Good software for producing professional-looking pages has had on-screen kerning for a long, long time. Adobe PageMaker has had it since it was owned by Aldus. Ventura Publisher has had on-screen kerning since before it was owned by Xerox, when was owned by Ventura Publishing, and ran under the DOS operating system. Framemaker has on-screen kerning. Quark Express has it.

Without good kerning it is impossible to produce a professional-looking advertising page, for example.

People who care about the graphical look of their type must choose some other software than Microsoft Word, which is too crude in the way it adjusts letter spacing.

Most people don't use big headlines and most people don't notice when the letter spacing is poor. However, for professionals, true on-screen kerning is considered a basic feature.

This is only one feature that is poorly implemented in Microsoft Word. There are many, many more. Microsoft Word does not handle the headings on tables well, for example.

Mostly, though, Microsoft Word is quirky and buggy, in my opinion. It seems to be an example of managing software development so that there is always a reason to upgrade. That means that Microsoft is deliberately choosing to be your enemy.


Oil company executive testifying to U.S. congress in 1998: "CentGas cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place." For a link to this and other documents, do a search for the word "Taliban" in: What should be the Response to Violence?

From the article:

"So it's in the manufacturer's best interest, at least financially, to make products that need maintenance and that have to be continually improved with successive updates, patches and versions that CIOs pay for up front. In sum, bad software works for the vendors."

' "If software makers see they are losing money to people going the open-source route, then they will change. Until then, it will be business as usual despite appearances." '

This problem is MUCH worse than they are saying.

Microsoft Word, for example, after all these years, still does not have a way to adjust letter spacing on screen. This is required to make headlines look good.

In my opinion, Microsoft Word is quirky and buggy. The fundamental problem may be that the top management of Microsoft doesn't care about Microsoft employees any more than they care for their customers. A lot of the work that comes from Microsoft is sloppy and uncaring.

Open source software solves this problem. You may not get everything you want, but you will be involving yourself with people who CARE. To me that seems to be a good recipe for a happy life: Involve yourself with people who care.

When I use software, I often have some contact with the people who produced it, because I need upgrades or explanations. For me, one of the beautiful things about open source software is that I like the people.


U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

My tests have shown that constant movement from an unstable floor does cause problems after perhaps a year. This is at a customer's site.


Government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

Eh... I don't think that terrorists will ever cease to be. I just think that the US can smear the bulls eye from our backs.

Read the linked article, and look for mention of Mother Teresa. Even though she visited some of the most war torn places this good earth has to offer, she died of old age and millions mourned her passing. That is what comes from strength of character and a genuine willingness to help.

Killing hundreds of thousands of innocent unsuspecting people, both through our actions, and our inaction.

Claiming to be the "land of the free and home of the brave" but supporting dictatorships, and refusing cease producing land mines.

Patting ourselves on the back and proclaiming what a great nation we are, while letting much of the world suffer without electricity, reliable sources of food, clean water to drink, etc. (No, I'm not a socialist, but I do believe in giving a fair opportunity for success.)

My personal favorite. Supporting Osama and his "freedom fighters" in their fight against the communists of the (former) Soviet Union, and then dropping funding when we no longer gain anything from it. Not that this was a isolated or singular event. This is a recurring activity. Do you have any concept of the government (or living conditions) in Kuwait right now? To forstall any questions, I don't. That's the point. Our interests were served, so we feel no obligation to pay any more attention.

In the end, the root of all violence is violence. I wish no ill will on you, or the terrorists. I hope that they are in a place where they can reflect upon the actions they commited, and see the pain and suffering that it caused. I don't wish them to feel shame, just that they might grow, and if faced with the same choice again, make a more peaceful one. As for myself, I live with the daily struggle of not flipping the bird to those motorists that feel no remorse in cutting me off. We all have to start somewhere.

I find this really, really painful: I think the U.S. government is becoming thoroughly corrupt.

Lots of people are using the terrorism to accomplish sneaky goals.


Government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

Wow! Open Office has a Marketing project too!

Even though open source projects don't try to make money, there is still a marketing function. Marketing is creating communication between the project and prospective users. Most projects ignore this requirement; some die as a result of not communicating.


Secrecy corrupts democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

"You techies disgust me!"

You modern whippersnappers disgust me! Whenever I want to listen to music, I have a band come to my house.


Secrecy corrupts democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

"They are making decisions regarding their longstanding agendas and using the "war on terrorism" as a cover."

This seems exactly right. The evidence suggests that the real motivating factors for top political decisions are weapons and oil. The U.S. is the largest seller of weapons in the world. The U.S. gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel, part of which must be spent to buy weapons from U.S. manufacturers. U.S. weapons manufacturers also sell weapons to Arabs.

This is a quote from the official testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives of Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca, on February 12, 1998. He said, in part, "CentGas cannot begin construction [of a gas pipeline] until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place."

For a link to this document on the House of Representatives government web site, and a document about the pipeline route, search on the word Unocal in: What should be the Response to Violence?

The Bush family has ties to Unocal. Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of of the U.S. Defense Deparment, made a trip to Burma (where Unocal has interests) that was paid for by Unocal.

It seems possible that the war in Afghanistan is being waged to allow the pipeline to go through.

It's like the "war on drugs" which has increased the amount of drugs available in the United States.

Moderators, please recognize that what Archfeld said, in the parent post, is true.

Archfeld says, "in the middle east for ONE purpose ONLY, oil as we all know it..."

"REALITY says people do not just become SUICIDE bombers for NO REASON."

and

"IF our government had not systematically SCREWED everyone they've ever dealt with in the Middle East maybe things would be different."

This is a quote from the official testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives of Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca, on February 12, 1998. He said, in part, "CentGas cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place."

For a link to this document on the House of Representatives government web site, and a document about the pipeline route, search on the word Unocal in: What should be the Response to Violence?

I went to the NAI website and tried to buy PGP about 18 months ago. There were problems with the site. The product was poorly explained, and I got error messages.

Also, would you buy encryption software from ANYONE who wasn't offering the source code? I had read that NAI would give the source code to someone who bought the product, but I was unable to find mention of that on their web site.

I sent NAI an e-mail message, and no one replied.

Finally, I just gave up and used the free version. I paid less (zero) and got more.

The story says, "I worked there up until today and somewhere around 250 of the 300 employees were clipped."

Do I understand this correctly? What could 250 people be doing with PGP, a product that was written by one man, and was changing very slowly?

Maybe they were selling special versions in Arabic to Saudis living in Afghanistan? (When you have 4 wives, you have to keep a lot of secrets.)


Secrecy and weapons sales corrupt democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

You lose a lot. First, the government is no longer supporting the public network.

The Internet MUST be made secure. We need to accomplish that, not just allow it to be insecure and then pay for a lot of separate networks. It would be great to have the government help everyone else accomplish security.

Second, having a separate network creates a sense of separateness among government employees. There is too much of that already.

Remember, a separate network means that employees no longer have access to the Internet. They can't join in with the discussion on Slashdot, for example. They can't see what people are saying. They can't do research on other ways of achieving security. They can't check their e-mail. A democracy should try to accomplish security, but not separateness.

Third, having a completely separate network is EXPENSIVE. We lose the right to spend our money on something else.

There are cheaper ways of accomplishing security.

Every time someone proposes to do something that doesn't make sense, and costs a lot of money, look for the real reason.


President Bush's father is connected with a company that wants to put a pipeline across Afghanistan: What should be the Response to Violence?

People are using the terrorist threat to do things they wanted to do anyway, but would not normally be allowed.


Secrecy and weapons sales corrupt democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

U.S. government:

"We must take your freedom away so that you can continue to have freedom."

"Only violence stops violence."

Secrecy and weapons sales corrupt democracy: " What should be the Response to Violence?

I imagine a dung beetle thinking to himself, "Why would anyone go to so much trouble to move my favorite rock?"

If you have good technology, you can be really annoying to dung beetles.


ABC News article: "Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..." What should be the Response to Violence?

You didn't read carefully, or you visited the article earlier and forgot to do a View/Reload to reload your browser, so that you were reading an old version.

The article says, "The lowest figure sometimes quoted, including only deaths due to military action, is 1.740,000." The article quotes a CNN story that says 3,000,000.

Comments like yours are helpful because I didn't realize before how many people don't know the numbers.

The government of Vietnam claims that civilian casualties were far higher. I haven't been able to find a link to that in English, so it is not in the article.

This is important if the United States is your country, or if it isn't.

AC, you are missing the point. The U.S. weapons makers sell weapons to both sides. The U.S. weapons makers sell weapons to both the U.S. government and to the other side of many conflicts. The U.S. government itself always pays far more. If a poor country has a billion dollars of weapons, the U.S. government fights with 10 billion dollars, or a hundred.

The selling to both sides is about money. It is similar to the situation where Robert Moses paid billions of dollars to destroy New York city neighborhoods. Sometimes rich people support powerful politicians because it is profitable, even though it is destructive to their country.

The U.S. weapons makers sell weapons to both the Israelis and Arabs. Somebody posted a message earlier saying that U.S. weapons makers were still selling weapons to Saddam Hussein during the buildup for the Gulf War between the U.S. government and Iraq.

This is a lot bigger than you seem to realize. If you are a U.S. taxpayer, you pay your share of $3.2 billion to Israel every year so that Israel can buy weapons made in the United States. Then you pay so that the U.S. government will be able to fight conflicts due to political instabilities in the region.

Everything I've said is meant to be conservative. Most people don't realize how many people have been killed by the U.S. government, so I added links to the number of people killed in three countries to the article, What should be the Response to Violence? Search on "Vietnam". The numbers are greater than I said earlier, because I was not counting all the countries, or deaths due to Agent Orange, or other civilian deaths.

The article is just a part-time, unpaid effort. I will try to post more links to sources for weapons expenditures later. For now, here is just one: See the Oct. 6, 2001 Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service article by Paul Richter, Stingers old but could pose threat. "Stingers" are very expensive missiles made in the United States. The Taliban has them.

Links to sources for the number of people killed in three countries have been added to the article, What should be the Response to Violence? . Search on "Vietnam".

"(an article written by yourself, I might add)"

Yes, I wrote the article I reference. But there are over 300 pages of articles to which I link that I didn't write. They come from such sources as CBS, NBC News, ABC News, BBC News, and others. This is more their story than it is mine.

nobodyman, this is serious business. This is our country.

You quote the article: "The U.S. has the highest percentage of citizens in prison of any country ever, in the history of the world."

Then you say, "(which is just plain wrong, and you don't bother to back it up)."

In the article I did show how to find all the information yourself. Don't believe me. Do the research. ... in the history of the world is taken from a study done of prisons throughout the ages. For example, the size of ancient Roman prisons is known, and the population is roughly known.

The article, What should be the Response to Violence? is just a part-time attempt to pull together some links. It started out as a letter to friends. It is not complete.

I have plenty of other things to do, and I wouldn't bother with this if it weren't important. I have paid work to do, so I lose my hourly rate for work done without pay.

"(an article written by yourself, I might add)"

Yes, I wrote the article I reference. But there are over 300 pages of articles to which I link that I didn't write. They come from such sources as CBS, NBC News, ABC News, BBC News, and others. This is more their story than it is mine.

nobodyman, this is serious business. This is our country.

You quote the article: "The U.S. has the highest percentage of citizens in prison of any country ever, in the history of the world."

Then you say, "(which is just plain wrong, and you don't bother to back it up)."

In the article I did show how to find all the information yourself. Don't believe me. Do the research. ... in the history of the world is taken from a study done of prisons throughout the ages. For example, the size of ancient Roman prisons is known, and the population is roughly known.

The article, What should be the Response to Violence? is just a part-time attempt to pull together some links. It started out as a letter to friends. It is not complete.

I have plenty of other things to do, and I wouldn't bother with this if it weren't important. I have paid work to do, so I lose my hourly rate for work done without pay.

"Yes, indeed this is a minority point of view."

It is a minority point of view, but I forgot to mention there are some famous people who agree with me: For example, Jesus Christ and Hillel, the Jewish sage.

"All you did is get on your soapbox..."

It is not only my soapbox. Look at all the links to articles by ABC News, BBC News, MSNBC, and others. In the referenced article, I give many, many links to stories, and give some of my own explanation. If you download all the linked stories, there are over 325 pages. I've written only a few pages.

"Besides, many (if not most) of the people we trained are in the Northern Alliance."

Maybe. I would have no way of evaluating that. However, there is only one person the CIA trained who is presently at issue: Osama bin Laden.

The fact is, the CIA designed all the procedures the terrorists used. Do you know many Arabs? I do, and planning is not their best skill. Americans are much better planners. I think if you ask a few Arabs, they will agree with this.

"... but the divisiveness among the ranks caused them to lose power to the Taliban."

That's not what MSNBC, CBS, ABC News, and others say. They say the CIA, or the CIA and the ISI, put the Taliban in power. DO NOT believe me. Research it yourself.

"When you come up with a solution, maybe people will be more willing to listen."

Plenty of people listen. It is the people who make money selling weapons who don't listen.

You are right, I don't have complete answers. However, if the U.S. works on how to live in the world without killing for a few years, and spends 1/10th the money it spends on war-making capability, I guarantee it can do better. Non-violence can be a lot more powerful when it gets the same preparation and attention as violence.

A quote from the article I referenced: "Israel receives an astounding $905 per year for every man, woman and child who lives there. Israel is required to spend most of this money to buy weapons from U.S. weapons makers. One Jewish leader calls it welfare for the weapons makers. Remember, Israeli citizens don't pay U.S. taxes.

Here's another link to the article again: What should be the Response to Violence?

"Yes, indeed this is a minority point of view."

It is a minority point of view, but I forgot to mention there are some famous people who agree with me: For example, Jesus Christ and Hillel, the Jewish sage.

"All you did is get on your soapbox..."

It is not only my soapbox. Look at all the links to articles by ABC News, BBC News, MSNBC, and others. In the referenced article, I give many, many links to stories, and give some of my own explanation. If you download all the linked stories, there are over 325 pages. I've written only a few pages.

"Besides, many (if not most) of the people we trained are in the Northern Alliance."

Maybe. I would have no way of evaluating that. However, there is only one person the CIA trained who is presently at issue: Osama bin Laden.

The fact is, the CIA designed all the procedures the terrorists used. Do you know many Arabs? I do, and planning is not their best skill. Americans are much better planners. I think if you ask a few Arabs, they will agree with this.

"... but the divisiveness among the ranks caused them to lose power to the Taliban."

That's not what MSNBC, CBS, ABC News, and others say. They say the CIA, or the CIA and the ISI, put the Taliban in power. DO NOT believe me. Research it yourself.

"When you come up with a solution, maybe people will be more willing to listen."

Plenty of people listen. It is the people who make money selling weapons who don't listen.

You are right, I don't have complete answers. However, if the U.S. works on how to live in the world without killing for a few years, and spends 1/10th the money it spends on war-making capability, I guarantee it can do better. Non-violence can be a lot more powerful when it gets the same preparation and attention as violence.

A quote from the article I referenced: "Israel receives an astounding $905 per year for every man, woman and child who lives there. Israel is required to spend most of this money to buy weapons from U.S. weapons makers. One Jewish leader calls it welfare for the weapons makers. Remember, Israeli citizens don't pay U.S. taxes.

Here's another link to the article again: What should be the Response to Violence?

Please look beyond what you are being told. This is not an adult video game.

I'd like to express a minority view: If you have been reading the news since the Vietnam war, this present "war" was entirely predictable in 1980. The U.S. government began its involvement in Afghanistan 21 years ago. (See the ABC News timeline link in the article referenced below.)

The CIA brought Arabs to the U.S. and trained them in terrorist techniques. Here is a quote from an ABC News article:

"Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..."

For links to stories about this from MSNBC, ABC News, The Atlantic Monthly magazine, and other respected sources, see the article: What should be the Response to Violence?

Afghanistan is the 15th country the U.S. government has bombed in 30 years, an average of 5 countries bombed every 10 years. Will there be 5 more countries in the next 10 years?

It was entirely predictable that someone would try to bring the violence to the United States, given the violence the U.S. government has done for more than 30 years. The U.S. government has killed more than 3,000,000 people in that time. To quote the biblical saying, "You reap what you sow."

If you really, really love the U.S. like I do, you will think carefully about the problems of the U.S. government.

Weapons making is EXTREMELY profitable. There are people who do hidden things to push the U.S. government into conflict because they want the money. The U.S. is the world's largest weapons manufacturer. The World Policy Institute, in a May 1995 article, "Weapons at War" said, "In the past ten years, parties to 45 current conflicts have taken delivery of over $42 billion worth of U.S. weaponry." (The links for these statements are in the article referenced above.)

From the story:

"... HotHardware features a review where they use one of these new processors in an Intel D815EEA2 motherboard, one that Intel shows as not supporting the new processor. What gives?"

If I understand the table correctly, it is probably just a case of not having updated their web site. Intel is notoriously sloppy about things like that.

About a year ago I called and talked to an Intel employee about a huge mistake on their web site. He said it would be fixed immediately. Eight months later the error was still there. I called and talked to the same man again about the same error. He didn't realize I had called before. He told me again it would be fixed immediately. Again it was not fixed. This is just one example.

Be careful with the D815EEA2 motherboard. If you remove a removeable drive, it may re-configure the BIOS, without any warning, and boot from the wrong drive.

Be careful with the network adapter if it is built into the D815EEA2. It assumes that it is attached to a huge network. If it is attached to a peer-to-peer network, you may not be able to make it function. An Intel technical support person and I worked on this problem for more than an hour. The final answer was to buy a CNET network adapter for $12.00 and disable the network adapter on the motherboard.

Also, if you are running a Raid 0 controller like the Promise Technology FastTrak 100, the D815EEA2 BIOS has a very weird configuration. It is not obvious how you get the motherboard to boot from the Raid controller, because the way you select it is hidden.


What should be the Response to Violence?

From the article:

...the system would focus with laserlike precision on a tiny handful of the guilty. (This assumes that the terrorists aren't cunning enough to disguise themselves.)

There is a very serious problem: People in power want to use technology, but they don't understand it. Lack of understanding doesn't stop them! They just charge ahead with laws like the DMCA and other craziness.

There is considerable use of the feelings surrounding the September 11 terrorism to get support for goals that they wanted to accomplish anyway, but that would not be supported before.



ABC News article: "Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..." What should be the Response to Violence?

Osama bin Laden will surely bid on this.


ABC News article: "Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..." What should be the Response to Violence?

"it's pretty much impossible for reasonable abuse ... of the system case to damage the drive once it's installed."

I agree. The case takes all the shock by bending and deforming.

"IBM uses a system that actually moves the heads off the platters when the drive is spun down..."

All modern drives have this feature. The heads do not lift far, but they pull up off the platters due to spring action. All modern drives require power to put the heads on the platters. If there is no power, there is no contact. Apparently some marketing literature has implied that this is new with IBM drives.


ABC News article: "Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..." What should be the Response to Violence?

"those IBM drives have their heads parked off the surface of the disk when powered off..."

All modern drives have this feature. This allows them to have a much higher shock rating when off then when operating.

"... by far the most common reason [for drive failure] was due to overclocking."

Interesting. I have no experience with overclocking.

"... I've had about 3 drives of each company fail..."

Western Digital had a very bad run of drives about 3 years ago. They acknowledged this. Since then, their drives have been excellent. I have 3 WD400BB 40 GB drives spinning next to me as I write this.


ABC News article: "Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..." What should be the Response to Violence?

Great photo!! (Be sure to click on it to see the higher-res copy.)

It amazes me that there are so many galaxies that each of us could own one. If we each owned a galaxy, then each of us would own more stars than there are people on Earth.

There's plenty of energy in the universe, it's just not always where you need it.


ABC News article: "Abu Sayyaf ... train[ed] terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA ..." What should be the Response to Violence?

"I've got to wonder if the problem isn't the drives necessarily, but bad handling..."

Bad handling is DEFINITELY an issue. Many people buy OEM bare drives that come from the manufacturer in bulk packaging. The people who package them and send them to you obviously have no computer knowledge, or thay wouldn't be working in a shipping department. (Computer knowledge means never having to say "Paper or plastic?")

Studies have been done of the acceleration (deceleration) caused by hitting a drive on a hard counter. A small bump of a metal drive on a hard counter can be 70 Gs. When you think about it, it makes sense. The drive is traveling at perhaps 1 foot per second, and then it comes to a complete stop in less than a thousandth of an inch.

The solution is to buy retail-boxed drives. Wait for a sale if the price is a problem.

The damage done by a bump is usually not evident for months until the drive fails. Apparently a drive will get a small mechanical irregularity, and then slowly chew on itself until failure.

By far the most common cause of drive failure is vibration or movement of the case while the drive is running. If you put a tower case on the floor, and the floor moves a little every time someone walks near, expect problems. If you put a case on a concrete floor, but it is often knocked during the day, expect failure. If a computer is on a table that moves a little while you are working, it may not last long. This failure mode is dependent on how much movement about the axis actually happens, of course.

Drives are built to handle a lot of Gs when they are not powered, but when they are running they are very vulnerable.

Inadequate power is also a reason for drive failure. Put a drive on its own power supply connector.

I've had good luck with considerable quantities of Western Digital drives. Good support, also. I've had bad luck with Quantum, Seagate, and Maxtor.

Whew! I didn't realize I knew much about this until I started typing.


Secrecy destroys democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

MODERATORS: I suggest you moderate the parent comment UP.

Microsoft probably slowed pipes in Windows XP (eXtra Pain) to accomplish some purpose. Here are some quotes from the parent comment:

'Many "enterprise" systems still use pipes on windows. Database systems in particular...'

"I doubt SQL Server uses them (especially if they're degrading this quickly) but many of MS's competitors still do (Including IBM's DB2)."

Of course, long-time Slashdot readers will find it hard to believe that Microsoft would do something against the common good. *grin*

Also, the point is not that this test shows the overall superiority of Linux. It shows an example of the code quality of Linux.


Secrecy destroys democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

"... the poor performance of Windows XP was a surprise. Windows 2000 actually did better than XP!"

This has been happening since the days of the VAX minicomputers, and probably before. Hardware manufacturers want slow, poor performing software, because that makes users buy more hardware. Most of Microsoft's sales are to hardware manufacturers, not to users.


Secrecy destroys democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

AC, you haven't been paying attention.

This killing thing is nothing new. It has been happening all the time. The only difference is that it happened inside the U.S. this time, after many, many years of Arabs saying they would retaliate.

It was a well-planned attack, with very well-written training manuals. Who trained Osama bin Laden? The CIA. See the 1998 MSNBC article, "Bin Laden comes home to roost" linked in the second line of What should be the Response to Violence?

The U.S. government killed an estimated 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and an estimated 150,000 people in Iraq. The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people. None of the people who were killed in any way directly threatened the U.S. These people had mothers and fathers, wives and families and friends.

The U.S. is the world's largest weapons dealer. The U.S. sells weapons to both the Israelis and the Arabs.

Did you know that both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have run oil businesses? Did you know that oil companies want to build a pipeline across Afghanistan? Do a search for the word "route". This is an official oil company document.

AC, you are being manipulated. I'm guessing you don't think that only American lives are valuable.

They say that the internet takes people away from real interaction, but I have found it to be the opposite.

For example, I met a Brazilian woman in a chat room, and, after months of sending hundreds of e-mail messages and then talking on the telephone, I went to Brazil and lived with her family while she taught me Portuguese.

Without e-mail, I would have had much less connection with Brazilians.

What should be the Response to Violence?